Pantheon is garbage until Rage Quitting is dealt with.

I'd say pantheon is garbage until it works more times than it fails.

Whats worse than ragequitters in the Pant, is forum posts such as these.

I can understand your frustration, but cussing and flaming about it here will lead to no good.

And remember, not all players are committed pro's or hardcore enthusiasts. There are many casual gamers out there and to expect everyone to hold to the same gaming morale's as yourself at all times is unreasonable.

With respect, at the end of the day....it's a game, don't take it so seriously.

Well i've played the game two days now, and I notice glaring imbalances on the Light side, such as Reg's Snipe I often am vs 2 reg's who just snipe all game from miles away, Oak is strong but fair, and then there's Sedna, her heals outheal my DPS easily, how can you do anything against that? 

Sedna's definitely the least powerful Demigod atm, the heals are very strong but the DPS is very weak, she relies strongly on autoattack and minions, so I suggest armor yourself up and she can't do jack to you. Remember that Heal costs a nice bit of mana, and she can't heal when stunned whereas you can kill her when she's stunned. I would say therefore that stuns and armor pwn Sedna in an unholy fashion.

I think that rather than ragequitters, the issues leading them to ragequit should be addressed. E.G. The fact that dying gives the enemy a ridiculously large quantity of gold so that they can easily outclass you on items and fuck you over for the rest of the game.

I dunno you were playing pretty strong with her earlier today, taking on an Oak and QoT at the same time.

I think QoT is definately the weakest DG (however can be fun to play with, she has a lot of not so useful skills), Sedna is actually not too bad especially early and mid game. Late game she starts to fall behind a bit.

Certainly no match for a Ooze UB with some nicely placed Foul Grasps

You could have at least said GG before you went

Sedna is weak at actually killing Demigods, but there's only one game mode where that's the goal; in the others, driving the other Demigods off is enough, and she can do that by just outlasting them.  I didn't find that I had any trouble winning when I played with her in the Pantheon.  (my w/l ratio with her is super-low, but that's mostly because I was suffering from connection problems that weekend and I ended up being an AI in many games)

Pantheon's not garbage due to ragequitters, it's garbage due to 2v1 battles and AI, and the fact that it probably has never made a game with 6 human players of equal teams.

Rage quitting in Pantheon would start to go away and/or not matter if they made a few changes such as making the death timer scale with level, starting lower and working up higher either with deaths and/or with level, as well as scaling the xp/gold gain.

Reading these forums and going by my own experiences there are just some things that make the game not very fun at times.

1. Length of time it takes to actually play. Obviously this is something they're working on.

2. The steep penalties to dying. What's fun about staring at the screen for 30 seconds waiting to be able to play again? What's fun about playing a hopeless battle for the next 45 minutes because your death allows the other team to level a couple times and buy some nice gear to make you easier to kill next time? Unless you're on a skilled team, having someone on your team die early in the game almost guarantees your team will fight a losing battle of attrition. Some sort of "Underdog" code could work wonders to keep the game fun for both the losing and winning teams. Strengthen the losing team if the power difference between the winning and losing team passes a certain point. Give the losing team a boost in more health, or more attack, or more gold, or more exp or a mix of them. There are lots of variables that could be increased by a little or a lot to help the losing team become more competetive making the game more exciting for ALL players.

3. Ragequitters leave you with an extremely non-effectual AI player. Well, if we fixed the reason causing people to ragequit this might be less of an issue. But even disconnects causes this as well and probably deserves some attention. If someone leaves the game, that Demigod either needs to be jacked up in its strength, or the team as a whole needs to have some of the previously mentioned variables boosted by a little or a lot.

The idea here is to make the game fun for everyone, whether they're a newbie or they're some uber-leet-demigod-master. If the game scares away newbies it makes it less fun for everyone since the game relies on the multi-player aspect. Only the most immature uber-leet players won't get bored of easily crushing newbies left and right. The more mature players with lots of skill enjoy competition and a challenge.

So to make this game fun for everyone, newbies and pros alike, it needs to be challenging to both newbies and pros alike. Right now it's only challenging to newbies, and so much so that they can't fully experience the fun of this game.

That's just my experience talking with other newbies in game.

Agreed. Ragemoar.

I know about the bugs, but it is something you just gotta deal with untill they fix it. Along with bugs, and random noobs, you might as well just stick to custom games for a while. I honestly wish there was a way to make noobs do some tutorials before they are allowed into pantheon, like "Win all 8 games on a single player Hard Tournament". It is pretty damn easy, and it would stop all those random noobs that get in a game and tell me it's their first game. Maybe having them play 10 skirmish games would also work.

Now I know people are gonna flame me for that comment, but I have spent 1,821minutes in this current pantheon, and I have seen a LOT of noobs. I do my best to be ncie to them and help them, but trying to type and help them while trying win a losing battle is hard.

Firstly it is important to point out ragequitting will not stop no matter what they do.  There's still jerks that will curse/claim your demigod is OP/says their teamate sucks and then leaving.  Therefore, complaining about rage quitters and telling them to "fix it" will not work at all, they can't change people's attitudes.  Attitudes are the problem, not the game.

1:  The length of time to play is just about right.  30 to 45 minutes is great time for a strat game.  If you're talking about the fact that there's no option to resign, that's coming soon.

2:  The way to stop the death penalty is not to die.  Once you think about it adding an "underdog" ability would be abused to death and not be fun at all.  If you're dominating the other team you deserve to dominate.  It would not make the game more exciting at all, the players with skill deserve to win.  Plus, the example you use, is of a teamate dying.  1 death at the beginning doesn't make or break a game for pete's sake.  They aren't going to go buy the all father's ring with the 800 gold they will get from it.  How fair is it if a team is dominating on a football field and the ref decides to give the losing team the advantage of 3 extra players and 15 extra points?  Would that make the game more "fun?"

The death penalty is perfect as it stands.  What fun would it be if your enemy died and instantly respawned?  You'd never down the citadel, and if you nerfed the gold and exp, there'd be no reason to kill another demigod at all.

3.  They are fixing AI.  Once again though, you suggest a system that would be abused and just plain unfair to the winning team.  If you get an AI partner stick with it and hope for the best.

You say you want a system where newbies and pros can have fun, and we already have it.  New players just need to learn how to play.  What is NOT fun, is me losing to a new player who has only been playing 1 day while I have been playing since the release of the game, because of some underdog system that ramps up his stats and he instantly respawns at the citadel, which makes it unkillable.  There's nothing unfair or cheating about it if an experienced player beats a non-experienced player.

I'm thinking I didn't clarify enough.

I'm suggesting the death timer starts out low and builds longer as the game progresses and/or your level increases. By the time you're beating on a citadel the death timer would be the same as it is now. It's the early game that would have a short timer.

"Underdog" code is fluid, not permanent. It's also comparatively small. It won't make the losing side more powerful than the winning side or even necessarily AS powerful as the winning side. It'll allow them to have a chance at catching up. And the closer they are to catching up the less the "Underdog" code will help them. The "Underdog" code would allow the losing side the chance to feel like they COULD possibly catch up if they play their cards right.

There's no way to exploit it. It wouldn't kick in until your team was trailing behind by lets say (arbitrary numbers here) 2 levels. It would give small boosts in specific variables (possibly gold income, damage increase, armor, HP, regens, whatever) allowing them to survive a bit longer, do a bit more damage, etc. So maybe a level 7 team wouldn't die instantly to a lvl 11 DG. The level 11 DG would have to think more strategically than "Hah, I can spam my attack and they'll just die before even taking a tenth of my HP". As the team catches up (even IF they ever catch up, lets face it some people really are just that horrible) the "Underdog" effect diminishes back to zero. The greater the difference in "power" between the two teams the greather the "Underdog" effect kicks in. The lesser the difference in "power" of the two teams the lesser the effect.

This doesn't keep the winners from winning. It just makes it more challenging for the winners to win. Challenge is good. Challenge is fun. In many games it might not even take effect. This is aimed at the severely outclassed teams. The teams where you spend thinking to yourself from 2 minutes into the game, "Dear god we're going to lose". And 35 minutes into the game you're thinking "Dear god why didn't I just ragequit, this has been the least amount of fun I've had in a long while!"

I love common sense thank you

And to sschrupp... honestly if you die to much your too aggressive and if you can't correct your poor strategy by the first 2-3 deaths (which will by no means give the other team a winning advnatage yet) you deserve to sit there and waste 45 minutes of ur time for ur early game incompetence.. then again you could always focus on capping flags get giants cap their ports and win that way... no matter how good their items are if u coordinate this right they will most likely loose.

Incidnetly every single game that I have lost (thinking that we could make a comeback) is a game where my team mates gave up long before the match was even decided

I'm also going to plant myself firmly in the "No thanks" camp regarding these sorts of handicap mechanics, especially in Pantheon. 

As was said, "Rage quitting" isn't going anywhere.  What we 'can' get rid of are the punitive measures that the players who stick it out get slapped with.  When someone quits, get the AI out of there.  If the team quits, the team that stayed wins.  They get the favor, they get their victory tally, and they move on to the next game without having to sit through a boring comp-stomp. 

Now, a handicap 'option' for custom games?  Sure.  Why not.  For competitive play, however, nobody should be getting a bonus for doing poorly.   

One thing I wouldn't mind seeing is access to local character stats and whatnot while you're stuck in death-timer limbo.  It is a little tiresome having nothing at all to do for those 30-ish seconds.

Good point, Sakhari. Maybe it's best not to have a handicap feature in Pantheon tournament.

To the others, this is just a suggestion on how to make the game more appealing to the greater audience. It in no way makes Demigod less fun. It's just an option that could be thought about and tweaked to make the game more fun.

But then again maybe I'm strange in that I have more fun when the entire game has some challenge to it. It's boring when my team is severely trouncing the other team due to disconnects, ragequitters, bad luck, what have you. Likewise, the games not as fun when the roles are reveresed.

Unfortunately I've been on both sides of the coin and I've tried to think of something that would improve the game. Maybe some people here are so awesome at the game and only like it to be easy for them. I assumed the awesome people liked a little bit of challenge. Being lvl 13-16 and just laying waste to a lone lvl 7-10 person with his AI buddies just wasn't fun for me, so I thought that a handicap system could definitely have spiced things up a bit and made it more fun for both myself and that poor soul on the receiving end of my ass-whooping.. lol.

And thanks for your pearl of wisdom Killa_Blood. I'll try and incorporate that into an idea to try and improve the game for everyone.

Well, I certainly won't claim to be an awesome person as far as this game is concerned but generally, they do.  They tend to prefer, however, that the challenge comes from being matched with other competent players rather than newbies who have been handed an artificial crutch. 

Don't get me wrong, I think the pursuit of greater fun for all is a noble one but to me, it seems that the actual problem is poor matching (three chart-toppers versus random newbie and an AI.  IT HAS BEGUN!) and poor handling of the quitting issue (AI's have no place in competitive play).  I'd prefer to see the train wreck addressed rather than create a system of handicaps around the flaming wreckage.

*edit Just noticed the 'to the others' portion of your post.  If we're agreed that handicaps have no place in Pantheon, then feel free to disregard the above. 

If you want to fix rage quitting, fix the bullshit.

Heroes die way too fast when you stack assassins.

I mean if you have 3+ assassins you can alpha the other team down, one by one.

yes you're right Xaes lets nerf all assasins, it's OP that they can kill things. Oh, and thanks for ragequitting 5 minutes ago.

Never forget the timeless addage of FPS-Doug.

I can dance all day... I can dance. All. Day.

Ohh, Sakhari, thanks for mentioning the borked matching. I haven't been able to read all that's going on around here. I knew that people were having problems connecting to people but I assumed that the game was actually trying to match people of similar talent for the most part.

But yeah, if it's not doing that at all then it's no wonder there are cases of vastly differing team performance. I definitely agree that the actual matching of teams within similar skill ranges should be dealt with before any sort of handicap system. Although a handicap system would still be an excellent option in custom games since there's no way to guarantee you won't be getting newbs on one side and pros on the other. In cases like that it could be seen as a sort of grief mitigator.

Assasins are good at killing things?!?! Really? I mean it's not as if their name is....oh....wait.

On topic, I haven't played Pantheon in a long while. I've stuck to skirmish, although I might try a few custom games to see how those play out. And I know ragequitters are annoying, but stressing over it will only give you a migraine. If my teammate quits and I fall too far behind I'll just quit as well. No point in staying and watching the enemy farm the AI.

Damn right, Generals should be able to take 3 assassins at a time and still kick ass!

Just a quick question though? What happens if the other team has 3 assassins, does it end up in stalemate?

When was the last time anyone hre saw generals act like generals, and not just spec to be assassins?

When was the last time you saw an Erebus Night Walker build, Sedna with Yetis, Oak with Spirits or Queen with Shamblers?

I haven't seen them in months. Assassin method of play is overpowered, and needs to be nerfed.

We all know Yetis are broken... and I actually did see a Sedna play with Yetis  I think 2 days ago... might explain her 0-11 score