Pantheon Changes, Concerns and Issue Tracking

NT

True... of course playing UB in a dark Panth these days works pretty well too...  u know... soon u will have too admit that I do play the game (and game my play) quite well...

I think a reason for people dropping just before a pantheon game starts, bringing and AI in could be that they have alt-tabbed out of DG to look at other things while they wait and then when the match starts they crash as DG doesn't like to be alt tabbed out of. For me if I alt-tab out while wating for pantheon to start a match when i come back the screen will just be grey or the game will just crash in the background with an error report of some kind. I don't know if this can be fixed, but it would help pantheon if DG was bit more alt-tab friendly.

Prussian u are far from playing good, u average at most. Feel free to jump in when abbugerehedgie or me host game to prove me wrong. I can 1v1 or 2v2 if u got someone.

So there is no way now to get AI now? even if  u get 2 people on dark and 0 on  light? will it  still give you expierience points and count towards ranking if u beat AI.

I think thats the main issue with pantheon. I agree that there is no point of dividing demigods into light  and darkness. Instead we could get demigods to fight for ruling pantheon (something like turnaments in single player.

Thanks, Ciber.  I added your comments to the concerns section.  I appreciate the feedback.

Guys - I will be moderating this thread.  Please keep to topic.

You could still get into a 1v1 scenario to fight AI only if the other human player dropped at the load screen.  Because of the changes they made, the game should not launch at all if you were simply the only player queued up.  If things are working as described, AI's will only join if other players drop from the load screen.  At least, that's my best understanding. 

Please remove divining demigods into dark/light side.

Make "Random Demigod" the only choice at start! If possible avoid double or tribble Demigods.

Winner of the Pantheon will be the Demigod which won 20000 favor points first!

That is very good advice...

I played a couple of pantheon games today and there was an issue in each of them.

The first game started OK with 4 human players, but after about 15s or less a player left rendering the game pointless, so I left as well.

From that, I think it might be better if when a player leaves within the first few minutes of a match the system would simply end/cancel/void the match.

The second game didn't even get started, as the pantheon system put together an 8 player match but the match didn't start it just got stuck, presumably someone was having connection problems. I have to say it is pretty unclear what is actually happening at this stage, it is only with experience that you can see the signs of players leaving. Gradually it became apparent that people were leaving so I clicked cancel as well. Sometimes connecting players can go on for 10 or 20 minutes or more with no match starting.

Couple of things from that:

 1 - An 8 player pantheon game is too much there is a high likelihood someone won't have enough bandwidth and twice as likely than a 4 player match that someone will disconnect or otherwise drop out. I would say 6 players max for pantheon games.

2 - I think if after something like 1 minute not everyone is connected then matchmaking should fail or if anyone cancels before everyone is connected then matchmaking should fail. This would save on starting pointless unhappy matches which have AI in beacuse someone had disconnected or decided to leave before the match starts.

The third game started fine but one of the players was replaced by AI from the very start making it too easy for my team and quickly the other team conceded. Not much fun for any of the 5 players actually in the game. Plus one team didn't know they had an AI on their team, so they didn't even know thay had an unfair disadvantage. Having an unseen handicap is definitley anti-fun in any game.

I think if at the very start of the game one of the players has disconnected already then instead of replacing them with AI the game should just end there instead of we wait for everyone to realise there is a problem and one team concedes, the system should just end it automatically.

I think these things might make pantheon more fun for everyone and then more people would play the game. The game is great and getting better all the time, but that doesn't mean it's all perfect!

Good thread BTW.

They still are some trouble in pantheon...this morning i waited 30min and i didnt get a match....sometime i was alone in waiting list and other time we were 2-3 and no match in 30min. If they have removed AI, this is nice but boring when all waiting ppl on the same side are waiting too long for a game.

Second thing, SD need to add PRISON in 1 vs 1 because always play in 1 vs 1 on Crucible is boring.

Thanks for another post, Ciber.  I'll go through that later today if possible and update the OP as appropriate. 

primz - The possibility of not getting a match to launch AT ALL does exist now because of the removal of AI.  But there might be an issue if you were queued up on light side and the other individuals were on dark.  Was that the case this morning for you or was everyone that joined the queue on the same side?  Were you viewing opengames.asp or did you just note that X players are waiting for a match in game?  The more details you can provide, the easier it will be to track an issue down, if there is one. 

I waited about 30 min to get a match last night as well, even though 3, 4 or 5 people were wating for a game. The reason why:

There were only darkness players in the queue! This went on for quite a long time, as in more than half an hour, until 2 light players joined. This happens a lot.

I think that this is a good reason to remove the light/dark divide in pantheon or allow me to switch sides at will. Or change pantheon in some other way that allows for mixed teams of light and dark more like skirmish.

Also I agree on using prison for 1v1. I like prison and I would like to see it more on pantheon. Plus I think it would work as well as crucible for 1v1. Plus I don't mind more 1v1 on pantheon than there is now as it adds variety.

Low population tends to not be so much fun.  Since the change removing AI, I decided I would try to play on whatever side I felt like would have a lower population this time around.  That works fine for me as I enjoying mixing up my character selection quite a bit, but may not for others.  I typically check out opengames.asp before I even bother to queue up in panth to see what the sides are looking like.  I personally wouldn't wait around 30 minutes... if the population is that low, I'd just host my own game. 

I agree about using prison for 1v1 as well.

Ok. With the new ai gold death penalties i would like to suggest something for pantheon.

Two of the most fun games i have played have been 5v5s. But my conn can't handle a 5v5? Oh but wait.

It was 1+4ai vs 1+4ai on brothers/mandala.

It was actually a really really fun game. if it were only a 1v1 game, it would be tight and tense etc But with 4ai teammates, it became a bit of push the hwole base yourself, as well as try farm the other ai quicker then he could farm yours.

Considering you could have ai apply for perhaps 25% of the gold and exp of before, this could be a much more enjoyable experience then a simple 1v1?

edit. I realise Ai are out of the pantheon now. But if they were to have say miniaml gold or experience applied, this could work. Replacing a teammate with an ai would still not work.

Kitch,

I do understand where you are coming from and agree (to some extent) that the new options might make it possible to have AI in a pantheon game.  But, then a few things would be back in effect.  1 - people would be able to go back to farming AI for experience.  2 - the AI's are still remarkably dumb.  Even on nightmare + high HP, they still aren't much of a challenge.  You'd have to come up with quite a few parameters for it to work...

the game would have to only launch if there are at least 1 human on each side.  The AI's would all have to be on nightmare + high HP + low gold.  The game would have to not launch if a player quit at the load screen so AI farming wouldn't be increased all the more.  In short, I think it would require far too many things to be tweaked, imo.  Some might disagree with me. 

There is always the option of hosting a 1+4AI v 1+4AI game in custom with the settings I mentioned though.  AND it will count for stats as well.  I'd actually imagine that many might enjoy playing this type of game.

I agree with pacov, I just don't want AI in pantheon. They are just too artificial.

The missing dark side valor flag on zikurat has been added back to the map in version 1.2 on 11/19/2009.  Confirmed by morph and pacov.  OP updated. 

Another thought too, kitch - that 1+4AI v 1+4AI is actually a perfect example of where we'd want to use the custom lobby... its a high customized situation.  If you decide to host a few, please post back here and let me know if it was easy to get some games going or not so much.  Thanks!

Here is an illustration of a problem with Pantheon as it is:

After waiting a long time, it is clear that the unbalance of light/dark players in pantheon is what is stopping me from getting a game. I would prefer a 1v1 with that light player than waiting ~40 minutes for a game. More 1v1 in pantheon when there are low numbers on one side please!

Also it would be better if this showed more about what is going on, as in 1 light player and 4 dark players waiting:

 When I have been looking at that for half an hour I am thinking 'Why am I not in a match yet?????', so more information would help. We all know that alt-tabbing to look at the web page stats is risky because if a game starts when you are alt-tabbed it will crash the game for you, put AI in your place and ruin the game for the other players. Also more to look at on the pantheon waiting screen would be nice!

As well, it would be nice to know what the matchmaking syatem is actually doing, such as trying to match on exile map.... seeking 2v2 game... adding players... waiting.. etc. it would at least take some of the mystification of why isn't a match starting away as well as giving us something to look at.

Even more dark in the queue, it gets a bit ridiculous, I guess everyone goes on the side with more favour points.

People will get wise soon enough... 90% of the population can't be on the same team if you ever want to get matches off.  That said, if you are actually on the light side, I'm pretty sure you're getting your games in fairly quickly. 

http://forums.demigodthegame.com/369644

To document in the OP later.  There is a map issue on zikurat that gives light side (if i remeber it right) and advantage.  Towers don't spawn until war rank 4 for them but they already exist for the other team.  A change is needed so that both sides spawn the towers at the correct time.  Someone coded a mod that actually resolves this, so the needed code for the fix has already been coded, but needs added:

http://forums.demigodthegame.com/369644

It seems like pantheon almost always chooses 2v2 zikurat. It gets pretty boring playing the same map and it's not even the best map.

I haven't had the same experience, Ciber.  Zik does come up alot 2v2, but I still get many in on other maps.  I do think that zik might be weighted a bit more heavily.

SD - can you change the weighting some so that Zik is rolled a little less in 2v2?

Also, I'm glad 1v1 comes up less, but I don't think I've had a 1v1 in quite some time... you might have decreased the odds of a 1v1 too much (eg once in a while is great... never is bad).

Maybe it's just me, but I'm getting zikurat zikurat zikurat:

They should re-add crucible to the pantheon. That map is designed for smaller fights and is still a fun map.