Demigod: Staging updates – v1.01 talk

By Frogboy on June 2, 2009 12:35:49 PM from

It’s hard to believe that the updates we’ve done so far have all been on the v1.0 series. v1.01 is the first update that GPG and Stardock consider significant enough to give a new version number.

Of course, that means testing and testing and testing and if we’ve learned anything in the past month is that the on-line testing procedures were inadequate. So on the one hand, we want to get these updates out quickly because there are so many important improvements and on the other hand, we don’t want to put something out that has glaring problems for some people.

For example, one of the things we’re struggling with today is that occasionally Skirmish won’t start games. That is, the players will be connected and it’ll send the message to start the game but it won’t. So we are trying to figure out what causes that.

On the other hand, other key things are working so much better. In-game connectivity is vastly improved. The handling if quitters and disconnects is improved. The stats are far more robust. The AI is noticeably better. A lot of command queuing issues are resolved. The bandwidth use is significantly reduced which should have a pretty big impact. So we have all those things nailed down and yet, we have the issue where skirmish games just get stuck about 25% of the time which is simply a show stopper.

Last night I played a game with just AI. It was the first time I’ve played against AI since shortly after release that was “fun” since before, the AI’s were just cannon fodder – throwing themselves at towers and just being ridiculously easy to manipulate. I can still see areas for improvement with it but kudos to GPG for taking this stuff seriously.

Now all that said, we have a list of things that we think need to be focused on in the coming weeks – both from a business point of view and from a game play point of view.

Finding ways for friends to get into skirmish games on the same team.
Dealing with “rage quitting”. v1.1 (not v1.01) will have a concede option so hopefully that will help.
Finding ways to provide more free maps and Demigods that doesn’t break the bank.
Coming up with new powers that are fun and increase strategic depth.
Finding ways to keep retail sales up. Sales are good now but let’s be real here, updates are fueled by new sales. If you guys have ideas on what it would take to get more of your friends to buy copies at retail and on Impulse let us know.
Building a system where we just host the games. Demigod would think it’s “peer to peer” but we would actually make it client server with Stardock hosting all the games ala Elemental.

But right now, we’re working on the skirmish issue still. I’ll keep you guys up to date on where that is. I’ll be on the chat area too today.

+912 Karma | 120 Replies

Can't speak for others but I am sick of playing Cataract and the other maps don't get played mainly because of connectivity issues with over 3v3. More 3v3 maps would be good in my eyes.

sim speed is the biggest contributor to laggy games in my opinion. I've had people complain about my ping and then when we start the game they have a sim speed of 1

Agreed. Sim speed is more of an issue. I can't count the number of times that peopel have had a go at me because of my ping yet they have a starting sim speed of 1

Maps get tired because we cant play them all, just cataract over andover mainly because of connectivity issue when there are more than 3v3. More 3v3 maps would be great

Replays.

And the best way to attract some new customers would be a tournament!

quoting post

Finding ways to keep retail sales up. Sales are good now but let’s be real here, updates are fueled by new sales. If you guys have ideas on what it would take to get more of your friends to buy copies at retail and on Impulse let us know.

Demo. And more content. I have some friends that might want to buy it, but when they read 8 demigods and only a handful of maps they lose interest.

Don't think it's so much the total lack of maps as much as a relative dearth of 2v2 maps.

$14.95 per month for ongoing content and gameplay features

You lost me.

Double-posting n00b. My apologies.

If you want people to become interested before SCII comes out later this year, you'll have to :

0) Super top priority : make sure you can get a game going within 1min with 95% success regardless of game mode.

1) Add Replays functionnality

2) Add new maps

3) Add new DGs

4) Add Clan support

And stay the hell away from anything like making pay people for updates, map packs or new DGS. On the PC market, it will backfire on you faster than the speed of light.

If you really need to, make a real addon with like 8 new DGs and 10 maps at once for like 15$.

Quoting taintofven,

reply 25

i don't think there's a shortage of maps or clear-cut balance issues. i don't see how anyone can make statements otherwise.

on the whole, the community's competitive experience has been limited to PUBs. balance has to be put under the microscope and examined. i don't think that's really possible, yet, because the games aren't competitive enough due to factors like random teammates and the game being NEW.

a lack of maps? everyone has exhausted themselves on these maps only after a month and a half? i haven't, and i've played a lot.

I do, most popular game mode is 3v3 and there is only 2 maps. Using 2v2 or 4v4 maps for 3v3 isn't particularly fun.

Sorry Frogboy, but the statement that extra content needs to be derived from future sales is basically letting me know that this game as it stands TODAY has no longgevity say past a year. Maybe Im just reading into it negativly but if I were to see something like " we have longterm plans for this game and this is just the tip of the iceberg as far as content goes" sounds alot more sellable and gives something to look forward to.

Word of mouth is kinda hard ATM also, I gave away all the coupons I had access to but some of the questions asked from my freinds were "does it have a ladder or ranking system"? my reply " yes, but broken ATM"? How can I aid you in your sales if I can only give that response? "Hows the gameplay and matches? " well it has its good days and bad days". "Is it like wc3"? Kinda but only 8 maps and 8 heros ATM. "are they gonna make more"? " well that depends on sales"

Like Silk said, there are "enough" maps, until you take into account connectivity. Every time I go online to play, it's Cataract the majority of the time, because it's about the "biggest" map you can play; bigger maps are way too big for 3 players, and it's unlikely you'll get more than a 3v3 working usually (well, lets see what 1.01 does though now).

And the smaller maps, well, 1v1 and 2v2 is not exactly what this game is about (although it can be interesting sometimes), so smaller maps are not used much either.

And online play connection is still broken.

Untill this is fixed i don't see sales going anywhere.

Honestly, the biggest thing you can do is to create an atmosphere harnessing competitive gameplay.

If you can get replays, a ranked team ladder/clan support and can show you understand the importance of competition, 3rd party tournaments will follow. People not involved in Demigod will see this and be attracted to it. For a huge number of gamers these days, fierce competition makes games fun. People are inclined to play mediocre games (e.g Red Alert 3) because if they are the best, people will know about it.

I can't see the addition of new in-game content driving massive waves of new customers unless somehow they've previously been exposed to the game and found the depth and replayability to be sub-standard. For someone who has never had the chance to play the game, they don't understand what more maps and more demigods will do, but they sure know what competition is...

Quoting Slayer42000,

reply 10

Agreed. if SD/GPG take that route where they only focus on new content because that's only thing they think will drive sales, Demigod is on borrowed time.

Senda still has the attack bug, i've noticed it with pounce. Also, my UB stucked again on Prison, pinned to an invisible spot on the ground, stutter there until i click again to move. Played only two SP matches, ~2 minutes eatch. It's not that hard to encounter these bugs, i really don't understand why the people from GPG don't know about them in Q&A.

The spike problem is stil there, even in 3v3 matches, at least for me. And the bandwidth for a 4v4 match it's the same as before.

The AI seems a little bit more cautious about enemy towers, but he is still very easy to kill.

The auto-attack prioritizing over the move command is still there and this is a major annoyance.

At least the Wand of Speed is fixed, you don't pause anymore when you cast it. But if i click on somebody to auto-attack, and he runs from you, but he is faster than you so you activate Wand of Speed, it doesn't continue to chase him until you click again on him.

And for a strange reason, it's harder to connect then before (and i was not having any troubles at all connecting). I might be wrong though, as i've only tried a couple of times tonight.

Anyway, personally i'm very disappointed about this, it's seems this game is beyond fixable. You can't sell a broken game (with connection issues and gameplay bugs) and with missing basic mp features. Even if all of this will be fixed some day, by some miracle, it will be too late, the damage has allready be done. Imo, it's allready late; look on any gaming news site that has a comments section, and you will see that when some DG news appears, almost all of the comments are something like "fun game, but very broken". I really can't recommend it to any of my friends, with connection problems, in-game bugs that are very frustrating (if there is one good excuse to rage quit is when you die because of a attack/move bug) and the total lack of basic matchmaking with friends and other stuff.

I'm sorry, but i've lost 99% of my hope in this game to be successful and playable. I'm so disappointed, not for the 40$, but for game itself, because of it's missed potential...

Make the minimum requirements include an Radeon X800. It has 256 ram but after 10 minutes performance dies my friend reports. He might ask for a refund since its unplayable.

the online still isn't bulletproof as other rts games.

Quoting astonerbum,

reply 15

Make the minimum requirements include an Radeon X800. It has 256 ram but after 10 minutes performance dies my friend reports. He might ask for a refund since its unplayable.

The minimum video req on the ATi side is the x1600... and the x800 doesn't support Shader Model 3.0 so I'm kinda surprised that it runs the game at all.

Minimum:

Windows XP SP3 (32-Bit Only) / Vista SP1 (32- or 64-Bit)

2.4 GHz Processor

512 MB Available System Memory

8 GB Available Hard Drive Space

128 MB 3D Video Card (ATI Radeon X1600 / Nvidia GeForce 6800 or better)*

Sound Card

Broadband Internet Connection for Multiplayer

Stardock's Impulse Required for Updates/Digital Download

And that's all pulled directly from the Demigod page on Impulse. The 256MB of VRAM means absolutely nothing if it doesn't have the bandwidth or shader power required to handle the game let alone that the card doesn't support Shader Model 3.0.

Thanks for the update, and I just have one want...

I want a 5th ability!

Personally, if the game's multiplayer worked for more people I think the game would sell itself.
As it stands, if someone asked me about Demigod I'll tell them to wait till it works even though it is a good game. I'd make a point for them not to buy the game because I know how much of a nightmare it's been for me thus far. Once it works, I'll sing it's praises and begin shepparding the masses, however until then I don't see the point, regardless of how much I like SD's business practices. Once the game works, and is selling nicely, I think the other issues will begin to become more prominent though.

If you want people to become interested before SCII comes out later this year, you'll have to :

0) Super top priority : make sure you can get a game going within 1min with 95% success regardless of game mode.

1) Add Replays functionnality

2) Add new maps

3) Add new DGs

4) Add Clan support

And stay the hell away from anything like making pay people for updates, map packs or new DGS. On the PC market, it will backfire on you faster than the speed of light.

If you really need to, make a real addon with like 8 new DGs and 10 maps at once for like 15$.

It is hard to overstate how important his top priority is. if you want to grab the multiplayer crowd in, the game cannot so difficult, slow, and full of errors when setting up. There are a TON of gamers that enjoy a competitive (various degress of competition of course), but if you are spending minutes having various people rejoin games, various people disconnect from games, and other issues, the game is not going to catch on with any larger crowd.

Great to see a patch out. I do enjoy this game and am glad to see progress being made to fix issues. Is there any expected 'balancing' patches in the future? No I dont have time to read through all the forums and check to see. and seeing how they wont give a refund progress made to fix things is atleast a good thing..

Quoting Slayer42000,

reply 10

A game developers dream IMO would be that 3-5 years after release it is still selling and has a demand. WC3 is still selling to this day. Why? Is it mass content, or word of mouth or mods? That is the secret to sucess IMO. I think a game developer needs to make choices one of them is " do we just make a game and hope to get a good ROI and move on, or go for longgevity and reap rewards for years to come.

Sorry Frogboy, but the statement that extra content needs to be derived from future sales is basically letting me know that this game as it stands TODAY has no longgevity say past a year. Maybe Im just reading into it negativly but if I were to see something like " we have longterm plans for this game and this is just the tip of the iceberg as far as content goes" sounds alot more sellable and gives something to look forward to.

Word of mouth is kinda hard ATM also, I gave away all the coupons I had access to but some of the questions asked from my freinds were "does it have a ladder or ranking system"? my reply " yes, but broken ATM"? How can I aid you in your sales if I can only give that response? "Hows the gameplay and matches? " well it has its good days and bad days". "Is it like wc3"? Kinda but only 8 maps and 8 heros ATM. "are they gonna make more"? " well that depends on sales"

Quoting Slayer42000 for truth.

It's hard to recommend Demigod to other people (that you like), especially if I have to tell them "buy at your own risk - you may or may not have serious connection issues".

Quoting CitizenKane2,

reply 22

Quoting Slayer42000,
reply 10
A game developers dream IMO would be that 3-5 years after release it is still selling and has a demand. WC3 is still selling to this day. Why? Is it mass content, or word of mouth or mods? That is the secret to sucess IMO. I think a game developer needs to make choices one of them is " do we just make a game and hope to get a good ROI and move on, or go for longgevity and reap rewards for years to come.

Sorry Frogboy, but the statement that extra content needs to be derived from future sales is basically letting me know that this game as it stands TODAY has no longgevity say past a year. Maybe Im just reading into it negativly but if I were to see something like " we have longterm plans for this game and this is just the tip of the iceberg as far as content goes" sounds alot more sellable and gives something to look forward to.

Word of mouth is kinda hard ATM also, I gave away all the coupons I had access to but some of the questions asked from my freinds were "does it have a ladder or ranking system"? my reply " yes, but broken ATM"? How can I aid you in your sales if I can only give that response? "Hows the gameplay and matches? " well it has its good days and bad days". "Is it like wc3"? Kinda but only 8 maps and 8 heros ATM. "are they gonna make more"? " well that depends on sales"

Quoting Slayer42000 for truth.

It's hard to recommend Demigod to other people (that you like), especially if I have to tell them "buy at your own risk - you may or may not have serious connection issues".

I have to agree on this sorry to say, I was going to get my brother to buy it and we could play together, but he just may not be able to connect and thats a buzzkill if it happens at all.

Quoting Doddler,

reply 25

I'm going to guess that the 'free weekend' idea that steam has going for some of its games is a big sales driver, especially when it coincides with new content (like maps/items) and/or game sale, maybe something like that would be handy?

that would be great! i have the game but i'd love to play with my friends - maybe they would buy it too.

Building a system where we just host the games. Demigod would think it’s “peer to peer” but we would actually make it client server with Stardock hosting all the games ala Elemental.

I missed this in Frogboy's reply.

This would definitely be a welcomed development, I think

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Demigod: Staging updates – v1.01 talk