SMITE: Open Beta – Preview
SMITE, the MOBA game we discussed while it was in Closed Beta had been experiencing a rapid growth and increase in popularity. In conclusion we decided to continue this Open Beta preview where we left off last time.
Story:
Since our first preview more gods have arrived all of them trying to prove themselves to earn their immortality. Each god has an extensive background and lore included for the history fans out there (like me!).
Sound:
Soundwise the game hasn’t changed that much. Of course new modes, means new battle music!
Graphics:
The menu received an extensive and very needed update and is looking very nice now. No big changes in – game except for a lot of new gods, skins and a makeover for the Joust mode. Again new modes were added, but the game stays true to its original style/scheme.
Gameplay:
The game has several modes to play in: Conquest (previously known as “Standard”), Arena, Joust and Domination. The game also offers variants on the above that change every day. These include : Blood Brothers Brawl, Mage Battle, Battle of the Beards and many more. It is important to know that for now, only Conquest is available for Competitive and Ranked games.
– Conquest:
Conquest got covered in detail in our Closed Beta preview. It’s the basic MOBA game mode in which your team splits up over the three lanes. On those lanes you farm waves of enemy minions while pushing onto towers. Meanwhile the opponent is doing the same, often resulting in fights between players on the same lane. It also includes neutral minions in the jungle that can give various buffs if killed.
– Joust:
Joust is the same as conquest, but this time it is 1 vs. 1. It is also in a differently themed area, as the name suggests, it’s themed after the middle ages.
– Arena:
Arena can be compared to a WoW arena. It’s a 5 vs. 5 match in a small Roman/Greek styled coliseum. Every team starts with 400 tickets. You start the game at level 3 and with 1500 gold. This gives you some decent starting options concerning skills and items. First off you get a minute of preparation time and then the minions spawn. The goal is simple : Get your opponents tickets down to 0 before they do the same to you.
How do you do this you might ask? There are 3 ways: First, by simply killing enemy players, this is also the most effective –but hardest- way. Secondly, kill enemy minions. Finally, each base has a green portal in front of it. Your minions will try to reach the enemy’s portal but will always stop to fight the enemy minions. That’s why you have to kill off the enemy minions so yours reach the portal and also reduce the enemy tickets.
– Domination:
Domination is a base capturing game mode, much like LoL’s Dominion or WoW’s Arathi Basin. As in the arena game mode, you start at level 3 and get 1500 starter gold. It also uses the same ticket system with both teams having 400 tickets to start with.
Winning this does require some different tactics. Killing enemy gods only deduces the tickets a little, the most efficient way is capturing 2 out of 3 bases to steadily drop the enemy tickets. While the minions are pushing forward onto the bases they will run into a sand guardian. Killing said guardian, captures the base for your team, minions however aren’t strong enough to do this solo.
– Assault:
Assault was just added last week as a new game mode. It reminded me a lot of the popular custom games called All Random All Mid in LoL. You start the game at level 5 with 3000 gold, but more importantly, you can not choose a god, it’s randomly assigned to you out of the gods you have or that are free to play. For the rest it is not all that different from Conquest mode, but this time there is only one lane for all ten people and only one Phoenix in front of the Minotaur.
Here are some of the modes I came across as daily ‘modes’:
– Brothers Blood Brawl: A variation on the Arena game mode in which you and the enemy team can only choose from 2 gods, these being Loki and Odin
– Mage Battle: A variation on the Arena Game Mode in which you and the enemy team can only pick mage gods, like Zeus, Ao Kuang ,Anubis, Ra and so forth.
– Battle of the Beards: A variation on the Arena in which –you probably guessed it- only the manly men with beards are allowed to fight.
– Clash of the Titan-killers:Another variation on the Arena in which everyone plays either Zeus, Hades or Poseidon.
Conclusion:
I really liked this game, it’s turning out to be one of the more unique MOBA’s and it does it very well. The 3rd person view really gives something extra, especially in modes like Arena and Domination. It does make last-hitting minions for cash harder to master, but it makes you feel like you’re playing a shooter but with way cooler skills. There is also a wide variety of different gods to test and learn. This is of course not unique to this game, but it’s always a nice touch.
What makes this game special for me is their Character builder option. Here you can pick whichever god you want and equip it with items to see how his stats would be ( at every level). You can also set a priority to his skills so that you can check how well the items would scale at every skill level. The items can also be saved as the recommended items so that you can find them easily in game, or even let the game buy them for you if you want to. This last part isn’t implemented as of now, but it should be up soon.
Of course the game is not perfect and certainly not bug free, it is still a beta after all, but it is getting close. In the few days I played I only had 1 game crash. The problem was that I did not get a reconnect button and I essentially left my team to fight on its own. I’m sure this is something they will fix in the near future.
To round this up, I would certainly advise MOBA players to test this game. It is a nice addition to the MOBA line-up and its unique ideas make it one of the better ones out there. It is also very accessible to players new to the MOBA genre with tutorials and computer generated enemies (With decent enough AI as far as I’ve seen).
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