Polynomial

Mmmm, interesting stuff.

I've always felt we've never been told the truth about what actually happened behind curtains that led to the disastrous launch (which i was fortunate enough to miss), and the subsequent long and delayed process to get the game to the semi-playable state we have it in now. Too bad i think we will never know, and all we will get at most is a pair of minor bug-fixing patches in the next 1-2 years.

It's been more than a year now that Demigod was released, and stability/connection/bug-wise we have a version that would be acceptable at release date, but not a year after that. Demigod is "reasonably" balanced thanks to players-feedback, but it still has sh*ttons of bugs and stability-connection issues, and no it's not our computers/setups Frogboy, no matter how many times you say that .

I mean, this week, 13+ months after release, SD issued a list of to-do bugfixes that were pinpointed and (some of them) custom-fixed by players months ago, and some of them have been present since DAY 1 (!!!!!!!!!). To make it worse, that list is far from complete (for example, UB Post-Mortem skill killed creeps not rewarding proper gold and XP), and there seems to be no intention to investigate-fix the connection drops that keep on ruining this game.

So, yeah, i call Demigod BS here too, but i don't expect any answer at this point. 

Interesting stuff Poly!

I'd take those figures with a grain of salt, pending word from someone still with the company.

Given the folks at Uber left GPG quite some time ago (before SC2 had a publisher, I think), their figures for SC2 might well just be the development budget at the point they left. There's no knowing whether that included the post-release budget and other expenses or changes since their departures. Further, it's impossible to say what guidelines Square-Enix may have set for post-release support, or how their signing SC2 may have impacted the budget.

My understanding was that the Moho engine saw a large number of changes and upgrades for Demigod, while SC2 was a much smaller update of Demigod's version of Moho, which could have a considerable impact on budget as well.

For me, all I would ask for Demigod 2 is, balanced dg's, more maps for 2v2,3v3,4v4 and fixing all teh bugs and a no stat mode...

If you feel that way, I guess you'd have to ask GPG.  It's their game. They have a Demigod forum on their site.

BTW, SupCom 2's budget was much higher than Demigod's. Demigod was no where near $10m to make.

Hi Poly!

However:

Btw, SupCom2's multiplayer connections are far from perfect. The lobby randomly drops players, player randomly loose connection during the loading screen or sometimes even in the game. There is an exploit that lets the loosing player disconnect and he will get a win in the stats. The ranked ladder is completely borked, some players started with the usual Elo rating of 1600 while others started at 0! (They would have to play for weeks to get to 1600 without a ladder reset but that has already been announced.) There are several cheaters who play with infinite resources or research points, one of them was #1 for some time...

Does any of that sound familiar?

I do believe that SupCom2's development budget was a lot smaller than the first game: The engine was already build, there are less than half the number of units and maps in SupCom2, textures and meshes are way less detailed, no expensive rendering scenes in the campaign, they didn't even bother to make proper campaign mission briefings. There is no map editor and the game is locked against modding atm.

Development time was rather short (I think ~18 month) with a team half the size of the original team and they had to cook up the Xbox version during that time as well. The closed beta was running for 2 or 3 weeks with only 30 people, many of them not experienced SupCom/FA players. By the time the beta started the gold version was basically already pressed onto DVDs which might explain the 4 GB patch at release.

I will not go into the incredible bad design choices for the eco and the glaring balancing issues of SupCom2 because that would lead this threat off topic. Everything considered I would personally say Demigod is the superior game. It's basic gameplay mechanics are good, thought through and more fun. The Demigods are designed far better (considering artwork, skills and variety). The only things where SupCom2 can score some points are the number of maps, the single player campaign, pathfinding and the patch support. GPG seems to be less reluctant to actually fix issues in Supcom2 and improve the balance for some reason.

Taking everything into account I would consider Demigod the better game. And I will be back once I got my gaming PC fixed.

Speaking of Uber Entertainment, check out their debut game Monday Night Combat! It's a 3rd person shooter but the gameplay mechanics remind me a lot of Demigod. It is annouced for the Xbox but the developers assure me that they will release a PC version as well (if Microsoft doesn't pull the 'it's Xbox exclusive' joker).

Check out their Youtube channel for more gameplay videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/UberEntChannel

Btw, Uber Entertainment's Creative Director is John Comes, aka Scathis, who designed Demigods gameplay in collaboration with Bob Berry, aka o, who is the CEO of Uber. Their CTO Jon Mavor, aka neutrino, was part of the original Total Annihilation development team and fans of Parcour, ninjas and stunts may want to check out this video by Uber's animator AZO!

Not that I'm thrilled to hear that they still have issues, but I'm actually a little glad to hear that they don't have all of their connectivity issues sorted.  Poly indicated they were swell and as thats something that really plagues us dg folks, I was a little annoyed to hear that they may have ironned everything out

Supreme Commander 2's multiplayer is perfect compared to Demigod's. I had never had a lobby crash, random disconnect or long freeze periods like I always had in Demigod. The game does not freeze up when you win a game, and there is no wait period for poeple to connect after they get into a lobby. Sim speed issues are basically non existent. And 4v4s run about 585x smoother than Demigod's 5v5s with less art assets. When it comes to connections, Demigod's worst aspect, Supreme Commander 2 is perfect in comparison.

SupCom 2 was an update of the FA engine, not the Demigod engine.

Maybe Chris Taylor learned something from Demigod:  That if you don't support your games post release, then the player base slowly loses hope and leaves... so you don't get enough long term revenue... so your kids don't get to go to college. 

Ummm... yay I guess?  Good news for Demigod 2 that GPG can learn from their mistakes?

It could've been so epic... Hopefully they get there with a second one... Hopefully stardock publishes it again so we get some support guaranteed!!

with an e:  Sure all online games lose their player base over time, but its my opinion that Demigod could have been so different. If things had gone better I believe this game could have been the next Starcraft...

Latency and connectivity issues are so bad only one map can be played regularly and this game is the redheaded stepchild of the developer and gets supported accordingly... I could go on but its all been said before, but in spite of all that went wrong we're still here because it is the most fun and addicting game I've ever played.  Just imagine if more than a negligible effort had been made by GPG to balance it and fix the bugs?