Quote from Frogboy:
The only reason I bought this game is because Frogboy and Stardock/GPG in general made it out that Demigod was going to be a competitive sport. To be more precise, "the counter strike of RTS".That really does explain this game was released with no replays and observer mode - which is bascially a MUST for the competitive scene (in a RTS community at least) and its still not out 3 months+ after release.
The "casual gaming" attitude of Stardock is also reflected in them saying that they want to have the AI in Skirmish and Pantheon games.
I hardly think Frogboy wants to shaft competitive gaming for the casual scene with a competitive PGL background of his own.
English isn't all that hard. Or math.
If there's 2000 people playing and only 100 want the "pre-arrange teams", that means only 5% of the players want that feature.
Frogboy isn't saying they're focusing on the casual players, he's saying they're focusing on the majority. Which is how it should be.
Sad panda as well here, can't belive what frogboy posted this last few days. Old days it was "the hardcore players is what makes the game".... now, this. Well, lets see what the future holds for us, competitive, stats freak, abandoned bastards.
Heh. Tell that to Blizzard's SC2 policy, MastaPT.
The competitive groups are the people who are going to stick with the game.
He clarifies it here https://forums.stardock.com/359540/get;2307224:
Things like arranged teams and the like are great on paper but they do very little for casual players. I've been pushing for "random teams" for custom games. That's a bit more doable but I'm not sure how popular that feature would be either.
Skirmish and Pantheon provide a solution on paper but the problem there is that people simply quit before the game starts or just after the game starts if they don't get the combo they like which really ruins the game play experience.
In other words, there are no perfect solutions. My personal preference is randomized teams like I said.
Look, if the competitive groups are what makes the game than more than 5% of people will want competitive focused features.
Just don't go and read into his post what's not there. After all, stats are a priority, and I doubt stats are such a big deal for the non competitive crowd.
It's a matter of resource allocation. If you can work in a feature that 95% of the players want, you don't go work on one that only 5% are asking for. 95 > 5. Simple. No big this game is for casual players, or hardcore players, or professional gamers statement.
I want competitive gameplay, the game will get stale without it.
Only reason me and my team bought this game was because we thought this is going to be a good team-based game with with strong competitive scene & tournaments as promised.
All i have seen so far is:LOTS of connectivity issues,lack off essential features(VOIP,Clan system,Replay function),inefficient targeting & control systems,countless nubers of promises empty promises & lies.
And now,"focusing on caual gamers" aka.killing competitive scene!?You guys are just brilliant!
Anyway congratz GPG/Stardock,you just lost all the respect what I had left for you.
If GPG & Stardock find that I'm not the part of the market that they want to focus on and support(As a fact I should say - START supporting) competitive scene I want a refund.I did not buy this game to suffer months with it's connectivity issues and empty promises just to get spit on by Stardock/GPG.That's extremely dissapointing that Stardock plainly lied and took the more profitable - casual gamer approach.
wow there are really only 2000 players a day? That sucks.
And the rest of the buyers just play singleplayer?
So if they want to do something for the majority, why don't
they add content (DG's, Maps)?
I don't think that bringing out a demo version will do them any good, as you can download
a offline version, from way before it was even released in europe. lol
Hopefully SC2 comes out this year
Yeah, I dont really agree with the general attitude that competitive people shouldnt get much focus.
The big problem with the argument is the numbers bit. DG as it is right now has almost no features to encourage competitive gameplay. It doesnt have clans, it doesnt have team automatch, it doesnt have proper stats etc. It does however have pretty much what you need for casual gameplay. So OF COURSE there arent so many competitive players - the machinery isnt in place to have them exist unless they are really determined.
Its just a self fulfilling prophecy.
I do think that its not constructive to get all bitter about it though. Some of the posts in this thread a pretty bitter and really dont serve any purpose other than to whine. If you are going to disagree with things, you should do so in a way that is at least trying to get SD/GPG to change their minds and not just channeling hostility.
This also mean NO CLAN imo. Why put up CLAN if they dont let it play pre-arranged...
I think CLANs is tied with pre-aranged.
Anyway its SD and/or GpG choices.
I'll be the first to admit when I'm wrong. And after that comment I made it became clear that my perception of the population of the community was in error.
On Stardock's side, I pretty much have an infinite budget when it comes to doing things on the game code-wise. The challenge is making sure it's economically feasible for GPG to make changes on their end to get what people want.
I read these posts and I wish I could talk more openly about things but too often people get stuck in this myopic vision of how things "should" be.
We all love Demigod. We know it's a great game. And I think we all agree on what things would make it even better.
But at the end of the day, it's a product. There's no way around it. Most companies aren't like Stardock. I own the company, it's highly profitable so I have a lot of flexiibility in doing things that don't necesarily make the best short-term business sense.
The things we at Stardock want to do for the game come from our desire, as gamers, to make the game meet its potential. But the business justification to do so is shakey. We have a long-term agreement with GPG to keep updating the game but we always have to be conscious of the costs. Just because we're willing to do whatever for Demigod doesn't mean that GPG can necessarily do the same unless there's a business justification. I'm not speaking for them. The team at GPG are my friends. They're not just my business associates or something, they're my friends. So I don't want to abuse that friendship to try to make them do things that don't make sense.
So a lot of the solutions we come up with we try to do in a way where Stardock finds a way to do as much development of it as possible.
So for instance, it would be relatively easy to have the pantheon tend to match friends with friends when matching people up because we can do that on our end. It's a different thing to go to GPG and ask them to pull guys from SupCom 2 so that they can build some sort of team-match up UI.
Now, you guys can talk about how things shouild be done in some ideal world but those of you who want to see real world changes to Demigod need to try to come up with ideas that can be largely implemented by Stardock if you want to see them actually happen. It has nothing to do with "caring" and everything to do with the weird culture that exists at Stardock about games.
I don't think I can put it any more candidly than that.
the issue with casual players (and i am one now, for the most part) is that they aren't going to stay with it for the long haul. communities are built and maintained by the most hardcore and competitive gamers (which i used to be, when my private life allowed for more leisure time).
if you want a game to keep going for years you need to foster its competitive/hardcore community. otherwise it will expire after 10 months, like basically every game naturally will without active support.
from an economic standpoint i can understand the aversion to fostering high game longevity. it means that you have to continue maintaining the game with personnel and hardware resources. thats an ongoing drain on company assets. you'd want to avoid this at all costs unless you had a good model for continuing to monetize your product post-release.
this is why there's so much DLC crap these days. its a way of squeezing more blood from the stone. it also allows a game to stay fresh and in circulation longer.
i honestly think the single greatest error made with Demigod was releasing it too early. obviously the connection problems were nasty, but those might have been solved in advance as well given proper beta testing. but the real problem at this moment seems like the game was basically 6 months of development away from being fully featured and ready for ongoing support and expansions packs or DLC content.
the game should have been launched with better social networking, ranking, clan and team support, voice chat, etc. all those features people like in their other multiplayer games (World of Warcraft, Team Fortress 2, etc.). it does cost more to develop to that level and maintain the gaming infrastructure as well. but it needs to be done. and it can be mode profitable through DLC.
at the moment it seems like Demigod is so far behind the curve on features and monetization options that it is bound to simply die in a few months, which is the natural life cycle of most games. so they made their money in the first few months after release and then it just went out. they're probably looking forward to the day they can pull people off the project and work on something else.
Even if I could be peruasded to agree with you - not a hard task. How does tha thelp us now?
Okay. I agree. Demigod's beta program should have focused more on the on-line game play more. I agree.
And? Now what?
Your argument basically makes a good case to simply move on and call it a day. Elemental, Supreme Commander, etc. certainly can benefit from what was learned here.
Or did you want something to be improved about Demigod?
Fine - put some QoS into the match making at least - don't unbalance teams with AI on one side and not the other, and surely it is possible to match sim speed and ping to ensure playability??? Playing a 3v3 game with someone who can't handle more then a 2v2, or being slotted into a game where my ping to everyone is 400+ and over 600 to one other person is not useful in any way...
At the end of the day, this game can never be played fully competitive world wide as it is so sensitive to pings over 350. This means Australians and Europeans cannot play each other, unlike say Sins of a Solar Empire..
Well for starters, you mentioned the difference between what GPG and Stardock are able to accomplish.
So what exactly is it that Stardock can do? By the looks of it, netcode is GPG's issue, which is fine. Can you guys modify gameplay? Create new Demigods? There are a thousand things I would like to see implemented (and would certainly pay DLC prices for, unlike many other games), but first we (the community) need to know what is a feasable request, so as to combat the constant spammage of threads like "THIS GAME IS BROKEN WTF!?!111!11!?".
well, Brad, i think you read my post correctly the first time. it is an argument to basically just let go of Demigod and work on whatever comes next. hopefully some valuable lessons were learned and future products from Stardock and GPG will benefit from them.
the other option might be to do a Special Edition Re-release of the game. something similar was done by CD-Projekt with their excellent rpg The Witcher. the initial release had lots of bugs and was incomplete in terms of its graphics and voice over acting. so they fixed the bugs and spruced up the graphics and acting and made a big advertising push for what they called "The Witcher Enhanced Edition". the upgrade was made available for free to all existing Witcher owners but they treated the launch of enhanced edition as a new product in its own right. it was a major improvement and got alot of good press and alot of new players.
its not directly comparable since Witcher was a strictly single player game, but the idea might be translated.
how do you feel about releasing "Demigod: Special Edition" as a new product with full adverstising support? this product would include replays, team/clan support, and 2 additional demigods. maybe some new maps as well. i understand this would represent some degree of business risk that Stardock and/or GPG might deem unacceptable. but it might be worth it as a way to breathe new life into Demigod.
@ Frogboy
For premade team I think it can easyly fixed on SD side like I said in another thread with a check box or something similar in the Friend list. Like if both friends search a game in the pantheon at the same time, match them up.
Custom game doesnt need pre-made since we have mostly all control over it.
Skirmish can work the same as pantheon imo.
I think this require no code changes from GPG (may be wrong here).
So if im right, arranged team is kinda fixed.
From what I heard, stats are also gona be fixed or currently being looked at.
So whats the problem now? in-game Voip? come on there are verry popular program for doing this. Skype, ventrilo, teamspek to name a few.
So imo this is FAR from being a priority not to mention the extra upload rate it required while most players seem to be lock at 128k upstream....
Stats fixed + the pre-made team in = competitive = good = more players etc....
GPG to their new map /bug fixed/ new content while SD do the others thing mention above
So everyone will be happy in the end ! .... Well I think
If you can turn that "tend" into "always if you ask it to", you might just eliminate the premade vs. PUG issue. As in *poof*, problem gone. Do the interface with Impulse. I WANT to see Impulse have this functionality for the next game you launch. Get it done, we're willing to help test this stuff if you would just give us something to test
P.S. just make sure we can specify which friends we want to be automatched with at the moment.
Can anyone really say there's a better gaming community than those Stardock provides? Really. What other game do we get such real interactions like this? Its the reason I'm going to continue to buy Stardock's games year to year.
I just want to take a moment and say I doubt there's a better developer-players community anywhere. Its the reason to stick with Demigod and to stick with Stardock.
So far, I think SD and blizzard are my favorite.
Frogboy, I'm surprised to see you admit that Demigod has been mishandled, but its big of you to say that, so I appreciate it. I think Transitive has an excellent idea: a special edition with all the essential features (replays, team automatch) and new stuff (maps, DGs). The community would get what it wants (needs), and there would be plenty of economic incentive to do it.
That is a good idea. And you can get those re-reviews you've always wanted
The Witcher: Enchanced edition pulled it off. So can Demigod. We're behind you, Frogboy
We'll tell people to buy your game
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