I think most RTS games I have played do this. Yet we don't get any information about what specific balance changes are being made. I mean, right down to the numbers. Instead, we're just patched without any real input. Think we could change this around? Proposed specific patch notes, discussion and then patching?
pre patch day is not coming til next month.
They already said they're sick of these boards and that they're not going to ellicit feedback or give information out.
Suffice to say, since transparency seems to only result in ugly behavior from the vocal members of the Demigod community, I have been told that there are no plans to further update the community.
What I've seen is 95% of the people giving nice, complimentary, or "way to go, thanks!" messages after an update. ONE troll writes ONE flame and BAM, the entire board is shut down. And since there is always going to be a least one troll on most any forum/thread, that pretty much gives trolls/flamers a lot of power, and dooms the "good guys" if you ask me.
Or tomorrow...
double post
Frogboy thinks trolls only exist in Demigod because of his troll-free Sins and GC forums.
I think this has been a huge learning experience for all involved - including us as consumers. They talked before about how their policy before was to lock posts instead of censoring users. Frogboy said that he got a lot of requests at PAX for them to "bring the hammer down"on the trolls in the forums. I think in the future we'll see more post deletions/user posting bans, and fewer thread locks, which will make the community as a whole a cheerier place.
EDIT: Back on topic and done beating a dead horse - Patch notes would be great, but I've been okay with what they've given us in the past, where it has been "We fixed x, y, and z, and some other stuff too." Balancing changes should definately be passed along.
I don't see why GPG cannot post the specific things they want to change.
No company can make a game perfectly "balanced" without community input. As far I know, GPG doesn't even play Demigod and they have no replays to view.
fixed.
Frogboy responded saying he does see the merit in impelmenting matchmaking but it's not SD's fault there isn't any and then locked the thread. Sadly I think my praise of the other parts of the game only made it worse because his team didn't do that work, so rather than blunt my criticism as I'd hoped to I only sharpened it. In retrospect it's clear how I could have worded the post better, but when it comes down to it Stardock's name pops up when I load the game, I'm a fan of SD in general, and they host these forums, so occoasionally I'm going to slip up and say SD when I should have said GPG.
Anyway regardless of whether or not I'm one of the offensive posters, I really do think the majority of you guys post as well as anyone could hope for on an online message board. This place is no worse than the rest of the internet and in fact it's really better than most of it. Calling everyone trolls periodically is a self-fulfilling prophecy. :/
I just really wish there were a better way to articulate that if I were pissed at SD or even GPG I wouldn't be here. I post because I like the game and want to see it improved, not because I'm upset and with Istari, Frogboy, Kryos, or whoever else reads these posts.
Saying "perfectly" there softens the blow of what could otherwise be a pretty harsh statement and you criticize him for it? Ridiculous.
the game isnt balanced, nor will it ever be.
when human thought is involved with anything at all, there is always conflict, just like how you perceived my first post. so no matter how much you try to balance something in a game through human opinion, you will never find perfect balance.
I'm with Obscenitor on this one. I'll be the first to criticize Demigod for its shortcomings, but that doesn't mean I don't love the game. I'm not afraid to talk to Stardock on IRC though. I just wish Stardock would take some of the better suggestions made by other players here instead of solely sticking to the Stardock/GPG vision of the game. Like Obscenitor said, the biggest example there is matchmaking.
I'm just trying to make a suggestion here. Its a simple one I feel. The community knows the game better than Stardock and better than GPG. I'm not trying to insult either company, far from it. There is no Greg Black here for Command and Conquer. The guy gets paid to watch replays and work on multiplayer balancing. There is no such employee at Stardock or GPG I know of. Especially when the game has no replays.
We can be resourceful if Stardock lightens up on the hands-off community being toxic concept.
I play the game every day (check my pantheon account):
http://pantheon.demigodthegame.com/games/player/10397/
There are two avenues of new features going into Demigod:
1. Demigod specific stuff: GPG.
Right now, we have a build that they're really trying to get out in the next day or two that has the replays and such in. You'd be surprised at the kind of little weird stuff that can creep in that have to be found and fixed.
BTW, I'm having the Skirmish option taken out. So before anyone yells outrage, I was the one who specifically asked for it. It's never been a popular feature, splits the MP community and lets SD off the hook on making custom games more robust.
But as others mentioned in this thread, if it's Demigod specific, it's GPG.
2. Stuff developed by Stardock for Stardock published games in general.
The main avenue here are the overlays. For instance, we're working on having the connection info give users in game access to other player stats for more balanced gaming in custom games where I think the real "Fun" of the game comes in (And in the absence of those stats being accessible, a lot of the frustration).
This is also where things like team games and such can come up and other things. However, the pacing of those kinds of updates are going to be slow.
As for balancing, playing the game online daily helps me get an idea of things. But other than QoT being a bit too wimpy and Erebus being a tad too powerful, the balance is pretty good. The weakness is that too many of the items are simply useless distractions that don't lead to any particular build IMO. That's not something easily rectified though since a lot of people wouldn't agree with me necessarily.
But IMO, as someone who has played a lot of MP games over the years, Demigod is pretty well balanced.
Demigod is spectacularly balanced when you get down to it. Even QoT isn't that bad really, she just has some goofy bugs that hold her back. If her shamblers took attack commands correctly and if she her herself handled them a bit better she'd be my go-to DG for anti-EB minion swarms. Kinda the same deal with TB, if his fire attack worked he'd also be an easy pick for an interesting upper tier DG.
When I think about balance issues though, there's nothing else that's more than a blip on the radar for me. I can think of numerical tweaks I'd make here and there, but I would be afraid to muck around much with anything because the balance at the moment is so solid. I'm actually afraid of the new DGs purely because I fear change to how well the system currently works.
On the whole skirmish thing being removed I think that's a fantastic idea, but if I'd made the call it would have been pantheon on the chopping block.
Don't get me wrong; I love the mini-tournament aspect, but I really think that the light/dark restrictions and the downtime between mini-tourneys make it the weaker of the matching options. Not really knowing anything about what's going on behind the scenes with matching it's just my guess that at times there must be a lot of dark players and not enough light or vice versa and the system has to either throw in AIs or increase wait times to cope, not to mention it's gotta be harder to balance teams when you've got say two good players and a beginner on light and three beginners on dark.
Still though stand-alone pantheon really is better for the community even in pantheon's current form than the skirmish+pantheon, which you're absolutely right does split up the community, it's a good change.
p.s. Do you know if pantheon would still run between tournaments in a skirmish type mode, or would auto-matching shut down completely during those periods?
Demigod is pretty well balanced and you summed up the current topics perfectly there. Glad to hear it.
But in the case of a strategy game I think one person well versed in the game (clearly yourself according to your history) is good, a lot of people talking and picking out the good ideas is probably more beneficial.
I personally think the game does not need a lot of balance talk, actually. Frogboy hit most of it. The biggest issue is builds and items.
The game is far away from balanced...
Balanced would mean you could win with most/all herocombos on most/all maps. Simply not the case.
What really would be needed = minions need a golddrop if you kill them. Items must make it possible to specialize and go certain builds, like massive pure health, pure damage builds etc. All that is not possible.
The game should be centered about heros not creeps. Currently getting giants first is the way to go most of the time. The way it should be is playing well and doing least possible mistakes and figuring a good build/strat vs enemy heros..
But whatever keep posting the carebear stuff like game is pretty balanced and ok etc.. I have little faith in this game anymore either way
With Tyo getting married this weekend I doubt a patch for a couple weeks
Yes, it is. But, the main issue is not DG imbalance, it is gear imbalance, because actually HP items>all other items.
Really no game is perfectly balanced. If you look at WoW - it had not been balanced ever (and maybe never will be).
What i want to see in Demigod is changes to item balance to make HP stacking not the only viable option.
Balance for 10 heroes isn't exactly groundbreaking though when you look at DotA, HoN, LoL and all the other DotA-clones, they balance just as well with having many, many more heroes.
The problem with just buffing the damage gloves out of the wazoo is that not every DG is going to benefit from that equally (a major autoattack buff won't help rook a whole lot and on the extreme end TB's fire autoattack doesn't even work) and currently most DGs are pretty well balanced against each other. Most skills are well balanced against each other in total damage and unique effects, but many DGs have wildly disproportionate autoattack methods, increasing the value of autoattack seems to me as though it would most likely worsen balance.
What you're also ignoring is that fights can already be quite short. In 3s you can literally die inside of a stun lock from 100% to zero, so pushing people towards DPS builds will exacerbate that on two levels. The obvious one is that damage will go up, but the less obvious one is that HP will go down. Pushing players towards DPS items is vaguely like capping a hit point flag in that respect.
Answer me this: are fights currently taking too long? Is the most pressing issue with DG that it takes three rounds of attacks to kill a player when it should take only two?
I agree that bad items are distracting and create traps for newer players, but strongly disagree with the assessment that it has a meaningful negative impact on the game once you're past that beginning stage.
Clearly demigod isn't perfectly balanced, but it is well balanced. Every DG but QoT and fire TB has a fair shot at victory in the vast majority of situations.
OMG! completely agree with items and also agree with ur qot comment but to a further degree. She is EXTREMELY wimpy. disagree with erebus being to OP though. for how strong he is on single targets, he lacks for multiple targets simultaneously. Thats balance in itself there...
wtf? its not bugs ... its her skills (nearly all of them), they just dont scale... theres plenty of discussion on qot and how bad she is in other posts and everyone generally agrees with her being underpowered compared to any other demigod.
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