Category: Video Games

Smite

Balancing the Triangle: Rethinking Gods’ Strengths and Weaknesses

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Balancing the Triangle: Rethinking Gods’ Strengths and Weaknesses

Game Feedback: Balancing and Design Considerations

  1. Symptoms vs. Root Cause:
    • A symptom serves as a sign of an underlying issue but isn’t the cause itself.
    • In the game context, free beads are a symptom, not the root cause of gameplay dynamics.
    • Players’ safety improvements in Smite 1 stem from design choices, but the fundamental cause lies elsewhere.
  2. Design Triangle: Damage, Mobility, and Ease of Use:
    • Gods’ balance hinges on three factors: damage, mobility, and ease of use.
    • Currently, gods exhibit excessive strength with minimal weaknesses.
    • This imbalance leads to a race toward overpowering abilities and power creep.
  3. Practical Implementation: Example with Zeus:
    • Zeus, lacking mobility, should excel in high damage output.
    • His sole crowd control (CC) would be a short stun.
    • Design flexibility could allow abilities to adapt based on the player’s role.
  4. Trade-offs and Weaker Corners:
    • Gods shouldn’t excel in all three corners of the triangle.
    • As power increases, trade-offs should emerge (e.g., harder-to-use abilities or lower damage).
  5. Super Mobile Gods and Crowd Control:
    • Highly mobile gods should naturally lack immunity to CC or hard lockdown abilities.
  6. Difficulty in Dodging Abilities:
    • The game currently lacks the feel of a fighting game due to reduced skill shots.
    • Setup options are prevalent, making it easier to land abilities.
  7. Power Curve and Kit Weaknesses:
    • The overall power curve needs adjustment.
    • Some kits require more weaknesses and less strength.
Smite

Smite 2 alpha first impressions

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Smite 2 alpha first impressions

Smite 2’s first-weekend alpha has just finished, and it is in a very early state. It feels like an alpha piece of software, unfinished with barebones features. A fresh foundation to build on, with core mechanics being the most important thing to focus on during this alpha period. Once they are finalized, it’s unlikely they will change due to everything else being built on top of it.

Alpha patch notes can be found here.

Gods can now build any item, with Strength (STR) and Intelligence (INT) replacing physical and magical damage. These two different stats have different effects on scaling their abilities and basic attacks. The only negative aspect is that there are more terms that can confuse players—references to physical and magical damage feel odd with STR/INT floating around. I would prefer if Smite stuck to two terms when it comes to damage. Let me give you an example: magical and physical protections. Which items protect me against strength attacks? I can already envision new players and returning players who don’t follow the patch notes asking that very question for years to come. Having more knowledge to learn means a higher barrier to entry. I’m sure the designers are aware of the KISS principle (Keep it simple, stupid). On a positive note, I appreciate how each type of damage now has a symbol showing its type. Reducing the knowledge required with lifesteal and penetration, thumbs up here—this is a good change overall. Movement changes are also overdue. Displacement CC changes reduce the number of terms in the game, and that is a good thing.

Front End UI:

  • The current UI feels functional and temporary, as confirmed by the patch notes. However, on consoles, it appears rather clunky to navigate and use.
  • The shop experience on consoles is frustrating. Here’s a simple solution: add a virtual cursor that can be controlled by the joysticks. Warframe uses a similar system, and it’s cross-platform.

Gameplay Changes:

  1. Tower Bounties and Health Bars:
    • These small changes could be positive, but there’s concern that most players won’t notice them.
  2. Minions:
    • While a small change, most players will likely notice the adjustments to minotaurs.
  3. Infamy System:
    • The shake-up in how jungle camps work introduces some problems. First, there’s no progress bar. Second, it’s not obvious what’s happening. For average players who don’t read patch notes, there should be clear indicators of changes.
    • On a positive note, the buff descriptions before pickup are a huge improvement.
  4. Interactive Map Objectives:
    • Some objectives (like Warhorn) lack clear explanations. Players need to know what they’re doing and what the objectives do.
    • The change to jungle buff pickup is good.
  5. Stealth Areas:
    • I’m glad stealth areas made it into the game. They add an element of strategy, using the map as a tool.
  6. Gold Fury and Ancient:
    • It’s unclear if the UI shows the bonus given after killing the Gold Fury. Ancient provides another strategy for breaking into a base. Objective control becomes more important.
  7. No More Classes:
    • Removing classes is a positive change, but playstyle tags should be visible during god selection. A sorting system would prevent the overwhelming feeling from the large roster.
  8. God Ability Text:
    • Short and long versions of ability descriptions are perfect. However, accessing them on a controller feels a bit clunky.
  9. Full God Kits:
    • With limited playtime, I appreciate what you’re trying to achieve with full god kits. My concern is ability bloat—adding too much while reducing weaknesses and giving gods too much versatility.
    • Various changes have noticeable gameplay impacts.
  10. Item Changes:
    • The component-based system is a step in the right direction. However, there’s worry about how actives and passives work on controllers.
    • The crafting recipe system isn’t very clear in the current UI. It’s essential to ensure players understand it.
    • The flexibility to choose starters without being forced into a specific option is a positive change.
  11. Wards and purification Beads: Turning these two into free resources I hope will see increased use of wards and make beads easier to balance. My only worry about wards is not being able to replace them, being able to buy new one for gold that resets the cooldown would be good.

Item Slots:

  • Inventory management now allows you to change slots around, which is a welcome improvement.

Consumables, Actives, and Passive Items:

  • Consumables taking up slots makes sense—early game, they’re crucial, but they become less useful late game.
  • However, the controller scheme feels a bit clunky when using these new items. Improving it is challenging due to the limits on button combinations.

Core Combat:

  • At times, hitting basic attacks felt a little off. I’m unsure if this discrepancy was due to the model style in contrast to the conquest art.

Conquest Map Design:

  • I would prefer the jungle to feel more like a maze. Creating difficulty in ganking lanes and deciding to give up farm for a gank feel impactful.
  • Currently, more cartoony style, but I was hoping for something different. Don’t mind this new direction being colourful. While I love the overall look of the game, it doesn’t quite fit the art style of the gods.
WarFrame

Warframe brief thoughts on Qorvex

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Warframe brief thoughts on Qorvex

Here are my thoughts on Qorvex, using the Warframe wiki. I won’t give much detail but a rough overview of how it works instead. Qorvex based on my experience is a caster health tank. Traditional health tanks have leaned towards being more like weapons platforms. Using my tier list, an example of health tanks and casters. So we now have a hybrid.

How do I rate him? The average frame leaning towards below average. Still useable but has some problems that can be addressed. Some minor quality-of-life changes will go a long way, just making the gameplay loop feel better. Lack of self heal or armour stripping feels odd given what others similar to him can do and where to unlock him.

The Gameplay pool appears to be a pillar, the guard followed with the wall before blasting.

Passive

3-metre punch-through on weapons. The old passive was adding radiation damage, disappointed that was changed. I’m guessing it was changed due to messing with damage spreads.

Chyrinka pillar

The base range here is just 7 metres which is well tiny. Casting this will force you towards the ground, with the line of sight check. It rather weak ability that does not fit into the rest of the design. Want to stay near the pillar but that rarely happens due to very limited benefits.

Containment Wall

Straight line attack with line of sight checks, again grounded but this time with long animation. Anything is flying you can forget about hitting it. Any sort of geometry can block this attack. Designers love to put boxes and clutter around the map, stairs also block it. Crowd control is rather weird here, the slamming effect can do odd things.

Disometric Guard

Status cleanses and immunity is strong, nothing really bad to say here. The trade-off is no heal or armour strip.

Crucible Blast

Grounded once more with boxes able to block the beam. The duration is just 2 seconds, does decent damage during that short period.

Rather frustrating just how long the cast animations can be. Not only that but you fixed it in place. Making it so you’re mobile or less stuck in place would also be nice.

Quality of life changes

The pillar needs a range increase, increasing this to at least 14m I like to see 20m. The wall should be cone shape that would slam everybody into the centre. A bonus of being able to hit airborne targets. I would like to see some sort of healing or armour strip added. Guard having some healing would be nice. An Armour strip could be added to the wall. Blast can slowly move or increase the duration. Just doing the first two changes would be a major improvement for him.

Smite

Smite 2 oh finally

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Smite 2 oh finally

Smite was originally released in 2014 for Windows, 2015 Xbox 360, 2016 PS4 and Nintendo Switch in 2019.  Using heavily modified and now outdated Unreal Engine 3 2004. Not just that but it uses software like Adobe Flash Player that is no longer supported and has reached its end of life. Unreal Engine 4 was released in 2014, and Smite is one last and longest-running games using that engine. Upgrading from 3 to 4 would be a challenge but upgrading two generations is impossible. Newer graduates and game developers have never experienced Unreal Engine 3. Therefore makes sense that Smite 2 would be coming sooner. During smite lifetime we have seen various failed spinoffs using smite assets.  Teams behind these games have been using Unreal Engine 4.

Sometime last year I asked one of the community managers about a PS5 client. I can’t remember the exact answer but in my mind, smite 2 was being worked on. Therefore 2 weeks ago I was not surprised to find out Smite 2 is coming in 2024. Combined with slow down in god releases and hints.

Long awaited squeal is being released in different gaming landscapes. The multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) genre no longer dominates the market. League of Legends Wild Rift, the console version was announced 2 years ago and no news. Apart from that MOBA space has been well empty, here are the wiki releases. Smite is the only game in town on console and few new games coming out.

The team plans to port the existing roster to a new game, including reworking and rebalancing based on new game mechanics. 50 promised on release with 5 new gods, release schedule 2 per week during the alpha, 1 bi-weekly during the beta. That means similar levels of content by 2026/2027. No details on the new designs just old assets coming to the new game. Rebuilding everything for the modern gaming landscape. The camera is changing just a bit and different styles of graphics. First impressions are positive so far, including from former pro players and community members who got to play it.

Older platforms are likely to see no new game but servers for Smite will be supported for a while. With over 1,600 skins porting everything over would be a massive cost. The solution is legacy gems rewarding you for money spent on the game.  I don’t care about skins.

Bugs with crashes have been increasing so a new game was badly required.

Looking forward to playing the new game but…..splitting the playerbase is a huge worry for me. Good news console player base lacks a MOBA and PC market would be open to a new one.

Marvel Snap

Snap thoughts and deck theory crafting

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Snap thoughts and deck theory crafting

After 6 months of playing Marvel Snaps, here is a new year progress update. Out of a total of 331 cards, I own 213 cards. I’m missing the following cards from each series.
Series 3 96 / 104 
  1. Agatha Harkness
  2. Crystal
  3. Dagger
  4. Hazmat
  5. Leader
  6. M’Baku
  7. Quake
  8. Spiderman 2099
  9. Stature

Agatha is mainly used to farm boosters, the play rate is 195 out of 331.

Crystal looks like a good card that gives you a card draw. Not one deck comes to mind but various styles work with her.

Dagger could be a good move card not core but an option.

Hazmat’s old archetype is far more risky, on paper junk deck may be the best home for him. Not sure enough win conditions exist for that to work.

The leader is just a good card however has decreased in play rate.

M’Baku I don’t know what to think about this card

Quake looks pretty good these days I can see her working in a control deck or tech card against storms or certain decks abusing locations.

Spiderman 2099 as a move card could be good but not sure

Stature tech card against discarding that restricted by that mechanic.

The only two cards I want here that is Leader and Quake.

Series 4 7 / 23

  1. Darkhawk – Combo
  2. Echo – Tech card
  3. Havok
  4. Hit monkey – Combo
  5. Howard the duck
  6. Kitty Pryde – Bounce
  7. Knull – Destroy
  8. Lady Deathstroken- Destroy
  9. Legion – Tech card
  10. Martyr
  11. Mirage – Combo
  12. Nimrod – Destory
  13. Silver Samurai – Discard
  14. Zabu – Combo

Quite a few good cards here which have added basic archetypes too.  Mirage is normally found in Loki decks. Handful of cards I want Darkhawk, Echo, Hit Monkey, Knull, Legion, Zabu. New archetypes defining or flex cards that have powerful impacts.

Series 5 13 / 24

  1. Annihilus
  2. Blob
  3. Caiera
  4. Elsa Bloodstone
  5. Galactus
  6. Gladiator
  7. Ms. Marvel
  8. Sebastian Shaw
  9. Thanos

Annihilus is a flexible card or is another tool for the junk archetype, improving the hood/sentry combo. 

Blob can be a big card finisher or of a wider package, flexible card fits into many archetypes.

Caiera has not defined a deck but has helped improve it. Not sure what to think about it.

Elsa is no longer the powerhouse she used to be.

Galactus can be a cheeky finisher that works in junk decks but uses too many cards. One of the few big bads that splits the player base.

Gladiator has found his place with Silver Surfer just good at times.

Ms Marvel has dominated the meta finding her way into all sorts of archetypes. The easy ability to spread power across lanes makes her super strong. She has various counters but they come with trade-offs.

Shaw is similar to Glad, he good silver surfer piece.

Thanos has found a place in many different archetypes, viable in some form for a while now.

Deck theory crafting

I want to try Storm/quake due to the amount of limbo. Not sure what package I would build it around. Not climbed much these seasons so far need to find a deck I enjoy. Meta has been a rather weird one for me. Just some brief thoughts and what I’m looking at targeting in spotlight caches. Kang still sucks ^_^

Marvel Snap

Marvel snap pool 3 progress update

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Small progress update for series 3.

80 out of 99 cards, the following cards are missing I have included the archetypes.

  1. Agatha Harkness – Booster farming
  2. Crystal
  3. Dagger – Move
  4. Doctor Octopus
  5. Dracula – Discard
  6. Ghost Rider – Discard
  7. Hazmat
  8. Invisible Woman – Combo
  9. Jane Foster Mighty Thor – Combo
  10. Leader – Good card
  11. M’Baku
  12. Mystique – Good card
  13. Quake – High skill
  14. Zero – Combo

Update – Gambit, Magneto, Mysterio, Titania, Viper leaving me with 14 cards to collect.

About 10 cards that I can fit into various archetypes and would work within my existing decks. Let’s talk about other cards that don’t have a home but could have a home.

Agatha is mainly used to farm boosters, blob can use her stats which are okay.

Crystal can be used with Rohan to fill your opponents hard.

Hazmat is a weird combo card, Luke cage nerf means it comes with serious downside.

M’Baku fun

Titania I can see this card working with a zoo style deck but these days that not a good deck.

Viper fits into junk style of deck.

Video Games

Snap thoughts incomplete series 3

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Marvel snap card collection is split into five pools, the starting collection is 1 and 2. Pool 3 is the biggest one with a huge impact on deck building. Archetypes that already exist in earlier pools get better. New cards are added to series 4 and 5. The second dinner used to do series drops moving cards down towards 3. Nothing about that happening anytime soon, which makes spotlight caches and tokens rather important. Missing a couple of cards that open up new archetypes, improving on existing ones.

I currently own 68 out of 99 pool 3 cards, 68% complete a collection level of 2784. Looks unlikely I will complete the pool by 3500 levels.

Discard – Apocalypse discard shell is missing Dracula, Colleen Wing is rather nice. All about emptying your hand, buffing dracula based on biggest card in hand. Hela Discard can be a casino. Discard big cards and bring them back later on. Here I’m mising a blackcat, gambit and ghost rider. Gambit can sometimes find a place in other deck. Outside that i’m mising a couple common big cards that see play in that deck. I have hela but can’t do that style of deck. Apocalypse I can do weaker version of that deck with some success.

Destory – Getting Deadpool big in a destory package just fits into that shell. Annoyingly I have other part which is X23 both together work so well. Similar to discard just weaker version without it.

Good cards – Doctor Octopus good distruption card can upset plays your opponent may be wanting to do. Magneto good distruption that moves cards around. Mystique copies any ongoing cards in last played that creates some crazy turn 6 plays. Rogue tech card that steals ongoing effect from your opponent. Goose on paper should be good. Invisible Woman maybe a good card but not sure.

Move – Not sure if dagger is core part of move but she fits into so many lists. Miles Morales is just nice to have when you can move cards around.

Mister negative – Missing couple cards that reduces the slot machine nature of this shell. Jane Foster Mighty Thor lets me draw some rather good cards. Leader can swing this deck towards winning. Bast can find a home here and other decks.

Silver surfer – Crystal another 3 cost card can fit into this deck not sure if it any good here.

Shuri sauron -Zero gives this deck a mana curve, opens up some new playlines. Tiny boost that gives this deck another tool to use. I had success without it but would better with it.

Niche – Agatha Harkness is double edged sword, good at farming boosters and maybe discard deck. Quake is good distruption card with skill ceiling that is high. You move locations that are unplayable breaking what your opponent wants to do. Rockslide needs darkhawk to create a new type of shell.

Following cards one from pool 4 and 5 that I have my eye on. Some of these cards just improve existing decks looking out for spotlight caches with them in.

Pool 4

Khull – Destroy

Legion – Control

Man thing – Debuff

Mobius M mobuis – Tech card

Nimrod – Destory

Ravonna renslayer – Mister negative

Zabu – Discount 4

Pool 5

Alioth – Tech card

Echo – Tech card

Elsa bloodstone – Zoo?

Iron lad – Just good

Jeff the baby land shark – Just good

Hit monkey – Serra

Kitty pryde – Bounce

Nebula – Control

Thanos – Destory, control, lockdown

Feedback, Video Games

Halloween patch mainly Mobuis thoughts

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Halloween patch mainly Mobuis thoughts

The second dinner Halloween patch will be a treat or trick. Patch notes can be found here.

Mobuis M Mobuis

  • [Old] 2/3 – Ongoing: Your Costs can’t be increased. Your opponent’s Costs can’t be reduced.
  • [New] 2/3 – On Reveal: Until the end of next turn, your Costs can’t be increased and your opponent’s Costs can’t be reduced.

Developer Note: Mobius M. Mobius has had a massive impact on the metagame, forcing a changing of the guard among top decks that saw perennial powerhouses like Zabu, Sera, and Death fall from grace in favor of decks that could push Power by just playing cards for their normal Energy Costs. While we were eager to see the world Mobius would create, we expected to make an adjustment down the road in order to welcome Cost reduction strategies back into the sunlight. Today is that day, as we’re shifting Mobius to provide a temporary counter that requires good timing to maximize the effect. This makes him trickier to set aside Energy for, kind of like Shadow King, and also opens up counters like Magik for decks that are hyper-vulnerable to Mobius being played on turn 5. We’re also interested to hear your feedback on our approach here, using a new card as a tool to create a new play environment temporarily.

There are loads to unpick here let’s start with what is changing. Mobuis is redesigned and being changed from ongoing to on reveal.

He was designed as a counter against cost reduction and cost increases. As a card, trying to do two jobs at the same time. Tech cards are cards designed to counter a specific archetype.

Here is a list of all the cards that interacted with him.

  1. Baron Mordo
  2. Beast
  3. Death
  4. Evolved abomination – High evo
  5. falcon
  6. Iceman
  7. Loki
  8. Mile morales
  9. Mister negative
  10. Quin jet
  11. Ravonna renslayer
  12. Sabretooth
  13. Serra
  14. She hulk
  15. Spider ham
  16. Stature
  17. Swarm
  18. Wave
  19. Zabu

The result wide range of archetypes was impacted. Therefore seen in 1/3 of decks on release before reaching settling at 1/4 of decks. A powerful effect that the game needed but overpowering. Which is why something needed to change. Now we can talk about the notes provided with this change.

Developer Note: Mobius M. Mobius has had a massive impact on the metagame, forcing a changing of the guard among top decks that saw perennial powerhouses like Zabu, Sera, and Death fall from grace in favor of decks that could push Power by just playing cards for their normal Energy Costs. While we were eager to see the world Mobius would create, we expected to make an adjustment down the road in order to welcome Cost reduction strategies back into the sunlight. Today is that day, as we’re shifting Mobius to provide a temporary counter that requires good timing to maximize the effect. This makes him trickier to set aside Energy for, kind of like Shadow King, and also opens up counters like Magik for decks that are hyper-vulnerable to Mobius being played on turn 5. We’re also interested to hear your feedback on our approach here, using a new card as a tool to create a new play environment temporarily.

The most interesting line here is we expected to make an adjustment to bring cost reduction back. Maybe I’m misreading this but strikes me as naive developers expected a shake-up but were surprised by rapid change. They knew this card design would most likely mean more balance changes are needed later down the line. I don’t think they fully understood or considered the far-ranging impact would be so quick. 

When I saw this card I knew it would be impactful, I was shocked because even limited cards I owned it hit some hard. I’m still surprised that he was never a temporary effect with a body but an ongoing 2-cost card. Of course, if you have a deck based around cost reduction you would include him. If the meta is full of cost reduction that counter just makes sense.

I don’t know what the hell second dinner was thinking here. Maybe we get a better statement but the damage has been done. Mobuis should be split into two cards and something should be given to players who picked him up.

Call Of Duty, CoD, Video Games

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 first impressions

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Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 first impressions

Modern Warfare series was rebooted in 2019, this is the third entry. Small rant here I don’t understand why you don’t call this modern. The studio behind this title is Sledgehammer Games with Infinity Ward original creators of the series. Infinity Ward now acting like a satellite studio but updating Warzone. Tons of studios working on Call of Duty, three main studios and many others.

I have not played a Call of Duty game in years and similar to the older games. Combat is fast and smooth, maps are redesigns of modern warfare 2 core maps. New art improves the look and feel of the legacy maps. A list of confirmed maps can be found here.  Honestly rather happy with that list, some really good maps here. Not going to call it a beta but more a demo, the final release is due in November.

Perks return, and other things.

Let’s talk about the negatives

The art design of operators blends into the maps so easily. Not just that it really difficult for me to work out who is friendly or foe. This has been a problem for years and drives me mad. Countless people have similar problems.  Call of Duty has been removing information from players for years now and is core to the formula.

Progression is locked by levels, including upgrading your weapons. I’m not sure weapon challenges exist for progression I hope not. Speaking of which you can’t build your own loadout at level 1 which is really annoying.

One thing I did notice is minimap no longer gives you red dots. Given how fast you die I could have missed that detail.

Outside of that, it is just more call of duty nothing groundbreaking. More single-player, more zombies and more online madness. Not sure how many guns will be in the full game but the selection here is limited which is okay. Balance has been a problem for a while, trying to balance a range of guns is hard.  Sway feels like it returns but not sure.

Grown out of the call of duty as I got older mainly tiny things that annoy me remain.

Infinity Ward

Video Games

Snap Loki season pass ladder climb, some deck thoughts

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Snap Loki season pass ladder climb, some deck thoughts

Marvel snap ladder goes up until rank 100, I’m currently in the low 90s. Making it my highest rank so far, I have seen a major improvement in terms of my gameplay. A game of luck with skill being a thing. Have been able to reach 97 but am now stuck at 96 again. 

Mainly used three decks all rather consistent in my view against other common styles. The archetypes used are ongoing, Serra control and high evo. Meta right now is all about using as much board space as possible. Yet to finish pool 3 some decks are missing parts and can’t access other decks. 

Mister negative – I don’t like this card, don’t find it works too great at the moment. Something is missing from my deck not sure what. 

High evo – I don’t have all the pieces but it can still work. Undervalued this playstyle but it is rather flexible with major power swing potential. Being able to impact your whole deck without being played is huge. Sort of becoming a tech card against Loki, just strong against others near the top right now. You can counter it but most people just ignore it. Sleeper deck that has been rising the ranks. 

Destroy – Past two months destroy has been popular, with three cards venom, death and knull. These cards push destory to being rather good and I don’t have them. I can’t destroy and people destroy me. Counterplay exists due to the familiar and easy-to-spot play pattern. Loads of power spread across the board. 

Loki – Okay card with loads of natural counters, requires building a deck around him. The collector was nerfed in response to him meaning none loki decks dropped off a cliff. 

Mainly playing against well evo, control decks and other weird combos. Which can seriously throw you off.