According to distributor Stardock, the first beta will begin next month for preorder customers, though this is an engine stress test, and not a “fun” beta. Beta 2 is set to follow in October, again less focused on fun, as this will be to elicit player feedback. Beta 3 will follow in December, and while they don’t comment on its fun-factor, it will presumably be present (or one has to worry the game will have no fun either), but this may be a public test. After that they plan on testing release candidates ion January and hope to release the game in February.
So, anyonce can explain me how the game will play? I don’t know the DOTA mod from War3 (i only know it is supposed to be something like that).
edit: ack, i can’t edit the title. Someone fix that! Schedule!
As far as I can understand there are two ways to play. Assassin or General. Having played DOTA a lot I’m assuming that playing a General means creating/controlling auxiliary troops while the Assasins are the “Hero” units of the army. Basically it’s like a regular RTS only with multiple commanders, multiple player controlled units and whole bunch of AI units controlled by said commanders. At least that’s how I think it’s going to work.
DOTA btw was two bases which both kept spawning NPC troops who then tried to attack the enemy base. All the human players played heroes, trying to affect that battle by destroying sentries, enemy combat troops and enemy heroes while getting involved in your regular RPG stuff (leveling,item upgrades etc.).
Also apparently there can be a bit of base building too, not to mention the portals. This game sounds more like an RTS taking on DOTA-like attributes than an attempt to commercialise the DOTA game style.
This schulde and direction has me very skeptical, unfortunately. It seems like they are planning on only 2-3 months balancing the game… and even that time is being shared with pre-beta stability/performance crunch.
I’m particularly skeptical because they’ve chosen to include commanders. Having played various RTS-FPS hybrids, none of them have managed to balance commanders vs heroes properly. This is a different beast, but if wc3 custom map roots are any indication, this gameplay style has been far less popular, as well as being far more problematic in balancing.
The initial appeal of DotA lies in empowering the hero completely – the ability to make unique combinations of items and heroes of unmatched power. This is achieved by simplicity and variety (104 items and 91 heroes). I have some confidence they could get the secondary aspects correct, the slow gathering of hero strength, the balance between focussing on gaining exp/money alone or forming a squad to disrupt the enemy. I remain very skeptical about the game, as the addition of commanders not only makes the game much harder to balance, but also flies in the face of the basic equality of all players and their importance.
There will be 2-3 months to balance the game… with players’s feedback from the beta, that dosn’t mean the total amount of time to balance the game will be 2-3 months. They will also balance the game a lot before for themselves!.
Most games offers a total balance time with players of 0 days. It’s all internal.
Well, the phrase stress testing implied testing high/max player counts. Given it’s an entirely team based game, I don’t see that meaningful balancing can be done before you see the dynamics between full teams.
I’m not trying to slam the game or the team, I’m still very interested. DotA is my game of choice lately, and I’ve come back to it many times over the years.
The idea of a professional, beautiful multiplayer game inspired by it, is high on my wish list. It’s just, the experimental usage of engine, new genre, multiplayer oriented – compare it to Blizzard’s balance testing efforts for Starcraft 2, the tried and true: over a year after stress testing the engine, with constant feedback from professional gamers and casual testers alike, still looking like at least 6 months to go. I guess Demigod’s job is simplified by its novelty (starcraft 1 has so many rabid fans, and there are so many RTS’s in general, that the bar is very high), but by directly comparing itself to DotA, they are creating certain expectations for many.
I would say it’s more accurate to say that DotA served as one of the inspirations for the game.
But the goal of beta 1 isn’t to stress test in terms of numbers of players on but rather more of a compatibility test for the engine.
Also, Demigod has a pretty significant single player experience in development and both single player and multiplayer support a persistent game universe where players build up over time.
Re balancing: We’ve been balancing the game for months and GPG has been working on balance and stress testing since last year. I don’t recall seeing where I can join a public Starcraft 2 beta so I am not sure how you can compare Blizzard’s “tried and true” system to Demigod’s upcoming beta that anyone can join.
I read some more interviews and material after I posted, and realized I had been too extreme in my dota comparisons, and too skeptical in general. But, reading this leaves me extra, super reassured. I am back to my initial happy on hype train schulde.
I pre-ordered the game awhile back, so I’m definitely looking forward to playing Demigod. The promise of a persistent online environment is definitely going to be interesting, if they can pull it off properly.
Heavy Gear was pretty neat that way, at least before the cheaters arrived.
Cool. The design of the game over the past Summer has changed since Stardock became the publisher. Chris Taylor and I are moving towards a co-designer philosophy so wev’e been making changes to expand the experience. Someone who loves DotA will almost certainly love Demigod, but the scope of Demigod is, naturally, a lot bigger.
As the betas have come along, the potential of the game has steadily increased far beyond where we started. If all goes well, this will be the type of game people are playing 5 years from now.
In the persistent universe component of the game, the plan is to let people choose their hero (a Demigod) and as they are victorious, they gain essence that can be used to help their Demigod ascend to godhood. Similarly, they can use this essence to knock another demigod down from ascending (though it costs more to do that) or use it to make themselves more powerful for future matches. All this is subject to tweaking of course subject to our own balance testing and player feedback. :)
While it’s too early to make comparisons, to ME, and speaking only for myself, the game feels a little bit like Company of Heroes with the difference being that your Demigod is obviously the focus of building up and making a real butt kicker but you have other troops doing their own thing trying to capture parts of the arena that give your side an advantage. And the world is somewhat more damageable than in CoH because, well, you’re a freaking god so you make a bit more of a mess when you’re pounding your enemies into dust. :)
Hooray for putting in single-player too – I don’t do multiplayer (don’t have the time to get good enough) so I was writing this game off until now. The whole Sacrifice vibe (insanely weird armies of creatures) is really working for me.
Edit: Actually it looks more like an exoskeletal dinosaur than any kind of bird.
