r/smite comment

Also a Smite 1 vet here. I haven't personally played much League (I've tried to get into it multiple times, it's just not fun to me personally), and I appreciate the effort you put into this post. With that being said, there is so much you're saying here that is either missing the entire appeal of Smite to its core audience, or just straight up ill-informed. Wall of text incoming, I know, just bear with me.

"For instance, miss fortune in league have hybrid scalings on her ability, she is mostly played in the bot lane as an adc, which has an emphesis on basic/auto attacks, and doing consistant dps in teamfights. but if you go for an int/ ap build, she becomes a poke champion that basically spams an anubis 3 on cooldown one screen away, which in turn turns her into a complete neusence. But the design philosphy here is that by pivoting into one path or the other, it changes the playstyle of the character drastically, which I think that the best implimentation in smite is probably just chucc."

I feel that you're blatantly overlooking some examples of great implementation of hybrid scaling in this game. Chaac is actually one of the least compelling examples, imo. Neith's hybrid scaling achieves almost the same effect that you're describing with Miss Fortune. She has three viable ways of being built (str AA, str ability, int ability) that each 1) have different playstyles and 2) lend themselves to either ADC or Mid. I know you talk more about Sun Wukong later in the post, but he's also a great example that you're overlooking. Again, three different viable builds (str ability, int ability, str bruiser) that have different playstyles and lend themselves to Solo, Mid, or even Jungle. Other gods serve as better examples than Chaac, too, that I won't get in detail on, because I think you get my point here. Aladdin, Agni (non-aspect vs aspect), Athena, Cernunnos, Nu Wa (non-aspect vs aspect), Medusa, Kali, Danza, Bari, Sol (non-aspect vs aspect), are ALL gods whose split scaling leads to different possibilities of playstyles.

I will agree that there ARE examples of poorly implemented/poorly balanced split scaling gods, such as Hou Yi (int builds suck ass on him), but there are way less examples of this than not.

I'm gonna skip forward a bit here while we're on the topic of Wukong: "Current builds (e.g., Int on Sun Wukong) feel shallow because they don’t meaningfully change playstyle"

I'm sorry, but this is blatantly, factually incorrect, so much so that I struggle to believe that you've even tried the three different SWK builds in their respective roles. Int Wukong Mid lends itself to a high CDR long range poke mage playstyle, bruiser Wukong solo lends itself to the OG Smite 1 Wukong playstyle, and I've even found more success than not with str ability build Wukong Jungle, which takes the tiny bit of assassin potential he had in Smite 1 and cranks it up a notch, because of the hitboxes doing more damage in their closer segments.

"Devs need data driven tuning"

Yes and no. The devs have been doing data driven tuning for years now. I agree that it took them too long to get good at it, but they got there. Smite 1's ending balance state that they left it in is genuinely amazing, and while they're not doing quite as good of a job with Smite 2's balance compared to Smite 1's, it's still good nonetheless. Furthermore, the Smite 1 balance state gives me more hope that Smite 2's balance state will also get to that next level of quality some day. Other than PvE being too valuable compared to PvP at the moment, the balance state is already pretty good. I do really hope they fix that soon tho :/

"Hunters are too strong"

As an adc main myself...
shhhhhhh 🤫🤫🤫🤫🤫
you're right tho i can't lie just stfu pls

"Crit items are dominant"

Blatantly incorrect. https://smitebrain.com/gods/artemis/builds - https://smitebrain.com/gods/anhur/builds - https://smitebrain.com/gods/apollo/builds - https://smitebrain.com/gods/artemis/builds - https://smitebrain.com/gods/kali/builds (note: only her aspect builds apply to this conversation)- https://smitebrain.com/gods/rama/builds so on and so forth, you get the point. only exception i found is Jing Wei's builds but that's because of her built-in crit.

Again, I struggle to believe you've played enough Smite 2, at least in its more recent patches, to comment on the specifics of its meta/playstyles/etc.

"Many [hunters] have mobility/damage immunity, making high damage output feel oppressive, especially against warriors and guardians. Not every marksman should have escape, if a hunter has good escape, they should do less damage in return, vice versa."

dude seriously stfu stop blowing our cover

"Several gods have highly overlapping kits for instance, Wukong vs. Ratatoskr, Thor in a similar conceptual space, differing mostly in stats rather than core ability identity"

This is such a forced, disingenuous argument, and here's why.
On paper, in theory, yes, these god's three kits share some similarities that might make one think they play similarly. They both go up into the sky (for wukong this is even a stretch to say), they have a mobility option, and a strong CC option (wukong has 2 if playing aspect).

But that's it. On paper. In theory. Their kits look similar to each other if you're just reading their wiki pages.
When you actually play the three gods, they feel very different, and they each have their own unique playstyles.
The only slight part of this whole argument that I'll agree with is that there are too many air assassin ults (thor, rat, thana), but that's because of balance pain-points, not because of homogeneity.

"Smite overemphasizes skill shots. Does everything needs to be a skill shot; non–aim-intensive abilities can make the game more approachable and varied for new players?"

Oh boy, oh god, oh man, oh boy oh god oh man. Where do I even start with this point? It's SO deeply out-of-touch.

Despite you already having made points earlier in the post that were just straight up incorrect facts, not even opinions, I genuinely feel like this one is your most misguided point of them all, even though it's just an opinion.

Again, I know this is just your opinion, but I can confidently say that you are failing to grasp what makes Smite so much better than any other MOBA (at least when it was still a one-of-a-kind game, i know the genre has pred and deadlock now, but that's besides my point) to its core audience.

When I was a new player back in 2014, when I was DOGSHITTTTT at the game and had no idea what I was doing, skillshots were EXACTLY what kept me coming back to the game. And many Smite vets that I've talked to feel the same way.

At the time, I didn't even understand how to correctly play a MOBA. I didn't know ANYTHING about farming, correct positioning in lane, correct positioning in teamfights, Conquest roles, map objectives. None of that was why I, and so many others, stuck with Smite in the first place. It was literally because of the skillshots. Because of the mechanical requirements of the game, compared to other MOBAs. And it will always continue to be that way for new players that come to Smite 2.

This feels perfectly analogous to if a Call of Duty player were to say, "Battlefield overemphasizes vehicles. Does there always need to be a vehicle on the map? Less tanks and fighter jets could make the game more approachable for new players."

Like, it's just a complete and utter failure to grasp the reasons why Smite has such a strong, devout cult following, why it's such a classic in the genre, and why it's still alive today.

Smite doesn't need to be League. It's its own game with its own identity, and that's why people love it. I know Hirez is moving some mechanics in the direction of League, such as str/int and active items, but these are mechanics that ADD SUBSTANCE to the gameplay, not take away from it.