Moba balance comparison, please comment

[Wingflier]

http://www.pcgamesn.com/dota-2/dota-2s-concurrent-players-outnumbered-all-99-other-games-on-steams-most-played-list-today

Holy cow.

[keith.lamothe]

Valve Wins.  Fatality.

[Mánagarmr]

The power of mobas.

[Misery]

I've just found out that Smite supports controllers.

Likely, Smite will now be the main moba I play.  Though my interest in the others hasnt dampened.  But as this is the worst time of the year for the kind of pain I have (I hate weather now), I've hardly done any online gaming of any sort recently.  Which is irritating.  Too much mouse, on pretty much any type of game!  The only one I can really handle at this time is World of Tanks, since the pacing is slow and I'm not exactly clicking a thousand times per second.   But I cant think of any other online games that I can really do right now with the mouse and all.

[Mánagarmr]

I've yet to try Smite with a controller. I have issues seeing how such a fast paced game with huge precision requirements can work under the constraints of a controller. But I guess the only way to find out is to try.

[Misery]

Eh, I'm not expecting it to bother me too much.   It'll at least have a normal-ish control scheme since it actually supports controllers normally.  As opposed to something like the PC version of Minecraft, which doesnt support controllers whatsoever, but I use one for it anyway.  Bizarre control scheme, that.

[Misery]

Okay, Smite-related question:

Do they normally do server maintenance extremely frequently?  I've barely been able to do much in it these past few days because the servers are brought down over and over at some point during the night...

[Mánagarmr]

Okay, Smite-related question:

Do they normally do server maintenance extremely frequently?  I've barely been able to do much in it these past few days because the servers are brought down over and over at some point during the night...

As far as I know, there are NO planned server outages. They've been testing a new queue system lately, but that hasn't affected uptimes.

[Misery]

Ugh, yes, the new queue thing.  I already miss the older one.


As the server thing goes though, they keep giving a message about "scheduled maintenance" before it happens (I saw it about 30 minutes before each time), and then it's down for hours.  Obnoxious, whatever it is.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Ugh, yes, the new queue thing.  I already miss the older one.

Why?

[Misery]

Because I have zero patience.  Particularly when I have to wait.

With the old system, I could look at it and say, okay, there's 1 minute till this mode fires off.  Not so bad.  It never seemed to be more than 2 or so.  With normal queues, I look at it and say, argh, I'll hit this but it could be six minutes.... AGAIN.... till it fires off, unless of course someone 9/10s it and the waiting cycle starts again.  Like with the other games in the genre, while it's using normal queues, I keep the iPad nearby so I dont pass out from boredom trying to get a game going.  That's never a good sign.  Never had to do that with this game before.  I've heard nothing but anger from players in most places I go to that will discuss the game, and I cant blame them on this one.  To me it seems like one of those things where it wasnt broken, yet they still "fixed" it.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Because I have zero patience.  Particularly when I have to wait.

With the old system, I could look at it and say, okay, there's 1 minute till this mode fires off.  Not so bad.  It never seemed to be more than 2 or so.  With normal queues, I look at it and say, argh, I'll hit this but it could be six minutes.... AGAIN.... till it fires off, unless of course someone 9/10s it and the waiting cycle starts again.  Like with the other games in the genre, while it's using normal queues, I keep the iPad nearby so I dont pass out from boredom trying to get a game going.  That's never a good sign.  Never had to do that with this game before.  I've heard nothing but anger from players in most places I go to that will discuss the game, and I cant blame them on this one.  To me it seems like one of those things where it wasnt broken, yet they still "fixed" it.

The old system was broken. This is fixing a problem SMITE has been having for the last several months. We've been having common complaints such as:

Grouped players fighting solo-queuers
Bronze players in League fighting with Diamond League players.
Level 1-15 players fighting lvl 30+ players
And so on.

The matchmaking has been borked for a long time with the old system. I much prefer untimed queues, they simply make sense. You won't have 100s of people queuing at the last second anymore. They'll queue up and get put into the appropriate matches for their skill levels. Since the system no longer has to make last-second decisions on where to put people, it will have time to make the right decisions for players.

For myself, I've been getting into games at a maximum of 1 minute, no longer than that. Often, it's less than 30 seconds. For casual queues anyway. Its a lot faster to get into a game now than before. Can't comment on League as I'm avoiding it for a while until things settle down. I've been wanting this system to come for a long time and so far, everything seems to be working fine. Obviously not all of the kinks are worked out but if you're in a queue for longer than 2 mins for casuals, you should reset the queue (though that bug was fixed with the latest patch).

I can't help the lack of patience but this shouldn't require nearly as much patience as the previous system.

[Misery]

I'm also playing only during the middle of the night; it's the only time I'm awake.  So the queue times extend with this system, and not as isolated events.  It's USUALLY longer.

As for matchups VS other skill levels and stuff like that.... I never saw it as a problem, because every single other moba I've played (and every other competetive game type I'm into, usually) has the same issue, without exception.  It's annoying, yes, but it really does exist for all of them, different queue systems or not.  I hadnt so far seen it as being any more or less common in this one, though I could be wrong.  But it wasnt anything new to me at all.

As a rule though I care only about how long it takes, which is typical for me.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

I'm also playing only during the middle of the night; it's the only time I'm awake.  So the queue times extend with this system, and not as isolated events.  It's USUALLY longer.

As for matchups VS other skill levels and stuff like that.... I never saw it as a problem, because every single other moba I've played (and every other competetive game type I'm into, usually) has the same issue, without exception.  It's annoying, yes, but it really does exist for all of them, different queue systems or not.  I hadnt so far seen it as being any more or less common in this one, though I could be wrong.  But it wasnt anything new to me at all.

As a rule though I care only about how long it takes, which is typical for me.

Set your preferred servers to European, since they'll be awake while the rest of NA isn't.

Just because a problem exists in every other MOBA doesn't mean we can accept it as a problem here. This is the reason why Hi-Rez made the change, to fix the matchmaking. I can't say its a success just yet, it'll take some time to determine but so far I'm preferring how quickly I can get into matches now. Whether its giving me good matches or not remains to be seen.

[Misery]

Just because a problem exists in every other MOBA doesn't mean we can accept it as a problem here. This is the reason why Hi-Rez made the change, to fix the matchmaking.

That bit is why I brought up the others; they already use this system, and it does nothing for the matchmaking.  Typically, this is the same in non-moba games.  Nobody seems to have a REAL solution to cruddy matchmaking.  With people of all levels randomly logging in and out at all times, it might simply be too chaotic to easily impose order on, as online games go.  Which is also why I only care about queue times at this point. 

I'll give the server switch idea a go though, that just might help a bit.


On a side note, did they remove a mode here at some point?  I coulda sworn there was a Domination-style mode in there somewhere, though it had been awhile since I'd logged back in again somewhat recently.  Can definitely already see plenty of other changes.