I dont think anyone wants this to become wow-like  with dozens of triggerable abilities. That "with three or four builds per hero" part of the quote is imo where our opinions differ: I want fewer DG's with way more then three or four builds. (and at the very least WAY more then the 1-2 you seem to be suggesting as the optimal number). I don't think you need dozens of abilities for that. What I'd prefer is for the depth to come from using the abilities for the right reason at the right time. For that the abilities should be multipurpose and customisable and work in diffrent ways in diffrent situations. Imo there are a few abilities in the game (that I can think of offhand) atm that are multipurpose and usefull in diffrent situations:

Penitence - damage, vulnerability, slow and interrupt. All are useful at slightly diffrent times so you gotta choose when to use it. More damage on the rook or save the interrupt for the hammer or transfer?

Structural transfer (combined with the towers) - Need the tower or hp? Also veeery vulnerable on interrupts.

Bite - more damage (and slow and....) or wait for a few moments for the heal?

The Erebus' teleport (bat swarm or something?) - damage or a fast getaway? or try to get both? perhaps save for when the opponent runs..?

Deep Freeze - interrupt and all abilities on cooldown for the target or good damage if you can get enough  effects on the target?

 

Then there are a couple that are always good but use so much mana, that you gotta choose between having mana for other things or them such as:

Oaks AoE thingy

Mist

These are the ones that add depth to the actual combat. Not having gazillion choices of extra powers and heros to use them. The map useage simplicity is something I already said needs to get more complex. If you add more conflicting effects to powers, you have to think more and more when using them. Combat shouldnt be decided by who's got the best build or who picked the right gear (tho naturally both need to matter), but by the choices you make IN combat and directly before. Also there needs to be more abilities with big cast-times and visible animations to make interrupts better since it lets make powerfull abilities that are balanced by being vulnerable.

 

The tl;dr version: There is no point in adding a lot of abilities into the game (with or without new demigods to use them). What needs to happen for depth (that you need for long term enjoyment) is for every single ability use to be a choice and not just something automatic to do every time you see an enemy DG. Something needs to be done about maps as well to make matches not go the same way every single time.

 

Could you please elaborate?

Tell us how demigod is better?

Nothing of that has anything to do with gameplay, my question still stands.

Happy to help. Then again, theres a reason why the DotA community has the stigma it has, and I have no issues with calling it as I see it. Like the World of Warcraft community, DotA is full of whiney and annoying people who view new members to their community as a plague that needs to be stopped or shunned.

If you asked this question in the DotA community you'd be black listed for life. Luckily, this is not that community. Anyway, apart from really horribly named techniques...

Jungling is a tactic whereby a player farms a stronger-than-creep neutral unit on the DotA Map to gain a level advantage over his opponents. This tactic involves them avoiding their enemy, kiting the unit into an wave of their own creeps and kill-stealing the unit from their own Team members to ensure they are able to dominate an opponent with a level advantage as early as possible. Basically, they don't fight the enemy - they fight the AI controlled characters to level up so that they don't have to worry about outplaying their opponent - they can just brute force them. Being as this was implemented in Warcraft III, and done better, and appropriated by DotA I don't consider it a staple of the DotA model.

Juking is actually two things, technically. It is using the LoS of the Warcraft III Engine to your advantage when attempting to Gank or escape from a Gank attempt. I will concede there is certainly some gameplay depth in this technique, however I still view Ganking in DotA the same way I view Ganking in World of Warcraft - a bad players way to taste success. Demigod removed this issue almost entirely. You have to face your opponent.

Counter picks is forcing an attack on your own Creeps to rob your enemy of the advantages given to them by a killing blow. This is a left-over engine feature from Warcraft III, whereby forcing an attack on your troops was allowed with the attack command. I don't view this as strategic depth but rather the limitations of a Mods capabilities being exploited. Demigods percentage based system works much better and as such keeps the focus where it needs to be - on fighting your enemy.

If you'd like I can explain how and where each technique is used on the DotA Map?

Advantages of playing against human opponents really. And they're not unpredictable if you play long enough. One of the reasons I left.

The Map suffers from shallow strategic depth as a whole - there are only a few limited ways to play the Map due to the fact so few of the Heroes are worth using. Items provide slight variations on this, albiet a few do open up some interesting mechanics so I will concede that point. As a whole, I got bored with DotA because it was essentially the same three or four matches played over and over and over; only the names of my opponents and team members changed. And as it has become with Starcraft, where people watch replays and re-enact the minute-to-minute gameplay of Professional players, the 'best' tactics have surfaced and these are now used by all players. Don't confuse the possibility of Depth with actual Depth. Look at The Rook - he can be played many ways, however the Tower Rush strat has already surfaced as a pretty much unbeatable strat if used correctly. This character lacks depth because this one strat is "the best". For depth to exist, multiple paths must be able to be used with the same level of success - then it becomes of a matter of which strat to use when, creating depth.

I am a noob at Demigod and DOTA, and I will admit that. I havent played years, hardly even months of DOTA, and only a few days of Demigod.

I can honestly say from what I've played, DOTA had a ton more depth than Demigod. You took apart just 3 (out of the many) strategies in DOTA and loosely explained them, and why you think they aren't relevent. Well, I'm sorry you were unable to use any of them effectively to see the depth they added to DOTA. There is absolutely no depth to Demigod. All you get to do is attack your opponent face to face (which you so clearly point out a few times).

Could you give me any examples of the depth of gameplay that is found in Demigod but not in DOTA?

In all honestly though, I think Demigod plays a lot more like the Hero Wars mods in WC3. You have limited paths and choices to make when confronting your enemy. There is only one way to level up and that's by fighting your enemy face to face. There is hardly any suprise element because of the lack of a good fog of war.

I got bored very easily playing a few games of Demigod...I could actually play Hero Wars longer, and that's because there is more of a variety of heroes to choose to play. The only thing Demigod has on DOTA or even Hero Wars is graphics...and those only add to the gaming experience if there is good gameplay.

Sorry Demigod, you've got a while to go...keep trying and good luck

 

~Krith

I'm certainally no expert at either game myself, so we're probably on the same page in both games which is good because this provides an interesting view point from players who clearly like and dislike the opposite game/mod in this situation and have equal experience at both.

I took apart the three I asked to take apart. If you'd like me to briefly explain others I'd be happy to.
I found a great deal of success if using the above techniques, Ganking is incredibly effective in DotA for example and I was actually very good at it. But I grew bored of this, and eventually came to realise it's a fairly cheap method of winning the match. Playing the Map I learnt that it unfolds in a very limited number of ways over and over and over and this bored me very quickly. Same map, same heroes - all I had to do was figure out which of the variations I was experiencing and play accordingly.

To be fair, Counter-Strike is simillar on some maps (Dust plays out in only a handful of Variations) so DotA is not the only game to suffer from this. The reason people keep playing these games year after year is that they enjoy the setting, or the characters or just the sheer gameplay mechanics. DotA got stale for me and it's at this point I realised how shallow it was. It's why I began looking at other options both strategically and gameplay wise. I wound up here in the Demigod community after realising DotA is fairly limited in both. Demigod forces you to use creative thinking of your environment and abilities to outplay your opponents (minus The Rook strat I listed above) in combat as opposed to just being a higher level or ganking the hell out of them. The maps do unfold in simillar ways, however the number of variations per map is significantly higher than DotA because of the way the Demigods are designed - the exception being The Rook (as mentioned above). I've played the same maps on Demigod many, many different times (offline and online) and am still coming up with completely useable strategies as opposed to the handful that were useable in DotA. It's not just the mechanics that come into play, it's also the balancing. DotA abandoned attempts at balance and just added bucket loads of Heroes.

To be fair Demigod outright steals the general concept of DotA, so a lot of the depth comes from refining that model. The Flags were a suprerior addition with their benefits because instead of fighting over the Jungling locations players are fighting over flags which slightly tip the balance of favour for the whole team as opposed to simply powering up one Hero. It's a lot less focused on "Me and my Hero" than "My team and I" which is why it works better as a multiplayer game. Demigod's depth comes from creative thinking and useage of your Demigods as opposed to refinement of the same strategy game after game. The removal of Ganking from Demigod works for the game as it forces players to understand their situation - rather than their stage in their pre-approved strategy - and judge things on the fly, making for a much more exciting game, at least for me. While it can obviously be argued that DotA has the exact same depth and strategy, I personally found that each game played out remarkably similar, which showed me the game lacks depth as the "best" Hero combinations, strategies and item combinations were possible; balance occurs when no one of any is "best". Demigod, with a few exceptions (Heart of Life anyone?), has no "Best" of any - all Hero and most item combinations are functional and creates additional strategies that are useable. DotA lacks this.

The higher variety of Heroes is a valid point; more Demigods correctly balanced would mean more Strategies, the problem with DotA however is that despite being over 90 Heroes, they are not 90 uniques gameplay methods or 90 different strategies - some Heroes are extremely situational and as I mentioned above with the limited number of ways the matches play out, their situations never arise negating their purpose.  Each Demigod has variations on their general play style - not significant to say that it encompasses an entirely different method of play - which opens up their usefulness in a much wider range than the specifically designed Heroes of DotA adding much more Depth. Demigod might only have 8 'Heroes' but we get a lot more out of them than the Heroes of DotA.

Might I suggest heading over to the suggestions forum and making a post about what you think would make Demigod a better game? As a fan of the model - hence playing both DotA and Demigod - you'd be the ideal candidate to recommend changes to make the game better.

graphics make more people want to play

assholes make people stop playing

plus this game has alot off backing so it can only get better so it will be better then dota in the long run

WoW is boring i didn't like playiong it one bit

eye candy atracts people to the game and if it is a good game it will keep them  aswell  u iddiot

wow i got bored off within a hour  didn't like the game at all

 

And we should care about your personal opinion about a game why?

Fact of the matter is that WoW does not require a high end computer, yet it is a huge hit one of the biggest in retail online games afaik.

The game is also sold by the travelling word of gamers, and at the moment more and more people are getting scared away from demigod because of no indepth gameplay, shoddy connections etc.

 

It appears you did not play in very organised teams in DotA, because games where people killsteal, steal creeps and jungling spots are most likely pubs, and public games are generally shitty.

You seem to argue that in DotA the game is about you and yourself, it is not, it is about having a good mixture of heroes, know where you fit into your teams strategy and pull of everything in a skillfull way, yes, carries are given killing blows alot of the times, but as long as it benefits the team right?

 

not true at all with all the unique hero and item combinations available DotA get FAR more out of their heroes as a teamgame.

Come again? Youre saying killing your enemy proving superior since he has no map awareness is a cheap method of play? This isnt hello kitty island you know:)

again, you must only play pubs, since going one item build works in publics.

 

I have to respectfully, but strongly disagree in saying I think as many unique Demigods as financially viable would be the way to go. As long as you can keep making unique aesthetics / play styles, I would say to keep adding more.

 

I think GalCiv is a different enough genre that it doesn't really apply. I'd use DOTA for the comparison which is perhaps a little too far on the stacked side, or even pen and paper Dungeons and Dragons. With their fourth edition, they started with 8 classes in 2008, have added another 8 classes in 2009, as well as expanding the existing classes signficantly, and plan to continue to add more classes in the future (at a guess, another 8 or so in 2010 or 2011, probably including a Necromancer and Monk, among others). These are characters you might end up playing one exclusively for a year even, and yet they keep adding fresh choices because they know people really enjoy the new feel.

 

I think a moderate amount of depth and a large amount of breadth is ideal, because it allows you to appreciate significantly different aesthetics (fighter vs. wizard vs. walking castle) with also some meaningful choices once you've chosen your characters. I like playing a Necromancer one map, and then an assassin the next. The choices feel more different than they are when they are different characters, which is good.

 

Though incidentally, I still say an "easy" way to increase how far these characters will go would be to create good / evil versions of the existing characters. Same balance, different skins, sounds, and effects. I think, say, a giant white lion would be an excellent alternative to Unclean Beast. It'd lessen any balance issues in Panetheon too.

 

Also, I know a large number of people who are pretty unimpressed with the number of demigods. I think they are being a little unfair, but I do agree with them to the extent I'm hoping the eight we have now are just the beginning.

 

So it takes you a year to learn 4 new characters? Nice.

I'm also curious to see why when people mention adding more Demigods everyone is like "80 or 100 IZ TOO MANY WTFZOR SO MANY CANN0T L3ARN DEM ALL!!!1" Have you ever considered a middle ground? I will even admit that even half of that number is too many. But i think that 20 Demigods is a very respectable amount to achieve by the end of this year, any less is just being lazy. The engine is built, the network issues are almost corrected, the developers should have full resources soon to produce content and if this content means 2-4 Demigod and 2-4 Maps for a whole year's worth of content, then i think they are just insulting the worth of their customers.

I know most people will be like "OmGz 2 new Demigods after 6 months Thank you so much you guys are teh best!!!1" just because you are happy for any content, but the fact that there are 2 large developers working together on a very minor title compared to their previous individual games... there should be no excuses for a larger amount of content by the end of the year.

Interesting. Designing 12 new Demigods ensuring that they are balanced enough at their release to fit snugly into the pre-exisiting structure of the game while also ensuring that they are unique and add something to game rather than just added for the sake of another Demigod in the list would equate to, assuming each Demigod requires equal amount of work, roughly 3 weeks (no weekends off either) of contiual work on each Demigod. The balancing act for each new Demgiod would also increase in difficultly for each additional Demigod released as additional factors would need to be considered when balancing or designing their abilities.

So, designing, modeling, texturing, animating, coding, balancing, testing, bug fixing and patching in 15 working days, from scratch? I'm assuming the entire employee roster of both companies aren't working soley on these new Demigods of course (if I remember correctly, the guys at GPG are the ones working on content anyway, not Stardock). Plausible? Hardly. I'll accept 12 excellently designed and perfectly functional, not to mentioned balanced and viable, Demigods rather than 8 great Demigods and 12 rushed, steaming piles of shit. But thats just me.