A game that is absolutely in the deathgrip of a bad decision driven company. This game is no longer about the love and passion that was felt years ago. The steady decisions to ignore or just flat out be incompetent at addressing the communities complaints are the only real constant here, to be honest. Oh, and a constant influx of new bugs while old ones remain and even evolve in annoyance.

God Design
I have been an active player of this game for about 5 years, (Athena's release). As a reference, this is about midway through beta. I've got 2440H and 55M, so almost about 700 hours additional to the numbers shown here in Steam. It seems like every hour I play these days is just enjoyed less and less. During beta, and early season 1 + 2, there was a really heartfelt development aura that you could feel with every patch. The gods that came out were much more enjoyable than almost everything that's come out during the past year or so, (I will admit, I do love Cerberus.) But when you compare gods like Chernobog, Achilles, Hachiman, and Thoth to gods like Tyr, Ah Muzen Cab, Janus, and Scylla, you can just tell there really isn't much actualy originality being dumped into these kits. They may have one mechanic that is new and exciting, but other than that, its just a better version of a previous gods ability and a boring passive slapped onto it to make it feel like its actually fresh. (It isn't)

Chests
Now you've got the community wide absolutely hated chest mechanic. Originally when chests came out, they were all right. There was a chest with approx 55 items in it, including voice packs, higher tier skins. It was pretty cool. Also included was the new Nuclear Ymir skin and Derpules skin. Neither of these skins were really that out there as far as the original appearance, but they had nice little gimmicks. Derpules took the joke of the community hating new hercules model's tiny head and took it further, giving him a pea sized head and a funny helium voice pack. Nuclear ymir was also just a bright green version of ymir with a fun and unique voice pack and some pretty impressive effects added on. These two skins were not exactly incredible, but they were fun and acquirable if you had already invested into much of the (much smaller) cosmetic inventory. Now, every single patch that comes out, there is a new chest (Sometimes even three), slapped full of random older skins and all kinds of miscelleaneous cosmetic ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that shouldn't be in the game either. I believe it was something along the lines of 8 months before an actual Direct purchase skin was released. Everything was a gamble. And that is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Many of the skins are now just unoriginal theme crap,

Community Relations
Last year Hi-rez also had many of their employees be let go, quit, or fired. Nearly every member of this employee pool was a well known, well liked asset of the community. Now the company is flooded with all of these people that don't seem to even really give a ♥♥♥♥ about engaging in the community. SNK8Four is my prime example. This man was absolutely adored by the community, the pro scene, and pretty much anyone that began watching smite on twitch in its early days. He was very much the face for many people that began early. Then just one day, he's gone. (To be fair, Hi-Rez no longer deserves him.) So these decisions are just weird from an outside perspective. The new character design lead is just full of ♥♥♥♥, the new artwork / effect guy (HiRezChuck or some ♥♥♥♥) is just a flat disppointment with everything, (WE NEED MORE ANIME AND SKULLS GUYS). Its really just confusing to see this massive sweeping directional change that the game has had, especially considering HiRez floundered their partnership with Tencent which included remodeling and removing pretty much everything in the game with skulls, and now they are just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ everywhere. Its edgy and annoying.

Matchmaking
Here's one that was brought up in the comments, and should rightfully be added. I guess I'm just too numb to it at this point to have thought it up while typing. The matchmaking in this game, is terrible. Absolutely terrible. The queues are diluted because there are so many.

Here is a list of all game modes and a short description
Conquest - The tried and true three lanes and jungle MOBA format.
Siege - Two lane smaller map, with 4v4 and an objective boss in the middle to facilitate pushing. Intended to be a somewhat shorter mini conquest.
Arena - 5v5 Death match, minimal wave farming. Its pretty much just the chance to beat the snot out of each other. This is the game that is ranked as the most popular.
Clash - Also kind of a mini conquest, however its 5v5 still with far less focus on jungle, as the lanes are closer together. Pretty much arena with a little bit more farming and a center objective boss.
Joust[i/] - 3v3 Single lane, small side jungles and an objective boss in the middle portion. Also a more popular game mode than Conquest.
Duel - 1v1 Joust on same map. Ranked only
Assault - All random gods 5v5 one lane. No backing until death.
Mode of the day - Random garbage that cycles through every day. (All same god no cooldowns etc)

EDITED
Smite has shifted to a timed queue system, so now you only sit for 3mins at a time for casual conquest. Matchmaking still seems pretty random skill wise.

God balance
This is Hirez's biggest problem, in my opinion. I get the skins in chests thing. I get the god design thing. I get the business/employee thing. But when your game is about beating the crap out of each other, is it not an all around better idea to focus on improving that aspect? New gods are horribly bloated, every ability becoming a novel to read as opposed to the long forgotten "This ability will hurt people in front of you" mechanic. Old gods are left to rot, unless Hirez has decided to do massive sweeping changes to an entire kit, buffing three separate things about them and then wondering why they are overtuned, of which they will then follow with sweeping nerfs that do not address the new problems and simply deteriorate a god to uselessness once more. OP Gods sit at that stage for a much longer period of time than you would expect. Conveniently when the oddyssey skin for Ullr came out, (Buy all the items throughout a time period = approx 140$USD), Ullr managed to sit at 100% P/B rate for Months. MONTHS. Tiny little nerfs came in to give the appearance of adjustment, but it was incredibly shallow and obvious. 3 months after the skin came out and was no longer acquirable, he was hit with multiple nerfs, bringing him in line. When a new god is released, there are two possible scenarios.

Scenario 1) This god is unstoppable. He can do everything by himself, requires no assistance, and will absolutely make everyone else have 0 fun, if the person playing them took the 10 mins it usually take to figure out the core mechanics of this god.

Scenario 2) This god is absolutely horrible. The kit is just a mishmash of clashing abilities which in no way shape or form synergize together and will just serve as three random situational abilities with an ult that hopefully does something, (Looking at you Chernobog).


This game is a huge part of my life, and I do not want to even KNOW how much money I have actually spent on it over the years, including a +1500$ to the world championships in January of 2015. (EDIT - I forgot I also attended in 2016)

But, it is also a huge regret and a downward slope. HiRez needs to get their ♥♥♥♥ together, because this game could easily be so incredible, but they refuse to take the proper steps.