Original Post — Direct link

As new gods get added to the game and patches buff old ones, I have noticed a design philosophy that I don't agree with and feel like warrants discussion.

With more than 100 gods to choose from, it's imperative to find a way to distinguish them, gameplay wise. This means that each god should have clear strengths and weaknesses, but buffs in recent patches seem to go against this principle.

Take hunters as an example: what distinguishes one from the others? They mainly vary in how good their waveclear is, how well they can escape, and how strong their lategame can be, which mostly comes down to attack speed steroids.

Neith has always been the early game hunter: strong waveclear and crowd control, easily exploitable escape, and weak auto attacks lategame. But since some patches ago, her jump became faster, and Unravel now gives her an attack speed buff, hurting her identity.

On the opposite end of the spectrum we have Artemis: great lategame thanks to Vengeful Assault and Tusky, but weak clear and vulnerable to ganks. She got a very small buff, which gives her slow immunity on her steroid. A bolder decision could have been increasing its duration instead, solidifying her strengths rather than patching up her weaknesses.

Giving every new hunter a movement ability also means that gods like Apollo and Jing Wei don't stand out as much.

One consequence of this design philosophy is that it makes it harder to remember all the things a god does, and therefore how to play against it. Pick an old god like Nemesis: even if you never played against her, just by reading her ability you can learn that:

  1. She has strong slows but no hard CC, meaning that Sprint is great against her
  2. She can reflect damage, but you can break the shield through crowd control
  3. Building lots of defense doesn't help much against her

Now take someone like Cthulu: even if you manage to understand what the hell Torment is, where is the counterplay?

The other issue I have is with items. Every item should have a specific purpose, making it easy to understand which gods it is strong on and against which composition it excels. Hydra's Lament is a great concept: you have to think who can make the most out of it, and it rewards you for slightly changing how you play once you have it. It also helps teaching auto attack canceling.

Spectral Armor is another fine example, though a much simpler one: lots of crit on the enemy team? It's good. No crit? It's bad.

But then you get to items like Charon's coin. It does a lot of stuff, but it's not at all obvious when it's better than the alternatives. You have to first figure out that the coin flipping thingy is nice flavor but not that relevant, and then see that it gives more %pen than most other items. But then... when is it better than Obsidian Shard? Well, Obsidian Shard is only good on gods who want go get one strong hit, like He Bo and Scylla, so Charon's Coin should be better on everyone else? It's not obvious without spending hours in jungle practice. If it was something like the old Spear of the Magus, but with % protection reduction (so a magical executioner), this would be clearer.

Many defensive items also add crowd control reduction, which is quite hard to evaluate: we already have the Cloaks as anti-CC item, Stone of Gaia as anti-knockup and Winged Blade as anti-slow, why is there an additional stat, which helps in no way against half of all CC?

These two issues merge into one when you consider ability scaling: some recent changes have increased the power scaling of some abilities which had low numbers. But this means that buying power is "kinda good" with everyone! I'd much prefer a few gods with high scaling, like He Bo, who prefer high damage items, and others with low scaling, like Thanatos, who get their damage from penetration, Hydra's Lament, or simply being overleveled.

To sum up, my main gripe is that the game is getting more complicated, with lots of text under every item and every ability, but this has not led to an increase in depth: you rarely feel rewarded for picking the right items or exploiting the enemy weaknesses.

Or am I overanalyzing?

External link →
about 4 years ago - /u/HiRezAjax - Direct link

So at first I was a little offended by this post, because I disagree that SMITE lacks depth and I disagree with the idea that SMITE has failed to introduce any new depth.

But it did get me talking with the design team and led us to some very interesting conclusions. I'd lead off by saying that this concept, like many in game design, is very subjective and has lots of exceptions to rules. Just because OP might think the game lacks depth, doesnt mean they are wrong, but myself or a majority of players might still disagree with them.

The concept of depth vs breadth is a core tenet of game design, and is usually defined as such:

  • Breadth: the sheer number of mechanics, items, characters, levels, systems, etc - its what you have in your game

  • Depth: the variety of experiences and moments that can some from your breadth of features - its how your game plays

Id also like us to remove the term "complexity" from our vocab - to me it just makes the discussion more confusing as it could be applied to either breadth or depth and in positive or negative attitudes. "EDIT - seems obvious now that complexity = breadth - but i feel like not all commenters were adhering to this rule - so i restricted my vocab in my response for clarity reasons"

when translating this to SMITE

  • Breadth: the number of gods, items, modes we have in the game - this is constantly increasing obviously - players want and expect this. Its safe to say when prototyping a new game you should avoid overdoing it here, but in an 8 year old MOBA we know this has positive player metrics associated with it (ex: people log back in on new god patch day more than on an average day)

  • Depth: the unique gameplay experiences that a player can feel - This is HOW you play a god - id argue you can play against a lot of Scyllas and still notice slight differences in their playstyle and combat choices from game to game, thats good depth - id also assert this is generally increasing, although if we are going to ADD depth, we most likely are going to need to add some breadth at the time time. I think the two are more connected, and especially in MOBAs.

Now for some more specific examples

  • Cthulhu: we add a new god - breadth - but how can you say that this god brings no new experiences? Cthulhu heavily changed team comp choices to favor mobility (his ult counter) as well as build choices toward tanks building more health and bringing back Qins Sai into the meta to counter that. Cthuhlu also does have clear weak points, as we saw him trying to be forced into support in SPL and losing constantly. he needs the right build/level advantage to be as effective as possible.

  • Charon's Coin: we add a new item - breadth - but I think its unfair to say this item came with no depth. It was shipped with an entire reworking of the Penetration system. In many cases for SMITE: system changes = depth, adding more to a current system = breadth. This item was necessary for a core system change, that provided new learning experiences, including play and counterplay. This item also just isnt as plain as OP suggest, this item requires kill/assist stacks to be effective, so you buy this item you are opting into fighting more. Its likely a worse choice of an item if you plan to play the EU worlds farm strat (an obviously effective strat)

OP also bring up hard counters a lot. I dont think they are as good of a measurement for depth as OP suggest. Hard counters can be introduced in ways that dont feel deep - but this is subjective.

i dont really think that "introducing new strategies that feel like they need to be hard countered" is a good design goal, but certainly people could disagree.

In the end, OP no, you arent over-analyzing. This is an incredibly deep and difficult topic to define, and players of different skill level and seniority across SMITE might heavily differ in opinion.

But what I can say, is that our team is always looking to add meaningful depth to SMITE - primarily through systems changes - and new gods that bring very specific new gameplay experiences - such as skillshots that can be used in many different ways - or ones that feel unlike anything else in SMITE.