I've waited and watched - including that unfortunate video you released where you walked around your office asking everyone why your game wasn't working - but it's now a month after release and your P2P infrastructure is a complete mess.
It's intensified by the fact that I'm in Australia, but so are 22 million other people and you had no qualms selling to as many of them as you could, so I should be just as entitled to my frustration as anyone else.
I don't care how or where you tested this system, to NOT have run a large scale international infrastructure test when planning a new P2P connection system is just absurd. Of COURSE you were going to run into issues with varying latency. Of COURSE you were going to get slugged with hundreds of different router settings. This should have been expected the moment you suggested P2P connections.
I just have one question: WHY?
If every other game on the planet can run with a direct server connection (and I'm sorry, Demigod does NOT require split second synchonicity), why did you think you were in a position to pioneer a radical new type of multiplayer connectivity? I mean, you made something AMAZING with Sins, but even there it wasn't until several patches that overseas players could connect to one another because of the culminative lag between them and the server. What made you think you could handle P2P, when even the big boys stay clear of it?
And why the hell would you choose to test this infrastructure on a game as big and expensive as Demigod, when you provide a sales service for dozens of smaller, much more manageable games that would work as a testbed?
In fact, why would you choose a game that RELIES on multiplayer, nay, is ONLY multiplayer, to test something as bold as this?
Great idea, but ALL of this would have been picked up in even a rudimentary risk analysis PRIOR to kicking off the multiplayer infrastructure component of the project and should have EASILY been identified during your testing processes.
I have two accounts, fully paid for, for me and my wife to play online, LAN and in your tournaments. Except there is no point, because we can't connect inside of 30mins. This game is AMAZING - it beats the hell out of DotA and it's great fun to play with mates... but we will ONLY play it with friends now, which means it'll be dead in about 3 months.
I suppose you don't really have to care at the end of the day, you have your money... but I do wonder what Gas Powered Games thinks of all this mess.
Feel free to delete this message if you want. Says alot about your 'gamers bill of rights' though if you do.
You guys are an amazing company and Sins was enough to instantly buy my brand loyalty and my support for Impulse... but Demigod has pretty much destroyed it. Someone at your end needs to take some pretty serious responsibility.
Frustratedly yours,
Omni
