[2021] SMITE Fun Fact: Achilles was the last God introduced in SMITE to not have a "slow" built into his Kit. He was released Early 2018.

This is actually neat. Often when working on gods we are more specific to them and may or may not fall into patterns without realizing this so this was a good opportunity to gut check some of the decisions made on those gods. While if I could go back and change some decisions I have made through various gods developments (I think any designer on any game feels similarly, lol); I am unsure if I would change much about these slows.

I was curious to go back and get specific numbers but I know in general SMITE is a pretty slow heavy game. Looking at the total god roster of 116, 89 have a slow to some capacity (76.7%). Removing all of these gives a historical 71.2%. It serves as a reward inside a kit to follow up on further aggression without being so disruptive as to remove control from players and in general creates good fair moments of tension so I am not surprised that this is the case. It is also why Winged Blade has always been (and likely always will be) a really good item.

While this is infact the longest spree of slows that I could see I think a good chunk of it was guided around respecting potential frustrations.

For example, I worked on Heimdallr and his horn was originally a tremble. He has this horn that blasts so loud is indicates the start of Ragnarok; the theme was that being directly blasted by this powerful sound wave would be disorienting enough to tremble you; with the final blast being the knock away. Through development though this quickly became frustrating as long duration control that fights you can be frustrating. For ultimate level abilities like Discordia or an ability with more restrictions (Cab) it can feel appropriate but for Heimdallr; not so much. However it still leaves the thematic hole and a slow filled to serve that purpose.

Horus and Set were also gods I worked on and while I feel like their "thematic" reason for having a slow isn't the best; they do serve strong functional roles. Set is an assassin with no Hard Crowd Control who has to heavily commit to make a play. Giving him a reward for the skillshot of utilizing his A01 and Clones to let him contribute something more to his team when he cannot helped round out his gameplay in a way that isn't just more variable damage. Horus gust is a bit more thematically understandable but it could have gone no CC or knockback instead. Given his function was supposed to be a Support who contributed to locking down enemies no CC would have limited his capacity in that role and meant he would need higher damage or healing to compensate. We could have given MORE but he also has one of the longest lockdowns that also shreds some prots. He probably didn't need a full displacement.

Those are three solid candidates for potentially not having a slow; and had we gone with that decision the 'pattern' would have been more consistent with the historical rate but I do think this mostly points to why this has been the pattern as of late. I don't think if Heimdallr trembled, Set lost his slow, and Horus either lost the slow entirely OR got the knockback would be automatically better for not creating a list like this.

EDIT: I actually did my math a bit wrong : Hun Batz has a slow, I forgot to include that from his A01. Also The Morrigan should count for 0.76.

Possibly, but it also helps us push to explore territory that can provide unique gameplay. With pure focus on Gameplay it can be easy to not explore more dangerous ideas or just immediately dismiss them; but often you would miss out on the insight of both what options to explore once you commit to an idea but future lessons for gods.

3/4 of your examples I would say show this pretty well works. Pushing how "disorienting" we can make his horn was a relatively low risk exercise on our part that wouldn't break the characters theme if it was not there and had some potential payoff that is could have bolstered his theme some and potentially provided unique gameplay. It was tested as a known higher risk aspect but it was a pretty easy thing to try out, iterate on, and discard if it didn't feel like an add.

Tsukuyomi's Basic Attacks is similar. It had the potential to double down on his theme and reinforce his precise and calculating demeanor and the pointedness of the ability that causes it but was not something so integral that when we removed it post launch ruined his theme.

These I would mostly say as theme reinforcements rather than themes unto themselves and for each case we might have gone too far I think we have found places where they can be real value adds. This also doesn't go over the countless times we try stuff internally before releasing it out to the world. Some things people really enjoy wouldn't exist if we didn't try some of this stuff.

Baba Yaga RNG was a gameplay hook and is one of those things I think people are either going to really enjoy or be turned away by. As long as it independently isn't so strong and frustrating as to warp enemy gameplay it can be OK for some gods to have niches as long as it isn't too extreme. It is one of a MOBAs biggest strength, you can almost always find someone you resonate with. Baba mostly saw play once we fixed other issues and bolstered other parts of her case which to me points to the RNG aspect largely hitting the mark.

Persephone would be one where yes, the theme created a negative gameplay; which we would readily admit. The idea of a character reviving to fight again is not only a very popular request but felt like a solid 1 to 1 connection and pushed it forward. We did a lot internally to mitigate how strong it could potentially be, both before launch and after launch; but it was fundamentally breaking a promise about the game in a way that was negative.

The rework version may not be as flashy but we kept it for a few reasons. The first is the passive itself does have a component that on its own is a powerful enough passive. Generating free gold is potent and we knew it was getting stronger with a faster plant generation rate. With this we figured that rather than removing entirely the ability to do something post death and bolstering the passive slightly to compensate that keeping that as some extra flavor was better. We expected this to be the most divisive point of the rework; and it was. However since then her metrics, ban rates, frustrations are all in a much healthier place (they may not be perfect but are a significant improvement from the old version) and I am unsure if changing the passive even more would have resulted in something more positive unless it was entirely (gold generation included) reworked. We were already changing a lot however and this felt like a step too far. I think this has merits to be debated from from both sides.

TL;DR While yes it may be possible that we sometimes overindex on 'theme' it does provide us an opportunity to really explore concepts and ideas we might otherwise discard out of safety and provides the team an opportunity to see what we can/can't/shouldn't do within SMITEs gameplay space. I also don't fully agree it is a scale purely between Theme <----> Gameplay; as they often intersect in a variety of ways and in a variety of extremes.

Sure, and I would be OK if this is just something we disagree on.

To me the 1 being random is about playing around the hand you are dealt with the occasional 'high roll' with the drawback being a specific lack of consistency. This isn't the only version of RNG in her kit but it is the more extreme version.

To some people this is going to be a complete deathblow to the desire to play her. I think this is OK. Assault is somewhat similar. Some people like the randomness and others don't and won't touch the mode. We even mitigate the RNG some with healer rules but if you add too many more I think you remove a lot of what is appealing about the mode. (TL;DR here : It's ok if the RNG alienates some players. There is also probably an 'optimal' RNG amount to maximize how many people enjoy her).

Here would be the two ways in which I think the OK goes to Not OK.

1. If her popularity suffered so much due to this. She isn't the most popular but she also isn't unreasonably low. Her appearance combined with a more niche playstyle puts her about where I would expect. Maybe if she lost this she could be a bit more popular? But I feel like this has potential to backfire as a removal of a unique gameplay experience. There might be middle ground for this (Internally I know more than a few people wanted me to remove the 0; which is also pretty consistent external.) but I a mostly arguing in defense of approximately this level of RNG. The removal of the 0 would be something analogous to adding healer tiers in assault.

2. If enemies felt like the reason they couldn't fight her was due to this RNG. While her high rolling into a silence can be pretty altering, the hit area and duration you are likely to be locked down limits just how crazy if could be. Put this to He Bo carpet size and we are having a very different conversation.

If it is bigger it should probably get it's knockup back for theme reasons. Although we did remove that; probably can't bring it back.

How about a slow?

Now you're cooking with slows.