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

How do your minions get too far away from you? Once you get used to using O, N and M it becomes a lot simpler and second nature to keep your minions attacking the same thing as you and grouping up. I'm sure you already use these, but the more you use it the simpler it becomes. More to the point, the features for doing these things are already in the game, waiting to be used.

Quoting VenomKing,

reply 25

Quoting Ferazel, reply 24
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.

I think that players prefer to play assassin characters due to the problems with managing your general's army with the game's current UI. It's more fun to play the class that is easier to perform what you want it to do. Personally, when I play a general I find the game's UI too limiting in what I want to be doing with my army. I can't easily micro my minions or cast spells on them. This makes playing a general frustrating. As an assassin, the game's UI suits me better because I am more independent and I don't have an army to monitor and maintain.

You're using statistics to support a theory that people want more assassin characters... when I think there is a more fundamental issue with the game's UI that is swaying people's playing behavior.

This is true, but it could be easily fixed. My personal favorite hero is a genral, Lord Erebus, my main complaint about his minions is that they are too far away from me and sometimes stay in the enemy line of fire to get killed, this could be fixed with easy button commands like: Regroup on me.

Also I would like minions to automatically attack whatever I attack, exept if they are intended to not do it.

There is a regroup-on-me function. I can't tell you the actual button, but I have remapped it to be C for me.

Hope that helps!

Playing Sedna, it can be very annoying having your minions not be able to get past a wave of creeps, I'd really like it if they turned off the collisions in the same way as Demigods can walk through minions/creeps.

I like using my minions to block enemy minions and creep waves though.

Also any word on if the update is on schedule? Just curious, can't wait to see the new version

IMHO you better step up the marketing before League of Legends (Creators of Dota) comes out this fall or it's well... I predict it's over.

Quoting ,

reply 5

IMHO you better step up the marketing before League of Legends (Creators of Dota) comes out this fall or it's well... I predict it's over.

I predict it won't be over.

[quote who="/b/" reply="5" id="2274263"]IMHO you better step up the marketing before League of Legends (Creators of Dota) comes out this fall or it's well... I predict it's over.[/quote]

THis honestly looks like shit, but there is another game coming out and it truly is a dota clone. It's called Heroes of Newerth.

You can't get more clone than this, and it actually looks interesting, more than League of Legends at least.

In the end, the game with the most varied and good gameplay will win. Graphics don't matter on the long run.

Confession:

I DG

So when my friends, who play DG, got Heroes of Newerth Beta Keys a week ago--I was not happy.

Well, about 3 days ago, curiosity, and an invite to the beta got the better of me.

As a DG and DOTA enthusiast, I can say that the game blew me away and I'm struggling in my loyalties. The diversity in characters, modes, the incredible community support, they all grabbed my attention. These are all things that the normal joe, and even the "pro" love.

Community support for it works very similar to Steam. It doesn't feel clumsy. You can easily join games with your friends with a simply click on the friends list. You can right click and look at people's stats in game. If you drop from a game, you can rejoin. They have a simple notation system by which you can see if a game is for (casual/new players), or if its for (experienced people). And this doesn't even begin to talk about one of the things that will draw the masses...

The 40+ characters. Its rediculous. There is so much more strategy to team composition. The average player likes to be able to choose, and choose from a plethera of options. Think about simple games like Street Fighter... more choices added = masses are ooo'ed and aaa'ed. Or think of when StarCraft introduced a 3 race strategy game.

Or think of the progression of DOTA. When it first started, there were very few characters. Over time, more were added. Did people keep playing the first version or versions because it was more balanced?? Sure... for a while at least. And then the new version drew them with the variety. Not only that, but balance issues were slowly worked out. Was it perfect? No. Tweaks were always being made.

DG is pretty balanced... But balanced doesn't get second looks... Sexy, surprising, and replayability do.

Heroes of Newerth has a couple characters that aren't quite balanced, but it has spizzaz and diversity. Our consumerist society will eventually let its voice be known. But as it stands now, I give advantage and serve to HoN

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Demigod: June FAQ