Just got another update. They’re really cranking 'em out now!
Update was, and I quote:
Skirmish and Pantheon join game tweaks.
Hah, you’re the one who pulled out the non-relevant sports metaphors. And I realize that it is most likely that the mechanics of Demigod work the way they were intended to work, but that doesn’t make snowball/ragequit/steamroll scenarios suck any less.
Football analogy is quite good, if you consider college athletics.
Within a single game, football often exhibits momentum, where a particularly good/bad start will result in a much better/worse game than would normally be predicted. In a longer term context, the more wins you get, the better off your recruiting is for next year, and the more money that alumni contribute to your school. More money means better facilities and better coaches, which once again makes for better recruiting and stronger players.
Demigod is “working as intended” and there is some “snowballing” and associated frustrations. DotA has the same balance issues, and these issues are the primary reason why DotA a) rejects game sizes with under 10 players (players with a poor start can avoid conflicts, or be counterbalanced by partners with a stronger start), and b) has such a nasty, insular community. For my part, I’ve essentially gone back to DotA – after all the patches, Demigod matchmaking is still a low player-count hit or miss affair… and there is no indication it will ever reliably support the number of players that seem optimal.
I see fewer and fewer generals using minions, and I’m taking this as a sign that the item costs need to be reduced and the skills buffed. Minions as they are right now just aren’t worth the hassles in controlling them.
I might shelve Demigod for a while, too, but my frustrations are different now. It’s too easy to lose a game because of bad teammates and far too difficult to get in a game with your friends. Once the clan system goes in and the Impulse Overlay is a bit more useful, I will pull it out again.
My family uses DDB as code for Double Donkey Beast, a term used for any incredibly overweight individual who is holding up a line due to their sheer size.
It originated in a trip down to Mexico way, where we took some kind of inane donkey ride. As is often the case in any touristy occasion where Americans are known to congregate, the entire tour was being held up by a feisty, and fairly obese, American tourist who, due to her enormous size was driven to some rather amusing feats of gymnastics to mount her poor beast of burden.
The handlers, who were wiser than they were polite, bruited it about amongst one another, in Spanish, that an individual of her not inconsiderate size would surely need a second beast to reach the top of whatever path it was we were following.
This witticism caused no little amusement amongst the members of our party who could understand, and they lost no time in sharing this delight with the less capable.
Soon after this otherwise forgettable experience the term, and the acronym that saves the pride of those referred to, was coined.
DDB
1746
You may now refer to me as Double Donkey Beast with no complaints, if you like.
And so as not to make this a completely content-free post, sports metaphors still don’t work for this game because you can’t quit a football game (something that I am sure anyone who has played high-school football is acutely aware of when they’re being blown out 44-3) and that the ACTUAL MECHANICS of football don’t reward the winning team with cash and prizes (unlike Demigod, where killing a couple enemy Demigods without them killing one of yours pretty much makes you unstoppable 1v1 and decent in a 1v2). When you put these two factors together you get a lot of people quitting the game after only a couple of deaths in public games, and a lot of bitching and moaning in private games.
I am all for a huge dollop of gold when you kill an enemy Demigod in the assassination game variant, but during Fortress/Citadel it stinks. There’s no point in every dying to accomplish any of your objectives (unless it’s literally the last objective of the game) because it hurts your team so incredibly badly. You’re out for 30 seconds and the guy who killed you has gotten anywhere from a little more powerful (late game) to A MEGATON more powerful (early game). So when people die, they get disheartened, and they quit. And that sucks. I’m not saying that you should get no gold, but is 1k to start out with (and it only goes up from there) really necessary? That’s a huge advantage.
Snowballing is somewhat necessary if you don’t want stalemate games to last forever. That said, I have been part of a couple of really nicely earned and legitimate comebacks. So it’s not like, once the game tips to 60/40, it’s all over but the crying.
DDB - We may just be noobing it up with regards to “dying for your objective.” No, it may not be worth doing that every time. But I’m unaware of a team who has said “we’re going to take demigods/builds optimized for capping flags and wrecking fortifications. We’re going to buy the death penalty reduction out the max, and use capture locks like crazy, and run away a lot, and basically die but control the map.” It seems like, in my games, it sucks to die for the sake of a flag capture or something when you’re spending all your resources on being a better killer or improving your creeps.
Also - something needs to be done about the way I can’t effing see myself or my target or anything once a big melee starts happening. Unless you play Rook.
Hey guys, just a head’s up:
At this point, getting into a MP game should be pretty much taken care of now.
For people who can’t for whatever reason, we should have proxy servers up in a Wednesday update. After that, anyone who can’t connect we’ll have to deal with 1 on 1.
At this point, I’d say >95% of people can get into a game very quickly without a problem. The proxy server should take care of another ~4.9%.
If you want to know how this disaster happened in the first place read here:
Demigod: What the hell happened?
Jason and I just won a pretty epic stalemate on Crucible. I was Sedna and he was an Ice TB, we went up against an Erebus/QOT combo. Our lack of burst damage meant that we had to wear down bramble shields pretty slowly, and there was a lot of back and forth over the flags to begin with. Our opponents also went minion-heavy, and our lack of AOE meant that our creep swarms were pretty outnumbered.
Fortunately, we were both playing pretty damned well, and after an hour, we managed to grab the portal flag in the enemy base and that was pretty much the end of it. I think it really sealed the deal once we bought our 20k artifacts, since both teams were almost level 20 by that point and everybody had giants out.
All in all, one of the more epic wins I’ve had in this game. Unfortunately, it made my girlfriend- who had just made a rather awesome dinner- ragequit out of the house. Heh.
EDIT: This is an awesome part of that post, Brad:
Today and later
Right now, we’re staging an update that addresses what was mentioned above. It’ll either get released this evening or tomorrow.
On Wednesday, the plan (not promise) is to release the update that supports Proxies. That update will also support some new command line switches:
/proxyonly (if you know you won’t be able to connect normally you can just have us host your traffic)
/noAI (will tell Pantheon and Skirmish to not allow AI players in even if you have to wait longer) – this may not make it into Wednesday but I’m hoping.
/localproxy (if you have a monster machine with a really really good network connection you can let people who can’t connect route through you which lowers lag – only do this if you have a very fast UP speed).
About the previous discussion about rage-quitters and the snowballing effect. I think it’s normal that the action of killing a enemy Demigod is the most rewarded in the game, but i think the reward is too high. Yeah, it’s true you need a big of snowballing in the game so the matches can end, but right now it is too much. Make two or three mistakes and you are then against a enemy richer and with higher level.
Nezz
1751
I have no idea whether it’s currently technically feasible, but ideally a DotA-like, when played publically, would allow players to leave and join freely during the round, like in a multiplayer shooter. It’s simply not realistic to expect enough dedication from a team of random strangers to finish such long rounds.
Lux
1752
Terrible idea. Can you imagine popping in on the losing side of a slaughter? Now imagine doing that over and over since the leavers tend to come from the losing end of poorly matched games.
Yeah, this right here is a major issue in pub L4D versus games. You randojoin into an organized team’s pubsmash because, surprise, those are the games with the most leavers.
It’s great for the co-op mode, but in versus it just doesn’t work out well.
Yeah, I would play the shite out of that game. I’d absolutely love to mod anything they will let me in Demigod.
I wish we had a map creator and an SDK so I could make my own game types and my own flag capture types.
Yea, my view is that if you have your AI and other parts written in LUA, you have such an opportunity here.
We’re looking at LUA (or Python) for Elemental AI scripting. I’ve generally not liked writing my AIs in anything but C/C++ but I really like the idea of other people being able to mod what we make.
With Demigod so much done in LUA, it’s just begging to be modded in interesting ways. I think we should do what we can to not just support that but to reward it.
At this point, releasing the SDK with a map editor may be the only way to revitalize the game.
linger
1758
If you want to stick closer to C/C++ syntax, I’d say Lua is the way to go. Python seems to be alot more popular and known in general…but the required whitespacing for syntax still irks me as weird.
Quitch
1759
Moddable AIs competing online? Yes please!
DDB
1760
They should make your AI pass some sort of artificial Demigod Turing Test.
Here, I’ll get us started:
When (game Ends):
allsay(“GG”)
If (gamewon) = true:
teamsay(“lol those guys sucked.”)
