I see a lot of tirades on the forum here. I think much of what is said is based in emotion, not fact. I wanted to take a moment to give my own analysis of Demigod the game, and a couple of recent hot-topics. Not that I'm anyone whose opinion matters, hehe. I am not what many of the more shrill posters would call a "fanboy," as this post is not 100% positive. I'm just trying to be as realistic as possible.Is Demigod fun? All things considered, it's clear that it is. I picked up the game about a month and a half ago. Since that time, I have had no problem finding games to play. I'm sure I have spent several hours per week playing the game. The game is fun, or I wouldn't. Is there 'no' playerbase or a 'shrinking' playerbase? Not that I can see from the time I have spent online. It seems to me to be holding about steady. It takes me at most a few minutes hunting for a game in the evenings. It takes me longer sometimes when I spend some effort searching for custom games that are not premade. Incidentally, it is not hard to find a game with no premades. It takes a little effort, but this is not difficult. When I play, I spend the whole time *not* playing against premades. The whole premade "issue" has been blown way out of proportion, I suspect, by sore losers. I am a complete loner -- no Demigod-playing friends -- and I can spend all night playing against PUGs. That's the pure fact of it. If I am out there doing it, then I just don't buy that premades are ruining the game. If you are getting smacked over and over, it's probably because you chased three demigods into their towers over and over...Is the Demigod code where it should be? No. I hate to say this, because I like this game. But, as a software developer and coder of games myself, I simply can't imagine how this game was released in the state it's in. Furthermore, when the 1.1 patch came out, it became evident within hours that there were problems (the first example of this that pops into my head is the random DG feature). I can only conclude that Gas Powered Games is simply not testing. Perhaps has no test team at all. In a situation where a piece of software has taken so much heat for bugs and problems, to release a major update that has not been tested to triple the expected standard is just dropping the ball. While I do believe that GPG has been laboring and putting in long hours to get code out, that is only half the task of software engineering. The code must be tested! I respect the efforts that have been going on, but please, for the sake of the game, get a test team. The next update, if there is one, really needs to be free of problems. Will Demigod be "gone in a few months?" I think that's unlikely. I also think the people who post such things are mostly emotional and childish. Whoops, that comment will probably get me flamed. So be it. Realistically, though, there is some risk that Demigod will wane and fail if the next update(s) are not in good shape. If Demigod is well-supported by GPG I think it will continue to live on. If 1.2 is a success -- a polished, mature update -- then I think Demigod will do well. I'm having a good time with this game and am willing to overlook a lot of the problems. I think the silent majority of players are the same. But, there is a limit to the patience of the masses
He was very active in posting not so long ago though. They do have a QA team, the random Demigod bug must be something that simply doesn't work in the live environment somehow.
Well, its not like this is the only bug to make it past their QA team. Connecting was completely unacceptable at release, despite it working fine for their test team. Achievements and favor items werent stored properly at release, even though they were for the test team. And favor items still arent stored corrected even though I assume that worked for the test team. And the random demigod thing worked for the test team.
I think that the obvious conclusion is that the test environment is completely substandard and needs to be fixed. Badly. You can get out of a small number of bugs by claiming something funky went on in the live environment, but you cant do that over and over and over and over and expect customers to be OK with it.
I think that the obvious conclusion is that the test environment is completely substandard and needs to be fixed. Badly. You can get out of a small number of bugs by claiming something funky went on in the live environment, but you cant do that over and over and over and over and expect customers to be OK with it
It is posts like these is why Frogboy doesn't participate in the forums.
Given Stardock's long track record of very solid PC game releases, this kind of comment is simply assanine. And he should know it since has has Galactic Civilizations, a game Stardock developed and published.
The issues involved on Demigod are far more complex than what most people are willing to contemplate. There is no black and white answer here.
But as someone else said, Frogboy won't be participating much on the Demigod forums going forward. As others have pointed out, all Frogboy's massive participation has brought is everyone blaming any issue they have in Demigod whether it be mean players, some bug in Demigod, or multiplayer frustrations on Stardock in general and Frogboy in particular.
Stardock publishes Demigod in North American and digitally. Atari publishes everywhere else. Gas Powered Games is the developer. But FB's postings have done nothing but create the false impression that Stardock is responsible for all things Demigod.
And the fact that Stardock has stepped in and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in development to HELP Demigod has not seemed to earn much good will. So there's not a lot of incentive to hang out here when he can be working on Elemental or Object Desktop or any of the dozens of projects currently in development that are actually owned by Stardock.
This is pretty common in the games industry though, you know? People think Square Enix makes this game or that game, that EA is to blame for bugs in this game or that game, this company that hosts the online portion takes the blame for the devs.
Publishers being scapegoated for developer blunders has been an industry standard since they started placing their names on the game box.
Double post.
Now that Frogboy's gone, we get to flame you now, Istari!!! Make DG better!
All jokes aside, it's so sad that some bad apples screw it up for the rest of us. People expect a consumer product rather than care to participate in the community constructively.
You complain about everybody turning DG criticisms into anti Frogboy rhetoric, but when I criticize the QA team (with specific reasons, not just random trolling), you immediately turn it into a Frogboy issue despite the fact that I never mention the guy here and the post has nothing to do with him.
Legitimate criticisms against specific aspects of DG are not attacks on Frogboy. I dont think that I've ever said anything negative about Frogboy himself - the closest I came was saying that he was bound to get some of the blame for DG's flaws since he is the leader and the leader gets blamed for stuff that happens under him. And thats the worst I've said about him.
DG has some problems despite being a great game overall and having a ton of potential. The largest of those problems (IMO of course) is that there are a heck of a lot of simple and obvious bugs and difficulties every time something gets released. Some of these are understandable. I wasnt complaining at all about say the GeForce 7xxx bug (despite being affected by it) because I know that getting things to work on all setups is difficult and that everybody has problems upon release with some setups. But some of these bugs shouldnt have made it past QA - the random DG thing is simple and shouldnt have made it to the live version. The Favor Bug consistently showing up shouldnt happen.
Part of my job to to write software professionally, and I know that I would be in big trouble if I let bugs of this type consistently get into public stuff.
I appreciate SD's history in GalCiv and Sins. But having those two games work out well does not make criticisms of DG assanine. Are you honestly suggesting that DG's first few months is up to the standard that Stardock expected? I highly doubt that. I'm not saying that Stardock is a crap company - that would be assanine and you could use previous games as proof to show that that would be a stupid thing to say. I'm saying that DG's QA team has not done their job very well recently in DG IMO. And that has NOTHING to do with what great games Sins and GalCivII were.
I appreciate Frogboy's posts here and have consistently praised him for his efforts in doing this. But I think that DG also has some deficiencies that need criticism. I think that you guys need to stop interpreting criticisms of specific aspects of DG as criticisms of Frogboy. I also think that you need to understand that as a loyal SD customer, this games intial quality has NOT met my expectations and it has not met the expectations of many others (although your response time and work since release has met my expectations - I understand how much you have done since release and appreciate that ).
You guys have to be able to take specific and well constructed criticisms of apsects of the game as legitimate feedback and not personal insults to you or your CEO.
I understand that you guys are probably on edge because there have been a lot of trolls recently saying stupid things and personally insulting Frogboy. Yeah, you should be cracking down on those people. But I'm not those people and I've said a lot of good things about Frogboy and your company now and in the past. You cant call out posts like what I made as an example of the problems on these forums recently IMO. You complain about people blaming mean people in DG on Frogboy. Where have I said anything like that? I'm not even blaming bugs here on Frogboy - I'm blaming them on the QA team because I think they should have been caught. Dont call me out for things that others have done.
Frankly I find your response to me highly unprofessional for the reasons listed above. I give specific and thought out criticisms of specific aspects of the game and you call me out for criticising your CEO despite that fact that I never mention him and he had nothing to do with the issue. Thats not how things are supposed to work.
What we have little use for is endless sniping from users who have no idea of what happens behind the scenes.
That's my point, though. It should not be tedious when that information can be easily displayed in-game, or at least have a button in the UI that opens a browser to that person's Pantheon page. It's just a poor UI. My frustrating stems from playing MP games for the last two decades and seeing minimal improvement in matching. I expect a better lobby UI than the ones I used in 1989. The actually gameplay is great, but I am disappointed in the matching system.
Premades are fine. Hell, I play in a premade half the time I am on. I just want casuals and new players not to get discouraged because they are repeatedly stomped in custom games.
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