The State of Conquest and Moving Forward

Forum » News » The State of Conquest and Moving Forward 8 posts - page 1 of 1

The State of Conquest and Moving Forward

By: TitanAjax

Conquest is the primary competitive mode in SMITE. As a competitive mode, the gameplay on this map is always evolving. This can come from player made decisions and established metagames, or developer driven changes. At the beginning of every season we always evaluate the Conquest map and look for ways to make meaningful changes that our players will appreciate.

The approach we take to do this revolves around the concept of problem solving. We do not aim to add frivolous changes for the sake of change. Instead we seek out specific meta issues, role issues, or map interactions that the player base seems to dislike. After identifying the problems we look for solutions that will continue to provide players with the most flexibility in their paths to success.

One of the defining features of the Conquest map and the MOBA genre is flexibility. Team roles and item building are specifically designed to make player choice a powerful force. This results in some unpredictability, but that is yet another draw to the moba genre: no two matches play out in exactly the same way. This design principle is the main reason why we arrived at the decisions we are going to share in this post, and it is the main reason that we decided not to implement some of the SMITE community’s more rigid suggestions for solving problems.

CONQUEST STAT REVIEW

The debate about which mode is “best” is a constant discussion in the SMITE community. This is an especially difficult scenario because even in the data different modes excel at different things. SMITE’s success stems from the games’ variety. We provide a wide range of gods and modes so that we can appeal to a large audience. Every mode is important, but some are more important depending on how you look at it.

Here are some interesting stats about Conquest:

Conquest is the most played game mode in SMITE when sorted by actual “in-game play time.”
Conquest is the 3rd most played most when sorted by “unique players”, with Joust at #1 and Arena at #2
This means that Conquest is played by a slightly smaller pool of total people, but those people tend to play SMITE more than those who play other modes.
Sorting by “match count” is, in my opinion, the least accurate way to measure the importance of modes, and using this stat in official messaging has contributed to confusion. This stat is useful for measuring things within a game mode (each god’s match count within conquest for god popularity/balance reasons, for example)

LOOKING BACK AT SEASON 6 CONQUEST

The current Conquest map was first introduced in Update 5.1, where a complete art and layout update was done. This iteration feels like the strongest version of Conquest ever designed, so the team has been carefully updating it throughout the last 2 years.

Update 6.1 brought the following major features:

Totem of Ku

This new early game objective added value to the solo lane and allowed those laners to impact the entire map through their 1v1 performance.

Primal Fury and Oni Fury

This added more unique ways for players to gain an advantage in the mid to late game through new, rotating, objectives.

We feel that both of these features, combined with a series of smaller balance and QoL adjustments, led to a great start to the season. These features were designed to fix certain problems, and players appreciated that approach.

Throughout Season 6 the meta changed often, resulting in some crazy class/role position changes. As a team we felt good about the amount of optimization players were able to do to the map. This shows that our core goals of MOBA design (flexibility and player choice) were well represented on the map.

We feel that Seasons 5 and 6 were some of the best ever for the Conquest mode. The wider map, lower XP sharing, and more meaningful objectives have allowed the maps competitive nature to flourish. However, the best way to continue improving this mode is to be honest with ourselves about its problems and negative experiences.

CONQUEST SEASON 7 CHANGES

Flexibility and player choice are great, but they can lead to some dangerous situations if left unchecked. Even in representing our core design goals, extreme highs can be just as dangerous to player experience as extreme lows. As the season progressed we reached an Invade Meta, as well as some other other role balance concerns. Addressing these issues will be the primary driver for our Season 7 changes.

Problems to solve:

Invade Meta

Early invades have one major problem: they break the intended pacing of a match. This strategy immediately raises the stakes, causing wins or losses to be determined too early. This generally results in a stressful experience that feels more influenced by randomness rather than skill.

Jungle Role and Mid Role feeling less impactful than other roles

Previous changes to the map combined with meta shifts throughout the year have caused this feeling. Junglers were intentionally nerfed on a few occasions due to their ability to snowball a game. Mid laners have been sharing more and more farm to the rest of their team to adapt to the meta of grouping up in their lane. Although these issues resulted from intended shifts, a new Season is always a good time to evaluate roles and attempt to make them all feel equally important to the outcome of a match.

Duo Lane not at all resembling the Support/ADC Duo Lane

SMITE is designed to encourage more rotation, team fighting, and jungling in the early game for all roles, but we still want the roles to meet player expectations. Players strongly expect there to be a viable Duo lane in a MOBA, so as pros have continued to shift god/role positions into an unrecognizable state we will be introducing changes that encourage a return to more familiar territory.

Solo Laners can’t solo kill each other

Solo lane this year was as impactful as ever due to the addition of the Totem. The problem was that many players, especially on the high end, found that this lane had very little room to flex your skills. Very few solo kills occurred in the early game, resulting in a less exciting experience.

With our problems identified, and thus our goals set, we can start enacting meaningful changes to the map in order to solve these problems.

NEW CONSUMABLE: HAND OF THE GODS

The jungle clear Relic is making a return, but this time as a consumable along with some key functionality changes
Problem(s) being targeted: Invade Meta
The goal of this item is to give all roles extra protection against invades. With this item they can opt to have safer or quicker early jungle clear instead of additional potions.
This consumable deals damage to all jungle monsters in a small area around you
You can only carry 1 stack of this consumable at a time
This damage effect does not damage enemy camps or jungle bosses, but it is increased by Assassin’s Blessing
The damage dealt is a flat amount that does not scale
This item costs 100g

NEW STARTER RELIC: VISION SHARD

Each player’s “inactive” Relic slot, the one that cannot be upgraded until level 12, will now have the Shard in that place. Activating this places a weak ward in the target location on a 120s cooldown.
Problem(s) being targeted: Invade Meta
The goal of this item is to give players more control over their early game experience. With this item players are less likely to fall victim to risky or aggressive ganks in the early game. It also might help familiarize more players with the joys of warding, as it will be applied to all game modes.
The 1st Relic slot is not affected by this
The Shard can be upgraded to a normal relic for free at level 12
The shard ward looks different and does not change with ward skins, has smaller radius, lower duration, and provides no gold when killed

NEW OBJECTIVE: JUNGLE SHRINE

The Jungle Shrine is a new early game objective located in the area in between Yellow Buff and Back Harpies.
Problem(s) being targeted: Jungler Impact
The goal of this feature is to add more team wide impact to the jungle role in the early game. Junglers can’t be in every lane at the same time, but now their allies will feel their impact through these gifts of gold. We hope this has similar levels of success that the Totem of Ku had.
This objective’s gold reward grows each time your team clears a jungle camp, so it essentially has a variable respawn time and variable reward amount.

YELLOW BUFF SPAWNS EARLIER

This Camp now spawns at 20s instead of 23s
Problem(s) being targeted: Invade Meta, Jungler Impact, Mid Impact
The goal of this feature is to make sure Mid Laners (and sometimes Junglers) have enough time to clear the Yellow Buff before lane minions meet or harpies spawn. Certain Mid/Jungle combinations would not possibly be able to kill the camp and still make it to midlane before any minions are killed.

MID HARPY PATHING AND XP CAMP CHANGES

Mid Harpies on the Gold Fury side now have a very different Jungle path that favors the home team mid laner. There is now an additional Mid Harpy camp so that each Mid Laner has their own.
Problem(s) being targeted: Mid Impact
The goal of this feature is to increase the amount of farm the Mid Laner has access to, and to make the lane slightly safer. Players are losing a path from Order to Chaos side, which will make certain rotations much more difficult.
The Mid Harpy Camp on Fire Giant side is not changing and will still be a contested neutral objective

NEW XP CAMP NEAR DUO LANE

A new XP camp featuring a single Elder Harpy has been added to both the Order and Chaos side of the duo lane.
Problem(s) being targeted: Duo Lane isn’t a Duo Lane
The goal of this feature is to encourage players to stay together on that side of the map by giving them more XP/Gold sources.
These camps are positioned in the environment right next to the Purple Camp.
These are tanky, hard hitting monsters that are cleared most easily by a group of 2 players or more.

Purple Buff spawns earlier (same time as Yellow)

The Purple Camp will now spawn at 20s
Problem(s) being targeted: Duo Lane isn’t a Duo Lane
The goal of this change is to give the Duo Lane a big head start in safe gold and XP. It should make it much less likely that Duo Lane loses this camp to enemies at the start of the game, and it encourages two players to work together to clear it in time for minions to meet.

Health Pots will no longer stack with Health Chalice

Problem(s) being targeted: Invade Meta, Solo Laners can’t solo each other
The goal of this change is to prevent tanky gods from bullying everyone in the early game. The ability to stack double heals has helped early invaders stay alive longer to cause more trouble, and this excess healing makes Solo Laners much less likely to die early.

More Balance changes

These changes might be equally important or impactful as some of the other features here, but they don’t require as much explanation to understand. They all contribute to the problems and goals we have already stated, and can be discussed in more detail in the future.

The effects that all 4 jungle buffs have on players are being slightly adjusted
Jungle camps are getting a 10-20% increase in health and protections
XP Splitting change from 20% to 25%
Totem of Ku Rewards will be slightly adjusted
Blessing Adjustments
Gold/XP Adjustments
And even more!

In Season 7 we will strive to continue to improve the current Conquest map for competitive SMITE players throughout the year. The design team will be looking forward to hearing feedback from players, Olympians, and Pros. We will work together with the SMITE community to make Season 7 the best one yet! Be sure to tune into the Season 7 Update Show January 8 at 3pm ET to see these changes in game and for more in depth discussion.

We’ll see you on the Battleground!

Source: https://www.smitegame.com/news/the-state-of-conquest-and-moving-forward/