Demigod IMO is the leader of its genre.
Compared to LoL, HoN, DoTa...it plays better, looks better, and has a better community. I even find LoL to be very addicting and fun, so Im not comparing DG to games I dont like for illustration.
Due to the horrid release, our playerbase started small and has only gotten smaller.
As a direct result of this small playerbase and from what I can tell is a subpar p2p system (im not computer savvy guys, I just know that the other games of the genre all have DG beat in this regard, even though stardock pulled out their lategame win with their new system they had to write at release), starting a game, or playing all the games you want during your day is very, very difficult. Id like to point out here that if your main problem is you cant play the game enough as youd like, well thats the problem to have.
Im no marketing major, though I do have an MBA from a top 20 school. I dont think you can revitalize a game once its release is boogered. What it needs is a SEQUEL. Warcraft 2 anyone? (all the nerds here may remember the worldchanger this one was compared to its predecessor).
Other, subpar games of the genre have huge playerbases. You can play all day and not see the same people.
Frog. Stardock needs to buy the rights to the DG franchise, bust out a DG2, and REALLY put out the leader of the genre that DG could have been. I have no doubt you chaps can do it - Im a fan of SD what can I say.
This email was inspired by the small amount of games I played today vs the amount I would have liked to play.
AGREED! ...across the board, ... but hey, if SD goes public with an IPO, I'll already know my investment of the year... DG2... just think of the possibilities...
Agreed, I'd buy 2 copies.
First, they should fix some bugs that are still here and there.
Then, add a some more content (or make an expansion)
And THEN, make a sequel.
But meh, I would buy it anyway.
I'd say expansion first, that might b ea big enough break from the game's reputation to work.
Especially if it was a stand-alone expansion.
guess the bad start was one of the reasons why many online gamers stood away from it. the guys who play offline anyway didnt even notice it and just bought it. i mean ok that stardock report is true but come on... 23%?? really? its a multiplayer game and only 23% play it online? how is it with other multiplayer games like the many strategy games? also only such a small amount? but anyway these 23% keep the game alive long term and not the other 77%. would anyone still talk about starcraft without that online community?
I'm not sure how many of the major bugs could be fixed without some substantial reworkings. I would think that a Demigod 2 would be the best route. Fix the pathfinding, netcode, and exploits. Allow players to adjust the lag from 350 ms if playing on a LAN. I'd buy DG 2 if it had all of these things worked out.
A few years back there was a great game called Dawnspire.
Dawnspire was quite a great game, quite similar to demigod even if you remove the reinforcements. The point is that it had a big community for an indie game with no marketing.
What dawnspire did right was that they had a very generous Trial version of the game. It included
So basically what they did was give you a free game!
Then once you had found out it was really nice you started to want the rest of it. those 2 other classes, guildfights and that extra ability. So I bought the game!
Being an indie game it wasnt expensive either, Silent Grove Studios (the makers of the game) also made some bucks from selling extra character slots, which I also spent money on in order to keep one of each class ready at any time.
So the point that Im trying to make. There is a really nice way to get a big community, which can then be made into actual benefit for the company by just making a really good trial.
When the demigod demo was released my hopes was that the demo would use the same servers as the normal game. allowing Demo users to fill our dwindling Retail games. When this wasnt the case, the demo activity and usefullness dropped to 0 quite fast. I barely see more then 2 people in the demo channel these days, 1 of them is me.
So my reccomendations for Demigods future!
Everyone tries a free game they think they may like! Even the ones that may even have tried it before but didnt like it then.
Allowing a big partion of the game to be free like this means you will get a massive community buildup. And once a community is big enough, DLC will become a major income source!
So now you can start producing DLC, sell new demigods for 2.99 dollars each and whoops you suddenly got a guy who didnt want to pay for the game, paying you not only 10 dollars to unlock the retail heroes but probably also 2.99 dollars for any new demigod you release. Demigod would become something that could produce more money for you the better you made it, Its a developers dream!
If you do this thing about a free trial Im quite sure that not only will the public think much higher of Demigod, but you may actually be able to turn it from a slowly dying game, into a game that just keeps gaining players as it gets better and better!
If this isnt done, I really dont see any way to turn the trend exept for releasing an Expansion, something I doubt will ever happen.
So just wanna end with a hypothetical scenario.
Imagine we are about 1000 players playing demigod during sometime of the weeks atm.
Releasing a free trial would (if announced well on gaming sites etc) def increase the amount by at least 5000!, that is 5000 people who will most likely spend the 15 dollars to get the full game in atleast a month, And even if they dont, they provide "cannon fodder" for the guys that actually payed! ensuing there will always be a game they can join that fits them, Meaning they are much more likely to keep playing the game, which means they will most certainly buy any DLC you release!
ya sevenix thats what LoL is doing. I dont know how profitable its been for them though. anyone know>?
The thing that killed DG before it even got going was whoever's boneheaded decision it was to go P2P as the way to play a multiplayer game. As expected, that created tons of headaches and discouraged many of the potential player base. Many of them do a "proxy" connect now, but it's more like a bandaid solution to a flawed concept. A shame, because I too like DG and am sorry it turned out the way it did.
What Sevenix says is a good idea I think. JUst moving the demo to our servers would help, as it is today it's just stupid.
I don't fully agree with you guys on some of these points.
While I do think Demigod is the most fun of its genre, the MP features of LoL and HoN are far superior to what is in Demigod. I find both games a lot easier to get up and into a game than Demigod. I just wish those games had the game mechanics and polish of Demigod but then again, financially, I'm glad Demigod has the polish and gameplay advantage since obviously I have a vested interest in Demigod's continued success.
It is important to remember that while Stardock publishes Demigod, we didn't program it. We sell Demigod. We also sell LoL and will hopefully sell HoN when it comes out.
Peer-to-Peer is the way most RTS type games are done. In fact, other than Stardock's other MP games, I think most strategy games use the P2P model. The problem with Demigod's online play is that it is very network intensive for a P2P game which tends to excaberate the weaknesses of P2P.
I occasionally play 5 on 5 games with Demigod and it works pretty well as long as you get people with <150ms latency which can be tricky.
C&C, Starcraft, Dota, etc. are all peer-to-peer btw.
Personally, I loathe peer-to-peer. Always have as many long time players (and beta testers know). But I also understand why GPG chose to do it that way.
There's nothing inherently wrong with P2P. I just don't like being at the mercy of a guy with a bad connection. But on the other hand, it would be really difficult to have made Demigod Client/server and have it be "fair". The guy with the best connection would have such an advantage in client/server.
Sorry to ramble. Just a few thoughts speaking just for myself.
I like that you ramble, not many CEO's do that.
Pretty much my sentiments Frogboy, but I gotta say the idea of SC and WC3 (dota) being p2p is confusing to me, becuase honestly I played those on dialup and they worked great, even when I split a dialup connection on WC3. I just don't understand why DG requires so much more bandwidth.
That being said, once a game is up and running it blows the competitors out of the water. I'm curious about what you guys can do to facilitate that process via impulse.
And I could multitask fine on my 512K Amiga.
You'd have to ask GPG on the specifics of their network code.
From what I've been told, however, it has to do with the lower tolerance on timing. If you remember in SC and WC3, you don't actually have real-time effects. People shoot but you don't seen projectiles. You don't see each piece of damage happening.
Instead, in WC or SC you'd have units sitting there doing their thing and slowly HP is being lost.
By contrast, in Demigod, even the little arrows shot from the Rook are being tracked in real-time.
I remember in Sins of a Solar Empire people wanted the ships to have turrets but Ironclad rejected it on the basis that it would dramatically increase the requirements for multiplayer as well as greatly increase the HW requirements in general.
really appreciate you popping in and posting frogboy
It doesn't seem at first glance like DG has more occuring than a dota game did, but this next point is pretty interesting, I hadn't thought about it:
The main problem of the P2P here is not the huge amount of traffic generated, or anything like that, although those are problematic. The main issue is the current configuration on how to resolve bad connections. Rather than checking for each connection between each player, the system just axes the game completely, and declares it invalid. Unless it declares the dropping player the winner.
Why doesn't it declare the war rank leader team the winner? Why does it have a three minute concede limit to discount a game, if a single minute would suffice? People just die and concede, and it's really boring.
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