No you completely misunderstood me. My code is definitly not flawless, but that is what QA is for. To pickup most of what skips the developers precious perfect code he built ontop of his ivory tower where he can only see his personal found glory. I expect hidden bugs in games, and maybe even obvious ones that fell through the cracks, and thats understandable. However, the things that occured in this game if you have been playing since release were astounding. Yes we have a few quirks now, pathfinding one of my biggest beefs, but I can understand how that may be very difficult to fix. My biggest problem with stardock is the fabulous support they are giving us should have been done before the games release - yes, we all know that now. I would retract all the bad things I've said about stardock when we get past this point of what should have been the game's release, and actual real content & development they promised their fans that they are known for.

You should know better than anyone, if you force an unpolished product on the consumer, that will only make them look elsewhere in the future. If I sold you accounting software that didn't let you do accounting, but finally got it working 3 months later (with still some bugs), would you be praising me? No, you would be upset it took that long and every tiny bug would bother you, thus the general mood of the community here. I don't expect this to change until all that are fed up are gone, or Stardock/GPG go above and beyond the expected.

Edit: Lots of edits, i thought outloud this time ;(

Unfortunately the reality is there are very few truly friendly gaming forums.  Combine that with the fact that the game is targeting the DotA community (one of the most notorious) and the poor launch and this level of volatility is pretty much what I would've expected.  Sucks to see Frogboy go, but I understand both that he has better things to do and that his presence on the forums was a privilege to begin with.

All the talk about the GalCiv 2 community made me want to fire it up again... GalCiv3 please!

That is Stardock's policy for all their games.  Has been for years.

After 2 months, things here have only gotten worse.

The developers need to work on a long term recovery plan (perhaps by the 1 year deadline) and completely overhaul the game, with massive content, connectivity support, new game modes etc. Much like Age of Conan have just done, they understood that their release was poor and unfinished and set a long term plan to revamp the entire product and then sent out free trials to former and prospective members once they are actually satisfied that the game is worth the player's time.

A patch every few weeks fixing little bugs here and there is not going to do anything to change the minds of the people that had to suffer through the release of Demigod. This community is just going to keep falling through the cracks until there is an overhaul of the game, regardless how long it takes. If that is not possible in regards to GPG/SD, then i'm sorry to say that this game and this community will never be a non-toxic environment and will just continue to lose current players, and plague the new players that get involved in this community.

I think he was referring to the community and playerbase getting worse.  He did mention that there are patches here and there that fix minor bugs, but we need a large overhaul of the game to give it long term viability.  The patches aren't making it worse

the customer is always right aint it

A forum is an open place, ppl can and will say what they want. However its also the place that gives devs the best ideas and feedback. If u cant see the advantages of that and are unable to weed out the poor comments,i think the problem is on some other end.

As for people misbehaving ingame, i have yet to see a game where this doesnt occur, and i think demigod isnt the best but also isnt the worst game regarding people behaving lame.

In other words; if u stop caring coz people are assholes u become an asshole yourself (u can check some other companys to see what i mean)

And also i feel its not the community that has abandoned this game,but i think it has been decided a long time ago this game wouldnt get the support (read money) it needs to exploit its full potential,so i think frogboy u have to search your soul and see who or what is really frustrating you.

and i would know that... how, exactly? all i know is, if anyone at any time had told me i could get my money back, id have fallen over myself trying to respond fast enough. i TRIED to get a refund during the tail end of beta once it became clear that demigod wasnt going to be worth the money and was refused. at that point i just chalked it up to a $40 mistake and went on with life.

then i run across someone linking to this thread from somewhere else and find out i COULD have gotten my money back had stardock only bothered to communicate that to me. the dont have any problem managing to send me an email when they want to tell me about stuff i couldnt give two shits about, but they cant be bothered to let me know i could unload this game and get my money back?? whatever. lesson learned...

I have to disagree with the comment that all online communities are as virtiolic as this one. Gal Civ 2 for instance had a great and very positive forum, still does.

Elemental too has a largely positive and constructive community.

I think there are two reasons this community is as it is;

1. The game had some really bad multiplayer issues when it went live, Stardoc have put a lot into fixing this, but the damage was done people where understandably frustrated. I can understand how it happened, how the problems where missed but that made the forum a shop for venting frustration.

2. The demographic of demigod is probably rather younger than that of GAL Civ 2 or Elemental, and probably tends more towards instant gratification than turn based stratergy nuts like me.

3. Stardoc are only the publisher for this title, they are not free to do whatever they like with it like some of their own titles.

Frogboys right though this has become a particularly toxic forum. Think I'll divert my attention back to Elemental & Gal Civ2.

If you can't come to the offical website of the game you are currently having issues with to investigate the issue or perhaps contact the company directly, then it's no one elses fault by your own. You can come to the forum to complain, why not come here to check up on whatever issue you're having?

The site should have been one of the first places you checked. Not visiting the site, yet complaining about problems you have with the game, is eerily similar to complaining about a vote's decision after having refused to pick sides.

You could have read the user manual which states Stardock's fairly well known refund policy very clearly.

Well if you happened to pre-order early based on the design laid out for the game at the start it's quite a long way off what they aimed to deliver back then. That's fine in itself, stuff gets cut and changed in every project and demigod had a change of lead design mid way so it's understandable that it's changed a lot.

Then couple that with a beta you couldn't opt out of without losing money but an apparent lack of any community input whatsoever about what gets cut gameplay wise, even when massive comunity reactions arise (re: Generals). I can see why some people are less than happy with the final product.

I would have been tempted to take the full refund too, but I'd seen SD take enough flak over everything that they had some of my sympathies and I'd accepted that I wasn't going to get the game I had invested in at the start well before the beta ended. I settled in to see what DG would develop into instead, based on the constant assurances that the game will continue to develop long after release.

So expecting some kind of post release support when it's been openly advertised isn't actually self entitlement, it's just not being a pushover. People can go about it badly but to say they shouldn't expect a damn thing is being overzealous, it doesn't help things, the people who are trying not to be douches get wound up and even people who are going about it very badly have a legitmate reason to argue with you about that one point. Then this place has one more flame in the inferno...

That's where you said it.

I know you were in beta, I posted enough and only when I had something constructive to say or an idea to put forward. The beta forums were too frustrating to engage in banter in between constructive posts, the strange mix of sycophantic behaviour and thin skins were quite depressing if you got bored of shouting "wooooo, demigod!" in various intonations or dispelling ridiculous misinformation and hyperbole.

Plus the only serious feedback we ever got was from Frogboy, and we got a lot of that, but it never translated into anything material in the game except on the rare occasion it was something he'd already thought of or helped come up with. The reason there were so many differant proposals for generals was because they were looking for an alternative to what they had, all those people trying to bring new ideas to generals didn't like them. That's so what. But nothing much changed except idol cost and minion damage tweaks, despite some well thought out and popular alternatives.

I imagine most of us know what we paid for the game too, bringing it up over and over won't bring anyone to a sudden epiphany. It's not like GPG got paid $40 to make the whole game either, any kind of game update is a benifit shared by the >>100,000 customers who paid $40 each. The same way I enjoy millions of pounds of public spending even though I only pay tens of thousands in council tax, because that spending benifits thousands of other people at the same time.