I agree with Poly here. I couldnt find the fun in LoL either, that I had in Demigod.

All what differs Demigod from Dota/LoL/HoN is what I liked in it. The flags, the citadel, upgrades for teams...

Same for me. Tried LoL but it wasn't entertaining, felt more like work with all the needless micro. Some people might enjoy last-hitting, I certainly don't need a 2nd job. The art design was nothing I could enjoy either. I wasn't really impressed with the design of the heroes either.

LoL's recipes might be a good idea though, they add some depth. Demigod's items really could have used more variety and balancing.

Demigod had the innovation, LoL and HoN had the greater depth. GPG just needs to take note of that for this to work.

And leave out last hitting >.>

From what I hear, Generals didn't play very much like generals. If so, GPG should develop the RTS aspect of the game. I would be very interested in that.

Its a fine line between balanced and overpowered when it comes to generals though.

Just please make sure your netcode isn't a complete piece of ****

Actually, make sure its goddamn kickass. It might just be really important to a multiplayer game.

I played Demigod for a month and then it felt incredibly repetitive. Havn't played or missed it since. One of my more worse buys actually.

I bought it out of confidence because i really like both SupCom1 and DoTA.

I enjoyed Demigod for some time, but with so repetitive gameplay it became boring.
Now I play League of Legends and you have so many hero combinations, items and strategic possibilities I cant think about playing Demigod again.

I am looking forward to play demigod2 and I hope they will put in 40 balanced heroes with many items, a new netcode and a noob friendly user UI.

The most important feature every game needs is a reconnect button!

I think the repetive gameplay was mostly the fault of the balance. I mostly played UB and there were pretty much 2 viable builds: Ooze/Spit with Blood of the Fallen and Ooze/Spit with Blade of the Serpent. Bestial Wrath was just too weak by comparison. Same goes for a bunch of the other demigods as well.

If GPG would just try to balance the game more it would make for more interesting gameplay. And I'm not even saying it has to be perfectly balanced. A nerf to Ooze with a buff to Bestial Wrath could have changed UB gameplay quite a lot.

I think it would have been interesting to have a slightly different balance for every new Epoch. Just collect some anonymous stats on how often each build is played by the top players and change the balance accordingly.

Steam would be nice, but I think GPGNet is what gave SupCom and FA such staying power with me, at least. Having a really solid community with chat and clans etc. really helps towards building a community.

Demigod didn't innovate anything other than pretty graphics for this genre of gameplay.

The core mechanics are the same as Dota. The maps, while it was nice that they deviated fromt he typical dota and dota clone "One and only one good map" thing, it became a nightmare for both balance and map creation. Only a handful of maps were in the game, and only a few were decent enough to consider playing. Most were too small and linear and inhibited strategic gameplay, thus bonking the map entirely. The largest maps were probably the best for competetive play, because youcouldn't walk right over and help a buddy instantly. In LoL And HoN Being on the other side of the map in a lane was a damn big deal, unless you have a teleport tool your buddy is on his own. The map in this kind of game is of huge import, and that is why they all use similar maps, because that is what works and nobody has found a better one yet.

It didn't innovate anywhere in the heros. Generals were more powerful assassins with some support abilities. Some heros in HoN and LoL summon minions, that isn't new. The implementation of generals as a pseudo RTS like character failed. Skill trees are nothing innovative, they are just the normal four skills and attribute increases layed out in a pretty tree. That is literally nothing new at all, other than the presentation of it.


You can't take out last hitting because then the gold mitigation becomes boinked. Earn gold like you do xp, just be around town? Then the tides can't change based on money from minions, which means games drag because one team can't get an advantage (assuming equally skilled teams and no feeding taking place). Flags were actually worse than buffs/runes because they were either inconsequential (some of the flag buffs were meh) or were too easy to take back. Buffs and runes are game changing because the ones who get them get the buff exclusively until it respawns. Flags are worse for gameplay comparatively.

The heros themselves did nothing terribly new or exciting. The state-switcher heros were neat, but we have that in the other respective games. And the dev's inability to quickly patch in balance changes and new heros crippled the games long term appeal. LoL gets a new hero about once a month-ish. It has 60+ heros, forty at launch. There are constant balance tweaks. Demigod had ten to start, and a final count of 12. Even if the game had a strong competitive scene, with the multi-character teams in a five v five often having multiple champs, things just went to ****. Bad enough in LoL when you have two Garen's or Twitches or Morganas or Amumu's (one on each team in non-ranked) but if you could have a whole team of amumus or morganas, well tits on that. Unless my memory is wrong and you couldn't have multiple champs of the same type on a team, but I though I remembered that happeneing.

But when you have the 5v5 or 4v4 set up in mind, and only have a pool of ten champs, something should be glaring obviously wrong.

The graphics kept them from making enough new heros to put out, tone the graphics down so you can do this. The prettiness didn't keep me playing past two months. I don't really care how it looks. Same goes for the maps I suppose.

Poly said that it shouldn't be too much like the others, thats why he likes it. But when you make a Dota clone game (which it is, don't deny it, you'll just look stupid) you either clone it very well (HoN) or kinda clone it and do some things different and lower the bar to entry (LoL). Demigod's bar was too low on all counts that counted (hero count, balance, map strategy, metagame implementation, updates). Some things can't be changed without extreme innovation (like last hitting for gold. If you take that out, you better innovate a damned good way to replace it, any ideas? Exactly), which didn't happen in demigod. It was fun for a few weeks. It just didn't go anywhere. Kinda like SC2 is in the competitive area. It was going well for a bit, everything got fleshed out, end of story.

If you don't like that it was a shitty dota clone, that it shouldn't be like dota, fine, but then they need to create a new genre and blend RTS and dota together into a decent hybrid, like they said they wanted to, but that would require generals who rely on minions because they are inherently weaker than assassins, but Oak could out assassin the assassins, which borked the main gimmick. Sure the cheese minion builds won out as the supremely best strat after that, but it proves the point, if gens could be just at good at killing **** as an assassin, then the assassins are useless. If the assassins don't have a decent arms up over the gens, then they aren't worth the trouble with the minions the gens get in addition. They can start there and remedy that dichotomy, but I'm not sure how it would work in the dota play style then.

And I said it already, but citadel upgrades really didn't add much to the game. It made you dump gold somewhere else occasionally, but so do wards and other support items. You didn't have to upgrade creeps until your opponent did just to keep **** equal, or never do it so your opponents get less gold! You bought the first one and sometimes two gold upgrades because they payed off enough to make it worth it, third one didn't. Death reduction, like in other games, pointless, you shouldn't be dying almost ever if you can help it. Tower health and damage? Mildly useful, but if you have so much trouble defending towers that you need that boost to survive, the game is looking like it might be decided already. Finger of god? Woooooooh. Don't get me started on the item situation. Relics were stupidly OP, and the fact that almost the whole cast shared common items implies greater gameplay issues. Those debates in LoL whether AD or AP ezreal or katarina is better, whether to go mana regen, mana pool, or boots first for a caster/ganker, whether to stack health, armor, or magic res, you might not like that "needless micro/thinking," but it actually makes the game infinitely deeper than demigod was. When it matters where you're positioned in a lane, at the top or bot, by a bush or not, in a forest or not, nearer to a tower or not, when that could mean the difference between insta death or not just by your position, that is a good thing. Demigod usually didn't have that just by the way the maps were layed out. Was there really even ganking in demigod? I can't remember to be honest.

Don't get me wrong, demigod was for a bit. But I play LoL (and am starting HoN) quite a bit, and there is a reason LoL and HoN don't get boring almost ever. Demigod had none of what these games have that keep players coming back and working on their game. :/

I just hope they do something to make it worth picking up. If DOTA2 comes out before it, then well, Demigod 2 might be dead before it even comes out.

sanman, if you take all the features by themselves and then look if they have been used in ANY other game before (other genres included) you will quickly come to the conclusion that there has been hardly any progress in the game industry at least for the last decade. Demigod combinded a lot of features that had not been used in this way in this type of game and the result was a very addictive and fun game. That's all you can really ask for. Sure, some things could have used some improvement and polish but that is what happens when you use gameplay features in a way they haven't been used before.

When I type dota, do you not know what I mean? Seriously, I'm confused, you are making a strawman with that first point there. Complete and utter strawman. That isn't all I can really ask for, I ask for excellence in the things I purchase. I am a consumer dammit.
That is what I do, if you don't hold the creators of products to a high enough standard, you get **** like Activision releasing 2 GHs a year. That is bad, for everybody but Kotick.

Seriously, Demigod didn't do anything special, it was a poor copy of Dota. Dota is Defense of the Ancients, a warcraft mod that invented the genre of game that Demigod is. When people talk about the myriad of shooters nowadays, it is either a) this game did nothing to further the genre and does not perfect the known and expected features, thus it is not that good or b) it does nothing to move the genre forward, but it does everything it is expected to do perfectly, so it is a good fps.

In its genre, Demigod is an a) case. HoN and LoL both do a better job at it other than being a terribly casual game. That is the only place where it matters that it has an advantage. But it trades casuality (? word?) for competitive appeal, and thus did not do well in the long or short run. It is unfortunate, but the fact of the matter is, it was a bad dota clone.

Recently released MoH is a shitty FPS for the same reasons Demigod is a shitty Dota clone. It does its job poorly and doesn't differentiate from similar products. I'm not bashing it, I liked it, but you can't ignore the facts man.



Seriously, this is ignorant. Dota did that, Demigod followed in its footsteps. You're giving it way too much credit.

It seems like either you are the one who is ignorant or you haven't even played Demigod that much.

Demigod was a lot more addicting for me than DotA. I am generally opposed to RPG style things and more so opposed to pseudo strategy games like StarCraft and WarCraft, especially their weapons mechanics. Demigod doesn't technically work better, from a StarCraftian point of view, but it is still far more appealing to me.

And in my opinion the flag mechanic is also a lot more fun. I do not understand how you could say that they are inconsequential. Every flag is important on its own in almost every map and on top of that it is important to hold more flags than the enemy.

Complaining about the lack of Demigod's to choose from is also an argument brought by a lot of people, but I never understood it. It's like complaining that there are only 9 classes in Team Fortress 2. High numbers of very or slightly different heroes is not the point of Demigod or Team Fortress 2, imho.

oops

I....I....*facepalm*

You act like Demigod is its own genre, you all do. I'll break this down nice and simple for all you folks who have such a raging hardon for Demigod, okie dokie?



Put in over 150 hours. Not a life changing amount, but enough. Years ago yes, but my memory isn't that ad.



Opinion piece, thanks bro.



More opinions, thanks, glad I know you better now. Calling Starcraft and Warcraft pseudo strategy games is ball bustingly hilarious and stupid. They are strategy games, starcraft 100%, warcraft 99% with some RPG spice on top. Weapon mechanics have nothing to do with demigod, LoL, HoN, or Dota, and your comparison of RTS games to Dota style games makes no sense or point here, not sure where you're going with this.


Your opinion on why you like Demigod, while backed up with the above I suppose, has no bearing on the facts of the matter when considering Demigod as a game in and of itself. Again, thanks for sharing, but you aren't actually making an argument against me or anything....yet..


Okay, cool, I'm glad you like it more than runes and buffs. It is simpler to keep track of, easier to incorporate into your strategy, and all around just noob-friendlier than runes and buffs are in the other games, you seem to like these qualities of demigod, thats fine, thats great! But that doesn't change how it actually impacts the gameplay.



I did not say they were inconsequential. I did say some of the flags had very minor buffs occasionally, I then said some had tremendous buffs. I did say that flags were a weaker tool for enhancing the strategy compared to runes and monster buffs. I did not say that you shouldn't be using them when playing demigod, you should if you want to win. You didn't read my words carefully enough. I'm not sure why you just jumped on the word inconsequential and ran with it. Flags, like runes and buffs, are crucial, but they are not as good a game mechanic as runes or buffs.

Firstly because they are always there. Secondly because the second they are taken, you know. There is no need to scout or have map awareness, because it is blatantly obvious. Runes and buffs in LoL and HoN add strategic depth and reward teamwork in many more ways than flag captures do. It is not so static, it is fluid. It makes the smart team stronger and the weak team weaker because of the way they play. The team that wards effectively, keeps an eye on the clock, and gains the rune or wins a fight because of it earned that, and they had to work for it. Flags, you just realize "doh, we don't have it!" and waltz over and pick your nose. Then after you leave the other team does it. After you have map control, sure you keep it while you assault them en force, but it is otherwise a rather static and uninvolved compared to their genre counterparts.



Then let me attempt to explain it to you.


It is in no way like that at all. Different genres, different implications from the number of "classes" (and classes != equal champions, multiple champions may belong to the same "class" in general (agility, strength, intellect, mage, nuker, support, healer, CC'r, initiator, harasser, tank, off-tank, DPS, ranged DPS, ganker, et cetera) but the individual champion has a much greater effect on the outcome of the match than their general classes do. Amumu and Taric are both tanks in LoL. Amumu has an AoE stun, a long range stun and chase, and great crowd DPS. Taric has a heal, a shield which explodes, a single target stun, and an ult which heals and buffs damage. Both can be tanks, but either one will have a vastly different effect on the match outcome, unlike in TF2 where a scout is a scout on either team, and it is left to teamwork and individual skill (and weapon choice I presume) to decide what happens. Champion selection pre-match can often decide it from what I've seen. 3DPS and 2Nukes versus 2Tanks, a support, a DPS, and a nuke is more often than not obviously over before it has begun, unless skill disparity is too high, but then most rules fly out the window in that case.)

In short, no, it isn't like complaining about the classes in TF2.



First off, hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha @ the slightly different part. You claimed I may be the ignorant one here, but you show your ignorance with the broad statement that champions in the other three games are slightly different. I don't even have to explain why. Google a compendium of the heros for any of the games. Read their abilities and passives and stats and strategies, infer their strengths over similar champions, and understand how blatantly obvious those "slightly different" differences are. Ashe's ultimate and Tristana's in LoL, while both ultimates of ranged DPS carries, are vastly different in the way they impact the match. A global stun, a shot which forcibly moves the enemy in the direction you choose. One has active attack speed enhancing abilities and a DoT and a flash of great length which slows, one has passive crit enchancement, a perma slow skill, an AoE slow of great range, and a passive gold boost/scouting mechanic. All their abilities are different and impact the match and any given battle's outcome. Tourchbearer and Unclean Beast could both be built as ranged damage characters, spit filling the role for beast. Where they the same? Obviously not. Even in just their given role as a range damage dealer, one was a nuke, one was a DoT, one scaled better than another, one had AoE, et cetera. Does this seem more pronounced because there are only ten heros? Perhaps. Is it actually more pronounced or more impactful than in my first example in a game with 60 heros? No, not in the slightest.

Would Demigod have been better off with 20 heros instead of 10? Assuming the same quality of the heros, of course it would. Saying otherwise would be a fallacious comment. Perhaps their development cycle didn't allow for that, that is fine, but the game would have been better with more champions. No argument there factually. Perhaps you believe otherwise and that is your opinion and I respect that, but as multiple cases have shown in this genre, more champions > less champions. Even if some do get beaten out overall eventually (in LoL there are a handful who are, in most cases, outshined in their role by others, they are still entirely viable and useable, and if mastered can decide matches). There is no reason you can't have the cake and eat it when it comes to champion number. It won't be perfect, but it will most certainly be better. If this was a game of only 2v2s, ten characters would be almost passable. But it is a game of 5v5s and 4v4s and 3v3s predominately Ten is rather inexcusable from a strategic and gameplay enhancing standpoint. Surely you can see/agree to that?

The point of the games? Gosh, no, the point of TF2 is to be a competitive team-based FPS game with a class-based system underneath. Demigod (being a dota clone) is to be a competitive game based on champion selection and player skill. Not all champions are equal, not all players are equal. Less champions means less diversity of play, which means less innovation, less strategy, less fun, less life-span, and less support. You cannot say that having only ten champions was fine for Demigod just because it was more casual than its predecessors. Would you say it would be fine if the next halo had 1/6th the guns of the one before it, even though the first game had more than the most recent one had (as Dota and LoL and HoN all had a vast number more champions than demigod did, in case you missed why I was comparing them). No, it would be preposterous to argue that, and you arguing thusly is incredulous to the max. Is the FPS to Dota comparison not apt? I apologize, you started the trend, I just figured I'd use the same set-up.

Demigod is not unique from Dota and its ilk. It did not innovate. It did not do anything better than the other games short of its casual implementation. That is fact. If you want to believe otherwise, then you're ignoring the evidence, which lies in the three most prevalent examples of the genre. Dota, being the creator, HoN, the Dota done better clone, and LoL, the slightly less hardcore child with a few minor tweaks. Demigod is the fourth child we are discussing here, and it is the youngest, most plain, most ignored child of Dota. Thats fine, nothing wrong with that. But that is how it is. :/

P.S. When I say competitive, don't get your panties in a giff and freak out imagining the hardcore DOTA players freakin out on a nub who just waltz in to feed. No, I am speaking to the competitive nature of all video games. Be it competitive against other humans, the AI, an evil character in the story, or whatever, almost every game is competitive in some regard. Dota, LOL, HoN, Demigod are all competitive multiplayer games where the objective is to win over your opponents. Objectively Demigod has the least amount of depth of the four. I'm not bashing it, I'm not saying I don't like it, I'm just telling the damned truth. You shouldn't be offended because you loved the game or in your opinion it was better for its difference, thats fine, but to contend that it is deeper and more strategic is inanity to the utmost degree. What has more depth, a puddle or an ocean (comparison not to scale!)? The ocean. You would never argue otherwise. As such, don't do it here, okay?

TL;DR sanman, I don't have the time to read all of that, let alone to respond to it. I have no idea what makes you reag so hard about Demigod but you should start taking your medicine again...

Why do you add things like that to you post? Doesn't seem very helpful to get your point across.



No I do not. Demigod incorporates different elements of other genres. That's it.



Again, condescending.



No. Games like *Craft are mainly real time tactics games, which do not even have any kinds of simulation. Even Demigod needs more strategy than StarCraft. Weapons mechanics are an important part of the TA/SupCom franchise and do play a role in Demigod. Where as LoL, HoN etc. mainly use a deterministic weapons systems.



No one said it wouldn't change anything. That's the main point, it makes gameplay better or at least different.



->




I would regard that as your personal oppinion too.



Well, this makes me think that you never played Demigod very seriously. You have to choose when and which flag you take, if you sacrifice flag control over farming momentarely, you have to work with your team in order to get one flags or multiple flags etc.



I still think it is. VALVe broadened the abilities of each class in Team Fortress 2 with the class updates, however, these changes weren't really needed to make the game significantly better or more appealing in itself. For me, Demigod shares some similarities with Team Fortress 2.



You are doing it again...



No I said 'very or slightly'. I was just including the possibility of there being heros that are only slightly different on the outside from another one. I did not want to say that all of the heros in all those games are only slightly different from each other.



I can agree to some of that. All these things still wouldn't change my oppinion on why Demigod is still a good DotA clone and even better than the other ones. But that's just taste. I simply hate *Craft and all their mechanics . Of course no one would actually mind more Demigods (unless they are horribly imbalanced and there is no money left for patches).



I wasn't arguing that, but since you brought it up: more depth does not equal in more fun. Not for every game and not for every individual person.



I "hate" fantasy, RPG, *Craft-style games. During the development of Demigod I was never interested in it at all, simply because I knew it was fantasy and a clone of DotA, which I had no fun with, for the most part. The only reason I am defending Demigod here is because despite all of these things, Demigod got me addicted after an impulse buy (pun intended ;P). GPG and Stardock managed to do something unthinkable for me which amazes me of course and therefore I am sceptical to any change that someone might want to introduce to Demigod.


It's a similar situation in Team Fortress 2. They already changed my precious Team Fortress 2. It doesn't give me the same fuzzy feeling anymore as when I started playing it. It's still fun and I stil play it every day, but it's just not the same anymore.

Demigod innovations:

Citadel upgrades
RPG Demigod trees
Capturable flags
Capturable portals
General archetype

That's atleast 5 deviations from DOTA.

Flags are not like runes and buffs. They exist within the game and fluctuate based on team performances. That's more like Demigod's favor items.

DOTA heroes have no where near the skill trees demigods did. Their skills were reduced to increasing 1 of 4 in a linear path. Demigod had legit skill trees.

Generals were much different than minion heroes. They had their own unique ones in addition to buying more.

Certain maps even had capture trebuchets. GPG just didn't capitalize on that idea. Some maps even had health crystals at flags. One of Demigod's biggest strength and weakness simultaneously was map design.

I think the best question is why are you emotional to write essays over this stuff >.<

You don't have to be emotional or even give a damn to argue and make points and such. Well, maybe you do, but I don't.


Was fun. Had fun provin ya wrong for the most part.

You didn't prove anything wrong. All we stated here was just a bunch of opinions. None of us care about your high and mighty viewpoints, really. That's why no one read what you typed.

I like Demigod more than LoL, HoN, and Dota. I thought it was a better game. Just because you need to convince everyone else of your opinion to help your own insecurities does not make everyone else wrong and you right.