Stacking up on more Favor items will cause some people to play the game alot more just to unlock those items for themselves, but in the end that does not improve on how bland the game is. The main problem i see is that they made a mistake being too much like DoTA yet at the same time trying not to be. They either should have replicated it more closely or strayed much further away from it. Demigod is now in the middle of DoTA and a RTS game and results in nothing.

People who are experienced with Dota play Demigod and cannot understand why there are only 8 to select from, each not being interesting or in-depth at all, having no form of item recipes, slow paced gameplay and realise why they are wasting their time playing it.

People who are experienced with RTS games play Demigod and are left with a completely stripped game with no construction, no unit management, no strategy and totally flat gameplay.

The game you are playing now is the game you are going to play on release. The only thing that will be changed are some values and minor balancing. In the end i just think that GPG and Stardock had 2 different visions on what Demigod was supposed to be and the released version of the game will be equal to none of those visions. Hopefully with some hard work, soon after release there will be a major content patch or expansion that will at least save some respect for both of these companies.

I'm all for more skills. I think the number of skills right now will work for an initial impression or first few plays but honestly, as much as I like this game....the number of times I 'tower pull-boulder roll-hammer smash-repeat' is a bit much. I think a major problem in this regard is the length of actual combat. There is far less fighting in Demigod and much much more of the walking back and forth trying to convince your enemy to get closer....which is tactical...but not very fun and certainly not combat. A bit more life and perhaps we could actually swing at eachother more than once before someone heads for the hills or the grave.

http://forums.impulsedriven.com/341572      Theres a link to another discussion on favor items. I totaly agree the depth of the favor items system should be revised, although I don't know if it can totally make up for the small skill tree.

I think a problem here is that RTS games are known in general for thier depth and strategy...and also for their length. GPG has really tried to make the games in Demigod very short, they've stated this more than once. They want the games to be 10-15min long for obvious mismatches and 30min or so for equal players. That dynamic is very difficult to fit into the RTS genre. Perhaps thier attachment to this idea is stopping them from considering further depth in the skill tree or longer battles etc.

IMHO:  More skills, longer battles, longer games > Less skills, small skirmishes, short games.

Although I, too, am unsure as to what else can be added to increase the depth of this game (the devs say they aren't touching the C++ until after release, so we have limited options), favor items seem like a great way to start.

I didn't really say to make it harder to grind for items, I just suggested that more should be added.

And as for functionality, that's not really my choice to make... I'm just making others aware that the choice should be made by the devs.

Thirdly, spam CC might be the only option for play right now, but ability use in general is quite straightforward. I suppose we're going to expect this game to have an evolution in gameplay, and adding more items is just a start.

Exactly, the whole point of this "genre" of gaming is to be able to blend the different play styles of a group of heroes together instead of just stacking the abilities of 1 of them. Unfortunately as there arn't enough to fill a game with no overlapping demigod's and that the game will never have enough to give a fair selection to a 5v5 game without having multiple of 1... this is just a fundamental game flaw that will stick to Demigod until it's death.

Hopefully with the addition of new Demigods they will also be willing to undertake significant balance changes to tweak the pace, style, and even the depth of the game.

Fire-Ice, Ke5trel... I haven't been around much lately, been busy with life/Dawn Of War 2/Empire total war... I remember my biggest issue with Demigod being that I felt the "skill ceiling" in DG was from a house made for gnomes (This was way back in beta2).

So my question to you two is: Has this changed since beta 2? If so, could you give some examples? I must say that the first post by Fire-Ice made me think that this issue hasn't been resolved...But thought i'd ask explicitly . Maybe the ceiling has gained a few feet in height at least by now ...I guess those gnomes must be having halfling friends visiting maybe?

I guess I can come back to check out DG when 3C comes out...Take a break from DAW2...hehe... Played way too many games there.

-Drexion

No offense taken, that's a valid statement but on the other hand do you realise why we (or i) have only played half a dozen games? Because the gameplay is flat and uninteresting. Generally in RPG type games i play support heroes where i can directly support my team, and in Demigod that just means playing Sedna, healbotting my teammates and pouncing on rook's hammer attempts. From all 8 Demigod's, i only find 1 of them fun to play, also that being said the supposed "in depth" level of customisation of each Demigod is miniscule which also leaves less to be desired while playing the game. The assassin's are fair but they are mostly 1 trick ponies (TB ice spam, rook boulder/hammer, unclean beast... less depth than some DoTA heroes)

So i should just play a General and use their minions to support my team right... because that's fun to do? Meh, i think we can both agree that Generals are not up to anyone's expectation even your own, Frogboy.

I paid for the Beta, i have played enough to know what i like and dislike about the game and the fact that i only have a handful of online games means that the dislike outweighs the like. I'm not saying that the game is terrible, but coming from a competitive DoTA background, seeing Demigod use DoTA in it's advertising as a comparison or basis of it's gameplay, i had expectations that will never be met for this very reason.

Lets face it, making an unbiased comparison between the supposed "shallow hero depth" of DoTA and the "in depth customisation" of Demigod, they are the same with Demigod having a few more passive abilities. When you see Pudge in DoTA sneak around hooking/eating people, it might not have alot of depth to it, but it's very fun and challenging to do. When you see Rook in Demigod Boulder/warp/hammer people, it might not have alot of depth but is also fun and slightly less challenging to do. Making comparison's like these between a Mod for WC3 and a completely independant game that is supposed to use DotA as a base for the gameplay yet has comparisons that match up evenly (clearly except having 83 less characters to play) is the main reason why i have logged so little hours into Demigod.

Hope that clears it up for ya Frogboy. I'm not going to make random hateful rants about your game.

Hey Drexion, welcome back ^^

Micro has a few twists now but it isn't all that much different from when you left off.  The macro is getting more and more interesting, though - you can see the outline of build balance starting to take shape, and you can't win every battle with a cookiecutter...

I think if they keep adding and balancing demigods you will see an interesting game in a "He chose Rook so I'm gonna go Pounce Sedna or Shield Oak or Fury Regulus or Slow QoT or Tower Rook" sort of way..You didn't really have variety in Beta 2, and it's still limited but you can see it taking shape with the skill lines.  You start to see signature playstyles on the good players, and they aren't identical across the board. Counters are developing that take it past single pass samurai duels and into interesting fencing matches..

So for example Rook boulders Oak, but in the time it takes him to get close and raise the hammer Oak pops his shield or uses penitence to interrupt and starts whaling, so Rook drops a tower or two and is down to 1/2 health, warps back to edge of Oaks vision, pulls his interruptable-by-any-damage 3000 hp and mana regeneration over 10 seconds item and pops 5 second invulnerable but frozen item.  By the time Oak can hit him again he has his health back and his boulderslam is close to ready, so Oak retreats and leaves his Spirits to harrass.  You see interactions like that with most of the DGs at this point, and of course it gets more complex when you have teams..

The items, especially favor, as Fire-Ice points out, need some love and could do alot to really differentiate, but that's just about patching, something we can probably count on with these devs.  In a year I'm thinking 20 DGs, dynamic LoS, hundreds of completely custom upgradeable items, you know, small potatoes

At this point the game is fun, and it provides a foundation for something deeper.  A few subtle tweaks could make all the difference, in either direction.

You should come check it out and tell us what you think could make the difference between halflings and gnomes ^^

So we were talking today about how to counter the infamous Rook + Unclean Beast combination.  It sounds like you are pretty confident in the meta-game countering so I would be curious to hear what your suggestions are against that combo?

The general strategy is to take Staff of Renewal on Rook so he can double boulder/smash and then have either UB or rook take warpstone as soon as they can.  By doing this they are able to jump a target (either just by engaging them on foot or teleport ganking them) and once the first stun lands there doesnt' seem to be much that can be done to stop it.

Taking Oak seemed to be the most logical counter since he has his shield and a ranged interupt (for the smaash) but this requires Oak stand out of the battle while the second player engages.  Even if you do stop the slams, you still have to deal with the stuns on the second character not to mention the auto-attack damage.  On top of that while you can avoid the initial combo, you only have a handful of seconds to damage them before boulder/smash/drain are cooled down and you are without a shield (though you still have penitance to at least counter the smash again).

The biggest problem with the above strategy is that Oak can't engage or he risks being the target of the combo.  2 oaks may be able to do the trick as long as they surround Rook so his boulder can't hit both but you are still limited on cooldowns and Oaks damage, while good, can't keep up with auto-attack from Rook/UB.

I really enjoy the meta-game of picking good counters to various builds and combos but this is one that I just can't figure out (given the current game mechanics).

Considering how small the player base is atm, on release these imbalances will become quite an issue