The Official Demigod Change Request Thread

By Frogboy on March 29, 2009 3:29:09 PM from

Want something in Demigod’s balance changed? Make the case in this thread.

Everyone here at Stardock and GPG can feel the electricity in the air. It’s that feeling, that knowledge that the game you’ve been working on is going to be a hit. Those of you in the game industry know that feel. But for those of you who aren’t let me explain: Game projects take years from start to finish and let’s face it, statistically, most games aren’t very good. And for those on the project, it can be a real morale killer because the teams on those games usually know it long before release but cannot really do much about it. With Demigod, both teams (Stardock and GPG) know they have something special here.

That said, I’ve put together a list of change requests that are in front of us to see what we can do and what we can’t do.

This is the official change-request discussion thread. As these features are changed/added/addressed we’ll update this post.

I. Game options

d. Tower Strength

i. Weak is 2800. Please change to 4200.

ii. Normal is 5600. GOOD.

iii. High is 14000. Please change to 8400.

e. Grunt strength

i. Please change to” Grunt HP”

ii. Weak is 240 HP. GOOD.

iii. Normal is 390. GOOD.

iv. High is 870. GOOD.

f. New option: Grunt Damage

i. Weak: 75% what it currently is.

ii. Normal: what it currently is

iii. High is 150% of what it currently is

iv. Severe is 300% of what it currently is

g. Gold rate

i. Low. please increase by +1.

ii. Normal. Please increase by +2.

iii. High. Please increase by +3.

h. Starting gold

i. add: Please add “low: $0”.

ii. normal is $1000. GOOD.

iii. high is $20,000. Please change to $5,000.

iv. filthy rich is $40,000. Please change to $15,000.

II. Citadel Upgrades

b. Building Firepower. Please reduce cost on each one by 50%.

c. Currency.

i. Currency I. Please change to 4 gold.

ii. Currency II. Please change to 6 gold.

iii. Currency III. Please change to 8 gold.

d. Black Smith

i. Black Smith I. GOOD.

ii. Black Smith II. Please change to 40%.

iii. Black Smith III. Please change to 50%.

iv. Black Smith IV. Please change to 60%.

f. Experience.

i. Experience I. Please change to 20%.

ii. Experience II. Please change to 30%.

iii. Experinece III. Pleae chnage to 40%.

iv. Experience IV. Please change to 50%.

III. In-game Balance

a. Going up a war rank gives all players on that team 1000G.

b. When teleporting, the target destination displays an animation to cue players that someone is teleporting in.

See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhuPKYyKu5I&eurl=https://forums.demigodthegame.com/342558/page/4/&feature=player_embedded for refrence

c. Torch Bearer

i. Fireball I. Please increase damage from 300 to 400.

ii. Deep Freeze. Cool down penalty on others reduced by 3 seconds on each on.

d. Rook

i. HP decreased by about 10% at all levels.

ii. Boulder Roll 3 stun time reduced to 3 seconds.

e. Unclean beast

i. Base speed reduced to 6.0

ii. Reduce melee damage by about 10%.

iii. Reduce HP or Armor by 10%.

f. Destroying a tower provides 800 gold, destroying a fortress 1600 gold.

IV. New Items

a. Scroll of rebound. $250. Upon use any spells cast on that player or area around player within the following 2 seconds are rebounded upon the caster.

b. Ring of rebound. Instant cast time. Upon use, any spell cast on that player or area around player within the subsequent 2 second are rebound upon the caster.

V. Ongoing Bug issues that must be resolved

a. Disconnects in-game

i. More consequence for disconnecting

ii. The game must be able to cleanly recover from a disconnect.

b. Connectivity

i. Connecting to other players needs to be as reliable as possible

ii. Current beta connectivity dialog needs polishing

c. Pantheon

i. Pantheon experience when connecting needs polish

ii. AI players should be last resort and there should always be at least 1 human player on both sides.

d. In-Game (separate bug database not covered in this thread)

VI. User Interface Requests

a. Tracking toggle button on screen (for new users, the [T] track option for having th3e camera follow and center on the Demigod is very nice but not easy to get to.

b. In the lobby screen, display the Experience rating (from the Pantheon) by a player’s name to make it easier for players to balance custom games.

VII. New Features

a. New Multiplayer Option: Skirmish [Demigod]

i. User selects Skirmish then choose Demigod and then presses Fight

ii. Impulse Reactor puts together players that are balanced to battle it out.

iii. Pantheon displays separate top players for Skirmish.

b. Pantheon Teams [Pantheon]

i. Players can create and join teams

ii. Player s can only belong to one team at a time

iii. Various ranking options based on Teams.

c. Skirmish Tournaments [Pantheon]

i. Not to be confused with the Pantheon itself

ii. Set begin and end date where players participate in a series of Skirmish games with their rankings filtered during the tournament. Top players win prizes.

Version 1.03: Updated March 29, 2009.

+912 Karma | 228 Replies

ty great idea, I think all ideas listed were great.

d. Favor Items. [Evaluating]

Items that should be prioritized to ballance

General: Cloak of Night (free warpstone at lv1 seems way too good)

Assassin: Staff of renewal: Its way too good, for any demigod.

Common: Teleport Pedant: This one may be ballanced by an overall nerf to teleports in a offensive sence.

II. Citadel Upgrades

a. Fortified Structures: I actually think the % of this has to be higher each level, Demigods grow several 100% in power during the game, the towers grow a maximum 40% in hp. right now this is something you only get first level of so you get the initial regen, keep the regen upgrade the same but change the max hp to range from 20% to 100% at max rank.

b. Building Firepower. Reduced cost by 50% is good yes, Id want the same 20% to 100% increase in damage here as well though. An increase in range of 1.5 each level would be great if that's possible as well.

III. In-game Balance

a. Gaining 1k gold at each warrank sounds a bit much to me, Either make it more like 600 or make it depend on the level, like. 100g*WarLevel, so first level would give you 200, second 400 et.c.

b. When a player teleports, their abilities should be disabled for 3 seconds. This is a good change I agree, but I think a better way to solve it would be to give an visual effect at the target 3 seconds before the user arrives, that would prevent tele-ambushing while still allowing you to tele back home for urgent defense.

c. Torch Bearer

iii. Increase the area of the ring of fire quite alot, perhaps make it grow by level, imo it should be something like 50% bigger, modify damage to keep it ballanced. If you could it would be nice to have TB's in fireform move 15% faster while in fire.

Just my immediate thoughts.

. Gaining 1k gold at each warrank sounds a bit much to me, Either make it more like 600 or make it depend on the level, like. 100g*WarLevel, so first level would give you 100, second 200 et.c.

Disagree. Early on, there's hardly any gold. Later on, there's plenty of gold.

And in my opinion there is nothing wrong with that, giving such big amounts of gold so early game may inflate the value of the gold. With 1k each warrank, Warpstone will be something you get at lv3 again.

The change would definitely speed up the pace of the game, on good and bad. Go ahead and implement it, it can always be fine tuned it once we see it's effects.

and oh yeah

III. In-game Balance

Arena:Leviathan: The two +15hp regen flags in each base really ruins the gameplay, get rid of them.

1. Yesterday I played a game and had 5 item pictures that reduced my speed. this is bull crap I am talking worse then stunning at least stunning is gone in couple seconds. 8 second slows is B.S.

Poisoned dagger, wyrmskin gloves, Maim, beasts claws, TB Freeze,

Why? Wtf? Isn't their enough slows in game reduce all to 5% this needs to change If your going to allow all the stacking.

I bet I wasn't even at quarter of my original speed!

2. Also want Pantheon search for players increased to 30 seconds to avoid AI Games

On spawn rate: Slow makes it so there's often no reinforcements on the map at all on small maps. Fast builds up an incredible mass of units. Devastating against towers and single target attackers, but vulnerable to AoE effects.

I rather like the massive HP towers for high. I'd rather those reccomendations be added as additional options.

Also, if grunt damage game option gets in, tower damage game option as well.

Edit: Slows are kind of prevalent. Perhaps universal can't be slowed more than 60%?

Don't know how relevant this is, but I just opened a new topic about items.

Please do something about Sedna and Queen of Thorns heavy minion builds. Both Yetis and Shamblers, in my experience, absolutely suck. Add in extremely high mana cost for the summons (for Sedna and her yetis), it makes it even worse.

If you believe a balance doesn't need to be struck here, I'd encourage you to play Sedna and focus on her Yetis or QoT on her Shambler skills and see how you stack up during a game.

II. Citadel Upgrades

j- Weapon Shop:

lvl 1 Allow items up to 5000 gold <- Base is 3000

lvl 2 Allow items up to 10000 gold

lvl 3 Allow all items to be purchased.

Now team needs some money to improve and makes all weapons a little bit expensive.

General:

Command stack: allow to create a stack of actions to be performed secuentially, such as "move to a place but stopping in some checkpoints".

b. When a player teleports, their abilities should be disabled for 3 seconds.

I know this idea is popular right now, and I've actually been a proponent in past builds because teleganking means that defense will always have an advantage. Something you want to consider here though is that this will tip the balance way in favor of offense.

I played a good game on Cataract earlier today where Wagnard and I kept trading portals with Terror and Iamkira. They would come in and cap one of ours, lock it, and then get pushed out and then we would go do the same with one of theirs..They had early advantage with locking because Terror's QoT had some sweet brambleshield action, and late we had the advantage because Rook and UB could bring the damage, but it was the kind of give and take that makes a game memorable instead of routine...

There would be no later for us to comeback in if abilities locked after porting though, because QoT and Reg would have crucified us as soon as we popped in to defend a portal. What you probably end up getting is teams of QoT and Oak early rushing portals with shields and holding them until gg, with no defense possible before the lock comes down, and no way to develop an alternative team build that successfully counters this.

I agree teleport ganking is cheezy, but you can learn to avoid it, and I have a feeling the solution might be worse than the cure in this case..

Unfortunately I can't think of anything better right now but I'll keep thinking about it...

Well, instead of a three second cooldown, you could have a one or two second cooldown. That might help.

And I don't have the beta, but I'm glad that this game is looking good already. Looking forward to getting it in the near future.

And I am very glad that you devs are taking the time to show us the changes you're looking to make, as well as discussing them with us. I just hope post-game support is as good.

Why cooldown the abilities? 1.5 second stun on arrival plus/used on arrival animation (instead of just popping up) and it's solved. Enough to start running or prepare for battle.

III. In-game Balance

a. Going up a war rank gives all players on that team 1000G.

b. When a player teleports, their abilities should be disabled for 3 seconds.

c. Torch Bearer

i. Fireball I. Please increase damage from 300 to 400.

ii. Deep Freeze. Cool down penalty on others reduced by 3 seconds on each on.

d. Rook

i. HP decreased by about 10% at all levels.

ii. Boulder Roll 3 stun time reduced to 3 seconds.

e. Unclean beast

i. Base speed reduced to 6.0

ii. Reduce melee damage by about 10%.

f. Destroying a tower provides 800 gold, destroying a fortress 1600 bold.

I epecially like the UB/Rook/TB changes - they sound great. However, the increase in gold with towers/fortresses/1k per war rank will be interesting. I dont think any of us can actually predict what that will do - but like Sevenix mentioned earlier, if the effects are bad, its easy to re-tweak it. Teleports having disabled abilities for 3 seconds also sounds great. Ke5trel made a good point about it earlier, but again, if the change is for worst it should be easy to re-tweak.

I also disagree about QoT's shambler skills sucking (as someone mentioend before). Her mulch can deal uou some dangerous damage and her bramble + mulch hp can really make her an even stronger tank than Rook.

Also I really feel that Erebus is just...too weak atm. I think he is the only seriously underpowered one. I cant be 100% sure as to what to change about him...but maybe increase his base speed? increase his base damage? reduce mana cost for mist (now that it cant regen hp)? reduce bite cooldown? Anything really.

I also seriously think those wyskrmin gloves NEED a nerf. You guys reduced damage by 15 last build - that wasnt the problem. The problem is when a DG like regulus starts hitting you with his high DPS, and the gloves effects start to take effect, you can sometimes just slow down so much that you have no chance of surviving. That is of course, unless you start fighting back. But thats not option, as attackspeed is also reduced by 25% percent. So you cant run, you cant attack. Something needs to be changed imo.

Oh and pleaaaaaaaaaaase can we have potraits of our ally's DG health on the side? Would make casting buffs/heals on them so much easier and lets you monitor their hp/situation a lot more easily. I dont know if you guys can get this in for the next build or release, but im pretty sure EVERYONE would love this feature.

Instead of cooldown just make them invincible but can't attack for how ever long u want them to not be able to use stuns.

Actually I really like Soccers idea - they get a 2 second stun, but cannt take damage. Thoughts?

I want to correct something frogboy said.

I Really think each gold mine is currently giving 2gold a sec (at every update of the cas counter)

Go on prison map. (you have 2 mine at start) you will see your gold go up 4$ each time. So it mean 2gold per mine.

Correct me if im wrong here....

And for a balance change, I suggest you look at how much the ICE TB deepfreeze. I think its too usefull for its price.

It can do interrupt, higher colddown on spell, slow us down and do big shatter damage.

I vote remove the interrupt on it. (just my opinion on it... take it or leave it)

Hi,

First, please make something about generals :

I think make them stronger when they have their minions is a good option and you can using different way for that :

example : Genreal's minions take % of damage taken by the Demigod || Or demigod have their speed/attack/HP (change for each demigod) increase by % of minions they have !

We can do a lot of things about minions.

On the other side, alone general have to be less powerfull because actually, we can played general without minions and win !

Secondly, please to make creeps (grunts) more "dangerous" for demigod :

Actually (when i played pantheon) I can be in opponent grunts without a risk to be killed...

Thirdly, about Pantheon

I don't know but I think we are always in normal mode. Can be possible when a players loose all his game, next time it will be in easy mode (against players who loose their game too), and hard mode when players win a lot of battle...

Thanks for listenning us,

PS : I'm still french, and I hope I've been understood ^^

j. Gold rate

i. low is 3 per second (per gold mine). Please change to 4.

ii. normal is 6 per second. Please change to 8.

iii. high is 9 per second. Please change to 12

First of all Gold mines each give 2 per second not 6 in normal mode. Which is fine the way it is atm

Now lets do a little bit of maths here lets say you have 3 Gold mines for a team with 3 players and the gold mines give 8 gold per sec for every player. 3 x 8 = 24 gold per sec for every player.

Now lets see how much money everyone would have earned solely because of his gold mines in 10 minutes. 600 * 24 + 1000 (starting money) = 15.400 Gold for every player after only 10 minutes. Then you will have to add the money you get from kills and from farming reinforcements. Now frogboy proposes 1000 gold for every war rank for each player of the relevant team as well. After 10 minutes you are war rank 3 - 5 I think. which would give you additional 3000 - 5000 gold

Lets assume together with the other money sources you will have 25.000 gold after 10 minutes, with war rank 5 and some kills it would be no problem. I didn’t even count currency upgrades in at the moment

You could afford an artefact and 4 other expensive items then. Which in my eyes is insane. 10 minutes are Early to mid game in Demigod the way things are right now. With the changes frogboy proposes everyone would have an high-end equipment and probably very good Citadel upgrades as well. Also Killing other demigods fades into the background because its not really that much money compared with what you can get with the help of mines.

Your new idea also creates a problem with capture locks. A cap lock lasts for 45 seconds and only costs 250 Gold.
With 8 Gold per sec the advantage of your team by locking a gold mine would be 45 * 2 * 8 * x
2 = 1 Mine more for you 1 Mine less for your opponent
x = number of players in the team

For example you have a 3 player team again: 90 * 2 * 8 * 3 = 2160

An advantage of 4320 Gold you achieved with the capture lock.
That would mean you had to increase the costs of the Lock to at least 1000 Gold or something in that vicinity, which would make it completely useless when you want to lock something else than a Gold Flag.

All in all, the whole game would only circulate around capturing and defending gold mines. Which in my opinion is bad.

Just out of curiousity, why are we increasing Gold income by so much? (with the towers and war rank bonuses etc.?). I am in no way saying its a bad idea - to be fair we havent tried it and it would be foolish to say what it would be play like without actually trying it first hand.

I just wanna know the point in giving us so much more gold?

OK so after a bit of discussion I'm thinking the best solution, rather than totally altering game balance with teleport debuffs, would simply be to have a telltale when someone is teleporting to a location that starts when they begin the cast (or if that is too much 3 seconds from arrival). That way the offensive player sees the port coming and can escape the gank or set up ambush if necessary, but doesn't have huge advantage

Instead of cooldown just make them invincible but can't attack for how ever long u want them to not be able to use stuns.

Also this does pretty much the same thing as quoted for alot less programming, no?

Quoting Ke5trel,

reply 20

I agree with this. Having a portal animation of some sort open at the target location for the duration of the casting would be ideal.

I see Draginol suggests this might not be as fun or only chases after balance in theory. It sounds like the most enjoyable solution to me. It's not fun to have your powers completely disabled. Now if the reason is that adding this in would be difficult at this stage then I understand.

OK so after a bit of discussion I'm thinking the best solution, rather than totally altering game balance with teleport debuffs, would simply be to have a telltale when someone is teleporting to a location that starts when they begin the cast (or if that is too much 3 seconds from arrival). That way the offensive player sees the port coming and can escape the gank or set up ambush if necessary, but doesn't have huge advantage

I said that before, but nobody listened ¬¬

"Why cooldown the abilities? 1.5 second stun on arrival plus/used on arrival animation (instead of just popping up) and it's solved. Enough to start running or prepare for battle."

Look at change requests like this:

You have say 20 points of resources available to make all the changes.

Changing teleporting in to disable abilities for 3 seconds costs 1 point to implement. Having teleporting in create a new animation where the players are teleporting to might take 5 points. That means other changes would have to not be made.

I agree that the best solution would be to have teleporting result in the players essentially "Beaming" to that location with an effect showing up where they are invincible but don't show up for say 2 seconds. But since that isn't already in the game, it could mean more time to implement. That doesn't mean it won't ever be done but we're talking about for release.

Or as we say in engineering - perfect is the enemy of good.

better than spending 1 point to potentially make the game even less fun - flag capturing and locking will be no fun for the defenders with that change, you should leave it as it is for now and implement a better change like a warp in animation later.

Even portalling in a flag at the mid of the map becomes a big risk when you have everything disabled for 3 seconds as teleport has a 3 seconds cast time and in that 3 seconds an enemy could be at that location and fuck you up.

With all honest respect but you write so much stuff which would make the game worse than it is now or at least which would risk to totally screw up the balance that I am not convinced in your expertise when it comes to gameplay changes in Demigod. It also doesn't increase my confidence that you want changes on things which are currently not the way you describe them - and this isn't the first post where you got a few game mechanics wrong.

(I am playing the gamereplays.org tournament currently, so I don't have much time right now but I will dissect many of your proposed changes later - some are okay though.)

I am not convinced in your expertise when it comes to gameplay changes

This made me chuckle.

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The Official Demigod Change Request Thread