If they ACTUALLY pull off a "Demigod: Better edition" (and i'm sure they aren't gonna do it)

What would happen with the people who bought the original? they would have to buy it AGAIN?

It was a free upgrade.

A functional friends system would be a good start.  And integrated chat that will provide a place for people to be in pre-game.  Maybe put a little bit of effort into making these two 100% functional quickly and promote them by community activity.

IMHO things would vastly improve if we would be able to make games within certain groups.  This + better ranking + ability to see ranking ingame would help a lot avoid the pub stomps that happen now.

If the game had logged in everyone straight to chat instead of menu I think things would have been much different.

what frogboy says is simply WRONG and it lacks of logic.

that there are so few premade games is not because there are to few people wanting to play in teams, the problem is that this isn't something that really works with the current infrastructure. there is no working communication (before game) and friend system. joinig as random a premade team isn't fun. but there should be the possibility to make teams, start games as teams and join games as a team, intelligent matchmaking system

this has any other online game of this kind. this is something what such a game should have before release. it may be buggy, but at least functional. dg failed in any point that is needed for a working online rts game.

a good game is by far not enough. you need infrastructure to set up teamed games as well as random player games. to publish such a game without this infrastructure is an economic and fun-releated stupidity. it's already prooved by the very few players that still try to enjoin the nice gameplay, what is the only thing currently what prevents dg to totally die.

Kudos to Frogboy for admitting the mistakes but you still have to wonder...with a pure multiplayer game what the hell were Stardock/GPG smoking when they designed the chat/lobby system? Its by far one of the worst i've ever encountered. For something so intergral to be let out in such a state means there are some serious questions that need addressing about both the design system in place -and- testing phases.

Game sites like MS Zone from 10 years ago were more polished.

If you want competetive then go DotA or HoN.

Demigod is much more beginner friendly and has enough depth to keep it interesting even for competetive players.

The Skirmish/Pantheon matchmaking system is great for casual gamers ... at least there they get the chance of meeting players with similar skills. Custom games are usually ass-rapes for noobs.

I compared Demigod to some of it's alternatives (Heroes of Newerth, DotA, LoL) in another thread, if anyone is interested:

http://forums.demigodthegame.com/359625

I think one thing to bear in mind, is that the competitive scene is really when a critical mass of players is reached. Then there are enough in the community to form up regular groups/clans and play competitively.

You cannot appeal to a "competitive" community, until your casual community is at it's peak and there is a big enough player pool to move into it.

How many people started playing a game because of the competitive side of it? Very very few players. Most players start a game, because the games are fun or their friends/reviews recommend it to them.

I played CS and Supcom competitively and started both as a casual gamer.

That said, I do think that the game should listen to the competitive players a little more in terms of balance, as normally games that are balanced at high level are balanced for the low level too. The problem at the moment in this game, is that there are no top players, the game is 100% casual pretty much at the mo, there is no way to play competitvely due to the stats and matchmaking.

A change like Pre-Made matchmaking and stat tracking should be very high up on the list, it serves both groups. A big problem for new casual players is getting stomped by pre-mades and seen as most competitive players will be in premades, I am sure they will be happier if they can matchmake properly.

At the moment though, Demigod doesn't need a strong competitive focus, it needs a strong infrastructure for casual players, if they keep attracting more players, the competition will evolve from that.

The comments on SC2 are interesting. I wonder if they will listen too much to the competitive scene, the game looks nothing more than a graphical update of the original, no groundbreaking features, which the rest of the RTS world has moved into (realtime physics projectiles, cover systems,  strategic zoom out).

Ironically my friends and I use steam to do group voice chat when we play.

The thing is, if you make a game for the competitive scene - it can still easily please the casual scene. However, you cannot make a game aimed at the casual players and sastify the competitive players.

Thats always been Blizzards philosophy when it comes to games, and its worked out very well indeed.

Hopefully, like me, you have learned to just keep your money on future releases rather than be dissapointed once you fall in love with a game. Everything I've said on this forums has largely been ignored as expected, I am but one person in the sea of a million crys.

It is just too evident to me that this will be a forward progression of things to come. When I hear things like "I know im the minority on this, [but im going to do it anyway]" I realize the things that people say are just that, words. This company hasn't come through on what it's promised its customers, and thats why they've lost all of my friends and I future support.

I was discussing DG in the context of the DoW2 patch that is soon to come out with a friend, and some of the balancing issues present there and their responses to them carry over to issues I feel are present in DG.

Most interesting was on the subject of a knockdown chance on a unit, which actually reflected exactly the problem I have with playing DG competitively. If a unit has a 20% chance to knock another down, you can safely say that there is a 20% chance, regardless of skill, that the battle will swing to the advantage of one player. People realised this is a poor mechanic for competitive play, and it is (I believe) being changed to an activatable ability in the new patch.

Demigod has about 15 items, not including the dodge mechanic, that fit this description. Items such as poisoned dagger which can either proc and cause your opponent to suffer a huge snare and possibly die, or fail to proc and do nothing are not terribly suitable for online competitive play. I doubt those players who play to win want their matches decided by the random proc chance of items, the TF2 competitive crowd didn't, the DoW2 crowd didn't either.

I doubt this will ever be changed, no doubt some of you like a whole bunch of random chance being added to every encounter (5% damage variance on everything including skills) because it's a somewhat interesting feature and certainly a major part of playing the game at the moment. But I would argue it is not something a competitive player would want. Changing nearly all of these items to activatables would be an interesting experiment:

 - The activatable slots would now be far more difficult to economise for the player. Choosing between Ashkandor and flag locks at the end of the game is tough on maps where locks are game-deciding.

 - Item activation would become a bigger part of the game, with players taking a large number of items that can turn the tide of battle offensively (a snare activatable) as opposed to the domination of activatable defensive items (eg pots).

This is not to say %proc items are intrinsically bad, but to have something as game deciding as a snare be reliant on a small random chance seems a little out of whack with what people generally accept.

TL;DR: DG probably isn't suitable for competitive play anyway.

Apologies for the long post.

Would you move to HoN, LoL, or something else? What about your friends?

For reference: I picked up a copy of DoW2 for cheap yesterday having being sold on the new patch. I think Relic are moving in the right direction.

EDIT: They aren't worthwhile because they have low proc chances They're frustrating for both players.