[2020] There should be an option to turn off skin effects in game

This topic has come up a few times with Olympians and Pro players so I feel prepared to discuss it. Here is what we are committed to doing to improve this concern:

• We have been much more strict on FX (visual) and SFX (audio) on skins for a while now. I meet personally with the Audio team on every single new skin to ensure key audio cues are preserved in all skins. Complaints have been way down since this practice started. We also review all visuals in playtests with designers, QA, and ex-pros. I can see from the speed this post is growing that we can continue to do more, though.

• The better solution is to fix clarity issues. We have recently updated audio and visuals for many old skins for better visual clarity. We have looked at every skin on the SPL Ban-List and made changes to make the skins look and sound more like the default gods. Many of the skins listed in this thread have had multiple changes made to them after their launch to improve clarity. I have personally played/reviewed/compared Vapor Wave Poseidon to Default Poseidon myself multiple times and implemented changes each time. It seems we still haven’t gotten it quite close enough yet, and I’m going to go talk with the team about it again.

• Just a few examples of old skins fixed in S7: Royal Fury Anhur, Recon Artemis, Senpai Da Ji, Shellshock Agni, Curious Critter Ratatoskr, Kitsune Ratatoskr, Kage Ratatoskr, Zenko Ratatoskr, Final Fusion Ratatoskr, Sweet Tooth Sol, Brimstone Demon Thor, Geek Beak Thoth, Playful Bunny Nu Wa, Frostfire Ullr, Touchdown Vamana, All Ra Ults.

• Another intended mechanic that rarely comes up in these discussions is Conquest audio. The Conquest map has specific zones where audio “travel time” is changed. Generally, abilities used in the jungle don’t have their audio travel as far as it would if it was fired in lane. There are even areas that make abilities silent to those too far away from the area. This has worked consistently in all iterations of the Conquest map (S5, S2, S1). We are considering some major changes for the S8 map to make audio feel more consistent and audible.

• There are a few skins that are especially hard to “just fix” though. I’m going to take some time to discuss those with the team. These generally only refer to the highest form of T4’s and some of the T5’s. It is a very short list. Short enough for players to learn how to play against it and recognize the cues. These skins are often considered “pay to lose” because they put so much change on the player controlling them.

We understand the player frustration here, and we are working hard to improve skin clarity, but this solution is not the answer. Here’s why:

• This suggestion is to “allow players to choose god to display default FX and SFX on skinned models”. This is a more reasonable solution than “allow us to disable all skins” which is absolutely too extreme and exacerbates the final 2 points in this list to dangerous levels.

• This suggestion likely won’t create such a positive clarity experience as it seems. Although many of us SMITE veterans know the default audio/visuals at an instinctive level, context will still be important. Seeing ability FX and SFX out of context is just as likely to cause confusion. Imagine seeing an icy god shooting a firey projectile at you. It’s going to look strange, and it might cause you to hesitate just as much as any skin would.

• This suggestion has serious technical barriers. I know people tend to not have much sympathy for tech limitations on features, but let me detail them for you anyway. First, memory and loading. This suggestion would require each match to load 2 whole sets of FX and SFX for every god, instead of 1. Consoles are already pushed to their absolute limit on SMITE due to the number of game assets in each match, we cannot extend it any more. Next, this breaks the core server-client tech the game has always operated on. Our entire system is designed to expect all players to see and use the same code files and art assets. This prevents cheating and ensures things are working. Changing this is probably possible but very risky and time consuming. Finally, this suggestion just doesn’t take into account the game’s structure. A Skin is enabled by a player, which changes the gods model (3D character art) which the Unreal Engine uses to find their animations, and audio is attached to character animations. Allow players to break this connection would require code that changes how assets are organized at the Engine level.

So just ban some skins from ranked, right? This has 2 major downsides

• First, there is what we call the “Slippery Slope” problem. If we ban 1 skin, people will certainly want more banned. This ties us up in long-winded arguments which waste time or result in too many skins having to be banned to be able to meet everyone’s personal preferences.

• Next, there's the problem of decreasing “Skin Value”. We work so hard to make players excited about our new skins, we want them to enjoy everything they buy from us. If players can’t use those skins in ranked and they mainly play ranked, they won’t want them. If players can disable and never see their allies/enemies cool skin FX, they might not want to equip any themselves. Skin sales is what keeps SMITE alive. This is why this subreddit exists, it's why the SPL exists, it's why my job exists. It feels much more reasonable to us to fix these issues rather than risk SMITE’s entire free to play economy. Skins do not need to feel OP to feel valuable, but we do think that they should be seen by everyone and should be playable everywhere. We are definitely in favor of fixing/changing elements of skins that feel like they cause gameplay advantages, and can do that without hurting their value.

I have already updated a few tasks for our team just from specific skin issues shared in this post. Please continue to help us by reporting the specific issues you see, and we will keep doing our best to make sure SMITE skins are an awesome experience for everyone.

ill add a task for it, thanks!

we have fixed most of The Morrigan skins, this one is next for sure!

A reasonable reaction, and one i honestly expected to hear more of.

to answer a few of your points

• Yes, Ms. Diagnosis Neith has been updated, i just tested this from an enemy perspective and her ability 2 is darker red than base neith

• Yes, Loki skins sound much more like base now, and if they dont, he is getting reworked so they soon will

• Yes, All Ra ults have been updated and adjusted to match more closely with base

• Sun Wukong, this one is harder to say, it was a specific decision to fit the skin theme, and I think it falls into my point about the rare few T4s, and id say that his poses are pretty intuitive.

Im not sure what you mean about stancers, if you gave specifics i could try to look into them.

The rest i think was pretty covered in my writeup

hes way up in the air with his hands up = eagle

reaching one arm out forward to grab you = tiger

spinning staff around in front = ox

many of these have been updated over time but ill take another look

we are planning some lighting changes to that map like we recently did with Arena and Conquest that make the Assault floor a little darker, which should help this.