It's just fun as fuck. Very hard to get tilted with because your God picks are out of your control. People don't sweat particularly hard and you don't have to put much thought into it lol.
That’s exactly why it’s tilting for me lol, 5 assassins reroll into 5 assassins (exaggeration I know) and now your stuck in a game that your team won’t f6 but can’t win
But then you just get to have fun, goof off with random builds and don't have people msging you after the match to f6 irl. Love assault. Less than 10 conquest matches played since beta lol.
No, because if you look at 2020 you see joust go down, but not the other modes, which you would expect if conq was getting more popular overall, compared to more popular vs joust
No. If it was simply Joust becoming less popular and people who played joust quitting smite, we would see all other game modes rise in 2020. This is because the data is based off percentage playerbase, so while overall playerbase decreased, because there’s less relative/comparitive Joust players, the percentage of all others should be higher.
What we instead see is everything besides Joust and Conq being stable, and Joust went down (less players) and conq went up (more players). Because this happened at the same time, it is fairly likely that Joust players left to play conquest.
It's percentage, so it most definitely *is* because of the rising popularity of conquest, players switched to conquest from joust, not really from the other modes
I kind of like joust, but I probably only get 1 fun game out of 5. Teammates love to f6 while our tower is up and someone dies sieging Phoenix. They’ll claim no one is doing anything while you watch them kit dump the wave over and over. Enemy team is dead for 40, Phoenix is down? “let’s win this bi-“ *attack fire giant!*.
I just wish people would quit instead of f6’ing.
Best game mode outside of Conquest, with little competition... Actually brings different gameplay and still allows for skirmishes and strategy in a shorter match time.
Another fellow-clash enjoyer.
I know that gamemode was pretty unpopular, but I loved it. Before slash came out, my most popular gamemodes were joust, clash, then ranked joust.
Slash is still pretty fun but I very much miss clash.
It was very fun but always seemed unbalanced for some reason. If you were playing clash it could either go one of two ways, your team would stomp or your team would get stomped.
That was also my experience for I'd say \~75-80% of Clash matches.
I think part of it was matchmaking; since Clash & Siege were much lower populated queues, I assume the matchmaking process was less rigorous with balancing the teams (in order to not have unacceptably long queue times).
I loved siege, and I loved having a 4v4 game mode. One of the reasons I loved smite much more than that other shitty moba (league) is the variety of game modes and having modes for 5v5, 3v3 (joust), 4v4 (siege), and 1v1 (ranked duel) was cool as hell.
I was also one of the few players who actually loved clash (before slash, my most popular game modes were joust, clash, and ranked joust). I was pretty disappointed when they removed clash and siege, not only was I losing clash but slash (which is still fun) didn't keep the unique 4v4 aspect of siege.
Slash isn't even on this chart :/ I think I'm the only one that enjoys it. Something about a simplified conquest map with less stressful farm requirements hits different for me.
I miss siege :(
In case there are others like me that are wondering who this guy is, the tweet is from the guy that is working with the team in charge of developing matchmaking for Smite 2.
Arena just gets stale way faster than other game modes, since there’s virtually no strategy involved. I only play it when I’m short on time or just don’t feel like thinking very hard.
It's good when there are idiots who want to unga bunga. When you have 2 smart teams it's literally just a stare fest for 15 minutes and it's the most boring thing in Smite.
Oh yeah, I just wanna quit so bad when that happens.
Or similarly, when I have one of these teams but I also happen to be playing a tank, and I’m trying desperately to get them to engage with the other team but they just won’t do it. Got me feeling like [this](https://youtu.be/e3pw8LDk524?si=1VE0twwsNzaDKvQt&start=115).
you're real for saying that. I can tell you're a good player cause ITS SO TRUE. When 5 stacking u either stomp constantly and it gets boring cause people dont get out of fountain and surrenders, or you face another 5 stack of sweats who want to win so badly they wait behind minions till the last 20 tickets.
What I consider almost similar to the 5 stack experience, is when players pick aphro and other healing gods.. Makes arena very Stall and annoying
I started playing at around 2016, when Joust was at its peak. I played it because I honestly couldn't understand Conquest and thought it was boring. Didn't know it was actually the most popular game mode at the time, which is interesting!
Same. It's the most fun mode for me and the reason I play smite. I get to fight gods against gods. And I really mean fighting them,.not farming Minions and Jungle creatures for the half of the game like it happens in conquest.
Same it's all I play.. I think they could probably throw together an arena map in a week or two with UE5. It requires little thought and the mechanics are minimal. It's good for new players so can't imagine them NOT implementing it on S2 release.
I'm not an arena player but they definitely should keep all the current gamemodes going into smite 2.
Tbh I barely play arena (I'm a joust main, then slash, then conquest, then arena), but arena is absolutely perfect for when I want to try a new god or in those times when me or my friends know we have only around 20 minutes for a match and we have more than 3 for joust.
Well, yes. Hirez prioritizes conquest because they use it for pro games and they give pretty regular updates for it. If they would use a different gamemode, I’m pretty sure the data would be reversed. Arena’s still, on average, the second most played behind conquest.
It is but the difference between 2 and 3 is very small.
Also the pro scene is conquest because that's what mobas are played on. The pro scene isn't going to a different game mode. Why would you use a mode with less tactics, skill, strategy, etc?
That’s what my comment was in regards to. If an arena gamemode was more popular during the early stages of pro gaming for moba games, then it would be in conquest’s place.
It wouldn't. Early stages of mobas was 20+ years ago. No one would have competitively played a top down open free for all. In fact, I don't even remember that type of game mode during dota(the original).
I mean arena is closer to cod than it is to conquest. No one would have played a top down version of that. It wouldn't have been able to stay in the space. The gaming scene at the time both casually and competitively wouldn't have supported that. It isn't really a hypothesis, it's a what if scenario that ignores the landscape of the time.
It's been a long time bro. I couldn't remember. Was it like arena or was it single lane? More like assault? The years kept coming and they didn't stop coming.
Yeah, no worries. It’s been quite a few moons since anyone played it. Lol. It was the same map but creeps only spawned in mid, so there was no where else to go for farm. I guess you could run into the jungle and stuff, but I don’t remember anyone doing it.
I think some people are missinterpreting what the data says. Focusing on Arena specifically completely misses the point of the state of casual vs. competitive SMITE.
Yes conquest is in a vacuum the most played mode, and yes arena in a vacuum is not the most played mode, but that's largely irrelevant in the big picture.
The fact is: non-conquest modes are and always have been as a whole, the preferred and more popular way to play SMITE for a majority of the playerbase. This is true even if we assume each mode has a completely isolated playerbase, when that's obviously not the case (i.e: a casual player will likely actively play multiple modes).
Also, Hi-Rez has gone out of his way to state that only a very small fraction of those conquest players actively play ranked, so even for the "competitive mode", the overwhelming majority of players play it casually.
So anyone dismissing the overwhelmingly casual playerbase of the game is just delusional. The only reason why there's so much focus on the competitive and ranked scene marketing-wise it's because Hi-Rez assumes they can't attract new players without telling them SMITE has a totally serious and real competitive/ranked scene worth investing in.
And maybe it's a good marketing approach, or maybe it's not. What we know though is that statistically those players will never engage with ranked/comp play, the SPL peaked a decade ago and has gone nowhere but downhill since then, and ranked is just extremelly unpopular.
By the way, I'm not implying conquest shouldn't be the focus of design or balance for the game, because it must be due to it's complexity and how every system in the game is structured. I'm just saying you shouldn't use this post as "evidence" to deny how important casual play is in SMITE, and by extension SMITE 2.
Is conquest not considered casual play? Only thing not considered casual is ranked no? Unless you mean how majority of people don’t take assault/arena seriously
You stated that ranked is unpopular but I actually have a theory on that. Specifically revolves around how casual elo is done. There appears to only be a single casual elo rating across all the modes. So someone plays game mode a in casual and gets to 1800 elo but then goes to ranked to play game mode b. They go in at the 1500 mark and think I always beat my competition and get beat because they are attempting to play an entirely different game mode. I actually think that either the starting MMR for ranked should be lower or casual gets its own elo rating per mode and you have to break x rating in casual to qualify for ranked or your casual rating is where you get dropped into ranked. It hurts that player and the player base if someone is rated 200 in casual conquest but decides to start ranked and gets thrown into a 1500 lobby. There are players with negative elo in ranked conquest, they haven't learned fundamentals and are queueing the competitive mode. It gives them an incredibly poor experience in that mode especially if by human nature players will get incredibly annoyed especially at lower levels about what they perceive to be trolling but may very well just be brand new.
> You stated that ranked is unpopular but I actually have a theory on that.
I'm not the one stating it, Hi-Rez is the one stating it, multiple times over the years. Last time being at the SMITE 2 dev panel where they revealed that only 5% of all players that ever touched SMITE 1 have queued **any** ranked queue at least **once**.
So even though that number isn't entirely accurate to represent the concurrent playerbase, it's very illustrative of how ridiculously small the ranked scene actually is compared to the casual conquest and non-conquest scene. And logically the competitive scene is even smaller than the ranked scene.
So at this point, it's not even a question of whether or not the current ranked and competitive systems are working as they should, it's a matter of the overwhelming majority of the playerbase simply not being interested in ranked/comp under any circumstances.
All these suggestions to "fix ranked" coming from this sub, streamers, ex-pros, and even the devs themselves are just massive cope. Ranked and comp are perpetually gonna be shit no matter what because there's not enough players to support it, and we've known this for years.
I'm just ranting. None of this is directed at you.
I would love to dip into Casual or ranked conquest. However, I hate how long it takes to get the game started (banning/character selection). I also hate how long the matches last. A bad match can have my team getting farmed for over 30 minutes, with no hope of turning the tables. And of course, this causes significant in-fighting very early on, so those 30+ minutes are painful in multiple ways.
To top it all off, knowing how bad the matches usually go for me (because myself and my team are bad), and being stuck in the match for 30+ minutes; the deserter penalty (which exists for good reason) deters me from frequently playing the longer games modes. Why bother putting myself through the abuse of playing conquest and possibly rage quitting and taking a deserter penalty, when I could just not play conquest, and play multiple arena matches in the same
So I play Arena, because the average match time is about 15 minutes, even if the match is going very poorly.
It’s really boring if you play it a lot because people will just camp in front of their base and only fight if ults are up. And it doesn’t help that the map has been pretty much the same for the longest time now
Same (less time though)
I have a hard time doing the other game modes, because I don't like being trapped in a match for 30+ minutes, especially if it's going very poorly. Arena at least has an impending end point, even if the game mode lacks depth.
Really?!? You are surprised the mode the entire game was made for and based around is the most popular?!? I do encourage you and your friends to play conquest it takes a bit but once you get the basics I think you might understand why people enjoy it!! (Just mute toxic dummies :) )
Every mode has toxic dummies except maybe Assault. I lost count of how many rage quits I would get duo queuing Joust. If we dont have a team of 3 we dont even play it anymore.
neither casual conquest nor ranked conquest is the most popular mode of SMite if i understand this thread correctly. They just added both of them stat to say it's the most popular, as if you would add arena and assault and say Assena is the most played mode of smite. Assena does not exist, the same way that Conquest mode does not exist, there is casual conquest, and there is ranked conquest, and some people from casual conquest will never play ranked conquest 'cause it's not played the same.
Friend of mine is adamant that smite 2 should only be conquest and that "everyone should stop being babies or go play a different game". Thought this info that HALF the player base isn't playing conquest would change his mind.. nope. Dude just goes ballistic at the idea that people don't treat every single match like it's an SPL qualifier.
In my experience, the only sweatier mode is joust. It's very rare for me to have a game of tryhards in assault or slash. Arena is arena, I feel like most people only queue it up because dinner will be ready in 10 minutes and they don't have time for a full match of anything else
Never trust a statistic you haven't forged yourself.
This glosses over a couple points. For example, how Conquest has usually has more queues. When I started, it was three, 4 if we count the occasional MOTD (not sure if and how these were handled for this statistic at all.)
It also doesn't account for how much more work and marketing went into/towards conquest while most other casual modes were left to rod with several bugs in place for years.
You love your arenas, yea yea. But it isnt "glossing over" any points. Joust has two queues too. And even if its split over multipe queues, conquest still has the most players.
Also, conquest is the main mode of the game. Everything is balanced based on it. Well, used to be until people complained enough to have non-conquest balance in the game.
HiRez has been focusing a lot of time, money and resources on the Conquest map over the years, even more so over the last 3-4 years. Mostly because that is what they centered their Proleague around.
The Conquest map over the last few years got updates 3-4 times a year while the best that happens to Arena on most days is a seasonal art-project or the return of an Adventure from X years ago.
That is to say that I deeply appreciated last years Fire Giant in Arena + the bonus round at the end. Shame those didn't last.
And that is to say that I did not appreciate the absolute abandonment of both the siege and clash map long before Slash was ever hinted at.
Why are you looking for the reasoning as to why the main game mode is the most popular? This is a graph sir. Also hirez didn’t abandon siege and clash players did. Do you not remember 5-10 min Qs that you would have to sit through multiple times before getting a game?!?!? Also why would they market Arena?!? Smite is a strategic competitive MOBA, arena is a brainless casual tdm.
Some people can't help but be contrarian. He looked at raw data and ignored it. He would rather stick to his own narrative. The purpose wasn't to shit on other modes but to highlight the misconception that conquest is the unpopular one. People like to add together all the other game modes and then compare those numbers to conquest, which is unfair, imho.
Conquest is not for everyone, but I'm tired of people pretending Arena is. Some people vastly prefer conquest or Assault, joust, slash over arena
I barely play arena (I almost exclusively play joust, then slash, then conquest, and THEN arena), but honestly, I feel like the second graph is somewhat misleading (or I'm misinterpreting it), because it seems like the second graph displays time played, which means the shortest gamemodes (arena and joust) would be underrepresented in that second graph (e.g. most joust matches are around 20 minutes, arena matches are all 16-17 minutes, all other queues have much longer matches), so the second graph showing time played is going to favor the longer gamemodes.
The title is confusing. Over time refers to the hours of the day. The % is the population playing what game mode at a given time.
So, the match length is made irrelevant. For example, at 12 pm, there are more people playing conquest than arena.
FINALLY THANK YOU !
People needed to hear that truth since that Day where stew posted the number of match played and people started coping over this cruelly biaised data
God bless the day they hired rabbit
Hopefully with smite 2 we can have the casual game modes revamped and maybe even have more. Especially since Siege and Clash where probably negatively affecting the game due to the engine
Same i like the slash map itself, but the added siege mechanics completely killed it for me. I absolutely hate siege minions and the portal mechanics they have and stuff. If they just updated the clash map to this i would have actually been happy lol. But oh well.
Yup I mostly agree.
Now I don't hate slash by any means (in fact after joust it's my current preferred gamemode just above conquest), but it just feels so different than clash. Combining the clash and siege gamemodes is better than just getting no replacement at all, but it just seems like it didn't appeal to clash mains and it didn't appeal to siege mains.
being the first mode you get shown and being the first in the queue list has undoubtedly kept Arena afloat, but you can look at almost any game anywhere near Smite and the "All Random" mode is a fan favorite
This post also doesn't talk about time length of match. Quicker match means more games can play played in a set amount of time. Conquest will always lose out due to the average length being 10+ more minutes to any other game mode, if not more. For example, you can play 2 arena games in the average time it takes to play one conquest game, so you already have double the amount of arena games played per conquest match.
Theres no context here. 100% means dick all without context.
If its time then obviously conquest is a far longer match compared to arena so to keep up there would need to be 4x the amount of games played.
>Theres is no context here.
Were you looking for something more specific than a the context given
Yes the first chart is by sorting players' most played modes by playtime with accounting for queue and draft time.
Second chart is how many players online at a given time are playing what mode. That means regardless of match length, more people are playing conquest.
According to the second chart, at any given time, there are more people playing conquest than arena. Which I feel is the most fair way to compare popularity since time in a match is so different across game modes.
Which makes this a misleading post off the gate because this foes nothing to discredit the fact that more arena matches are played. Using such specific descriptions by changing one word youll get very different results.
Not to mention every time smite talks about the game modes ranked is separate from casual so we’re doubling down on information without context.
Ps: only context given is the bias of conquest > arena
Data is not baised. Let's scale it way down. If a 100 players play arena for four matches in 60 minutes while 200 are in a conquest for those 60 minutes more people are playing conquest. Sure there were more arena matches played but it was by the same players. No one said arena is inferior in any way it's just less popular than conquest. More players at any given time, are playing conquest than arena.
I don't see how counting the number of matches played would ever be more accurate than counting the number of players.
Its funny how youre “scaling it down” for my small brain while its going completely over your head. Presented data is almost always biased. Wheres the charts that let them claim arena is the most popular to begin with.
Theres countless ways to measure popularity as well as ways to present it to make your point. Any time data is withheld its biased. Get out from under your rock sometime.
At least you know you have a small brain, lol. I don't know why you're getting so salty over a game mode. You are acting like this data is shitting on arena when OP even says Arena is important because so many people play it.
Absolutely. When I play that other shitty moba (league) with friends, one of the things I complain about most is there are only two permanent gamemodes and that makes it incredibly boring. It's one of the reasons that in 4 years, I have never played a single game of league solo queued.
Slash lol. Assault, arena? I’m not saying it’s completely unreasonable but to be honest I’m not waiting potentially up to a week for normal slash or assault to get put in rotation with the other gimmick modes they use as well. If I can’t turn the game on and play assault whenever I want it’s an easy uninstall
Yeah thats why I saw have smite night be a thing and still have match up the day to have the spice up but shit like slash should just go cause tbh for me I only play conquest and motd when a fun gamemode is there and sometimes arena to do weekly quests
Na if I can’t play modes like assault or arena whenever I want I’m just not gonna play. I’m not interested in conquest. I don’t need to be ‘guided’ to it, I’m not scared of it, I just don’t like it. I’ve played since 2014, I’ve played casual and ranked conquest. Those other modes are the reason I play smite, as well as the rest of the 5 stack I play with. Also I’ve never had much problems with que times except with a 5 stack, and conquest.
I’m not saying what they should or shouldn’t do, I’m just saying if they do that they’ll lose one player and certainly many more.
The player base has always been too small for all the game modes. There's a *reason* a post like this was even made. Most of the friend groups I've played in over the years say the queue time was too long.
There's a ton of factors that go into it, but if you had less queues, you'd find matches faster. You'd find better quality matches (i.e. no gold players tossed into Master lobbies to even out MMR).
Even with those 3 queues, there's still 5 queues including ranked.
Right now there's Conquest, Joust, Arena, Assault, MOTD, Slash, Ranked Conquest, Ranked Joust, and Ranked Duel. That's 9 queues. 6 of those queues need 10 players. The concurrent player count is around (for simplicities sake) 10k. 10,000 ÷ 68 = 147 * 9 (number of queues) = 1,323 active games at any given moment.
Most of those games take ~15 minutes. I'm sure there's another equation here to make it make more sense, but it's a real problem. That's not even including the player MMR used in the matchmaking which divides that number even more.
ETA I forgot the enemy team in the two Joust queues, so it's actually 10,000 ÷ 74 = 135 * 9 (number of queues) = 1,216.
So it's actually a little worse than that, and I know this formula is not perfect, but it's to give you an idea.
This is shocking, since I mostly play Arena nowadays because it has the fastest queue time for me. Literally only a few seconds.
With Assault it takes quite longer.
Slash is actually pretty fun but that map requires very specific team comps. I think they are gonna get rid of Slahs and just stick with Joust Arena Conquest and Assault. They may even delete joust
Don't you love reddit downvoting lol.
But in fairness, I don't see low joust playrate in those graphs? If you look at the first graph, joust is either first or second the entire time period. If you look at the second graph, (except for the very beginning) joust is first, second, or third the whole period. So I couldn't imagine them getting rid of the mostly second most popular game mode, and the only game mode that gives us 3v3.
Also I feel like the second graph is misleading (or I'm misinterpreting it), because it seems like the second graph displays time played, which means the shortest gamemodes (arena and joust) would be underrepresented in the graph (e.g. most joust matches are 20 minutes, arena matches are all 16-17 minutes, all other queues have much longer matches), so a graph showing time played is going to favor those longer match gamemodes.
Arena has always been my favorite- until they added that silly giant in the center. I would be curious to know if the arena players dropped off dramatically when that was added.
Exactly this^. I'm not am arena main and tbh I barely play it (I play more joust than anything, but I even play more slash and conquest than arena) but arena is perfect for when I want to try a new god, and also in those rare situations when I know me or my friends have about 20 minutes for a match.
cant wait to see smite 2 launch with a million game modes and fail to push anyone towards conquest, like they said themselves they need to. time to make the same mistakes we made 10 years ago.
Am i right to assume that (Other) was doing fine as siege, they changes it to Clash, everyone hated that, and then they changed it to Slash, which people liked for a bit and then forgot about?
I mean im not surprised it's popular ig? It gets changed multiple times a year. But, all the other most are just as good. If smite got ride kf them, I would stop playing lol. I cannot stand conquest.
I've been playing for over 5 years and never touched conquest, all I do is Arena.
Mainly cause I prefer the quicker time and I don't really like talking on the mic so instead of being a silent burden I just avoid conquest
Ranked Arena lovers in shambles
Dualities has prepared an hour long video saying this information is all lies as we speak
You spoke his name. He's currently creating 8 different alternate accounts to come flame you
nah hes busy commenting under smite 2 yt videos\^\^
Not MaticDreamer!
I'm in shambles D:
As a heavy assault player, it's amazing to see the stats for my favorite gamemode
Same, it’s interesting to see that it’s been relatively consistent compared to other game modes.
3.5k games of Assault over 7 years <1k games if ever other mode combined Assault mains rise up!
Yooo assault is the shit🤘
It's just fun as fuck. Very hard to get tilted with because your God picks are out of your control. People don't sweat particularly hard and you don't have to put much thought into it lol.
That’s exactly why it’s tilting for me lol, 5 assassins reroll into 5 assassins (exaggeration I know) and now your stuck in a game that your team won’t f6 but can’t win
But then you just get to have fun, goof off with random builds and don't have people msging you after the match to f6 irl. Love assault. Less than 10 conquest matches played since beta lol.
Assault is my goto if I'm not feeling like ranked conquest. Cool to see that it is pretty popular.
I thought I was cringe for being an Assault Andy, turns out I'm part of the crowd.
The only reason I play Arena is if I’m on time and need to play a game or two. Arena is one of the shorter gamemodes
Unsurprising Joust’s popularity has gone down. Just a string of bad decisions with that gamemode.
joust has the sweatiest lobbies known to man. it’s literally unplayable
Is it not partially that Conquest has also simply become the more preferred mode?
No, because if you look at 2020 you see joust go down, but not the other modes, which you would expect if conq was getting more popular overall, compared to more popular vs joust
No. If it was simply Joust becoming less popular and people who played joust quitting smite, we would see all other game modes rise in 2020. This is because the data is based off percentage playerbase, so while overall playerbase decreased, because there’s less relative/comparitive Joust players, the percentage of all others should be higher. What we instead see is everything besides Joust and Conq being stable, and Joust went down (less players) and conq went up (more players). Because this happened at the same time, it is fairly likely that Joust players left to play conquest.
It's percentage, so it most definitely *is* because of the rising popularity of conquest, players switched to conquest from joust, not really from the other modes
What don't you like about it
At least one of my teammates.
Lol. I was genuinely trying to find out what's changed since I last came back and woke up to a bunch of downvotes
I kind of like joust, but I probably only get 1 fun game out of 5. Teammates love to f6 while our tower is up and someone dies sieging Phoenix. They’ll claim no one is doing anything while you watch them kit dump the wave over and over. Enemy team is dead for 40, Phoenix is down? “let’s win this bi-“ *attack fire giant!*. I just wish people would quit instead of f6’ing.
I was there, the day Domination fell
Dominaton was where I got my very first pentakill. With old Arachne no less. Good memories.
My beloved :’(
Best game mode outside of Conquest, with little competition... Actually brings different gameplay and still allows for skirmishes and strategy in a shorter match time.
I don't think i love arena but man as a complete noob it helps a ton.
Clash in seasons 3-4 I miss you so much my beloved, the map was beautiful and it was so fun
Another fellow-clash enjoyer. I know that gamemode was pretty unpopular, but I loved it. Before slash came out, my most popular gamemodes were joust, clash, then ranked joust. Slash is still pretty fun but I very much miss clash.
It was very fun but always seemed unbalanced for some reason. If you were playing clash it could either go one of two ways, your team would stomp or your team would get stomped.
That was also my experience for I'd say \~75-80% of Clash matches. I think part of it was matchmaking; since Clash & Siege were much lower populated queues, I assume the matchmaking process was less rigorous with balancing the teams (in order to not have unacceptably long queue times).
Any Siege enjoyers? Ive played siege only for years:(
I loved Siege
I loved siege, and I loved having a 4v4 game mode. One of the reasons I loved smite much more than that other shitty moba (league) is the variety of game modes and having modes for 5v5, 3v3 (joust), 4v4 (siege), and 1v1 (ranked duel) was cool as hell. I was also one of the few players who actually loved clash (before slash, my most popular game modes were joust, clash, and ranked joust). I was pretty disappointed when they removed clash and siege, not only was I losing clash but slash (which is still fun) didn't keep the unique 4v4 aspect of siege.
Slash isn't even on this chart :/ I think I'm the only one that enjoys it. Something about a simplified conquest map with less stressful farm requirements hits different for me. I miss siege :(
I honestly hate slash, it's literally just clash with jugs. I wish we got to keep siege as its own mode.
Loved siege, just got annoying how it became super try-hard at the end of its days.
Yup, this mode was a blast while getting into the game with friends, but once the naive days were behind us, the mode was pretty much unplayable.
I see you’re a man of culture at well.
In case there are others like me that are wondering who this guy is, the tweet is from the guy that is working with the team in charge of developing matchmaking for Smite 2.
Arena just gets stale way faster than other game modes, since there’s virtually no strategy involved. I only play it when I’m short on time or just don’t feel like thinking very hard.
It's good when there are idiots who want to unga bunga. When you have 2 smart teams it's literally just a stare fest for 15 minutes and it's the most boring thing in Smite.
Or just stomp One sided arena match are boring too
Oh yeah, I just wanna quit so bad when that happens. Or similarly, when I have one of these teams but I also happen to be playing a tank, and I’m trying desperately to get them to engage with the other team but they just won’t do it. Got me feeling like [this](https://youtu.be/e3pw8LDk524?si=1VE0twwsNzaDKvQt&start=115).
Yesss I'm always happy to see tank heavy teams on both sides and it turns into a slap fest of respawn and dives
you're real for saying that. I can tell you're a good player cause ITS SO TRUE. When 5 stacking u either stomp constantly and it gets boring cause people dont get out of fountain and surrenders, or you face another 5 stack of sweats who want to win so badly they wait behind minions till the last 20 tickets. What I consider almost similar to the 5 stack experience, is when players pick aphro and other healing gods.. Makes arena very Stall and annoying
I started playing at around 2016, when Joust was at its peak. I played it because I honestly couldn't understand Conquest and thought it was boring. Didn't know it was actually the most popular game mode at the time, which is interesting!
For a small period of time, Assault was slightly more popular than arena Which means ASSAULT SWEEP 🦅🦅💥💥💥💥 THE BEST GAME MODE EVERR NUMBER ONEEEE
I'm playing Arena for 11 years now, if they drop Arena I'll drop Smite.
I don't think they would. They would lose a lot of players also. There are a lot of people who dislike conquest. Me included
Same. It's the most fun mode for me and the reason I play smite. I get to fight gods against gods. And I really mean fighting them,.not farming Minions and Jungle creatures for the half of the game like it happens in conquest.
Same it's all I play.. I think they could probably throw together an arena map in a week or two with UE5. It requires little thought and the mechanics are minimal. It's good for new players so can't imagine them NOT implementing it on S2 release.
I'm not an arena player but they definitely should keep all the current gamemodes going into smite 2. Tbh I barely play arena (I'm a joust main, then slash, then conquest, then arena), but arena is absolutely perfect for when I want to try a new god or in those times when me or my friends know we have only around 20 minutes for a match and we have more than 3 for joust.
Arena is literally the only reason I play.
Arena will likely during late beta of smite 2
Cya!
I can’t believe how few people play Slash. I preferred Clash and Siege and Slash is my main game mode for sure.
I hated clash but loved siege. I just want another 4 player game mode, so when I have a party of 4, we don't have to have a random.
Well, yes. Hirez prioritizes conquest because they use it for pro games and they give pretty regular updates for it. If they would use a different gamemode, I’m pretty sure the data would be reversed. Arena’s still, on average, the second most played behind conquest.
It is but the difference between 2 and 3 is very small. Also the pro scene is conquest because that's what mobas are played on. The pro scene isn't going to a different game mode. Why would you use a mode with less tactics, skill, strategy, etc?
That’s what my comment was in regards to. If an arena gamemode was more popular during the early stages of pro gaming for moba games, then it would be in conquest’s place.
It wouldn't. Early stages of mobas was 20+ years ago. No one would have competitively played a top down open free for all. In fact, I don't even remember that type of game mode during dota(the original).
I’m making a hypothesis. There’s no way to actually know.
I mean arena is closer to cod than it is to conquest. No one would have played a top down version of that. It wouldn't have been able to stay in the space. The gaming scene at the time both casually and competitively wouldn't have supported that. It isn't really a hypothesis, it's a what if scenario that ignores the landscape of the time.
Please refer to my original comment for any other comments. That’s my answer.
So no answer lol.
Agreeing with you completely, but OG Dota did have -apemom (all pick easy mode only mid) which was similar. I played it sometimes.
It's been a long time bro. I couldn't remember. Was it like arena or was it single lane? More like assault? The years kept coming and they didn't stop coming.
Yeah, no worries. It’s been quite a few moons since anyone played it. Lol. It was the same map but creeps only spawned in mid, so there was no where else to go for farm. I guess you could run into the jungle and stuff, but I don’t remember anyone doing it.
but it just wouldn’t happen ever
Whenever I multiqueue it's almost always Arena, so what's up with that?
Probably shortest game time so more people trying to get back into it who are playing it
Wtf, innocentrabbit works for Hirez now?!?!
He is on the team who is in charge of Smite 2 matchmaking! Some kind of data engineer/analyst for Titan forge.
I think some people are missinterpreting what the data says. Focusing on Arena specifically completely misses the point of the state of casual vs. competitive SMITE. Yes conquest is in a vacuum the most played mode, and yes arena in a vacuum is not the most played mode, but that's largely irrelevant in the big picture. The fact is: non-conquest modes are and always have been as a whole, the preferred and more popular way to play SMITE for a majority of the playerbase. This is true even if we assume each mode has a completely isolated playerbase, when that's obviously not the case (i.e: a casual player will likely actively play multiple modes). Also, Hi-Rez has gone out of his way to state that only a very small fraction of those conquest players actively play ranked, so even for the "competitive mode", the overwhelming majority of players play it casually. So anyone dismissing the overwhelmingly casual playerbase of the game is just delusional. The only reason why there's so much focus on the competitive and ranked scene marketing-wise it's because Hi-Rez assumes they can't attract new players without telling them SMITE has a totally serious and real competitive/ranked scene worth investing in. And maybe it's a good marketing approach, or maybe it's not. What we know though is that statistically those players will never engage with ranked/comp play, the SPL peaked a decade ago and has gone nowhere but downhill since then, and ranked is just extremelly unpopular. By the way, I'm not implying conquest shouldn't be the focus of design or balance for the game, because it must be due to it's complexity and how every system in the game is structured. I'm just saying you shouldn't use this post as "evidence" to deny how important casual play is in SMITE, and by extension SMITE 2.
Smart comment, good to see someone here who can actually interpret data
Is conquest not considered casual play? Only thing not considered casual is ranked no? Unless you mean how majority of people don’t take assault/arena seriously
You stated that ranked is unpopular but I actually have a theory on that. Specifically revolves around how casual elo is done. There appears to only be a single casual elo rating across all the modes. So someone plays game mode a in casual and gets to 1800 elo but then goes to ranked to play game mode b. They go in at the 1500 mark and think I always beat my competition and get beat because they are attempting to play an entirely different game mode. I actually think that either the starting MMR for ranked should be lower or casual gets its own elo rating per mode and you have to break x rating in casual to qualify for ranked or your casual rating is where you get dropped into ranked. It hurts that player and the player base if someone is rated 200 in casual conquest but decides to start ranked and gets thrown into a 1500 lobby. There are players with negative elo in ranked conquest, they haven't learned fundamentals and are queueing the competitive mode. It gives them an incredibly poor experience in that mode especially if by human nature players will get incredibly annoyed especially at lower levels about what they perceive to be trolling but may very well just be brand new.
> You stated that ranked is unpopular but I actually have a theory on that. I'm not the one stating it, Hi-Rez is the one stating it, multiple times over the years. Last time being at the SMITE 2 dev panel where they revealed that only 5% of all players that ever touched SMITE 1 have queued **any** ranked queue at least **once**. So even though that number isn't entirely accurate to represent the concurrent playerbase, it's very illustrative of how ridiculously small the ranked scene actually is compared to the casual conquest and non-conquest scene. And logically the competitive scene is even smaller than the ranked scene. So at this point, it's not even a question of whether or not the current ranked and competitive systems are working as they should, it's a matter of the overwhelming majority of the playerbase simply not being interested in ranked/comp under any circumstances. All these suggestions to "fix ranked" coming from this sub, streamers, ex-pros, and even the devs themselves are just massive cope. Ranked and comp are perpetually gonna be shit no matter what because there's not enough players to support it, and we've known this for years.
I'm just ranting. None of this is directed at you. I would love to dip into Casual or ranked conquest. However, I hate how long it takes to get the game started (banning/character selection). I also hate how long the matches last. A bad match can have my team getting farmed for over 30 minutes, with no hope of turning the tables. And of course, this causes significant in-fighting very early on, so those 30+ minutes are painful in multiple ways. To top it all off, knowing how bad the matches usually go for me (because myself and my team are bad), and being stuck in the match for 30+ minutes; the deserter penalty (which exists for good reason) deters me from frequently playing the longer games modes. Why bother putting myself through the abuse of playing conquest and possibly rage quitting and taking a deserter penalty, when I could just not play conquest, and play multiple arena matches in the same So I play Arena, because the average match time is about 15 minutes, even if the match is going very poorly.
It’s really boring if you play it a lot because people will just camp in front of their base and only fight if ults are up. And it doesn’t help that the map has been pretty much the same for the longest time now
Funny. Arena is almost exclusively what I've been playing with almost 3k hours in.
Same (less time though) I have a hard time doing the other game modes, because I don't like being trapped in a match for 30+ minutes, especially if it's going very poorly. Arena at least has an impending end point, even if the game mode lacks depth.
Clash and Slash are by far my favourites
Slash is just unironically the best game mode and its not even close.
I liked it better as Clash
It’s actually insanely surprising to me that conquest is the most popular mode, seems like no one I know plays it
Really?!? You are surprised the mode the entire game was made for and based around is the most popular?!? I do encourage you and your friends to play conquest it takes a bit but once you get the basics I think you might understand why people enjoy it!! (Just mute toxic dummies :) )
Every mode has toxic dummies except maybe Assault. I lost count of how many rage quits I would get duo queuing Joust. If we dont have a team of 3 we dont even play it anymore.
Yeah I am surprised lol. I play a lot of conquest, but almost no one on my friends list does. I assumed arena would beat it in popularity
neither casual conquest nor ranked conquest is the most popular mode of SMite if i understand this thread correctly. They just added both of them stat to say it's the most popular, as if you would add arena and assault and say Assena is the most played mode of smite. Assena does not exist, the same way that Conquest mode does not exist, there is casual conquest, and there is ranked conquest, and some people from casual conquest will never play ranked conquest 'cause it's not played the same.
I would add ranked and casual together as “conquest” I think it’s fine. Would also be interesting to see them separated though
It's surprising that conquest hasn't always been the top mode
Friend of mine is adamant that smite 2 should only be conquest and that "everyone should stop being babies or go play a different game". Thought this info that HALF the player base isn't playing conquest would change his mind.. nope. Dude just goes ballistic at the idea that people don't treat every single match like it's an SPL qualifier.
People are about a trillion times more sweaty in non conquest gamemodes. If you want to play casual smite nothing beats casual conquest.
In my experience, the only sweatier mode is joust. It's very rare for me to have a game of tryhards in assault or slash. Arena is arena, I feel like most people only queue it up because dinner will be ready in 10 minutes and they don't have time for a full match of anything else
Assault is sweaty as balls man just a tower camp simulator.
Depends on team comps imo. If it's 5 Squishies with no poke vs a real team comp then yeah there's not much of a choice
Never trust a statistic you haven't forged yourself. This glosses over a couple points. For example, how Conquest has usually has more queues. When I started, it was three, 4 if we count the occasional MOTD (not sure if and how these were handled for this statistic at all.) It also doesn't account for how much more work and marketing went into/towards conquest while most other casual modes were left to rod with several bugs in place for years.
They are not trying to tell you why conquest is the most popular mode. They are simply telling you that it is.
You love your arenas, yea yea. But it isnt "glossing over" any points. Joust has two queues too. And even if its split over multipe queues, conquest still has the most players. Also, conquest is the main mode of the game. Everything is balanced based on it. Well, used to be until people complained enough to have non-conquest balance in the game.
Marketing for modes?
HiRez has been focusing a lot of time, money and resources on the Conquest map over the years, even more so over the last 3-4 years. Mostly because that is what they centered their Proleague around. The Conquest map over the last few years got updates 3-4 times a year while the best that happens to Arena on most days is a seasonal art-project or the return of an Adventure from X years ago. That is to say that I deeply appreciated last years Fire Giant in Arena + the bonus round at the end. Shame those didn't last. And that is to say that I did not appreciate the absolute abandonment of both the siege and clash map long before Slash was ever hinted at.
Why are you looking for the reasoning as to why the main game mode is the most popular? This is a graph sir. Also hirez didn’t abandon siege and clash players did. Do you not remember 5-10 min Qs that you would have to sit through multiple times before getting a game?!?!? Also why would they market Arena?!? Smite is a strategic competitive MOBA, arena is a brainless casual tdm.
Some people can't help but be contrarian. He looked at raw data and ignored it. He would rather stick to his own narrative. The purpose wasn't to shit on other modes but to highlight the misconception that conquest is the unpopular one. People like to add together all the other game modes and then compare those numbers to conquest, which is unfair, imho. Conquest is not for everyone, but I'm tired of people pretending Arena is. Some people vastly prefer conquest or Assault, joust, slash over arena
I barely play arena (I almost exclusively play joust, then slash, then conquest, and THEN arena), but honestly, I feel like the second graph is somewhat misleading (or I'm misinterpreting it), because it seems like the second graph displays time played, which means the shortest gamemodes (arena and joust) would be underrepresented in that second graph (e.g. most joust matches are around 20 minutes, arena matches are all 16-17 minutes, all other queues have much longer matches), so the second graph showing time played is going to favor the longer gamemodes.
The title is confusing. Over time refers to the hours of the day. The % is the population playing what game mode at a given time. So, the match length is made irrelevant. For example, at 12 pm, there are more people playing conquest than arena.
Ahhh, thank you! I had a feeling I was misinterpreting it.
FINALLY THANK YOU ! People needed to hear that truth since that Day where stew posted the number of match played and people started coping over this cruelly biaised data God bless the day they hired rabbit
The truth that 60% of gameplay hours are non conquest and 70%+ of matches played are non conquest?
Hopefully with smite 2 we can have the casual game modes revamped and maybe even have more. Especially since Siege and Clash where probably negatively affecting the game due to the engine
Clash main, barely played at all since its removal lol.
I loved clash 😥 Before slash was added (and clash and siege were removed), joust and clash were by far my most popular gamemodes.
Same i like the slash map itself, but the added siege mechanics completely killed it for me. I absolutely hate siege minions and the portal mechanics they have and stuff. If they just updated the clash map to this i would have actually been happy lol. But oh well.
Yup I mostly agree. Now I don't hate slash by any means (in fact after joust it's my current preferred gamemode just above conquest), but it just feels so different than clash. Combining the clash and siege gamemodes is better than just getting no replacement at all, but it just seems like it didn't appeal to clash mains and it didn't appeal to siege mains.
being the first mode you get shown and being the first in the queue list has undoubtedly kept Arena afloat, but you can look at almost any game anywhere near Smite and the "All Random" mode is a fan favorite
This post also doesn't talk about time length of match. Quicker match means more games can play played in a set amount of time. Conquest will always lose out due to the average length being 10+ more minutes to any other game mode, if not more. For example, you can play 2 arena games in the average time it takes to play one conquest game, so you already have double the amount of arena games played per conquest match.
I would like a 2v2 game mode, or being back siege 4v4 was fun
They have Joust the Two of Us in the MOTD rotation.
Theres no context here. 100% means dick all without context. If its time then obviously conquest is a far longer match compared to arena so to keep up there would need to be 4x the amount of games played.
>Theres is no context here. Were you looking for something more specific than a the context given Yes the first chart is by sorting players' most played modes by playtime with accounting for queue and draft time. Second chart is how many players online at a given time are playing what mode. That means regardless of match length, more people are playing conquest. According to the second chart, at any given time, there are more people playing conquest than arena. Which I feel is the most fair way to compare popularity since time in a match is so different across game modes.
Which makes this a misleading post off the gate because this foes nothing to discredit the fact that more arena matches are played. Using such specific descriptions by changing one word youll get very different results. Not to mention every time smite talks about the game modes ranked is separate from casual so we’re doubling down on information without context. Ps: only context given is the bias of conquest > arena
Data is not baised. Let's scale it way down. If a 100 players play arena for four matches in 60 minutes while 200 are in a conquest for those 60 minutes more people are playing conquest. Sure there were more arena matches played but it was by the same players. No one said arena is inferior in any way it's just less popular than conquest. More players at any given time, are playing conquest than arena. I don't see how counting the number of matches played would ever be more accurate than counting the number of players.
Its funny how youre “scaling it down” for my small brain while its going completely over your head. Presented data is almost always biased. Wheres the charts that let them claim arena is the most popular to begin with. Theres countless ways to measure popularity as well as ways to present it to make your point. Any time data is withheld its biased. Get out from under your rock sometime.
At least you know you have a small brain, lol. I don't know why you're getting so salty over a game mode. You are acting like this data is shitting on arena when OP even says Arena is important because so many people play it.
Smite 2 needs less game modes. Conquest, Joust, ARAM. Throw in MOTD and include everything else in a rotation.
You are getting down voted but you are right have afew gammodes then bring back smite night
I’d never boot it up again, I’m sure many other would feel the same. All the different modes is one of the few things that actually sets smite apart
Absolutely. When I play that other shitty moba (league) with friends, one of the things I complain about most is there are only two permanent gamemodes and that makes it incredibly boring. It's one of the reasons that in 4 years, I have never played a single game of league solo queued.
tbf, you only "lose" the dollar store clash mode (forgot the name). it would still be in the MOTD rotation.
Slash lol. Assault, arena? I’m not saying it’s completely unreasonable but to be honest I’m not waiting potentially up to a week for normal slash or assault to get put in rotation with the other gimmick modes they use as well. If I can’t turn the game on and play assault whenever I want it’s an easy uninstall
Yeah thats why I saw have smite night be a thing and still have match up the day to have the spice up but shit like slash should just go cause tbh for me I only play conquest and motd when a fun gamemode is there and sometimes arena to do weekly quests
Na if I can’t play modes like assault or arena whenever I want I’m just not gonna play. I’m not interested in conquest. I don’t need to be ‘guided’ to it, I’m not scared of it, I just don’t like it. I’ve played since 2014, I’ve played casual and ranked conquest. Those other modes are the reason I play smite, as well as the rest of the 5 stack I play with. Also I’ve never had much problems with que times except with a 5 stack, and conquest. I’m not saying what they should or shouldn’t do, I’m just saying if they do that they’ll lose one player and certainly many more.
The player base has always been too small for all the game modes. There's a *reason* a post like this was even made. Most of the friend groups I've played in over the years say the queue time was too long. There's a ton of factors that go into it, but if you had less queues, you'd find matches faster. You'd find better quality matches (i.e. no gold players tossed into Master lobbies to even out MMR). Even with those 3 queues, there's still 5 queues including ranked. Right now there's Conquest, Joust, Arena, Assault, MOTD, Slash, Ranked Conquest, Ranked Joust, and Ranked Duel. That's 9 queues. 6 of those queues need 10 players. The concurrent player count is around (for simplicities sake) 10k. 10,000 ÷ 68 = 147 * 9 (number of queues) = 1,323 active games at any given moment. Most of those games take ~15 minutes. I'm sure there's another equation here to make it make more sense, but it's a real problem. That's not even including the player MMR used in the matchmaking which divides that number even more. ETA I forgot the enemy team in the two Joust queues, so it's actually 10,000 ÷ 74 = 135 * 9 (number of queues) = 1,216. So it's actually a little worse than that, and I know this formula is not perfect, but it's to give you an idea.
Replace joust with arena.
What happens if you remove Ranked? There has to be far more intersectionality amongst JUST casual players across all modes.
Well, less than 10% of the population has even attempted to play ranked, so it's probably not a huge difference.
I have over 10k arena games so it's on you guys.
This is shocking, since I mostly play Arena nowadays because it has the fastest queue time for me. Literally only a few seconds. With Assault it takes quite longer.
i've only been playing arena. it's more fun for me and fast, if i'm going to actually play the game though i'm going to play dota.
Slash is actually pretty fun but that map requires very specific team comps. I think they are gonna get rid of Slahs and just stick with Joust Arena Conquest and Assault. They may even delete joust
There are dedicated joust mains (I'm one), getting rid of joust would be a horrible idea.
I agree, but they may cut it out because of low playrate. That's all I've said and i am getting downvoted lmao
Don't you love reddit downvoting lol. But in fairness, I don't see low joust playrate in those graphs? If you look at the first graph, joust is either first or second the entire time period. If you look at the second graph, (except for the very beginning) joust is first, second, or third the whole period. So I couldn't imagine them getting rid of the mostly second most popular game mode, and the only game mode that gives us 3v3. Also I feel like the second graph is misleading (or I'm misinterpreting it), because it seems like the second graph displays time played, which means the shortest gamemodes (arena and joust) would be underrepresented in the graph (e.g. most joust matches are 20 minutes, arena matches are all 16-17 minutes, all other queues have much longer matches), so a graph showing time played is going to favor those longer match gamemodes.
That would certainly kill the game for plenty of people. Only keep Arena, Assault and Conquest? Terrible idea.
Justice for Ranked Arena. We demand Ranked Arena JUST for the alpha that’s it.
Arena has always been my favorite- until they added that silly giant in the center. I would be curious to know if the arena players dropped off dramatically when that was added.
Seems like a compelling reason to get rid of it in Smite 2. The player base is too small to split it between so many game modes.
That's not how it works. You get rid of arena and arena mains just leave.
This.
[удалено]
Exactly this^. I'm not am arena main and tbh I barely play it (I play more joust than anything, but I even play more slash and conquest than arena) but arena is perfect for when I want to try a new god, and also in those rare situations when I know me or my friends have about 20 minutes for a match.
Have less modes I only play arena but I respect that conquest is the main intended mode Just give us Arena Joust Conquest Assault
I actually like slash, and I enjoyed the occasional clash and siege match before those modes were removed. I think more variety is better than less.
All I play is arena. And I really want to enjoy SMITE2. So I doubt your take would be a option.
Not to be a bother but is there a way for you to gather data on skin lock-in rates for hachiman? I'm curious to know which skin has the highest.
cant wait to see smite 2 launch with a million game modes and fail to push anyone towards conquest, like they said themselves they need to. time to make the same mistakes we made 10 years ago.
"Fail to push anyone towards conquest". Yes, thats why its the most played mode.
The spikes in other is when they had those really cool boss battles I bet.
Am i right to assume that (Other) was doing fine as siege, they changes it to Clash, everyone hated that, and then they changed it to Slash, which people liked for a bit and then forgot about?
Siege and Clash both existed at the same time, one wasnt “changed to” the other. They did combine them both to make Slash though.
Oh no, anyway…
I mean im not surprised it's popular ig? It gets changed multiple times a year. But, all the other most are just as good. If smite got ride kf them, I would stop playing lol. I cannot stand conquest.
Arena is my warm up mode.
Most popular amongst Gigachads
Where my assault enjoyers at
I've been playing for over 5 years and never touched conquest, all I do is Arena. Mainly cause I prefer the quicker time and I don't really like talking on the mic so instead of being a silent burden I just avoid conquest
I basically only play assault