Hey Demigod forums. I'll preface this by saying that I was one of the many of you who pre-ordered this game to get into the beta. I played through the first two updates, and then decided I was done messing around with what I was afraid might end up as a half-baked DOTA clone.
I recently installed Demigod (a week ago, in fact) only to discover, much to my delight, that what I was afraid would be a half-baked DOTA clone had actually turned out to be a very refined and unique experience. The game was still visually stunning but contained much more polish than the beta I remembered. The demigods all had more thoughtfully designed skill trees than I remembered. The whole citadel upgrading mechanic was entirely new to me. I was overjoyed to find all of these things (and, of course, much more) - so much so that I convinced a friend of mine to buy the game. We played a great number of LAN games together privately before I even thought to try out multiplayer in the online arena.
This brings me to my point, which is one you are all familiar with (I think): the execution of the matchmaking system in this game, in spite of what is surely a great sum of effort and ingenuity on behalf of Stardock and Gas Powered Games, is.. well, it doesn't work. There is no need to describe why it doesn't work, because regardless of whether it is the result of a piece of faulty infrastructure, a rogue algorithm, gremlins or trolls, the bottom line is that I have played four Pantheon games today, and not a single one involved me playing against real people.
The point of this post / rant / flame is to vent my frustration over the failure of this system, which I would argue is one of the most invaluable elements of the game in terms of its (the game's) longevity. It severly pains me to see such a gorgeous game suffer so much on account of this oversight bug not-properly-functioning system.
Comments? Thoughts? Flame?
~ Aariel
