I like the new cost of items and the changes to the favor items.  The game is really starting to come together. TBO Rook has major hit points over other melee characters if he takes a few hits running away he should. Don't let your hit points go so low.  I think his towers need to be stronger so when he puts one up he can use it as defense to run away.  I think the gameplay is competative now I played two great games last night with ultimeh as my teammate both were long battles of evenly matched teams. 

Btw, Thanks to Cari , Yarlen, Kryo and Nakor for spending their weekend fixing the facilitator so we can play today

Thats the reason you usualy release patches on thursdays and not fridays

Depends on how tough those minions are. I tend to think that minions should be "a lot tougher" (as mentioned).  

I think his suggestions are right, and I strongly encourage you to read the thread he linked to here.

On the other hand, I don't think I agree with any of your suggestions on changes to Generals.  The Idol system is not fun at all, your suggested tweaks will do very little to change this. 

I also Agree with TBO, leave the net lag where it is, or let it be adjustable.  The responsivess is very important in a game like this.

Which is some incompatibilty with your particular system and Demigod which you know we are looking into so posting about it is rather futile.

One of *the* reasons I never got into SupCom was the "500ms tolerance" that was built in. Every time I tried to move my units, I felt that delay and it drove me crazy. Which was why I *hated* the thought of Demigod going from a 200ms to a 350ms default.

I liked, and think it makes sense, what some people said about making it NOT have a "fixed" delay, but make it depend on the players IN the game. So if someone joins with a 300ms ping have it automatically raise the "tolerance" appropriately. Or if everyone who joins is sub-150 ping, LOWER the "tolerance" down from 200ms .

Also, please give the host of games a "filter" to NOT allow people OVER a certain ping to join the game. Personally I'd never want anyone with a 300+ms ping to join my games.

-Drexion

Increasing a delay between command and execution will make the game more of a plot & react experience than a twitcher, won`t it? You`ll have to be more deliberate in committing The Rook to a Hammer Slam for example. It`ll be trickier to time things. Personally I like that.

Regarding unit counts and Minions, I theorize that reducing the count of General units will also help mitigate pathing/clustering problems in tighter map areas (?). I like having a horde, so I`m hopeful that perhaps some Generals might still rely more on numbers than quality, though I understand both how that makes them more vulnerable to area effect annihilation and how that may go against the grain of the intent of the change (to toughen up Minions).

Agreed

Up cost to 1200 if you really want this. 

Alternatively - make mines which have been decloaked by Totem of Revelation destructible. 

Latency from Santa Fe, New Mexico, with a 12 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up connection -

Europe - between 200 and 300 ms, usually right at 250.  Portugal seems to be slightly higher and England slightly lower. 

North America East Coast - usually right around 100 ms

SE Asia and Australia - 400 ms or higher

At some point the back end should incorporate dynamic net_lag adjustments, but if it's too early for that with Demigod a selection of presets in the game lobby with the default as low as possible, as TBO, suggested, would be great.  A default of 350 ms would be rough, frankly.

Happy Birthday Trigeminal ^^

Thanks, I was starting to feel lonely.

Ya Happy B'day

Now i do think we need some instant items that will work when stunned like a heal items. I also believe your favor item should be instant if you chose a heal or mana. Because he who picks 800 hitpoints gets it right away. The Heal should be instant and can be cast even when stunned.  I am not sure I like the level 20 cap Makes choosing skills a lot harder. If winning I go with one skill set if behind I have to choose another route which then sets me back late game.

but I like the sniper guy's current voice.     it makes him sound super cheesy and fun to mimic....   the 2nd best voice is oak.

I disagree a little on the minions.   I like having huge swarms of minions when I play generals, though I understand why you might want to have a few strong minions rather than a swarm of weak ones.   If only there was a good way to let us both have our way.

To me this says the level 20 cap is working.  They want you to make choices and say wow, should I get that or this this time.  I think about who I am fighting and after 20 games with sedna between 2c and 2d, I still don't choose the exact same build or build order.  If you throw in items you can see I am actually making chooses based on how my strengths match up against an opponents strengths and weaknesses.  I think this is a very good thing.

Sounds good. Do not remove Totem of Revelation please. Its a great item imo...Maybe increasing its price to 100, or making it have shorter duration (lasts for less time), visual radius of it decreases, it can be destroyed (decent amount of hp) etc. Do one of those things to the Totem of Revelation, but keep it Nothing wrong with it atm

If you are going to introduce totem of cancelation I think mines didnt really need that really low cap nerf it got. Maybe keep them but put up cap by a bit?


Rest of the changes sound great....Like the fewer but stronger suggestion.

350ms is too much...specially when we only have one unit to control. The only reason I can imagine for not having a dynamic net_lag is because its too hard to implement? (Is it? I have no idea...someone please enlighten me on this).

I still highly recommend trying out the proxy connectivity methodology. It will increase lag but will definately give the ability to play.

Speaking of which. Beta 2C is HORRIBLY riddled with lag. I mean many games are plain ol' unplayable. 2v2 is pushing it, 3v3 is bad, 4v4... I can't imagine it working smooth, I have to say you guys need to do a whole lot better. Sorry to just bluntly say it.

Dude we are on 2D now, and the lag isn't an issue in too many of the games I've played.  The netcode still needs work, but only 1 of the last 5 or 6 games had any lag.

Well my orginal thought on generals was that they would each work a diffrent way. For example (because dota is commonly used, and is appropriate for a rough tool) take chen, brood mother, furion, and keeper of light (though KoL recently got a rework, but I'm talking about the orginal version). Each has it's own method of having units, chen steals neutrals, brood gets them from killing units with a buff on and her minions can make subsequent minions through the same buff, furion makes only one unit type from trees, kol makes a unit which makes more units, which heal. Dota has some varied (partial) general, with varied minions. QoT and Sedna summon the exact same waym vampire and oak basiclly both summon off dead units. And all these units are barley varied, the two largest variations are shamblers have some slight range, and spirits fly and some simple stat adjustments. No special abilites, only one unit each, 2 spawning methods, only 2 unique variations. Thats WEAKSAUCE!

So what I think could improve are the folowing: make more spawn methods, wheather it's on attack/kill, buy from base, on cast, on being hit, or anything else. Also more actual abilities! make shamblers able to root or something(they're not too bad range+eatble is not half bad), make yetis able to jump,  make vampires minions able to death explode or something. And also more variety! When I orginally thought of generals I thought of multipule units and specialized units and other things, not: oh I can spawn lots of one unit. I saw things like diffrent forms of shamblers, thorny shambler(dmg return), spindly (long range) shambler, burnt shambler(high armour/fire resist). Or vampire minions like maybe the spiny things in combat, but also able to buy vampire eliminators, fast high damge to demigod units, or buy blood sappers, little building bombing units. Or in the case of sedna, as shes more a healer, crowds of yetis make good sense, but maybe throw in a captain yeti, or ranged yetis for good taste, and make like the third summoned yeti the captain and the 4,6,8 th ranged. And for the spirits, maybe make them retain aspects from which they died, minatours are generic, archers are high damage, priests are hp regen, angeles are move speed, ect. ect. Thats what I orginally thought of as I heard about/saw generals. While the Idols are nice, I would rather have more special unit variety before being able to summon bunches of units which are already on the field (though a mind control device, or scrolls (one use items, multi use trophy) of that type could be good items/trophies(?, is that what theyre called?))

Also a balance thing that bugs me is that a melee general (specificly sedna) has no way to stop air (specificly spirits) as the siege archers can't hit air (archers? really now?). And demigods are probably epic enough to figure out how to hit air units in most cases (rook i can understand, he has arrows, maybe UB not being able to as well, but he needs a way to stop air, qot (I haven't checked her) would be just fiable, oak has spirits, and vampire can floaty jump?), sedna has a pretty long spear and that... thing can prolly jump, so please some air cover please? relying on base defences wave creeps is not a viable solution.

P.S. I can still barely connect so the net code hmmmm, its first priority in my mind.

P.P.S. The game is definetly looking better each beta, skill trees are evolving to forms that I like better, so keep up the good work! also if your reading this... then you are keeping up the good work anyways! (most game companines would go: oh look 100 new posts, lets go play madden football 2005 for 4 hours for inspiration on the 2009 version)

I like your ideas in general for, umm, Generals. I wouldn`t change the Oak`s Spirits though... they seem appropriately uniform to me. Queen Of Thorns and Lord Erebus might be the most sensible candidates for randomized variety in their summonings.

As for striking air units, if Angels are going to be reigned in to a single unit spawn per wave, I am okay with leaving certain Demigods (including some of those I love playing!) wide open to air. That forces the player to utilize elements of their faction such as defenses to defend against them... or to seek the assistance of friendly folk like The TorchBearer... . More reason to cooperate.

Back to General summonings, I don`t think I`d change how they summon at this stage in the game. A little late for something as core as that to mutate a great deal, plus I think the idol system works well in conjunction with both inherent generations and ability summoning. Mind you I am very pleased with the shape Demigod is taking.

They can change something like that realtively quickly, in most mods mind you it takes time, but at a place where they have multipul programmers and developers working for 8+ hours a day, they can change it easily, it is no where near too late to change something like that. It's just that they have decided to put their foot down on the issue I guess (which seems stupid to do before the 'gamplay' beta).

Also in general I wasn't talking about randomized spawns, but those could be a way of doing it, I was think of completly diffrent methods in each case, QoT could pick a version to use (which gives me an idea, right clicking a skill could give you an alternate version/change it for the next left click! could be a way to implament more in mods), eurabus would have a vampires lair building (i.e. barracks), spirits would just be randomized at spawn, and sedna would be more structred were my orginal ideas.

something i am missing with generals is any kind of direct link to their summons... like a live bond.

i would prefer very strong summons, which share their life with the summoner, for example if the summoner has got 5 strong summons, each of them with arround 1,5K HP, the general would have his own... 1,5K HP + 50% of each of the summons current life. means, if the general stands alone, hes an easy hit. and while he is surrounded by his own units he is a hero hard to be killed.

the way to kill a general should be to first kill some of his minions. without killing them it should be very hard to come up with him.

not that he should take down other demigods in a second, but taking their attacks without big problems for some time before getting in real danger until his minions are alive.

Interesting idea.  Something certainly needs to be done about the weakness of generals who focus on minion play compared to assassins suh as the rook.  Of course the rook is very overpowered, but no matter what I should not be one shot killed.  I think it is clear to everyone generals are getting better, but they still need a ton of focus to get them to where they need to be.

thats exactly what im talking about...if the game engine could be tweaked to allow for more grunts on the field, but make it incredibly unbalanced as far as numbers go...many more minotaurs and the same number of archers, priests etc...it would be great, sort of a dynasty warriors feel to it if you will. (if anyone knows the game, its an epic)

I like this idea as something exclusive to a specific Demigod. It would be a good peculiar trait; smething for a Demigod we have not yet seen.

The engine was made for many many units (it's based off of supcom, a game that can have thousands of units per player), it's easily doable.

agreed...this should be for a specific general, like the queen of thorns..

were the graphics this good though? I've noticed the game slow down a bit towards the end when full groups are clashing with each other...which is what i would want to see right from the start.