Demigod: June FAQ

By Frogboy on June 17, 2009 2:35:08 PM from

JoeUser Forums

Greetings!

So where do things stand with Demigod as of mid June with our favorite action RTS/RPG game?

Let's dig into this with some frequent questions I get messaged.

Q: Who are you?

A: Frogboy = Brad Wardell, President & CEO of Stardock

Q: Who makes Demigod?

A: The award-winning developer Gas Powered Games is the developer of Demigod. However, as some may have noticed from Sins of a Solar Empire and Demigod, Stardock gets very involved in the games it publishes. The most recent example being when Demigod's MP connectivity was problematic during the initial launch, we assigned our own developers to fix it.

Q: What is the status of on-line connectivity.

A: Pretty much perfect now in custom games. I.e. as good or better than any RTS out there. That said, we can't control what happens in-game with people who disconnect or have shaky connections. We take the data and send it to Gas Powered Games to see if there's anything that can be improved.

Q: How good is the online experience now?

A: I'm highly biased but I would say it's generally pretty awesome IMO -- now. That said, I have a long list of complaints:

1. Rage quitting. v1.1 will let teams concede and we're going to start rating people based on the % of games they complete/concede ([good],[fair],[poor]) so other people can choose to play with them and in pantheon/skirmish games it will be biased towards those who complete a game (or at least concede as a team).

2. "Random" disconnects. These don't tend to be as random as they look. There are people who have, to be put mildly, non-ideal Internet connections. I had almost forgotten the term "ISDN" until playing online. This happens in every game but it is still something on our list to work with GPG in making better.

3. Pantheon / Skirmish quitters. Biggest problem here is where people quit pantheon games before they start. I mean literally quit. The solution I think here is to let people join as groups which is something we're talking to GPG about doing in a future update.

But as some have observed, I tend to be a glass is half empty guy. In all honesty, I'd say that Demigod is the funnest game I've played online in years - since Total Annihilation for me. YMMV.

Q: How are sales?

A: Mixed. Digital sales are great. Retail sales need work. We are hoping word of mouth on the game will encourage people to go to their local retailer and pick up the game.

Q: Where are the two new Demigods?

A: We're still working out the details with GPG. They're heavily into Supreme Commander 2 but they are working on more Demigods. We are leaning towards having both Demigods being assassins since they are, statistically, the most popular. One good, one evil.

Q: When is v1.1 due to be released.

A: Next week.

Q: What are the next updates beyond v1.1 going to focus on?

A: Modding & clan support are at the top of the feature list. Beyond that, it will depend on how sales continue to be honest.

Q:Why isn't Gas Powered Games on the forums?

A: They are reading the forums, I can assure you. They're just extremely busy working on the actual game. I don't code on Demigod so I have the luxury of being able to hang out with you guys and actually play on the game.

Q: I get confused over developers and publishers. Could you explain this more?

A: Sure. Stardock develops and publishes games. It developed, for example, Galactic Civilizations I/II and The Political Machine. It published Sins of a Solar Empire and Demigod.

When we publish, we get heavily involved on the game design to a very large degree (in Sins we worked closely with Ironclad on everything from what each frigate and cruiser did as well as the economic system, in Demigod, we were heavily involved with the flags and citadel upgrade concepts) but we don't write any code for the game itself but ultimately (after the initial release) ended up writing a lot of the connectivity code to replace the licensed system we had used.

The next game we're developing ourselves is Elemental. That's one we're developing and publishing.

Q: When are you going to fix "the balance" in Demigod.

A: You losing a game to someone doesn't imply an imbalanced game. V1.1 will be tweaking things like Heart of Life and numerous other things but no, <Insert Demigod here that ticked you off in last night's game> is not over powered.

Q: How do you plan to keep the community growing?

A: We're now close enough that I can tell you have a new feature that will be going into beta. It's called ReadyToPlay(TM). It will help you get groups of people together for games.

We are also going to have official tournaments after v1.1. The rankings you see today are going to disappear after v1.1 now that the early cheese issues and data reporting is taken care of better.

Overall, the community seems to be growing pretty steadily in terms of # of games played per day.

But the main thing about the stats is that MY stats will get reset because I can assure you any time I lose it's due to the other guy's demigod being over powered, the other guy cheating somehow, or some bug. There is no other possible reason as I think you would all agree...

+897 Karma | 84 Replies

It is nice to see you posting here again Frogboy. Seriously, your posts actually make me want to buy more games from Stardock. No Joke.

Contrasting these 2 responses from Frogboy makes me a little uneasy :

Q: Where are the two new Demigods?

And

Q: What are the next updates beyond v1.1 going to focus on?

A: Modding & clan support are at the top of the feature list. Beyond that, it will depend on how sales continue to be honest.

I would have preferred, in relation to the answer to the latter question, something along the lines of "Modding & clan support are at the top of the feature list, together with the two new Demigods and a couple more maps. Beyond that, it will depend on how sales continue to be honest".

quoting post

Q: How are sales?
A: Mixed. Digital sales are great. Retail sales need work. We are hoping word of mouth on the game will encourage people to go to their local retailer and pick up the game.

I would wager future retail sales are going to hinge on how good the demo is. It's also hurt that it's taken this long to get a demo out. Make sure the demo is great!

Thank you for opening pantheon up to 3v3. you guys may want to take a look, because i've been conneceted to a lot of games with only 5 people. Doing the math that probably shoudln't happen.

Are we going to see more maps at any point? 3v3 is the most popular game type atm and we only have 2 maps that support it, Cataract is getting old fast.

Lev and Exile are simply too big/spaced out to compliament 3v3 as there is a lot of dead time and poor pvp interaction when a much of the action can be taking part a million miles away on the map

As for the balance issues, no game is ever 100% fair upon first release, however I had to laugh at your response because people complaining about erebus or hol were obviously right if you're taking the time to patch it. So some of the people complaining about various things being OP atm are probably right also.

So basically the games balanced until the very moment you change something THEN it's perfect...until next time.

No offense guys but this game is looking more and more like a budget title that got pushed out the door a little too early, got off to a bad start and has turned into a salvage mission.

Updates depending on sales is scary because I love this game but I can only buy one copy and for a multiplayer only game, demigods is light on content already, when my friends ask if it's worth 50$ it's a hard sell. Presenting a catch-22/chicken or egg scenerio

Random disconnects dont only happen on bad internet connections. They happened all the time since 1.01 when I had Fiber optic internet.

poopdick wrote :

No offense guys but this game is looking more and more like a budget title that got pushed out the door a little too early, got off to a bad start and has turned into a salvage mission.

Ouch.

Quoting CitizenKane2,

reply 7

poopdick wrote :

No offense guys but this game is looking more and more like a budget title that got pushed out the door a little too early, got off to a bad start and has turned into a salvage mission.
Ouch.

I didn't mean for that to sound quite so harsh, what I was trying to say is what we have now is a great starting point with solid basics however this game is very light on content. If Demigods was 30$ on Xbox Live Arcade it would get a 10/10 "game of the year" from me but this is a full price retail release with no single player campign, very limited selection of maps and only 8 gods (at this time)

"Sales have to increase for new content"

I would say content has to increase for new sales

I'm also confused as to why there was no demo at release? Was that mentioned in an earlier journal? Do you guys plan to buy some space on gametrailers when you release the new gods to get some hype going? couldn't hurt to remind people demigods is out

Thank you for the update. I am concerned though in how you mentioned gpg is concentrating heavily on sup comm 2 now. I hope there will be continued long term support of this game. I am sure many people will have no problem paying for additional content. The game is a gem but it needs more heroes, maps, tweaks etc over time.

DG needs more marketing !

cooperate with some

- DotA-fansites

- game-websites

- game magazines

- websites & magazines focudes on online-gaming

!!!!!

IMO, the idea for 2 new assassins should be 2 new generals. You say that assassins are the most popular type of character, wouldn't you want that to shift to something a bit more balanced than skewing assassins even further? I do agree that 1 sin and 1 general would be best, at the very least to keep both sides even.

That's just my $.02, take it as you will.

Good Job Frogboy, keep it up

Hope the sales are good enough for more updates and extra content.

I would even pay for extra content, just to support the game.

So is that it for Pantheon connectivity issues? It's as good as it's gonna get?

ie the biggest reason why you hardly ever get a proper 2v2 is that people purposefully disconnect before the game launches?

I came back to the game after a week, played a Pantheon game last night, looked like it was gonna be a 2v2 but ended up being 1v1 with an AI on either side.

Obviously, that ended up being an 'Abuse the AI' game. Even tho I managed to win by having an easier AI to kill repeatedly, it didn't register on my game list.

You should just make Pantheon 1v1. If you want team games, it's so much better to do custom. You can filter it for exactly who u want to play.. ie skill level, classes, ping.. whatever. Just boot whoever u don't want to make the perfect game.

Pantheon should be about random encounters to see who has most skill (ie it's more like ranked games).

whooo! welcome back frogboy!

And I agree on the connectivity, it is almost perfect. The biggest issue hampering games right now is low Sim Speed. I'm not sure how that could be dealt with, but otherwise the game plays fantastic now.

Quoting ToxDrawace,

reply 20

Putting in 2 new assassins will only skew it more to assassins. I think it'd generally be a good idea to keep an even number of assassins and generals.

dito !
1 assasin and 1 general would be better !

agreed

+1 We need a general too. Some support guy, like it is now with Sedna and QoT.

Anyway, why don't you discuss this with the community? Why don't you want feedback on your ideas for the new demigods?

Mixing groups and random teams is the worst thing you can do to Pantheon. I'm fully aware that DG lacks big enough community for solo and multiple team ladders, but mixing them into a single one would make it utterly meaningless and uncompetative for anything less than the largest team allowed.

The posted seems to me a lot like "no solution for Pantheon in 1.1.". I'm puzzled by how you plan to have a competative, random matched tournament with all the current problems and no mention for a solution. I think you need to state your policies regarding these problems and abuses as soon as possible, so they can be evaluated and discussed by the community.

Off course, if you plan to run different style official tournaments it's a completely different story - but even at relatively small scale those tournaments are usually a big pain. Looking forward to seeing what system you have planned.

First i want to say thanks for this journal entry.

Q: How good is the online experience now?
A: I'm highly biased but I would say it's generally pretty awesome IMO -- now.

Maybe i'm mistaken, but aren't Pantheon matches supposed to be like in the range of 2v2 to 5v5? Right now i only see 2v2, and sometimes even 2v1 with AI. Why is it limited to 2v2 when you say the online experience is "awesome"? Even in custom games, 5v5 working-till-the-end matches are rare...

Q: How are sales?
A: Mixed. Digital sales are great. Retail sales need work. We are hoping word of mouth on the game will encourage people to go to their local retailer and pick up the game.

Word of mouth is not enough for this game, i'm afraid. You need to push more content, a demo, fix Pantheon and reduce the retail price of the game. Seriously, in Europe the game costs 35-40 euros. This is a lot for a game with only 8 demigods, 8 maps, virtually no community features, bad rep for non working mp almost no post release marketing whatsoever. A more fair price would be 20 euro, imo.

Q: Where are the two new Demigods?
A: We're still working out the details with GPG. They're heavily into Supreme Commander 2 but they are working on more Demigods. We are leaning towards having both Demigods being assassins since they are, statistically, the most popular. One good, one evil.

That is what i was afraid of. No time for Demigod, limited resources for it, because they want to push SupCom2 out of the door. That's bad news for us. And speaking of SupCom2, don't they know that Starcraft 2 is right around the corner?

Q: What are the next updates beyond v1.1 going to focus on.
A: Modding & clan support are at the top of the feature list. Beyond that, it will depend on how sales continue to be honest.

Hmmm, didn't you said that you hired GPG a full year support for this game? Or is it like "2 demigods + clan support + mod support" = 1 year?

Q: How do you plan to keep the community growing?
A: We're now close enough that I can tell you have a new feature that will be going into beta. It's called ReadyToPlay(TM). It will help you get groups of people together for games.

This is the stuff you talked about here? The ETA of 30 days is still in place?

offtopic edit: this forum hates multi quoting.

Cool no mention of replays

...or rematch.

I have to agree with the people who are suggesting keeping generals and assassins numbers balanced. The fact that assassins may be more popular could suggest that perhaps the general mechanic needs to be looked at instead? I personally agree with the idea of scrapping the assassins and generals division. The generals can basically be specced and geared to act as assassins anyway (almost), and it will stop people like me who want a balanced selection screen from complaining lol.

Q: What are the next updates beyond v1.1 going to focus on?

A: Modding & clan support are at the top of the feature list. Beyond that, it will depend on how sales continue to be honest.

...is directly related to this...

Q: How are sales?

A: Mixed. Digital sales are great. Retail sales need work. We are hoping word of mouth on the game will encourage people to go to their local retailer and pick up the game.

This "depends on sales" sounds quite scary, especially since you honestly need the updates to stimulate contiual purchases and public rep. We want you to get more money, dont get us wrong, but in order to get the word of mouth and rep that will help the sales, you will need to continue supplying content. The game as it stands only has so much lastability, with 8 demigods especially. We aren't saying this out of selfishness, we want this game to succeed too!

In fact... this genre of game depends on continuous updates. I know you dont like us comparing it to DotA but really, anyone would be grasping at straws to argue that its success is unrelated to its frequent and many hero additions and updates over its life. I (and many others here) can't stress this enough.

(Personal side note) I'd love to see a map or two that are earth/grass based instead of tiles, I imagine they could be quite beautiful with the right water visual effects as per Cataract/Leviathan.

But as some have observed, I tend to be a glass is half empty guy. In all honesty, I'd say that Demigod is the funnest game I've played online in years - since Total Annihilation for me.

Thanks for the update! Good to hear you are enjoying the game as much as we are FrogBoy

Being a glass-half-empty kinda guy can only help the game, keep making it better (see above lol) complacency is a killer!

Quoting Annatar11,

reply 2

Putting in 2 new assassins will only skew it more to assassins. I think it'd generally be a good idea to keep an even number of assassins and generals.

We don't need more assassins OR generals. What we need is a totally new class: Servicers.

For instance, we could have The Cook. And he provides a health boost in the way of pastries and other goodies. He is similar to a general in that he has underlings that help him with his delicious creations.

Another, The Butler. He helps in taking care of the citadel and fortresses and towers by keeping them clean and tidy. He is also like a general in that he oversees servants that do the actual dirty work.

Also, The Wench. She provides...many things...to help support the hard working front-line Demigods when they need a little HP or mana boost.

So, if we could start building the Servicers class I think we'd see a lot more improvement to the balance of the game.

Frogboy, can you speak at all about UI changes to make things like healing faster/simpler/less misclicky?

I'd drop the Assassin / General monikers (misnomers, imo) in favor of either a single list of DGs and/or moving towards a more clearly-defined holy trinity model of DGs:

Damage output focused DGs (ex: Regulus)

heal/buff/debuff support focused DGs (ex: Sedna)

tank DGs (ex: The Rook)

I think this helps teams that plan their make-up a bit more.

Note that I don't suggest DGs get changed to become pigeon-holed into narrowly-defined roles (in fact, I think skill selection can significantly change the role of a given DG), but simply suggest that from a user-standpoint, understanding the relative strengths of a given DG wrt to it's existing intended role would be made easier if you just dropped the somewhat misleading Assassin/General break-down.

More on-topic: Adding 2 new assassins at-a-glance may skew things even more towards assassin selection. But an alternate possibility is that having more assassins may have a watering-down effect (with more so-called assassins to pick from, maybe I'd see more variety from game to game). I'd rather see more DG variety than have a Rook and Regulus and Unclean Beast showing up in every game I play.

Frogboy wanted to drop the whole Assassins and Generals concept before the game shipped, but they were locked into it from all the marketing so they just sort of made the best they could out of it.

So, I wouldn't count on the Assassins and Generals thing disappearing, even though I agree there's really not that much to differentiate the play styles to warrant the different titles.

Frog, Stardock needs to work with Atari to advertise this game in shops, TV and stuff in Asia. There's like 20 or so Singaporean players that I know of and I'm doing all I can in the local game forum.

http://forums.gameaxis.com/showthread.php?t=1492636

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Demigod: June FAQ