A glimpse of frustration

By HorseStrangler on October 5, 2009 2:31:43 AM from

I just finished the most dissatisfying game I've played in a long while.

It was preceded with this game. As you can see it didn't count, my team got two kills in the first minute so one of them looked up my rank and said something to the effect of "no point in trying, one of you is rank 5 and I'm a newb" just before quitting.

Then came this next game. This one was a blowout on exile, I was accused of being a premade within the first 30 seconds because of my rank (which is usually a pretty fair accusation, but I was solo tonight) and one of the players repeated the sentiment that Demigod online isn't worth the trouble and he's quitting.

The part that really got to me is that by just queueing up for pantheon like a normal player I was genuinely ruining at least one person's night, probably two of them by what I gleaned from their frustrated messages. Now don't get me wrong, in general I have an embarrassing lack of internet manners and a tendency to nerd rage, but not even a troll like me enjoys just ruining the game for some dude who's only played half a dozen matches.

I looked up the other team's stats and these guys were clearly beginners just trying to get their 40 bucks worth out of a game they bought and I didn't just waste their time, I ruined it. Neither game was fun for me and I stopped queueing for the rest of the night in hopes that they might find a better balanced game, though I suspect Drizzo77 is gone for good.

Here's where I sound like a broken record, but at least part of the reason why it went so badly is because of the light/dark distinction in pantheon. Regulus and Rook are possibly the two hardest characters to avoid death with, and the dark team has two super popular melee meat grinders and is receiving a third in the next big patch. Compound that with their team having a total of 22 wins between them and not even 70 games played, and it was a recipe for disaster.

Why was I not given the guy with the 3-4 record and pitted against the ones with 200 games and 50% win rates? Clearly the guy on the other team was able to form a sentence and wanted to communicate his frustration to someone, if I'd been on his team I'm sure he would gladly have talked about how to play better, but instead he was stuck with two other guys who had no idea either. The completely arbitrary light/dark distinction drove off at least one customer tonight.

Anyway, I would say that generally speaking my internet empathy is pretty lacking, but tonight I had a glimpse of these people's absolute frustration and I really didn't like it. I really hope that the guys at GPG are putting their heads together to find a way to get players paired against more appropriate opponents.

+37 Karma | 9 Replies

I really hope that the guys at GPG are putting their heads together to find a way to get players paired against more appropriate opponents.

https://forums.demigodthegame.com/365963

lol....

There are two ways to improve automatch ups.

1. Have more players available to pick from.

2. Skirmish, but we voted that off the island.

As for Drizzo77, don't feel bad, he's been playing for nearly a month.

Not a solution to Pantheon games.. but the public vent server/balanced custom games have been going very well.
https://forums.demigodthegame.com/365726

It is not always quick to get a game going but with everyone on the same page (i.e. being there for a balanced game) there seems to be more patience to get things set-up appropriately and you end up having both teams on voice chat. Every game I have played this way so far has been enjoyable and informative. I would even hazard a guess that the more skilled/experienced players that participate find it enjoyable as it allows for a much more organized game than queuing up with a premade and playing vs. randoms. Hopefully as more people get converted to using this format the games will come easier.

I also had a bad pantheon experience over the weekend. Not because of unbalanced players, but because of unbalanced demigod choices. I was oak with 2 regulus players against 3 UB on Exile. We were doing OK until they hit level 5 and all got grasp. At that point if we engaged one of them, the other two will run over and chain grasp us to death.

The main problem was the chain stunning. I know it has been discussed elsewhere, but UB grasp needs to work like other stuns and give immunity. (and I play as UB a lot)

The smaller problem was having multiple of the same demigod. While it may not be broken or OP, it would be better to somehow reduce the number of repeated demigods on a single team.

If you want balanced teams/balance DG combo's dont go to Pantheon. Its a random quickmatch system which imo is for noobs (or is very noobish - although it can be fun to be play whether your good or not).

Play Custom Games if you want balanced matches

They need to implement a real automatch system pronto.

I tend to avoid pantheon games, ridden with AI, premades that join together that love to noob stomp (you know who you are.... this one really annoys the shit out of me because pantheon is ment to be random. Its the lamest form of noob stomping.), noobs, fortress mode, double and triples of demigod, disconnects etc....

Yeah... pantheon is a pretty big crap shoot. Not sure what you can do though other than avoid pantheon in its current state... even if there weren't light and dark restrictions, if the population is low, you still might end up in a 1v1 matchup with someone brand new. I agree that losing the light/dark sides would logically make it easier to match up players, but I'd think it would require a rewritting of the pantheon system (what is light? what is dark?) or make it null and void. It seems like dropping pantheon and bringing back skirmish might be a better option (and use a matchmaking formula of some sort). That way, we'd at least have the potential for better matchmaking. Oh well. As it is, I mostly stay away from pantheon.

I agree completely, this light/dark distinction is retarded and irrelevant. Unfortunately it doesn't look like SD and GPG are willing to listen to reason, the community has asked for the removal of this machanic in just about every way concievable and they straight up ignore it. If they're not going to do anything, they should at least tell us why they think removing it is a bad idea.

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A glimpse of frustration