I don't get it. I though that Demigod's net code was developed by Stardock and you are responsible for it. All this fixes and patches about connectivity, they all come from Stardock, we know this from Brad and his journals. So...i don't know what to think anymore.

P2p is pain these days. If you have a crappy connection and have high ping to the host, at least you didn't lag the game for everyone or slow it down because you have a crappy PC. Not to mention all the p2p connectivity issues, when players cannot connect to others.

Frogboy,

I think its ridiculous of you to expect a player to be satisfied with a 2 human vs. 1 human + 1 AI matchup. its not fun for any of the 3 humans involved. the team of 2 will easily farm money and exp from the AI and gain an insurmountable lead. for the team of 2 this isn't much more fun than a comp stomp. for the poor bastard who got stuck with a Bot for a partner it feels like being used as a human golf-tee. 

quiting at the outset of a game of 2v1+bot is not inconsiderate. it is rational behavior. it saves all 3 humans time. its not objectifying other people's time at all. you need to acknowledge that players seek a particular game experience and not just any old match will do. if this is really your attitude then you have a major attitude adjustment to make in terms of understanding the mindset of multiplayer gamers. 

I say this will all due respect, because I greatly admire the overall manner in which Stardock interacts with their customers. However, what you have said in this latest post seems to reveal a gigantic blindspot in your understanding multiplayer. Please educate yourself. 

I want to voice my agreement with this point of view.  I guess I'm in the minority, but I've had fun games that included AIs when both teams had them.  What bothers me is when things aren't balanced out, since it tends to mean losing in a really frustrating and un-fun way.

I've won a game paired with an AI against 2 human players. That being said, if I had the option to turn off AI players, even if it took twice as long to find a game, I would do it. Especially if it keeps people from quitting at game start. Give players the options they want: no AI, team size (2v2, 3v3, 4v4, 5v5), etc., and let them see how many players are looking for the same game type as them.

Also, are the game options really random ?? Because that seems like a HORRIBLE design decision. Especially since you can't even tell what the options were set to! People who play competitive games seriously ALWAYS use standard options. Not doing so would be like randomizing the distance of a 3-point shot in every basketball game. Don't do that.

This. Plus it's said in far less inflamatory language than mine would have been. Thanks Transsitive.

As a former finalists in PGL (professional gamer's league) and the top ranked player on Boneyards (for Total Annihilation) I think I do have some understanding of the genre.

Perhaps I should clarify what I am saying: People should at least tell others that they are quitting and why instead of simply exiting because by doing so, it gives the impression that there's some bug in the game.

As to why pantheon and skirmish have had to substitute AI players, there's reasons for that that I cannot easily go into except to say that as the publisher, we have limited capabilities over what UI's the game shows (our overlay can inject messages and we've tried to add more but there's only so much we can do).

Gas Powered Games is working to make sure the MP experience is better I can assure you of that.  But up till now, we've been stuck between a rock and a hard place on the match making.  Make people wait too long and they complain it doesn't work. Don't have it wait long enough and you end up having to have bots. It's a no win.

No.  Demigod's net code was not developed by Stardock. It was developed by Gas Powered Games.  We initially licensed a third party library to handle the initial NAT connection between players (similar to what GPGNet provideD) and then, finding it didn't scale wrote a new one over the last 2 weeks.  But once you're in that lobby (or in that game) we're not involved.

As for P2P - which RTS's do you know of that aren't P2P? Can you name any?  Dawn of War 2 is P2P. SupCom is P2P. Company of Heroes is P2P.  C&C is P2P.

The only one that isn't pure P2P is battle.net and that is only because it was developed over a long long period of time where it's a hybrid of many things (it's mostly P2P, part client server, part client/host).  Obviously Battle.net is the best system out there but it's not exactly licenseable.

But in a game like Demigod, if you don't have the players synced up, which is really what you're talking about, you would have to have cases where you think you hit a player but you really didn't because that guy was lagging and thought it was somewhere else.  Forget whether it's P2P or not, it's a question of whether it's synced or not.  If all sides are synced then it's the same thing on all sides.

Now, it's probably not how I would have done it.  I would probably have done it client/server where when you press a command it's not acknowledged until it reaches the host.  But p2p works extremely well for most games and there's a reason why most RTS's are P2P.

When will the "feature" of 5v5 be implimented. Dota 3v3 sucks, and demigod 3v3 sucks. 

LOL.

Well I can assure you that Gas Powered Games does read these forums as much as we do. They are hard at work adding new features and enhancing game play for Demigod.

The same problem happened with Sins of a Solar Empire.  Stardock didn't develop Sins of a Solar Empire. We published it. We were heavily involved in its design and such but we don't code it.  But people would give us credit or blame for some feature or lack of feature.

Demigod's awesomness is because of the hard work of people at Gas Powered Games in terms of their 3D modeling, their art, game mechanics, animation, awesome 3D engine, etc.

But similarly, a lot of the things people want in Demigod are things that only GPG can add and they are watching and taking note of what things they can and can't realistically add in a free update.

Similarly, the Stardock team has looked at what it can add via Impulse Reactor.  But as a practical matter, we can only add features that make sense in all online games, not just Demigod.   

When something is loading can we have an image of a frog hoping on a progress bar?

Seriously, it could be pretty cool to have some form of turtle-ish demigod. I mean, why not?

I wish I could just go out here in Denmark and stumble over such a cute turtle, it's so sweet

Looking forward to the documentary!

Frankly, blaming it on the user population and saying WC3 is 3rd in franchise with millions of users is a weak argument.

What do you think I'm telling my friends right now following your answer?

"No, don't come, not enough people to get you a match going in less than 5min". And most likely answer "Ouch, sucks, used to be able to play in 30s on WC3".

Again, people don't care about your excuses. They don't give a crap if you have technical problems or low user base. They want to click and have a game in less than a minute. I know it, you know it. You can't change people mindset.

I really hope all the problems are mostly behind us and the European release will add thousands of players, but something tells me even then you won't get a match going in less than a minute.

The matchmaking is terrible, it needs fixing and improvments, it's a fact and we know you are working on it, but again, little joe in his home does not care, he wants to play correctly now, not tomorrow.

I somewhat agree but the latest updates of the past week make the matchmaking pretty decent.  Also, you can't expect any company to compare to Blizzard.  That's like asking a ball player to hit as many homeruns as sammy sosa on steroids.