We are almost ready to launch Season 5 SMITE for PC! This is a very exciting time for all of Hi-Rez Studios as well as the SMITE community! Before we launch, I wanted to do a review of how PTS went and what our strategy is moving forward. The PTS was quite successful and the team made great progress with the additional help from the community.







Bugs

Lots of bugs were fixed. Also, lots of bugs were created, but then we fixed those too. Bug fixing was our first priority for the PTS and the community helped us find these at an extremely fast rate. We are on a very tight work schedule to make all of this happen. We have to move fast while everyone is at the studio to fix as many bugs as possible, then take the PTS down, apply the new build, internally QA it, and prep it for launch. We moved as quickly as we could for this, which resulted in us shipping some bugs that we should have caught, but we felt it was worth it so you all could have more play time. I know this system doesn’t favor all regions, but it is extremely important that we adhere to our own studio schedule here in Atlanta.





Communication

The SMITE team and the players communicated with each other better than ever before. Stealth and Isiah are a big part of this, but the rest of the Hi-Rez devs have put in extra effort too. The Showcase on Twitch was shorter and more focused, the AMA on r/smite afterward cleared up any additional issues, and all types of social media were active with discussion. We also launched a new version of Pro Feedback that uses Discord instead of Email and we are getting a lot more feedback than ever before from SPL players. Throughout Season 5, we plan to continue with this new plan that includes more transparency and communication.





Balance

PTS is not exactly the best place for balance. Matches are often one sided and bugs or other issues can distort the feelings of power. However, we still got a lot of good balance feedback about the new map and items. We got overwhelming comments that people were gaining gold too fast, so we turned that down. We also adjusted Blessings in many ways to make sure all classes and all Blessings are viable in the new map. We fully expect this map to need more changes going forward. Season 5 will be a very interesting Season for balance as we learn together what items and gods can best utilize the new map.





Going Forward

The most important thing to remember is that this is the beginning of the new map, not the end. Yes we have been working toward this for a while and we are presenting a “finished product” but that doesn’t mean there won’t be changes.

We purposefully held off on doing too much God balance in 5.1 because we want to see the actual results first. The first few patches of Season 5 will include a lot of experimentation and data collection, followed by (possibly) some pretty heavy balance.

Here are some of the things we will paying especially close attention to:

Gold Gain and XP gain in Conquest, Match duration and snowballing vs comebacks.



Guardians and the support role in general, including god picks and XP/gold gain, and items



Individual God Balance issues, specifically mobility and clear



Individual Item Balance, Mage item overhaul, Blessings



Bug Fixing and Performance testing will also be a constant focus in the next few patches. There will also be Project Olympus updates and Console specific updates. All things considered, Season 5 is looking like it’s going to be an amazing year for SMITE!