Game Design <> Product Quality

very well put... and i do have to agree.  fortunately game quality can be inproved while game design can not so there's stil hope, we just need some patience.

I also agree.  My friends do too.  One of the best games I have ever played, unfortunately bugs, excessive mp lag, crashes, and poor matchmaking increase time between fun needlessly.

Agree.

I would consider match-making a design element.  And the underlying connection architecture (peer-to-peer vs. client-server) is also a design element.  Albeit one that, when working correctly, is transparent to the user.  The first could be fixed, though it's not trivial, so resource/funding constraints will probably prevent it.  The second is too fundamental and ain't changing, taking 5v5 and large maps off the table.

Beyond match-making and connectivity, the existing bugs will eventually get resolved to where the game plays as it should have on release.  But, as you can tell from my pessimistic tone, I think you only get one shot at hitting critical mass in terms of a sustainable community, and it's gone.

My verry persponal opinion is that GPG has verry good game idea and make verry fun games. But the technical part of it is not  really good.

Like the O.P mention DG have some connection issue (upload a lot more than any other game with similar genre.)

Some of the verry well known of RTS/ most team based game online (are / were) missing.

But I like the fact that they have planned a long term support and for that and the fun/addictive part of this game I still play it and will in the future.

I think this is the primary frustration many of us face.  The core gameplay has elements of geniune beauty which makes it hard to simply walk away.  But the small irritations make it difficult to stick around.

I like your cake metaphor, too - pretty much what I was trying to get to with this one:

Best case scenario -

1.  GPG and Stardock release modding.

2.  Modders tweak the issues they can (AI, items, UI, pricing, upgrades, etc) and their mods get fed back into the official game

2.5.  Modders release new maps and new Demigods as the kit permits, I'm not sure how much of this we'll see, but the best and most balanced of these get fed back into the game as well

3.  GPG/Stardock rebuild the multiplayer system to more closely resemble something like, say, Heroes of Newerth.

R2P is heading in the right direction, but you have to fix all the clumsy aspects like lack of an ingame rating system, broken and poorly executed stats, and lack of a post-game lobby.  Pantheon and Skirmish should be scrapped and a ranked mode introduced that falls between them and Custom in terms of host choices

4.  GPG refurbishes the engine flaws the modders can't necessarily get to (pathing, crashes, /nosound)

5.  Stardock takes the results of all of the above, hypes it, and re-releases Demigod as an "Enhanced" or "Gold" Edition a la The Witcher.  (@ brjoha - which proved you could take a buggy, flawed product with good core mechanics and refine it after release to the point where it gets a much larger audience.  Even more importantly, it took CD Projekt's reputation with gamers as a shoddy developer of a shoddy game and flipped it completely)

6.  Those of us who ponied up $40 (or $45 if you pre-ordered - we ever gonna see that money again, maybe in Impulse credit?) for the initial launch of the game get the Enhanced Edition free

I hope they are still planing to make the game "server-client"

it would be a fundamental change and need much work.......but it'll make the game more playabel and give the cummunity a larger access to 4vs4 and 5vs5

-> this would be an important step to get a growing community !!

many potential customers are discouraged by the limitation of the game. Dota players are accastomed to play 5vs5, they wouldnt buy the game as long as 80% of the games are 3vs3...

many players stopped playing DG because they were sick of 3vs3

5vs5 should be the core of a game like DG, so make the game "server client" and you ll get a lot of new players !

This is what I have always hoped for since 2 weeks after release.  This game is great and with a bit of work it could really go places.  It really needs the witcher treatment.

P.S. For those of you who haven't tried witcher, check it out on impulse, amazing rpg.

I agree.

But it should be put a bit more drastic imo. No good competitive player will ever play this game for more then say 20-30 games. Its just very very flawed. Devs seem to even say that they dont get enough money to fix this.

I keep coming to the forums in hope of a patch that fixes this game but it just doesnt seem to happen.

I see it as a HUGE fail. Balancing this game out could be so easy... Adding a few maps should be THAT big of a deal either.

But because this will never happen i think this game is very horrible and almost unplayable. While the Design is good and had potential.

And this is where the thread goes from semi-constructive to lockable :/

It would have been nice if we could have kept it out of the typical Demigod fireplace, but w/e

I really just don't know what to say. The gameplay is great, the Rook is seriously one of the best characters I've ever seen in any video game. Flags are clever, favor items give interesting customization, and you're not forced to play through a microscope like you have to on LoL and HoN.

The game design is fantastic and this game was so nearly a classic. If it had been hosted on GPG.net the game might have exploded at launch. I just don't get why this didn't happen.

Im not sure the Witcher approach would work financially for SD and GPG but I hope we would see a Demigod II with a bunch of new content, the new lighting engine and pathfinding from SupCom 2 and some extensive rebalancing (HP stacking) and bug fixing. The design of Demigod is extremely good and it would be a shame if this game would not become a classic.

I disagree Jessep, I really think the focus needs to be on rebuilding the connectivity. Like I said I hate to say this because I realize SD worked so hard and pulledd off a miracle with the proxies, NAT, etc., but when it comes down to it fixing the wrong thing just isn't the same as implementing the right thing.

The main problem, in my mind, is that the SD guys don't view the game as competitive, or rather that more basic matchmaking features are perceived to be outside the interest of the casual player.

That's my concern, at least in part.  I know the current multiplayer system was built on the corpses of interns and the potential divorces of every married dev, but if they can't build new features into it they might have to consider starting over from scratch.  Duct tape design is good in a pinch but lacks foundational flexibility

I have played several games online, and I tried Dota too. Maybe the problem was that I played Demigod first and after that Dota, but I prefer Demigod over Dota. In my opinion DG is better (like I said "My opinoin" so dont flame). About competitevness: I watched a few replays from Dota, and players almost always use the same items, with a bit of changes, what the character needs, so I dont realy know why people say that at a game you need to stack HP, Dota players stack attributes. Demigos isn't balanced as a blizzard game ( yesterday I had more damage than all the other playres, and more favor points at the end, but we lost, was playing against two Erebos, they are really sick), but the situation isnt that bad at all.

I never logged in forums for a game, Demigod is the first. Cause: the community is good, and the main reason was Frogboy, who cares for demigod, and players alike, always giving information, asking for what too fix, taking the community in, and so on. The way he stands for this game is fantastic.

About 4v4, and 5v5: If a player watches for pings in a costum game, than there will be no problems, played several good 5v5 matches, with absolutly no lag. There will be always plaeyers who qiut, or get a disconnect cause there crapy PC or net connectoin, that wouldn't fix a server.

Bugs: demigod started with lots of bugs like I red. I bought the game after the patch so I didn't noticed it. What I red at a portal in Hungary, that the players noobed, and cursed the guy who went online to try the game fixes, that's why he wrote a negative article.

Overall: I love to play demigod, it has a few issues, but as Frogboy is posting it from time to time, several things are going to be fixed. this community is great keep it up, be patient and I think it will be awarded from the devs.

I hope that this game is fixed because its simplicity in its idea but the perfection in its creation makes me weep at its beauty

I thus pledge too support Demigod until it is fixed

/signed in blood

/signed @op

btw. there are only 5 open custom games currently, five. this game cannot be fixed anymore. well, technically i could but most customers are not forgiving. they will not come back. i feel very sorry to say that, but demigod is dead and no patch of the world could turn it arround. it's a shame!

edit: @Siriusstinger

i played dota first and i still agree with you. it's like the op said: great game design, extrem poor quality! a multiplayergame with the worst multiplayer infrastructure and features ever seen.

Agreed.

No, the main problem is that SD doesn't see it as the role of the game publisher to have to develop this sort of thing.  If GPG is interested in building an extensive MP match making system (ala bring GPGNet back) or what have you we're all over that.  

Stardock is the publisher of Demigod.  We were the publisher of Sins of a Solar Empire.  When you play Sins of a Solar Empire online, you play via Ironclad Online.  

I agree that from a competitive scene perspective, Demigod could benefit from vastly more match-making features. But those are not features that publishers normally provide. 

If you want to see what Stardock itself develops for multiplayer games, you'll need to try Elemental.  Once Elemental is done, there is always the possibility of licensing some of that back for use in Demigod.

I'm sorry some of you aren't satisfied with Demigod's multiplayer experience.  There's not a lot that we, the publisher, can do.  Having the Demigod design document on hand, I can say that the features you request were not part of the design. They were never discussed during the beta process nor ever promised to users.

I happen to like Demigod a lot, I play it pretty much every day. I think Gas Powered Games did an outstanding job crafting an excellent game.  It is a very high quality game.  From a competitive stand-point, however, the game does not have the kind of multiplayer match-making features that will satisfy many competitive players. 

Those who were part of the beta from the earliest times know that Stardock's preference was for Demigod to be more single player focus but there simply wasn't budget available to do the kind of single player experience that GPG felt Demigod needed to do the game justice.

In my opinion, Stardock went far beyond the call of duty to step in and at its own cost develop, largely from scratch, a worldwide proxy and networking system for the game.  Stardock's own games won't even make use of what we developed for the game since our games are client/server.

Anyway, my point is that those of you who are waiting for Stardock (the *publisher*) of Demigod to step in further to create some sort of competitive multiplayer match making system for Demigod then I say to you that you are addressing your requests to the wrong party.  We don't code Demigod. It's not our game. We have no rights to the game beyond our publishing agreement.