any mechanic designed to compensate after a game starts is a bad idea.

Glad to see we're keeping an open mind about it.

 rubber-banding mechanics make games closer but less competitive. it irons out the wrinkles in the game. but its the wrinkles that are the source of the fun. this ain't chess. inequality is the desired state of the game by design. 

A closer game is one that is more competitive. A soccer match that features the best team versus a group of amateurs is definitely not an interesting, fun, or competitive game. I mean, competition is "A test of skill or ability; a contest:" There is no test in a game that is not close.

Demigod is based fundamentally on INEQUALITY of competitors. why else would it feature a levelling system or a gold system? 

Disparity between players is incredibly important. I definitely agree better skilled players should win against worse opponents. A level difference or a gold difference wins games. However, the argument in the OP is that there is an additional difference between players that is unnecessary and unduly frustrating for the losing side.

to extend the metaphor: what if it was chess? should a player start getting his pieces back if his opponent takes too many of them? free Pawn back every time you lose a Bishop? opponent has to give up a Rook if he takes your Queen but still has his own? 

I would argue that chess is too simple a game as far as the amount of variables that you couldn't easily introduce subtle changes without breaking the simplicity of the game. It's also way too old a game to change its rules; you're pretty much stuck with how it is, even though that has arguably caused issues like the formulaic nature of openings. You just can't change chess.

Demigod on the other hand, is not cut in stone. It also is much more complex a game as far as what occurs, what can change. It's also a computer game so a neutral third-party can decide that the losing side should be rewarded. Again, an ideal balancing system would not affect the outcome of the game, only try to keep the game interesting for as long as possible. While a system wouldn't be perfect, I do think it would do better most of the time than not.

Eh? Every player can get the same favour items, every player can play any demigod, every player can buy the same gear, every player can buy the same citi upgrades.

A player with more skill in DG will have a HoL, Ash, etc. A player with little skill with not have these items. You make it sound like someone who is better than you magically summoned better gear as if they didn't earn it. You died, you fed, you have less gold they have more. This is a skill difference, it's not random, it's not luck, it's not unbalanced, it's not OP anything and it's not unfair. You lose if you are not as good.

Here we differ again. YOU don't want to play DG competitively so you want to turn the game so it favours your play style. That is a very narrow and selfish point of view. Did you actually read what i said about a ranking system? Here's an example:

You only play casually with non-premades for fun. (This is fine and great I have no problem with it.) So because of this you have a low rank because you can't beat more skilled players. This means that when you play a game based on rank you are automatically placed in games with people of a similar rank to you. i.e. other pugs. You have your fun casual game and enjoy yourself.

Get it? This isn't about pugs vs premades, it's about recognizing the difference in skill levels and catering to it.

a close game is not a more competitive one. thats the essentially flawed premise in the whole argument. a close game is just one in which the eventual winner was restrained from leveraging an advantage. if its the skilled play of the opponents that causes the restraint than the game was a competitive one. if its a built in mechanic of the game that causes the restraint it was not a more competitive game, it just took longer. 

making it take longer for pros to stomp noobs doesn't solve the problem at all. it doesn't address the root cause, which is skill disparity. 

my perspective on competition and competitiveness is that it is specifically the games with the LOWER margin of error that become the most competitive and highly-skilled communities. 

chess is a game of pure skill and it has an exceptionally low margin for error. your pieces available are strictly limited and you can lose incredibly swiftly if you present an opening. chess has perhaps the highest skill-level community of any competitive game that i know of. its built into the DNA of Chess by virtue of the low margin for error and lack of "come from behind" options. 

and finally, what makes you think auto-balancing mechanics like the on proposed even do what they're intended to? in Basketball the losing team gets control of the ball after each basket. does this have any effect other than to make Basketball more interesting for the crowd to watch? seems to me like teams that are clearly better still dominate. Jordan and the Bulls had no trouble demolishing lesser teams. Demigod shouldn't have rules for the benefit of the spectators because there aren't any. loser's out (as the rule is called in basketball) wouldn't help anything anyway. 

You may start with the same opportunity, but you quickly diverge. In FPSs, whether I have 1 kill or 100, I have the same gear. That's the difference I was talking about.

In Demigod, kills give the killers gold and XP. It's easier to get kills once you kill. This snowballs. This makes the opening part of the game disproportionately affect the mid- and endgame.

A match where the losing side is given a temporary advantage presents a challenge to the winning side along with presenting an advantage to the losing side. This seems to provide new level of competition between otherwise players rather than stifling competition.

I don't see what this has to do with pugs or premades: Both types ragequit, both can span the gamut from shitty to awesome.

I also don't see what a skill level has to do with it either. It means that games are closer by default. But if that's your goal, then why is a balancing system so unfair? A better team would win in a balanced or unbalanced game. If the losing side is able to use their advantage to turn the tide, then isn't that a show of skill on their part?

Chess is not a valid metaphor for this game. In chess, when you take a piece, your pieces are not buffed. In chess, a pawn can take a queen. In Demigod, "pawns" cannot take "queens".

It is competitive. If, in Demigod, the outcome is decided very early on, it seems like only 25%-50% of the game is competitve. The rest is just clean-up.

Some games do stay close the entire time. These games are fine.

However, some games have a streak of kills early on. These early kills allow more kills to be gained. That disparity disproportionately affects the game. It stifles competition because the losing side ceases to be competitive.

I mean, look at it this way: Team A is better than Team B 50% of the time. This should result in a very close game. In fact, if Team A is better in the latter 50% rather than the beginning 50%, it will not be close. This is uncompetitive.

Again, basketball/sports analogies are not valid: Demigod rewards scoring teams by making it easier for them to score.

At any rate, a more interesting game for the spectators is also a more interesting game for the players.

you've got it backwards regarding early deaths. a single early game death doesn't matter much. its exceptionally easy to recover from 1 or 2 deaths before level 5. its back-breaking and game deciding to die twice at level 10. 

if a player rage-quits because they died once or twice near the beginning of the game then the problem is a lack of maturity and an over-estimation of how far they've fallen behind. in other words, bad players rage quit more frequently than good players. its one of the things that makes a player bad. 

and yeah, good players die less. thats a truism. matches between 2 highly skilled teams are very low scoring. i've played games where first blood doesn't happen until 10 minutes in. 

No, it's the opposite.  Early deaths are the worst because the enemies haven't filled their inventories yet.  Now they get the cheap and extremely effective items like Nimoth and Hauberk and Vlemish and Boots of Speed and Priest minions and the middle left boots that boost HP.  Now their heroes are *significantly* more powerful than yours.

You guys are bashing the OP's idea a lot, but few have disputed mine.

In the system i proposed they are not eliminated, they will just play with some people that practice this thing more often than usual, that's all. The ranking lvl it's still in it's place, it's just combined with the # of disconnects. If they are noobs, they will still play with noobs, and if they are pro, they will play with other pro players. Add to this the concede option, for a quick fix of the late game "rage" quitting and you pretty much fixed the problem. I think...

I've said this a few times in various contexts. Here it is again.

If you make the game last longer you are giving an advantage to the late game heroes.

Your " balancing" system actually means that by playing a late game powerhouse like UB or Reg you have an advantage over someone playing a strong early game character like Sedna or Rook, because they are going to be unable to close the game out due to artificial benefits you're giving their opponents.

I do like the idea of reducing enemy gold rather than giving gold, it would make the AI somewhat plausible if someone does leave, but in the end I don't see it as being much better than the current system, which allows the winning team to win, and win quickly.

You have completely misinterpreted the system and missed the point. This is not a rubberband system. If you are losing due to skill you are not going to magically bounced back by a mysterious force.

Skill is not how little you make mistake, it's how good you are in adapting to change base on situation. Even good players can make mistakes. Currently DG is a system Mathematicians will hate and call it a chaotic system, where small changes amplifies and leads to dramatic consquences. If a team is 60% better than the other team, but due to initial build order choice of equipment is unluckily bad versus the less skilled team, and initially lost few kills, the less skilled team is going to win, no question, simply because current game mechanics does not award clever rebound of strategy, since it amplifies on early differences in exponential way.

That's even not the point. The point was bring a system to give the losing team some hope. It is STILL competitive, as there's No buff to the losing side, there's NO nerf to the winning side either. The only change is when you score a kill, it may be a clever strategy change from the losing team, this system will properly awards it. As with before, it wasn't even fair.

Now you tell me, a level 10 DG killing a level 8 DG, how's that competitive? You would argue why the lv8 DG wasn't "skillful" enough to gain equal exp/gold before. But base on the current mechanics, you can't guarantee that, since even "luck", small differences, could have diverged and have exponential differences. You can say after first two kills, it's mostly decided which team is going to win. How's that competitive and fun?

If you are saddistic yes fun is when you are level 20 bashing a level 10 team. To a Pro, fun is about challenge and about how your change of strategy swinged the tide of battle. Believe me, no major change in strategy can turn a level 8 team to win against a level 10 team at the current affairs. (Believe me, I had that before, see footnotes) The system awards "skill" in the starting 3 minutes of the game, and the rest you don't need any. Most people would rage quit later when completely outclassed, no hope of a change of tide, a total despair, not many people are masochistic and hence they rage quit.

EDIT:

My system properly awards consistent skills, if you are skillful, you get less gold per consistent kill but there's no harm done to you. If you are consistently skillful and adapt to strategy, you will be fine and you will win. On the other hand, if you lost first 3 minutes for whatever reason, if you are skillful enough to adapt and coordinate with your team, you have a small chance of coming back, compared to absolutely none in current game mechanics. Tell me, how is this bad.

Foornote:

Example, I had a game where we lost few unlucky kills, due to DG choice and bad initial BO paths. The level gap grew and we could do nothing about it. We were not much less skilled than the enemy. Despite huge (3-4) level differences, we capped flag most of the time. Our citadel was at a higher war rank. We changed our strategy to focus on citadel upgrades. We sacrificed our expensive equipments and sold them. We got giants and had them for 2 minutes before enemy had any. We maxed citadel upgrades for armour and attack power. Despite this, we couldn't make a come back. The enemy UB was at level 20. We were level 13-15. The level difference gap as I mentioned only grew. There's nothing we could have done about that base on current game mechanics.

That depends on your DG. I was merely making an example that applies to most DGs on competitive ground base on approximately equal skill. If you are more skillful than your higher opponent yes, you can kill them despite some level difference. However this does not contradict my points nor reasoning.

As for the example, see my example on the footnote of the above post. It may be subjective bias but we do not feel we are significantly less skillful than the other team. Yes we lost a few kills at the beginning, some honest mistakes. But I considered ourselves playing BETTER than the opposing team mid game to late game. That's majority of the time.

...These topics are always filled with such rubish and fail and whining about people who quit the game.

Get the fuck over it you pissy little girls.  

If you think it's rubbish bring some good reasoning to back it up. Your post is as rubbish as what you meant. If you are not contributing get out of my thread and thanks for the nice language.