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.
Sounds more like micro-hell to me, and completely disinteresting. Not to mention unecesarrily gamey.
You need more detail -- what's 'creep denial'?
That said, several maps provide more than 2 lanes -- Leviathan has 2 'starter' lanes, plus two neutral portals for two more lanes. Same for Ziggurat.
Other than that, there's a reason I tend to prefer to host with 'strong towers' and 'strong creeps' when I do a custom game; the creeps do need the extra "oomph", especially early game, and the failure of towers to scale drives me insane. The need to (massively) improve the citadel upgrades, IMO.
Such as...? I've seen a use for most, if not all, of the items in the game, even if it's not a use I'm going to use. They're providing for experimentation and differing playstyles... not a bad thing.
Play some more; the DG's are extremely diverse. It's only in the extreme late game, if things have been dragging on far past the point that they should have ended (i. e. very nearly equal teams) that this becomes even close to true.
Player, not developer, problem. Take the rook; everyone insists that you have to tower farm (well, used to). But a properly played smash build can do a lot of damage.
ANOTHER post about how this game isn't dota????
GO PLAY DOTA IF DEMIGOD ISN'T DOTA ENOUGH FOR YOU.
I'm a fan of both DotA and DG, but I'm seeing mostly a series of bad ideas here. The viewpoint of OP is that DotA is the pinnacle of gaming, and the best something like DG can do is hope to emulate it. DG does not need to try to be like DotA anymore than it already is, and should try to forge its own path.
Point by point:
Denies and last-hitting of creeps are not needed in DG. The play of DG focuses on moving around and trying to control the map, which would be over-complicated by trying to last hit creeps for extra money.
The items in DG are good, though they do need some balancing. Specifically, many items need buffs (especially some of the artifacts). However there are uses for everything in the game, just not optimal choices. The item mixing system of DotA is a pointless complication. They lead to the same results (better item), but require an abstract and complex way to get there. The only thing this adds to gameplay is that some items are more desirable because their components provide a nice buff while trying to reach the end goal. Since DG can sellback items for close to their buying price, that addition to gameplay quality would be nullified here. However, I do agree we need to see opponents inventory.
DG's builds for individual characters are far more diverse than DotA. Also, DotA is far more of an auto-attack fest than DG, and offensive items in DotA are more powerful than in DG by far. This is just a bad judgement made from someone looking for reasons for DotA to be better. In regards to the variety of builds, I think we will also see the metagame change dramatically as people start to get good with more interesting builds. It has only been a month.
AI and Pathing is crap, agreed.
Thats really GodLike! You wrote everything I thought what shoudl be fixed.
Really nice, especially the part about the number of creeps. I would really like to have a creep option with 5 settings called "low" "middle" "normal" "big" and "sick". The "normal" number should be the double amount than it is now (sry im german...)
Even better it would be to have a bar to set the number of creeps. Anyway, the creeps must become more as standard, and still more as option!!
some of your points are very good ones that i agree with. others are not well founded and i disagree with.
1) creep "last hitting" and "denial"
- these are two of the most difficult and frustrating mechanics in DotA and they are one of the primary sources of the extremely steep learning curve. personally i'm glad they were not replicated in Demigod. i know you like them because you're an experienced DotA player but i suspect nearly anyone who hadn't spent years getting used to it in DotA would really friggin hate it.
-they also wouldn't really work very well in this game since creep waves are generally bigger and the creeps are smaller in size relative to demigods. there's a big contradiction created by the ability to zoom out in DG. in DotA you're always zoomed in by alot, thats just how the WC3 engine works. in DG its much more common to play zoomed out for a more strategic view. this fact alone makes creep denial tactics like from DotA conflict with the viewing mechanics in DG.
2) Items
- i agree with you that there are alot of filler items in DG and some broad revisions to alot of items would be appreciated. more activated items, more consumables (but less overlap, more different effects), more exotic proc based effects would all be good.
- i agree with you that being able to view ally items would be extremely valuable. viewing enemy items should not be possible though, hidden information is an important component of interesting competitive game play. you should be able to surprise your opponents with your items.
- i disagree with you that DotA had a good item system. it is obtuse and hard to learn and very punitive of early mistakes. yet another source of the extremely high learning curve of DotA. they implemented a similar system in this game through simpler means. they simply gave high re-sale value to items so you can convert early game items to late game items by selling rather than putting a recipe together. i like it better this way, less learning curve and more flexiblity.
3) Hero Diversity
- i agree with you partially. in Demigod the heroes are very noticeably different for the first 15 levels of gameplay but levels 16-20 they become almost interchangeable, just being auto-attack DPS machines fueled by artifacts more than abilities. better end-game diversity would be appreciated. early and midgame diversity is excellent though.
- i don't personally like the 100 different heroes of DotA. yet another source of the monstrously high learning curve of DotA and there's also alot of junk in that pile. only 10-15 of those DotA heroes are good enough for high level play anyway, so who cares how many of them there are in total?
- i'm eagerly awaiting expansion demigods and revisions to the original eight, as i'm sure you are too. 8 is too few. new DGs would be exciting.
4) AI/Pathing
- total agreement. the pathing is horrible and the AI could be better in general.
QQ why do you have to turn Demigod into dota. Whyyy can't you just go and play Dota insteed... QQ
I disagree with almost everything you wrote.
Creeping/Micro: This game lacks any micro-based creeping
Thank god! I applaud that this game has NO micromanagement of creeps. I do not want any added and hope this request is thouroughly ignored. The AI works fine on its own.
This looks like you just havent played the game enough. All the items have their place with a certain build for a certain DG. And I definitely DO NOT want to see my opponent's inventory and vice versa. It's fine now where every player operates independantly. Add in inventory review and you make it more likely to pick on 'poor' demigods who spent more on cit upgrades. You also increase the ability of good players to dominate weaker ones.
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.
You just don't know what you're talking about here. Go play more. There are multiple builds for every DG and those affect your item purchases. There's also 8 DGs to play, which I conside a lot. All have their own unique levelling trees and all have unique powers. This is already a LOT of variety. You may not be seeing it because you're just not experienced enough yet.
It's not that bad, but it could use improvement. This is your only point that has any merit.
I agree with every single one of the things the original poster said. I also come from DotA to demigod. I would like to point out I am in no way biased towards Dota. I love Demigod as well now. I almost exclusively play Demigod. I am very happy with it. I'm just greedy and always want more. But... I have friends who still play Dota and have not been converted. I also have friends who play dota who I got to buy Demigod, who are not happy with it - and returned to playing Dota. I hope the Demigod community (and financial investors) realize how much potential community they can pull away from Dota.
The magic of dota comes from years of refinement by an activity community. Please listen to players like Ghostnote because he knows what he is talking about!
However, I understand than many people come to Demigod and probably have never played dota. Dota is a fantastic game. It's graphics system cannot compare to Demigod, but for replay value and longevitiy its the game itself thats important - not the graphics. Demigod succeeds on many levels, but for many Dota players it just isn't enough. Dota players expect Demigod to be everything Dota is and MORE. That's what we feel a "Dota-inspiried game" should be.
I would like to respond to some of Ron Lugge's comments and reiterate that I am not biased towards any particular game. Each of my responses below portrays my opinion in terms of what would be more fun.
"Sounds more like micro-hell to me, and completely disinteresting. Not to mention unecesarrily gamey."
- Last hitting and denying is a huge part of DotA, and its fun. It gives you something to do at all points in the game. It adds another dimension of skill and interest to the game. However, I don't think this feature in Demigod is absolutely necessary if we have other things to replace it. The overall depth and gameplay of Demigod I feel doesn't really need last-hitting and denying IMO. Since playing more Demigod lately, I haven't missed last hitting or denying whatsoever since I feel there is more of a strategic element in Demigod and that makes up for it.
"You need more detail -- what's 'creep denial'?"
- Creep denial goes hand in hand with last-hitting creeps. In DotA, you receive a nice little gold bonus if you manage to get the last hit on a creep. Similarily, when an opponent creep is below a certain threshold you can attack it. By getting the last hit on your opponents creeps (or towers) you essentially prevent them from getting any gold bonus. In dota this is listed is a "deny" in the internal score system and doesn't really give you anything other than bragging rights. But its fun.
"That said, several maps provide more than 2 lanes -- Leviathan has 2 'starter' lanes, plus two neutral portals for two more lanes. Same for Ziggurat."
- Good point. I agree with you on this.. I haven't really noticed a lack of lanes in the game. But I do agree with the poster that I would like the creeps in Demigod to use more of the available space. To add my own thoughts: I honestly thing the maps in Demigod just need to be worked on a bit more. I find it strange theres 9 maps in the game but only 8 demigods. For map to hero ratio thats a ratio of 9:8. In Dota your ratio is 1:92. I really hope that gap in the ratio is bridged at some point in the future
"Other than that, there's a reason I tend to prefer to host with 'strong towers' and 'strong creeps' when I do a custom game; the creeps do need the extra "oomph", especially early game, and the failure of towers to scale drives me insane. The need to (massively) improve the citadel upgrades, IMO."
- I agree as well. The "default" settings could be easily updated to reflect this as 99% of people play on the default settings.
"Such as...? I've seen a use for most, if not all, of the items in the game, even if it's not a use I'm going to use."
I find this comment a bit curious, but maybe I'm misunderstanding. In dota every single item has a use - and probably has been used at some point or another by good players. I feel that the items in Dota have been crafted and reworked with the same care the heroes have over the years. I agree with the original poster that this is severely lacking in Demigod. This is compounded by the lack of recipes in Demigod. Imho recipes are fun - selling is not. Recipes give you the feeling of building to something greater than the sum of parts.
"Play some more; the DG's are extremely diverse. It's only in the extreme late game, if things have been dragging on far past the point that they should have ended (i. e. very nearly equal teams) that this becomes even close to true."
Perhaps you should take your own advice. As I play more, more and more games are getting to the extreme late game phase. Much of the time if Demigod has a novice player the game is practically over in 5 minutes due to this reason. (Opponent gets fed a huge item early game and its gg) In Demigod it really does seem like the skills are secondary. I can't really say it better than the original poster said but I would liek to add that the control bugs and freezing skills in Demigod only compound this problem. The attacks (boosted by huge items) are really the most reliable forms of DPS in the game right now.
"Player, not developer, problem. Take the rook; everyone insists that you have to tower farm (well, used to). But a properly played smash build can do a lot of damage."
I see both your points of view on this one. I feel the OP is talking about extreme late game here.
Thanks to both of you guys for your insightful posts. My intention is only to help this game grow and get better and learn whatever it can from other games.
First of all, sorry for my bad English; I'm Spanish, and although I understand it perfectly I've got some limitation when I write it.
I see this well-redacted thread very useful to get some ideas a bit further, and not to get stuck on a plain "this isn't as good as DotA".
Being for quite a long time dota player, i know that when ir receive the retail game (hope will be this week) it'll be imposible to me not to compare it with dota. However, I dont see it as a bad thing, they could take some very positive ideas for forecoming changes. That's why I hope I won't forget this thread, and try to answer it when I have played it enough.
Well its not that i like DOTA... cause actually i hate it... but i do like Land of Legends / Legends of Eternity and i must agree
on ONE thing then. the creeps are too weak on the beginning... you can like ignore them and keep attacking the Gods cause pah they dont do anything those creeps... what would be cooler is have creeps like meatshield and stuff wauit for ur creeps to come cause they bit toughter and stronger so you let those 2 groups fight but like... intensivly ^^ and if youre group has like one ore 2 creeps enemy hero he can better run IF a demigod is in the background attacking aswell cause actually they do some damage... 2 bad it aint like that... you hit em few times and you get XP... thats all they good for (ore for sapping life out of them with OAK ore EREBUS ore... another GOD
anyways hope you understand my texture ^^
greetz
I don't agree with him on the form, but I should agree on the "core" of the matter.Demigod shouldn't be a simple replica of DotA (I was a very experienced dota player), it should make his own path. I don't agree with transitive's post saying that blablabla too complex, blablabla to hard, blablabla too complex learning curve, etc.Demigod was also thought to be played in competition, and I'm sure that a lot of players here don't agree on the fact that the game must be easy to play or learn.Easiness means getting fed up really fast for me. If you have, by exemple a linear learning curve for this game, you will be bored in 3 months.
Best exemple that comes in my mind:
TF2: Great game, nooby and pubbies friendly, got bored in 2 months because I mastered the game with all classes. Then, the only thing that you can work to be better is the teamplay. On a personal based side, nothing more required. That's sad in comparison of the first TF (only to compare).Devs should invest in the long-term goal, and for that, you need to scale the game on the principle that Blizzard has mastered: Easy to learn, hard to master (or something like this). This game should be really easy to play, but they should really add some things to make things harder for those who want that ! I think that I have always something to work when playing a game, you shouldn't have to play this game 20 hours, no more and able to master all the aspect of the game.
So, adding a system not necessarily like deny but something that add difficulty and skill to passively bother your enemy is a good idea in my opinion. Because Demigod is actually limited on active way to bother the enemy (harassing, gank, nuke & Co). I already posted some of my thoughts here for the one that are interested to read: here
Ok, I think we're somehow failing to communicate. For pretty much every item, I see a use / purpose to it. The only question is if I'm ever going to use it (for example, a movement oriented Erubus is not likely to use the '5 seconds invulnerability at the cost of not doing anything orb as much as a rook with low movement speed) with a given playstyle. Every item in the game has a use, could be useful, it's just that depending on your playstyle you may not like it.
Not a problem I've been having, and I usually play 2-3 games a day, on average. I don't think I see giants very often, much less the heavily artifact'ed DG's that this scenario requires. Of course, since I tend to prefer rook (whose hammer is the single largest burst DPS in the game) or erubus (whose bite synergetically improves autoattack) my viewpoint is probably a bit skewed.
Every helm with the exception of Vlemish Faceguard is poorly itemized. All boots with the exception of journey treads, boots of speed and unbreakable boots are very weak. Most of the gloves are weak, many of the breastplates have goofy passive abilities, rather than being substantive upgrades. Heart is extremely overpowered, very few other accessories are ever worth buying. Many items have procs or use effects that seem to take up the entire item budget, but do very little.
There simply isn't a very interesting progression of items. Beyond Mageslayer, Ashkandor and Bracelet of Rage I see very few artifacts ever used and there are quite a few rendunant consumeables.
Time to beat the dead horse again.
While I like DotA as much as I like Demigod, I'm getting just a little sick of these posts explaining that Demigod is not, in fact, exactly like DotA, and how it would be really great if it was, and cherryblossoms would rain from the sky.
Creeping is probably the dullest part of DotA, imo. Do I do it well? Yes. Do I have fun with it? No! I'd rather be having the epic flag wars you can find in Demigod, rather than sitting behind my creeps to deny every drop of gold that I possibly can. Demigod is also meant to be more easily picked up than DotA, which is admittedly quite infamous for being impossible to start. (still a good game, but you know it took you ages to learn) Furthermore, the gaps in between creep spawns are there because they encourage team play, such as flag capture and ganking. Note also that the creeps give minimal amounts of gold, and thus the whole deny tactic would probably result in a waste of effort that could be put into something more practical. Finally, the creeps in Demigod are clearly meant to be secondary, unlike in DotA. They exist largely as an opportunity to farm, and as a way to make you feel friggin awesome. Don't tell me you didn't like it the first time you hit a creep and he flew down a hole to his death.
Itemization needs some serious work in Demigod. However, recipes are a needless complication to the game, which serve no purpose other than to force you to buy certain items in early game in order to get your desired endgame results. Thus, they simply impede strategy by limiting your options. Furthermore, just like in DotA, recipe items would cause you to waste your time running around the map, desperately trying to get your item. And finally, Demigod has a small enough inventory as is, so building your third or fourth recipe would be irritating, if not problematic. I want to be able to HOLD the items I buy. Even the small ones.
Heroes in DotA seem to have this problem too. However, tbh I have seen it less in Demigod. Even at endgame, Regulus loves his mines. Rook loves his towers for TP's, and his hammer smash and boulder roll for the slow/stun. Erebus loves his mist, bat form, bite, minions, and poison potions. Sedna loves her heal. Oak....Don't get me started on Oak. I think you see where I'm going with this.
Pathing Dear gaming gods, I humbly beseech you to fix pathing. It needs even more work than items do.
I've never played DoTA, but I can at least partially agree with some of the post.
Like many others, I don't like micro-hell so I wouldn't want things like last hits and creep denial.
I do agree that the game needs more items, and the items that are already there are in need of a lot of balancing, as some are bought by everyone all the time, and some are completely ignored (like all but 2 or 3 of the boots, and all but 3 of the trinkets).
I definitely would like a couple of demigods added every few months or so, 8 is somewhat low, and especially since they only have 4 abilities and several of the demigods are 1-trick ponies. More variety would me nice.
AI pathing also needs a bit of work, I hope any new maps added in the future are unique in their creep pathing.
I still think the only the problem with items atm is balance - thats it. They all have interesting effects and such but its just some are too weak and there price doesnt scale well with how good the item is. Lets give them more than a month to balance out the items And I have to say pathing around corners and such is pretty poor, but can be avoided with good micro. Its just atm the ability unresponsive bug is not being fixed.
We're gonna have to agree to disagree here, because from my perspective you're just about insane (other than Heart of Life being a bit OP).
creeps are actually quite strong even minos and archers of course they don't have much hp but keeping them alive by preventing your enemy from attacking them is what gives you map control.
You are right about the boots, and partly when it comes to helmets, and other item classes though. And Heart of Life is the most overrated yet not really overpowered item of all. It is true that a lot of items aren't perfectly balanced yet but a lot more than those you mentioned are useful, some maybe only in narrow situations but still.
also when it comes to pathfinding, its not really worse than the best RTS ever made : starcraft. Learn to micro, not really that hard with those few minions when you are used to have big armies
dont agree, creeps can be increased in strenght and in respwan
and BOTH options sux
i tried them and it sux
i would maybe only insert some more creeps path in some map and thats it
creeps are fine
cant really see a *problem*
yes, indeed many items are useless, but there are tons of good items, many items situation, and so on, they could work a bit on them but thats not a priority imo
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.
lol you kidding? bery bad idea
seems a common problem of ppl who doesnt know the game very well
my games are ALWAYS over mid game, the games NEVER get at a point where articafts matters or autoattack matters
if the games get that far there is a problem in players
on this i agree but unluckily i think we have we chances to see major balance anytime soon
i would write myself a list of balance or problems in balance but its no sense till we have a good connection working and the "feel" that GPG is gonna develop the game balance further
This kills the flow of early game and often results in nothing more than demigods running between flags to cap and recap constantly.
Eh? If every lane had creeps then people would just lane camp. I like the fact you can't just say, sit on the 20% exp flag in the middle of the map cuz you won't get any creep kills at all. If this lane got creeps too where's the incentive to move around?
I really like the dynamic fluid play of having to constantly recap flags, sitting my DG in a lane then goign to sleep for 30 mins hardly sounds entertaining. Players who sit still end up with a shitty war scrore adn unless they are playing against nubs who feed them they will end up in big trouble when the other team pulls out giants.
While I'm not immediately familiar with how DoTA plays, I think the creeps should play a bigger role. Until you get mid-game when catapults start coming into play, there's not much value in fighting along side your own creeps and clearing a path for your creeps to strike enemy structures. I think this is exemplified by the fact that most people consider getting priests/angels a mistake rather than an advantage. Again while I don't have any real DoTA experience, I get the feeling that creeps do a lot more of the work, and the game is about helping those pushes. In DG the creeps are just minor nuscances that serve no purpose other than leveling until late game when suddenly giants pop up and instantly win the game if you have more portals than the opponent. Somehow that doesn't really seem like it scales well.
I'll agree that the situation needs tweaking with regards to the angels / priests and various other citadel upgrades. That said... lower level minions do have a powerful effect with regards to 'creeping' -- you kill enough of them, and you can get a huge XP (and gold) advantage over an opponent. That's on huge advantage frost TB / other AoE chars get.
The problem with priests / angels isn't that they aren't useful, it's that they 'feed' a creeping opponent far, far too much.
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