I reckon distorted kinda has a point there. Hands-on experience with a particular DG is the #1 important thing to effectively playing against him, and regardless of who they give the new DGs to first eventually we'll end up in a situation where N number of people have considerable experience with the DG and X don't.

I'm not sayin' that the current staggered release policy is wrong, but I do think they're setting themselves up for quite a few community tears in the future, as supposedly pro players find themselves unable to compete against DA for a month or two, and therefore raise a stink about him being "genuinely OP because we (veterans) say so".

I doubt the entire playerbase is going to have such an extreme reaction to them being released, Poly. This isn't the 'stacking issue' again, where the arguments both for and against have merit, these are two new Demigods no one has seen before. I'd be surprised if people started making games with "NO NEW FUCKING DEMIGODS, BITCHES" as the title. Thus, I doubt we'll see this hypothetical subset appear; people can play against the new Demigods even if they don't have access to them. This is till the optimal method of testing.

Opening up the new Demigods to everyone will ensure that correct balancing will take a hell of a lot longer; first, you have to get past everyone playing the new Demigods. This could take weeks depending on if they're over-powered or under-powered at release. Then take into consideration of ease of play; if they're as easy to play as UB, for example, then you're going to be waiting quite a while before you begin to see normalised match ups appear.

With the currently selected method, normalised match ups occur instantenously which will significantly decrease the time frame for correct balancing to occur. Then, they're released in a steady, stable, balanced state to the public. I don't see how this is bad in anyway, shape or form. What is the downside to this method of testing, besides yourself possibly not getting access to them until they're balanced?

So lemme get this straight - Because I'm not unhappy with the proposed system, you expect me to forefeit my chances of playing the new DGs to prove to you that it's fair?

Do you have the impression that I have some special, priviledged status which makes me more likely than you to get to try these  DGs? If I did have that status (purely hypothetically speaking, because I don't), do you think that it would be in my power to give it away regardless,?

Even if I could, why do you think I could be given that status? The only reason I can think of why I could possibly be favored over someone else is because I both play and communicate more than the vast majority of players, and if I were chosen for those reasons, why would I give it away to someone both less likely to play and to provide feedback?

 

Basically you're unhappy and you want me to be unhappy. Sorry, but I have no reason to cater to your schadenfreude. I would actually like to declare the opposite of what you asked, I absolutely do not want to give you or anyone else rights to my DG beta raffle ticket. If I get it, I get it, if I don't I don't. You have no entitlement to my chances in addition to your own.

So says the rabble rouser. You're the one who's trying to make people angry.

im gonna skip straight to my point without reading wat everyone written but i think thered be a bigger benefit if the new demis are released to everyone then we'd find out from all diff play styles HOW and WHAT needs to be changed (if needed) to make them balanced.

ur getting limited viewpoints if restricting who gets to play them.

You'd have a much more limited view point of their performance if everyone had them; they'd be skewed due to the sheer number of times you'd see the new Demigods. It's simply not a level playing field for testing.

Any reasonable people should be able to see both sides here; the players want to play the new DGs becaues they're bored, the devs want to ensure that players don't get attached to the DGs in their current form because they may be subject to change and they also want to get feedback on players playing against them, not just as them as is likely to happen if they're made available to everyone simultaneously.

The players who are trying to say that there will be a more productive testing experience are really just guessing here, and of course to some extent the devs are as well, as I doubt they've ever tried something like it. However, a lot of the talk in this thread is just people venting about how sick they are of waiting, not the product of any real thought about why it's actually going to be more productive to open the flood gates.

I'd love to have open access to the Demigods. If they are unbalanced, then we can simply host games titled "No DA or Occulus." We'd be able to analyze them much faster if we all had access to them. Our player base is small enough without restricting it further. Maybe everyone with 200+ games could get access to them.

I disagree.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but

1.20 allows for easily accessible modding.

1.20 contains the files for the new demigods.

1.20 won't allow players to access the new demigods.

1.20 allows for easily accessible modding.

In conclusion, if you really care about having the new demigods ASAP and unless something has changed, once we have the new demigod files enabling them for use in a mod will be readily achievable.  In the worst case scenario, one would have to swap out one of the existing demigods for one of the new demigods.

 

i neither started the thread, or seem to be 1 of only the at the moment 3 people agreeing with frogboy.

How about letting us have them for single player only? Surely no one would be against that.

Polynomial made a Argument

 

lol anyways i agree with Epiphenomenon as well if we had them released to SP only then perhap's it would make everyone alil more happy but as for MP i do not have any complaints Fix the 2 DG'S balance them and release that's all i care about unti'll then i'll be playing lan game's and playing online 

I would do that . I am not that interested in the new Demigods before they are released publicly, because I'll end up playing with Rook anyway . But I think it will be tied to the RTP key and thus to my account.

I hope the Beta-test won`t take ages

accordingly to my demigod-experience (that eeevvvverything thakes longer than expected), we wont get the new DGs before New Years Eve ! thats crazy, thats sad, but thats realistic !

 

cu in 2010

 

again with such huge modifications to game (new favors, demigods, items prices) i would be good idea to reset stats and favor points. This will give everyone fresh start and equal oportunity noobs or pros. this game will be very diffrent with 1.2. Same like we used to race to Hearth of life when it cost 4500 (if remember correct). Which ever team got it first would own the gameand chances to recover from 3-5 kills were very slim.

Ps.

oak with shield and HoL was more op then original ereb

i know i am a bit off topic. but other thing that could be usefull is unranked game modes. there is no way to test out builds (not to mention new demigods) without ruining ranks. singleplayer is not good enough to check competitve build. Our premades dosnt want to play each other to prevent dropping in stats. More people would play with noobs too

Seriously. How can you make the argument a small set of people can give comments faster than the entire community? Its mathematically incorrect. I don't know about your Ready to Play matchups, but there are maybe a dozen or so people "Ready to Play" Demigod US evening times. That's assuming everyone with Ready to play gets access. Frogboy needs to comment on this.

The Demigods are done. They do not need balance testing. The ONLY Demigod balancing that has EVER happened up until now is Erebus. That is ONE balance change. They are already a joke in this community for taking absurd amounts of time.

Firstly, the Demigods are not going to be balanced entirely on the comments of a handful of players - they'll post their observations, absolutely - but it's more about internal numbers; behind the scenes data mining. The less players they have to watch, the faster this collection can be completed. Why?

For the purposes of balance you need to see the new Demigods is all conditions otherwise you create situational Demigods - Demigods that are only 'balanced' when certain criteria are met, such as the presence of another Demigod, and this results in them being either over-powered or under-powered outside of their 'situation'. If the entire community has access to the Demigods, you'd see the usual rotational change that takes place when new content is added - namely, everyone would use them for a while, then go back to the Demigods they prefer if they don't prefer the new Demigods. This would result in the first week, possibly two weeks, being unable to be used for balancing because they'd mostly be playing in Mirror matches or games where everyone is using the new Demigods. This is fine for balancing in that situation, but you don't need two weeks worth of data for that - what you need to see is what happens when they play against and with every Demigod, and multiple times. The more people who have access to the new Demigods, the longer it takes for the Demigod rotation to return to normal, where we'll see a healthy mix of all the Demigods so that data can be collected for, say, the Demon Assassin VS Oak, or Oculus VS QoT. Then they'll have enough information to begin implementing changes to balance them out.

If only a small number of players have access to the new Demigods, then the chances of them all playing in the same game decrease, and thus the likely hood of a game with a good spread of Demigods increases. As the chance for a spread of Demigods increases, the time required for data mining decreases as the odds of seeing identical matches also decreases. Thus, the less players have access, the less time is required for balancing. It's basic systemic data mining, it's not rocket science.


This is because the Demigods were balanced through the Beta and Internal QA quite extensively. This isn't because the guys and gals at GPG are magically able to balance everything on a piece of paper before implementation, it's because they take their time and do what is necessary to get it right. This point works for my argument more than your own, so thanks!

zehdon is correct on this. his explenation is sound. i know what he is talking about myself.

Lets assume for a moment that everyone who has Ready to Play and Demigod registered is added to the DLC list. How many people is that? The point as said by Frogboy is to use Ready to Play to get those people playing together. The lesser people have access to the demigods, the lesser amount of games will be played with them. Playing as the new guys in games where there are people who do not have access to them is only going to piss them off. This is not about math in that case.

And in regards to the testing point. That was before GPG had any experience with the game. Now they do.

Being that this community has more than a few people who love to complain, and being that I haven't seen a single thread threatening to boycott the new Demigods and kick players who have access to them, I tend to think that the majority of people won't have a problem playing with the new Demigods.

As I mentioned, the purpose of segmented testing is to increase the chances of encountering multiple and varied situations. If you have 50 people with the new Demigods, they're less likely to see repreated circumstances - or at least, less likely to encounter matches where everyone is using the new Demigods, than if the entire community had access to them by the simple laws of chance.


Being as each Demigod is designed to play differently to the other Demigods, their experience with testing thus far has little bearing on how the Demon Assassin and Oculus are going to be balanced as there is little to no comparison that can be made within the other Demigods and their respective builds. Unlike HoN and DotA, you can't say "This guy is like [x] so we'll do similar to what we did there". It's simply to disconnected.

I understand your point.

However, I see serious issues with people have access to these demigods for a time where not everyone has them. Considering these demigods are supposed to be for everyone, its easy to expect people in game being annoyed when others can play as the new guys. Premades were shunned first, I don't think its a stretch for people to not play against the new guys with open arms.

There's no point in arguing this. =P

Frogboy said relatively quickly, and I'll just give him the benefit of the doubt.

This community is so small - small like a Beta-community - so release them for all !

 

we can test them together , instead of waiting 2 more months until the chosen "10-men-squad" has finished their work.