Normal Conquest: A Failure To Communicate

It's a typical day. You log into Smite and queue up for some Normal Conquest gameplay. After a minute or two: the Match Ready notification pops up and you click "Accept." The other 9 players Accept as well, and you enter the God Select lobby. You happily type your desired role in chat and your teammates call theirs. You discuss strategy and pick your Gods to form an ideal team composition. Everybody's happy and locks in their Gods as you do yours, and you proceed to have a fun and rewarding game of Smite!

...Maybe.

All too often in Normal Conquest, the God Select stage is plagued by any combination of:

       - A complete lack of communcation
       - Arguments and raging over a player not getting his or her chosen role.
       - Players who instantly lock in their God without a word or regards to those that actually call a role in chat (Instalockers)
       - Players that aren't experienced enough to know any better.
       - Players that refuse to play Support/Guardian or another specific role.

While this lack of communication and cohesion tends to improve as players grow in skill, Normals are regarded as a more casual gamemode and thus are often not taken seriously. Ranked Conquest, inversely, offers a rating and rank to place a player's individual skill, as well as featuring players that are more willing to use voice communication or Lobby chat to discuss their God selections ahead of time.

The consequences of these behaviours and lack of communication are almost as numerous as the behaviours themselves:

       - The arguments and raging continue in-game.
       - Players rage quit and leave the game, putting your team at a God disadvantage.
       - Newer players are turned off by the toxicity and stop playing.
       - You or your teammates go on tilt or get angry, worsening your play.

Regardless of whether you have experienced this second hand or been guilty of such behaviour, and regardless of what God or role you picked, here's some tips to get the most out of these situations:

Don't be this guy.

1. AVOID RAGING OR TILTING

Avoiding raging or tilting can be one of the hardest things to do, especially when faced with uncooporative or noncommunicative teammates. No matter how frustrating these players or situations can be, however, if you allow yourself to get angry or "tilt", you WILL play worse. You may not be able to change their behavior, but you still might be able to win if you focus and play your best. Additionally, time spent typing at or in response to other players is time wasted where you could be on the map farming or trying otherwise to help your team. 

If another player has decided to start taking their aggressions out on you or your teammates, you can mute them by holding the TAB key and clicking on the speaker icon next to their name. At the very least, this will remove the temptation to respond and let their words or saracastic VGS-system spamming be silenced. You can and should still try to communicate with them with the VGS system and help if they need it, but you can't control their behavior. Report them after the game, Block them if necessary, and move on.

The score screen. Click the speaker button to silence toxic or raging players.

2. BUY WARDS AND SENTRY WARDS

No matter how non-communicative or cooperative your team is being, or how much you are winning or losing your lane: wards are essential. For the low price of only 50 gold, you give yourself and your teammates free vision around wherever you place them for 3 minutes, or until they are killed. Sentry Wards also give you vision and reveal enemy wards in an area for a slightly increased cost of 135 gold, allowing you or your teammates to destroy them, denying them vision. The only drawback is that players can only carry 2 Wards and 1 Sentry Ward at a time, and only have 3 wards of any kind placed on the map at a time. Despite this drawback, a well placed ward can mean the difference between life or death for you and/or your teammates.

The minimap. The dots indicate some ideal ward placements for both Order (blue) and Chaos (orange) sides.

3. FARM GOLD AND EXPERIENCE

Lost lanes and lost teammates can make every step a trecherous one. You can feel safe near a tower, ready to farm a wave of minions, when suddenly that super strong and overleveled enemy God comes from another lane and joins his teammates in a tower dive: taking your life in the process. In situations such as these, finding safe places to farm gold and experience requires good map awareness, assisted with the vision provided by Wards. Remaining close to towers is essential, but making sure to secure the various Jungle camps when they respawn can be a great boost towards catching up. 

Being alone, while giving you more solo experience and gold from minions kill, is extremely unwise in these situations. Stick with your team as much as you can, as you may be able to get a crucial kill on an enemy or even win a team fight. Additionally, sticking together can also help any teammates that have fallen behind due to their own lane disadvantage: giving your entire TEAM a benefit, as Smite is a team game. Finally, sticking together is great for taking down objectives, towers being some of the most important, but also the two biggest Jungle camps: Gold Fury and Fire Giant. Both the Gold Fury and Fire Giant require some very careful timing, as the benefits they give significantly empower a team. Winning a teamfight or getting a crucial kill, then securing one of those objectives can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat!

Gold Fury (left) provides a large amount of gold and experience to your team upon death. Fire Giant (right) also grants gold and experience, but also a buff to all your teammates upon death: boosting their power, movement speed, protections, and health and mana regeneration.

4. THERE'S ALWAYS NEXT TIME

Despite you or your teammates' best efforts, some disadvantages can arise that you simply can't come back from. The most common of these is teammates who leave the game, whether out of frustration or internet issues, but can also come in the form of less-than-ideal God matchups in lanes: thus giving the enemy team a huge gold and experience advantage. As a player, you can also find yourself being outplayed and out-performed by your lane rivals.

No matter the circumstance, the most important skill in any situation is to learn from your mistakes. You can't change other players as much as you might try, but even the greatest professionals make mistakes. Also important to know: not every game will be one plagued by miscommunication and troublesome teammates. Take a break if you need to, get up and stretch your legs, but remember before you queue again: it's not how hard you get hit, it's how quickly you can get back up.