Well, I think premades (and I am one of them) have a justifiable reputation.  The bottom line is that this game just isn't made for people that want to play together.  I wish it were, because the games can be fun, but it is not.  There is just no viable match making system - for teams or individuals.  I am happy that this feature is going in, even though it means premades will be a thing of the past.  It just is not right that new / noob / individuals are cluelessly joining a game labelled "3v3" when its a 3 man premade with a 90% win record.  That would chase me from the game pretty damn quick.

I think the solution isn't to discourage pre-mades but get TEAM matching in which is the long term goal here.

Sweet crackers!  You just earned Karma +350. 

This game is past the point of "people quitting because of noob bashing by pre's" game is old. Pre's have been around. noobs have been stomped. The damage is done. Only thing now is to make sure the game can survive another 6 months before everyone leaves. My grip being, that at certain times of the day, there's only 1-2 games to join and 5 pw protected games.

Either way, this update is an improvement, thanks for making it happen.

+352..

Are you guys serious?

You are upset that people that don't want to play against pre-mades will find out that... you are... a pre-made.  And this new update... will allow them to easily discern that you are not someone they want to play against.

It is bad that players know the truth?  

Yes, yes, we need team matchmaking modes.  But, crying about people finding out that you are a pre-made and wanting the developers to encourage obfuscation over that fact is ridiculous and juvenile.

If the Demigod community was strong, with thousands of games starting every hours and tens of thousands of players online at any time, I would agree that this feature would be useful. In the end, I fear it will completely kill the game. I expect after this patch, premades won't be able to play a game together anymore and they will leave which I believe will be 50% of those that remain.

I think Stardock and GPG should be spending the time to get people to come back to the game by doing things such as fixing crashing, being able to rejoin a game if you did crash, new demigods and maps, in-game voice chat, etc... Once these things are in and we have a large playerbase again, then we can see things like this update.

Note that I said, "I believe" which means I am giving my opinion, which I am entitled to give. If your opinion is different, that is fine, and you are too entitled to it. If you want to see actual numbers, go to http://www.demigodthegame.com/opengames.asp and see how many games are taking place at any given time.

I accept your opinion (I am not a jerk about it), but I have my own to counter with. A lot premades don't care if they play a premade or a pug. You can see this by reading most of the posts in this forum (since you obviously need hard numbers and won't accept opinions). If I can't play with my friends, this game gets boring. Especially since playing with pugs more often then not, unfortunately means you have to interact with people that are not courteous and play as a team. I don't really care if I play against pugs or premades, I just want to play. Right now, if you start a game that says "premades only" it can take a really long time to get someone to play with, usually since you need another premade that has the same number of players. So the only option left is to start a game and hope to get players.

If people start joining games, checking records and then leaving, I will spend more time in the lobby then actually playing the game. I love this game, but I don't want to sit around waiting. This is why I said if there were more people playing, then this would be fine as premade vs premade would be easy and quick to form.

If you look at my record, I play mostly with friends and I am only 50% so premades vs pugs doesn't mean the pugs lose.

If that is the case, then at least dev time isn't wasted, but if my fears are correct, demigod won't have much of a community left after this update, so new maps and demigods might be too late.

Are you really having a hard time understanding? I said I believe that it would be 50%. I never said that it will be. My concern is that I believe premades make up half of the players, and as Frogboy even said, the game was designed to be played with premades. Pickup groups work but it is a lot more fun to play with people where you can work together, usually through a voice server. The reason I expect these premades to stop playing is because they will spend long periods of time waiting for another premade to roll along that is compatible with their game options (which I said in my last post).

To spell it out, say I have 3 friends that want to play, I start a 4v4 premade game. Normally it takes anywhere from 5-15 minutes to get another 4 players. Now lets take away half of the players, since they don't want to play with a premade. It would now take twice as long to form a game, so 10-30 minutes since only premades will play against us. But we also are looking for a 4v4, so a 2,3 and 5 person premade can't play with us, so it could even take longer.

If it only took 30 seconds to form a game today, then 1-2 minutes to find a premade would be ok. But the demigod community is very small right now.

I can't speak for other premades, but the people I play with change every day and the times we play change. We are in a sense a pickup group in a ventrilo server that then plays demigod. We do play with the same people a lot, but it is not something that is organized. I am not about to spend time to try to find other groups to play with. In fact, when we get more 6 or more players, we just play against each other, since we don't really care who we are playing, we just want to play.

If a game needs people to post on forums and do a lot of leg work to play, the game will fail. The game needs to have a mechanic for doing this and the player base. Try League of Legends if you want to see how premades can be done right (the game sucks, but the lobby system is much better then Demigod), or even a game like Left 4 Dead.

This is a very narrow view of the issue. I don't disagree that premades that like to crush noobs won't like this system, and I agree, I would rather see them leave. But my concerns for the time it takes to form a game can easily get most of the premades to stop playing since they can spend the same amount of time that it takes to play a game looking for a game. Would you be ok with sitting in a game lobby for 30 minutes waiting for people to join, or would you move onto another game?

Unfortunately it has never been that easy. The only place to really check is IRC and no one ever responds. And people should not resort to playing over Hamachi.

Of course that is the solution, but hazarding a guess, team matching is not close to being implemented.  I think we can all agree that, rightly or wrongly, premades will be getting fewer games after this patch.  With that being the case, what keeps premades around and playing?

I agree the change needs to go in, but I don't think you understand how hard it is to get a premade game going.  First off there are different types of premades - 2 mans, 3 mans, 4 mans, and in some outside cases 4 mans.  2 mans do not want to play 3 mans who do not want to play 4 mans, etc.  I play in a 2 man.  I'd play against a 3 man if the game intelligently matched a competent 3rd player to the game - but it doesn't. 

So after the patch, what do I do as a 2 man premade?  I can't join PUG games, even if it's a 4v4 (likely to get kicked based on record and premade status).  I'd play against a 3 man if I could find a competent 3rd - which depending on the day may or may not be possible.  I'd probably not play against a 4man because having 2 pickups would make it very difficult.  So the chances I can get a quick game (i.e., use my time efficiently) is probably unlikely.  At that point I have three options, wait it out to get a game, game Pantheon to play my two man, or play something else.

I guess what it all comes down to is a plea to put match making into Pantheon a priority, but I fully agree that bad PUGs should not be tricked into playing premades.

6 months is that when supcom 2 comes out?