Update

So it's been ~3 weeks so I thought it was about time for an update. Still not planning on getting back into smite for at least another couple months or so as I have had a lot more time to work stuff out without it. Haven't really been doing that much as of late though to be honest, I was kind of too bummed out to work on my social life a whole lot (as I wasn't socializing as much before compared to my normal amount due to the problems I was having as described in previous blog posts), so I've mostly just been focusing on schoolwork which has been going well enough. My sleep/workout schedule is still kind of wonky, but overall I'm doing fine.

For the last few weeks I've been avoiding all smite related content and have been trying to limit just how much time I've been more or less wasting on my computer, between only allowing 2-3 steam games I actually enjoy playing installed in my library at once and using StayFocusd (a chrome extension) to block websites like youtube and facebook after I've used them for an hour each day. This has worked to a degree, but I've managed to still waste more time than I'd like (the only difference is now I'm wasting it doing things I enjoy even less). Also for whatever reason I've still been hungering for competitive play, so I took up Smash Bros more seriously, which I guess is my brain's way of compensating for not playing Smite. Went to a Melee tourney last week and won 1 set so I guess I'm not completely terrible. I would be more concerned that I'm using Smash as a replacement for smite except

1. The most smash bros I can play in a single day is ~2 hours compared to upwards of 4 for smite.
2. Playing smash requires other people thus I'm limited in when/where I can play it (ie: I can't stay up all night doing it) and at least I'm socializing when I am.
3. When I was playing smite, I was still actively playing smash, just a little bit less. So it's not like it came on as an additional activity, it's just that I started doing it more in an attempt to fill in a gap I've become accustomed to, thankfully it's not capable of filling that gap to the same extent and using up all my time.

So yeah, that's what's been going on with me. Today I 'kind of' caved and watched a youtube video on smite "Top 5 Reasons Why OP God Releases Are Good For Smite", which I mostly allowed because it doesn't really inform me on any new content and because it has more to do with the development side of smite and as a computer science and game design major this intrigued me. Overall I agree with his points (except for his last one that OP god releases are fun, I really don't enjoy playing gods that I know are overpowered, it makes everything I do with them feel cheap and unimportant. It's really cool getting a pentakill, but when I know I only got it because my god is overpowered as all hel, it's not rewarding at all). However, I don't agree with his premise, as I think there are even more compelling reasons as to why OP god releases are bad for smite (most notably, bad gameplay whenever a new god is released for the 9-8 players in a game that aren't playing the newly released op god, and cascading power creep).
Play Video
I'm not going to respond to any comments regarding the video on this blog post since I'm still avoiding smite related content and this was really just to give you guys an update on my status, but since I haven't been sparking any new discussions for you guys in a long while I figured I'd leave you with that :P

Best wishes fam
~Zilby