Dev Insights - Ao Kuang, Dragon King of the Eastern Sea

Who?

But seriously, how they conduct their god reviews is pretty terrible.

I mean, lore, sure, you're introducing a new god, it's nice to know a bit of the origins of the god for some of dat immersion. It's not detrimental to the god's role though, so it's a bit worthless.

Introducing the abilities is key, and they do that. That's good, except they could do more than just show us the ability while reading the description. They could show us some nuances with the abilities, as well as give us some usage tips for the ability rather than just tell us what it does. Learning things is worthless if you don't know the practical application for it. Also, for most god reveals, they literally do nothing for when they reveal the passive. They just have the god stand there. They could at least show us the passive in action. Seriously.

The last major part is by far the most worthless part of the reveal. They just get the woman to shoutcast over a scene from a game. Yes, thank you, we are seeing the video too. Now how about you actually help us with the mentality of the player playing the god, and his thought processes and what he achieves from doing said play. Telling us what happened is worthless. Absolutely worthless. We still get no sense of practical application of the ability despite that being what the main purpose of this section is. The only thing we get is a sense of the god in game. We don't even get a sense of how we should play the god in game, as they only show instances of where the god succeeds. Showing us failed moments with the god is just as important as when we see the god succeeds. The cliche 'learn from your mistakes' is necessary here.

I'm done. /rant

I still want our Mighty Storm back :(

It hardly helps with immersion, you get a wikipedia run down of their lore, a lot of gods personality's and chatacteristics stray from their original counter parts, i mean do you really think the greeks imagined athena to have a thick russian accent (i ****ed that word up i think)? Probebly not since russian didn't exist, it was domeyhing they threw in for ***** and gigs but i digress.

If they were given a clear reason to fight other gods then that would help with emersion, that there are order and chaos titans isn't enough and it is also not so great setup, things like "nox must fight for her children" is too vague, why should i care about her kids which are emotions? Why are the kid/emotions in danger?

Seriously tell me what character you can get emotionally attached to in smite? Scylla is a child with dog tentacle legs who says she is a monster... K but i don't think i can relate to that in the slightest. Apollo? Well he is your typical arrogant lovable jerk character... Thaaaat has been done before and better by making the character have flaws case and point being TF2's scout, keep in mind that these gods are NOT perfect beings as they come from poly theisisms and not mono theisisms where the god IS a perfect being.

That means the argument that because they are gods they don't flaws doesn't hold water.

Im getting into lore rant terrotory again so i'll stop.

But i just got an idea.

I agree with All4. I simply can't get attached to the characters at all. We're getting withdrawal symptoms from Dawngate.

I mean, the characters can be charming, but they don't really have a soul. Not like Dawngate's Shapers. The closest character I got attached to was removed from the game.

Like MadDanny said:

"A MIGHTY STORM!"

I don't exactly understand why LoL players are even here, you figure they would be on their own forums and discussing their own game with each other instead of rushing over to the SMITEFire forums to rag on a god for looking similar or completely alike.

There is a such a thing as unknowingly copying a character and then doing it on purpose,but yet we all know we'll still play it and probably have a heck of a good time with it.

Personally I'm not a fan of this new model. give me the old blue eastern dragon any day that Kukulkan the reptile impostor took over xD, Honestly I think they should have just used the freaking dragon that's in his ultimate and down size it to the original A.K's size. cause the dragon looks totally wicked cool but his default model for the entire game long is i'll admit unique and interesting. but the Humanoid/Dragonic looks are kinda boring. I'm just hoping maybe his Voice pack will bring some new life into this model.

Hands down the only reason i'd probably even play this god when he arrives as I'll instantly have him from Gods Pack, is the ultimate. the whole point of just wounding down somebody and devouring them mid-air is awesome points enough for me. and if I like his play style he'll probably be the male Freya I've been waiting for.

(P.S i'm not a fanboy of Smite/Hi-Rez or LoL, I may be more on Hi-Rez's defense but their fan-service recently has been severely lacking)

This.

Technically speaking, Ancient Greek traders settled and traded in Russian lands where they must have heard Russians talking. It also wouldn't be far-fetched to say that they might have learned warfare and wisdom from early Russian civilizations. Mind you, this was all in 8 BC, and Athena's myths started to appear in 5 BC.

Flawless logic, exept for the flawed parts like us not being LoL players, we play all kinds of moba's which again can give you a broader perspective of am industry WHERE SMITE IS COMPETING IN.

Key word being COMPETING.

Also if you look at what we have been doing, saying that all we do is saying that some designs are rip offs is A: something we don't do often and B: not even scratching the tip of the ice berg.

We play League. But we talk about Smite.

We don't make League-related threads or posts, but posts about Smite, including points where Smite and League are compared. Why should the fact that we play multiple MOBAs force us to frequent one forum, or avoid another? Is there a MULTIFIRE I'm not aware of?

It's insulting to insinuate that we should leave due to us criticizing Smite, and we happen to like another MOBA more. It's like telling a LoL player to leave MOBAfire because he plays Smite and happens to like it more than League.

It's like this. A filmmaker goes to a reddit for graphic arts. The filmmaker can still give guidance on topics that are not films, such as graphic novels or video game making, since all involve the visual medium and use similar or identical techniques, such as the dutch angle or a flyaway shot or linear perspectives, etc.

And again, we don't talk about League or other MOBAs except in relation to Smite. We don't just say "this part was copied," and other superficial subjects. League is not an alien artifact completely unrelated to Smite. There are lessons that both games can learn from each other, and we have every right to be here, as you do.

Don't really got much to add here, even if I did add anything remotely logical to this subject everyone would probably still pin-point a menial flaw with it and go on another tirade of how Smite/LoL are ripping off or they're alike and both very much the same. people just can't seem to make up their minds around here. to me you're either for one side or the other. you can happily say you enjoy both but everyone knows deep down inside they pick a favorite. some will say they enjoy Smite's more action adrenaline pumping style of MOBA and others will enjoy the more intense strategic above the action style of LoL. So I can understand simply stating one is your favorite and even if you say here League is your favorite not many will haze you or downplay you for it.

But don't come straight to the site intended for another game just to point out the clear rip-off/steal, some of us don't even pay attention TO other MOBA's so in reality we may see Ao Kuang as simply Ao Kuang and not Kalista (Which personally I look at Kalista and she reminds me more of an odd specter form of Kali combined with a bit of Anhur/Loki with the spear and slender looks) I'm not even positive if that is the full story and if the whole rage is about tooltips/introducing a god. truly, does it really matter? we have a practice mode for a reason..to GO practice a gods kit and find out what exactly it does. then with a bit of trial and error you figure out more and more about them if not you just begin blazing right off the bat good with a god. technically I see Ao Kuang being played much like Freya. you're gonna build up attack speed/power items so you can dice up a god in short time with hard hits and land your ult before they can react.