The real price of bad connections.

from Demigod Forums

Any body remember a game called Shadowrun for the XBOX360?  If you have even heard of it you probably remember it as a kind of failed experiment.  The underlying mechanics were actually quite good but it was such a buggy mess that nobody bcould appreciate it.

But did you know that Shadowrun has actually become a great game?    In fact if you go out and buy the game today you will find that it functions perfectly, the game is actually extremely deep.  Never the less, 250 people play Shadowrun today.  A bad launch, that is how a game that was actually quite amazing managed to be completely overlooked.

If you don't launch well the players will leave.  Watch the video where Frogboy shows you around the office and look at how many games were being hosted.  His list is full.  Any one online earlier today, when it was still "working" could see that there were far less games open.  People are, predictably, giving up.

If you let these players leave there is a good chance they will simply never come back.  Every day that this game remains bugged will bite in to the community a little bit more.  The worst kind of word of mouth is spreading.  Even if the game is fixed eventually it won't matter, this will be another Shadowrun.

Don't get me wrong, I love the game (or at least I think I do; haven't actually been able to play it all that much.)  I think the game has a lot of potential and seems to be a very high quality product.  That's why it bothers me that the game might lose so much steam over nonsense.

 

demigod
12,081 views 13 replies
Reply #1 from Demigod Forums Top

Shadowrun was so much fun for the first 2 months it was released, Especially being a PC player when 75% of the playerbase was on the Xbox.

Reply #2 from Demigod Forums Top

I only got in to it recenty so I wouldn't know about that.

 

I do know that the reviews for the game came out and described it as being riddled with game breaking bugs.  That's why I never bought it (until it was 3.00 in the bargain bin.)

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Reply #3 from Demigod Forums Top

Any body remember a game called Shadowrun for the XBOX360?  If you have even heard of it you probably remember it as a kind of failed experiment.  The underlying mechanics were actually quite good but it was such a buggy mess that nobody bcould appreciate it.

But did you know that Shadowrun has actually become a great game?    In fact if you go out and buy the game today you will find that it functions perfectly, the game is actually extremely deep.  Never the less, 250 people play Shadowrun today.  A bad launch, that is how a game that was actually quite amazing managed to be completely overlooked.

If you don't launch well the players will leave.  Watch the video where Frogboy shows you around the office and look at how many games were being hosted.  His list is full.  Any one online earlier today, when it was still "working" could see that there were far less games open.  People are, predictably, giving up.

If you let these players leave there is a good chance they will simply never come back.  Every day that this game remains bugged will bite in to the community a little bit more.  The worst kind of word of mouth is spreading.  Even if the game is fixed eventually it won't matter, this will be another Shadowrun.

Don't get me wrong, I love the game (or at least I think I do; haven't actually been able to play it all that much.)  I think the game has a lot of potential and seems to be a very high quality product.  That's why it bothers me that the game might lose so much steam over nonsense.

 

 

Agreed fully.  Tbh, they need more player input to be added in the game...and quicker.

Reply #4 from Demigod Forums Top

The connection is really annoying for me... I have seen a bit better connectivity lately... It's not as bothersome for me because I maybe go for 1-2 games a day? I don't sit on here all day trying to log on... Currently I'm pretty happy with the game other than server problems which I think can be fixed so people have to be patient it hasn't even been a week since real release... Other than that I love the gameplay... Old DoTa plater from WC3... I'll probably stick with this game until SC2 or D3... I'm normally a MMO player but there are no good games out right now....

 

Truthfully the only thing that will get me to quite is if the playerbase falls, I don't want to be playing the same people consistently...

Reply #5 from Demigod Forums Top

Quoting Exile96, reply 3

Agreed fully.  Tbh, they need more player input to be added in the game...and quicker.

They added tons of player input for balance in the day0 patch, and for how some skills fucntion forbefore (mulch got the aoe based on player suggestion, deep freeze rework was a player suggestion it used to be a single target freeze)  Plus some ui stuff.

Not to mention.. remember back when most skills where like 15-45 second recharge?  You would start a fight by dumping your skills then auto attacking.  That was really boring, and they fixed that.  Also mana didn't matter at all, really.  Now mana items vs. skills is considerably better.

Granted, they never did any big things, like the upgrades, and lots of things could be added to the ui like pings and ally portraits/healthbars/focusing.

 

So they've  definitely been listening, because I know many things are EXACT requests.  They just haven't been able to do everything in the aloted time.  We just have to hope we'll get good content updates.  But yes, SD should of pushed the release back and had a phase4 beta.

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Reply #6 from Demigod Forums Top

I would like it if they made it a little more complicated so that people don't just run off a few different items so people can post their builds and that will be like the main build that EVERYONE uses... If they added like 100 more items where you have to say buy 2-3 other items and it turns into 1 good item when your done that would be amazing.... (dota) :P

Reply #7 from Demigod Forums Top

Huh?  It doesn't need more.  All more items does is increase the learning curve.

You could add 10 more weapons to qauke 3, but you already have variaty.  You already have your close range gun(shotgun).  You already have your fast firing projectile gun(plasma gun), you have your splash damage gun(rockets), you have your sniper(railgun), your longer range spammy gun(the starting rifle omg forgot the name :/), you have your shooting around corners and defensy gun(grenade launcher).  Really, what does it lack?..  More weapons wouldn't make Q3 better, it'd just mean more to learn and be harder to balance.  It's good with the amount it has.  More isn't always better.

 

And dota just reduces the variaty with combinations.  It takes 75 items and turns them into 10.  How many times are you going to get ying without getting yang too?  It'd be better really if you started with 24 items, and had upgrades which branched them out where you technically have hundreds, but it seems like less since it's starting with a few and upgrades are focused.

 

But about 30% of the items really need to be redone from scratch because they're redundant.  they're just worse versions of an item that does the same thing.

Reply #8 from Demigod Forums Top

Quoting innociv, reply 7

And dota just reduces the variaty with combinations.  It takes 75 items and turns them into 10.  How many times are you going to get ying without getting yang too?  It'd be better really if you started with 24 items, and had upgrades which branched them out where you technically have hundreds, but it seems like less since it's starting with a few and upgrades are focused.

But about 30% of the items really need to be redone from scratch because they're redundant.  they're just worse versions of an item that does the same thing.

One good thing about combinations in DotA is that you get a smaller benefit earlier, rather than having to save gold for the big item. Also you can decide in which order to get the items, and in some cases you can just buy a useful item and later decide what to combine it to.

Agree with some items needing a redo. Also, the items seem a bit boring.

This is bit OT though. As for the topic, that's pretty much true. But the developers seem to do their best to fix the problems soon, and at least least when reading forums and sometimes ingame chat, there is good interaction with developers, which really helps keep the hope up. It's far worse when there may be lots of fixes going on, but no help or new meanwhile. This doesn't help those who don't follow the forums, ofc..

Reply #9 from Demigod Forums Top


Don't get me wrong, I love the game (or at least I think I do; haven't actually been able to play it all that much.)  I think the game has a lot of potential and seems to be a very high quality product.  That's why it bothers me that the game might lose so much steam over nonsense.

It's not nonsense. Players can't play the game. If players can't play, everything else doesn't matter at all. The game will fizzle because Stardock ignored that their game is unplayable in release. Hopefully, they'll learn from this and will never again drop their rule that a released game must be working and without any game-breaking bugs.

Reply #10 from Demigod Forums Top

Blizzard they ain't. We are paying to beta-test this game, folks. I, for one, will be be extremely wary of anything that says "Stardock" on it in the future. The 100,000 pirates out there were the smart ones, imo.

Reply #11 from Demigod Forums Top

To the OP:

See, you're using conditional here: it "might" lose so much steam over nonsense. Truth is, it has. I love the game and have been playing since beta, but in my opinion, there's a very high probability it will never take off as it should have. I read the comments on other game forums, and they're not good. People have paid, can't play, are giving this game a bad grade and are moving on, and they most likely won't come back. Which means it's likely the game will be deserted -and a deserted DotA has lost its selling point, I guess, so this is the recipe for a vicious cycle.

Release is the most critical time in a game's life, and it has been a failure. It is going to be very difficult, if not downright impossible, to recover from such a bad launch, and numerous examples prove this. People are going to go back to DotA. It's not "if it's not corrected, it's going to cost". The cost is already being paid.

Look at the gamespot review. 6.5, for a Stardock game? The game is barrels of fun, they even say that. But they can't play. Do you think this game can still be a best-seller with negative reviews from both customers and major review companies?

I don't want to spit at Starock or anything, because I love all of their games. But there's no point hidding the truth: because of its launch, Demigod has lost its opportunity for becoming serious competition for DotA.

Reply #12 from Stardock Forums Top

I want to give this game a oportunity. But tryiing to connect a game and getting nothing or a crash, make me go to play my other games. 

My money was wasted on this one. 

Reply #13 from Stardock Forums Top

Shadowrun can die in a fire for all I care, they demented a great RPG into a moronic console action shooter, pretty much destroying any hope the franchise has in the future.