Stardock, Just Release the New Guys, No Beta'ing

I guess if they just release them to everyone, there will be a lot of balance issues and rage.

Where does it say only AI can use the new Demigods? I think anybody would know that that is absolutely stupid. AI was never and never will be an accurate depiction of how real players play in this game. I wish GPG and Stardock would realize that to the extent the actual players do.

you will get that rage anyways

http://forums.demigodthegame.com/369226/get;2445059

 

It's not about that. It's about being able to play against/alongside the new Demigods, be it an AI or human player. At first the human player who can play the new Demigods will be from Stardock, then from RTP. And later on everyone will be able to use them. But during that time, you'll always be able to play with others who can use the new Demigods.

http://forums.demigodthegame.com/369226/page/1/#2445119

The dg's are in the game the second 1.2 goes live.  We get access when SD unlocks them for us.  Hehe... so not only will frogboy taunt us by watching him play them but so will the AI.  I can only wonder what the AI will do with the shadow ability. 

I'm pretty sure we all agree that we'd like to start playing the new Dgs asap.  Realistically, using ready to play is for marketing and to increase the install base.  All well and good.  I think rolling out the dgs as DLC are what they are testing... and they can control access as they like.  Bottom line - we all agree with GIMME!  I'll wait as long as have to.

its not the waiting that really bothers me after all im sure everyone wants to get their hands on the new demigods, and the longer it takes the more polished they will be....however the thing that makes me a bit ticked off is that not everyone will get them right away which is very very strange because then if there are balance issues well then too bad the people that can play the demigods will be OP, but im sure the reason behind giving them to the player base is to test updates through impules and DLC for future demigods? either way the waiting and QA isnt the bad thing imo its the only certain people get the free content that bugs me

That's absolutely ridiculous. There is absolutely no point in having the AI being able to use it first.

I am totally fine with other select individuals being able to use the new Demigods. The only things that can happen with the selective release of the new Demigod are better balance and relatively less whining. I can understand that feeling of "so close yet so far," but more patience will be very beneficial.

While we are at it, we might as well give GPG and SD more breathing space about the new DG issue. It seems that every other person is giving SD crap about not releasing the new DGs immediately, and if we are going to see any benefit from the extended beta testing then we should probably cut back on the raging.

I voiced my opposition to this back when frogboy first posted the idea. For the life of me, I can't figure out where the logic lies in excluding some(most?) of your (already small) userbase when trying to get opinions on what needs fixing.

So you want people to have ready to play in order to easily contact those people, fine, contact those people anyway. The people who don't have ready to play still have access to the forums, there will be ways for them to post ideas / criticisms. The larger your beta pool the better the potential feedback.

In this instance, the excuse of witholding to balance the DG's is a moot point, if you've got access to skills, stats and abilities that I've never experienced, i'm not sure of what the animations even look like, how will i know when to interrupt a potentially lethal ability, i'll have been able to read the skills and stats, and understand them, but untill i play them i'll never truely know them.

Letting bots have the ability to access these demigods and not real players is making the community angry. Despite what you see on the forums, a lot of people have held their tongue sat back and waited for improvements (i'm one of those people). That you don't want to listen to what your consumers are pleading for, makes me question whether or not anyone has learned from the past, or cares about the future.

 

You're so right about it being completely unfair to people fighting them. These guys are supposed to be free DLC for EVERY Demigod player. You're creating a point in time where you are giving people an advantage deliberately.

Precisely. I cannot agree with this more. Yarlen, Zoomba, Frogboy, T-Man whomever. Message us on Ready to Play for individual feedback. We will give it to you happily.

This is not your usual Demigod sucks rant. This is a good argument and I hope it changes your perspective, Frogboy.

I guarantee everyone if plans continue as normal, it will be 2-3-4 more weeks before the DLC is publically available. Thanksgiving will delay everything. I told my Demigod team the new guys would be out in August. They still joke at me.

This is another good point. If only a certain group has them, and imbalances are found, this is completely unfair and will only alienate people given the record of how many weeks patching takes around here.

agree with op

 

myself convinced 7 people to buy demigod...not a single one of them bought via coupon..all paid full....

i advertised the great game amongst them...

they are also joking on me..and next time i wont have the trust of them....

 

not your fault..but pls hurry up and dont make experiments with different groups released to...

 

greets..da half calmed ...half stinky microstar

My guess would be that you either have this sort of hybrid live beta or we wait on an internal beta at GPG to be completed.

If you let every player access these DGs you're just going to have a bunch of mirror matches.

That's not really an issue.

It is if the purpose of the partial release of the DGs is to help test their balance.

I think you and I obscenitor if we had access to their full skill trees could probably point out things that look iffy without necessarily "testing" them in game.

I don't see any need to do weeks of Ready to Play balance testing. They should be released to everyone and patched if issues arrise. Simple as that.

Everyone remember Erebus being patched? It was done rather swiftly, so I imagine it could be done again.

Exactly, in fact I believe Frogboy commented as such. I think it's the best way to test them; we need to make sure that they're balanced in all conditions. Seeing 3v3 matches where everyone is playing the two new Demigods is going to skew any perceived - or passive - observations.

Which is why everyone should have access to them. Mirror match probability decreases the more people playing, and whining and forum comments probability increase.

The new Demigods are highly anticipated  why, exactly, wouldn't people play as them if they had them? The more people who have new content, the more people are going to use said content. It's simple.

If they're released un-balanced, which they're going to be - hence being tested, the less people that have access to them the better. Arguing that Mirror matches aren't going to occur if everyone has them is unrealistic.

The mirror match probability doesn't decrease if everyone has them. If everyone has access to them, most will try it out, therefore there will be a lot of mirror matches. If only a part has access to them, only they will chose them and they'll most likely also have players in their game without access to the new Demigods.

If they're released unbalanced you're leaving a group of people with access to them, and a larger group of people who don't. That, and you'll be annoying the community who does not have access to them. It was said from the start these 2 guys were for everyone.

The more people that have the new demigods, the more different games we will experience. You cannot assume everyone will solely be playing the new guys.

That is very true. Stardock and GPG didn't exactly predict the whole premade situation and that issue is just another one to come up. There is not enough people playing Demigod AND have Ready to Play to have a subset beta test getting a ton of games in with these guys all with different variables. The best solution is just to go all in and take a leap of faith that GPG did a good job.

Another point that is important to testing balance: Knowing how to play a demigod is crucial to knowing how to play against them. This is why you get so many beginners crying op. You don't see what really hurts that DG until you have it done to you. It is also is a lot easier to predict what the opponent is going to do and when if you play the character yourself.

There are two reasons that this will make a difference in balancing.

1. It will be hard to counter a demigod you have never played as
2. Plenty of people will be seeing the new demigods for the first time and playing against people who have 50+ games with them.

Both of these seem very likely to cause a false positive on the "over powered test".

By all means - feel free to send a link to this post to all Stardock Employees via the Private Message system - I happily give up my place, if I were to have one, in the group chosen to Beta Test the two new Demigods. Please give my place to anyone else of your selection.

The method of fragmented testing is the best way to balance the new Demigods quickly; they'll select very active players and ask that they test the new Demigods and report their observations as well as checking the numbers on their own end to see how they preform.

If you're attempting to say that I, and the others here who also agree with this testing method, are simply saying this because we believe we'll be selected and thus actually have the new Demigods, you're very, very mistaken.

I feel I can offer great insight in regards to beta testing. But I do not feel this is the best way. Obviously if I would ended up testing them I would start hammering away in game again. These guys and 1.2 are EVERYTHING I've been waiting for. But no one is going to play with me outside this subset.

How do you suppose this small subset of Demigod players will test quickly? What about time zone differences? Work? Life? Anything? Like its been said, no one wants to play demigods they have no access to.

Its really simple. Law of averages, law of large numbers, mathematics. Let a complex system run long enough and eventually something interesting might arise that contradicts the short term answer. A small subset of a small community cannot do that as efficiently as everyone can. Even if everyone who has Ready to Play and Demigod (I think that's what Stardock would do, not hand pick) is added, its still a subset.

This is all assuming these guys even have serious balance issues, and I can tell you from what I know, they don't.