I’m back.

By Frogboy on July 8, 2009 3:40:37 PM from

Vacations are always over too fast.

Ever wondered why games don’t tend to be released in the Spring or Summer? Besides the Winter being better for retail, the other thing, at least in software that I’m beginning to see is that it’s harder to get updates out quickly because that’s when people tend to go on vacation. So it’s definitely been a slog getting updates out the door these past few weeks.

It’s just as well because as games evolve, the needs of the game community change. Here are some of the things that have risen high on the list of things to add into Demigod in future updates:

1. I’d like to see a randomize teams in custom games. That is, players press a button and when the game starts, the teams are mixed up. There is definitely a growing issue about “pre-mades” vs. “random”. We will have to talk to Gas Powered Games to see what can be done without blowing up the budget but I think this is an issue that is needed.

2. I also think that clans/groups are probably going to need to be moved up ahead of mod support. Currently v1.2 is looking at modding as a major focus. But I’m curious to hear what you guys think about this because I think modding, as important as it is, may not be as important as making it easier for groups to play together. The pre-made issue wouldn’t be so obnoxious if it were pre-mades vs. pre-mades. Again, the trick here is to do this without blowing up the budget.

3. More demigods. This is a topic that comes up on every call with Gas Powered Games. Right now, they’re focusing on finishing up the demo but getting some sort of pipeline of new demigods is something we think is critical.

4. The freaking stats. While this would probably be #1 on my personal list, I’m painfully aware that I’m in the minority on this. Nevertheless, abusing my position here a bit I assigned part of our software group to get in there and nail down the stupid stats. I’ve come to understand that the situation is a lot harder than it would seem (at least intuitively). But not to be a bastard, I don’t really care if it’s “complicated”. If I win, it better bloody show up on my record. 90% of people probably don’t care but I personally think the 10% who do care are crucial to the game’s long term on-line viability.

Now, this is by no means a complete list. Replays, Rematches, and lots of other things are on the list for a v1.2 which we are negotiating with GPG. But these are the kinds of things that I think are pretty crucial in my opinion.

+897 Karma | 159 Replies

Welcome back I hope you enjoyed your vacation.

Well if you look at sins, clans have sort of died, but modding is still very strong. But iunno, demigod is a different game

Plus modding in your own demigods would be nice.

Hurray!

Seriously... More maps is the priority... A large variety of maps makes the current demigod base 'last' longer... You should be putting out 3-4 maps each month IMO.... And maps for 4 or 6 players should be given priority as most games have this range.

Items come next... 1 new item a week minimum...

Then demigods....

Don't think.. Just do it...

Javaslinger

Maps/Demigods/User interaction (where are your friends, how long have they been on a game if they are in one, option to allow them to join your game, who are they playing with)

Welcome back frogboy.

PS: My stats are all messed up because of disconnects (crashes because most of the time we were winning when it happened) from one player in our team. Once someone disconnects, it is over. No way to come back from it.

Modding woud be nice but to a surrtun level. i mean we dont wanna see unbalanced map or DG's.
Clan support would get rid of the hole "premade" bs. But the the best way to keep going is to
get some new Pro Maps in the game ( soon ). but thats just my 2 cents.

You could do it like Team Fortress 2, where they take the best mod maps and turn them into official ones.

Yep would love to see the clan support. I don't understand the premade argument - if you want a random game do skirmish or pantheon, if you want a game against premades - otherwise known as friends! Then go to custom.

The random button if you have that should be an option and at the hosts discretion.

Maybe have the ability to battle groups of friends against each other....if the population is large enough

quoting post

I really don't have to the faintest clue how this was overlooked in the first place, but pugs are tired of being stomped, and premades are tired of stomping. I have a feeling most premade players share my desire to compete against other premades to see which teams are really the best. This should be #1 priority, imo.

Btw, could you expand on what exactly you mean by "blowing up the budget"? Perhaps my understanding is flawed, but don't you have a bunch of guys that work on content/updates/patches every day, and their time can be reallocated to any particular feature at will? How does re-prioritizing the contents of future updates result in expenditures?

Welcome back.

I don't know how the stats experience is calculated right now, but GPG should take a look at how professional ladders are made:

Earned experience is less if your team wins against a lower-ranking team (average rank of all players) and higher if your team wins against a higher-ranking team. This way, the issue of PROs vs. casual players would also be migitated.

Another point is that GPG should really take a look at the compiled lists of bugs and suggested balance improvements that are posted here in the forum. Most of these things should be rather easy to implement.

I disagree, this will not solve the problem. With randomized teams you have a chance that you will get "Doubles" which will cause the most of the people whining about premades to avoid it and we'll be back with the same whining. If you restrict doubles in the randomization through an option it would probably be recieved better. Or an improvement to skirmish matchmaking so people can get into games that match their preferences.

It's a shame mod support is being delayed, I think a lot of people in the community would be able to turn out bugfixes and some interface improvements through it,. plus it would make content creation easier for developers.

SoFFacet: it depends where they expend the energy. Putting time into a new game has more potential to produce sales than putting time into an already existing and running game. More potential buyers in a new game (in their opinion, I think TF2 proves it wrong).

I checked Amazon and to add clan support to the game would cost $2,499,999 dollars. While adding mod support would only cost about $2,249,999. So, that's a difference of about $250,000. Something they have to weigh to make sure they are spending their money in the right places. Because while clan support is more 'wanted' it seems, mod support is cheaper. What to do.....what to do.....

welcome back

i personly think Modding is more important than clan support. clan's are based on a growing communitee and a growing communitee is currently being held back by a lack of content (which is being held back cause GPG have their hands full still). so it makes sense to introduce modding sooner so more content is released and the comunitee grows, thus increasing clan and making clan support more valuable.

i also agree that there needs to be some quality controll. i remember it being mentioned that mods would have to be submitted in order for them to be downloaded which makes a lot of sense, however what might eb needed is some sort of "testing grounds" so modders can test and evolve their content.

this comming from someone eager to build a few maps ASAP!

Welcome back.

1. Randomize custom games. I think rather than spend money/resource to get this. The money should be spent getting a more robust skirmish/pantheon. Pantheon is mostly just 2vs2. If you can get it up to 3v3 every game, I think more people would play that instead of custom games.

4. Stats were working for supreme commander. Hopefully you will get this fix soon for a tournament.

Hope you had an enjoyable vacation.

Its tough to say which is more important, mods or clan support.

Both are almost as far as they can be taken by the community without official support. And I hear about both of them quite a lot. But I'd say that clan support would probably be the most important at the moment.

Mods keep the game from going too stale and will generally drag the game's life out by a good bit as seen in many games.

But the clan support brings numerous organized players together who can shift the direction of how the game is viewed and handled entirely, 99% of the time for the better. This should also kill two birds with 1 stone by solving the "premade" problem that everyone keeps complaining about. Clan support should also improve the overall ingame communications with other players and friends. And with a game like this, communication is a big factor.

A few people are requesting the random team option. And a random team option would not be a bad thing to have at all. Even if it has to wait for the clan support update. It may not be used overly much, but it would certainly get use. Normally the people who would use random teams are all friends or in the same clan and know each others skill levels. This will not fix with the premade vs pugs "problem", but it may alleviate it a bit. As no one will want to join someones game with their friend if the host has random teams enabled. This can very easily lead to no one joining their game.

Welcome back, Brad!

I think personally think it would be a big mistake to push modding back to move clan support up. I'd think there's more mileage from making mods than adding clan support.

Stats are my personal #1 item as well, but mostly related to the guaranteed win ability by using the host disconnect exploit in 1 form or another. As of today, anyone can pull it off and cheat the system.

The premade issue is a hot item. It seems obvious that some are playing in premades to keep their stats high. Forcing them to mix up teams could resolve that, but hopefully you aren't suggesting that every custom game has to be a mash up. If that's the case, then I'm not sure how you'd have clan v clan, etc. I'm guessing you just mean having an added option to force random teams at launch set by host (but if that's the case, then this won't do a thing for the premade issue as they'll just avoid this type of game).

Welcome back, what did you buy me?

Hope you had a nice vacation.

Hope you can share some fun vacation pics, if that's not too privacy invading for you. I can for some years to come only dream about a vacation abroad.

Welcome back!

Like a few others stated: allowing the Host to randomize teams is a necessity, but I think forcing all Custom games to be random would turn groups away as there'd be no way for them to play together with the current setup. It'd be great to have the random/not-random switch shown in the lobby (pre-lobby?) so that way premades will pick out other premades quickly, and those wishing to avoid will be able to. It just saves people from connecting to a game, asking to randomize, getting 'No' and quitting to move on to the next game.

As someone who prefers to play as a premade, I also think that MOD support is more important than any clan work right now, or better, new Maps - a few of us are getting to the point where playing the same map for the hundredth time is getting stale (not necessarily unfun, but still).

Welcome back!

personally i would abosolutely LOVE a map editor, thats always been huge to me.

I would have modding second on my list and clans last... just my personal opinion.

I don't think Randomizing teams would really impact the problem of premade vs random pugs. The fact is, I want to play this game with my friends, and I'm sure a lot of others do to. Some want to farm randoms for stats, some just want to play.

I see how the line of thought would be that a host can randomize teams to keep several people from joining the game and stacking one side with friends. But, the issue with that is that most people who are on 'premades' (That just means they play with friends apparantly) hose their own games. And since their whole objective is to play with their friends, they arn't going to use that randomize button. If they wanted to, they could divide up on the teams already. So I don't really see this option as having any true effect on the issue.

Some alternatives to consider, that might also be easier (or harder) fixes:

A clone of the current lobby code, creating a new lobby for Ranked games, creating 3 divisions. Pantheon, Ranked, Custom (unranked/stats unaffliated with Ranked/pantheon)
An option in 'Game Options' to make games unranked. This would allow 'randoms' or 'pugs' to only join games which don't hurt their stats. I would have no problem doing that if it meant me and my friends could play games. It would also add some great functionality, practicing for clans or hardcore buddies, etc. Its prob the best substitute for a whole new lobby or clan support (including its on lobby).
Push out the Clan Support. Bump it up in prority like you said. If I understand the intentions you have posted about, it seems like 'clan support' includes team matchmaking. Really, its not about clan support at all. It's just about that aspect of a new lobby, or a new "Team Pantheon", or "Clan Team Matchmaking", whatever you want to call it. What we need is a feature for friends, clans, premades, whatever to be able to fight the same type of teams.

No matter what solution you go with, the important factor is alleviating the Random/Premade issue. And I don't think that can be done without adding support to that mode of play. Any kind of support. A Randomization option, or unranked option, would just alleviate the stress for a small portion of the people. The only way to actually take care of it is in the form of seperation of clan/premade/friends playing into a seperate lobby or matchmaking form.

I sincerely hope you decide to increase clan/team matches on your priority fix list. I believe it to be the only long term solution. I hate that people are being driven away from this game because they end up playing people tha play with friends or clanmates only. I'm one of those people, I only play with friends. So I hate that I'm contributing to driving away people. But I do not get any enjoyment out of this game without playing with the friends I've made. I didnt know any of these people before playing Demigod, so I'm not really sure why people don't make friends and playw ith them instead of go solo and then comlain about fighting friends (/shrug, I really don't get it). But I do understand that it is a problem that is harming the game, and thus, needs to be addressed. Like you said, long term investment comes from clans, friends, modders, etc. So tailoring to those people is probably the route to go. The best part is, by tailoring to them, you are also tailoring to the lone wolves who play randoms only, and feel driven away from the game by the groups of friends who play. It's a win win from my perspective.

I like Obscenitor's idea.

That being said, the chances of that kind of overhaul happening are slim to none so I really think the best course of action would be to stop ranking custom games and add team pantheon/skirmish matches. p.s. if you want a good laugh, look at the current player rankings. The entire first page is full of players with a 90% win rate, which shows the 'top' players haven't been fighting each other at all, it really is just pub stomping

Pre-made team match should have been thinked from the start. it should be something that could blow the budget imo. Its not something new, its something common with RTS (supcom)

But I dont understand why GPG did not do it like supcom at release. supcom have team ranked games.

Anyway the future of dg look good so far.

I think you underestimate what the mods will be able to do. I'm not sure how many modders are out there for this game, but I think if there are enough out there all of a sudden you will have new maps, new units, new demigods being designed and created just by the ambitious who want to do so. Then GPG or whomever is in charge of approving these or what not can take the most popular and balanced ideas and allow them in. This could add a ton of new content depending on what is allowed by mods. Now if by modding you simply mean a couple UI tweaks, then yes, that could probably wait even though I personally would like to have some nicer things and tools on the UI.

For me stats is also number 1, I don't think you are as in the minority as you might think on this one. If a player gets a win they should get a win, and if a player disconects they should get a loss. I like the all random idea, I think that would help. I also agree with a previous poster, since when did custom games count as ranked matches, I've never seen that before. Hell I could log on with a friend who doesn't care about record, play 100 1v1 games and be 100-0. Also many people not just hosts disconnect and have games not count against them all the time.

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I’m back.