Postpone release date » Forum Post by _Mercury

Quoting ,

However, some issues need to be improved before release :

Stability : Alt-tab state still crashes occasionally. Also, dialog screens sometimes stall for minutes.

Multiplayer : Still doesn't work for everyone. For me and others, 3C is even worse than 3B.

Agreed. They know this and are working on this. The game can still go gold tomorrow and have a zero day patch.

Balance : Not nearly worked out. Skilled players will rip through it in a flash, the rest of the community will follow, and the demigod usage distribution chart will be very uneven. At least another month of intensive play with several hundreds of players is needed, with fine-tuning every week or two. If the game goes out like this, you will need to reset the pantheon rankings several times before the balance is settled.

Balance is what we are supposed to be working on and frankly is pretty decent at this point. It still needs work and it is simple to fix and tweak at the last minute. So in theory mark that down as good.

Diversity : Many abilities and most items are currently not valid. So are most Citadel upgrades.

Where are your suggestions. Add them, I'll comment and so will everyone else and if they are liked stardock will add them. I too want a bit more diversity in favor items.

Don't be all doom and gloom. Things are actually looking quite good, ewxcept fot the net code, and the game released as is isn't bad. With a solid net code it would be good to great. Considering the 3 weeks remaining for some major balance tweaks and a few small enhancements, it could be even better than great.

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I agree with the OP in a few respects.

The game stability and net code is being worked on so I dont think it will be a problem.

Balance is not right yet, theres a few demigod combinations that are far too powerful especially if teams were more organised (ie vent or lan). As of now rook and tb can pretty much instagib anyone they want, or massing 5 of one demigod would be much more powerful than a mixed variety (think rook, 5x2100 damage and 5x towers, 8k hp each). Planning the balance around organised teams trying to pick these imbal combinations is what balance should be focused on. Its hard to do this however when there doesn't seem to be any of said teams playing atm and trying to break the game, although I think Wagnard and his friend often go TB and rook and dominate, so its one example they could be trying to balance.

Diversity is something that needs to be looked at. Many items are just not valid, theres far better choices for many of the items. Same goes for abilities, theres certain abilities that are just not good as others and have no purpose in the game, they don't even fit into another build. Giving the bonus level 15 skill that gives a unique buff to a skill line at lower levels would be great to help these less powerful moves. When you only give a demigod 4 moves, they better all be great.

Games great though, I have fun, but when its realeased people may get upset if they get pubsmashed by anyone whos semiorganised and pick imbal combos.

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atm they are making sure the Singleplayer works perfectly so that people that buy the game and dont got internet will still be able to enjoy it perfectly, One the game gone gold, which it does any day now they will be able to go back to focusing on the day 0 multiplayer patch.

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OK Trigeminal

Diversity

Here are the only viable options :

Citadel upgrades : Experience, Reinforcements, Trebuchet.

Consumables : Potions, Teleport scroll.

Breastplate : Hauberk of Life, Godplate.

Helm : Plenor, Hungarling.

Boots : Speed, Unbreakable.

Gloves : Brutality, Wyrmskin, Fell-Darkur.

Trinkets : Warpstone, Narmoth, Heart of Life.

Don't save for artifacts usually, takes too long with idle gold.

All this assuming a need to prioritize gold. In a prolonged game with lots of gold, spend freely.

Demigod abilities :

QoT : Most abilities are useful. Compost probably too weak. Minion enhancements are ridiculus - Minions are experience fodder, easily erased by AoE, +50 health or no.

Erebus : All abilities are useless.

Torch Bearer : I only take Rain, Fireball, Fire Nova and attributes. Powerful DG.

Unclean Beast : Most abilities are useful.

I have no access to the other 4 atm. Also never played humans. DarkZ's point about combos is important.

a month or two delay is not doom but maybe making the planned date then releasing a patch is right, dunno.

If the game fulfills its currently apparent promise, it can be very good - I'd give it around 9.0. For great, I require better maps. Demigod maps are even worse than SupCom's. Completely 2-dimensional, restricted, non-reactive.

Still - very, very beautiful game, good action.

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Your concerns are more for the longevity of the game and less about the initial success of the game. Initial impressions by reviewers and customers are going to be very favorable which will drive sales. After that these little things may start to bother people, but they have budgeted for updates/fixes/balancing throughout the end of the year so I expect we'll see things continually improving. While your concerns are valid, I don't see any reason to delay release.

+1

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Here are the priorities and specifics as I see them :

1. Stability. This is not too bad right now, but not ready for release ( but see my comments below ).

2. Diversity. This is related to balance, since if some options are much better than others, only they will be used. As I specified above, on most varieties ( items, citadel upgrades ) only 2-3 will likely be used. Level them.

3. Demigod balance. The distinction Generals/assassins should not be canceled, rather it should be seriously applied. Some obvious mistakes were made such as giving assassins auras, making Generals' auras irrelevant ( think in the neighborhood of tripple damage and double HP. Genaral-accompanied minions should actually be a threat to demigods, rather than experience pills ), and making Erebus' melee-range single-target attack ( bite ) weaker than all ranged and AoE attacks. And factor team-support such as healing aure into the favor point system.

4. Net code. This is precondition to extensive testing and balancing. If it was just 1v1, tweaking the demigods to balance could be simple. But in such a team-oriented game, you need to cover the combinations and their interactions with items and other aspects of the game. To do that, you need as many competitive-minded testers as possible.

5. Pantheon. Favor items alone do not make a persistent universe. There is a lot of room for creativity here and this could be a great attractor to the game. Seperate the pantheon from standard ranking system so as not to push off those who do not wish to spend all their spare time in the pantheon accumulating items and power.

Single player : not a priotity for me at all, I never play them through, only buy games for the multiplayer : )

All this takes time and extensive testing, but it will give the game a chance to fulfill its great potential. About the idea of releasing the game then continuing the work, I don't know, there must be precedents to learn from about making the declared date vs. making a first impression.

Cheers

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Mercury - Is that in order of importance? If you had to pick 2 of those to be focused on before release, and one for a patch each month out, what would the order look like?

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Hmm, hard choice.

Net code is a must and a precondition to other improvements. Making sure everyone can play online smoothly and fixing the net stats.

Now that I think of it, the game never crashed on me in mid-game, which is the worst party breaker. The dialog screens used to stall for minutes for a day or two, but now they don't seem to. Alt-tab crashes are not frequent. If this is the typical case, maybe it is less urgent.

Demigod balance looks a more important issue than diversity, also requires more work than just tweaking prices and effect numbers of items. Also has a more central effect on the core image of the game.

So I'd say : net code and demigod balance before the release, then pantheon, stability and finally diversity. Just IMHO, I'm no game developer : )

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I disagree with _Mercury_'s specific examples (and his opinions on what is "useful") but I agree that the game is too shallow to interest me at release.

1. The Maps are horribly simplistic. "Prison" and the "2v2" map should just be deleted and replaced by more of the multi-path maps.

2. The Balancing and Veriety is low - few abilities actually require "skill" to be used right, and many are designed to be chained or are very "passive" in their nature. The game needs many more abilities that require skill.

Example:

Fireball - (removed)

Inferno - (added) - Ground targeted small AoE that "erupts" 2 seconds after being cast. Stuns a target for 0.5 seconds. Same cast time, lower cost and higher damage then Fireball. Long cast range.

The 2 second delay between casting and effect requires prediction skills to be used right, and creates a mind game where the enemy can chose to move unpredictably to dodge them.

Such abilities are severely lacking in the game.

I has to be delayed and get a lot more work in on veriety and balancing - otherwise it's just inferior to other CoRPG/Arena and won't reach it's full potential.

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Quoting _Mercury_,

reply 4

OK Trigeminal

Diversity

Here are the only viable options :

Citadel upgrades : Experience, Reinforcements, Trebuchet.

Consumables : Potions, Teleport scroll.

Breastplate : Hauberk of Life, Godplate.

Helm : Plenor, Hungarling.

Boots : Speed, Unbreakable.

Gloves : Brutality, Wyrmskin, Fell-Darkur.

Trinkets : Warpstone, Narmoth, Heart of Life.

Don't save for artifacts usually, takes too long with idle gold.

... Listing half of the completely useless items as being the only valid ones sort of invalidates your opinion to me. :/

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... Listing half of the completely useless items as being the only valid ones sort of invalidates your opinion to me. :/

Okay, say you are at the shop with 5,000 gold, which items of each category would you consider buying ?

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Guys, It's ~4 days to Gold status deadline. Printing the game the way it looks to us Beta testers right now is just too much of a gamble. What if you can't make adequate netcode in time for day 0 patch ?

That would be a big party crasher. I'm sure there are many players who, like me, don't care much for campaign and jump right to online play. Not many things are more frustrating than net problems with an exciting game.

Balance is also a big problem. You need at least a couple weeks of reasonable demigod usage distribution with the beta players, and settled issues like the chain-stun and other combos.

Other issues are the numerous bugs, stability ( close to perfect ) and diversity ( item and upgrades balance ). And the Pantheon is a huge potential which is little fulfilled with the current Favor system.

Unless the game you have is very different from the one I have, it looks to my humble eye that you are taking a big risk. It could also affect us as we naturally want as big a community as possible.

Please consider giving it another month. I know it is probably a hard decision. Just my 2 personal fingered crossed here.

Cheers : )

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Giving it another month now will ruin their whole ad campaign et.c

They will just release it along with the day 0 patch, then another patch one month later and the game will be awesome.

At that time we will also start seeing some of the stuff they will include in the first DLC package one more month after that. Most probably a new demigod and a new map, also probably are a few new skills for the already existing demigods, and a few new items. Also this is where we may start seeing the removal of the classes, making all classes into simply Demigods since the general concept didnt work out to good.

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Demigod is way more stable than Empire Total War and Demigod is the fricken game that's in beta while E:TW is at retail release with 3+ patches.

I just don't want to come onto these forums a couple weeks after Demigods release with some issues and have Gas Powered Games offer the following solution: "Oh, it won't crash if you disable sound!"

('-')y

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Right now, with the game in the current state, is not something that will keep people active online. One being that there is no way to open a chat window, add friends, clan members groups, see who is online and who arn't. Invite friends in a game... the list goes on and on. And sorry irc chat in the lobby just doesn't cut it.

I feel like I'm playing a single player game online, very little has been implimented to create a community. Forget the patches and items that you can buy.... that can be an update a month after the game release. There are two major things that need to happen:

1. Being able to connect to players online (I haven't had much of a problem with this because I have set up my router properly)

2. Have a solid way people can communicate. Sins is a poor example, btw. There should be a messenger window that you can have up the entire time. When your in the lobby looking for a match or if you are in game talking with another friend about starting the next game. And NO, alt-tab to talk to m8's is bs. So making a shell program is not usefull at all.

Games nowdays are about community... if you can't make that happen the game will have some sales but will fall to the wasteside in a couple of months. Look at how strong WoW is in terms of community and why are they so strong. I don't play the game but can tell you that it is def easy to find and talk to your friends.

I would hate to see a game with a lot of great things going for it to have a lobby/online community of a couple hundred people. Just like Sins of a Solar Empire, there should be thousands of players online at any time of day instead of 20-50 players.

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Quoting _Mercury_,

reply 15

Balance is also a big problem.

This game has balance? I wasn't aware they had started the balancing process. And I'm not being sarcastic either.

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Quoting WhopperJr,

reply 18

2. Have a solid way people can communicate. Sins is a poor example, btw. There should be a messenger window that you can have up the entire time. When your in the lobby looking for a match or if you are in game talking with another friend about starting the next game. And NO, alt-tab to talk to m8's is bs. So making a shell program is not usefull at all.

Just press Shift-Tab and chat away. It is the same channel we chat in while using Impulse and where games are arranged every day. It tells you about it every single time you run the game. I would say its impossible to miss but you apparently have.

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Don't tell me that the irc window is the best they can do. Is there a way to make a friends list? Make private chat rooms? See who is online, even if they are in other rooms? I'm telling you it's not cutting it. How many people can be in the chat room before it becomes a stream of unconnected conversations? Yes it is good for chatting about the Beta, but when the game goes live with hundreds of people online, tell me how it is useful... please enlighten me with your genius!

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Quoting MetDragon,

reply 7

The game in it's current state needs at least another few months of bug testing and balancing. Compared to other games this close to release, this game is very unfinished.

This

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[quote who="AngryZealot" reply="19" id="2116509"]

Quoting _Mercury_,
reply 15
Balance is also a big problem.

This game has balance? I wasn't aware they had started the balancing process. And I'm not being sarcastic either.
[/quot

And this sorry for the double post.

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Quoting WhopperJr,

reply 21

Don't tell me that the irc window is the best they can do. Is there a way to make a friends list? Make private chat rooms? See who is online, even if they are in other rooms? I'm telling you it's not cutting it. How many people can be in the chat room before it becomes a stream of unconnected conversations? Yes it is good for chatting about the Beta, but when the game goes live with hundreds of people online, tell me how it is useful... please enlighten me with your genius!

try

/join #WhopperJr

and then tell your friends to enter it.

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Guys at release day there will surely be a mega pach to the game addressing most balance / character malfunction to the game.

Have confidence. I dont think they will release a semi-broken game.

P.S its not that broken. the word I used is a bit strong here but its the only english word thats came to my french head

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Sure I can tell them to /join #WhopperJr But that means that I still need a different tool to organize the team... aka skype or somthing of the sort. The only problem is that say I want to play against another clan and they don't use skype... Looks to me that they won't be able to know if i'm online or msg me for a match. Am I wrong?

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Quoting Wagnard,

reply 25

its not that broken. the word I used is a bit strong here but its the only english word thats came to my french head

I'm French Canadian ... and the only english word that comes in my francophone head also starts with a B ... boring ...

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Quoting WhopperJr,

reply 1

Sure I can tell them to /join #WhopperJr But that means that I still need a different tool to organize the team... aka skype or somthing of the sort. The only problem is that say I want to play against another clan and they don't use skype... Looks to me that they won't be able to know if i'm online or msg me for a match. Am I wrong?

Why would you need Skype? It is a safe bet that whoever you want to play uses Impulse, doncha think? The Impulse integration allows for what you want.

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