When will Pantheon work?

I'm of the same mind as you are and I'm at Stardock (its CEO in fact).

Here's the problem:

Whenever we think the problem is solved, it works perfectly. Then it goes out and pow.

I have not only experienced what you have described, I have videoed it (much like the logs) and shown it to the team.

It's not as easy to "fix" as one might think. It's not "bugs" as much as false assumptions.

Let's go through your list and talk about how they happened:

1. No longer allowing 2 v 1 games.  We used to fill this with an AI player when someone would drop or abort prior to the game starting. But then people complained.  The real solution is to bring in another human player but doing so after the match has been generated requires an additional layer which is being done but originally it was believed (wrongly in hindsight) that an AI player would do the trick.

2. Accurately tracking and ranking games.  This works pretty well now but only as of v1.01.  So what happened? A lot of this code was bundled with the original network code that was licensed and when it blew up, so did everything else.  When we began replacing it with new code, this was one of the last things to be fixed.  It's taken care of now as far as I kow.

3. Allowing > 2 v 2.  This isn't as easy as one expects because you're going from 4 players to 6 players to get to 3 on 3 which, unfortunately, requires more bandwidth than a small % of users.  During the beta, nobody had a connection worse than 256 kilobit upload. But it turns out there are still a sizeable # of users on ISDN and low speed DSL.  To go above 2 v 2 we have to find a way to measure bandwidth.

4. Matchmaking based on record is already in.

5. 50% this is the same as item 1.

6. I have experienced this one myself. It appears to be related to people quitting (aborting) early for whatever reason during the hand off and the system doesn't know what to do.  

It's not that these features didn't "work" at release. They did.  The problem is that they worked with a particular set of users (the beta group) and didn't take into account things that are happening in "the real world".  Not that that is any kind of excuse, I'm just telling you what happened.

I've assigned developers from other projects to aid the existing developers at Gas Powered Games and Stardock to address these things.  I play the game myself and I share your frustration.

Thanks for this reply Frogboy, a lot of good information. 

Is there anything in the works to measure bandwidth?  I'd love to play larger games, but I'm glad the decision to cap at 2v2 was made for now (who wants to have a 75% chance of terribly laggy games)... that said, I'd hope some research was being done to improve that. 

Yea, clearly the goal is to get to 5 on 5 pantheon games.  We're working with GPG to come up with a good/easy bandwidth check.

Thanks frog.  I don't mean to sound like a jerk, but it's not clear that's the goal.  I try to keep up on your posts, but I only know what you mention is being worked on and I didn't see that.  Glad to hear it, though!

frog, if you get a chance, would you look here http://forums.demigodthegame.com/355265?

Frog:

On top of everything else, now the game isn't accepting my login/pass info as valid so i can't even play.  I've never been burned so bad on $40 for a game, I enjoyed the premise of playing 4v4 as that makes the game much more exciting than 2v2 multiplayer.  When your limited to 2v2 ranked matches there is an immediate steep learning curve where in a 4v4 game, you have the ability to learn from teammates and learn from their strategies.  Plus 4v4 is simply more exciting. 

You mention above in point #3 that Demigod can only do 2v2 multiplayer due to other not having good connections?  Why not set a connection test threshold so that those people with a good enough connection can do 4v4?  Why did that never get done?  If people couldn't have a good connection in 4v4, what would make it so great that they were in 2v2???  Obviously people on a bad connections from Taiwan to the back woods of Oklahoma are still causing problems in 2v2 all the time, I get a game going 3 out of 10 times!  Why is the mutiplayer after patches still not working 70% of the time?  No wonder I can't 4v4, I can't even 2v2.

I can't even login right now.  Can I please have my money back?

Thanks, hate to be that way, but I just layed down cash for a game with no real single player game that seemingly has a focus on online gaming with seven other people and it simply doesn't work.

Your other games you distributed were of great quality, what happened, I feel burned.

Is there any hope obi wan kenobi?

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Thank you Frog for the reply.  I apologize for some of the smartass comments I've made about this game.  

Based on your candid response/explanation I know you feel our pain and are doing what you can to correct it.

Lets face it, but this game is awesome. Which is why it's frusterating that it's not quite there yet. 

I'm excited for the day that I can simply click pantheon and "Fight!" and play a game in an hour.  Although this post was made out of semi-rage that the game doesn't work, the fact that you understand or care enough to even address these issues makes me confident that you guys'll work it out.  

From a person who was angry when I made this post--Thank you.

Frogboy, might I suggest that users simply choose from a dropdown what their connection speed is? Leave it at "I don't know" if the box is untouched, and place those people into 2v2 games. Other people with good connections would then be able to play larger games.

Although a bandwidth test is probably better in the long run.

Pantheon is so hit or miss.  I spent 50 minutes trying to get into a Pantheon game that was 2v2.  Most of the time the game would launch and then "player has left the game" before it even starts.  I ended up with a game after 50 minutes and the person dropped midway through.  That drop is not a SD problem, but it should not take me 50 minutes to get into a game that is 2v2 in the first instance.  I even had a 2v0 game in that span.

I think Pantheon has got worse since 1.01.

Before, getting a 2v2 was acceptable.

Now, the majority of my games are unequal.

Weird.

Unfortunately no it isnt fixed. Last pantheon ( before 1.01 ) it seemed to work fine for me but now its broken again. I have a very similiar record in the two tournaments but in the first one i had 1326 exp and was rank 1 and now i have 99x exp ...

If it is fixed please post the formula with wich experience is calculated. Another example taken from the pantheon rankings page :

6 kstampy    1,980xp     15,040     2   2    176 minutes
7 baalz        1,966xp      27,505    80 24    3,424 minutes

So a player with 2 wins and 2 looses has more experience than 80-24 ? Its clearly broken so please dont go around saying "its taken care of "

Well, there's no real point in talking about points and rank when most games now is decided in the first second.

ie who has more AIs.

The only thing I can get from the Pantheon score atm (Darkness are winning) is that light players disconnect more often.

(yes that's a stupid conclusion in order to highlight the futility of talking about score)

May I suggest the game keep track of internal benchmark on performance. Most 3v3 games I play, I  emphasise the word 'most' here, ended up with a single or two person with simspeed 0 or lower; even those with perfect ping.

Ideally the match makring system should take care of 3 things: ping, simspeed and bandwidth

There are a lot of people ignoring recommended requirements on this game.

Also I kind of remember before this game was released someone said if soemone dropped out a game another fresh player could jump in with his own DG  (mapbe inherit gold and exp) over the AI on the game to keep it balanced? This would solve most issues.

http://pantheon.demigodthegame.com/player/59367

According to your own stats, you've played a lot more games online than I have.  You have nearly 30 hours game play just on-line not counting single player and you think you should get a refund because you're having trouble logging in today?

In just the last 24 hours or so this is what you've played:

Anyway, since it's clear I can't even answer an original person's question without a bunch of people jumping on me as if I have a magic wand to fix other people's code I'm bowing out.

If anyone needs me, I'll be over in the Elemental forums. 

Thanks for the response and for whatever was done to resolve the login/pw issue... nice to get back online again.

may i get a refund ? because i wanna buy the retail version with the box ,i have it digital only,and now i wanna the box,because i love this game

[quote=Frogboy]1. No longer allowing 2 v 1 games.  We used to fill this with an AI player when someone would drop or abort prior to the game starting. But then people complained.  The real solution is to bring in another human player but doing so after the match has been generated requires an additional layer which is being done but originally it was believed (wrongly in hindsight) that an AI player would do the trick.[/quote]

7 of these started as 2v1 (some with AI some without).  Hell, in the connection info in one of them, one of the players never connected to anyone (you know you get many fails like that too).  Then as soon as he dropped the game started as 2v1.  You (GPG, stardock, whoever wrote net libs or whoever the f#ck is responsible for the connectivity/server part of the game) have bugs that cause people to drop. The game doesn't handle this very well.  Actually it handles it piss poor.  You need to fix these bugs.  If 90% of the games start proper a lot less people are going to complain.  Only then start thinking about complicated stuff.

So the problems I see that need immediate fix are:

1) I think you still have a problem with distributing sockets to all or whatever you do to get people connected.  There are many fails on Pantheon even in the setting up the game phase.  I look at connection info and in more than 50% of the games someone doesn't manage to connect to all people.

2) Games start even when 1) happens, hence the famous 2v1 setup

3) During game load way too often someone gets dropped.  I know my sample isn't too big, but it happens way too much to be just a coincidence or player quiting/aborting.

4) I'm sure the little ui feedback and general slow establishing of game connection and loading makes the things even worse cause people are impatient beasts.  For example, the loading bars for all players in blizzard games are there for a reason.  Learn from others, not from your own mistakes.

P.S. Isn't Stardock as a publisher responsible for the QA of the game?

The guy above is a little angry, but he makes some decent points.

If you play Pantheon, you don't quit out of it, because otherwise people see you as a gigantic quitting whore, and then you can't play custom either.  After that, you are left with essentially nothing except a good old single player matchup.

The angry tone was in response to Frogboy's last 2 posts.  Yeah the guy played for 30 hours.  So did I yesterday, for 8 hours in a single day.  85% of which was spent trying to get a proper game.  So how do we account for that.

With him being the official voice here, he cant allow himself to goint into rage responses.  Yeah we understand he's frustrated and a lot of the cause is out of his hands.  But we are frustrated too and any info from any source is a very welcome one.

As I already posted, we're currently seeing less than 50 games started per hour in pantheon.  We are not dealing with a system that has been overwhelmed with unforseen traffic, we're seeing a system that fails to perform under fairly low load.  Something is serousy wrong if a matchmaking system that starts less than a game per minute fails most of the time. 

That represents my Pantheon experience too.  Custom games work like a charm now so I always return to that.  But playing Pantheon is like pulling teeth - painful to an extreme.  Something has to be broken with it.  I spent at least 50 minutes to an hour yesterday leaving Pantheon games that were 2v1 before the game even started.  Pantheon should be a play method that lets you get into a game within 5 minutes and matches you against people of equivalent skill level - not an exercise in frustration.