A short reality check

By Butterchin on June 29, 2009 11:32:06 AM from

I see a lot of tirades on the forum here. I think much of what is said is based in emotion, not fact. I wanted to take a moment to give my own analysis of Demigod the game, and a couple of recent hot-topics. Not that I'm anyone whose opinion matters, hehe. I am not what many of the more shrill posters would call a "fanboy," as this post is not 100% positive. I'm just trying to be as realistic as possible.

Is Demigod fun? All things considered, it's clear that it is. I picked up the game about a month and a half ago. Since that time, I have had no problem finding games to play. I'm sure I have spent several hours per week playing the game. The game is fun, or I wouldn't.

Is there 'no' playerbase or a 'shrinking' playerbase? Not that I can see from the time I have spent online. It seems to me to be holding about steady. It takes me at most a few minutes hunting for a game in the evenings. It takes me longer sometimes when I spend some effort searching for custom games that are not premade.

Incidentally, it is not hard to find a game with no premades. It takes a little effort, but this is not difficult. When I play, I spend the whole time *not* playing against premades. The whole premade "issue" has been blown way out of proportion, I suspect, by sore losers. I am a complete loner -- no Demigod-playing friends -- and I can spend all night playing against PUGs. That's the pure fact of it. If I am out there doing it, then I just don't buy that premades are ruining the game. If you are getting smacked over and over, it's probably because you chased three demigods into their towers over and over...

Is the Demigod code where it should be? No. I hate to say this, because I like this game. But, as a software developer and coder of games myself, I simply can't imagine how this game was released in the state it's in. Furthermore, when the 1.1 patch came out, it became evident within hours that there were problems (the first example of this that pops into my head is the random DG feature). I can only conclude that Gas Powered Games is simply not testing. Perhaps has no test team at all. In a situation where a piece of software has taken so much heat for bugs and problems, to release a major update that has not been tested to triple the expected standard is just dropping the ball. While I do believe that GPG has been laboring and putting in long hours to get code out, that is only half the task of software engineering. The code must be tested! I respect the efforts that have been going on, but please, for the sake of the game, get a test team. The next update, if there is one, really needs to be free of problems.

Will Demigod be "gone in a few months?" I think that's unlikely. I also think the people who post such things are mostly emotional and childish. Whoops, that comment will probably get me flamed. So be it. Realistically, though, there is some risk that Demigod will wane and fail if the next update(s) are not in good shape. If Demigod is well-supported by GPG I think it will continue to live on. If 1.2 is a success -- a polished, mature update -- then I think Demigod will do well.

I'm having a good time with this game and am willing to overlook a lot of the problems. I think the silent majority of players are the same. But, there is a limit to the patience of the masses

+23 Karma | 35 Replies

Nice solid post.

Completely agree with OP. Thank your for putting up this completely respectful post about exactly how things are.

And this is a pretty accurate representation of how things are going on.

+1 this is the post that all players and developers need to read/understand/accept.

Solid post, my feelings exactly. Even the last sentence!

+1 in full agreement

agreed, but i am adding for myself, that the game has many frustrating sides besides the fun! bugs with the statistics, connectivity bugs, bugs with the gameplay, bugs with the game itself and a slow homepage/forum/stats page.

if some of them come together in 30min its very, very frustrating.

1+ completely agree with OP

I think you missed the post where they said the random feature is working in their test environment but not in production.

I'm sure they test their code. There are sometimes differences between dev, test, staging, pre-production, and production servers.

Or sometimes developers hardcode name or ipaddress so it works in dev and test but fails in production.

quoting post

Incidentally, it is not hard to find a game with no premades. It takes a little effort, but this is not difficult.

So what is the secret? You can ask once you join, but that places a lot of trust in the host to be honest. You can check Pantheon, which is what I do, but that is tedious, especially if you are the last man joining and everyone wants to launch. Or you can keep a list of host that regularly do premade games - also another route I've taken to.

In any case, the lobby system should provide information about the teams or at least provide a quick link to that information. I am a reasonably saavy person so I get the information that I need, but for new players, the system is set up for them to get spanked.

Blitz:

Yes, I did miss that post. I'd love to see a link to the thread, though

I was thinking that perhaps what GPG needs is a small Production-copy environment for testing. I'm sure they could even find some community volunteers to spend some time in a pre-release test on said environment. Not unlike what Blizzard does with World of Warcraft, perhaps, though on a much smaller scale. I know that in my career history, if our software goes out with bugs it's not the developers who get spanked, it's the testers. They are the last line before the code is in front of customers.

Also, thanks everyone for the positive replies! I never expected such a response.

Here is the developer post on random demigod working in test environment:

https://forums.demigodthegame.com/357291

I think they do have small production-copy environment for testing. They let us play with it in May with their multiplayer issues. It didn't help much since the multiplayer issue worked fine in their small production-copied environment but blew up production when thousands more used it. Frogboy mentioned he doesn't want to do it again because it divided up the community.

OP, I agree with you. In fact, I'd think that the player base is experiencing a net increase, as I know some people who simply have not gotten the game yet due to hearing bad things about it, but I would venture to guess they will buy it in the future when a demo comes out.

I've not had that much problems with premades. I think they are relatively rare compared to most PUG players. Even people who have friends that play, it's often hard to get to play at the same time due to crazy schedules and all.

Demigod is fun albeit frustrating at times. It can be better, but not wholly unplayable as many ragers like to say in the forums. I think the vast majority are not experiencing the crazy technical difficulties that people are posting about.

As far as i know, from Frogboy's posts, the 1.1 patch was in QA at Stardock for 1 or 2 weeks. I don't know how they test it, with how many people and in what conditions, but they are doing it wrong, if such bugs get away after 2 weeks of testing. And no, putting the blame on people's PCs is not the smartest way to answer the complainers.

I play a lot of games, and i don't see this with other patches...Look at TF2 patch, or at Down of War II latest patch (now that's a MASSIVE patch and that's how you done post release support!) and then compare it with 1.1 patch.

The people bitching about premades (like me) are whining about the way it ruins Pantheon (ie you or your opposing team ends up with AI cos they quit).

If you complain about premades in custom.. well.. that's custom for you.

What's annoying is that for a game that's meant to be 99% multiplayer, the multiplayer aspects of it is what lets it down the most.

Connection issues.

No decent MP interface.

No decent game modes (ie 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 ladder)

Pantheon stats don't work.

It's like GPG took the SupCom engine, got some REALLY talented artists (I'm well impressed by the art) and then wrapped a good game idea around it then run out of time/cash.

The negativity I think is because people are so disappointed with what could have been.

ie imagine if the game was released in this state and v1.1 was what's now going to be in v1.2,

I know I would've recommended it to 2-3 of my friends which in turns leads to higher sales which leads to more patches/enhancements etc etc etc.

I realise u have to release a game at some point but if they had delayed DG for 2 months, in the long run, I think they would have got more sales.

When u get a good 3v3 tho, boy, is it good fun!

Quoting Melric,

reply 10

I check their name at pantheon http://pantheon.demigodthegame.com/

Yes it's tedious but better than wasting 30 minutes in a premade game. I usually avoid joining games where I'm the last man joining. Or i would check pantheon before even going into that game, sometimes the game disappears by the time I'm finish checking which is ok. I usually join the games where there are just 1 or 2 person in the game.

Or host your own game, it takes longer but there are usually no premades when you are the host.

Great post, and something that is very reassuring to me. As someone who recently bought this game last week, with no DotA experience, it can be very daunting to see some of the threads already hailing the end of this game. I haven't even had the cojones to join an online game and have stuck to single player for now to learn the game a bit better and maybe not come off as such as scrub online.

Posts like these give me more confidence to continue playing this game.

I check their name at pantheon http://pantheon.demigodthegame.com/

Yes it's tedious but better than wasting 30 minutes in a premade game

Might work if alt-tab didn't cause the game to explode. I don't want to use windowed mode.

Your best bet is making your own game and putting "no premades" in the title. Still no guarantees though.

Yeah, I really agree with MrBoingy here.

People are frustrated because the game does many things very well and its a ton of fun when things go well. But because the game was launched stripped of so many features that have been standard in online games for a decade or so, getting things to all go well doesnt happen nearly as often as it should. Which is really frustrating.

I can deal with the connection issues on launch. That can happen in games just after release and Stardock worked hard to fix things and was up front and honest about things. But the fact that they launched what is basically on online only game without clan support (for example - there are lots of other similar features missing)? How can that be? Stuff like that really frustrates me because those missing standard features really do lead to a much more consistently fun experience.

Might work if alt-tab didn't cause the game to explode.

Doesn't for me. Using Vista 64, English. Alt + tab away from the game, never had any issues. Which isn't to say the issue doesn't exist, but it's not an issue for everyone.

Quoting MastaPT,

reply 20

Might work if alt-tab didn't cause the game to explode.
Doesn't for me. Using Vista 64, English. Alt + tab away from the game, never had any issues. Which isn't to say the issue doesn't exist, but it's not an issue for everyone.

Just XP.

Nah, I alt-tab all the time, XP SP3. The only issue I get is after tabbing back into the game, the gamma seems to be reset to very low.

I'm getting less alt-tab crash bugs now. Still getting some muted sound bugs (empty canyon anyone?) when I finish or alt-tab.

Neah, it goes kaboom here too, on Vista x64, when i alt tab. Not every time, mostly in lobby. It crashes or weird stuff happens, like the red circle for spell range disappears.

The OP's concern about GPG's test team for DG (or the lack thereof) is valid. It would be great to get some confirmation that GPG does have a test team for DG.

P/S I would like to see Frogboy more active on these forums (although, understandably, he probably has his hands full with other SD projects).

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A short reality check