Um it's 8 per side.

it's not assassins vs. generals.  You choose out of any of the 8 you want.

That is only 8 TOTAL...boring! Mirror matches are, you guessed it: boring! Unless you can only choose a character only once instead of multiple instances, in which case its a like saying im not eating a ham and cheese sandwich, im eating a cheese and ham sandwich.

8 characters/demigods total doesn't necessarily make a game boring. If they have no depth and really only 1 way to play them then yes. If you look at a guild wars warrior for example, you can play axe, sword, or hammer and all play differently. Even within those three archtypes you'd have some differences in how the character plays and their strengths/weaknesses depending on your secondary and how you round out your skill bar.

The current problem is that the skill choice options and varying builds just aren't present - it all seems the same.

its Beta 1, lets see what happens

costs a lot to make a single demigod (~100,000 US dollars)

so its gonna be low at first, another thing, try to play differently, figure out a cooky way of playing a demigod, MAKE it interesting

Seeing how only 8 demis doesn't allow for unique demis in 5v5, I would like to see an option for max of 2 of the same hero.

Saying you can play a Warrior in Guild Wars as axe, sword, or hammer isn't doing it justice..

If you take into account dual classing..

You can play a warrior with lots of interupts, while still doing good DPS which a normal interupting class can't, but you're limited by the melee.

You can play a warrior that is pure DPS, but you need to rely on someone else to slow/cripple your targets.

You can play a warrior with knockdowns and big spike damage.

You can play a warrior to spam conditions on people, making them constantly need to spend energy removing them.

You can.. i mean theres like so many good builds.  My favorite was a few adrenaline skills, disruting chop, disrupting dagger.

There was sooo many ways to play each class, but they still had their roles.

could you imagine trying to balance 24 demigods

Yes?

OP: 8 Demigods is FINE. IF there are more than 2 viable (competant) builds for a Demigod, and if those builds change the gameplay of the given Demigod, this is going to be just fine. It's just the start, anyway. More will be incoming.

Remember that, the game's developers can think, too! You aren't the only one who thought that 8 might not be sufficient. Difference is, they can do something about it. We'll see in beta 2.

You are thinking too much DotA, where there is 1, rarely 2 builds (of major difference) for each hero, and the rest are similar, for most.

Also, ever noticed you are buying the same items for some heroes, because their gameplay is too similar? 91 distinct heroes is not an achievement, it's impossible. Especially when the engine shapes the gameplay, instead of the gameplay shaping the engine. Some are bound to play like others.

I'm not saying all heroes only have 1, maximum 2 different builds, but those who have more, are mostly exceptions (for example give me Alchemist and I can make him pure pwnage DPS, pure tank, or pure support, just by different builds)

What I'm trying to say: They wouldn't put 8 heroes on a 5v5 game if they didn't know what they were doing.

during my experience with dota, out of the 91 total characters, their abilities start to repeat themselves...so the game becomes watered down imo.

Well, im a Dota Player myself. But alot others forget one thing. Here, Demigods got an amount of skills which would be enough for 2-3 Dota Heros. So a total of 8 Demigods would make 16-24 Dota-Heroes. And Dota also started with a little amount of Heroes. I mean, Dota is nearly as old as WC/TFT itself.

Give Demigod some time. I also would be a little bit upset if there would be only 8 Demigods for both sides (so 4 for each). This would mean, in a 5v5 Battle at least 1 dual-Hero. 8 per side on the other hand, would be more than enough for a start. Maybe limit it to: Only one Demigod of each type for each team. So that Team A and Team B could have a Rook but Team B cant fight with 5 Rooks.

This is also dangerous for balancing stuff. If one hero should get a little bit imbalanced/overpowered over the others.. everyone would just play him 5 times. This could really happen on public, non-organzide, non-league games.

BTW: Dota is not only for pro vs. pro. The community is just full with elitists, but it's not the game. The biggest part of Dota is still the public gaming (~80%). The balance in Dota is diffrent to explain. It changes with the skill of players in the game. Newbies vs Newbies got a diffrent balance than Pros vs Pros. And for a custom map, made by just so few dudes - for aboslutley nothing - its a real nice balanced game. Maybe only 20-25 of 91 are playable in pro-games but thats still quite alot. In Counterstrike exist two dozen weapons, but 90% of the players use Deagle + M4/Ak.. wow.

Once the engine is created I seriously doubt that it costs 100k to develope each character;otherwise, this company would die like so many other game studios. New characters would cost about 10k to 15k max. I would be interested when tools became availible for modding the hell out of Demigod.

Why would they lie about it if it wasn't true?

Quoted from Joystiq

$100,000 per demigod sounds just fine.