same here, everyone is ragging on the graphics but its the style they're going for, lo poly models with high res textures. I rekon that i will play both games, they both look good and are taking diferent sides of the genre.

Guinsoo is but Icefrog isnt, and he is the main driving force behind dota. Hopefully it wont be a full on clone and it will stand up as a game in its own right

I hear this point time and again and i dont really get it, when i first played dota i had no problems with recipes, they are simple, they add depth to the strategies for items and they make early game items stay useful late game.

The thing is that LoL is staying so close to the DotA model

Its true that guinsoo is making it but IceFrog isnt so i think it will stay reasonably close DotA model but i doubt it will be a clone. It will be far away from Demigod so i will probably play both.

I've never understood the hate of recipes, when i first played the game i liked recipes too, i never found them hard or biased towards pros. They keep the item system deep, it adds greatly to the strategy and it is a great way to keep early game items useful late game.

I like the graphics too, its low level model polygons but high res textures. It does look like it will be more combetetive, I'm sure that after they are out i will try both and decide which i like more, but because LoL is coming out after Demigod i will probably end up sticking with Demigod (assuming it is backed up well with patches)

As for the idead that it will suffer the gameplay-ruining changes that E-sport pros and douches are pushing for in SC2 im sure that Guinsoo won't be that stupid. I'm all for E-sports but some of the changes being suggested for SC2 are absurd ex. no MBS.

Hopes that itll be made well

The issue with the graphics is the low polygons and quality.  The type of graphics is a design choice, and that's fine.  The quality of the graphics is flat out bad.

Recipies...  well, I know this is a big thing.  Yes, they work.  However, they are needlessly complicated.  This is coming from a fan of the notoriously complicated X series, and I think recipies require too much unnecessary studying of the game.  I honestly don't get DotA at all due to not understanding the recipie system, which is a major part of the game.

Earlier this year, I went to a programming camp to learn about C++ and stuff for two weeks.  Obviously there was a lot of game time as well.  DotA was one of the games that people played, but most of the people there had never played it before.  Every new person there expressed an extreme dislike of the overly complicated and user-unfriendly recipie system because it made it far too dificult to understand the game.  And you could tell who had played the game before; the seasoned players dominated everyone else with superior recipie usage even when they were using slightly underpowered characters (random heroes).

There are better ways to accomplish items retaining usefulness over time.  One example of which would be blacksmith upgrades.  I suppose it is a design choice that some people will like and others will hate.  Personally, I hate it.  With a passion.

I gotta agree with orkimond about the new players getting owned with recipies.

Allright this bullshit has got to stop.

Recipes are not complicated. They weren't complicated before, they are childishly simple now.

Any recipe in DotA tells you exactly what items are needed to make it, usualy 1 or 2 items, and tells you exactly the effect it does. The vast majority of them give simple stats and passive increasing effects, very few of them are "more complicated" because they give a new ability, which means one extra button to click - oh no, you just went from 4 to 5 buttons to click.

Sure, you need to "learn" which items are good on which character, but it takes all of 2~3 games to figure out the character archetypes - strenght, agi, int, and of each the variety of nuker, ranged and melee. You can use the same build on any of the 9 possible archetypes and do just fine in any game, and with time you'll figure out more advanced stuff. Example?: You can get a Sange & Yasha and Power Threads on every single damned melee or range str or agi hero and do just fine. That's it, 2 easy to make items with uncomplicated recipe that take all of 2 minutes of reading and you just covered half the heros.

Now seriously, all you people complaining about the OMG complicated DotA recipes need to man up, are you a fucking 1 year old who can't tie his damn shoe laces or what? You read, you observe what others do, you understand. It's the same as every other damn game.

You must be the sort of people who just can't play shooters because every time you play in a new one you get owned, tell yourself "bah it's cause they know the spots to hide / get weapons on the maps, that's all" and give up. Gamers these days are so whiny and, let's face it, braindead. If everything isn't handed to you on a silver platter with a 3 word explanation that covers every possibility it's endless QQ.

Topic has officially digressed to pettiness.

We get it you love DotA, guess what some people don't.  LOL means there are now two games that are in the genre. 

I love overly complicated games.  The point about recipes for some people is they were needlessly complicated.  I always felt it was poor implementation, and did not add to depth.  You disagree, cool.  No need to be rude.

Do you find 1+1=2 Complicated? Because that's what DotA recipes boil down to.

Lol.  Recipes are not complicated because the stat boosts make no sense or because nobody can figure out how to use them in battle.  That has absolutely nothing to do with it.  Rofl.

And wtf do shooters have to do with this?  If I lose at a shooter, its because the other guy is a better shot.  Its not because they knew where to get the sniper before me, its because they are good enough to whip around and no-scope in a split second.  I don't even understand what analogy you're trying to make here.

And please.  It was a somewhat intelligent discussion before you showed up and began needlessly insulting everyone.  Are you happy? Bullet even gave you rep for some odd reason.  Now go back to lurking or whatever it is you normally do and please stay out of intelligent debates.

EDIT:  Ninja'ed

No.  You need at least three buttons.  Attack, block, and grab.  Rock, paper, scissors.  Otherwise the game has no depth at all.  The difference comes when you have to push four buttons in sequence to attack, against just pushing one button to attack.  My apm is too low to play Street Fighter, so I stick with Smash Bros.  My apologies for being inferior.

Here, as further proof of the simplicity of recipes, a screenshot which anyone can use to get a solid grasp of recipes in the 10 seconds it takes to read it.

Now please, stop bringing up how terrible and complicated recipes are in every post remotely to do with items or DotA or now LoL. They're not complicated, anyone can spend 5 minutes in a solo game to figure out how it all works then play and have fun.

And yes what the recipes do is an important part of game mechanics: They allow a player to get early game items and use them at late game. Without them You'd have people save up to skip over early game items to go straight to late game items faster - and that's bad gameplay, because it rewards people who don't use items.

Yes there's other way to keep early game items competitive late game, many of these alternatives were covered within days of the first Beta coming out, they're all still here in these forums. But these ways aren't any more simple or complicated than recipes, they're just different. Ultimatly the devs should pick one that fits based on the look and feel of the game, not because they want to pander to the lowest common denominator.

Look at the screenshot. Recipes tell you what they need to be made. ANd once you know which shop sells what, you can figure out that an item that gives stats increase is made from other items that give stats increase, so you go to the + stats shop and buy the items the recipe asks, and make it. It is not in any way, shape or form complicated.

And you have to spend time memorizing things in every single video game know to man, from the earliest arcade games to the latest shooters, RTS or RPGs. There isn't a single game out there where you won't become better by remembering what happens when and what to use to counter it. And I don't see the issue about this. What else are you doing when playing a video game? Cramming for a college exam? Come on!

I havent played wow in a while. but since when are recipes in wow complicated? Except maybe epic ones since you may not know where to get some items from the high end instances.

Heres my opinion the golden age of gaming is dead. We're now going into the fluff machine....no new game really takes that much skill to play anymore. Everyone wants to make a game u can pick up and play with no learning curve because the majority of people are lazy and dont want to actually learn the techniques and fine details of a game. because that takes time and a brain larger then a peanut(not saying anyone on this board just in general).

Every single game is being dumbed down in all genras....except maybe not fighters. WoW was a big success because anyone could pick it up and play it. And then after a yr and all the r tards hit maxed lvl and relized that raids required to many people...they figured oh well thats to much planning for me....thinking ahead is BAD!! (the time issue coulda been fixed by being able to hit checkpoints and then letting u tp to that check point when u have more time ala WAR, but that wasnt the issue).

I see recipies as the economy to a rts. take out the economy and what do you have? A very dumbed down macro fest. The economy isnt all the skill u need to master its only a small bulding block, then comes your micro, macro, overall stragety, positioning etc etc. but the difference between being a truely great player is mastering the economy. all the rest will come with time. economy and strategy are the only things u can plan for.

Are recipes hard to make? No

Are he ingredients hard to fine? Yes, for beginners but that easy enough to fix if u just want everything handed to u put all the shops in a town.

Or if u dont know where soemthing is look! does that put you at a disadvantage yes. But thats why u start off as a noob so you can learn

Do recipes add a extra layer of planning and strategy to the game? Yes

is that a bad thing? well in this age of gaming it is

 I personally have not played WoW.  MMO's take up too much time that I need to spend doing other things.  However, I understand the point Blitz was trying to make, and it was a valid point.  Recipes in WoW aren't a problem.  Regardless of how many items you need, how far you have to travel to get those items, or how much those items cost, you can do it on your own schedule.  In DotA or Demigod, every second you spend making a decisions is one second you can't be on the field leveling up.

Wtf are you talking about?  Games these days are far more complicated than games five years ago.  Look at early games.  Mario had movement, jump, and fireball/run.  Heck, nothing really had any more buttons than that.  Why?  The only buttons on the controller were the directional pad, A, B, Start, and Select.  Today, look at a typical controller and what do you see?  A, B, X, Y, two shoulder buttons on each side, a directional pad, two control sticks (with buttons built in), start, select, and sometimes even more.  Games are getting much more complicated as time is passing.  Look back at the classic games such as Elite and Wing Commander/Privateer.  Yeah, they were amazingly complicated for their day, but neither of them can even shake a finger at the X series.

So why do people complain about simplification so much?  Well, things are getting more complicated.  Simplification of games is needed much more today than it was a decade ago.  That's partly why Freelancer was heralded as such a great game.  If you strip it down and look at it for what it is, it’s not really that much better than the games that came before it.  Yeah, it has it outshines other games in some places, but mostly it was just very easy to pick up and play.  One of its best features was the fact that it had a revolutionary new flight control system that made flying a spacecraft a hundred times easier.  It was a huge step forward for the genera.  Why?  Because it made it easier to play and understand without sacrificing any depth.

Of course, there has to be balance.  A great example of mixing complexity with user-friendliness is Metroid: Zero Mission.  The first Metroid games suffered from being inaccessable.  They dropped the player in a hostile environment with virtually no instruction other than "kill Mother Brain."  That's great, but how do I start?  In Zero Mission, they added what were basically objective markers on your map, so newer players had some idea of what to do.  Unlike Fusion, however, they didn't force you to go to the objectives in the order the game provided them.  In ZM, you could go do whatever you wanted, wherever you wanted, even if it was in the other direction from where the game wanted you to go.  NONE of the complexity seasoned players craved was sacrificed by using this system, but the game was made much more accessible.

That is exactly what I am trying to do here.  The world of gaming is getting more complicated with each passing year.  The challenge is keeping it simple enough for new players to enter the game without sacrificing the complexity that makes the game worth playing.  Innociv's blacksmith idea is a perfect example of this.  Again, I am not complaining that recipes are complex.  I am arguing that there is a far more effective system that makes the game more accessible without sacrificing the core game play complexity.

For the record, I am strongly against over-coddling the player.  I think Metroid Prime 3: Corruption was a pretty bad game, at least as far as the spirit of Metroid goes, simply because it tried to hold your hand too much and force you to do things its way.  It sacrificed the core game play of open exploration in order to make the game more accessible, which imo was a huge mistake.

The biggest difference between your economy and recipes is that a normal RTS allows you to be in more than one place at a time.  Recipes require you to stand at your base while other people level up out in the field.  In an RTS, you can manage your economy while your combat units are in the middle of a battle if you want to.  You can be both attacking and keeping your economy strong at the same time.  Even if you take a few seconds out to ponder an economical conundrum, the rest of your forces will continue to go about their assigned jobs.  In DotA, if you take a few seconds out to research recipes, you are losing the gold and experience you should be getting out in the field.

 

Agreed.  Just a few clicks.

No.  Ingredients aren't hard to find at all.  Knowing what ingredients to get is the hard part.  The shops in the woods in DotA and the artifact shop in the middle of the map in Demigod are good aspects of the games that should not be removed.  If an item isn't in the shops, it’s in the woods.  That part isn't hard.

I agree that newbs are at a disadvantage for these reasons.  However, these disadvantages should be kept to a minimum.  The only reason I can possibly think of that would cause someone to want the game to have an unnecessarily steep learning curve is that they enjoy winning the game more than playing the game.  They want every possible advantage over as many people as possible when the match starts so that the game is just that much more in their favor.  The opposite of people like me, who want to play the game to have a fair challenging fight and clash strategies with my opponent.  Sure, I want every advantage I can get within a match, but making the game harder to pick up just so I can beat more people is ridiculous.  If someone can give me a different reason as to why they would want an unnecessarily steep learning curve, I'm all ears.  This is all I can guess right now.

Can the extra layer of planning and strategy added by recipes be incorporated in a more user friendly fashion without sacrificing any of the planning or strategy?  Yes.

I admit that it is sometimes taken too far, but you simply can't ignore the fact that games need to be playable.  User friendliness is not something to be ignored.  The core game play always comes first, but intentionally making the game inaccessible when a better option is sitting right in front of you is the equivalent to shooting yourself in the foot because walking is too easy for newbies to pick up.

I was trying to fight one battle at a time, but you said it very well and I can't just ignore it.

Now we get into the mechanics behind recipes.  On this I am somewhat torn.  On one hand, I recognize that planning ahead should be rewarded.  On the other hand, I know that recipes lock you into a specific build and thus preventing adaption as the game progresses.  On this note, I believe that Innociv's blacksmith idea actually performs better than recipes.  Yes, it still requires planning to be successful.  You can build up your Demigod with a large degree of customization that was worked on throughout the match.  However, you aren't locked into a build from the first item you buy.  Even if you were to fully upgrade one or two items, you would be able to start from scratch with another item and build in a different direction.  Heck, if you had to, you could change the upgrade path halfway through one item.  I think this is the best system, offering both rewards for planning and room for adaption as matches progress.

And I am still open to suggestions.  If someone can present another option that would make the game better, I would be more than happy to concede.  My goal is to try and help to mold Demigod into a better game, not win a forum war.

oh yeah and games like DoA where its rock paper scissors and basically guess with a 1 in 3 chance of choosing the right area to counter, compared to game like tekken and vf wheres its alot more complicated and takes knowing every single character to beable to compete at the highest lvl.