Demigod, Is anyone else playing?

[Crash486]

I hadn't seen any threads on the topic, but demigod was released just the other day. I've been following the game for awhile now, but it doesn't seem to have gotten really any media attention (possibly because both stardock and gas powered games are smaller than average companies).

http://www.demigodthegame.com/

The game plays more or less like a more in depth version of the WC3 mod/map DOTA. Players take command of one of 8 demigods and team up with friends in a large battle royal (up to 10 players max) against other players or computer opponents.

As you play the game your Demigod levels up allowing you to choose your tech tree (resets after each game). Just about all the archetypes are present among the demigods and their individual tech trees. Healer types, single target damage, aoe damage, seige damage, etc, and each of the 8 demigods has their own distinct feel (no carbon copies).

As you kill other demigods or waves of NPC reinforcements which clutter the battlefield, not only do you earn experience, but gold as well, which can be spent on outfitting your demigod with items to compliment the tech tree you've chosen, or to upgrade your teams wealth of NPC reinforcements.

Like I said, the game plays a good deal like DOTA used to, but with better graphics and more depth. If you were a fan of DOTA it's deffinately worth checking out or if you've never played DOTA and simply enjoy RPG/RTS/Action genre games it's probably worth a look as well.

 

[oliveira8]

Oh there was plenty of media...mainly negative.

Gamestop sold the game before time forcing the game developers to waste their mini Easter holidays making the multiplayer work, and then the game got pirated to hell and the illegal copies flooded the servers keeping legal owners from playing the game.


Rough start. : /

 

[glimmrang]

I might get it

 

[Crash486]

Oh there was plenty of media...mainly negative.

Gamestop sold the game before time forcing the game developers to waste their mini Easter holidays making the multiplayer work, and then the game got pirated to hell and the illegal copies flooded the servers keeping legal owners from playing the game.


Rough start. : /

Indeed, it did have a rough start. I read all about it on their site. Apparently the estimated the ratio of pirated copies to sales is somewhere around 15 to 1. I don't know that I actually believe that, but I'm sure there are a large number of pirated copies floating around, seeming as to how they claim they hadn't yet implemented the copy protection before gamestop released it.

I find it amazing that gamestop could get away with something like that. I would hope Stardock would throw the book at them, but unfortuantely they're one of the most mainstream game distributors out there. It'd be a large bridge to burn.

 

[Kstreitenfeld]

The single player on Hard and Nightmare can be extremely annoying because apparently one of the factors that make it "hard" is the fact that your computer allies are facking retarded and die repeatedly to the enemy computer. Despite losing more then half of the games for a hard single player tournament I was still able to manage top rank overall to unlock Nightmare, but after seeing Hard's computer allies I really don't want to see Nightmare.

But I guess there is a limit to how smart you can actually make the AI and the only way to actually make the AI a challenge in a game like this is to give them an unfair advantage. It's to bad really.

.... After all that I wouldn't make such a fuss about single player if the multilayer was better.... I'm not talking about the game play either, the amount of time it takes to connect to games and the lag once you get inside is annoying to say the least.

All the cons aside, I feel this game has great potential. With a few updates to the multilayer connection issues and I could really see this game going places.

As a long time DotA player I would really recommend this game to my friends, although I might also recommend waiting awhile before buying it so they can steam out the issues.

 

[Crash486]

The single player on Hard and Nightmare can be extremely annoying because apparently one of the factors that make it "hard" is the fact that your computer allies are facking retarded and die repeatedly to the enemy computer. Despite losing more then half of the games for a hard single player tournament I was still able to manage top rank overall to unlock Nightmare, but after seeing Hard's computer allies I really don't want to see Nightmare.

But I guess there is a limit to how smart you can actually make the AI and the only way to actually make the AI a challenge in a game like this is to give them an unfair advantage. It's to bad really.

.... After all that I wouldn't make such a fuss about single player if the multilayer was better.... I'm not talking about the game play either, the amount of time it takes to connect to games and the lag once you get inside is annoying to say the least.

All the cons aside, I feel this game has great potential. With a few updates to the multilayer connection issues and I could really see this game going places.

As a long time DotA player I would really recommend this game to my friends, although I might also recommend waiting awhile before buying it so they can steam out the issues.

I'm not sure if this is correct or not, but what I've noticed on harder difficulty (hard to be exact) is the rate at which the enemy demigods level. I played one map with my buddy, and even though our kills doubled the enemy demigods, and we controlled the XP flag the majority of the time, the enemy demigods always seemed to outlevel us by 1 or 2 levels. That got to be annoying (especially when playing against romulus and unclean beast).

I think the game is meant to be played as a multiplayer game however. They're having issues with the servers right now because they claim gamestop releasing the game a week before the release date and before the copy protection had been implemented, really set them behind. First off they had to have the servers up a week earlier than planned (over easter weekend). And second, the game has been cracked and pirated an outrageous amount. Because of this they've been seeing an outrageous amount of server traffic on the multiplayer servers. This was their official word on the matter.

"But what happened was that we ended up with 140,000 connected users, of which about 12% were actually legitimate customers. Now, the roughly 120,000 users that weren?t running legitimate copies of the game weren?t online playing multiplayer or anything. The issue with those users was as benign as a handful of HTTP calls that did things like check for updates and general server keep alive. Pretty trivial on its own until you have 120,000 of them. Then you have what amounts to a DDOS attack on yourself.

So the day 2 update we released basically made sure legitimate customers were no longer being affected by those users. As a side note, no we can?t just eliminate the infrastructure being used up by warez users because they?re running the unprotected retail version and we can?t make a distinction between retail and pirated since there?s no copy protection. It?s not a huge deal in the long run (except to our metacritic score), it was just an unexpected challenge that made day 1 a very bad multiplayer experience."

I played of the mutiplayer today and noticed there was a large reduction in lag from day 1, Day one would take up to 30seconds or more just to refresh the server list. This is not how the game acted in Beta, so I can only assume it had to do with their pirate dilemma. That being said, hopefully the problem will fully correct itself in the not so distant future. Online is still very playable. I had little or no trouble finding/creating a game today. So maybe the hotfix they implemented is enough.

 

[Kstreitenfeld]

The single player on Hard and Nightmare can be extremely annoying because apparently one of the factors that make it "hard" is the fact that your computer allies are facking retarded and die repeatedly to the enemy computer. Despite losing more then half of the games for a hard single player tournament I was still able to manage top rank overall to unlock Nightmare, but after seeing Hard's computer allies I really don't want to see Nightmare.

But I guess there is a limit to how smart you can actually make the AI and the only way to actually make the AI a challenge in a game like this is to give them an unfair advantage. It's to bad really.

.... After all that I wouldn't make such a fuss about single player if the multilayer was better.... I'm not talking about the game play either, the amount of time it takes to connect to games and the lag once you get inside is annoying to say the least.

All the cons aside, I feel this game has great potential. With a few updates to the multilayer connection issues and I could really see this game going places.

As a long time DotA player I would really recommend this game to my friends, although I might also recommend waiting awhile before buying it so they can steam out the issues.

I'm not sure if this is correct or not, but what I've noticed on harder difficulty (hard to be exact) is the rate at which the enemy demigods level. I played one map with my buddy, and even though our kills doubled the enemy demigods, and we controlled the XP flag the majority of the time, the enemy demigods always seemed to outlevel us by 1 or 2 levels. That got to be annoying (especially when playing against romulus and unclean beast).

I think the game is meant to be played as a multiplayer game however. They're having issues with the servers right now because they claim gamestop releasing the game a week before the release date and before the copy protection had been implemented, really set them behind. First off they had to have the servers up a week earlier than planned (over easter weekend). And second, the game has been cracked and pirated an outrageous amount. Because of this they've been seeing an outrageous amount of server traffic on the multiplayer servers. This was their official word on the matter.

Ah yes the leveling difference, I have also noticed that but forgot to mention it. Today for kicks I was playing a round on easy and noticed that not only do you start of with a lot more gold you also gain levels extremely fast.

 

[Crash486]

The single player on Hard and Nightmare can be extremely annoying because apparently one of the factors that make it "hard" is the fact that your computer allies are facking retarded and die repeatedly to the enemy computer. Despite losing more then half of the games for a hard single player tournament I was still able to manage top rank overall to unlock Nightmare, but after seeing Hard's computer allies I really don't want to see Nightmare.

But I guess there is a limit to how smart you can actually make the AI and the only way to actually make the AI a challenge in a game like this is to give them an unfair advantage. It's to bad really.

.... After all that I wouldn't make such a fuss about single player if the multilayer was better.... I'm not talking about the game play either, the amount of time it takes to connect to games and the lag once you get inside is annoying to say the least.

All the cons aside, I feel this game has great potential. With a few updates to the multilayer connection issues and I could really see this game going places.

As a long time DotA player I would really recommend this game to my friends, although I might also recommend waiting awhile before buying it so they can steam out the issues.

I'm not sure if this is correct or not, but what I've noticed on harder difficulty (hard to be exact) is the rate at which the enemy demigods level. I played one map with my buddy, and even though our kills doubled the enemy demigods, and we controlled the XP flag the majority of the time, the enemy demigods always seemed to outlevel us by 1 or 2 levels. That got to be annoying (especially when playing against romulus and unclean beast).

I think the game is meant to be played as a multiplayer game however. They're having issues with the servers right now because they claim gamestop releasing the game a week before the release date and before the copy protection had been implemented, really set them behind. First off they had to have the servers up a week earlier than planned (over easter weekend). And second, the game has been cracked and pirated an outrageous amount. Because of this they've been seeing an outrageous amount of server traffic on the multiplayer servers. This was their official word on the matter.

Ah yes the leveling difference, I have also noticed that but forgot to mention it. Today for kicks I was playing a round on easy and noticed that not only do you start of with a lot more gold you also gain levels extremely fast.

I don't think you gain levels any faster or slower unless you change that option (at least no in custom games, maybe in tournament mode). But i deffinately think the leveling rate of the bots changes with difficulty.

 

[Kstreitenfeld]

No trust me, even try it for yourself. Play one game on Easy and another game on Hard and then tell me that there is no change in rate of experiance.

 

[Credge]

I'm one of the people who pirated it. I'd been following the game for a while and has been looking forward to it but I don't have the cash to spend on a game I won't play for very long. So, I pirated it to demo it. If this were an established franchise sequel, like Galactic Civ, I would have bought it.

However, after playing a few games, I went and bought it. Real fun game. So far I like every character except Regulus. He seems ultra-wimpy. Short range (even with the range upgrade), slow movement, larger size... just not very good. His snipe ability is ok... probably much better online.

Anyway, I can't blame people for pirating the game. It's a new type of game that many, many people have never played. Many others like me can't afford to spend money on something that may or may not be any good. And, as the president of Stardock has said, a pirated copy is not a lost sale. In my case, a pirated copy was a gained sale.

The online problems aren't the fault of the pirates though. Gamestop is to blame by breaking the street date.

 

[Crash486]

I'm one of the people who pirated it. I'd been following the game for a while and has been looking forward to it but I don't have the cash to spend on a game I won't play for very long. So, I pirated it to demo it. If this were an established franchise sequel, like Galactic Civ, I would have bought it.

However, after playing a few games, I went and bought it. Real fun game. So far I like every character except Regulus. He seems ultra-wimpy. Short range (even with the range upgrade), slow movement, larger size... just not very good. His snipe ability is ok... probably much better online.

Anyway, I can't blame people for pirating the game. It's a new type of game that many, many people have never played. Many others like me can't afford to spend money on something that may or may not be any good. And, as the president of Stardock has said, a pirated copy is not a lost sale. In my case, a pirated copy was a gained sale.

The online problems aren't the fault of the pirates though. Gamestop is to blame by breaking the street date.

regulus is awesome if you buy the right gear for him. You need to buy home some plus speed gear, plus damage gear, and then get him chance on crit does 4X as much damage, because he crits more than any other hero. Then he regularly hits demigods for 1000 damage/hit. Also make sure to get his +range ability.

 

[Kstreitenfeld]

I like to get decent mana regen (that orb thingy that costs about 4.2k and regens mana + hp on use is what I buy, great for when you don't plan on being hit) on regulus first and spam the hell out of his land mines and snipe.Mostly using the land mines to farm creeps for cash though.