If you had just made this explicitly clear from the get-go, I don't think there'd have been any flames/complaints *at all* on this game.  The game is fine if you look at it as Demigod (and fun too).  However, if you look at it as a Dota-replacement then it's not so good.  A lot of the hardcore dota players had their interests piqued by this game because of how it was portrayed as basically dota with production values and generals.  After they paid the money to try it out, they found out that wasn't the case.

Also, saying hard core players tend to want endless amounts of depth is partly true.  However, in the case of demigod, there was a ton of constructive feedback from people giving possibilities on how there could be more depth, higher skill ceiling, etc.  I don't believe any of them were implemented - only the cherry-picking tweakables were put in.  In this case, it wasn't like the community was simply saying "somehow put more depth into this game!".  Rather, they were saying "this game needs more depth, please try [XXX] or [YYY]", or even "why isnt [ZZZ] in this game? the game is too simple without it"

I do understand the dilemma here.  Everyone thinks they can be a designer and ultimately someone needs to make a call as to what goes in.  Also, design by commitee rarely works.  From that point of view, I am also hesistant to listen to the forums.  However, in this case, I think there were a lot of GOOD ideas they could have made the game much better but were completely neglected (I'm talking about ones that probably didn't require too much resources to implement... and others that might have required rejigging some UI).

   I actually like the core gameplay of Demigod considerably more than DotA.  I just wish Demigod had more skills, a few of the skills redone/changed a ton, 30% of the items completely redone from scratch, 30% more of them adjusted considerably.
   It does a lot of things better than DotA gameplay wise, in my opinion.  But in a lot of ways it doesnt' require enough skill.

   Demigod has STARTED to become better.  But it's just starting to with a month left.  It should of started to way longer ago..  There are better mechanics on some of the new/updated skills than the completely bland ones in 1A.  In 1a, the only decent mechanic there was was how rook could place a tower that you could building-tele to, how you get things like life leach off rooks towers on his back, the boulder roll kept someone still to hammer slam, while hammer slams ground targeting and delay makes it hard to alnd against someone otherwise good, require leading/guessing, etc.  Besides that.. everything was point-click-do-damage, or a stun, pretty mcuh.  It's gotten much better in that regard, but still needs tons of work.

   And too many of the items are just like.. a spreadsheet.  There aren't enough good activated ability item.  Not enough good passive ability items, and not enogh passive ability items in general.  So many spreadsheet items are redundant because another item does the same thing more cost-effeciently.  Adjusting their stats won't help that, the redundant items need to be ones that have an ability that can't just be compared on a spreadsheet.
   Currently. the few ability items there are.. aren't very good.  1% chance for a 300health shield, doesn't stack, is essentially reducing 3 damage per hit.  That's worthless. a few armor does that.   If it was reworked to something like "When hit, you gain a 300 health shield.  This ability will only trigger, at most, once every 5 seconds" would make it something to tank better when you already have high armor, but wouldn't be as good with low armor, because of how armor is calculated.  Things like that would make the items more interesting

   Plus, 1% chances is random.  Random doesn't belong in a game that's supposed to be about skill..  No chances on items should be under 10% or 15%.

   I sadly happen to question how much this game will be improved 3 months from now.  It probably isn't going to be much better in a month, and right now I have lots of dislike about it.  While I really like a lot of the decisions made with it (no armor types, except siege, no "good early game, bad late game" and vice versa type hero balancing, no stat points on leveling), theres a lot about it that feels like it's just.. unfinished.   And I just question if it's going to get finished, or if it'll just stay the same and you'll make us pay $10 for another Demigod when the actual game is not completed.

   In 3 months, I don't see why the game couldn't be great, if that was the actual goal to patch it to adjust some skills behavor, redo some items, balance out the items.  But with how it is now, sure moving some numbers around will balance things out where some things aren't so underpowered, and fix the few overpowered things, but it won't make it much more fun or competitive.

Amazing, you summed up my thoughts more accurately than i was actually thinking them up.

Taking Age of Conan for example, which i beta tested and pre-ordered, the game looked great early on with its amazing graphics and production values, but as soon as you hit end-game the experience turns very boring very quickly. This is how i see Demigod. It has great graphics and style just like Age of Conan had, but once you get familiar with the game the experience dies out very quickly and i will be left with the question "why am i playing this instead of DoTA?" If i am having these thoughts in the final stages of Beta, and the release will be generally the same game as it is now, then i just don't see anying in Demigod that will keep me coming back for more.

I vowed never to pre-order another game since Age of Conan because of how much of a disappointment it was after all the hype and popularity, i went back on my word and it seems like it's going to happen all over again. A great looking game with great production values that just becomes very flat and uninteresting after a short amount of time.

I hear alot about how Demigod will be greatly improved upon depending on how successful the game becomes. If they are referring to sales then i am fine with contributing my part to the improvement of the game but if they are referring to the actual popularity and amount of people playing the game after a few months, then i think the game will be in deep trouble.

Aye.  But Demigod could be much better than demigod in 6-12 months.  They have a whole team, not one guy.

Supcom was supported very well.  New units where added, lots of changes.  FA had a lot of things added to it which modders had modded on supcom.

I just.. don't know if it'll happen, even if this is GPG.  I can't help but think sure that sure new skills will be added, but we'll have to pay for them, and blah blah..  And that designs won't happen, because it's too much balancing afterwards.

I guess it's just something we'll see a few months from now.  I just never really expect somewhat major additions and game mechanic changes to be done in patches.

Imo if we're talking about "Depth" of a game. Every single game has its depth, it's just depend on how hardcore and get into it enough. Heck, Mario also has a lots of depth if you considering you have to remember all the position of all enemies and get every hidden coins in the game. There's depths in every game, it's just that you really notice it or not.

For me the only concern is that the content seem to be lacking in the place it shouldn't be. Okay I admit that I'm one of the ppl that interested in Demigod cuz I'm a Dota player. So what I was expecting are : 1) Heaps of Heroes 2) Heaps of Items . That's the only 2 thing I was expecting if Demigod want to compete with Dota in the same genre.

People who play Dota still playing it right now (for 5 years already) becuase of the number of possibilities have never ceased to expand. More heroes and items every few months really make this Dota still alives.Not considering all these UPDATES CONTENTS are all FREE. That's the non-commercial game for you. So can we expect a COMMERCIAL game which cost us 40$ to have the same amount of updates and added contents later? I can safely say I have never seen any commercial games have the same amount of updates as Dota before.

Demigod seem to put efforts into Demigods designs, as in Visual and skills and concepts etcs, therefore those are not the PLAYABLE contents. The fact that you can't even have a 5v5 match with no duplicate Demigods sadden me so much. Okay we got more incredibly detailed arenas to play in and more modes also, which is really makes a lot of different in gameplays. But however we change the arena, we still have to choose from the 8 Demigods which make the core gameplay. For me the number of Demigods are the indication of the amount of replayability of this game. Can I expect like 1 new Demigods every 2 months or so?

The core mechanic of Demigods are far more superior to Warcraft 3 engine can do and the specifically designed engine should be great advantage to the game. No surprise that the game run smoothly and look incredible although I was expecting the game to run as smooth as Sin, maybe we will get a low-end graphic setting later.

I'm also a fan of GPG since the Cavedog era and recently Stardock fan since Sin. I'm confident in the quality of the game they are making, but sometimes quality just can't surpass the quantity.

Demigod has enogh items, it's just alot of them are redundant or bad.  The actual number of items you'd use is small.

I think it only lacks with the number of skills.  There should be like 50%-100% more.  And some of the current skills need some reworking beyond just adjusting their numbers, some need changes in function.

But, I didn't like DotA.  I just like the concept of it.

Jinx -

To play dev's advocate for a bit - It's interesting that you are using MMOs as your example.  DoTA, amazing community support notwithstanding, is niche the same way Everquest was niche.  We didn't know that, of course, (EQ had what, 400k players at one point?), but both games take a great deal of investment on the part of the player.  So you get incredibly loyal, skillful, and small fanbases.

What WoW did differently was build a glitchy, buggy, sometimes broken but relatively accessible gameworld and then grind the buggy and broken parts out over years and years.  What was left was something millions of players could get into.

I know, DoTA has a ton of players.  Fine.  Ask your average 15 year old if they have heard of it.  Ask any non-gamer.  It hasn't hit the mainstream and as long as the community stays prickly and elitist it never will.  Nothing wrong with that - probably a better game for it.

It's an old classic - take something niche but amazing like Carl Perkins and put Elvis in front of it.  Suddenly the little old lady down the road is buying records.  Can you say that Elvis is better than Carl Perkins?  No.  But how many people have velvet paintings of Perkins in their trailer?

Demigod is the first to mainstream DoTA-style gameplay - it is very, very accessible - and if the devs use the first 3 - 6 months of release productively I could see it having a really long tail. 

in MMO analogies.  I think Demigod has a chance to become as successful as WoW.  WoW doesn't become this successful in 1 day, it took them 5 years.  The main recipe for their success is grabbing the casuals.  Demigod is geared toward casuals.  I think WoW doesn't have the depth but it grabs millions of casual players.  You'll get bored in WoW end content as well.  It's gotten better through expansion packs but I still find it boring once you reached max level.

Age of Conan and Warhammer is geared towards hardcore players.  Hardcore players are really a small group compared to casuals.   So I think Demigod is in the right direction even though it doesn't have much depth like WoW.  They can add the depth later with custom mods, more demigods, ranks, and pantheon. 

gpg/stardock is not blizzard.  If this game was created by blizzard, they probably would spend another year on it because blizzard has the money.  Gpg is a small company and they have budget the game to come out this spring.  They then have to see if the game is succesful and then add more content to it.  If you don't want to ever be disappointed in a beta, then go join Blizzard's beta games.  Go to their blizzcon to get that close beta key.  You'll know you'll like starcraft2 and the dota mods for starcraft2. 

I believe Demigod will be much much better than Dota in every aspect.

First, there's the automatch function and ladderboard. Also, the game is not dependent on getting the best items like Dota is. I see complaints that items are not powerful, they suck and so on. However, I believe the Devs are going in the direction of "it's the player's skills and not the items that matter". Each item provides boosts to specific attributes, mana items for healers, health items for warriors and the minion boost items for generals.

If Dota players can't see this, then Demigod is not your game. I love the game as it is now.

The more I play, the more I realize that the playing field is still relatively level even in the late game. Can you say that about Dota? Absolutely not as those more experience players would have had the most powerful weapons already.

Except that's kind of the point.  The better players should be able to develop a clear advantage over worse players over the course of the game, and eventually crush them.  Otherwise, what's the point of playing well?  In DotA, strong items do make a huge difference, but you need to play well in order to get them before your opponents, so skill is still a huge factor.

That said, I think pretty much the same thing can happen in Demigod.  If you dominate, then you can just get the awesome artifacts with crit chance, life steal, huge armor etc and wtfpwn people all over the place.  The only difference is it's a bit easier to get the best items in Demigod than it is in DotA, and the best items do less interesting things.

i guess i have to quoet myself

Well then what's the incentive for the losing team to keep on playing? When they quit before the Citadel is destroyed, what fun is that? The better players already have a clear advantage. Like you said, they are better. Objective of the game is to have fun. Not to get steamrolled. And I believe Demigod has achieved this.

The level playing field allows the weaker team to come back, through learning better tactics, maybe learn to time special attacks together, that sort of thing.

ITs' not htat the items arent' powerful enough, it's that they're bland.

The items under $2.5k gold cost are balanced well for the most part, with mostly being simple +armor/life/dmg/etc.  But the more expensive ones should be giving more interesting abilities and such, both active and passive.

It's good that the 5k cost items give much less +stats for the money compared to the 500gold and 1.5k ones.  But the abilities and such on the 5k cost ones are worthless in any sort of build right now, mostly, 'cept warpstone and such.

Now this i would call a prime example of bad game design.

Why ? Simple... because it allows players to rest on their past laurels earned in the early game, making the whole notion of a late game rather superfluous.

In a mainstream game with mainstream players i can already see how it would lead to whole teams quitting before the match was even halfway done.

Not rocket science...  i always thought the point of "playing well" was about having to outplay your opponent... not about amassing a ton of items that allow you to walk over your opponents without a hint of challenge left. Bad lategame design, is what that smells like.

In Demigod, items and levels are a factor (being forced to make decisions about what build you want to run certainly adds depth)... , but not a totally overpowering one. You still need to play well in lategame and even against an opponent with an item/level advantage you can end the game quite quickly if they neglect defense just for a little bit.

well in my opinion theres always a thread like this about everygame. The game will be what it'll be, some people will like it and some people won't. it's impossible to make a game everyone will like. So far for me the game looks good, i hope theres a campaign in it cuz playing that skirmish over and over would be boring. but i think it looks good for me.

Even GPG had been saying "Demigod is not DOTA!" since before we even got involved. It hasn't been a secret.

Quite a difference between a full game and a custom map for an existing one. In the latter case, there's no art development and little debugging (only if you add some new ability scripts) to do just to add a new character. The mapper can just pick a model, maybe changing the scale or color-shift in the map editor, then stick some abilities on and run with it.

To be honest, the biggest mislead throughout this whole process hasn't been how much Demigod was purported to be like DotA.  I think that aspect of this discussion was really more something which people inferred.  Demigod is clearly modelled after DotA, so people expect it to be a lot more similar than it is.

The thing that many, myself included, feel that the devs have been misleading on, is their supposed commitment to making Demigod a competitive game.  It seems like that may have been the original goal, but somewhere along the way they decided that it'd be too difficult or they didn't want to go that direction.  Now the developers talk about competitive depth and hardcore gamers as if that is a niche market, and making an easier, more accessible game is better for mass consumption.  That's true, to some extent, accessibility does add to a game's popular appeal.  But in my experience it seems like the games with the most competitive depth actually have the greatest mass appeal, as long as they are designed to be fun and accessible at the same time.  That's why FPS like CoD are so popular and remain popular.  Not only are they accessible and fun, but there's a pretty high skill ceiling, which keeps people playing it for a long, long time. Demigod is obviously not a FPS, but I don't think it's out of the question for a game like it to be very accessible as well as highly competitive.

In seemingly casting aside their once proudly stated focus on making Demigod a competitive game ("tournament staple" was a term that was once thrown around, I believe) the Devs seem to have mislead many people who bought this game, and that explains a good portion of the discontent here.

And this is why i consider DotA pretty much unbalanced.

If Demigod is able to provide that variety in gameplay that DotA does while being balanced, it will be a success. But to get this variety Demigod needs some more heroes, not only 5 per side. And no new heroes as some kind of addon. That would only scare players off.

New heroes would be a good incentive to battle within the pantheon, by the way

To be honest if you go way back it is not modeled after if you read early posts on GPG forums you will hear the word inspired by quite a few games including Dota so don't put this clone crap out their this is it's own game and will stand on it's own.

PossiblyImpossible -

Accessibily and depth are not mutually exclusive, I agree. 

As an aside - CoD, at least CoD4, doesn't have a high skill ceiling, imo.  At least not in pickup games.  Maybe it's different on the competitive scene, but Airstrikes, grenade spam, etc. mean it's alot of fun for a while without being particularly hard. I never played the competitve circuit with that game though, so maybe..

On a team level I see Demigod being a very competitive game.  You play Pantheon games, mostly, right?  Start looking for 3 v 3 or more against humans and you start to see subtleties you will never get against AI.  1 v 1 doesn't have the depth it might yet, but small tweaks will get it there.

I seem to recall that the general marketing hinted quite strongly that if you like Dota you'll like Demigod.  I don't recall reading anywhere (except well after Beta 2) the devs saying it's nothing like it.

However, the biggest marketing blurb that I found completely disingenuous was the "we want Demigod to be the COUNTERSTRIKE of RTS." 

Counterstrike is one of the most hardcore, newbie unfriendly fps games out there.  It's also one of the most competitive.  To say that you want to make a game that's the "Counterstrike of rts" is saying you are making a game that requires tons of skill, probably not newbie friendly, and has a great amount of depth. 

Already in Beta 1, I could see that that wasn't the actual direction of the game.  It was just a marketing lie to amass more interest.  You know how that refund request turned out.  Contrary to what Brad thinks, you CAN often judge a game on its beta state - especially when you are judging based on design and NOT content.

Anyways, as I stated earlier, the game has its own merits and is fun if you don't think it's a competitive game or dota with production values.  However, if you came in here because of your various marketing campaigns and interviews, you might be in for some disillusionment.

See this thread for the solution: http://forums.demigodthegame.com/343533

Maybe you're right about CoD, I don't know...I'm not a big FPS player, but all I know is when I go on Xbox Live and try to play WaW I get smoked by the people who played it all the time, and there definitely seems to be a lot of skill involved in being aware of where your enemies / allies are, having good aim, knowing which weapons are best in which situations, and so on.  When I played CoD online I immediately got a sense of the great deal that there is to learn and practice to be really good at the game, and yet it is still really fun and accessible for people like me who suck at FPS.  That's the sort of dynamic that Demigod ought to aim for.

P.S. I don't play mostly Pantheon games, only if nobody else is online, since the only real "challenge" is seeing how quickly I can rack up 30+ kills against the AI.

Well the thing with Counter-Strike is anyone can pick it up and know what to do (shoot shit).. Not like reaching a decent level in a pub is the most amazingly hard thing to do anyways...

I think it's perfectly fine to look to Dota and find things that they did right and implement it with the ideas that you wanted for Demigod. They both fit under the same genre as much as you might hate that :/ Why not use good things amirite? I'm not saying we should base it completely off of Dota but look at things that worked really well to make demigod something better. Isn't that what we all want a better game?

STOOOOOOOPPPP!!!!!

Ok i read through this whole thread in hope of finding a good basic overview of the games quality but nothing but Fanboy-praisings and Doomsayers monologs here.

BTW forgive my (maybe awefull) grammar! I am german.

I didnt have any time to care for Demigods beta so far but i read about the game in different Forums. So what i want is a basic Overview of the game and FACTS!

I know the game shares the basic Gameplay of DOTA (wich ist cool). And now i also know that its alot more different than DOTA (wich doesnt mean its bad). I realy dont care about people saying its cool or it sucks! I build my own opinion in every aspect of my life. But to get me interessted in buying the game i want to know some basic facts about it so here are my questions. Oh and please only facts and nothing like "not yet but most likely in release" or "when expansion comes out".

1. Dota´s strategy is based on the combination (teamwork) of a vast amount of Heros and theyre skills (I know alot are pretty similiar but they differ in sometimes important details). DOTA has around 90 Heros or so with each at least 4 Abilitys making about 360 different skills. Dota had alot of Time to develop so i dont compare the Amount of Heros. But the total number of abilitys is a indicator for the amount of skill-synergies and therefore Taktiks. My expectation is at least a quarter of Dotas Skill array. So 90 or more different skills in total should be distributet on all the heros in Total.

2. Another important thing are items in Dota. Alot of strategy is involved here (not only what to get for each hero but also WHEN to get WHAT can make difference in Win or Loss). Are items involved in Demigod? And if not what else is there to add additional depth aside from skills?

3. The trick in Dota is (with good players on BOTH sides) to make enemy believe in something and then surprise him. Or at least having a realy good Team Movement and reconaissance across the map. What i have heard is that u see almost whole map all the time in Demigod. This is almost a "NO-GO" for a competative game (think about seeing through walls in Counterstrike, Map-Hack in Starcraft, etc...). So what system compensates for that in Demigod? How can u surprise ur enemy with something (cant be skills cause he knows what ur Heros can do)? 

4. Blizzards games (also Mods) are made with 2 things in Mind: Easy learning and starting, and after a while you detect incredible ingame debth allowing those game to be played at a very high skill-level, wich is in turn important to make a game successful over many years. I personaly realy hate blizzard games cause every goddamn game MUST compete with them. But after playing dozens of other games out there i know WHY THEY MUST COMPETE! Far too much trash out there with no Future at all and fit only for the smal play-session after work once a week at best. Is there enough "game" to detect details even Months after release? Or do you feel that u KNOW the game after playing the Beta?

Thx for your patience in reading this. And pls.... no flames needed, if u think those things arent essential for a long-time playing fun then at least tolerate other opinions!