Stardock, that's a bit harsh » Forum Post by Spooky_

Quoting Spooky__,

Even with a statement formed like that, the "it's pretty clear" would indicate that the decision was made because of the hostile comments. And don't forget the second statement.

or indicate that they want public it think so. Its always about money (nothing wrong with that, they run a business). Responses convinced them that there would be no profit. If they thought they'd make money despite negative responses by some players they would release new content

How frogboy put it is all that should have been said.

someone said they should have made it more clear why you need to activate oculus, true so.. it didnt bug me but i had no idea what the purpose was:0

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I think the quote's a bunch of garbage. . . I strongly doubt that Stardock and GPG are making marketing and sales decisions based on a handful of people complaining on their forums. Honestly there were only about 4 or 5 people actively complaining in the now-closed thread. I just cannot see this conversation happening:

A: "Well the patch is out now, we'll see if people activate Occulus"
B: "Uh oh, there are five people complaining on the forums."
A: "DAMN THEM ALL!!! I CAN'T TAKE IT!"
B: "I'll tell the development staff to cease work on Demigod now."
A: "But that would mean months of wasted work."
B: "The community is undeserving. This will teach them a true lesson."

So I don't buy it. If anything, the frenzy over Occulus's release should show Stardock and GPG just how much the community is chomping at the bit for new content. I would consider it a confirmation of what Frogboy and Istari were looking for. That leads me to conclude that either:

1. GPG hasn't worked on any more content and never really had a plan to. The above quote was just a lame try at covering what was the end of extra DG content. Had yesterday's forum post never occurred, the outcome - i.e. no additional content - would have been announced in another way at a later time.
2. Stardock/GPG really did want to test the community response but botched it by putting in the message in the patch notes. They lost control of the plan and message when some people figured out how to register Occulus and caused the mess yesterday. This may have pissed them off sparking the nasty response above, but in the end it was their foul up.

I hope it's option 2. At least then we can cross our fingers for more content. At this point, though, especially based on how even Stardock admitted the launch of Demigod was a disappointment, I think our best bet is to hope for Demigod 2. Double the Demigods and maps, update the graphics and tweak the gameplay, and make the netcode bulletproof. I've gotten enough enjoyment out of Demigod that I'd pay for that.

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No, the two problems are directly related. If the people who know what is going on fail on FREE content... there is no point in doing additional content $$$ because the masses will fail miserably or worse too.

Stardock will get a bunch of grief, not make any money, and nobody will be happy on both sides.

Yes, but as I said, that's simply a support and bug fixing Problem, not a problem with the way of getting DLC (i.e. going on a website and adding it to your account, simply).

@SaulTigh: I too hope it's scenario 2, the first one just doesn't seem realistic. I don't think Stardock would ever do such an obscure thing.

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I think our best bet is to hope for Demigod 2.

I been waitin for games like Titan Quest 2 + Hellgate London 2 for a long ass time. They ain't coming.

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Quoting Spooky__,

reply 28

@SaulTigh: I too hope it's scenario 2, the first one just doesn't seem realistic. I don't think Stardock would ever do such an obscure thing.

I won't lil wayne and soulja boi to stop ruinning the hip hop culture; but thats not happening any time soon, and neither is this.

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My one complaint about this system was the fact that it was a precursor to paid content (which I posted in the 'Update...' thread), something which SHOULD NOT HAPPEN in a game like this. I know I can be considered 'one of the trolls' who raised a stink about this situation but I honestly don't like the future implications of the system. Think about it from a consumer/community/gameplay perspective: The player-base for Demigod is extremely small as it is, and GPG/Stardock thought it was a great idea to try and swindle what little player-base there is for extra content? Are they actively trying to kill off their game? From a developer perspective, charging for content is well and good and it is a legitimate business practice, I have no problem with that. However, doing so at the cost of angering your fanbase, milking them for content is nothing short of completely idiotic. It's a fine balance that I think even Stardock/GPG has a long way to go before striking gold.

Stardock and GPG should be doing their best to INCREASE sales of Demigod and INCREASE the player-base through meaningful content, whether that's in the form of free updates or a micro-expansion of sorts (ala Sins of a Solar Empire). Paying $8-$10US for ONE DEMIGOD is not what I call a 'meaningful update' and all that will do is split the already fragmented community further. Take the Team Fortress 2 model as an example. TF2 is getting close to 3 years old now. 3... YEARS... OLD... Best part about it? It's still going. Free updates to the base game that then increases sales for the base game itself (due to the base game getting a discount per update release). Could you imagine if you had to pay for each and every single TF2 update? Could you imagine paying for EACH NEW WEAPON that is released for EVERY CLASS? Could you imagine paying for ONE MAP? I don't think so.

Were/Are my comments harsh? Of course. I have made my dislike for nickel and diming DLC very clear. Yet, I'm calling it as I see it. To expect people to be all fine and dandy with the situation, then throw a complete tantrum when it doesn't work out as planned and thus punishing those fans who WANT to pay $8-$10US for (what I consider) useless updates that will fragment the community further is honestly nothing short of a d*** move, plain and simple. It just is. There is no other way of describing it.

Want to get a clear response from the community? Run a poll, either on these forums or through personal email and ASK what it is the Demigod community wants. Do they want to pay $8-$10US for a Demigod? Do they want to pay for individual maps? Do they want an expansion? Do they want any updates at all? I'm not saying I know all the answers and I don't expect to have them, nor do I speak for everyone on these forums. Stardock is known for its transparency and its communication with their community, so how about we actually get some communication going? Want to know what the community thinks? Just ASK US!

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"The point was to see how many still play the game;"

This is what server logs are for, or add an simple ping whateverstardockgpg.com server with info everytime someone starts demigod, it's not hard to track when demigod is run, especially if it was bought through impulse they could surreptitiously record times and dates everytime demigod is run the time played, their IP address, and transmit it back for statistical purposes.

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@kolenel_klink

If they really are trying to milk what little community they have for $ then they are douchebags and demigod rightfully deserves its place as a gaming abortion that was underfunded by a group of inexperienced and incompetent developers who did not do their due diligence on product quality and qa and deserve all the criticisms their customers throw at them.

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my impression is that DLC was the only way to get new content as its necessary to cover the costs, and as such it wasnt milking but a necessity. Otherwise im with niz here=P

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The announcement and store link were scheduled to go up today but the plan has changed to simply add it to everyone's accounts with the consequence being that there will be no additional demigods or maps added since it is pretty clear that the amount of hostility would overcome any value of the additional content.

After all, if this is the response of a free Demigod being added to the game one can only imagine what the response would have been to content that cost money.

I'm quickly losing respect for Stardock over this issue. Nobody is complaining about getting new free content. The complaint is having to jump through hoops to get it. ESPECIALLY FOR A GAME THAT HAS BEEN WRACKED WITH PROBLEMS FROM DAY ONE.

If this game were a brilliant success (meaning everyone was in love with it and it was very popular with no major problems since launch) then I could understand testing out this strategy of giving content through Impulse and whatnot. But like I said above, THIS GAME HAS BEEN WRACKED WITH PROBLEMS SINCE DAY ONE. Which causes people to get frustrated with each new patch that doesn't work or fix that only works for some. Or, as in this case, having to jump through hoops to unlock free content.

In my opinion, any future Demigod content should be free and part of a patch. Then in the future if GPG wants to develop a Demigod 2, THEN START IN WITH THE DLC.

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@kolonel_klink: DLC that cost money would not be there just to "milk" the Demigod players. It would be there to finance the actual content. I'd rather pay a reasonable small price for an additional map, than having no new map at all. GPG can't just produce new content out of thin air. Stardock needs to pay them to do it and Stardock can't pull that money out of thin air either of course .

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Quoting kolonel_klink,

reply 31

. Paying $8-$10US for ONE DEMIGOD is not what I call a 'meaningful update' and all that will do is split the already fragmented community further.

May I ask where you're getting the idea that they plan on doing this?

Run a poll, either on these forums or through personal email and ASK what it is the Demigod community wants.

http://forums.demigodthegame.com/356256

Old but still good, plus there are similar posts that I'm too lazy to find.

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Quoting ShakeNBake,

reply 29

I think our best bet is to hope for Demigod 2.

I been waitin for games like Titan Quest 2 + Hellgate London 2 for a long ass time. They ain't coming.

In all fairness, Iron Lore Entertainment (TQ) and Flagship Studios (Hg L) are both out of business, so you're really screwed there. GPG is still alive and kicking, so there's a chance that DG will be revisited. But owing that DG did not have a succesful launch, despite those rabid few of us that still love the game, they'll think long and hard before throwing good money after bad on DG 2.

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I just hope this little episode only affects dlc and not balance patching. I'm pretty happy with the # of demigods, and would pay for a map pack if it was the same polish as what came with the game.

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You've had plenty of time to reply to this one stardock.

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IMO if they should DLC maps not demigods, no one is going to play a game with new demigods if they are fairly powerful or top tier if everyone can't pick them, they'll be more whining.

The truth is GPG made a game that was underfunded, understaffed and under QA'd released and unfinished game and are now trying to fund it after the fact - lesson learned - don't release unfinished games, period, if I were GPG I would have not advertised demigod at all, I would have looked at the state of DG and cancelled the game rather then releasing a mediocre game and then turning around and complaining about piracy when it was really my own incompetence.

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Quoting Spooky__,

reply 36

@kolonel_klink: DLC that cost money would not be there just to "milk" the Demigod players. It would be there to finance the actual content. I'd rather pay a reasonable small price for an additional map, than having no new map at all. GPG can't just produce new content out of thin air. Stardock needs to pay them to do it and Stardock can't pull that money out of thin air either of course .

Two words: expansion pack. I know you don't seem to agree with this concept but a long time ago expansions were all the rage. Anyone remember the Firestorm expansion for Tiberian Sun? How about Special Forces for Battlefield 2? Resurrection of Evil for Doom 3? Hell, even more recently, Forged Alliance for Supreme Commander? These expansions did exactly what the names imply - they expanded the game significantly. I would even argue that Forged Alliance is one of the best expansions to date with what it added to Supreme Commander (as well as being cross-compatible with those who didn't own the expansion).

To be honest, I'm willing to wait for an expansion pack with more content packed in that would cover the development costs necessary than feel cheated/ripped off by paying a fee for one or two extra Demigods. Demigod needs some serious content added and I can only see that being done through expansion packs.

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This is absolutely rediculous, a hand full of negitive comments on the INTERNET and a company gives up. Wow.....

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2nd the expansion pac but it runs into the same problem, with a small player base doing either will not be profitable for the company.

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Guys chill....

overacting on both sides i think

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2422

Hi guys,

I'm waiting for the compiler on another project to finish so let me take a minute to address this.

There are a lot of different issues in place here so I'll try to be as succinct as I can be.

First, I don't think most people realize that Stardock is only the publisher of the game in North America and digitally. Atari is actually the worldwide publisher (outside of North America). But the responsibility to support the game and community (and more specifically pay for said costs) has been on us. That's not Atari's fault. We volunteered to do that. Post-release updates are something we think is very crucial.

That's why Stardock paid for the post 1.0 updates of Demigod. It's why we assigned our own developers to fix multiplayer connectivity issues (and why we volunteered to take responsibility for it when GPGNet wasn't an option). And it's why we paid for the creation of two additional Demigods. We weren't legally responsible to do any of this. We didn't have to do it. But our name was on the box and it is something we felt needed to be done.

Unfortunately, in the case of Demigod, all too often our efforts are met with ill-will. Because users see us out there so much, users assume that every real or imagined issue they have with the game is because of Stardock. I've seen people say they won't ever buy another Stardock game because of Demigod. And of course, we've seen how people reacted to yesterday's update that added an additional Demigod.

We want users to be happy with the game. We are happy with Demigod. We like hanging out with many of the members of the community. But I think it's clear that it would be a huge mistake to try to release future non-free updates for Demigod (i.e. map or demigod modules). Certainly, some people would buy such content. But not enough to where I would feel comfortable justifying our team or asking GPG's team work on it, especially when it would likely generate a great deal of ill-will by people who feel entitled to unlimited free content -- and who are very vocal.

It was promised that there would be more Demigods released. Stardock paid for them to be made to make sure we kept the promise. They've been made, they're awesome, and they're released. From here, we'll see how the game evolves. There's a lot of "stuff" that will get added to Demigod via Impulse in the coming months but we won't be paying for additional maps and demigods to be made.

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Well in that case ty for all your input, sucks that you had to take on all the weight.

I still dont like how that statement was made for reasons expressed above

But given the input stardock volunteered for community owes you ty, again (and GPG owes you that too). Btw why did stardock have to pay for GPG's shortcomings and necessary fixes?! does not seem right.

Also cow is right, when you have different groups of people you will always have someone that is unhappy, especially online. A very small percentage of people were posting those ill-will responses

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 46

Hi guys,

I'm waiting for the compiler on another project to finish so let me take a minute to address this.

There are a lot of different issues in place here so I'll try to be as succinct as I can be.

First, I don't think most people realize that Stardock is only the publisher of the game in North America and digitally. Atari is actually the worldwide publisher (outside of North America). But the responsibility to support the game and community (and more specifically pay for said costs) has been on us. That's not Atari's fault. We volunteered to do that. Post-release updates are something we think is very crucial.

That's why Stardock paid for the post 1.0 updates of Demigod. It's why we assigned our own developers to fix multiplayer connectivity issues (and why we volunteered to take responsibility for it when GPGNet wasn't an option). And it's why we paid for the creation of two additional Demigods. We weren't legally responsible to do any of this. We didn't have to do it. But our name was on the box and it is something we felt needed to be done.

Unfortunately, in the case of Demigod, all too often our efforts are met with ill-will. Because users see us out there so much, users assume that every real or imagined issue they have with the game is because of Stardock. I've seen people say they won't ever buy another Stardock game because of Demigod. And of course, we've seen how people reacted to yesterday's update that added an additional Demigod.

We want users to be happy with the game. We are happy with Demigod. We like hanging out with many of the members of the community. But I think it's clear that it would be a huge mistake to try to release future non-free updates for Demigod (i.e. map or demigod modules). Certainly, some people would buy such content. But not enough to where I would feel comfortable justifying our team or asking GPG's team work on it, especially when it would likely generate a great deal of ill-will by people who feel entitled to unlimited free content -- and who are very vocal.

It was promised that there would be more Demigods released. Stardock paid for them to be made to make sure we kept the promise. They've been made, they're awesome, and they're released. From here, we'll see how the game evolves. There's a lot of "stuff" that will get added to Demigod via Impulse in the coming months but we won't be paying for additional maps and demigods to be made.

That's the response I wanted to hear

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Hi guys,

I'm waiting for the compiler on another project to finish so let me take a minute to address this.

There are a lot of different issues in place here so I'll try to be as succinct as I can be.

First, I don't think most people realize that Stardock is only the publisher of the game in North America and digitally. Atari is actually the worldwide publisher (outside of North America). But the responsibility to support the game and community (and more specifically pay for said costs) has been on us. That's not Atari's fault. We volunteered to do that. Post-release updates are something we think is very crucial.

That's why Stardock paid for the post 1.0 updates of Demigod. It's why we assigned our own developers to fix multiplayer connectivity issues (and why we volunteered to take responsibility for it when GPGNet wasn't an option). And it's why we paid for the creation of two additional Demigods. We weren't legally responsible to do any of this. We didn't have to do it. But our name was on the box and it is something we felt needed to be done.

Unfortunately, in the case of Demigod, all too often our efforts are met with ill-will. Because users see us out there so much, users assume that every real or imagined issue they have with the game is because of Stardock. I've seen people say they won't ever buy another Stardock game because of Demigod. And of course, we've seen how people reacted to yesterday's update that added an additional Demigod.

We want users to be happy with the game. We are happy with Demigod. We like hanging out with many of the members of the community. But I think it's clear that it would be a huge mistake to try to release future non-free updates for Demigod (i.e. map or demigod modules). Certainly, some people would buy such content. But not enough to where I would feel comfortable justifying our team or asking GPG's team work on it, especially when it would likely generate a great deal of ill-will by people who feel entitled to unlimited free content -- and who are very vocal.

It was promised that there would be more Demigods released. Stardock paid for them to be made to make sure we kept the promise. They've been made, they're awesome, and they're released. From here, we'll see how the game evolves. There's a lot of "stuff" that will get added to Demigod via Impulse in the coming months but we won't be paying for additional maps and demigods to be made.

Well, you shouldn't have had to pay in the first place ,but thank you for doing so. Also, my main question (read: not complaint) is what about some of the fixes the modding community has created? i.e. minion health fix. I had hoped that some of these bug fixes would be included in patches because the larger community, the ones who don't read the forums, don't download the mods.

Again, Thank You for the demigods and all of the responses to the forums. Hope to see you ingame sometime soon!

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Frogboy:

"From here, we'll see how the game evolves. There's a lot of "stuff" that will get added to Demigod via Impulse in the coming months but we won't be paying for additional maps and demigods to be made."

So that's not to say that they won't be made--just that Stardock won't be paying for it? I certainly hope so. I play this game often--mostly offline. I would certainly be willing to pay a couple of bucks for each new map/DG that was made.

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