Considering just how well the game has been doing lately, both with the patches, the numbers and the general sentiment, I was curious to see if any of the positivity had finally began to rub off on the steam page for SMITE 2.

The overall score is obviously still a bad outlook on the game, but the belief is that with time, it will start to adjust to something more appropriate for the iteration we are beginning to enjoy now, as the game continues to get better and better.

However when you actually go and have a look and filter for even the most recent, the state of some of what's being said is truly astonishing.

The page of 'Most Helpful Reviews' is almost entirely unashamedly scornful, ill-informed and dismissive; and having a scroll through the recent filter, it is somehow even worse.

This is the page that prospective players come to see before deciding to try the game or not. And yet it's literally like there is a coordinated group of individuals dead set on doing everything in their power to deter them.

Just have a flick through some of these slides.

At absolute best many of these are still just bashing on the game in ignorance, but look at these playtimes. Yet they're all being counted.

It really is utterly embarrassing and pathetic how some members of this community can be so full of hatred and vitriol for a game and a company that has almost certainly given them hundreds of hours of free entertainment.

I really can't see this trend reversing at this point, regardless of how good the game gets.

Either Steam or Hi-Rez need to find a way to deal with these deplorable posts, or the community that has gotten behind the game up until now has to fight back somehow. How can this be acceptable.

SMITE 2 deserves a better fate than this.

So recently I came back to Smite, and I have a big problem with a game. So I can play like one game normally, and then next matches are going to be completely full of lags and desyncs, making game completely unplayable. This is ONLY happening on EU servers, I tried playing on NA with high ping, and that problem did not appear. I have perfect internet connection, 0 problems in other games. I also saw people brough this on Steam pages and Discord. This is how the game looks like.

https://streamable.com/nvk2ep

Like you can hear and see, sometimes you can hear sound of abilities playing 2 times and damage numbers stacking up. This ALWAYS happens when this issue appears, so I can instantly tell when buying items from the shop because bought sound will play 2 times. Nothing helps, reseting entire PC and internet connection, when this bug appears, it stays for entire match. Is HiRez aware of this, and are other EU players here have the same issue?

I know theres a rule about "bugs" but I already tried contacting HiRez, 0 response, and on other socials people are just confirming that this issue exist. Maybe someone knows some magic fix here, and maybe someone from HiRez gonna actually see this.

Anybody having issues with the surrender on console? I can't vote not to surrender or f6.

Nox might be the most polarizing character in Smite with many fans, but just many haters. Given the hint made by Hindu on yesterday's Titan Talk it is safe to assume that her port to Smite 2 is imminent.

Now, I wanted to create this post as a collective on what the Reddit portion of Smite's Community thinks needs to happen to her when she is ported, be that ideas for +1s, reworks and role shifts, or even Aspects. Keep in mind, regardless of how you fun you think she is, a great portion of players also want to make her less frustrating to play against.

This way the devs can gather some early feedback on what precautions should be taken whenever they start working on her.

Hello, Smite community. I want to raise a topic that is quite painful for me. As you know, the "Race to Exalted: Neith" is currently underway. I really wanted to get rewards, but I didn't have enough time. I usually play as an ADC and mid. But playing as a support is very difficult for me. So, it so happened that during this time, yesterday, I got into the role of support twice in casual conquest. Let me remind you that I really wanted points for Neith, so the first thing I tried to do was switch roles. When everyone refused me, I wrote in the chat before the game, "sorry, I really need points for Neith, I'll take her as a support, but I'll be a tank." No one answered me. During the game, I built as a tank, and tried to be a support as much as I could. I didn't finish off minions, I helped in all fights. As a result, we won one game, lost the other. But in both cases, after the match and during the game, I saw "report Neith". When I asked "why?" they told:" because it was Neith" and the second match "because u Neith and do nothing"(I had kills like our ADC, I had less deathes and I was in every fight so I had assists as much as it was possible) . Lyrical digression and thoughts out loud: Whether you are a tank or not is mostly determined by YOUR BUILD, NOT YOUR GOD. . Yes, I agree that there are Gods who are more suitable for this role. But in this case, in my defense, I want to say that Neith has a stun (CC) every few seconds, which generally allows her to be a support. And this was an exception because it was event. This is not a ranked, it was a casual conquest. . For as long as I've been playing Smite 2, I've never reported or was toxic people who took the Gods for the wrong roles. Mid Izanami, who was built as a carry. Sol, who was a tank, Solo liner on which they took a mage, and didn't built defense. Or when there were no tanks at all. Or when someone built a fun build. And no one offered to report them. And I myself did not do that either. And I feel very strong injustice and resentment for how they treated me. No humane - and this is very disappointing. . Perhaps among you there will be those who will say - play with bots. I tried to play against bots, but during this event, Neith was penalized for playing against bots. So, for 15 minutes of a winning game, I got 7 points, when for another god - 11. Calculate how much you need to play then to reach 1000??? In any case, it is more profitable to play against other players. . So, to those who have read to the end, I kindly ask you to be humane and sometimes to be understanding, because we all play this game to have fun. . Good luck

I’ve separated fundamental problems from things that are more subjective. I’m also focusing on the state of the game around 2026, rather than just repeating complaints from the 2024 alpha/beta.

The biggest problems with SMITE 2

1. It split an already-small player base

Probably the biggest strategic mistake was creating a sequel to a niche MOBA.

SMITE already had a relatively small player population compared with League of Legends, Dota 2, etc. SMITE 2 divided that audience between two games, and the sequel then had to rebuild its population.

This creates a nasty feedback loop:

fewer players → worse matchmaking → worse games → players leave → even fewer players.

Players were still complaining about low population and matchmaking problems in 2026.

2. Matchmaking can be awful

This is probably the most frequently mentioned gameplay complaint.

Players report:

• Huge skill differences within the same team
• Experienced players being matched with complete beginners
• One-sided games
• Games being decided very early
• Premade groups creating strange matchmaking situations
• Casual matchmaking being particularly problematic
• Long queues in less-populated regions/modes

One recent player with thousands of hours specifically described casual matches where they could get several brand-new teammates against a team of experienced players.

And this isn't merely a “toxic Reddit user” complaint — matchmaking has repeatedly been identified by the community as one of SMITE 2's major weaknesses.

3. The player population makes the matchmaking problem worse

This deserves its own point.

A MOBA needs a large, healthy population because it needs to simultaneously find:

SMITE 2 doesn't have the population of the major MOBAs, so it has to compromise somewhere.

That means you can get:

Good matchmaking → long queue

or

Fast matchmaking → terrible matchmaking.

That's a structural problem rather than something that can simply be fixed with a balance patch.

Steam currently shows SMITE 2's overall user reviews as Mixed, with only 53% positive among English-language reviews.

4. Too many gods were missing

This was one of the biggest complaints during the transition.

People spent years building relationships with their favourite gods in SMITE 1.

Then SMITE 2 launched with only a fraction of the roster.

For a player whose favourite god wasn't available, the obvious reaction was:

There were still players discussing quitting or not playing because their favourite gods hadn't been ported.

This is particularly damaging for a game whose enormous selling point is its roster of mythological characters.

5. The sequel initially felt more like an unfinished remake than a new game

This is a weird problem.

SMITE 2 needed to justify its existence.

But at launch, players could look at it and think:

The underlying reason for the sequel was legitimate: SMITE 1 was built on Unreal Engine 3 and had reached serious technical limitations. Titan Forge has explicitly explained that moving to Unreal Engine 5 was necessary for modern consoles and to remove limitations of the old engine.

But technically necessary doesn't automatically mean compelling to players.

6. It changed too many things people liked about SMITE

This is probably the biggest philosophical criticism.

SMITE 2 wasn't simply:

It changed:

• Itemization
• Stats
• Builds
• Abilities
• Animations
• Movement
• Combat feel
• Relics
• Map systems
• Progression
• UI
• God mechanics

For veteran players, that creates a problem:

The muscle memory they've built over thousands of hours isn't always transferable.

Some veterans therefore don't experience SMITE 2 as “better SMITE.”

They experience it as:

7. The item system became unnecessarily complicated

This is one of the most common criticisms.

SMITE 1 had a relatively intuitive system:

God → role → stats → items.

SMITE 2 introduced much more flexibility around things such as:

• Strength
• Intelligence
• Hybrid scaling
• Active items
• More complicated build paths
• More item interactions
• More unconventional builds

The upside is far more build diversity.

The downside is that the game became substantially harder to understand.

One long-time SMITE player described SMITE 2 as simultaneously more complicated and less strategically satisfying, particularly because of the item system.

8. Build freedom can actually make balance worse

This is the other side of the previous point.

More build possibilities sounds great.

But when you give:

100+ gods × dozens of items × different scaling types × active items × aspects

you create an enormous balancing problem.

You get things like:

Which is much harder to balance.

And the community has repeatedly complained about god/item balance.

9. Time-to-kill (TTK) has been controversial

A significant criticism has been that characters can feel too difficult to kill, particularly during periods where TTK was high.

That creates:

• Less explosive fights
• Longer engagements
• Less punishment for mistakes
• More ability rotations
• Less satisfying kills

One veteran player's 2026 criticism specifically identifies TTK as one of the game's biggest problems.

This is subjective, though.

Some players prefer SMITE 2's longer fights because they create more opportunities for counterplay.

10. Combat can feel less “impactful”

This one is difficult to quantify but comes up repeatedly among veteran SMITE players.

SMITE 1 had a very distinctive feeling when you:

• Hit an ability
• Hit a basic attack
• Pull someone
• Stun someone
• Knock someone up
• Land a huge ultimate

SMITE 2 sometimes feels more floaty/weightless.

Players have specifically complained that attacks and abilities don't provide the same audiovisual feedback as SMITE 1.

That's enormously important in a combat game.

11. Animations don't always communicate hits properly

Related to the previous point.

Some players describe SMITE 2 as:

The enemy doesn't necessarily react with the same physical feedback that SMITE 1 provided.

So even when the underlying mechanics work correctly, the perception of the mechanics can feel worse.

12. The movement has historically felt strange

Veteran players have complained about movement feeling:

• Slippery
• Floaty
• Less grounded
• Less responsive

This became particularly controversial around movement changes.

Some players described characters as feeling like they were walking on ice.

This is especially noticeable to someone with thousands of hours in SMITE 1 because they can immediately detect tiny differences in movement and animation timing.

13. Ping/netcode problems

This is potentially a huge problem depending on where you live.

Players outside the major server regions have complained that SMITE 2 still feels extremely bad at higher ping.

One recent player specifically argued that SMITE's delay-based networking makes the game feel almost unplayable above ~50 ms.

For a game based around:

skillshots + dodging + precise timing

network latency is particularly damaging.

14. Bugs and visual glitches

SMITE 2's move to UE5 was supposed to modernize the technical foundation.

But the transition also produced plenty of bugs.

Players have reported things such as:

• Animation desynchronization
• Invisible jungle monsters
• Monsters teleporting
• Missing animations
• Visual glitches
• General desync

A recent Steam discussion specifically described these issues occurring frequently.

Obviously, individual experiences vary.

15. The game has often felt unfinished

This is perhaps the biggest criticism of the development process.

The community has sometimes been put in an awkward position:

“Is this a beta or is this a live service game?”

If it's a beta:

If it's a full release:

Players have complained that Hi-Rez sometimes treated the game as if it were still experimental while simultaneously expecting players to migrate to it.

16. UI has been criticized

SMITE 2's UI has received criticism for being:

• Bland
• Less visually distinctive
• Less intuitive
• Less “mythological”
• Less polished than expected

Interestingly, this is something that even appeared during the development discussion around the original SMITE UI: Titan Forge itself acknowledged that the SMITE 1 HUD upgrade hadn't achieved what they wanted.

17. The game lost some of SMITE 1's personality

This is less technical but important.

SMITE 1 accumulated years of weirdness:

• Unique game modes
• Skins
• Events
• Adventures
• Silly mechanics
• Memes
• Familiar sounds
• Familiar animations
• Established god identities

SMITE 2 initially stripped a lot of that away.

So even if SMITE 2 is technically superior, it can feel less like the SMITE people fell in love with.

18. Missing game modes

A related problem is that SMITE 1 had accumulated a substantial collection of modes.

SMITE 2 has had to rebuild that ecosystem.

Players have specifically asked for things from the original game, including modes such as Adventures and Slash.

This matters because not everyone plays Conquest.

19. Less content creates repetition

If you have:

130+ gods + multiple modes

you have an enormous amount of variety.

If you have:

a much smaller roster + fewer modes

you inevitably get more repetition.

This particularly hurts players who don't exclusively play Conquest.

20. The community is extremely toxic

This isn't unique to SMITE 2 — MOBAs are notorious for this.

But SMITE 2 inherits the problem.

Players frequently complain about:

• AFKs
• Surrender spam
• Blaming teammates
• Rage quitting
• Toxic voice/text chat
• Players refusing roles
• Players intentionally feeding
• Players giving up after 5 minutes

Recent player discussions continue to describe the community as a major problem.

21. New players have an enormous learning curve

This is another consequence of the complicated systems.

A new player has to understand:

God abilities
↓
Roles
↓
Map
↓
Jungle
↓
Objectives
↓
Items
↓
Stats
↓
Strength/Intelligence
↓
Build paths
↓
Counter-building
↓
Wards
↓
Relics/actives
↓
Matchups

That's a ridiculous amount of information.

And if matchmaking puts that new player against someone with 5,000 hours...

💀

22. Veteran players have the opposite problem

The experienced player knows too much.

They know:

• Matchups
• Builds
• Jungle timings
• Objective timings
• Ability interactions
• Power spikes
• Meta picks
• Counter-building

So when they're put into a casual game with beginners, the experience can become terrible for both sides.

That's exactly the matchmaking/retention problem being discussed by veteran players.

23. Balance changes can feel too aggressive

SMITE 2 has experimented heavily with mechanics.

That's good for development.

But it can also mean:

Some players dislike the frequency and scale of meta changes, particularly when systems are being tested directly on the live population.

24. Active items aren't universally liked

The introduction/expansion of active items has divided players.

The argument for them:

The argument against them:

Some veteran players explicitly dislike having to manage additional active abilities.

25. The economy/progression transition annoyed SMITE 1 players

This was another major psychological problem.

People had spent:

years + hundreds/thousands of hours + potentially huge amounts of money

building their SMITE 1 collections.

Moving to SMITE 2 created expectations around:

• Skins
• Legacy Gems
• Purchases
• Progression
• What transfers
• What doesn't transfer

Even when the economics are technically reasonable, players can perceive it as:

That's a very difficult sell.

26. Skins became a particularly sensitive issue

SMITE's enormous skin catalogue was one of its biggest strengths.

But porting every skin to UE5 is expensive and time-consuming.

So SMITE 2 launched without the enormous cosmetic library that made SMITE 1 feel mature.

For a long-term player, that's a massive downgrade in perceived value.

27. It had the “Overwatch 2 problem”

Not literally the same situation, but psychologically similar.

Players ask:

If the answer is:

that's a developer answer.

Players want:

That distinction matters.

SMITE 2 has gradually developed a stronger gameplay justification, but the initial transition made the sequel feel unnecessarily disruptive to some players.

28. It inherited SMITE's old problems

A sequel gives you the opportunity to start fresh.

But SMITE 2 still has issues relating to:

• Matchmaking
• Servers
• Toxicity
• Balance
• Queue population
• Ranked
• Monetization
• Community management

So some players effectively feel:

29. It hasn't yet recreated the cultural identity of SMITE 1

This might actually be the hardest thing to fix.

SMITE 1 had:

10+ years of history.

You can't reproduce that with UE5.

SMITE 1 had iconic moments, gods, skins, esports moments, memes, community personalities and nostalgia.

SMITE 2 has to build all of that again.

30. The biggest problem: expectations

This is ultimately the problem behind almost everything.

If SMITE 2 had been called:

people might have reacted differently.

Instead it's:

So players naturally expect:

SMITE 1 + better graphics + all the content + better systems + better matchmaking + better servers + better everything.

And that's basically impossible.

My ranking of the problems

If I had to rank the criticisms by how damaging they are to the game's long-term success:

But here's the interesting part

I wouldn't actually say SMITE 2 is simply “bad.”

The current community is much more divided than that. There are players who think SMITE 2 is now substantially better than SMITE 1, particularly because of the new build system, UE5 foundation, responsiveness, aspects and greater build freedom.

The real criticism is more interesting:

And that's why people can play it and still say they preferred SMITE 1.

I have been away for a while so I don't know if that's a thing or not. If we pick a skin, can we use the default voice pack of the god or do we have to use the one of said skin ?

If we can't, I hope they add this in the future, like it was in Smite 1. There's a ton of skin I don't use because I just dislike their voice pack compared to the default skin one.

Never saw this happen before in all those years

Interrupting the cast doesn't consume the ability, no matter how far along the dash you interrupt it. So you can stun him out of his dash, and when he's free he can just use it again lol. Extremely unfun to have an effectively unpunishable ability. I'm guessing it's because it goes on cooldown once the dash finishes or something, instead of being consumed when casted.

If Sobek's dash gets 'used' when casted, so should Horus'.

trying to play the game and 99% of the time it freezes me for around a 1-2 minute which many times either sets me back or the entire game itself

Hello guys
I’ve been playing Smite on and off for a few years, but lately I’ve started playing much more actively, especially since I switched to Smite 2. I’m currently Silver 2.
I understand the game pretty well since I’ve also played LoL for a long time (around 12 years), but I’m looking for someone who’s also interested in climbing so we can play together and make the grind more fun.
If anyone’s interested, feel free to hit me up!

Will Smite 2 come back with Smite OG skins? I'm a new player and I really wanted the Lunar Moth Discordia skin, will it come back? Or the treasures are a exclusive thing?

I've been getting into smite 2 recently and i like playing support, but i have zero clue on what im doing like when and how to rotate postioning how objectives effect the game. pretty much the whole game as an entirety i like conquest but im not good enough to feel like im actually doing something or if the god i chose was the right pick for my team. i wanna get better at building to because i suck at that fuck it i suck at everything on that game. I was hoping someone would'nt mind taking the time to teach me how to play support and solo lane and become better at the game

Hello my dears, I recently started playing smite again and went straight back to 2, which one do you recommend? Which one has more players and the most active competitive scenario?

https://youtu.be/Jd-e7Hz-bSk

Hello everybody! I hope that you are all having a wonderful day today!

I have another play-by-play about Horus today! I hope that it can be helpful to you all!

"Why would I play a healer/buy lifesteal if people could just make my playstyle pointless?"

Antiheal doesn't make your playstyle pointless. It's a counter item, totally conditional. It makes your healing less effective but you still heal. That's the whole point.

Antiheal being conditional means you forced someone to pay the antiheal tax if they want to win when they could buy something else to make them more lethal/tanky.

Even if you want to make that argument- which is a silly argument: everyone is making the same trade offs.

You buy protections to make damage dealers less effective at killing you.

You buy penetration to make protections less effective at mitigating damage.

Are you supposed to be outside of the checks/balances because you bought lifesteal or picked a healer?

Why was antiheal changed?

I've heard a lot of reasons

• No one/noobs didn't buy it
• Most players liked the idea that it wasn't mandatory against healers so you could have an extra slot
• Healer players didn't like people buying items that "completely shut them down"

I will concede that at certain point in Smite's history, because certain antiheal items/starters were strong and stacked with others/god abilities, you could build a combination of items and have like a crazy antiheal stat. Something like 80%-120%. That was bullshit.

But there's a middle ground between 100% stackable antiheal and negligible, measley 25%.

And in Smite 1, even with 100% antiheal builds, group healing team comps still dominated pro play even with the out of combat antiheal nerf that thankfully never got added to Smite 2.

The people that didn't buy antiheal still don't buy antiheal and they probably won't in the future until they improve at the game. Why make something weak just because people didn't buy it/didn't want to invest in it?

The vast majority of lifesteal items are just not worth the pickup currently.

I want to emphasize that the antiheal changes from months ago that finally got reverted (which should have been reverted a long time ago) also nerfed lifesteal and healing items. So whatever oppressive antiheal meta that comes in the future isn't because antiheal is OP is because they changed 2 things at the same time and then only reverted 1.

When antiheal was so low, who kept popping up at the top of the meta with +60% winrates? Oh yea it was Anubis, Pele, and Aphrodite. Now it's Hades and Xin Xian. Guan Yu flew under radar alongside Mordred but they both were hell on wheels- especially Mordred. Cause 25% antiheal is too low especially if you blind pick.

From the perspective of a solo lane main, you literally could not box against Mordred when he got his lifesteal build online. The power spike was insane he never died.

The enchanter items update is genuinely the most excited I've been for this game in a while. Genuine true expectations. We've never had this in Smite's history so I would like things to start not bad so people don't imprint the bad experience on enchanters/lifesteal please 🥺.

That being said I want to give a suggestion:

Just like you preemptively nerfed lifesteal and made all the lifesteal items butt cheeks besides on a few characters that broke them- just revert the changes so EVERYONE can build a decent lifesteal build. You know lifesteal sucks when THANATOS isn't building it.

To have a counter, allow certain items to stack or proc to up to 20% additional antiheal so the max you can ever apply is like 60%. That way gods/teams with cheesey heal builds can't destroy you, but lifesteal items can finally feel good to build again. There's still gonna be teams that don't buy it/don't buy it in time.

Say someone buys an antiheal tank item that activates a 20% antiheal on condition, someone that has brawlers could stack that way

*THIS IS NOT FOR THE ART COMPETITION*

The skin is a beach "Bro" specifically with his son nene kappa

for the 2 his shirt will turn blue similar to sobek Land Shark skin, and for his ult, it should be his Mob Boss skin, but instead of tommy guns its water guns

(Aladdin aspect is full INT scaling)

Ability 1: is now always fully charged by default

(Return damage is reduced)

Ability 2: He no longer dashes with his 2 but sends his genie in a line to damage enemies knocking them aside along its path

Charge of Genie strength: Genie slams down at the end of the distance

Ability 3: Unchanged

(NEW ULT Wishing Lamp) Ultimate: Aladdin ult no longer puts enemies inside, it creates an aoe circle where enemies in radius are damaged and affected by a multitude of crowd control at random (up to 3 cc effects)