Actually, GPG is Delivering Promises

I believe the theme song for this thread shall be...

Posted:By Island Dog Posted December 8, 2008 1:12:31 PM

from what i remember they said making maps is too expensive ( i remember correct it was Frogboy itself, not sure). Right now its very hard to find 4v4 that wont lag. Not to mention 5v5 (i am yet to play brothers and mandala in demigods multiplayer. i did on gameranger ;))so far we got 2 maps used all the time (cataract,prison) maps used from time to time(crucible and exile, sometimes leviathan) and maps that u wont see at all (brothers, mandala). so we got 5 palyable maps * 8 characters *2 valid builds per character = 80 - after 80 games there is nothing to discover here

I reckon maps are as important as new demigods. Little less important than favor items and other itmes. But biggest aspect that need to adressed is bug fixing. I hope 1.2 wont bring any new exploits/bugs

I played Mandala and Brothers a lot...

But it would be nice if GPG made another 3v3 map and a 2v2 map for example .

I'm totally for new maps and I think they can cut down on the costs if they recycle some of the 'old' backgrounds. The environment from Zikurat, Crucible, Leviathan or Mandala could easily be reused for new maps. I think the difficult part would be to come up with interesting, new designs for 3v3 maps that play completely different than Cataract but are not too big.

You forgot zikkurat irek.

Wondering just how much of the post-realease budget got blown on the networking shenanigans, if they are so optimistic about the stardock/gpg collaborations. I was somehow under the impression there were 5 major updates planned for the year, i can't remember now where i got that information, but i can't help but think that major content updates were traded for connectivity and stability upgrades?

Nice idea about tying favour points to a selected demigod though. Better then the whole light vs dark, especially if thematically only one demigod can make it to the top. A chance to somehow implement now?

Have anyone read the Stardock Customer Report 2009?

https://www.stardock.com/press/Reports/Stardock2009.pdf

Here some citations from that report:

"For Stardock, the more significant shock of Demigod has been the discovery of the low number of PC gamers who play strategy games online. (...) Despite this, only 23% of people who have purchased Demigod have ever even attempted to logon to play Internet multiplayer."

and

"This is in stark contrast to MMORPGs and FPS’s which tend to have very large online communities. Our conclusion is that strategy games that we make and publish in the future will support multiplayer but will not sacrifice the single player experience to do so."

So I personally assume that supporting the online players might not be the higest priority of GPG/Stardock anymore, as they are a small minority. That larger maps may have issues with lag is probably not that much important as most players seem to play only single player or within the lan, where lag is no issue.

I did read the report and am really glad SD continues to share.  From what I've read here and there, this doesn't surprize me at all re:single player utilization.  The great news is that as long as the game is selling like hotcakes, there is incentive for SD in continued support of the game.  Additionally, I'm pretty sure that Brad mentioned before that he's more in it for the long haul.  As in Demigod will still be raking in sales in the future as it will continue to be available for sale on Impulse and will be promoted via sales, etc. 

As far as we poor folks who love DG for multiplayer, we're still getting clan support (no eta that I'm aware of), impulse is still slated to get VOIP at some point.  Its really just a waiting game... which we are all used to (patch is coming out last week, today, next week).  Not to say that any of us really like the waiting game, but SD being clear with why there was a delay continues to impress me. 

I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of feedback for DG is coming from the small community of online players, so I actually do believe that supporting online players is still a priority.  I don't feel like we're being dropped by SD in favor of single player.  They could leave DG exactly as it now and they'd still see sales coming in, but we are still getting updates.  My 2 cents. 

I agree with Pacov, Frogbay and Stardock in general have shown a touch of class by releasing that report. 

Thanks SD, you've definitely earned my support.

j

I watched this interview and it just makes me..... sad

It is really sad to see that the people that originally created this game, had really high hopes for it, they really believed that it will be top of the game industry, but it didnt work out as expected.

It is also sad to see all these awesome movies/trailers of Demigod, while it doesnt have a story-like Singleplayer.

Mike talks about Impulse match making system By Stardock, Which we never saw any, and if u are thinking about Ready to Play, this is not impulse and also it doesnt work very well.

Mike also talks about new Demigods, items, maps as DLC.....

Oh Well

You call this matchmaking?

I wanted to say that if the online players were of course the top most focus for the game when it was developed. As it showed that they are actually not the majority of the people that bought the game this probably could take some shift in priorities. This does not mean to completely drop support for online players of course but to take the others more into account. In many cases their interests will be identical anyhow. For example a new map or a new Demigod would be welcome for every player of Demigod. On the other hand an improved AI would be of more interest for a single player while some reduction in networking so big maps with 5vs5 can be easily played online would be of interrest for an online player only. So if the budget is limited decisions will be made what is done and what is not done.

Though I think that online players shout the loudest in the forums so their needs will be more likely to be addressed.

You are probably referring to advanced features, like team matchmaking etc. You should clarify on that and not simply say "which we never saw any".

Yes Spooky that is what i meant. Teams matchmaking, quick matched games, matching of premades vs premades, etc etc.

Some things that are really important but DG does not have them.