Triage for GPG - Things to Focus On
Demigod Forums
We've hit the point where you need to triage or the patients will start to die. This is what I'd focus on in your position.
You want a long tail on Demigod? You need to bring in Replays and a player Modkit/support ASAP. By ASAP I mean by the end of June. You can put balance and content on hold - nothing too gamebreaking at the moment and by the time your fixes are in no one will be playing.
Focus on re-incorporating Replays, so we can teach each other to play and so that we can show you what we mean when we say something is broken.
Focus on mod support and allow players to "own" the game by making their own content. You have some really good modders circling this game with nothing to do - they are releasing unsupported patches that fix your bugs but we can't use them, they have Maya, they will make the maps and DGs and AI and work out the kinks and then all you have to do is troll through the code and select the best efforts for the official build.
Right now the best hope for the game is to co-opt the players. I don't see how you can make it work without us, but at the moment it's a pretty antagonistic relationship despite Stardock's best efforts. Make us useful, give us something to do besides whine.
Make it attractive to people who like to tinker and you will be rewarded with a ton of new content. Sure, it will be difficult to regulate, but frankly, that's the least of your problems right now. Fertile anarchy is better than what we have, and it costs you a lot less effort long-term.
Some small stuff -
1. Desync pop up is (still) incredibly annoying, and you get it 50% when someone else DCs. Please either end game with notification or let us play.
2. HP builds are too strong, Heart of Life is an artifact in all but price, and 50% of your equipment options never get use. Tweak some numbers and prices, release to the wild, see what happens.
3. Bump up idol minion prices about 15% Minions should die when idol is sold
4. Lobby stats would be nice
5. Game options which allow serious competition - player chooses only DG, team, mode, map, and stacked DGs disallowed (i.e. no 3 Oak teams). This mode would be ranked. Skirmish and Pantheon aren't it.
6. Insight - Frogboy tells us where he is coming from - where are you coming from, GPG? Where do you see this going? I'm not looking for a 10 page journal entry every week, there are just blank spots where all Stardock can say is "not my department." Throw us a bone every once in a while.
Thanks for reading,
Kestrel
