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We need Randomness!

By on June 30, 2008 2:03:22 PM from Stardock Forums Stardock Forums

Random Heroes, Random Maps, Random Teams, Random Rules, Random everything.

You may ask "why?" now, here is the totally random answer : it's fun , see below.

 

We need an incentive to use Random Heroes , be it just that the opponent doesnt know what hero you have (like in Starcraft/Warcraft with the Races) or that you get a small bonus like a bit extra money as in Dota or even just special awards for playing random (which supcom failed to have).

Whats so cool about Random Heroes?

Random Heroes make for a more flexible and dynamic gameplay on the one side on the other side, people using random will whine alot less over pretended imbalances as they have a more unbiased point of view (won't stop them to complain about the real ones though - they will become more apparent even that way). 

Now the Problem is that humans are lazy per definition and usually will stick to what they know and have mastered but humans are also opportunists who will happily take every small, even meaningless advantages/rewards. (ofc the higher the advantage the more humans will take the advantage over their lazyness).

Whats so cool about Random Maps ?

Random Maps can have 2 meanings:

1) Randomly generated Maps, like in all those Age of *someword* games. While not that suited for competitive game it increases the replayability alot and forces the players to adapt alot more. While I am totally sure that Demigod won't have a random map generator, given the nature of Demigod Maps being flat, not using tiles and probably not that complex at all (aside from the artistical stuff) it should be fairly easy to write a random map generator (like Warmaker for Warcraft II) and maybe even integrate it into the game itself as mod.

2) meaning that instead of picking a certain map in the game lobby you have some filters (size, type, maybe even a list) you can apply and the game is played on a randomly picked map which pass those filters. This will lead to a bigger variability in  custom games (even if only some use it) - Automatch will pick a random map anyways I guess.

 

Whats so cool about Random Teams?

I always liked the concept of the RT ladder in WC3 as you needed adapt alot how to play depending on your ally and got to play together with players you normally would play (because they are either too good or too bad). And if you lose you can always say it's been the fault of the ally - with an fixed Team this causes controversies, I tried it often enough.

I'd like to have a random team option in custom games as well, you could argue that the nature of custom games itself results in being teamed up with random guys, but that is only true if you play "public customs". Would be cool to play a custom with friends and mix the teams up randomly without much effort (and even in Publics there is a tendency people will try to get on the team with the best player - especially the host as he has all the power^^).

 

Whats so cool about Random Rules?

If Demigod features different game modes (like the dota game modes or things like capture the flag, King of the Olymp or Free for all) I would totally like to have a button which says "random game mode". Different game modes are fun and if you have a random button nobody can argue which mode to pick in the game lobby.

Whats so cool about Random Everything?

if I tell , you will randomly forget to breath and thats something I don't want to happen.

 

I have no clue if that is a proper blog article , never written one before.

TheAurelOne

 

 

 

+9 Karma | 63 Replies
June 30, 2008 2:09:14 PM from Stardock Forums Stardock Forums

Some interesting thoughts..........

June 30, 2008 2:53:22 PM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums
I'll give you randomness. WARGABBLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. DRINFCLSROWOIWUER
Drink really icky no fun comes like sitting round wet outside in wrenching uptown Europe ribbit.
July 1, 2008 10:13:34 PM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums
I'll give you randomness. WARGABBLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. DRINFCLSROWOIWUERDrink really icky no fun comes like sitting round wet outside in wrenching uptown Europe ribbit.


BOLLOCKS! My gyrating razor-toothbrush concieves of no flAP FLAP FLAP FLAP FLap flap KAZOO!
LO! the ice cubes are freezing, I can feel it in my eyes.
July 2, 2008 12:16:43 PM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums
Hhahahaha nice!!
July 2, 2008 1:49:44 PM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums
Some interesting thoughts..........


I bet the wink means its already implemented
July 2, 2008 2:14:14 PM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums
How would you handle the people leaving because they get a Demigod, Map, Team or Rule they don't like?
July 2, 2008 2:45:18 PM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums


why would they join a game which has such settings? (especially if such settings would be visible before you actually join the game)

I mean all-random works pretty well even in publics in Dota, and I expect Demigod to have a much more mature community .

Guildwars handles leavers and leechers very nice imo, if they get reported by lots of people for leeching or leave a game where the own team hasnt surrendered yet they can't join another game for some time (like 5 minutes or so, thats already enough for the people to don't leave anymore. back before they introduced that punishment for leaving it sometimes happened that someone left in Random Arenas if his team didnt have a healer. nowadays this rarely happens at all.)

I think already a "I just left a game with random settings right after the start" Icon which you get when doing so for 5 to 10 minutes is enough, so he can still join all games but someone hosting a game with random settings is warned.


btw speaking of leaving, give us a proper surrender option like in guild wars , I hate this "stay until we destroy your world tree or we ban you" stuff when you have obviously lost already and its just a waste of time until you finally can leave without being banned.


And if randomadness doesn't work at all on public games there is always the option to stick to non-random game modes and play random modes with friends.


If there is no randomness, I do hope Demigod is moddable enough to get some randomness in at least.
July 2, 2008 8:36:10 PM from Stardock Forums Stardock Forums
Random maps and game modes would be nice.
July 2, 2008 11:29:23 PM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums
Hhahahaha nice!!


Glad to see you liked it, I hrmmfnrarnrnanr(mumbling)ajermaemrmaknfmjgughghjgaugjaugjmrlaugla So I take off the pants, see afdhgmurghjflurgdisalalamadma And that's how you find the hypotenuse of a right triangle.
July 3, 2008 1:33:26 PM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums
As far as I remember, it was said that there will be plenty of demigods/generals (I really hope so, not just 10, but ~80 would be nice ).

So a special random mode would make sense, if there will be a large number of demigods/generals you can pick from.

I never played Guildwars (only the trial) so I don??t know how it??s handled there. A simple new column in the statistics of each player will handle this problem a little I think. Like in CoH:
You can see the number of total games, wins, defeats and the number of irregular disconnects.
July 3, 2008 2:03:48 PM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums
It will never be 80 and I honestly prefer 15 to 20 (just a guess) really different Demigods over 80 which play very similar in the end ; if you take a look at dota there are so many skills which are nearly duplicates.
July 4, 2008 12:54:21 AM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums
It will never be 80 and I honestly prefer 15 to 20 (just a guess) really different Demigods over 80 which play very similar in the end ; if you take a look at dota there are so many skills which are nearly duplicates.


The heroes have different combinations of skills, so the way to play 2 heroes, even though they might have a similar skill, the others are different and changing the way you play them.
July 4, 2008 2:10:50 AM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums
I agree totaly with you TheBigOne, I also cant stop myself from thinking how Demigod will treat "leavers". Perhaps they could solve it by having the games be drop-in so as soon as someone leaves a spot frees up for another player to join the game.

drop-in is part of any succesive action game out there, World in Conflict or Quake for the obvious example.
July 4, 2008 3:44:26 AM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums
drop-in just legitimates leaving thus leading to more leavers and generally leads to a watered down gameplay as this continously coming and leaving leads to an unfair advantage of 1 team as someone taking a place of a leaver is more likely to leave too after realising that the xp and items his hero got are quite low compared to the other player (assuming he would take over the hero of the leaver and that some time has past in between).
I think its hard or impossible to implement into a p2p system anyways. (I don't know much about networking but I don't know any p2p game where this is possible (without saving and restarting - multiplayer saves are great as they allow to continue a game after someone got connection issues, already WC II had iirc but Starcraft for sure and was recently patched into WC III.)
July 4, 2008 9:37:17 AM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums
If there number of different Demigods will only be around 15-20 ...
I??m not sure if a random mode will make sense. Not a really surprise which hero is choosen with 10 players and 15-20 possible heroes. It will be boring after a short time. Even DotA is a little boring. Always the same heroes etc. (even there are over 80 heroes!).
In my opinion Demigod with just 20 Demigods/Generals will be just boring
July 4, 2008 9:48:06 AM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums
don't forget that Demigod has more than 1 map which increases a very important variable to gameplay and that Demigod is intended to be also fun in games with less than 10 players.

(and that Dota didnt start with 80 heroes either)
July 4, 2008 10:24:13 AM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums
More than one map, hm ok. Let??s see. We??ve got changing backgrounds and maybe not straight ways but curved ways. Wow, very variable
July 4, 2008 10:27:37 AM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums
80 heroes at release would be quite staggering to the normal player to comprehend. I'd prefer around 20something to 40something heroes.

I'm pondering the possibility of GPG releasing Demigods as content after the game is out considering they did it with supcom and t3h unit packs. Though it might not perfectly meld with the storyline. In supcom they could say "Oh look, the Cybrans invented some new shit." but in Demigod to add in new demigods would require some creative-ass writing/retconning.

Not to derail anything, but I do hope that it will be easier to get mods in GPG (IE:Auto DL like WCIII's BNet-sauce) and not have to mess around with the vault and leave the game to do so etc.
July 4, 2008 11:16:58 AM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums
Nokthra, if you ever played a real rts (dunno if you did), you would know what a big impact the map layout makes on the gameplay.

just checked Dota 3.6 the last version made from the original author and there you had 32 heroes.
July 4, 2008 4:14:57 PM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums
I don??t know what you mean with real rts. I played a little Starcraft, Wc3 real, CoH, Generals etc.

The maps I??ve seen until now (only some screenshots in a magazine) are not very variable. If there will be more differences than I??ve seen (like version 1 vs. version 2) I will quiet down
July 4, 2008 5:33:41 PM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums
imo your two examples are already quite different , but before we have actually played it we can't be sure how different such a design would play in Demigod but I am quite optimistic about diverse gameplay.

I have never played CoH but in my opinion WC3 and Generals play quite similar on every map while Starcraft and Supreme Commander play completely different depending of the map.

July 5, 2008 5:22:39 AM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums
I would like some differences in height
Together with the fog of war it will be funny I think.


CoH is really good ... if the developers would clean up the online lobby It??s very buged. But the gameplay is really good, I like it The maps are verry different, too.
July 5, 2008 8:34:06 AM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums
Do you mean differences in height of Demigods? Have you seen The Rook?
July 5, 2008 6:47:42 PM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums
No no. Sorry, I meant differences in height of the terrain.
July 5, 2008 7:57:23 PM from Demigod Forums Demigod Forums
80 would be way too many Demigods; they would end up too similar. Most RTS games only have 3 to 10 factions and they don't get boring. This isn't quite the usual RTS but I see no reason why 10 to 20 Demigods would get boring quickly.

I think they said that maps won't have height differences.
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