Stardock has many game communities. Sins of a Solar Empire and Galactic Civilizations stand out as being equally or more popular than Demigod and their communities are not like Demigod at all.

Completely different types of games. As much as they have multiplayer capabilities, and competitive possibilities... Competition is really the ONLY way to play Demigod.

Sorry to see Frogboy leaving. I hope he will continue his journals and make them locked so no replies can be added. That way we can still see what's on the horizon.

Another way to keep talking with the community is to have a restricted forum (like the beta forums for example) that only invited people can access. These people can for example be selected based on previous constructive posts regarding problems and how to fix them in combination with a mature way of writing.

Anyhow, Demigod is a great game and I and my friends play it a lot. We love the game so we will probebly continue playing even if there isn't a single more feature added or bug fixed

I haven't posted much although I love the game.. but I seriously have to reply to this one.  Frogboy - Don't let these bastards wear you down.  Some of these guys can be real assholes.  My gift to the community will be to be kind to the newbies and try to give people constructive critisism.  I will be buying elemental because it is looking like a kickass game and best of all you guys at stardock are involved.  If it wasn't for your involvement frogboy, I wouldn't even be looking at Elemental (Completely true..) - Most of the guys can call me a fanboy but I seriously like the way you guys (Stardock) communicates with the people and how you guys actually take into consideration what people ask (and actually implement it into the game!).  If anything I suppose getting the modding community up and running would help out this way people can make the game thrive and hopefully a lot of these guys can quit their bitching and whinning.

Compeletely agree with this.

Almost everyone who bought DG bought it knowing it had an amazingly mediocre single-player, and offered a potentially above-average competitive multiplayer experience.  Now, I don't mean "competitive" in the sense of exclusivey MLG pros and all that, but a good experience in the sense of a fun, contest between opponents game experience.  This leads to the community having not only a certain slant, but also certain expectations. 

The game's launch put things off to a horrid start, and it never really recovered from there.  People are frustrated because they are passionate about this game.  People feel ignored, mainly by GPG, and to a more minimal extent Stardock. 

To be honest, I think Stardock (and Frogboy) have taken the brunt of this, because there has been very little response from GPG.  Now, you can say what you like about every single employee of GPG being amazingly busy repairing Demigod, or preparing SupCom Dos; I however find it extremely disturbing that there is not one regular (by that I mean anything, even weekly/monthly) poster from GPG.  Someone to channel issues/ideas/feedback from these forums to GPG.  Someone to post what GPG has planned upcoming/anything they worked on for the week.  Stardock and (Frogboy) essentially take it all because GPG might as well have not even been involved from the looks of word we actually recieve from them.

I applaud Frogboy, because he has dealt with the extremely negative tone of these boards to the best of his abilitiy.  Nonetheless, I am a little disturbed that such an obviously multiplayer-focused game (and company) does not have a community manager, or at least someone who takes a more active role in these issues.  It seems to be a precarious thing to have the CEO of the publishing company dealing with the community management responsibilities of the developer.

Next formal apology = a pm.  I love frogboy, but multiple pages of this...

Next thread = Stardock... pwease publish games again.  Don't rage quit because of DG.

Brad's cool.  We can't control random Pete that jumps in and trashes SD + Brad (slurple can and needs to get on it).  We can control ourselves and not make this community any shittier than it has to be... and then even make it good.  It really shouldn't be that hard.  Brad's a big boy making good games and pulling down some good money.  Don't worry.  He'll somehow bounce back from the 13 year old that said DG suxors because its a beta.  Somehow. 

Mods that are here... please temp ban the hell out of people who need to rage on the forums.  Let's get this shite under control and move on. 

wow, that is ignorant.

i think with this post you can make you life really easy. it excuses everything. yes, you are right. just sell an unfinsihed game and then tell the customers: "hey, it does not make sense to develop it any further. you won't be satisfied anyway.".

of course, there are overreacting posts in this forum, so what? (i've read some overraction from frogboy too. btw. ) Buying such an unfinished game leads to such reactions. this you should have knew before! now complaining about a toxic community is hilarious. i think you would not get upset buying a new cabrio car and then waiting a year for the roof and the lights?

and i had a really good opinion of stardock before this.

edit: i was looking forward to elementel (damn how i liked master of magic) but currently i'm not sure if i'll buy anything from sd again. the reaction on justefied complains (even if some of them were written hatered) makes me think twice.

ZehDon:  I paid as much as you did for the game.  I'm not going to leave because you dont like my opinion of Demigod, Frogboy's stance on the community, or the online play.  I wont beat around the bush either.  Demigod has potential.  It could be a great game.  It should be a great game.  Unfortunately, it isnt.  This is The developers(GPG/SD) and the communities fault.  As I said in my initial post, Frogboy gets paid to work on this game.  If he doesnt like his job, he can find a new one.  If he doesnt want to ever go onto the forums, fine.  I know he's creative enough to have a vision for this game, and how it should work.  However, if this is his vision, it sucks.  If it isnt, then find a better way to implement it.  Giving up on it only burns his customers, and makes his games more and more like the crap EA releases.

Many things could be done to the comunity to make it better.  DG has a built in reward system in favor points that could be used as leverage against people that ragequit, and abuse.  I'm sure a filter system could be put in that takes favor away for cussing.  Make quitters lose favor, or items.  Relic tracks quits, and drophacks and gives each player a score based on these.  A few bad connections wont hurt you, but constantly leaving games will.  DG could have a system like this implemented.  It could even go as far as to temp ban a player after a certain number of drops/etc.  A community based system like Games for windows has could be tied to Impulse, where a player in game with you could issue a complaint (This could also be done via website).  that way, constant abusers would get negative feedback and players wont choose to play with them.  They could implement a game history list for each player, saving the last 10 games.  This would help eliminate premades from hosting and bashing noobs(I've seen enough of these)  As it is now, its hard enough to see a players history.(I cant alt tab, it crashes every time).

Demigod was released in a horribly messy state.  Stardock and GPG admits this.  Brad and crew worked extremely hard to fix this problem.  I commend them on that.  However, if I sold you a broken monitor on Ebay, then offered to pay to have someone fix it for you when you complained, is that better then if I just sold you a good monitor in the first place?  Of course, everyone would rather just have a working product in the first place.  Support after the initial network/connection issues has been average.  Its not EA bad, but its not groundbreakingly good either.  I hear in the future new DGs will be released, and maybe new maps too.  When those come, and depending on their price, I might change my mind on Stardocks support.  Until then, and as of now, I stand by my comment that support of Demigod has been average.  If Frogboy really has cut ties with Demigod, then support will only get worse.

As the CEO of the publishing company, Stardock, Frogboy himself doesn't get paid to work on the game. This was not his job, nad it never was. In fact, no one at Stardock was requried to do any work at all. They chose to do so, and recieved no additional money or benefits for doing it. If anything, the only thing they received was insults and an angry community. Frogboy also doesn't get paid to post Journals and keep the community informed of what's happening behind the scenes. He doesn't get paid to take time out of the little things he does like, ya know, running his multi-million dollar company to attempt to provide the kind of 1 on 1 interaction every other gaming community in the world screams for. He did this out of the kindess of his heart and because of his drive and passion for his job. And people like you tore him and his company down for it. That's why you make the communtiy worse, and that's why I told - not asked - told you to leave. People like you are not welcome here.

As the CEO of the publishing company, Frogboy has no direct control over the game. At all. In any way. This isn't his vision. The game is not a product of an idea from the CEO of Stardock. In fact, the game was well into production at Gas Powered Games long before Stardock was even involved in the project. Your complete lack of understanding on this point pretty much negates anything you have to say on these forums. However, I'd also like to point out that Frogboy is still going to provide the information posted on these forums to the Developers and changes will still be made. All of the items promised will still be delivered upon. We're simply no longer going to get the amazing level of interaction we had. Thanks to people like you.

I'd like to mark this entire paragraph as Exhibit A. Games for Windows provides the same service Impulse does, or will. They won't ever be tied together. The sheer amount of work that would be requried for this 'solution' would negate any kind of profits either Stardock or Gas Powered Games would see from Demigod. Your attitude and expectations need a reality check. These massive, sweeping changes are so far fetched that no company could ever deliver on them, and then you feel the need to insult people when they don't. Also, the stat keeping and displaying features and in-game displaying of people's records is already in the works, and if you bothered to read any of the posts Frogboy made before people like you drove him away you'd have already known that.

I'd like to mark this paragraph as Exhibit B. If you believe that the support we have seen here is 'average' then I feel no company could ever live up to your expectations because they're completely unrealistic. If you want to see 'average' support, head over to the Resident Evil 4 PC Port forums. The game was released without a lighting engine. This was later added in with the one and only patch the game ever received, and several of the crashes and bugs were also corrected. This is average support. What Stardock has provided to us thus far is the example other companies should follow, however when people like you clog up the forums complaining how even this grand effort is 'average' it's fairly easy to see why they simply don't bother. People like you make this community, and every other online community, worse. And you have provided Exhibits A and B proving this so.
No more jokes, no more moral statements - in all seriousness and fairness; just leave. You're not welcome here.

ZehDon.. what drives your rabid and angry positivity for this game? You remind me of a religious zealot who wants to slaughter anyone who doesn't want to share their heaven with them.

A publisher is ultimately responsible for the game. They finance the development. They supervise the development process. They call the shots. How many times have you seen good publishers swap dev teams on a project? Blizzard moved StarCraft Ghost to different dev studios twice before canning the project. The Publisher is like the board of directors.. if a company is flailing, the investors don't put the brunt of the blame on the CEO - the Board should have replaced him if he wasn't doing things right.

Saying the publisher is not responsible is a bunch of BS. They sink or swim based on the game's success, and they are ultimately responsible. If GPG isn't doing their part, its up to Stardock to change that.

Welcome to the present day gaming communities. If you long for communities online games had 10years ago, those days are gone. ALL gaming communities are nowdays full of whiners,wankers,idiots,retards,elitists you name it. Leaving this community because of that is stupid - you are chasing a dream.

Secondly Demigod community isn't that bad. Ever checked out communities like World of Warcraft ? 95% of the posts in Blizzard forums are "lol noob l2p",whine posts or troll posts. Atleast Demigod community has alot of constructive posts, you can only dream about those in Blizzard forums.

Look, frogboy, I am not saying that DG is the best game I've ever bought -however-, I just can't get enough of it, like I am addicted or something ( which is not good since I have some exams, but whatever ). I just wanted to say that you guys have done a brilliant job so far.

I see that people keep comparing it with DoTA. I have only played DoTA a couple of times and I think DG is light-years ahead. Just my opinion. Also, I know what it's like putting your heart and soul into something, just to see it ripped appart by rabbid wolves (or trolls, whatever). I am not saying that the game is perfect, but I CAN say that I love playing it. The only people you should listen to, are the people who's opinions matter. The people who give who give CONSTRUCTIVE criticism (good or bad), not the 12 year old brat who's ideea of making a contribution to the community is "OMG DG suX0rz kthxbye". I mean seriously, when has humanity, as a species, ever progressed in ANY way by giving a crap what those kinds of people think?

I once read a bumper sticker that said "Some people are only alive today because it is illegal to shoot them". Whilst this is a tad exagerated it does come close to the point I am making. Not ALL opinions are worth listening to. Some of them, as well as the people that stated them, just do NOT matter. I am not saying that you ( or anyone for that matter ) should ignore negative criticism. Just ignore the ones who say "ffs when is that f-ing _insert feature here_ going to get patched" and look at the ones that are something like "I've discovered a problem with _insert something here_ and HAVE LOOKED AT THE FORUM and found no thread for this, so I think you should really look into ...bla bla bla... here's a screen shot of it ...bla bla bla". I hope you understand what I mean.

In a way, this community is to you ( and maybe also Stardock and GPG ) like my ex-gf was to me. Something that you try and do everything you can to ( realistically ) make her ( the community ) happy, but all you get in return is bitching, whining, crying, trolling, cussing and no sex ( ok, that last part was applicable just to me ).

But DG is more like your baby....you can't abandon it just because it stinks of shit ( shit = part of the community ). You just hold your nose, change the diaper as best you can, and live through another day. I can't say I am too thrilled about your decision to "leave", but I do understand and I don't blame you.

Maybe a small break from all this crap can do you some good. During this time, maybe the community will mature itself and you will once again be happy to be a part of it.

Well, that's my rant. Don't know if it made an impact and/or a difference, but I did mean EVERY word of it.

As they say when a DG game starts..... GL, HF .