We were able to get the updated network update out yesterday and we turned the Pantheon and Skirmish to try to do 3 on 3 matches. Since so many people seem anti-bot, we are looking for ways to make that happen but the problem is, if people insist on human only then we need to provide more feedback to the user. We already get complaints from people saying it takes “too long” to get into a skirmish game (a whopping 2 minutes). So for people who insist on human only, we need ways to make them aware that the system is working but it might take several minutes.
Skirmish and Pantheon games aren’t just about finding some random group to have you play against. It uses your ELO (experience) rating to help match along with your location to try to put together the best match possible.
One of our frustrations (and this is one of the reasons I’m not a fan of MP games in the first place) is how inconsiderate some people are. We spent a lot of time trying to figure out why people were getting “disconnected” right when a game starts. Well, it turns out, from looking at the logs, is that some people, having only 2 on 2 or 3 vs. 3 where an AI player had to be substituted to fill in the gap that some people just quit right at the start. I understand the rationale but it’s still objectifying other people’s time. I won’t debate people on the issue as I think it’s a matter of agreeing to disagree.
But bottom line is that if people want to have an idealized match, it’s likely going to take more than 2 minutes and the only way to make it take more than 2 minutes is to provide more feedback so that’s what the team is working on today.
Proxy tomorrow
So besides having more feedback telling you how many people are looking for games which lets us increase the time to find an ideal match, we also plan to have tomorrow’s update have the proxy server. This should eliminate the last problems for connectivity except for the case where people have multiple IP addresses which is still being worked on.
More info please
Some people have said “I used to be able to connect fine, now I can’t.” We really need data from those people in the form of their impulsereactor.log files (located in my documents\my games\gpg\demigod) which you can send to support@stardock.com with (ideally) a description of what happened and whether you used to be able to connect so we can see. At this point, people shouldn’t be having any problems connecting other than those with router issues.
The Documentary
Once we concluded that we were going to have to write our own multiplayer system for Demigod and that it would have to be done not in a matter of months but a matter of days or a week or two we knew that crazy hours were going to be involved. So we video’d it. We hope to release in the next week or so a documentary video so you can see the innards of Stardock and what was involved.
Here are some images from it:
Marketing meeting
Management meeting in late April when it was decided to assign the Impulse team to develop a new system.
My daughter Ashley visits me at work
Our chief architect, Jeff Bargmann and his Impulse team merges with the Elemental development leads to create a new network system. The application team had already gotten somewhat involved by creating the “Impulse Overlay” that allowed us to inject new screens into Demigod.
Elemental team can’t resist but show off what they’re doing.
Found a baby turtle while taking a walk outside
First!
Thank you again for feedback.
Elemental seems nice. I'll look at the pre-order.
Awww its so cute. no not you, the turtle.
You guys are awsome, cant wait for the documentary.
No offense foggy, but ppl play multiplayer...to play with other players. I dont play neither pantheon nor skirmish for that same reason...because I DONT WANT TO PLAY WITH BOTS.
In all honesty, if i play pantheon and an AI is on my team...i WILL quit, playing with one of those ruins the game. Up until now i believed that it was a bug...sometimess having AI appear in your multiplayer games....but now that i see its intedended i just gotta say....wow.
A turtle... No wonder joining a game is that slow
Obviously it is going to take longer to find games if you have to match only humans but I think everyone should be able to understand how that is preferable. Trying to do any form of matchmaking is pointless when there are bots in the game as those games degenerate to who can farm the AI the most.
In addition to that the inclusion of bots in pantheon (havent tried skirmish) seems broken as in rougly 50% of the games with bots I have been placed in a team with another player against 2 AI. The result is obviously a completely meaingless game and a quick disconnect to try and find something new.
You plan somewhere in the future to make Demigod a client/server game, or is just for Elemental? If yes, how much time we will have to wait? One year or more?
Who's the hot blonde in the meeting room? Women sporting Detroit Tigers shirts are yea, good stuff
Random Team 3v3 on Warcraft 3 takes less than 30s to match 2 teams of 3 and without any lag.
Just playing evil advocate here, but you get what I mean.
PS: Can I dissect that turtle for my experiences? *evil grin*
I can't see anyone wanting AI players in game unless they are going SP or COOP - in terms of waiting as long as you are getting active progress on player matching then most people will wait. Its when you just get a limited feedback that it falls down
MP > SP games i'm afraid regardless whether it makes it more difficult to manage - that's why they are more fun tbh - AI will follow the rules.
Tals
Ya that's what I was wondering.
Warcraft 3 from the xfire stats is 5th in the charts and has 16000 players a day playing it (just xfire users)
DemiGod is 125th in the chart and has 729 players
It's a scale thing
Gave you karma for your profile picture haha
And I want the turtle!! Can you ship him/her to PA for me?
Let me start out with this -- I do realize that many improvements are in development, and that adding them in before completing the feedback enhancements would increase wait times and result in more negative opinions. I enjoy the game greatly and look forward to what you guys bring to the table in the future. Hopefully my opinions might help in considering what sorts of improvements will be valuable.
I'm not sure exactly how inconsiderate it is to leave a game where bots are already present. I mean if people who stay are comfortable with bots, then I don't see how one more bot will hurt them. And people who hate bots would already be upset, so what's one more bot?
I think the real problem is how bad the AI is for competitive play. Granted a human partner could be just as bad or worse but, especially if you've worked your "ranking" up, you should be mainly encountering partners and opponents that can absolutely destroy the AI in its current implementation.
The AI is great for testing things out on, learning how to play, and having some fun with. But in a competitive setting where you actually care about winning, having a bot as a partner is a disaster -- especially in 2v2. So perhaps the real inconsiderate measure here is forcing a player to accept a partner that is known to be weak and probably drastically below the skill level of the competition.
Outside of that, I think the lack of feedback and controls in Pantheon and Skirmish drive a lot of people away even in their current incarnation. I know when I discuss these modes with my friends, the opinions we share are rather negative, and the consensus is we generally avoid those modes as a result.
Two minutes feels like an eternity if you're sitting and looking at an unchanging message. Even the simple addition of a timer so you can see how long you've been waiting would be better.
And the lack of options really hurts those modes -- you can't demand no bots. You can't select which mode you want to play (conquest, domination, etc). You can't choose what size game you want.
I think the game is great and I have lots of fun playing with my friends. I just think that pantheon and skirmish modes could use some help. Thanks.
Those B.net/Arena.net guys knew how to get it done, but I think Stardock is going to get it right eventually
Warcraft 3 - the third in the franchise with millions of users has no problem because it has such a huge population.
It has nothing to do with tech and everything to do with user base.
I'm liking the cel-shaded look of the 'Elemental' art style.
P.S. I see 'Society' on the marketing meeting white board...
This is a problem with the way skirmish/patheon are set-up. They are too random. Yes, people have their ideal game. However, at the same time people have a breaking point where they decide "oh, %#@! this!" Pantheon/Skirmish are regularly exceeding this breaking point. It's why I consider them a broken format and refuse to play them.
Not only does pantheon/skirmish pair players vs AI, it has uneven matches (2v1), doesn't take player count in regard when selecting map, and has a bunch of random settings with tower strength, creep strength, ect.
A good example, I got paired with a 2v1 in skirmish as erebus vs 2 rook on mandala. That map is HUGE, to put only three players on it in a 2v1 is retarded. The whole experience was terrible for everyone.
You seem to understand why people would quit an incredibly laggy game, where some guy with -1 sim speed or a ridiculous ping is making the game a slideshow. The same idea applies here, you are regularly creating games that are so bad, so horrible, people do not want to play them.
So how can this be fixed? Pantheon needs better parameters.
Yes, it sounds like you're headed there anyway so I don't want to beat a dead horse, but I'd like to second what nothingpants said that this behavior isn't about a lack of consideration. If I'm put in a 2v2 matchup and there is one AI I'm almost certainly looking at either a challengless smackdown (if they have the AI) or a frustrating doubleteaming leveraging all the farmed gold (if I'm afflicted with it). Either way the game is already decided and I'm looking at 30 mins of going through the motions. I've even got no real objection to even numbers of AI on both teams, but when it's lopsided like this its very difficult to have a competitive game, and I'd rather take a disconnect than waste my time as my primary motivation is to have a fun game. I'd even probably be willing to suck it up if I thought I was the only one not having fun, but I can't really imagine most people playing at a competitive level will enjoy either end of this engagement.
Also, not sure if you're working on this already as well, but I'll sometimes get placed in a match with 2v1 human players and no AI. At first I thought that was too cool, overcoming a lack of appropriate matchups by pairing a highly ranked guy against two lower ranked ones. Then I got placed on the 2 player side of that equation (I'm currently ranked #1 in skirmish), so I think maybe it's more of a bug. At any rate, it's not terribly sporting if we're going to do ranked matches as there needs to be a fairly specific skill disparity to make this really a competitive match.
Feedback on the matchmakign would be great, seems like one of the problems is people getting frustrated and canceling out of the match as it's trying to set up. I can't imagine most people would have any problem if they knew and expected it to take 2+ mins to set up so long as they didn't think it twas hung. Probably a good chunk of the remaining "connection" problems could be resolved by removing the reasons people disconnect. Easier said than done, I know, but just my 2 cents.
As an interim solution, simply make it so if you have to put bots in a game, make is so they give very little (or no) XP/Gold to the team that killed them. Having no bot at all, or a bot that feeds the enemy constantly are both very big extrememes. In the future, after all the new AI mods come out, and the AI is imporved, then you could reset xp/gold bonuses back to normal if needed.
Well, I've been holding off on doing any Skirmish or Pantheon games until all the connectivity, favor, and stats issues are fixed. The other thing is that I don't want to play any competitive ranked matches w/ AI involved.
When that stuff is fixed I will probably play a lot more pantheon and less custom games.
I definitely hear ya when it comes to other people being inconsiderate in online environments. However, I've been pleasantly surprised at how respectful and good natured people have been on the custom games scene. I usually don't like the whole custom games routine but the community of people I have found in Demigod has been focused on fun and good competition.
I feel a better solution to rage quitters is rather than remove the AI, or improve the AI or impliment some elaberate voting system. is simply to make the AI play defence. plain and simple. 90% of complains about AI is that the feed like crazy. so by simply not having them suicide into the most fed player every time they spawn and just stay in base and farm grunts makes much more sense.
this also wouldn't effect the overall outcome of the game (as much) since the AI wouldn't be involved in pushes so the remaining human players are still at a disadvantage. but still playable.
i'm also pretty sure that i'm not the only one who thinks this. i've seen quite a few posts in the Idea section suggesting something like this.
Baby turtle demigod soon!
Lore: Frogboy found me now I will kill you all!
But I do demand that the table in the picture get turned into a round table.
Just Elemental. We don't develop Demigod so we don't really have a say there. Plus, Demigod's p2p system lowers latency.
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