Demigod brain storming

By Frogboy on May 24, 2009 7:51:56 PM from

It’s hard to believe, given everything Demigod has been through, that it’s only been available for about a month!

This week we’ll be putting the first significant update to Demigod through QA to see if we can get it out this week. v1.01 has all kinds of improvements to make the experience AFTER you get into a game much better.

But there’s some things we’re going to be looking at doing to improve the online experience before you get into a game.

Here are some examples:

1. We’d like to have the connection information dialog also display a performance rating. This is an issue that people are familiar with all the way back to the Total Annihilation and Starcraft days.

2. We’d like to display the skill rating right in the connection dialog. This will take a bit of doing on our part but I think it’s worth doing. That way, you get into a game where it’s 4 buddies ready to keep crushing 4 random guys and you can see what you’re getting yourself into. It will encourage much more even games. Few people like an imbalanced game experience.

3. Net connection quality. Games usually just display ping. But ping isn’t enough. As we’ve seen from the Speedtest thread there are a surprising number of users who have incredibly poor connections (think barely better than 56k modem). Some DSLs have 1megabit downstream but less than 150kilobit upstream. There’s no way that person is going to have a good experience in a 5 on 5 game. And they’ll bring down everyone else. So we need to find a way to calculate that and display it.

4. Karma. Okay, this is a controversial thing to have so we’d love to hear from you guys on the best way to find out if a particular user is a griefer. No system is perfect but I am sure we can think of a way to make it so that people can do something about that.

Connection info in game

Another thing we’d like to do is have a way to easily make people in your games friends so you can grab them later. We’ll be doing a lot of things in the coming months with the friends system. We hadn’t originally intended to deploy the Impulse friends system in Demigod at all as it was being designed as an Impulse Phase 4 feature but it became apparent in beta that we needed some way for people to interact. So you’ll see that sort of thing evolve a lot going forward.

+912 Karma | 116 Replies

Quoting Jaxian,

reply 24

I disagree that the choice is between ruining the game for the majority of people or ruining it for a minority. I think that it is a choice between forcing everyone to have to deal with a minor inconvenience, or completely ruining the game for a minority of people.

Honestly, I don't think it's a horrible fate, to sometimes have an early leaver in your game. In fact, it has been my experience that people almost never leave the game unless the game is already decided. I shouldn't be horrified at this thought: the biggest problem is that the game currently freezes for thirty seconds while the player disconnects, then if other players follow, the game continues to freeze over and over, then you're left fighting a bunch of computer players. The concede option would fix all of this. Keep in mind too that this game is very prone to crashes. But putting in a karma system isn't going to change that.

What I don't see often is players getting killed a few times early on, and rage-quitting before the game is actually decided. Is this just me?

Regardless, a big problem with DotA is that people boot others out of the lobby for, in my opinion, absolutely no good reason. A ping too high maybe, or maybe just a whim. And I'm already starting to see this happen in Demigod. Even with just ping, I can't count the number of times I've seen players get booted because their ping is too high (even though I've seen players with higher ping run just fine). The last thing I'd want to do is give game-creators even more incentive to boot people joining their games, and this is exactly what these sorts of karma systems do, except that the karma system is worse because once your karma is low, you can never repair it.

As for ESEA, I personally think their karma system works horribly and its problems are masked because only the most hardcore of players play EA Sports games online.

Even if karma is implemented, I don't expect I'd have a low karma. But if I somehow did, you can bet I'd be asking to refund a now-unplayable game.

It's either just you, or it's DG in general. In Dota, people leaving after being killed once or twice early on or even leaving because their favourite hero got picked or they didn't like the hero they got given are commonplace in my games. Admittedly the problem isn't as bad in DG, but considering how much the AI feeds in this game, a leaver early on could potentially ruin the game (That is, unless you have AI switched off). You say it's a minor inconvenience now (And in DG yes it is), but if there were somehow a mass migration of Dota users to DG, the number of asshats would shoot up, and it would cease to be such a minor inconvenience. Oh and also, another thing I just thought of, whilst a concede button would indeed help, on Dota there ARE people who will manually CTRL+ALT+DEL and kill the game process, which is the same as a disconnect, just to piss people off.

Also, never assume that a low karma couldn't be fixed. Like spazznd said above, having the karma calculated from the ratings given over the last 30 days would probably give a good indication, as well as allow people who started off sucking miserably to recover once they improve. Besides, a karma system like that (I really must stop calling it karma though, it's more like player statistics what i'm describing) would be very useful in helping the matchmaker service give good matchups ie: Let the nice people who play well, don't flame, don't ragequit, etc, play against each other, noobs can actually go up against noobs (Or, even better, a sort of parenting up mode where a pro captain teaches a noob team how to play), and the flamers can flame away to their hearts content with other flamers, etc.

Oh and one final thing, actually following those player statistics would be entirely up to the host. I'm sure for every host that wants a decent game and would want to filter out flamers, ragers, etc, there's a host who really wouldn't give a damn and let people play anyway.

Double post, my bad!

Maybe player ratings can be based off favour? Like an average earned per game. Favour is a pretty good way of determining a players contribution to the game. I have lost games with the highest favour score.

I think win/loss ratio is a hard one to judge in this game, the game depends on having a really good team, especially in 3v3+. I am not a good player yet, but I struggle to see how one player can really carry a team in this game. Three mediocre players will beat a good player with 2 bad ones in my experience.

Karma is a good idea, but not something where it can be abused. Something simple, like at the end of the game being able to tick a name for positive or negative. This way those who quit won't get the option to use it. Encourage people to use it as well, so that positive Karma can be used in game perhaps for bonuses, even if mild like a 100HP boost or 100Gold at start. Maybe even 10 Karma = 1 Mana or 1 HP or one gold to a maximum of 100.

Negative Karma = -1 mana or -1HP. The bonus is too low to really be worth abusing, but is a slight incentive for people to use the system. Also, if one player decides to grief and give you minus 1, theoretically the other players should be giving you +4.

(see if this works, made a post over in the "rage quitter" thread that didn't actually post)

Karma: Bad idea to let users rate, too much abuse.

Bad idea to get MORE karma for sticking game out and loosing, why? Because it'll just tie to the issue of people not wanting to play with other people, they'll see high karma and think = bad player. Karma is just bad idea all around.

What game really needs (and will indirectly help all these "issues") = A good friends system, a good chat system ... ala GPGnet (sorry, had to say it). Adding friends, inviting people to games, a message when someone on your friends list joins a game ... etc. All the long-term SupCom players know what I'm talking about.

People want good teammates. People learn that the "cooler" they are, the more buddies they will have, the more enjoyable game experience they will have. It all works itself out if there is a robust "buddy" system ... and "game joining" system.

In SupCom, people make their own "banlists" (with pen and paper on their desk) of players with slow computers, slow connections, or just plain jerks. Over time, treating people with respect, giving good advice to noobs (not just yelling at them for sucking in-game), you have lots of friends. Everyone starts to know who are the Jerks/asshats, etc. It all works itself out.

Just really need that good friend/chat/game-joining system. etc.

Maybe Karma could work if it is individual.

After a game, if you didn't like a specific player, you could give him negative karma but it only affect you and not everyone. Someone can hate playing with a specific player where someone else could like it.

So everyone could have his own "karma list" and the game would take it in consideration when matching you up in a skirmish/pantheon game. So you would be more likely to play again with people you gave good karma, and the opposite with people you gave bad karma without affecting how other people perceive these players.

This way, noone can abuse the system to make a player unable to play with others, only with yourself.

(sorry if this is a double post, but I wrote something 15 minutes ago, and so far, It's not here)

To expand on what Baphonaut suggested about Pen and Paper "Ban Lists". How about adding this suggestion to the demigod inteface. That way each user can track for themselves in a convient location.

Allow people to rate players on sportmanship, skill level and Connection, and the number of games played against. These lists could be shared between players, so that friends can build up players they like to play against, and who they choose not to.

It would be nice to include a win/loss and current streak against the player's account.

Have it so people can publish or share their "lists" with other players.

This could be implemented as a local copy, or on a server.

SquidLord
comment 74
Perhaps some Trust Metrics can be used to implement a Karma systemThis metrics, used in Google-rank or in Advogato, try to issue exploits and attacks.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_metricThank you, Elnopintan, for stealing the thoughts right out of my mind! But I'll amplify a bit for the sake of the readership.As I see it, what I've been wanting in a game system is not a tool that tells me what the community thinks of someone, but what I'm likely to think of someone. The community as a whole very well may be moving in a direction I don't enjoy: over-competitive (or under), obsessed with certain behaviours or avoiding certain tactics, whatever. I don't care about them. What I do care about is rating folks after a game based on my involvement / fun / approval and then having the system take my opinion as paramount and the opinion of my Friends / folks I've ranked highly, and then extrapolatively rank folks as I might based on my historical tastes and what people I consider meaningful to me (ie. those I had fun with) rated them.In a system like this, "gaming the system" is very, very difficult. A Web of Trust matrix exists as a set of connections, so if me and my friends enjoy playing together, we'll be mutually rating each other highly. Doesm't matter to the rest of the matrix, we can be perfectly happy doing so. If one of my friends ventures out of the group bubble of ratings and ranks someone he found in a pick-up game well, then the web links up, and a friend of a friend'll be rated somewhat more favourably (or poorly if its a negative rating!). This lets people get more of what they want and less of what they don't, and that's a total plus.Automated ratings based on karma from "completed / won / lost" games are a wholly orthagonal issue. I'd rather play with someone who may have disconnected 5 of his last 10 games (due to network ick, maybe, or whatnot) that my friends consider a good rating than a guy that rides every game out to the bitter end but is a complete douche to game with or who exploits every tiny exploitable ever. That is the kind of information I need.Mechanically, all it'd take is a post-game thumbs-up, thumbs-down or "do nothing" button next to everyone's name. You don't have to rate anyone, but you can. And that data goes into the database, and when a new person appears in front of you, walk the web and see what trust level they possess. (It's usually implimented as some kind of spreading activation network but any kind of digraph would do just fine ...)There's a web-link sharing implimentation of something very like over at Jaanix. I'm sure if there were any questions about underlying collaborative filtering algorithms, Joe'd be happy to help.

Everyone ignored this post, and I think it has by far the most interesting (and best) solution.

Read it!

I think that karma, if modifiable by others would be a problem.

The easiest way to handle this would be showing stats as follows:

Games played, games won, games lost, percentage of unfinished games (i.e (games won + games lost) / games played). The unfinished games statistics would not show before say 5-10 games so that if you happen to have to leave in your first game, you don't get stamped as a person who always leaves.

Yes I know this does not separate between "rage quitters" and the usual disconnects but does it have to? If and hopefully when the net code gets optimized normal disconnects would be less likely to occur.

The net quality could be tested once with an automatic test of download and upload speed that could be re-run if wanted. This result could be converted into a net quality rating.

Quoting Ceylin,

reply 22

-1 Karma for leaving the game early

+1 Karma for winning a game

+3 Karma for losing a game.

Really, what you need to do is reward players for sticking it out. Can't just award completed games, because most people will stay in for a game they're winning, thats not really all that impressive. Most people you'd want to play with will stick it through no matter what.

Also though, the biggest way to fix this is to have a rating system. That way even if they do rage-quit, your rating gets better. This will matter much more though when there are clan wars. Right now, with random teams its too easy to screw someone over.

I haven't gotten to the end of the post but Ceylin is absolutely right. I think, however, instead of points which you could keep getting (thus making rating someone tricy, as in "are they experienced" or "are they reliable players" which do not indicate good players).

I would recomend some division in order to show a % rating to portray someones perfornace per game. Something like +points over # of games or something along those lines. 100% is impossible but damned impressive, but that 20% portrays your not getting points and that might be for a reason >.>

Quoting BigBad,

reply 6

(sorry if this is a double post, but I wrote something 15 minutes ago, and so far, It's not here)

To expand on what Baphonaut suggested about Pen and Paper "Ban Lists". How about adding this suggestion to the demigod inteface. That way each user can track for themselves in a convient location.

Allow people to rate players on sportmanship, skill level and Connection, and the number of games played against. These lists could be shared between players, so that friends can build up players they like to play against, and who they choose not to.

It would be nice to include a win/loss and current streak against the player's account.

Have it so people can publish or share their "lists" with other players.

This could be implemented as a local copy, or on a server.

^^^ This

Quoting Lord Shitzu,

reply 7

SquidLordcomment 74Perhaps some Trust Metrics can be used to implement a Karma systemThis metrics, used in Google-rank or in Advogato, try to issue exploits and attacks.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_metricThank you, Elnopintan, for stealing the thoughts right out of my mind! But I'll amplify a bit for the sake of the readership.As I see it, what I've been wanting in a game system is not a tool that tells me what the community thinks of someone, but what I'm likely to think of someone. The community as a whole very well may be moving in a direction I don't enjoy: over-competitive (or under), obsessed with certain behaviours or avoiding certain tactics, whatever. I don't care about them. What I do care about is rating folks after a game based on my involvement / fun / approval and then having the system take my opinion as paramount and the opinion of my Friends / folks I've ranked highly, and then extrapolatively rank folks as I might based on my historical tastes and what people I consider meaningful to me (ie. those I had fun with) rated them.In a system like this, "gaming the system" is very, very difficult. A Web of Trust matrix exists as a set of connections, so if me and my friends enjoy playing together, we'll be mutually rating each other highly. Doesm't matter to the rest of the matrix, we can be perfectly happy doing so. If one of my friends ventures out of the group bubble of ratings and ranks someone he found in a pick-up game well, then the web links up, and a friend of a friend'll be rated somewhat more favourably (or poorly if its a negative rating!). This lets people get more of what they want and less of what they don't, and that's a total plus.Automated ratings based on karma from "completed / won / lost" games are a wholly orthagonal issue. I'd rather play with someone who may have disconnected 5 of his last 10 games (due to network ick, maybe, or whatnot) that my friends consider a good rating than a guy that rides every game out to the bitter end but is a complete douche to game with or who exploits every tiny exploitable ever. That is the kind of information I need.Mechanically, all it'd take is a post-game thumbs-up, thumbs-down or "do nothing" button next to everyone's name. You don't have to rate anyone, but you can. And that data goes into the database, and when a new person appears in front of you, walk the web and see what trust level they possess. (It's usually implimented as some kind of spreading activation network but any kind of digraph would do just fine ...)There's a web-link sharing implimentation of something very like over at Jaanix. I'm sure if there were any questions about underlying collaborative filtering algorithms, Joe'd be happy to help.

Everyone ignored this post, and I think it has by far the most interesting (and best) solution.

Read it!

Yes, that is interesting too. (Problem is, dude needs to learn how to use a thing called "paragraphs" ...)

Either way, an in-game system for the user would be nice.

Team skirmish and pantehon queues if it hasn't been mentioned, that's one of my favorite features and its absence really wrecked CnC 3 imo.

Also what if Karma weren't a persistent stat? Less capacity for griefing but a player who exhibits the same behavior over and over would still be flagged the majority of the time. Even a 2-3 day time periods for it to diminish might lead people to cool off a bit, though it would largely negate the idea of good karma and it wouldn't interact with auto-matching on a meaningful level (unless you included that too I guess, but personally I wouldn't).

Also I've gotta say I'm not sold on the benefits of replays. It homogenizes people's approach to the game very quickly. On games like WC3 and Starcraft it resulted in further refinement and proliferation of things like basic unit rushes (zerglings, grunts, footmen) which is fun for some people but lowered the unit diversity of the game and gave newer players no real experience with more complex units to build their own strategies.

So say someone releases replays of themselves stomping everyone with UB using favor item X, item Y, and item Z. One of three things is going to happen. 1. nothing, no one watches or draws conclusions from it (why bother with the replay system in the first place). 2. people imitate it and it expedites the development of a counter strategy, 3. people imitate it, there is no good counter strategy that's versatile enough and the game degenerates into imitation (and perhaps a very narrow scope of counter strategies) and players live patch to patch, changing to the next imbalanced (regardless of how minutely OP it may be) strat.

Personally I think outcome 3 is inevitable no matter what you do, but the replays exacerbate it. Bear in mind UB is just a hero I picked because it's the one I've seen the most complaints about, regardless of whether he's OP or not has no real bearing on my point, you can insert any other hero/build that is perceived as OP.

quoting post

I made a suggestion in the following thread regarding this:

https://forums.demigodthegame.com/353722

The most important point is this:

* Have the Impulse friend list interact with the match up screen directly

Example:

Friends and foes

1) The warning flag can be shared with other friends on your list, but NOT globally, so as to prevent illicit use from being spread to everyone. Hovering with the mouse over the warning flag will display a tooltip with comments as to why the flag was put there.

2) The green guy indicates that the user is currently on your friend list.

3) The star rating is a mashup of ranking and performance level (with an additional mouse hover activated tooltip explaining the details).

To be honest; the matchmaking system you guys have currently has enough problems. I think adding the karma system (now) will be just adding in more complexity of how to make a good match in the system; where the system doesn't even work half the time now. I say keep it at the basics and fix the matchmaking system NOW before you go into ideas of karma and player rating.

karma does not need to be a big comlicated thing, it can be a very small thing which can be helpful.

example dont have many things give karma only 1 thing give it. say leaving game before its finished if you leave more games then you stay inside to finish your karma goes to red otherwise its green.

sure this would not be the greatest thing to ever been invented but it will but it will not cuase grief and people will understand how it works, the simpler the better.

skill rating seems lot more intresting to me then the karma which hardly intrests me at all. skill rating should be based on oponents skill rating also i think, not on % win/lose. krushing noobs should not be the way to get high skill rating fast.

The Forums Are Now Closed!

The content will remain as a historical reference, thank you.

Demigod brain storming