Being a longtime DOTA player I was eagerly awaiting the release of Demigod. However, I'm disappointed in the lack of depth this game provides and the array of features that it failed to glean from the DOTA experience.
Creeping/Micro: This game lacks any micro-based creeping. The fantastic mini-game of last hitting and creep denial of DOTA make for a much more intense early game experience. The creeps are extremely weak in the early stages of Demigod, and though they can be upgraded, they're nothing but fodder. The waves also feel extremely slow, especially on maps with multiple lanes. This kills the flow of early game and often results in nothing more than demigods running between flags to cap and recap constantly.
The early-game creeps should be much more substantial in terms of health and damage, so they don't simply die in seconds and cause massive gaps between waves. Also a system of creep denial would be a great addition, as it would add an additional element of skill to the early game. There also should be more creeps in general. I'd like to see creeps pathing through every available lane, rather than the 2 lanes each map currently provides. If a map has 4 lanes it really should have a creep wave for each lane.
Itemization: Many of the items feel like they are fillers or weren't at all thought out. There is also no way to view an emeies inventory, this makes for situations where you have no idea what items your opponent is using, and how that level 5 beast has 5k health and seems regen every point of damage you inflict. Every item should have a place in the game and currently there are only 1-2 per item catagory that people even use. There is also an over abundance of consumeables, it would be nice if they were consolidated.
Viewable enemy/ally inventories would be a great change and changing the consumeable system to have some tradeoffs and higher expense would be a step in the right direction. Currently the system is really simplistic and limitied as to which items are used and it rather discourages creative combinations of items. Lower-end items that can be combined together into upgraded versions would also be nice.
Hero Diversity: Since there are very few heroes in Demigod, one would think each would be supremely diverse, but unfortunately due to the way itemization works in mid to late game, Demigod devolves into an auto-attack fest where damage, crit and regen numbers rapidly reach silly levels. It very much feels as if my characters skills, with a few exceptions, become secondary to which items I am able to purchase. Many skills simply don't scale well and are neigh useless mid to late game.
Make things other than CCs/movement abilities viable later game, either with items that upgrade skills or simply better scaling of skills. There are also quite a few skill trees that are relatively useless and that few people use (Sedna Yetis, most of QoTs open abilities) Very few Demigods seem to have multiple builds that are effective. Often one specific set of skills will outshine all others, but that'll be a matter of going through each Demigods tree and tweaking it to have 2-3 viable options.
AI/Pathing: This catagory is where the game particularly dims. Trying to play a minion General only to see your minions constantly unable to path properly or having minions lag far behind your character is supremely frustrating. Minions often get stuck when attempting to round corners, and often ignore commands completely when engaging other enemy characters. The pathing in general is pretty atrocious.
Give all minions a teleport to Demigod ability, so when they reach a certain critical distance from their General they will teleport to him. There's nothing more annoying than attempting to play a General only to have your troops unable to path around simple obstacles and keep pace with your character.
Jeez. Creeps are already crucial. They generate most of your experience and deal damage to structures. They heal you. They pressure the enemy and prevent them from healing. They light up the map and show you where your enemy is. Just because you don't see all the value in the creeps doesnt mean they need to change.
How much more crucial do you want them to be? If they are any more important this game will be another annoying micromanagement game. The whole reason I LIKE this game is because the creeps are the way they are. Anyone who wants more creep action should learn to play or just STFU.
I time my tower pushes with the creeps... seems to help.
It is, in fact, a key part of the game. It's what creeps do to help you. Sometimes you don't need creeps that can crush the opponent's player-controlled characters.
actually, the first level of creeps (minos and archers) pretty much does nothing but grant xp to opponents. The entire wave dies in 2 hits from a tower. I think that's what people are referring to.
A big NO on the last hit / exp deny thing. I played DoTA classic loads, and while good denial could win matches, particularly in a clan game where a team was depending on ultis rather than basic skills, it was really counter intuitive and annoying. I got hooked on Tides of Blood and RoTG AoSs for a while, coz in 1 last hitting was pretty irrelevant in the DotA sense, and in the other FF was disabled via a trigger.
IIRC there is already a form of this in DG anyway, where you get more exp for 50%+ dmg to spawns + some gold?
Itemisation needs some work, mainly because a lot of items are rubbish (Plate Visor!), and there is a particular lack of good minion stuff (imho). Seeing enemy inventory is fail Keeps you guessing if they are packing some clickies, or a load of pots / scrolls / locks for a portal capping run. Stuff to boost skill dmg% late game would be nice (my 1150 point fireball will not persuade a UB with 5.5k and 60hp/sec to leave me alone )
Skills need some reworking, in particular, minion skills are pretty awful, mainly because they don't do much - although LE and Oak's 'free' minions are much better than the pointless mana sinks Sedna and QoT get. QoT especially has several skills that just aren't that great and ends up leaning heavily on Bramble.
Pathfinding, well, rts pathfinding sucks in general - certainly nothing new here
Oh yeah, when I think fun I think micro managing creep kills.
Well I think there are some things which could be improved in DG. I don't play DG that long, but the item system just seems to be extremly simple. There is no way to have an advantage, if you have a basic plan what you gonna do during the game. I would love recieps, they make item choices more important. It's no fun to buy one item after another until your inventory is full with random stuff you need. Maybe no recieps, but some synergies or penalties between items would be nice.
There are too much towers in this game. It just sucks, everywhere is a tower. There is no space for Players to fight each other. I attack a Player and after 2 Hits he's back in Tower range and you have to retreat. This make escpecially the early game pretty boring. Running from Flag to flag is no fun. I know it ads a tactical part to the game. Thats ok flags are good, but it's just too much standing next to a fla and wait. You cap a flag, you leave, and 5secs later it's already caped by the enemy. So you go there again and do the same shit again.
Because the creep spawns are so shitty and slow, you can wait on that flag an nothing happens. If a creepwave comes, you slay it in some secs.
And the most important point, do creeps have no collision size? It seems like DG's walk through them like they are not there. This is unrealistic and make things too easy. Especially with autoattacks. It's so easy to kill a God with UB, you can just klick once and see the other god die. He walks throug all the creeps and you have to do nothing.
And the game speed itself seems to be a little bit too low. I miss some action. Most stuff is walking around and walking some more for capturing flags.
Demigod needs some more deep. I know there is one. But it seems not enough to play this game for more than some months. Compared to other games which are played for years by a big community.
You owe me a sprite, cause mine shot out my nose when I read your post.
OK, again. Flag capping encourages demigods to move around in lanes, rather than sit in one and farm. Further, since lone flags have no real sight bonus, they make better gank/team fighting sites than lanes, where you have to deal with towers and creeps.
Creeps (armies) have no collision size for one because they are meant to be secondary in the game's stylization. The increased size of hero units compared to minotaurs (who are, remember, massive comared to regular people) is a Greek/Roman stylization which serves to display the important characters. As armies are not terribly important, the game has pathing difficulties, and some characters are HUGE and should be able to step over creeps (Rook, anyone?) it makes perfect sense that they can be walked through. Making them into a barrier would furthermore overpower ranged harassment techniques, a feature I'm sure you are already well aware of as you have noted towers. Simply put, imagine TB or Regulus if you couldn't walk through creeps. They'd kite like children in a park. UB is hardly overpowered from this lack of collision; very few experienced players have trouble with him, from what I've seen.
Towers are really only about as close as the mid towers in DotA in most maps. In others, you are provided with the means to take towers out quickly for an advantage, that being a really big team. Therefore, towers are not too close. If you have trouble killing an enemy demi because of towers, you have probably not lured him out enough to warrant a kill in the first place.
Well If they are that big, I'm sure they would be faster without any creeps unter their feet. So let creeps slow down the DG, some movespeed penalty. Well when creeps mean nothing in this game, why are they as said above the main experience thingy? Why a HUGE DEMIGOD should get real expirience from that small stuff which doens't even bother them from walk through?
Well after your explenations it just seems as creeps are not integrated in to the game play on certain points. So the developers couldn't decide if they should play a part or not.
Well I do flag capping all the time, but I don't see why this makes the game better. Even if DG's walk around all the time. I don't get the advantege of it. Well in most cases I arrive on a neutral/enemy flag and there is noone because they already moved to the other flag. When they come I leave or what ever. So it seems in alot of cases ppl avoid each other on this point. Or it's just too hard to pin down a hero before he can flee. So in the default options (Normal flag cap time) it's just too easy to get a flag (never tried long capute time). In my opinion DG's seem to move around too fast for the advantage you pointed out. To compare it to DotA (I never mentioned or compared it in my initial post), ppl creeping on a lane can have advantages to the game play, as they are an easy target on the lane. This doens't apply to DG beacause in the early game with all the towers there isn't much space to sneak behind a creeping hero. So the DG early game is ruined by heros spending most ov their time moving around on lanes whith much serious enemy contact. Why fight a hero on a flag for the risk to get ganked, if you already gained xp with capping the tower? Seems this encourages ppl to just flee and cap another flag.
So alot is about avoid a real fight, beacuse the risk of dieing (which is the ultra bad thing that can happen to you).
Well admittedly, there is a lot more about control in Demigod than actually killing enemy heroes. However, if flags simply pass between two teams with neither gaining a distinctive advantage, everyone is most likely playing wrong. As flags are quite possibly the most important thing in the game, locks, teleports, and defensive/offensive capture maneuvers are key to team play. This takes the place of the more simplistic "Kill the enemy, push the tower" deal of most AoS games.
Again, towers are easily destructable. They also happen to be there to prevent the same advantages you complain about from walking through enemy creeps. The closeness of a tower in earlygame prevents melee characters from getting absolutely hosed by ranged characters in earlygame. Harassing is still very much a mechanic, but not overpowered due to the closeness of the tower. This is why you usually see a good regulus command the stage in prison. There are no nearby towers to protect other characters.
The creeps are not 'nothing', they are secondary characters, as NPC's should be. In DotA they take a larger role, it's true, but not necessarily a better role. By slowing a character down when he or she moves through creeps, you not only continue to give the advantage to the ranged character, but you make a good player using a general virtually invincible to, AoEless characters. This would also provide even more of an advantage to characters who slow enemies, by compacting said slow and making it virtually impossible to escape before massive damage has been done.
Creeps are part of the gameplay, they provide tower-pushing material (people have said they're weak, which is true. But without at least first level tower upgrades, they're 5 shots that your demigod is NOT taking while he piles damage on a tower), as well as providing valuable XP and gold for opponents. As the focus of the game is on Demigods, and how awesome they are, it doesn't make sense to have them fear mere mortals.
Well this game is named Demigod and not Demitower. Common, there are just too much towers in this game. I wan't to play with and against demigods, not against towers. I thought the story is about demigods fighting each other. What acutally happens, is demigods fighting a shitload of towers. Which makes fighting other demigods harder. There are enough defensive skills for attacked Demigods to make it back to the nearby tower (which is about 2 steps lol!).
This game should be about demigods and not about towers. The creeps are the perfect expample, they are there because of the towers, which makes my point even stronger. Like this you can call this game "Tower Defense of the Gods" or what ever.
What's the bad thing about letting demigods fight each other?
First, I think scarabuz is someone else in disguise, maybe OP.
Second, the amt of towers is personal preference. I don't find it overbearing since they are so weak.
Third, low level creeps are not really part of the gameplay. Splash damage is not dependent on any upgrades and hits DGs and creeps together.
The best thing would be, to double or triple the number of creeps (or to add an option to do so) and make them give the half exp and money. So they would be more important.
Creeps are definitely to unimportant & weak! Please make them stronger!!
I'll agree with you that they're useful. Having more creeps or creeps that are stronger than the opponents will give you a pushing advantage at nearly any stage of the game. Most of the creeps have a particular role that they do a good job at (though I'm convinced angels exist only to stop heart of lifes and give exp/gold), and make a big difference on any map with multiple lanes. On the other hand, it would be cool if I didn't have this sinking feeling that I was throwing the match by getting priests and angels. Losing because you upgraded creep spawns blows my mind.
Yeah... to me, it says something's wrong that I smile every time I hear that the opponent's "Priests have joined the battle." Especially if I'm playing the QoT or Torch Bearer.
They're attacking me with cash and better exp? Oh no!
I've never lost because I upgraded creeps... maybe I just haven't gotten into that situation.
Lately I started playing on War Score -> Low. Tower Strength -> High and Grunt Strength -> High and it makes for a much more enjoyable game! (Well, War Score -> Low is a bit too fast of a game.. but still fun)
In the leet community of dota there is no such thing as "fun".
All demigod needs is 50+ more heroes.
I do think creep denial is very possible in Demigod, simply by holding the creep convergence points, killing the enemy creeps, and allowing your creeps to run into the enemy towers, and I think it's an important part of the game's strategy from the early game onward. But I do feel your pain about the game sometimes feeling like you're just running between flags. I think it becomes less like that as the players get better, but it still could be more interesting.
I agree that a lot of the items feel like filler...things that people wouldn't actually ever use, and it would be nice to have that extra bit of customizability. Hopefully they'll revisit the item list, looking for items that aren't very useful. And I agree that viewing an enemy's inventory would be nice, but I've never felt like I'm lacking something without it. It'd be nice, but it's low on the priority list for me.
I agree, and I feel this deserves some extra attention. Demigods really do not have much customization at all. I really want to be able to feel like I play Unclean Beast significantly differently than someone else does, but really I build him exactly the same way. There's not much variation in the ways someone can play Unclean Beast, and anyone who sees you choose him knows exactly what to expect.
The auto-attack fest is also a problem, but I should point out that I've virtually never run into this in an online game. Almost always in an online game, one side will win before the game becomes an autoattack fest. And that is good, at least. However, this doesn't mean that we should ignore the fact that in a long-running game, most abilities become useless because the items are so good that your autoattack becomes super-powerful. It happens because items and artifacts do not increase the effectiveness of your abilities, but drastically increase the effectiveness of your base attack and drastically increase your health/armor.
By now I think we all know that the AI needs some improvement.
^ at least 70+
and 50 must be kitten, 10 frogs, and another 15 or so frog kittens
I'll preface this with a disclaimer: I have played an obscene amount of Dota. If you already hate me then don't even bother continuing to read because I'm sure you'll hate what I'm about to say as well.
I agree with nearly everything the OP said. Elaboration:
Creeping/Micro: I agree there is no micro with creeps, other than perhaps to aoe them. The main problem in Demigod is that there is very little value in actually KILLING creeps. The gold you get is pathetic proportional to how much gold you get simply by standing there. This was a poor poor design decision in my opinion. When enemy heroes get a gold advantage on your through kills or what have you there is simply NO WAY to make it up save killing enemy Demigods in response. And since they have the gold advantage they have better items, which means you can no longer beat them, barring the miracles of team work. (And that could go either way, assume you still draw if everyone is equally skilled)
As such, you cannot "out farm" the opposition like you can if you go down in Dota. That aspect of the game is completely removed, and Demigod is much shallower as a result. Sure it's "easier" and has less of a "learning curve" but it removes skill and strategy.
Throw in the fact that ganking alert people is simply not possible in Demigod (everything is so wide, there's no hiding places, and you can see nearly the entire map at all times) and it's basically a hero killfest. Still fun, but not as deep as Dota. The heroes themselves are deeper, but more on that in a moment.
Itemization: Completely agree. About half the items in the game are worthless and no one who knows what they're doing buys them.
Helms - Upper left, middle right, lower left are the only ones worth buying. Ever. (Sometimes middle left) Vlemish is such a clear cut obvious choice and outperforms all the other helms in value. That's just the helms. Similar things occur in most other categories. Mostly to blame are the craptacular Minion Boosts that are factored into so many of the item budgets. Half the heroes don't even benefit from this, so you get a poor value for the item bought. And some general builds simply don't care about the stats on your minions. So why do so many items have this crap on them?
Certain accessories are just worthless, and some, like the Heart of Life, are mandatory for every hero and every build. This is clearly unbalanced. There's also far too much reliance on healing potions. I think the cost for them should be increased.
Hero Diversity: Agree that near the end of the game the dps heroes win, with some stuns thrown in here and there. Set damage abilities scale poorly. This isn't as dissimilar as it was in Dota, but in Dota there were abilities CLEARLY meant for creeping. Creeping doesn't exist in DG so those AOE abilities well suited for wiping creep waves aren't so effective later on against 5k+ hp heroes, and you didn't gain a gold advantage along the way like you would have in Dota.
As such there's only really 1 build per hero that works well, with some variation here and there. (There are other builds yes, but they don't work as well) Anyone with a stun must get it.
I have hope here though that they will eventually buff/nerf everything into balance where the crappier abilities are usable. In time I hope they can get it right. It took time in Dota too.
AI/Pathing: Good god they need to fix this. Even more importantly they need to fix the GODDAMN ABILITY TARGETING BUG. Er...sorry. I get really worked up every time the memories of trying to heal myself as Sedna and dying because she just stood there and froze and nothing happened.
A lot of people seem to be against these concepts because they either haven't played Dota, despise anything about Dota, or think it would be "too hard."
If you haven't played Dota, don't get indignant. Dota is still the pinacle of this style of games. I've given up playing it but do not think for a second that Demigod is a better game - it is not......right now. I play Demigod because I see the potential for greatness in it. Each hero being deeper is something that Dota lacks. The flag system is kinda cool (despite every game being just a flag caporama right now).
If you despise anything about Dota - give it a rest. This game is extremely similar. Most Demigod heroes directly steal ability concepts from Dota heroes and sometimes mash a few heroes together. You're playing Dota. Oh wait, no you don't hate Dota, you hate the Dota community. Another misnomer - the same community exists in Demigod already. Leavers, elitists, noobs, the works, they're already here. Sure TDA were a bunch of jackasses but you can hardly call them "the community."
If you think it's "too hard" - so what? Every game does not need to be "easy to learn, difficult to master." The concepts that you find "boring" or "unfun" in Dota gave it extreme amounts of depth, and let people truly get better at the game. You could play without worrying about last hitting or denying, just attack the creeps and if you kill them you kill them and you could play the game fine. You could pick a lane and stay there. You could not try to gank people. But if you put effort into these things you would get tangible advantages over people who did not. It's called skill. That's the point of competing in an online multiplayer game. Don't fear "complicated" game mechanics - master them.
I'd respond to more things but I'm getting tired of writing this long post. Be back later, perhaps.
*edit: wrong thread
No I'm not an alt of someone else here.
Well the basic problem about all the stuff ppl are complaining in this thread is: I don't see why I should play this game for a longer time.
The long term motivation grows with the complexity of the game. Demigod is nice, and sometimes fun. But I can't see myself playing this game in a year still. I miss the space for improvement. You have 8 Heros with a decent amount of skill, but well the hero has a predefined gameplay. This is not a bad thing, but with only 8 heros it limits the game. I acuallty don't know how long it takes to master those 8 heros. But it won't take that long until you have your build and know how to play him. On this point there is only some limited strategy left to improve (Hero Combos, Flag Control). But this is not much improvement. Of course it matters to win a game, but there isn't that much player skill in it as in other games.
Dota can be played without deny creeps, but with doing it you have an advantage. You can play Dota without Complex Items, but if you know the items exactly and their build order you have an advantage. Such stuff is missing in this game, the creeps are easy and just bashing on the creeps like a zombie is enough.
And yeah this community doesn't seem to be much better than the Dota one. The only diffrence here is that the "pro"s don't want more complexity to keep their "pro" status. Affraid of a change and suggestions.
The players have not to decide if this game should be more like DotA or not. This is the offical forum, so there is maybe a chance someone of the producer reads it or what ever. It's a suggestion to make this game more popular and constant in long time terms.
This Game has a great potential, otherwhise I wouldn't post here and just uninstall it.
Sigh. In response to all the complaints about DotA bashing, I've played the game myself for god knows how long, still love it, and still play it. But that doesn't mean that everything in DotA must be converted to Demigod.
I think, in terms of creeps, that we should be given double the creeps at half the XP intake. For those of you who need help with the math, that's the same amount of XP, but with a little more gold and more 'threatening' creeps. That's really all that has to be done about it, because the game doesn't rely heavily on them.
In terms of outfarming your opponent, you can still out flag them, with the same probabilities as you could outfarm in DotA, bearing that you remember that someone who gets an advantage in DotA has the same advantage while farming.
Yes, hero killing is difficult in Demigod, particularly due to towers and lack of LoS. However, heroes are far less likely to become 'invincible', and a team with enough stuns and nukes in it can kill just about anyone.
Balance needs work, though.
Yeah ofc I can outflag other ppl, but this is horribly boring, because only walking around the map and stand next to a flag, doesn't require the skill you need to outfarm your enemy in DotA. You completly missed/ignored my point. In DG there are not much possibilites to beat your enemy with good player skills. So the game is concentraded on running around and standing next to flags... whooo yeah I need nice graphics for such things.
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