Ke5trel Ke5trel

What Demigod II Should Look Like

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What Demigod II Should Look Like

from Demigod Forums

-  It's clear that if Demigod has a long tale it will be with a diminishingly small group of committed players. 

-  If and when GPG develops the property further it will most likely be in terms of a sequel, not an expansion. 

Let's talk about what that sequel should look like.  Hopefully if the feedback is good it will get back to GPG and we'll see the distilled results in a couple of years. 

With any mechanics or UI or anything that bugs even slightly you should put down how it *should* work instead. Don't waste time complaining about how it is.  Instead let's talk about how it can be. 

I'll get some of the major ones out of the way right now:

1.  Multiplayer Code and UI - excluding the initial clusterclown release debacle I'd like to see multiplayer code copied shamelessly from HoN.  For this type of game it doesn't really get better than that.  The key ingredients to that formula from a consumer perspective imo

A.  Server/Client setup - lower ping, reconnection to dc'd games, A's slow PC doesn't cripple B's game

B.  Lobby Win probabilities based on stats

C.  Native statistics compiling.  Bara's site and criteria are awesome.  Put all of that in the game and make the most relevant stats instantly accessible.  Imo those are wins, losses, time played, and disconnects

D.  Exclusion options a la Supcom 2.  Don't backslide on me ^^

2.  Streamlined Social Networking - some of this is in or coming through the Impulse UI.  Make it native or seamless for II.

A.  Personal, team, clan, and general chat options

B.  Easily accessible friends, group, and clan options

C.  A notes and rating system outside of stats or friends status

D.  Persistent status markers outside the game.  If you want to get fancy tie them to signifiers ingame, and if you want a potentially rewarding balancing nightmare give performance bonuses for them.  Favor items are a start.  Now iterate that out. 

E.  Foster your community.  Bring in community reps who talk on the forums and play the game.  Sponsor tournaments and leagues.  Do that alot.  Hell, if you want to pay someone to do nothing else but organize that sort of thing I'd be happy to submit a resume, because you need to effin liase if you want to build the solid word of mouth communities are there for (^^)

3.  Make Modding Native and Friendly.  This doesn't need sub-categories, it's pretty basic.  You need to let your players make maps and demigods without a sophisticated skillset or a $10,000 software suite.  If that means the base game is slightly less pretty, guess what: no one cares as long as the gameplay is there. 

Seriously, the maps and models are so beautiful in this game but when they have fundamental flaws, like Crucible, nothing can be done on our side to work that out.  (I can't bear to think of how many artist man-hours you wasted on that map because you didn't think through the implications of bottlenecked play.)

4.  Make Replays native.  They need to be in on Release day, and they need to be as good as they are now.

5.  Take out minions, or rehash the mechanic from the ground up.  A single pet or set of pets is balance-able.  An army vs. individual system is too difficult unless you have someone obsessively balancing for a year or two.

6.  Tweak your Beta Schedules.  Closed Beta, however long it is, should have a month of playtime with a game that is completed in all but name.  Then you throw it wide open, or at least toss out 20k keys on Facebook.  You need to stresstest the beast and the balance before you go to the presses, and that takes time.    

7.  Create a pipeline.  Set a minimum number of DGs and maps that need to be in release (12 each).  Then make twice as many of each *before release*, and parcel them out slowly over the space of a year, tweaking as the meta dictates.  The recent Bioware approach of releasing extras immediately and over time is a good one both in terms of piracy-prevention and continuing revenue. 

8.  Either make Single-Player good or abandon it.  A Mortal Kombat approach is viable, but you really have to polish that waaaay up if that's what you are doing.  Otherwise you shouldn't waste your time or money putting together something half-assed when the game without it would be just as good or better

What else would we like to see in Demigod II?

 

 

 

demigod
31,412 views 37 replies
Reply #26 from Demigod Forums Top

Looking at it another way:

1.  Demigod's major failing was that it was too beautiful for its budget, team size, or development window. 

This had a few effects. 

- baseline mechanics (favor, minions, etc) and peripherals (stats, netcode) were neglected before release because the maps and models had to look so frikkin good.

- post-release modification of said maps and models by the community or even the devs proved extremely difficult. 

- fixing the monumental issues created by a botched release and its backlash left the GPG both burnt out and with little financial incentive to patch the relatively minor issues later exposed

2.  We see that other MOBAs with much lower fidelity but polished mechanics and peripherals have vibrant online communities.  (Yes, they are currently free, but so is torrented Demigod on GameRanger - see many games there?)

3.  A major complaint about GPG's SupCom was the ridiculously high system load it generated.  The SupCom 2 team streamlined and rendered down the sequel as a result, but got crucified for simplifying the mechanics of play as well.

Solution:

1.  Lower the effects, animation, and art budget on Demigod II by about 50%

2.  Keep the solid core mechanics you have, but polish them until they are finished

3.  Finally, I know GPG can develop for XBOX 360, but what I don't know is why they would release SupCom I and II on that system and not Demigod.  Considering its RTS Lite nature, Demigod II would be a much more natural fit on console than SupCom, imo.

 

 

Reply #27 from Demigod Forums Top

Quoting Ke5trel, reply 26
Looking at it another way:

1.  Demigod's major failing was that it was too beautiful for its budget, team size, or development window. 

This had a few effects. 

- baseline mechanics (favor, minions, etc) and peripherals (stats, netcode) were neglected before release because the maps and models had to look so frikkin good.

- post-release modification of said maps and models by the community or even the devs proved extremely difficult. 

- fixing the monumental issues created by a botched release and its backlash left the GPG both burnt out and with little financial incentive to patch the relatively minor issues later exposed

2.  We see that other MOBAs with much lower fidelity but polished mechanics and peripherals have vibrant online communities.  (Yes, they are currently free, but so is torrented Demigod on GameRanger - see many games there?)

3.  A major complaint about GPG's SupCom was the ridiculously high system load it generated.  The SupCom 2 team streamlined and rendered down the sequel as a result, but got crucified for simplifying the mechanics of play as well.

Solution:

1.  Lower the effects, animation, and art budget on Demigod II by about 50%

2.  Keep the solid core mechanics you have, but polish them until they are finished

3.  Finally, I know GPG can develop for XBOX 360, but what I don't know is why they would release SupCom I and II on that system and not Demigod.  Considering its RTS Lite nature, Demigod II would be a much more natural fit on console than SupCom, imo.

 

Has nothing to do with the graphics or budget. The graphics were one thing that made Demigod unique. Lowering the visuals would only hurt a potential sequel.

The real problem with Demigod was 50% of GPG being laid off in mid development in 2008.

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Reply #28 from Demigod Forums Top

Personally, I think Ke5trel is right. Sacrificing character modding, custom maps and effects to achieve industry leading graphics in a multiplayer game wasn't a smart move community wise - especially for a game that shipped with essentially one map of the correct size and balance for the community due to the connection requirements of the game. It limits the size of the community to those that can run the game at acceptable levels and limits the life of the community to the attention span of its players; when they get bored with the boxed content the game dies essentially because they can't make more themselves.

Quoting Ke5trel, reply 26
3.  Finally, I know GPG can develop for XBOX 360, but what I don't know is why they would release SupCom I and II on that system and not Demigod.  Considering its RTS Lite nature, Demigod II would be a much more natural fit on console than SupCom, imo.

If there is a God in heaven who loves us he will not allow Demigod II to be co-designed for a console like SupCom II was. They butchered SupCom II and ignored their fans for the sake of an extremely limited appeal on the X360. I'm already unhappy with GPG for that, if they destroyed Demigod they'd be dead to me.

Reply #29 from Demigod Forums Top

The way I see it, GPG didn't know shit about the expectations of the MOBA players and treated Demigod as they treated every other game of theirs.

DotA players were used to a large roster of characters and frequent balance changes and new additions to the roster - things that were noticably absent from Demigod. While the lack of a large roster and the slow addition of new DGs is understandable from a financial point of view, the slow to non-existent reaction to requests of balance changes is not.

Sure, they argue that the players are mostly wrong when they request a nerf or a boost - and often they are - but let's face it like it is:

GPG is too bloody fucking slow.

Reply #30 from Demigod Forums Top

Quoting Polynomial, reply 27


Has nothing to do with the graphics or budget. The graphics were one thing that made Demigod unique. Lowering the visuals would only hurt a potential sequel.

The real problem with Demigod was 50% of GPG being laid off in mid development in 2008.

Hmm, source on the 50% thing?

If there is a God in heaven who loves us he will not allow Demigod II to be co-designed for a console like SupCom II was. They butchered SupCom II and ignored their fans for the sake of an extremely limited appeal on the X360. I'm already unhappy with GPG for that, if they destroyed Demigod they'd be dead to me.

That's the thing though - SupCom is micro-intensive, Demigod isn't.  Every action you take with an Assassin could be mapped to a console controller without too much effort.  Minions are harder, but again, nothing compared to a SupCom port.  Finally, the already hardcoded latency means you could theoretically have 360/PC multiplayer games if you wanted to.

I don't really care if they do a 360 version or not, but it seems like a more natural fit than most of their games.

Which reminds me, since we are wishing:

I'd like the option to bind camera zoom directionally on PC so that AWDS could be used as movement keys.  You want to revolutionize the genre?  Give us more intuitive control schemes than the ancient point/click.

Reply #31 from Stardock Forums Top

Chris Taylor told us that in X-Play's Independent Dev Panel at DICE, Ke5trel.

Kinda sad, but that explains the issues with Demigod =/

Reply #32 from Stardock Forums Top

Chris Taylor told us that in X-Play's Independent Dev Panel at DICE, Ke5trel.

Kinda sad, but that explains the issues with Demigod =/

Sounds like that's a piece of the broken puzzle, anyway.

I would absolutely love demigod 2 if it was ever made.  Hell, I don't even require a 2.  Just fix what's broken in DG 1.   But I'm guessing the message is that too much isn't working, so we'd need a sequel to sort out the broken parts.  I generally agree with Ke5's points.  You ever think DG was just a psychology experiment to see how much crap obessive compulsive players would put up with before they quit... it's pretty suprizing to me how much buggy nonsense and exploits and rude shites and laggy connections I'd put with just to play DG.  Its still a blast when things work right for me.  Many of us that are playing other games now comment on how X game still isn't as good or fun as DG.  I'd certainly pay full price of admission again on a demigod 2 if we even saw connectivity and stat enhancements alone.

Reply #33 from Demigod Forums Top

I don't think it has anything to do with me being obsessive compulsive Pacov... though I very much am.  I think I keep playing Demigod because I have low self esteem and don't think I really deserve to play a game that the developer has put in more than a half-assed marginal effort to support post release.

Well no more!  I'm good enough, I'm smart enough... and doggone it, people like me!  I'm going to pre-order Starcraft 2 right now.

Reply #34 from Stardock Forums Top

they could make a sequel. they made a sequel to dungeon siege, and DS1 was...well...yeah. you have to consider, though, that the sequel was a weak attempt at a diablo 2 clone that still includes game-ruining bugs to this day. so demigod 2 might sound great in theory, but it would most likely be a repeat of the same failures for which GPG is well known.

Reply #35 from Demigod Forums Top

Do you think they would actually have a Demigod 2?

 

The End.

Reply #36 from Demigod Forums Top

More than 10 Demigods.

Demigods should come with an ultimate.

Demigod shouldn't suck beyond lv 19. Shame on QoT.

Reply #37 from Demigod Forums Top

I wouldn't like to see any changes in the graphic design of the game. Imo, this is one strenght of the game which let it stand out from all the low comic graphic DotA games.

Also, I don't need 30+ demigods/heroes to choose from. The diversity is virtual, in fact the abilities repeat, only the combination of them changes. I prefer a clearly arranged amount of demigods like in the first DotA Mods for WCIII (I'm speaking of those made from Eul) in place of too many heroes/demigods. Why? Because of the balance. Balancing 8 or 10 heroes is already not that easy, but balancing 30 heroes....well.

Which brings me to my next point which I would like to see adressed in a sequel of Demigod: Attempts to balance the demigods. I'm play the game only from time to time, but my impression is that there are some heroes which are a "bit" stronger than the other demigods, you know, one of them is really smelling out of his mouth.

 

But what I really wish is a complete rework of the network code in order to make the game finally accessible for multiplayer matches.

Additionally those kind of games have to have some kind of tracking system for wins, losses and disconnects.

A team balancing system on players statistics would be good (optional).