AGREED!  ...across the board, ... but hey, if SD goes public with an IPO, I'll already know my investment of the year... DG2... just think of the possibilities...

First, they should fix some bugs that are still here and there.

Then, add a some more content (or make an expansion)

And THEN, make a sequel.

But meh, I would buy it anyway.

I'd say expansion first, that might b ea big enough break from the game's reputation to work.

guess the bad start was one of the reasons why many online gamers stood away from it. the guys who play offline anyway didnt even notice it and just bought it. i mean ok that stardock report is true but come on... 23%?? really? its a multiplayer game and only 23% play it online? how is it with other multiplayer games like the many strategy games? also only such a small amount? but anyway these 23% keep the game alive long term and not the other 77%. would anyone still talk about starcraft without that online community?

A few years back there was a great game called Dawnspire.

Dawnspire was quite a great game, quite similar to demigod even if you remove the reinforcements. The point is that it had a big community for an indie game with no marketing.

What dawnspire did right was that they had a very generous Trial version of the game. It included

• 4 out of 6 classes
• All maps
• Unlimited playtime
• 12 out of 13 abilities for each class
• 3 character slots
• No Guilds

So basically what they did was give you a free game!

Then once you had found out it was really nice you started to want the rest of it. those 2 other classes, guildfights and that extra ability. So I bought the game!

Being an indie game it wasnt expensive either, Silent Grove Studios (the makers of the game) also made some bucks from selling extra character slots, which I also spent money on in order to keep one of each class ready at any time.

So the point that Im trying to make. There is a really nice way to get a big community, which can then be made into actual benefit for the company by just making a really good trial.

When the demigod demo was released my hopes was that the demo would use the same servers as the normal game. allowing Demo users to fill our dwindling Retail games. When this wasnt the case, the demo activity and usefullness dropped to 0 quite fast. I barely see more then 2 people in the demo channel these days, 1 of them is me.

So my reccomendations for Demigods future!

• Remake the demo into a full game Trial.
• Allow the Trialers to play on the same servers as the rest of us
• Limit them to 4 or 6 of the demigods
• Change the stardock splashscreen at startup to one offering the trialers to "upgrade" their trial game to full game for 10 dollars or whatever is fit.
• Start releasing DLC!

Everyone tries a free game they think they may like! Even the ones that may even have tried it before but didnt like it then.

Allowing a big partion of the game to be free like this means you will get a massive community buildup. And once a community is big enough, DLC will become a major income source!

So now you can start producing DLC, sell new demigods for 2.99 dollars each and whoops you suddenly got a guy who didnt want to pay for the game, paying you not only 10 dollars to unlock the retail heroes but probably also 2.99 dollars for any new demigod you release. Demigod would become something that could produce more money for you the better you made it, Its a developers dream!

If you do this thing about a free trial Im quite sure that not only will the public think much higher of Demigod, but you may actually be able to turn it from a slowly dying game, into a game that just keeps gaining players as it gets better and better!

If this isnt done, I really dont see any way to turn the trend exept for releasing an Expansion, something I doubt will ever happen.

So just wanna end with a hypothetical scenario.

Imagine we are about 1000 players playing demigod during sometime of the weeks atm.

Releasing a free trial would (if announced well on gaming sites etc) def increase the amount by at least 5000!, that is 5000 people who will most likely spend the 15 dollars to get the full game in atleast a month, And even if they dont, they provide "cannon fodder" for the guys that actually payed! ensuing there will always be a game they can join that fits them, Meaning they are much more likely to keep playing the game, which means they will most certainly buy any DLC you release!

The thing that killed DG before it even got going was whoever's boneheaded decision it was to go P2P as the way to play a multiplayer game. As expected, that created tons of headaches and discouraged many of the potential player base. Many of them do a "proxy" connect now, but it's more like a bandaid solution to a flawed concept. A shame, because I too like DG and am sorry it turned out the way it did.

I don't fully agree with you guys on some of these points.

While I do think Demigod is the most fun of its genre, the MP features of LoL and HoN are far superior to what is in Demigod.  I find both games a lot easier to get up and into a game than Demigod. I just wish those games had the game mechanics and polish of Demigod but then again, financially, I'm glad Demigod has the polish and gameplay advantage since obviously I have a vested interest in Demigod's continued success.

It is important to remember that while Stardock publishes Demigod, we didn't program it.  We sell Demigod. We also sell LoL and will hopefully sell HoN when it comes out. 

Peer-to-Peer is the way most RTS type games are done. In fact, other than Stardock's other MP games, I think most strategy games use the P2P model.  The problem with Demigod's online play is that it is very  network intensive for a P2P game which tends to excaberate the weaknesses of P2P.

I occasionally play 5 on 5 games with Demigod and it works pretty well as long as you get people with <150ms latency which can be tricky.  

C&C, Starcraft, Dota, etc. are all peer-to-peer btw.

Personally, I loathe peer-to-peer. Always have as many long time players (and beta testers know).  But I also understand why GPG chose to do it that way. 

There's nothing inherently wrong with P2P. I just don't like being at the mercy of a guy with a bad connection. But on the other hand, it would be really difficult to have made Demigod Client/server and have it be "fair". The guy with the best connection would have such an advantage in client/server.  

Sorry to ramble. Just a few thoughts speaking just for myself.

Pretty much my sentiments Frogboy, but I gotta say the idea of SC and WC3 (dota) being p2p is confusing to me, becuase honestly I played those on dialup and they worked great, even when I split a dialup connection on WC3. I just don't understand why DG requires so much more bandwidth.

That being said, once a game is up and running it blows the competitors out of the water. I'm curious about what you guys can do to facilitate that process via impulse.

really appreciate you popping in and posting frogboy

The main problem of the P2P here is not the huge amount of traffic generated, or anything like that, although those are problematic. The main issue is the current configuration on how to resolve bad connections. Rather than checking for each connection between each player, the system just axes the game completely, and declares it invalid. Unless it declares the dropping player the winner.

Why doesn't it declare the war rank leader team the winner? Why does it have a three minute concede limit to discount a game, if a single minute would suffice? People just die and concede, and it's really boring.