What may be factors resulting in fewer games being played?

Lack of interest due to lack of content and lack of modding.

For all the talk about the small community, I have never had an issue finding a game.  I think the longest I waited was 5-7min.

A lot of people getting fed up with disconnects and poor connections. As less players play, there are less good connections available or connections from people in your area.

That and the game is getting a bit old. Same 8 dg's on the same 3 maps (popular 3v3 maps) makes for a dull experience. But I still enjoy it and I keep playing

its harder for noobs now that the game has been out so long and people are playing 500+ games.

I think this is the primary reason, and it's understandable really - additional maps that are designed for 3v3 would help greatly, I feel. I've played 3v3 on hte 5v5 maps and while it's still fun, it's simply not as tight an experience. Modding support will help greatly. 
Personally, it's not an issue and I find the game to be a blast to play!

I think the single biggest boost to this game would be more 3v3 maps.  That is the primary number of people in a game.  Right now I only really like to play on Cata and Levi.  I just dont like Exile.  Zig is ok to, but better with 4v4. 

Some small 4v4s and some 3v3 maps would go along way toward diversity in gameplay.  I think moreos than more Demis.

Maps are definitely a major issue. It dosen't help that so many people refuse to play on leviathan or zikurat, both of which work fine for 3v3. Basically you have a big swath of the playerbase playing nothing but Cataract over and over and over.

Personally I've been having worse and worse connection issues as of late. Given that nothing I know of has changed on GPG/SD's end it's probably something with my ISP or router, but regardless of who's to blame, the result is the same: less time played and more time trying other games/homework.

I think most of us are just waiting for the next patch and hoping that we're going to see an uptick that can be maintained throguh modding.

RECAP

NEW:

1.Lack of new maps(specifically 3v3)

2.Lack of modding

3.new DGs taking longer than expected

OLD:

4. school (?)

5. connection

6.PUGs vs. premades arguments (?)

personally my fav is exile, but i really like levi or zikurat.

most of the time i only play 3v3

it just seems like the perfect fit.

not much lag, but enough players to make it truly cooperative yet skill based (not sure how that works)

The primary reason is repetitive game play! The game is too straight forward unless you’re playing equally with someone you are either winning or losing after the first 10 minutes and in most with no hope of a comeback from the opposing side. Three certain demigods on a team literally guarantee victory, outside buying specific items there is no real use for favor points. Some items are overly used while others never see the light of day for being called completely useless. I love the characters and the background stories but it makes it hard to play the game like I use to play let’s say fable 1 & 2 or even many games of the ff series.

The primary reason is that people hate to host games.

 So many people i know wait around in the lobby for a few minutes, and when they don't see a game they want to join, quit out.

I don't have the best connection for hosting lobbies. But when i see no australian games up at all, for 20 minutes on opengames.asp, i joi n and host my own, within 5-10 minutes theres usually enough for at lesat a 2v2 or 3v3.

It's because most people for some reason understand that the game is all peer to peer, but fail to realise it doesn't really matter who the host is.

We need to encourage people to host games, if they feel like a game. Not just hang around waiting for someone else to host.

For me, it's just the amount of labour involved in getting a stable game going. I could boot up Demigod and spend 5-10 minutes in a lobby to take my chances at ending up with someone who has their torrent on, -2 simspeed, or crashes/disconnects after 20 minutes - or I could boot up Legends or Newerth, join one of the hundreds of games starting up, and have disconnects/lag be virtually no issue at all. I know that most (or all) of Demigod's network performance problems come from the players, but I feel that Demigod is much more prone to it than the other games.

I like demigod. Of the 3 big "hero arena" games (or whatever we call it nowadays), it's the one game I can reccommend to my friends, knowing they can get into it and have fun without needing weeks of training first.

I point the fickle finger of fate towards the stat tracking, I've been away from Demi for a bit and found this to be enabled in game w/ the win %. However, I KNOW i've played way more than 15 games since release (played 3-4 solid weeks after release! was even one of those "special" people who got it early from Gamestop!) and now i can't even play a game due to being kicked.

THAT type of eliteism kills games.

Also don't forget that other games are coming out too. Left 4 Dead 2 is just ridiculously good, for example.

/signed

i can't believe that. i wait in avarage at least 15min. it can be in 5min but it also happens 30min. the reasons are diferently. sometimes no or nearly no open game or the lobby won't fill up.

but waiting only 5 min is a very rare event for me.

edit: i think many people don't want to host because it highly increases chances of crashing demigod. in fact when one of the player crashes while they are still in the lobby it is in 9/10 cases the hoster. and this happens quite often.

just host some newb lobbies or join noob games.  If you played 3-4 solid weeks in Epoch 1, great.  Epoch 2 had some changes, and people have learned new tricks.  If you're finding it stupidly easy.. well great, 80%+ wins after suffering through 100 noob / mid games should get you into any expert game.  What you might find tho, is that people stop kicking you for being bad, and end up refusing to play because your side is "too good" or refuse to play against you unless they have a strong advantage.

Also, I kick people from my lobbies not because I don't want to kick their ass, but because it simply won't be fun for the other team.  Sure you might be great, and someone who just picked up the game might be an expert after 2 games.. but quite frankly.. there is something to be said about experience.  Hell, I stopped playing for a month, came back to play a couple games, and it was rough at first.  I wouldn't have minded getting my bearings back in a noob / mid game if people would have let me (I didn't even try, guarantee'd kick if I join a noob / mid game :P)

I'd have to echo:

- other games

- Lack of varied maps

I'd also have to add that its hard to tell how many people are online... i know it shouldn't matter, but there could be 1500 people online and waiting for a game, but if there are only 3 games up, it feels like you're alone in the universe... It would be nice to have a better visual understanding of how many ppl are waiting.

I think that one of the reason that people don't host games themselves is that then thye feel committed to that game... i.e. if it takes 15 minutes to 'fill up' then they are stuck there.  Where as if they just 'look for games' they can keep looking till they find one that's almost complete and start playing.

I'm not sure if its feasible, but it would be nice if the lobby actually just changed ownership if the original creator left... in other words, if the host leaves, someone else takes ownership and the lobby stays up... that way there aren't as many 'orphaned' games... not sure how tough it would be though.

ThanatosESC.