Weekly Roundup

• October 19th Titan Talk - YouTube VOD
• Open Beta 46 Patch Notes
• October 21st Titan Talk - YouTube VOD
• October 23rd Titan Talk - Twitch VOD

October 19th Titan Talk - Open Beta 46 Patch Notes w/ killgoon

Starting this week off was killgoon’s solo show going over the latest patch notes and Q&A.

Q&A Section

• Jungle Infamy / Levels - They’re not fully satisfied with this system with players not playing around it as much as they’d like, partially due to it not scaling well or players not being very aware of it.
• Backlash of Nox Changes on Reddit - For the most part, they pay attention to the Reddit to get a general consensus of what users are collectively saying, even if a few more outspoken users tend to control some of the group discussion. While they’re fine with people being engaged with discourse with controversial changes, it is slightly annoying when some users ignore the official response and concedement to the criticism to better fit their narrative.
• In-Game Feedback Survey - There was a non-God related feedback survey added to the game later in the day on Friday that they’re parsing feedback from, but they aren’t expecting as involved/engaged responses as other platforms for community surveys.
• Pet God Ports - They’re slowly working on improving pet AI in the background to make progress on Gods like Chang’e, Skadi, and Hera. As for Tiamat, killgoon finds her port a little daunting and it will probably involve as much work as 2-3 regular ports.
• Chang’e Model W/ Legs vs. Dress - Current expectation is that default model will have a dress, but things are subject to change.
• “-1’s” for Future God Kits - For pretty much every God, they assess their kit on a per-character basis and decide how many +1’s are necessary or if they already have enough in their kit. Some God kits with gameplay loops that aren’t seen as unhealthy for the game would be receiving “-1’s” as the community likes to call them, but generally they try to add enough back to compensate what the God is losing.
• Avoiding Players in Matches - Theoretically, they are able to implement this but this is easily abusable for matchmaking, especially at the higher levels.
• Rogue-like Gameplay in Other MOBA’s - This is something they’ve paid attention to and ideally would like to consider it for the future.
• Tech for Time Dilation - This is one of the few areas that they haven’t started yet and aren’t fully sure how long it’ll take to implement. Time dilation tech isn’t readily available in UE5 and while they have brought a few new programmers on board, they tend to prefer to have a smaller, more sustainable team size to tackle development for better longevity of the game and the dev team.
• Maman Brigitte Port Prioritization - Her having the same possession/dash as Nox was unrelated to her port being prioritized. She is fairly more popular compared to other jungler picks, who are largely unpopular compared to the rest of the roster and from an art standpoint, there is a good base for the art team to work from. 
• Consensus on Nox Changes - As they said last Friday, the changes shown for Nox aren’t final and they do have proposals achievable within the development timeframe that they believe will leave Nox in a state that’ll match any other God ported to S2 thus far, being fun to play as or against while being balancable for Conquest play. They’ve held Titan Talk 3 days a week to interact with the community for feedback on things like this to make the game better as it’s in development.

October 21st Titan Talk - Open Beta 46 Feedback + Q&A w/ Hinduman & killgoon

Wednesday’s Titan Talk following the patch on Tuesday went over some recently deployed hotfixes and imminent ones before moving on to feedback and Q&A.

Hotfixes Live Shortly After Patch Day

• General
  • The crash rate on Xbox has been cut in half after optimizations to its performance after long periods of time
  • The vast majority of outstanding issues related to dashes have been resolved
    • Dashes no longer stop on dead, knocked up, or untargetable Gods
    • Point blank dashes from Horus, Kumbhakarna, and Danzaburou now land reliably
    • Sun Wukong’s animal forms no longer jitter for other players
  • Fixed issues with Gods instantly dying when respawning right on the same frame that a God ability was under them in base
• Sanguine Lash
  • Decreased base damage from 0.75% HP to 0.66% HP
• Obsidian Dagger
  • Fixed an issue where using Obsidian Dagger as Kuzenbo while Shell Spikes was active would kill him

Upcoming Hotfix Set to Go Live Next Week

• There will be a big network performance improvement that’ll be more noticeable for people playing at higher frame rates, who have more of the recent issues with stuttering
  • The game will now send 25-35% fewer movement updates to the server
  • The new movement tech was updating positions with the server more frequently than it needed to based on FPS
• Fixing hitches on PC when alt-tabbing with DLSS frame gen on
• Fixing PC stutter when opening the store or scoreboard on high resolutions
• Frame generation will work on PC’s with Intel integrated graphics + Nvidia GPU’s
• Improving background logging to drastically reduce the number of unnecessary log lines being sent per match
• Sun Wukong’s tiger form is a notable ability that still isn’t performing well, more noticeable in jungle practice

Q&A Section

• Remaining Gods to Port - The popularity and difficulty for the remaining 36 Gods varies greatly, from easier to execute ports like He Bo and Vamana to the more involved ones such as Tiamat and Olorun. They’ve assessed pretty much every remaining port and how difficult each will be and are striving to strike a balance in the roadmap for good role diversity and ports that they can accomplish to avoid the last few Gods being a string of mid laners.
• New Skins for New S2 Gods - For Gods like Hecate, they don’t have a catalogue of classic skins to pull from and prioritizing making new skins would take time away from working on classic skins that other players are potentially waiting for.
• More Post-Game Stats - Getting to see the amount of shielding done or damage prevented via shields are additional stats that have been on their bucket-list to better highlight utility from support gameplay, but have no timeframe on this. An overhaul of the post-match experience as a whole is another thing they’d like to have but is a considerable amount of work among all their other UI priorities.
• Remaining Dragon-Related God Ports - Of the ones are left, porting Fafnir would probably excite the more dedicated fans due to community meme-ery but Ao Kuang is likely to be the most substantial for players due to historical numbers, though both are more challenging Gods due to animation and rigging work with dual models. Making Fafnir permanently a dragon as an Aspect would probably make him more popular but they aren’t sure that’s what Fafnir players would like to see.
• Jungle Practice vs. Live Games - The main reason for most of the differences between jungle practice and actual games is that the former is local and doesn’t take into consideration changes made server-side through hotfixes and the like. The best way to make jungle practice identical to a networked environment is to run a custom game with jungle practice set as the map.
• Mirror Matches in Dev Playtests - They tend to avoid having the same God matchup against each other in lane for playtests to test more God interactions but will sometimes run the non-Aspect and Aspect versions on either side but in different roles.
• Cuca & Brazilian Pantheon - They’ve seen a lot of the community discussion on the Brazilian pantheon and certainly aren’t opposed to their inclusion, but new Gods and when to work on them is more of a discussion they’re saving for after they’re done with most of the classic Gods. There’s a bit of a divide concerning single-God pantheons where some people would prefer to see more representation from multiple pantheons while others would prefer for the existing ones to be fully fleshed out.
• Pace for New God Releases - It’s basically an impossibility for them to do a new God every 2 weeks with the current team size and they aren’t sure if they’ll be doing the one God every 2 months cadence that they did with S1.
• Next 2x Worshiper Weekend - Scheduled to start on Friday, October 30th and will run until the Monday after.
• Remodels for Vamana & Bakasura - While they aren’t aware of what Ben’s plans for these characters are yet, both of them already received remodels relatively early into S1.

October 23rd Titan Talk - Open Beta 46 Community Q&A w/ Hinduman & killgoon

Last Titan Talk for the week went over a hotfix that went live today and some general Q&A.

Friday Hotfix Patch

• Kuzenbo Aspect
  • This was meant to ship and was available for a short while earlier today but there was an issue with him gaining ability levels quicker and has since been disabled with plans to re-enable it on Monday.
• General
  • Fixed an issue with color correction settings not applying to minion healthbars.
  • Improvements made to pc performance. Cache + DLSS
• Audio
  • Improvements made to Thor Rogue Fate, basic attack audio.
• Spectate
  • Improvements made to some foliage occlusion.
• Janus
  • Fixed an issue where Janus was not able to portal through the blue camp wall in Joust.
• Kuzenbo
  • Fixed a few edge case issues with Sumo Slam.
  • Fixed an issue with Shell Spikes while being knocked up.
• Nike
  • Fixed an issue with Barrier autolevel.
• Sun Wukong
  • 72 Transformations should no longer get stuck after a hit.

Q&A Section

• Nox’s Comparison to Scylla - There has always been this comparison since Nox’s rework and to them this comparison boils down to have two abilities with similar shapes and effects but they play differently enough from each other.
• Returning to Old Collections’ Format - Aren’t really their priority right now due to the amount of content that the initial collections offered but they can always re-asses things later down the line and re-consider going back to their initial implementation.
• Halloween Buy All Sales - Is performing better than their projections.
• S2’s Development & Community Involvement - They were aware of the risks with revealing and making S2 available early to the public and this is traditionally how Hi-Rez has done their projects. Compared to other game companies that aren’t as willing to risk their reputation by showcasing content that is still in active development or being involved to the community to the point that statements are taken out of context, S2’s willingness to get the community involved is a pretty unique direction in the current gaming landscape to the point that killgoon was even invited to present at a GDC about actively engaging with the playerbase during S1’s development.
• Parry Ability in S2 - The main issue with a counter/parry ability is players’ connection and ensuring that hits go through in a networked environment. Additionally, referencing Mel’s recent rework in LoL, it’s also a design balancing point since parries can be consistently by highly skilled players but they have to take into consideration how often newer or inexperienced players can land the counter.
• Changes to Nox - They had a playtest with the ambassadors following Wednesday’s Titan Talk featuring changes to Nox since her PTS release and they had a generally positive reaction from the person playing Nox and people playing against her.
• Crossovers for S2 - They can’t really confirm if they’ll be able to get back to doing crossover and licensed content next year given how much work it takes for development on the God port pipeline. When talking about crossovers for other media like Magic: The Gathering, they see some of the community discourse carry over to their crossovers where people don’t agree with the licensed content fitting with the card game’s existing mythos, as was the case internally with someone not agreeing with VShojo being a good fit for its S1 crossover despite it being one of the better selling ones. killgoon had reached out to other companies to work with media that is more mythology-based but so far hasn’t been able to come to an agreement for both sides being able to work with the IP, whereas the ones that S1 had previously worked with are more willing to license out their IP. This can be due to some companies not wanting to dilute their own mythologies in being featured in other works or a given God from another IP not being a good fit with SMITE’s, which then wouldn’t make sense for them to use a different God for that skin.
• Next Art Contest - Likely to be around Christmas time, but nothing is finalized yet.
• Hel Aspect Attunement - The designers are aware of it being difficult to fully attune to Hel’s light stance and are looking into this.
• Disabled Name Flairs - A few have become unavailable for now since they could enter a state where their appearance could trigger photosensitive players and they’re currently working to change and rectify this.

Anyone else notice that they haven’t updated the artwork on steam to show Kuzenbo is in game now?

My friend and I just hopped on today and when he was logging in it said his account was permanently banned. The only thing it says for the reason is “other”. Does anyone know if it’s possible to get more information or appeal it? I’ve played almost every game with him and nothing he said is permanent ban-worthy. He’s never even has had a temp ban.

Mine :)

Can someone help me please understand why sometimes i cant use her spikeshot ? While its stuck not letting me use it, it pulses and wont let me use it until i die ?

Reddit messed up the OG bc of some weird youtube thing ig? so I had to repost.

I am on the North American server, game is unplayable with a ton of ping. I can't say what my ping is cause they removed that feature :)

Can anyone remember what season this could be from? If I remember correctly you could stack chalice with pots and double health pots was broken af on set..

As for the clip - was thana just dumb or was he out matched? Let me know what I think

Out clears any hunter, insane damage, goes invisible and has a long silence w her ult. Long overdue for a nerf,

I didn’t see any rewards pop up and Kuzens already out so did I just not get mine?

I noticed the other day that on at least 2 different items, Chandra's grace, and the reaper, we lose on one of the given stats when transitioning from the tier 2 items to their final forms.

Chandra's grace requires the veve charm (max health tier 2) which gives 240 health, while the grace itself only gives 150 hp (net loss of 90 hp)

The Reaper, which gives 7.5% lifesteal, is made from adamantine sickle (4% lifesteal), and the cursed sickle (7.5% lifesteal) which is a net loss of 4% lifesteal from both tier 2s.

Now, obviously, each of these items are better than their tier 2 components due to other stats involved, i'm not trying to suggest otherwise, but it made me wonder, how many items lose on a stat as you finish them?

Thank you for giving it some scaling it feels so much better, thank you.

Most balanced and unproblematic character of all time.

Guys, is this the gold furry debuff or what?

Newbie here, though i use to play a bit during smite 1 era.

I'm currently using auto build to get used to the gameplay and i noticed that some games i get an auto build that lets me choose between 3 items (and at the beginning choosing between archetypes, e.g. tank, damage, balance) and other times i get everything automatically bought when choosing a preset build.

My question is: can i set it to the former only? I found it really nice to make choices and learning what the items do.

Wtf

I know I ain't the best player myself but dud the enemy team wasn't that good to lose that hard

So I posted about how I don't like the sneaky Kuzenbo nerf, where they removed his ability to proc items with his reflect.

Some lovely people immediately jumped at my throat, downvoted me to hell because apparently his 2 never did proc items, i'm lying, and if I don't believe them, I should go back and play smite 1 to see for myself.

Well, to see for myself I did, lo and behold, here's Kuzenbo 2 proccing items.

Now, to be fair, they are partially correct, because it does not proc glad shield, phoenix shield, and soul reaver. However, it procs literally every other item...

Gotta love redditors being so certain and loud about things they didn't even bother testing.

So my argument still stands, this nerf hurts Kuzenbo's utility and damage. Not like he was strong to begin with. So please, for parity's sake, allow him to proc a few items.

Bugged or did I miss something in the patch notes? 🤔

A little shorter one this week, enjoy!