Category: Playstation

Gaming News, Playstation, PS4, Smite

Smite Season 5 Conquest update

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Smite Season 5 Conquest update

Conquest is getting a big update with season 5. First details appeared during the patch notes for 4.20. The following screenshots which explain the changes. Incomplete information due to the designers not giving us the full picture. Current map was released during season 2, slight path changes with balance changes. Various art changes like the allied tribute. A major update is coming 20% wider, lane changes including jungle, new art and gameplay changes.

Designers have given us the shape, size and entrances to the jungle. Unclear which parts are entrances. A large amount of jungle detail missing. Gameplay may be different compared to what the image shows.

Left side and right side –  Three new jungle entrances in the middle of the lane. Wider more open jungle entrances connecting the towers. Lane appears to be the same size. Two major ways into the jungle start near the tower and one at the middle. Much more open compared to before.

Middle – Fewer jungle entrances connecting across the map.

Designers made a point talking about new jungle paths. Another point is the lane shapes are going to be similar for both sides. Looking forward to learning the new map. Don’t want to make to many wild assumptions. Own personal guess going to take 22 seconds to travel between lanes using tier one boots. Subject to how the jungle paths are designed.

Playstation, Video Games

Fortnite first impressions

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Fortnite first impressions

Epic games newest title is called Fornite, early access battle royale game.  Half the game is free player vs environment part is locked behind early access. Battle Royale genre random loot-based shooter within a massive background.  Elements of the rouge like games one life and random loot. Crossover between arena shooters and rogue-like games. Add some survival elements plus scavenging with a little bit of last man standing gameplay that the genre. Arena style shooters have disappeared with none finding major success for almost a decade.  Rouge-like games have been a niche with small studios behind them. Bringing together various genres helped create a new last man standing focused genre.  Fortnite adds building to the genre.  Genre roots started with a mod for Minecraft based off the Hungry games movies.  Now couple years later Epic games have made Fortnite.

Stylised as cartoony, simple yet realistic graphics. Crafting is rather basic just select the thing you want to build. A building system simple yet feels good.  Weapons feel deadly and require a high amount of accuracy.  Weapon spreads exist for moving and firing.  Collecting resources turn into a mini-game. A high amount of detail when comes to sounds.  Overall core of the game is rather good.  The only complaint comes from how the sprint system works. Not a fan how sprinting works, the momentum just does not feel good. Sometimes you can lose all sprint momentum with no idea why.  Other times can feel awful when moving around the map.  The movement just does not feel right. Most of your gameplay comes down to moving around the map. Can spend massive amounts of time running. Stopping and starting just feels rubbish. That my only real complaint about the game.

The only complaint comes from how the sprint system works. Not a fan how sprinting works, the momentum just does not feel good. Sometimes you can lose all sprint momentum with no idea why.  Other times can feel awful when moving around the map.  The movement just does not feel right. Most of your gameplay comes down to moving around the map. Can spend massive amounts of time running. Stopping and starting just feels rubbish. That my only real complaint about the game.

Battle royale gamemode is rather fun.  No real progression system which is a nice change of pace. Real progression found in the random loot drops placed all over the map. Race to find the best gear and stay alive. Personally, can’t get hooked on this genre.  Not saying the game is not fun just not fun for me. A vast majority of games you end up running for 90% of the time.

Crafting system makes a difference, able to destroy the environment. Changes how you play certain fights can destroy cover or build cover. Combat is super rewarding lacking any arcade feel at all. Focus on collecting resources and staying alive. Every single part of the map is interesting with different focus points. Players are driven towards each other using a storm system. Health is lost when you stay outside of the eye of the storm which gets smaller and smaller. A perfect answer to the slow campy nature of the genre. Can drive players to various parts of the map making the game feel different. Combat comes down to how the players react to the map.  Epic games have released a great title and nice take on the genre. Look forward to trying the full game once they complete it.

Not a fan of the genre still a nice change of pace. Have I asking questions just how much rewards system mean to video games.

PS4, Smite

Smite ranked on console still toxic

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Decided to play some ranked conquest. Admittedly it on a console, which has a bad reputation. Many PC players joke about console yet average PC player not so great. Making the same basic mistakes. Taking on bad fights and failing to farm. Failing to understand the basics instead blaming others.

Every player makes mistakes including myself. Most mistakes are made regarding early jungle pressure. The vast majority won’t learn how to play from behind. Seeking out easy snowball based wins to climb. Don’t understand how certain fights are just terrible. Taking on aggressive high risk fights the majority of the time.

Hirez claims that ranked provides the most competitive environment. It does not provide that. Ranked is nothing more than a ladder. Games come down to early pressure how you play the jungle. Rewarding risky high snowball focused players. Players can be sloppy just got lucky, keeping bad habits at higher ranks. Some higher rank players do deserve the ratings given to them. Games are not more competitive on average.

Encourages a toxic set of behaviour. Players report each other for no good reason. Rather sad how mode meant to make you better makes you worse. These sorts of players should quit ranked. Understand the frustration but at a certain point maybe the blame is on you.  Sometimes, however, it can be hard to see what went wrong.  Professional players advice is focused on you, not your teammates.
.
Missed nothing from avoiding rank almost all season. Expected the matchmaking to improve but quickly dismissed that idea. Hope the matchmaking gets better but I doubt it. All I want is that god skin and loading screen. Right now just getting abuse from players. And blow out games based on early jungle pressure. Yet players ask why not many jump into the ranked ladder. The system not designed to help players grow or improve.

Ranked is nothing more than a public stomping playground with a ladder. Once you discover this, why play ranked to get better if just get abuse.  Hard to get better if the game rewards the worse behaviour possible. All about early snowballs diving people. Similar mistakes are made at lower levels to higher levels. Profesional players even talk about ranked being causals until a higher level.

A common theme is map awareness most players lack it so badly. Forced to babysit people and call missing every single time. Understand heat of the moment lack of map awareness. Map design sort of becomes obvious which direction people path in. Majority of my mistakes are simple basic things. Make assumptions that teamamtes understand what is happening.

Last two ranked games disconnecting players, neith instant lock after I call carry. Before that was a jungle who was unable to play from behind. Looking forward to grinding out 130 wins for a loading frame and skin. Seriously something needs to be done to improve the match performance. Grinding out 150 wins looks next to impossible. I do make mistakes but get more patience. Sometimes underestimate early game minion damage. Making simple mistakes like taking on too much damage early game.

Hope season 5 changes how minions work. Sometimes the AI is bit iffy. Minions die faster giving one side a clear unfair advantage. Larger groups can spawn leading to clear advantage. Often minimal interactions can cause them to target you. Towers suffer from similar problems. Sort of makes sense but can be frustrating.

The distance between lanes makes it too easy gain extra farm. Can sustain off camps provided you pick up bumbas. Farm so safely not risky unless you don’t have a clear advantage. Once you gain jungle pressure turns into the other team punishing your mistakes. Jungle fades into a second lane that rather safe. Game declines to team fighting rather quickly. Middle land often is 3 vs 3 lanes that feel melted into the jungle. What happened in middle lane helps decide the flow of the game. Forcing the other lanes to change playstyle to avoid falling behind.

Smite requires a massive knowledge pool. Vast amounts of items to learn to make that worse. Patches every 2 weeks with changes make it even worse. Majority of players can’t cope unable or unwilling to learn. Don’t blame them game gives you little to no tools. Recommended items are out of date due to the vast changes which can happen. Auto-leveling can be outdated again due to the changes.  Hope honestly that patch changes to slow down and reduction in items. With small set for certain gods. Small universal tree plus branches of specialist items. Would also reduce the number of passives. Decreasing items could lead to better balancing. Certain items have been abused on certain occasions. Which twist the item out of it designed role. A Recent example was a defence item which helped survivable.

Jungle design plus how certain abilities are easy to land is partly to blame. Abilities do too much damage are too easy. Players can’t dodge certain abilities if they are wide massive circles.  Certain aspects just frustrating with little to no downside. Snowballing is serious problem caused by the jungle design. Certain gods are overturned having too much. Decent clear opens up so many options in the jungle. Easy access to jungle farm causes so many problems. Wards are another issue. Players undervalued wards too often. Unwilling to buy wards for whatever reason. Vision is super useful in helping general map awareness.

Honestly, would like to see hunters changed. Early clearing hunters should have lower late game damage. A Late game focused hunter should have worse clear and bad boxing potential. Locking off critical damage from certain hunters. Steroid based hunters just too powerful in certain respects. Build paths should be more costly given the free farm. Season 5 could see big changes but honestly feel certain hunters are overturned.

Various things which need be addressed. Sometimes it was your fault, other times it bit less clear. I do enjoy smite but at times just frustrating to play ranked. Feels like rank is meanless a exercise in patience with other players. Just viewing ranked as a ladder over competitive matchmaking.

Game fails to teach you how to play. Way too much knowledge required. Every player makes mistakes high risky snowball plays are rewarded. Ranked is toxic environment with a ladder. Grinding out 150 wins for a reward is not worth it. A vast sum of knowledge is required due items. The jungle is a second lane with easy access to a farm. Snowballing is a serious problem as a result once gain jungle pressure too easy to keep it. Certain classes are overturned with hunters being an obvious example.  Hi Rez has added a vast sum of knowledge in items. Jungle is the second lane with easy access to the farm. Snowballing is a serious problem. Ranked is one big giant with little pay off given how toxic people can be.

I do like smite but the title has issues like every other game.

Playstation, Smite

Season four wishlist smite

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Season four wishlist smite

Season 4 of smite is coming January after the world championship.   Created list of balance changes I would like to see.  Included the reason behind the changes.   Won’t cover just balance, quality of life changes.   Only started to play during season 3.

Matchmaking changes

Hi-Rez released a FAQ page on matchmaking.   Highly recommend reading that page answers couple questions.  System rates players based on performance.  Balancing teams based the rating given to players.  Explained in detail on the FAQ page.  Certain factors weighted,  factoring inconsistency.

Matchmaking rating score is hidden.  The formula is unknown, forced to make assumptions. Possible player perception about the system is incorrect.  The margin of error is tiny, a vocal minority are wrong.  Smite guru offers some insight yet is inaccurate.  Biases could be at play, players overconfidence in abilities.

Making series of assumptions based on my own player experience.  Matchmaking could be rating certain players to high others to low.  The system could be working as intended just overconfident in my skills.  A bunch of questions about the system still.

Problem:  Team balancing

Current system scores teams trying to pair teams of equal value.   Using matchmaking rating system, total sum together trying to find a game. Avoiding massive player differences across the team in general. Problem here system always tries to find a game.  Lacking an upper limit or soft limit.

Ranked soft limit can be bypassed after some time.  Restrictions reduced after hitting certain time limit.

Solution

  • Upper limit on differences between players.
  • Resetting matchmaking system searching for an extended period of time.
  • Setting soft limit for team balancing
  • Reviewing the restrictions
Problem:  Average team balance

Teams total matchmaking rating is taken into account.  Balancing teams based on that average. Average could be way off players scores.  With massive differences in variables allowed.  The highly rated player could be put at a serious disadvantage.  Paired with lower rated teammates against higher average opponents.

Solution

  • Balance based on player average and team average.
Problem:  Rating system favours win/loss ratio.

Does not factor in player performance, changing ratings based on that.  Weighted more towards wins and losses.  Players can be carried even with poor performance.  Players who carry should be rewarded. Just factoring in team performance does not give you clear picture.

Solution:

  • Wins/losses should not be only thing weighted
  • Player performance should be rewarded even with poor team performance
  • Factor other variables, not just wins or losses.
  • Variables like player movement against enemy movement.
General items

Hud customization

Would like some HUD customization options for a console.

Items

Would like to see more items with certain choices locked. Example change some Guardians playstyles.  Allowing for interesting choices changing how gods are played.  Restrictions could be placed on certain items. Could create Guardian only items designed give you more defence.  The game already does with magical and physical items.

Ranked

Reason to play ranked over casuals.  Longer queue times games just as unbalanced.  No real reason to play ranked at all.  Rewards should be displayed at the start.

Clan system

Some changes which make clan system more relevant.  Constant updates to the clan chest.  Make worth being inactive clan getting players together.

Removing or revamping game modes. 

Joust/clash suffer from snowball problem.  Early clear teams just snowball hard due to the distance. Conquest jungle should be tighter.

God balancing

General problem smite has certain abilities super powerful.  Turning gods into ultimate bots.  Rest of the abilities are weaker.  Would like to see ultimates reworked with abilities tuned upwards. Small minor balance changes were done over big changes to abilities.

Conquest changes

Problem:  Jungle farm

Jungle feels like second mid lane.  Spend most time in the middle over the jungle.  Jungler should be making farming choices in the jungle.  Fighting over farm instead just teaching farm.

Solution

Add more jungle camps which worth more compared general waves.  Avoid other classes taking the farm make them tougher.

Problem: Much higher lost of farm during ganks

Solution:

Longer distance between lanes

God balancing suggestions

Every god should have some sort of niche.  Don’t want to see loads of changes.  More minor changes one at a time.  Tried to explain the problem with each god and why.  Disagree with me please explain in detail why.

Ao kuang

High burst potential against a single target.   Stealth which can be used as an escape.  Ultimate features an execution mechanic plus heals him.  Acts as only hard crowd control.  Design wise safer super high burst with low-risk high reward.

Problem: Ultimate

Allows Ao Kuang to safely engage or disengage without any real risk.

Solution

Remove any of the following things off the Ultimate.

  • Heal
  • Damage
  • Execution mechanic

Jing Wei

Combined together super safe late game hunter with two escapes.

Problem:  Passive

Allows the god to gain extra farm without risk.  No risk when comes to trading against hunters.

Solution

Adjust the passive various solutions

  • Decrease the distance or add a timer.

Problem:  Persistent Gust bonus attack speed

Solution remove the bonus attack speed

Problem:  Agility immunity to basic attack movement penalties

 

Solution remove the immunity

Erlang Shen

Tiermonster owner Lordwhizzkid explained here.  Shen has major identity crisis warrior or assassin. A decision must be taken before any balance is done. Something has to be done.

Playstation, PS4, Smite, Video Games

Smite Ranked Thoughts

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Why is ranked so Toxic?

Four months ago decided to stop playing ranked smite.  Playstation community was rather toxic. Seen more toxic messages from smite compared almost decade of playstation.  Personally suffered from insults.  Tonight was given four over couple hours.  Dozens messaging other players to report each other. Messages including ‘report for feeding’.   Inconvenience truth players have bad games. Reporting players for bad games, terrible attitude to hold. Behaviour like this means should not be playing ranked.  That attitude is setting you up to fail.

Decided to change my attitude, avoid any negative remarks.  Going to try be less toxic.  Avoiding anything which could be taken in negative way.

 

Experience with the community, toxic waste dump.  Threats of reporting players, over poor performance.   Telling people to uninstall, within low level ranked matches.  Players unwilling to give advice or take it.  Blaming others for any mistakes. We all have bad games, oh the horror.  Poor performance does happen, deal with it.  Learn how to play from behind.   Many players don’t learn how to do this.  Sometimes not your fault if your team not carrying any weight.  Team game after all can’t win without your team.

Negative reaction does not help.  How many times at school did teacher shout at you.  Did being shouted at improved your grades.  Shouting at your team does not help them improve.  No saint when comes to online gaming. Negative thoughts is going to have major impact.  Behaviour changes, decision making changes.  Have degree of respect treat others how you would like to be. Reporting them does not improve the matchmaking.  Deal with the cards in front of you. Learning how to deal with difference problems.

Wards

Any player can only carry three wards, placing just two. Four main routes into the fire giant one player can’t cover every inch. Need wards message should auto buy wards.  Every role should be picking up wards. No excuses as potions fall off hard late game.

Playstation, Video Games, WarFrame

Warframe Feedback

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Warframe Feedback

Alerts

  • Rewards should scale based on missions difficulty
  • Higher amount credit alerts
  • Higher amount resource alerts

Syndicates

  • Should separate mission objectives
  • Assassins missions against other Syndicates
  • Syndicates relics

Sorties

  • Should separate mission objectives
  • Relics
  • Higher credit awards per mission
  • Better rewards in general
  • Higher resource drop rate

Endless missions

Relics increase the odds of rarer relics. Allow players to earn more than one relic per rotation. Allow players to earn relics with void traces per installed.

Relics

Prime parts allow players to reuse relics but can’t get the same item again. Increase odds on rarer items further you go. Allow players to earn double or triple the parts.

Void traces

Void traces increase the possible amount earned. Could be done by changing the total or small increases so lower variation. Standardise void traces earned after certain rotation. Endless void trace missions allow players to fuse void traces into relics per round.

Playstation, PS4, Smite, Video Games

Smite Hunter Builds Season 3

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Hunters follow 6 core build designs.  Certain early game items help smooth the power curve.  Builds listed are final don’t include the early game items.  Disclaimer don’t normally play hunters, build order is useful to understand.

Build Name 1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th
Caster build Transcendence Warrior Tabi Jotunn’s Wrath Brawlers beat stick Titan’s bane The Crusher
Double stack Devourer’s Gauntlet Ninja tabi Transcendence ASI Titan’s bane Malice
Ability hybird Transcendence Warrior Tabi ASI Titan’s bane  Qin sais Malice
Ninja tabi Jotunn’s Wrath Titan’s bane Malice
Shifter’s shield Soul eater
Transcendence Warrior Tabi ASI Titan’s Qin sais Masamune
Everything Devourer’s Gauntlet Warrior Tabi ASI Titan’s bane Qin sais Malice
Ninja tabi Titan’s bane Qin sais Malice
Warrior Tabi The executioner Qin sais Malice
Ninja tabi The executioner Qin sais Malice
Power/pen Devourer’s Gauntlet Warrior ASI Brawler’s Beatstick, Qin sais Titan’s Bane
Ninja Tabi
Critical damage Devourer’s Gauntlet Warrior Tabi ASI The executioner Wind demon Deathbringer
Ninja Tabi The executioner Malice Deathbringer
Titan’s bane Wind demon
Wind demon Malice
Playstation, PS4, Smite, Video Games

Smite how to build every god archetypes

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Smite’s god pool has various gods which share similar traits.  Gods can have different playstyles want various different statistics.  Broken down each class into various archetypes. Far easier to remember compared to remembering builds which change all the time compared to archetypes.  More useful compared situational items builds.

Not going to cover Guardians or hunters due being easier to understand.

Assassins

Bruiser/basic attack

  • Arachne
  • Nemesis

Statistics needed attack speed, protections, health, cooldown and penetration.

All in basic attack

  • Kali
  • Bakasura

Statistics needed attack speed, penetration and super glue.

Ability – Warrior assassins love to use abilities to kill you. 

  • Fenrir
  • Hun Batz – Normally build one critical strike item due his passive.
  • Ratatoskr
  • Susano
  • Thanatos – Given free penetration on scent of death 35 flat penetration.  Total flat penetration is 50.
  • Thor

Statistics needed protections, health, cooldown and penetration.  Cooldown one key core statistic demanded from ability based assassins.  Main statistics priority cooldown plus penetration.  Statistics normally build cooldown, protections/health, penetration.

Hybrid

Awilix wants to be built like ability based assassin and little bit of attack speed.

Single target ability  

Kill one target and leave that pretty much what these gods do.

  • Loki
  • Bastet

Statistics needed power plus penetration love cooldown.

  • Serqet
  • Ne Zha

Statistics needed power plus penetration love cooldown.   Defense items plus one critical strike is good.

  • Mercury

Statistics needed power plus critical strike.

Mages

Traditional – Magical based gods ranged based with powerful abilities.

  • Agni
  • ISIS
  • Janus
  • Kukulkan
  • Nox
  • Poseidon
  • Ra
  • Scylla
  • Vulcan
  • Zeus

Statistics required magical power, penetration main priorities.  Cooldown is useful but gain less magical damage compared to other items.  Health/mana helpful for survivability.

Burst mage  – Want you dead quickly and fast using abilities.

  • Ah Punch
  • Anubis
  • Ao Kuang
  • He Bo
  • Nu Wa
  • Raijin

Statistics required magical power, penetration main priorities.  Cooldown is useful but gain less magical damage compared to other items.  Health/mana helpful for survivability.

 

Basic attack – Powerful abilities with powerful basic attacks.

  • Chronos
  • Freya
  • Sol

Statistics required magical power, penetration main priorities plus attack speed.  Cooldown is useful but gain less magical damage compared to other items.  Health/mana helpful for survivability.

Warrior/healer – Often have short range magical abilities like to be towards the front of any action. Often suffering from poor scaling.  Abilities often have high base damage.

  • Aphrodite
  • Chang’e
  • Hades
  • Hel
  • Zhong Kui

Statistics needed protections, health, cooldown and penetration. Focus should be on cooldown/defense items plus penetration.  Depending on the god certain ones want cooldown sooner over later.  Health/mana with protections can out trade many burst mages helps with survivability.

Warriors

Basic attack – These warriors love to fight with basic attacks.  Following warriors fall into this group.

  • Erlang shen
  • Bellona
  • Hercules
  • Osiris
  • Ravana
  • Vamana

Statistics needed attack speed,  protections, health and power.  Cooldown is always nice to have on any god can be built last.  Main statistics priority protections/health followed by attack speed when playing these gods.

Ability based 

Warriors in this group love to hit you with abilities following fall into this group.

  • Amatresau
  • Chaac
  • Guan Yu
  • Sun wukong
  • Tyr

Statistics needed protections, health, cooldown and penetration.  Cooldown one key core statistic demanded from ability based warriors.  Main statistics priority cooldown plus penetration.  Statistics normally build cooldown, protections/health, penetration.

Hybrid based

Within this group can be built hybrid building ability based or basic attack based.

  • Amatresau
  • Bellona
  • Hercules
  • Ravana
  • Sun wukong
  • Vamana

Statistics want mix of the above picking whatever you feel is required.

 

Playstation, PS4, Smite, Video Games

Ranked Smite thoughts

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Recently been playing more when comes to competitive video games.  Platform of choice being smite playstation 4.   Never been into any competitive sports but always had a competitive edge.  Love getting into the mind of my opponent understanding what they are doing and why. Like many gamers enjoy the competition which games can provide.   End of the day games are meant to be fun and can be competitive.

Smite competitive matchmaking has been pretty iffy from easy games to super unbalanced nonsense.   Rather frustrating because pretty much forced carry games due how random it can be.  Worse still negative poor matchups can force you to make bad choices.  Experience so far has been rather frustrating just how bad some of my teammates can.  Makes ladder climbing one hell of a climb.

Not sure what else to add 🙁

Playstation, PS4, Video Games

My smite god pool

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Assassins

  1. Awilix
  2. Fenrir
  3. Hun Batz
  4. Ne Zha
  5. Nemesis
  6. THor

Hunters

  1. Anhur
  2. Apollo
  3. Chiron
  4. Hou Yi
  5. Jing wei
  6. Ullr
  7. Xbalanque

Mage

  1. Chronos
  2. Hades
  3. Isis
  4. Janus
  5. Poseidon
  6. Ra
  7. Raijin
  8. Scylia
  9. Sol
  10. Vulcan

Warrior

  1. Bellona
  2. Odin
  3. Osiris
  4. Ravana
  5. Sun Wukong
  6. Tyr
  7. Vamana

Support god pool

  1. Ares
  2. Athena
  3. GEB
  4. Guan Yu
  5. Kumbhakarna
  6. Sobek
  7. Sylvanus
  8. Khepri