Brad’s Demigod Beta3A report

By Frogboy on March 3, 2009 12:11:41 PM from

Demigod beta 3A is a pretty big step up from beta 3. Unfortunately, the biggest problem with upgrading from beta 3 is that the “check for updates” API wasn’t in Beta 3. So what would happen to beta 3 users is that it just wouldn’t log them into the game which just looks like a bug.

Beta 3A has a lot of balancing, performance, and connectivity improvements.

Here are some of the key issues we found.

BUGS

BUG #1: Stuck looking at “waiting for other players” forever

There’s quite a few cases where connecting to the game results in someone crashing or getting booted. This is problematic for two reasons. First, that shouldn’t happen. Second, even if it does happen it shouldn’t cause all the other players connected to be stuck looking at “waiting for other players” forever.

BUG #2: Victory/Defeat hangs/super slow

For whatever reason, the end game is super slow. That is, when someone wins, it just brings the game to a crawl. The more players, the more of a crawl there is.

BUG #3: Lag is other people

It seems like your settings in multiplayer affect other people. It doesn’t make sense but for whatever reason, me having my uber-settings is slowing other people down even though my machine can easily handle it.

BUG #4: Unreproduceable problem on certain nVidia cards.

This one is driving us crazy. A handful of people with nVidia cards are experiencing extremely slow (>5fps) performance. We’ve put together identical configs and we’ve never been able to reproduce it. If you experience this, let us know and we’ll work 1 on 1 with you to find it.

BUG #5: Memory leak

There is a memory leak at the various menus.

BUG #6: NAT negotiation

So that people understand this issue: Demigod is PEER to PEER. It needs it to reduce latency. Most games are client server (i.e. somebody hosts a game and people join and that person is the “server”). That’s a big deal because most people know someone who “can’t host games because of their router”. Well in Demigod, everyone is the host effectively (because it’s peer to peer). The guy who can’t host say Company of Heroes games or can’t host Sins of a Solar Empire games wouldn’t even be able to play Demigod online because they have to be able to be the host too in peer to peer.

So Impulse Reactor has been developed to solve this issue and it works pretty well (amazingly well actually). But it has to work in 95% of cases or it’ll be a pain. Beta 3A gets us pretty far down the path but not far enough. It’s still not ideal. We’ll be continuing to improve this as we get to general availability. IF you are someone who has trouble connecting, hang out on #demigod (see the Impulse chat area in community).

BUG #7: AI dumbness

AI needs more love.

BUG #8: Path Finding

There are still cases where your Demigod gets stuck and won’t fight anymore. It’s getting better but it still happens. Minions are particularly bad about this.

BUG #9: The Pantheon…

Right now, it’s virtually impossible to get more than 2 human players into a pantheon game. It just isn’t working fully.

BUG #10: Default video settings not ideal

By default, the shadow fidelity and graphics fidelity are set to high. They shouldn’t be. By default they should be set to low. Technical users who care about graphics will know to boost it and non-technical users won’t care.

BUG #11: SLI is really slow on some machines with AA on.

BALANCE

Balance is better but the game is in a state where even 2 expert players won’t just beat another player but they will make the other team wish they had never been born. Me and Tandis can go into a game and make it so that the other side barely gets to play thanks to stun and a few other items.

Here are some items that I think are problematic:

General minions are way way too wimpy. These minions should have at least 2X base as many HP as they currently have.

Other Balance Tweaks:

Destroying towers should give much more gold than they currently.
Destroying fortresses doubly so. There should be a lot more material reward from destroying towers since that helps mark the progression of the game and can help move things along.

Demigod Beta 3A quick video.

Beta 3B should be out this week (fingers crossed).

+912 Karma | 26 Replies

You hit the nail on the head at least you are seeing the same problems we are!!! Chain stunning is still the most annoying part of the game.

thanks for the notes, Frogboy. The my settings = your lag issue is interesting...

Confirmation on warpstone being in next build?

Diminishing returns would do wonders for chain stuns. And chain slows, which are only a little less annoying.

first screenshot opens up the 3rd ss and gl getting all this done in 40 days

I was the problem with low fps with reinstall solved.

Great post hard to believe that we have come so far so fast. For all us here form the beginning i guess we are the ancients lol. It has been an honor to be part of this.
I think once the warp stone is gone or cost so much by the time you get who cares and chain stunning is nerfed we are there. Great work on a wonderful game. I want to know if the rankings will have titles i am aiming for the village idiot where horse can be the war lord.

quoting post

BUG #3: Lag is other people

It seems like your settings in multiplayer affect other people. It doesn’t make sense but for whatever reason, me having my uber-settings is slowing other people down even though my machine can easily handle it.

DoW2 had the exact same bug as #3 where everyone needs to set to low graphics. I wonder if DoW2 is peer to peer as well.

Quoting TerroR878,

reply 4

first screenshot opens up the 3rd ss

Yes, it does. I believe he is pointing to the mageslayer.

I'd like to see stun have diminishing returns (specifically: you can't be stunned again for N seconds after your last stun) or better yet, have a "Scroll of rebound" ala Magic the Gathering where when activated, for 3 seconds any power that hits you rebounds on enemies around you up to N meters away. So if they try to stun you, they instead stun those around. That way, people have to think about using stun.

have a "Scroll of rebound"

Home run Frogboy can we see this in 3B LOL.

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 9

I like that Idea (scroll of rebound) I just really want an escape from the chain stunning. Ex. If you get caught capturing a flag and 3 eneny Dg's are coming too you. You see them try and teleport out but the chain stunning starts. If we have a way out is what I am looking for. Because right now the only way out is the countdown timer.

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 9

EPIC. I am one that has always hated stunning items. It's not so bad if only a couple expensive weapons have it, but giving chain-stuns (IE: abilities on more than one character) is just unbalanced, and unfun. I really like this idea.

Great post, addressing alot of issues here. Keep up the good work

Oh ya a mirror effect type of item wouldbe great.

Also add a specific 4870X2 in windows mode problem please.

x2 minion HP? Are you serious?

Thats is not the problem at all. I personally think they have too much damage.

Bring their hp down to something that can be 2-3 hit and then killed pretty easily by assasins.

But make their damage actually dangerous. At the moment, when I am being attacked by minions I dont attack them - for two reasons.
A ) So much HP. 1k+ is just too much for a small minion. Why should I waste so much time killing them, especially when they can get reput up in a second.

B ) They arnt dangerous. They dont do any decent damage to me - so why should I bother. I think Spirits damage is pretty good atm - but they should never reach 1k hp imo.

I think the problem with minions is not simply that they do not have enough HP but that they don't do a good job of protecting the general. They can simply be bypassed by an assasin and get the general who of course is much weaker since he has far less items as all his gold went to the (very expensive) minions

QUOTED MYSELF:

IMO best way to balance Generals is to:

-Minions should not have almost zero collision, they must impede demigods to advance and block them on sight.

-Buff Minions to a level where the quantity equal to cap can actually be a threat to a demigod. Make them have passive awesome skills that protect his general: lifestealing for him, permaslow, ministun, armor/damage reduction...

-Nerf generals to have low hp, low DPS but better support/damage skills.

The point is: Minions should be your bread and butter DPS, like in any RTS...if by any chance enemy demigod manages to beat them (or leave them behind) then he would be able to try to kill the General. There makes no sense for Generals to be almost as good as Assassins on 1on1, but with minions (imba or crappy).

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 9

My original idea was was basically for all stun-like abilities across the Demigods (Frost Nova, Boulder Roll, etc) to have the same underlying mechanic. Being affected by any of them would decrease the effectiveness of the next by a %, and the next, and then you'd become immune to stuns for x seconds.

Of course this system could be changed for stun immunity for x seconds after the very first, it's flexible that way with just changing numbers So it's malleable and I think fairly elegant.

The rebound scroll sounds interesting, but the problem is a stun wastes no consumable slot and is free, but the scroll both costs money and uses a rather precious slot. So the chances are very high that at any given time a given enemy Demigod will *not* have one. It's also one of those things that could encourage too many returns to base to re-stock.

It's a good idea, but it could use some tweaking. Perhaps if it was on a non-consumable item that had some other bonuses and an On Use: Rebounds enemies who target you with an ability for the next 3 seconds.

Mageslayer is ultimate on Unclean Beast. The extra attack speed and 40% stun means most enemy abilities won't go off due to interrupts. And once the DG is stunned he looses target so he stops attacking, stops what he was going to do, turns around and attacks creeps.

Fix Stuns. Not removing them but actually fix them. When a DG is stunned its as if nothing happened (AI wise). You can issue commands (which override commands), or leave him alone and he will do whatever is issued after the stun. If the stun had no commands issues it should continue with the previous command. So he was walking, continue walking, attacking target x, continue. The same thing should happen when you invoke abilities, at least with which target to attack. I don't remember how many times I was at melee range casting an ability with UB only to have him stop and attack a creep, thus letting an enemy get away. Warpstone was a REQUIREMENT to catch people since abilities stop you.

Fix what stuns you will keep, infact, but still get rid of them. No matter how much you fix the stuns, they are still going to chain them, Astonerbum, and inevitabley cause the same issues overall.

First image links to third image as well.

[quote who="[AC]DalzK" reply="16" id="2084953"]x2 minion HP? Are you serious?

Thats is not the problem at all. I personally think they have too much damage.

Bring their hp down to something that can be 2-3 hit and then killed pretty easily by assasins.

But make their damage actually dangerous. At the moment, when I am being attacked by minions I dont attack them - for two reasons.
A ) So much HP. 1k+ is just too much for a small minion. Why should I waste so much time killing them, especially when they can get reput up in a second.

B ) They arnt dangerous. They dont do any decent damage to me - so why should I bother. I think Spirits damage is pretty good atm - but they should never reach 1k hp imo.[/quote]

Agree totally. Having a load of minions with massive HP is useless if the enemy can just ignore them. As there doesnt seem to be any collision/very little collision, the only way minions can protect their general is with damage or effects (eg slows, interrupts, minion takes 50% of damage done to general etc).

I also like the ideas of these "mini effects" minions can do.

Lifesteal
Slowdown
Stun duration reduced??
Armour Decrease
Increased HP regen
Increase mana regen
etc. etc.

Those are just a few off the top of my head - but effects like these would be great. Of course, they would have to be "mini" effects (e.g. NOT 50% slowdown - maybe 5%? Not -1000 armour decrease, maybe 200?).

Does this idea have a seperate post yet?

Does this idea have a seperate post yet?

it's part of a few others, Petit Phenix and Db0 talk about it. I think it would be a good post to put out there, Dalzk, except I wonder if it hits the "No C++" ceiling? Even so, would be nice to see post-release.

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