In Smite of Myself

Ah Smite, a Dota style game that’s presently in Beta and has no NDA so quite honestly it would be wrong of me not to write a blog about it because hey, I got into the beta and they get the name being spread by the likes of me to all of 2 people who will read this for free. That doesn’t mean I’m here to give the game a sensual rub down infront of anyone reading this. Oh no I don’t really like the game, this may be more a fact of this being the first full on MOBA I’ve ever played with Super Monday Night combat being the closest to the genre I’ve come before.


Just to prove the I'm not breaking some NDA here



From my second match in Smite I knew this wasn’t going to be the something I’d enjoy much as I was in the Novice and had “You useless fuck go mid lane you noobtard stop pushing left lane” and when I pointed out “Dude no-ones in left lane on their team I can push it right back” I got “Fucking noob useless shittard you should be team fighting mid lane with us play as a fucking teamplayer you useless noob”. Allow me to restate again, this was the novice queue a queue you end up in up to about level 5.


Yes its a very cut throat community


My experience didn’t get much better from there with my first unlocked God the ranged Mage He Bo. My first match with him I ran into someone claiming as a ranged mage who is weak defensively I should be the one to go solo mid lane, when I refused he continually called surrender votes then when everyone else refused he spent the rest of the match continually feeding.




This is just the tip of the shitberg that is seemingly the community I don’t envy Hi-rez who will have to deal with all these reports as presently I managed about 1 in 3 matches where I didn’t run into some screaming MLG esc idiot telling everyone else how to play while being 3 levels below everyone else on the field and telling everyone else how much they suck and are useless and I’m a damn low level on there so I’d hate to see the higher level community. This is considering the low level community has 2 in every 3 matches decided pretty much by which team has someone quit first.

Strategy wise the games very solid with a large selection of gods each with their own stats with strengths and weaknesses and plenty of build options letting you build your attack power or defence also letting you deliberately stick to certain lanes and build your defence to counter the enemies in your lane or switch up lanes to prevent the enemy trying to counter any one lane. Continuing the strategy is the ranged vs melee and magic vs physical damage where you ideally want to mix up everything in the lane to prevent the enemy being able to fully stack against you or deliberately stack the lane with say magical types then switch the lanes out using the enemies stacking against them. Jungle wise I’ve seen very little use, sure you get a bit of an advantage in the game by jungling but mostly its escaping and ambushing with the jungle enemies only giving fairly minor advantages other than the fire giant who takes about 3 people to have a decent shot of taking down but gives a very big team wide buff. Tower wise there’s also an interesting strategic element in that once you reach the main back line tower in this game being a phoenix, killing these gives your minions flaming weapons making them more powerful. However while you could focus on one lane to get these weapons the minatour who guards the enemy temple and acts as the main objective will be more powerful depending on the defences left. Additionally the Phoenixes will resurrect after a certain amount of time so while you can use the fire weapons to destroy the other towers you will have to deal with the phoenix again.




Gameplay wise it’s an ok game, it does seem like a good idea with everything being a skill shot but with some powers being like Artemis’s boar which is a homing attack that works in an area of effect so the claim about it all being skill based isn’t that legitimate. Additionally the idea of ganking (gang attacking someone often from an ambush) is very powerful to the extent the game turns into who can flank the enemy most each time resulting in a near guaranteed kill if you and your allies have the same amount of people attacking as those you’re attacking do. So while the game may claim to be skill based it’s not some huge super skill game as once you’re ganked you’re dead with next to no escape and will have to rely mostly on luck to avoid a death.

Prsentation wise it’s quite nice with a decent mythos and it does give a very mystical vibe and the third person view point being a very nice interesting change and a nice selection of different pantheons of gods. The game doesn’t look great, looking more like WOW than some modern game. So when I say the game looks bad playing on my toaster it’s because I can dial the settings all the way to maximum and still feel like I’m playing a game that was made in the dreamcast era. For the sake of context the only other modern title I can play on full graphics (that isn’t a basic game) is Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead both of which look fantastic and I still swear Valve are using dark magic to get them to run so well on my machine.



He Bo just rocks a bit

To sum up my impressions on the Beta so far

Positives:
Deep strategic element
Varied gods and play styles
Nice use of the third person perspective

Negatives
The community already is pretty repulsive with ragequitting and obnoxious players
The graphical fidelity of the game
The fact skill can easily be beaten by ambush strategies (team game or not knowing you will die if X happens and it will be a slow death isn’t that fun)

Things that are being fixed:
Balance issues between the gods
Custom loadouts (this is badly needed due to the extensive range of items)
The absolute stupid auto skill levelling (Hopefully being fixed as the computer is terrible and picking useful stuff)

Essentially I probably won’t be sticking round Smite much but I’m sure it will find plenty of love from fans of LOL and DOTA but not much beyond the lovers of MOBA games.

For those who want to sign up for the Beta here’s a link or drop me a message and if I haven’t been stopped by Hi-Rez I’ll be able to send a few Beta keys out using their new option (I say drop me a line as I believe its email based somehow)

and in advance no I have no idea why the URL insert isn't working