Not sure what parts and pieces of dev commentary youre cherry picking to put together this reddit tier conclusion, but this is not accurate.

I'll try to work up a quick response in a separate comment in this thread to give more information about this process.

EDIT: Longer - New God Launch Design Considerations can be found here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Smite/comments/kluxnq/why_does_every_new_god_have_to_have_power_creep/ghbwyv0/

Ive seen a lot of comments on new gods in general, so this response is going to go outside the scope of just OPs comments - but it seems like a fine time to share some more accurate and up to date information

First - OPs topic here

On the concept of "power creep"

New gods are designed to bring new features, new themes, and new experiences to the game. We are not intentionally overpowering new gods, we are not intentionally adding elements specifically for power.

Abilities have multiple components to add to the gods theming, or to put new gameplay twists on abilities.

On balance vs design

Balance does not directly relate to the "number of things" an ability does - its easy to have an ability that does a lot of different things and still be weak or feel weak, so comparing these two concepts directly is a bit of a misdirect in itself. Often new gods winrates go down substantially through some reasonable numbers nerfs, no components need to be removed.

On our goals for new gods

Contrary to a top comment in this thread - we actually have sufficient data to prove that our players prefer more complex gods - with more interations and higher skill caps. We have been mostly designing to that regard for the last 2 years. This has created some interesting perception vs reality problems - like Persephone and Yemoja having some of the lowest winrates in the game while still being regarded as OP. These gods have low winrates because most players cannot play them well.

On things always changing and intentional diversity

Now im sure plenty of people will read my previous statement and point out one specific easy god to invalidate the statement, so lets respond to that now.

We aim for a lot of diversity between gods each year - gameplay, class, pantheon, visual, theme - and difficulty diversity! So not every god is intentionally "expert" to learn - some are just hard or even medium/easy - we intentionally alternate through these aspects.

Things change, goals change, our design process has changed. Things we aimed to do 2+ years ago arent accurate to our goals now.

On gods being launched intentionally OP

This is generally false, and not our goal at all. Generally we would prefer gods to released as feeling "balanced" - meaning their launch few weeks win rate should be in the middle of the pack of gods - so out of 110+ gods thatd be rank 40-60 ish in winrate. This is the ideal launch - this is what we aim for. Its also very hard to do. This is not a SMITE specific challenge - if you follow any similar game you undoubtedly see similar "new champ OP" or "new champ trash" comments.

Gods are designed from their theme and their gameplay. These goals bring about the core components of each ability - balance is constantly considered alongside theme and gameplay and tweaks are made constantly for months of development.

I shared the launch data here: https://twitter.com/HiRezAjax/status/1339619598585487364

Two of our gods were underpowered (mulan), one extremely so on launch (baba). One was clearly overpowered (tsuku). And the other 2 were relatively close to our target, although still overpowered (cthulhu and danza).

Now, its not our goal for new gods to be OP - but lets look at what objectively happens to new gods.

New gods that are OP

• tend to get a lot of play

• we have no data to show that people actually quit the game because of this

• tend to keep a reputation of being OP for a long time - keeping their popularity or ban rate high even when win% drops to 50% or well below that

New gods that are weak

• tend to drop off in popularity very fast

• still bring people back to the game to check them out

• tend to keep the reputation of being weak for a long time - even when buffed well above 50% win%

We aim for balanced - and we are generally OK with launches being a little too strong or too weak - there are pros and cons to both. We don't try to engineer either of the above situations - this is just what tends to happen when people passionately discuss video games on the internet.

On balance and response to launches

Every god this year has been adjusted within 2 weeks of launch. That is our first balance release and the soonest we can reasonably make changes. Tsukuyomi was the strongest god in years, and the only one we ever considered a "balance hotfix" for - but he was still adjusted on bonus balance 14 days later.

We take player feedback seriously and make considerable adjustments as early as possible.

One thing that commonly comes up its "PTS Data" - and I want to make it clear that PTS data is extremely unreliable and weak. It generally has very few games, all of them are new god mirrors (for danza patch literally 100% of conquest games were danza mirrors) - and the data we saw there did not match live (and neither have previous gods) - the gods almost always get stronger from PTS to Day 1 live to Day 14 live - and each of them tend to grow at different rates.

Having the first few days of actual live data is so much more helpful - and we quickly balance in response to that.

Danza will be the only god who won't be adjusted this quickly due to launching during the Holidays. His win% has climbed into nerf territory - and we will be nerfing him in 8.1 with the rest of the major changes.

On dev/community

We are always listening to our players - and we try to reply as much as possible. Ive been on vacation and spending a lot of time with the family so its been harder to catch everything thats happening. I still check r/smite often, as well as twitter, watching streams, and playing the game. Even on vacation we do all of this.

Ill need to get back to the family soon so im not sure ill be able to provide more replies on this topic, but I hope this clears up a few common misconceptions and old echo chamber quotes.

Thanks yall!

• Danza ult is much more detectable? It has a very long warm up - moves rather slowly - and is easily avoided with a movement ability. It certainly can get lost in chaotic fights, but not much more so than other god abilities. Dealing with the inundation of information during team fights is a unique challenge for Mobas and a different discussion entirely.

• It doesnt taunt towers - and it has a considerable warm up time before it CCs anyone. Its also counterable. This is a very shallow comparison and not the same problem we saw with old Loki at all.

• This "stealth" is easily broken by any damage and even gives you many indicators as to where it might be worth attacking to reveal the god. Comparing this to Loki stealth and claiming "we havent learned our lesson" is just kinda of straight up rude. We clearly implemented a series of new counterplay options to this "stealth" as well as created a unique ability with strong themes fitting the god. Im quite proud of my team about this ability specifically.

Thanks!

Yea I agree - you can compare these gods at a surface level pretty easily - they both have similar "trickster" themes so thats an obvious result of our design process.

We pushed ourselves to make Danza unique in many ways, especially from Loki, and I think we succeeded.

The god is a little OP - which im not afraid to admit - which is bringing about more of these intense emotions. We will continue to aim for balanced and when we miss it, make adjustments asap.

Do not imply that the devs of this game "havent played" - its absurd and rude.

Im not denying the fact that the ability is strong. I was describing how its nothing like Loki.

Ive also done a lot of extensive testing on the timing of this ability and how easy/hard it is to evade the taunt - I agree with you that I still think its a little on the strong side.

I do have good replies for all of those but cannot share them now with a baby in my arms lol

Theme is very important - and you asked more on that so we will come back to it soon. Tsuku has more components in order to make his passive design feel complete. Has has the light and the dark basic attack, each are ranged, each with different shapes, and a different effect. The dark bonus attack also has a bonus effect, as does the light one youre referring to. You could argue that neither needed this extra bonus attack - being ranged and a different shape is enough - but we felt like the attack should have something additional and unique to diversify them.

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ah the old "winrates being skewed" discussion - the answer is no - persephone and yemoja still get thousands of matches - hundreds of thousands in non-ranked. This is a lie reddit tells itself to make them feel better when their opinions have no basis in stats. Persephone and Yemoja have proportionally just as many "mains" as any other god - and their normal vs ranked conquest stats track well to eachother. I really should do some deeper digging to help show hard data to disprove this - but the gods skill ceiling - these 2 gods are hard to play optimally - is overwhelmingly more of a factor on their stats than "i promise im good with this god i just dont get to play it enough"

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Theme is the most important part of a gods entire kit. This is what makes the gameplay exist - sure you can come up with an ability that is pure mechanics an no visuals, and then find a way to fit it with the god, but its just not a natural or often productive exercise. We consider balance and theme together at the start, then we prototype the ability, then we consider balance more highly at the end - for example - we are gonna let persephone avoid death it needs some constraints - so we designed it to be limited by her passive as well as having built in nerfs attached to her. These were then scaled up to weaken her further after playtesting and live gameplay.

I really cannot stress how important theme is to design like this - literally no one in the games industry works off 100% mechanics and then forces art onto it. That type of process just doesnt yield engaging content.

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PTS is primarily for bug finding/fixing - this has always been the case. PTS has always has intensely low player count and very unreliable data. However - PTS is still certainly useful for player feedback. We have made balance changes based on PTS feedback nearly every patch this year, or taken that feedback and immediately started working into the next bonus balance or full update.

I was making points in my bigger post that PTS is generally not great data for anything - and also generally not great feedback for new gods - when its such a small sample size and almost every comment reads like a different form of "new god op" and we see "new god op" even on the weak gods - there just isnt a lot of action to take that quickly.

Edit: oh yea! About PTS being shorter - when PTS ran longer - those extra days had even lower players - and basically did nothing except slow down our internal process. I dont think we have seen any less feedback or less bug reporting since shortening it - and we are much more efficient on our workdays.

I mean im not gonna go through every god with you but..

Danza has no leap/dash or stim - this seemed like a pretty big downside for the god, especially given how most high tier hunter picks look.

Odins downside was his transparency. The kit was quite predictable - i suppose the rework lost a bit of that but after some nerfs he has dropped off hard so the kit is certainly balance-able.

This "hard downside" concept tends to be applied in much too extreme of ways when discussed hypothetically. In real gameplay upsides and downsides are more subtle and counters are more soft. Id say this concept is intentional and proven to have its benefits after 8+ years of SMITE.

They are rankings out of the 110+ gods

so: Cthulhu was ranked #57 in win% on day 1 then rose to #6

Meaning 56 gods won more than him on the first day, but he was top 6 winnigest after 2 weeks.

All numbers displayed are "rank" in this regard - this makes it easier to see how gods relate to each other.

We have no plans to stop making new gods. I believe (and much of the SMITE team does too) that this would be catastrophic to our playerbase.

New gods are the most exciting thing in our release schedule for most players. Meaning this is a huge factor in people finding the game staying in the game, or returning to the game after taking a break.

We reworked Loki - possibly the most hyped and exciting rework in SMITE history and it only just barely felt like it matched a weak new god launch.

Also, Many of these old gods just dont need reworks or updates. Kukulkan is one of the most popular gods in the game and his kit is a closed beta kit. Ra recently had small buffs and has become #1 in the meta. Most old gods who feel lackluster can be solved through our minor rework process or balance processes.

If you are suggesting we completely remake new gods in the name of old gods - aka LoLs "VGUs" where they make essentially a new character with the name/themes of the old one - we have never attempted this - but we expect huge backlash in "losing" the old kit/old god - we specifically design our reworks to retain as much of the original gameplay as possible.

So, stopping gods is dangerous for the game. It would be a bad idea to stop making gods for reddits other favorite reasons (fix bugs) or (better balance) - but itd still be bad to do this and replace it with reworks.

So i dont agree with this "problem" - and the "solution" is especially dangerous to SMITEs success with overwhelming evidence.

Sorry for the long answer, but i see the suggestion a lot of "just stop making new gods" and I want to definitely show why we wont do that.

Every stat I shared in my tweets recently about new gods has mirror matches filtered out.

Its written in the stats image and in my previous tweet

Every stat i show my balance team weekly internally has mirror matches filtered out too.

I only include them when looking at raw popularity.

Maybe consider reading my replies, this might help prevent you from spreading misinformation in the future.

LOT to unpack here and a LOT of opinion/assumption.

lets try to unpack this?

• agree with you on the audience point - there isnt such thing as perfect balance - so what we aim for is optimal balance where "most" of our players who care about balance feel good about our decisions - this has been quite successful for us with increasing positive feedback and player metrics over the years

• Popularity is quantified in many many different ways - and youre right that its not really ever easy to just claim any god is popular across all of them - casual arena and conquest ranked have different most played gods (but some that are popular across all) - The key takeaway about this topic refers back to my "diversity" section - and that is to say - we have different popularity goals for different gods. Sure we would like them to be all highly popular across all modes, but its just not possible. Some god has to be first and some god has to be last any way you slice the data.

• Disagree with you on this complexity paragraph - Persephone and Yemoja still have LOW winrates at Diamond+ - Hard gods are hard for skilled players too, hard gods have more chances to make mistakes - certain pro players have even stated they dont pick these gods because this risk isnt worth it. Your statements on "depth" and "stale" gods feels like 100% opinion.

• Partially agree with you on power creep. The concept youre describing seems correct but the intensity is not. Power Creep is a common and intended aspect of many multiplayer/live games - and it does a fantastic job at keeping the game interesting and fresh without breaking it. The issue is the "rate" at which power is creeping - everytime some SMITE god feels slightly OP people get very concerned about this - but its not nearly as intense as the internet discussion makes it out to be. An overwhelming majority of our new gods have been easily brought down in win% through normal balance processes and live within a healthy spot now. The very few who cannot be balanced this way are considered for rework, which we are quite open to. SMITE is VERY far from spiralling into uncontrollable power creep. Our level feels normal for games like this, and has been yielding successful metrics.