Quoting Ciber,
reply 8
I think pretty much 80% of custom games lately have been premade teams vs randoms with predictable and unfun results.
Check this topic:
https://forums.demigodthegame.com/356938
Hello!
Last weeks i see like 75% premade custom games. People are obviously making some race for highest winning streaks.
Make it clear, normally it's not fun at all to play in random team against premade team, like 3 friends vs 3 random or 4 friends vs 4 random. Sometimes You can beat premade team, but thats really hard to achieve. So I started to think... is this game going to be fully premade ? At the start, I could play this game just for fun, from time to time, joining some first custom game on the list and have fun playing with all random teams without any disadvantages from one side (sometimes I was unlucky and got newbie in my team, sometimes other team was unlucky and that was fair).
Yea, I know playing with friends it's great thing, I'm not saying it's bad. But well, just look at some people. They can play only in premade team !! And to be honest, they just won't play against other friend team at all, they just like to kick random !! Why ? That's good question.
The stupidest thing around here is, when You are a host and You are losing, just quit and the game won't save at all !! Today I had a game, where host team was losing, so he quits game just before their citadel was destroyed. Result ? He got 110 games winning streak... still (just imagine, how many times he had to do this "trick" to achieve this proud result !!).
I can't understand why some people care so much about ranking ? Do they THINK people will say "he is good, he has 100% wins" ? And what about fun, If You crush Your rivals in 95% games, otherwise (if You fight against better team, premade or just lucky), You just quits to not count that game ? Is this still funny for You or You are playing just to get next win in ranking ? I can't say, never tried that, but it sounds hilarious.
I know no one like to lose, at least I don't 
, but when I see the game was close and we lost just by a magrin, it's fine for me, really. But I can't understand, how can people have fun from this constantly wins. These games are like with AI, just do Your job, same as always, other team has almost no chances anyway. Aren't that wins starting to be... automatic games ? You don't really play, You don't really need to think there. Just find out which players from opposite random team are the weasest and constantly attack and kill them, buy better gear from that "free" money and then You can do whatever You want to.
I'm saying that as a random player, who played this game just for fun, to stress out. Now, it's really no sense to play for players like me. I know clans would clear this situation a bit. At least You could easly see some players from same clan, before game start or even make clan vs clan battles. But there will still be some people, who just like to kick random assess hour by hour, day by day, week by week.
I think, there should be a possibility in lobby to check player history. Let's say last 10 battles, by showing only players names and result of battle from the person You are checking. Why ? Well I don't want to play random vs friend games, really. There is a line between losing on same terms and being smashed by a well organized friends, when You can just observe how Your random team is feeding them. I don't want that, it's not funny at all. That's why I think people playing premade games should be easly detectable from lobby menu. Just think about that - it's really no fun to realize You are losing almost all Your games, because You are playing (sometimes literally) alone vs 3 or 4 friends.
I think that's the main reason, why this game have no chances to stay popular longer than next couple months. Even the strongest person would give up after 2-3 weeks of constantly losing vs friend games. You just can't play this game alone now. You need to have few skilled friends in Your party, because You can be 75% sure, the other team will be premade. And if You really want to play "24/7" with friends, there are plenty of MMORPG's, which are made this purpose. Anyway, I think making premades detectable from lobby, would help alone players a bit.
Here is my idea how to show premades:
https://forums.demigodthegame.com/356938/page/2/#2274034
So, the conclusion. Premades aren't bad, when you WANT TO play with it. If I had 2 or 3 skilled friends, I would like to play premades to LEARN from other teams new tactics and their behaviour. But when i'm in random party and playing against premade, I wont learn anything at all !! Well, maybe one thing I can learn is... I can't cooperate with random party well. Sure, some chat dialogs are possible, but premades knows each other. They have tactics they are using every game. It's impossible to use your tactics in random party, because other players don't know you and your game style.
It's simple solution to this. Stardock should let for us to in-game check other people last games to easly see which games are premades and which aren't. If I see who some player played with in his last 10 games, I would see this particular game is premade.
It should be very easy to show. My idea is...
1) Add new history button in game lobby:
2) After click, you will get last 10 games list (based by ranking website), something like this:
So if you see some red colour in that list, you know those players played together before, and are in same team in lobby right now. From green colour you know, 2 players played together last game, and they both are in lobby right now, but opposite side. List should show at least last 5 games, and could be also in HTML format (build in game), so it would be much easier to implement. It really shouldn't be that hard to make, because you already have all data in your database. Its all about format and show them in game in right way.
So, if you have this kind of info, you can easly check player history in a second, and from the red colour know, which teams are premade. Simple and effective. This will let you choose, would you like to play premade or not. And thats what i want to know before game starts !!
