After 6 years SMITE again – help, the game just kills me
Years later, the MeinMMO demon Cortyn has dared to try SMITE again. The game is a lot more chaotic now – but is it still fun?
SMITE and me. We used to be good friends. I couldn’t do much with League of Legends, DOTA never appealed to me and SMITE’s “close perspective” was appealing. You were just a lot closer to the cool characters, everything felt like more action.
For years I lost sight of the game and now started again with a former SMITE colleague.
I want to describe here whether the re-entry is successful, whether SMITE is worthwhile and what the most negative developments of the MOBA in recent years have been.
Gods get too complex – half novels as a description
SMITE suffers from a problem that – at first glance – has only worsened over the years. Even now, SMITE continues to publish new gods and therefore always has to come up with fresh and unused ideas.
But that’s not that easy at all. Because at some point you just brought all kinds of meaningful character skills into a game.
SMITE solves the problem in the most exhausting way: Exaggerated complexity. Instead of only having 4 skills and a passive effect, the new gods often have skills that are divided into several small sub-skills.
The still quite fresh “goddess”, Morgan Le Fay from the Arthurian saga, can cast a damaging spell that has three different variants and secondary effects. A fear effect, a summoned clone, or a slow field.
The second spell is not just a fire projectile that leaves a DoT on the enemy, but also gives a speed boost and is renewed again and again through normal attacks.
Even the Ultimate has an enormous number of components. Each Morgan Le Fay spell applies different runes to enemies, which can then be consumed by the Ultimate. Each rune so entwined increases the width of the Ultimate projectiles.
If you compare these new gods with the old ones, this increased complexity becomes immediately apparent. The skills texts are shorter, the effects clearer and clearer, because they don’t have twelve different additional factors.
That doesn’t mean the new gods aren’t fun. I fell in love with Morgan Le Fay as soon as I understood her. It just means that as a re-entry or newcomer you not only have to learn all the new gods by heart, but these gods are also much more complex, which only exacerbates the problem.
With some skill descriptions, whole “wall of texts” await me where I think: “By Olympus, I just want to play one game”. Many of the new skills seem so overloaded and with so many subtleties that it is simply not fun to even want to learn them.
Game modes like “Assault”, in which you are offered a random god, are almost impossible. “Skimming the skills briefly” is simply no longer possible, because by the time I have done that, the first 5 minutes of a game have already passed.
No, getting back into SMITE is relatively tough and uncomfortable. It took hours to slowly get “back into the flow” and even after a week I still have no idea what some god will use to chop me up immediately.
But at least it’s fun – and I find it hard to argue against that.
But complete newbies would have to learn 118 gods, which is, similar to the competitor LoL, a huge, deterrent barrier.
The game itself – as gripping as it was back then
When you have survived the first hours and the chaos of the return, SMITE quickly unfolds the fun gameplay loop again, which was so great for me even back then.
The 3rd person perspective behind the gods still fits fantastically and makes SMITE feel more like an action game at times. Almost every attack is a skill shot, there are only a few exceptions where there is a fixed targeting of enemies.
This means that SMITE still feels more active than other MOBAs.
But I still have to make one confession: I can’t do anything with Conquest mode. This is the “classic” Moba mode with 3 lanes and a line-up of 5 vs 5. I have a lot more fun with the smaller maps, such as Joust or Siege, where only 6 or 8 players play at a time.
The games don’t last that long and it’s not that bad if you are “completely run over” – after all, the shame is over in 10 to 15 minutes.
But when things go well, the coordination with the team is right and a bit of luck is playing along, then SMITE is simply in a good mood. It’s action-packed, exciting and not infrequently there were cool “comeback” moments where a defeat could be turned into a victory.
Although in HotS I was very used to the fact that you no longer have to buy items (there simply aren’t any), in SMITE it was easy to do again. Practical: A lot has happened since then and all the gods now have recommended item sets that are suitable for starting. Better still: You can create your own purchase lists for each god and goddess individually.
It didn’t take long before I had everything set up as it should be for my goddess troupe consisting of Scylla, Serqet, Bastet, Morgan Le Fay and Amaterasu.
Yes, SMITE is fun. I had almost forgotten about it over the years.
Skins that make me laugh
If there is one thing I have to give SMITE credit for, it’s the diversity and creativity of the skins.
But that’s kind of the nice thing about SMITE. There are no legendary franchise heroes like in Heroes of the Storm, with whom you have to be particularly considerate. The developers can let off steam and they do.
Even anime skins are no shame – and I celebrate that.
When I run towards the enemy as the exaggeratedly colorful cat goddess Bastet, who fires her Ultimate with “Kitty-Cat, nyaaaan!”, I have to grin.
When Amaterasu in the best maid outfit with Tsundere personality praises her team members with an “I-It’s not that I like you or anything, baka!”, The corners of my mouth twitch upwards.
Of course, some skins are also a bit “over”. When I see Jormungandr jumping through the map as a huge meme cat, it’s a bit too crazy for me. But hey – I don’t have to buy the skins.
At the same time, SMITE is also much cheekier than other MOBAs, which is mainly due to the voices of the gods. When the bee god “Ah Muzen-Cab” mocks the opponents by saying that he “pollinated their mother”, I am very sure that other games would have long since deleted such sentences.
No, no question. If SMITE can do one thing, it’ll be designing tons of skins that make me want to spend money.
Quite apart from the fact that SMITE even has absurd gods like C’thulhu with them.
But that’s also the great thing about SMITE. Because you’re so close to the action, you can see a lot more of the characters and the skins. It just feels better than with other MOBAs, where your own character is just a small point on the big screen.
Reward systems that throw you garbage
What really pissed me off, however, was the abundance of different reward and shop systems and any events that all take place at the same time.
I can click so many different things in the main menu alone:
- Store
- Battle Pass: Transformers
- Esports & Live Streams
- Yulefest
- Odyssey: Perilous Seas
- Vault
Each of the points mentioned has several submenus with numerous buttons and further explanations, even more submenus and any systems that are all interlinked with one another.
It’s staggering. It’s so much that after 5 minutes you think: just let me just play with all that crap in peace and quiet.
It doesn’t help that each of these submenus has long explanations with dozens of popups and interlinked purchase offers.
It doesn’t get any better after a match either. After each round, 1-7 activations pop up for any nonsense that is not even clearly visible because the textures of the activations do not load. I feel like I’m in a mobile game that rewards me with some “great” bonuses so that I just stay on the ball. So far there has not been anything really useful or beautiful.
Here “less is more” would be really nice. Or maybe that’s a problem that longtime SMITE players don’t have, who have gradually become familiar with the introduction of these events and reward systems.
For me it was completely overwhelming, so I avoid all the menus and numerous submenus, in which I would have to invest almost as much time as in understanding the new gods.
Particularly absurd: There was even an “Unlock Free Rewards” button that asked me to seriously watch 50 advertising clips in SMITE. Well, I thought to myself. What should stop me from just playing the clips while waiting for a game? “Your dignity,” said a friend on the Discord. Somehow correct.
Nevertheless: SMITE puts you in a good mood
In summary, SMITE has grown significantly in recent years. Unfortunately not only with regard to the playable characters, but also with regard to the whole “trappings”. The menu seems overloaded, the countless activations are more annoying than they feel rewarding.
But as a whole, we like SMITE. The numerous different maps, the many game modes and the variety of gods are fun. Especially with one or two friends, SMITE still develops the same pull and addiction as it did a few years ago.
In any case, I have given the MOBA significantly more time in my appointment calendar.
A goddess even renamed SMITE once – because otherwise it would have caused real problems.
Reference-mein-mmo.de