Smite Dev Tracker

From 8.4 Patch Notes: (and nothing more has been said or shown since then)

• This map is planned to launch in Q4 2021.

• This new map is being designed to feel like both the Siege Rework and the Clash Rework, but at the same time. We are aiming to create a mode that both Siege mains and Clash mains will enjoy playing.

• When looking at the problems with Siege, the team noticed that many aspects of Clash could be applied to help improve it. Clash had similar issues to be solved using Siege mechanics.

• The two maps occupy a similar gameplay space in SMITE: Higher Combat, Lower Strategy – but with real lanes, towers, and jungle objectives. These design conclusions are what compelled us to merge them into one map. As the merging of the best parts of each map is such a primary goal – the name Slash will be sticking.

• It will feature both Maya and Egyptian environments – each tied to the respective bases.

• ...

Can you DM me the "Support Ticket ID" number or at least the player IGN you are trying to report? So I can see what happened.

Looks like you followed all steps correctly and if the player really said what you are describing, I would expect some form of ban to be handed out. Thanks

Text is not updated due to how this was implemented. I did hop in this morning into a Custom Conquest to confirm it functions as intended. Local matches (such as Solo Jungle Practice) may not show it working either.

This is absolutely correct. I think OPs title is a bit extreme - this is not ignored by everyone.

We on the design and balance teams discuss this all the time, and we are generally hesitant to make these changes for a few reasons, some of which you already listed correctly. Some other things id add

• Players absolutely underestimate how huge of buffs these are. We have seen this across many different data points in SMITE history. Making an ability easier to hit - faster animation speed, larger hit area, etc is one of the biggest buffs we can give a god. The increase in win% is often much larger for these types of changes even when compared to larger damage buffs and cooldown buffs. Zhong is already seeing pro play. Hades is one of the winningest gods in the game (except pro play) - we specifically discuss and choose not to buff in this way all the time

• We also have recently become much more open to these buffs. Apollo, Anhur, and Neith were fe...

That system sounds like it takes a different approach; which is fine but it is a tradeoff of being explicitly slower. You could make our system roughly match that by essentially using our confidence metric as a multiplier on MMR. At 0% confidence we assume you are 1500; then multiply by 0 to get you 0. You play and win; your confidence goes to like 10% and your MMR goes to 1600. You functionally have 160 MMR.

This is a common approach with systems like this but again; it is a tradeoff. While it lessens the pull of bringing down the median MMR it isn't actually ignored and it will explicitly take longer to test and validate a players MMR. We tend to find that these types of changes seem more detrimental in a game like SMITE where there is a lot of noise when it comes to measuring player skill. (9 other factors on your team than say a 1v1 for example).

In the short term it would have the effect you want.

In the long term it would not. If every new player started at 0 over time 0 would become the new mid-point.

The tradeoff being made here is mostly that this is the quickest way to place people accurately. You can do things to make it less accurate (artificially set players MMR, force restrictions on who they can play against) but these make the system take longer to find their true MMR, and this extra time further compounds into less accurate matchmaking in the long term. We make some of these compromises (there are soft restrictions in place to prevent new new players from facing veterans) but Matchmaking systems are quite delicate as they rely on assumptions and breaking those assumptions can lead to unexpected behavior and wonkiness in the long run.