Because that's what it looks like to most people. Small payments pile up to be big ones.

The fact thyey've said they expect to ship with 8 playable demigods(for a 5v5 game) scares me enough into walking the line to cancel the pre-order. If i hear something else i don't like i'll just cancel it. I got fucked over in supcom with a lack of patching serious bugs, and i got fucked over in FA with patching serious bugs. Baseball players get 3 strikes and GPG is walking the line in my opinion.

 

Yeah.

A FA patch made it uncompatable with my computer (won't work with Logitech webcams installed.)

The customer support solution was to uninstall my webcam.

 

That's bullshit.  I already have a bad taste in my mouth with GPG as it is so it won't take too much for me to cancle my preorder. :/

I knew it wasn't going to be many demigods, like 12-18 I thought.. but EIGHT?

With only 8 demigods, I'm already ready to cancel my pre-order . I hope I'll be able to do that with GPG.

 

I don't mind having 8 for beta, but I hope we'll get at least 16 with the release in 2009.

that, and its harder to balence a lump sum of heros right at the start. its easier to release with a small number. then add and balence them in 1 by 1

IT also limits what you can do with the new heros abilities in order for it to balanced to the "core" ones then..

 

I wasn't expecting 20, but i thought there'd be 12 or so.

 

REgulas' skill list also sounds extremely lame.

Good thing Stardock has a good reputation for solving problems.

Stardocks Reputation, and Good support + GPG's good grpahics and UI = Great game.

They each make up for what the other lacks.

Micro expansions are a much better solution IMO.

I would rather pick and choose what I want.  You can be sure that users will also hae the choice to simply purchase the compilation later too.

It's the publisher, not the developer, that detemrines how many free updates there is.  Being angry with GPG over the number of updates to Supreme Commander is pointless, they have no say in the matter.

It was that precise thing that got Stardock into publishing in the first place.  We like doing lots of updates but have had publishers tell us no because they wanted us to use their QA process but they had no QA budget.

I'm trying to understand this.  8 is a LOT of Demigods.  That's like saying Starcraft is lame because it only has 3 races.  A Demigod is an extremely unique entity in the game.

In a game with 5 v 5 games and such distinctive characters, 8 doesn't feel like that many, especially compared with something like DotA. I understand the amount of work that goes in, but these make it feel chintzy,

So when you play Starcraft does it feel chintzy in a 5 on 5 game that there's only 3 choices of who to play as?

I think some of you are taking the Dota comparisons a little too far.   If we wanted to, we could crank out 100 Demigods by just reskinning the Demigods and tweaking their stats and such but the idea here is for each Demigod to be very very unique and be a compelling gaming experience. It's not equivalent to a Dota hero other than in the most high level way.

Nah, I understand completely. It's just that there's such good lore that I think it'll really feel alive, and two repeated demigods would kind of break immersion. I don't much care, but I do understand where the objections come from. In all honesty, I much prefer depth to breadth, and if the demigods ooze the lore the way they could, then that'd be worth the slight immersion break. Plus, with that much magic, who's to say the elder gods aren't playing with space and time to play out their personal 'what if?' scenario? That's my explanation unless you come up with something better. It's really no problem for me and I'd much rather 8 demigods done perfectly than 8 done well and 2 done badly if you can't get 10 done, but it'd really be good if you could get ten done. If it was in the guaranteed DLC, that'd almost be as good for me, but it'd probably help sales considerably if you had 10.

 

P.S. I love how you switched accounts. That was cool. .

Since we're arguinging with devs thought I'd pitch my arguments:

Well first of all games with 'races' have a lot more art assets, like you guys maybe have a race worth of art assets, like what 6 units and 8 heroes, with probably like another 8 units for the generals?

On the fact that a demigod is an extremely unique game entity? Give me a break, of the three demigods I played there were 3 click to hit nukes, that did damage to one target, half of regulus's abilities were mines, and the other two (an aoe and a nuke) were very simple as well as his passives, increased range and maim? seen that as have I seen all the others as well, well maybe the tower of light rook thing was decently unique (RA2 had it) but the rest meh. If you want unique abilities look at maps like AotZ, DoE (http://forum.valor-zeal.org/), or HoSK (http://www.hoskmap.com/), a lot of those abilities are more unique than the one's I saw at PAX. How hard was it to copy torchbearers ice stun and make it a damage hit? Or the fact that each demigod has the same skill that takes up a third of their levels?

(Hell even SoaSE had more 'heroes' with rather unique abilities!)

And on the same topic, DoE and AotZ, are made by one guy. He skins and codes the entire maps (ok the skins are also done by other people), but they're doing it as a hobby, for a couple of hours a day. You guys have a full fleged game company, doing it as a job (and therefore working on it a lot more), with money to back it!

HoSK even has customizebal heroes! And these maps have only a about a dozen heroes a side.

So, I love the game so far, but don't give me this BS about extremely unique when one man teams have come up with more unique abilities and hero concepts. Escpecially when your 'unique' demigods are rather bland in their game play aspects (but the story is damn good). This sounds rough but see my much more positive post as well. (Also I understand the game Isn't fineshed yet, which is why I plan on being in the beta, to help make demigod the best game yet)

He has premade art and effects. That is so unbelievably helpful it can't be believed. I'm making a TC for sins, and I could be done with nine races and the model guys have only put together half a race so far. I fully understand that they have an entire studio, but the art is the limiting factor, and that's not something IceFrog has to worry about. He also doesn't have to worry about issues with an untested engine. All he has to do is the scripting, and he's had years to do it. There's a gulf between the tasks of making DotA and demigod.

That's like suggesting that in Sins of a Solar Empire, we should have had 50 capital ships for 32 different races. Then it would have been just a totally awesome game.  Right?

I mean, in Galactic Civilizations, we have 12 unique civilizations with the ability to create your own custom civilizations from scratch. Therefore, Galactic Civilizations must just be a lot better game than Starcraft, Sins, and Supreme Commander combined right? I mean, isn't that what matters? How many units there are?

There are two primary reasons for limiting the # of Demigods.  The first is gameplay. On paper, having a gazillion Demigods to choose from probably sounds super l33t awesome.  But in practice, it would be painful to properly balance and trivialize the uniqueness of each Demigod. 

Second, there is the cost.  Creating all the assets for a Demigod is incredibly expensive. As Chris said, a single Demigod costs well in excess of $100k to make.  In a free mod, you can get away with reskinning units from WC3 in multiple ways (storm spirit vs. battle master for instance or holy knight vs. Moon rider).  But in a commercial game of 2008, players expect very stark, very apparent differences not just visually but in how they move and function and play.

Moreover, we have to balance test each of these Demigods on many different maps to make sure that their powers, size, and other capabilities work well with what we put on the maps.

But I heartily agree that anyone who is going to be flaming us for "only" having 8 unique Demigods on release should absolutely get out of the beta now and preferably stick with Dota because that is not the direction we want to take. 

It would be like someone saying that Counterstrike "sucks" because they "only" have a handful of differnet types you can play while some freeware mod or whatever lets players choose amongst dozens of different types. 

But like in Counterstrike, Demigod focuses less on the # of types and more on the equipment and items you obtain for your Demigod.

After all, I would think it would be pretty obvious that if we wanted to just go for quantity of heroes that we could easily crank out 100+ Demigods using the same 8 bone structures we've got now. But that would dilute the uniqueness of the Demigods.

Yea, you'd almost think you had played a pre-beta of the game or something...

I don't think most people would agree that the rook is "bland" or the queen of thorns (to name two examples). But YMMV.

Remember what we've been saying on the forums: Do not judge the final game based on the betas. This beta is just that - a beta. If you're thinking you're getting a game to play that's going to be fun and in a near-finished state, then you should drop out of the beta now as you'll be disappointed.

 

There has to be either a decent amount of demigods (I'd say 15ish) or the demigods we're getting have to be more in-depth and versatile in skill choices. I'd think new abilities are easier to add in than entire new demigods, so this shouldn't be hard.

I'd hoped for more than eight as well, but it does take quite a bit to make those kinds of things.

More skills would also be nice, but even those would require more balancing and any new movements would have to be added to the animations (And also effects/sounds/etc.). 'Tis a sticky issue, this.

 

Our plan is to have a lot of equipment and items.  In Dota, for instance, there was a UI limitation on the # of items you could have. To work around that, you end up with lots of shops but also lots of Demigods in order to provide a variety of strategies.

In Demigod, we want each Demigod to be particularly special (this will be particularly important in the single player quest and the multiplayer persistent tournament mode) so the items and equipment become the key elements to allow veteran players to match their play style and strategy on a given map.

I sure hope so, Id imagine that more demigods would be added just like PATCHES, it would really be a cheap move to sell them.

if 500,000 copies are sold... the companiy makes $2,500,000 thats a lot of money... even if it costs $10 per disc they still get $2,000,000... and that more then covers any cost paid to make the game! For example SOaSE has sold 500,000 copies, and IMO the campaign/storyline they gave is crappy, all it is is skrimish.

My point is, are they cheap enough to make us pay MORE, the values I listed are for 1 game... They will make more and make a lot more money as well!!

Is this single player quest different depending on the charecter chosen, or is it similar for each charecter? (Similar like... Soul Calibur 4.) I could imagine that customization would take a lot of assets.

Can you be sure of that? They've already quoted that it takes $100,000 to make one demigod, and that doesn't cover the environment, UI, engine modifications, etc.

 

Depth and breadth, when taken to similar extents have analgous effects. If you can make it so that my queen of thorns and the other guy's queen of thorns play radically differently if we make different choices, then I'm completely fine with that. I start getting pissy if you don't have either, and I'm confident that the demigods will be deep. We shall see.

First let me add, that you missed this edit:

As I realized that I was coming off as if I was judging the game prematurely. I really do like the game, and intend to keep my pre-order. In fact playing the game probably made me keep it, if I had heard this info from another source I might have considered otherwise.

But I'm an argumentative kinda person so... I'm going to argue the general feeling, of most people, that there should be a couple more (like a dozen total):

I admit art is a limiting factor but, the $100,000 a demigod seems a little over the top. Lets say you have 4 artists, which you pay $120,000 a year (quite a bit more than industry standard, according to this handy PAX game development book) They work 2 months on each demigod (And only on that demigod) and then the art departments share of hardware, software, and building expenses ect. is $20,000 a demigod (Meaning thats $160,000 for 8 demigods for software, hardware, and rent/food/and what ever) Then there are units (just counting this time wise) which would probably be a 2 weeks to a month each. so 16 months (demigods) + 2*2 weeks + 2*3weeks + 1 month would be about 1 year, 8 months and 2 weeks.

So that scheme means that you pay your artists a ton, buy really really expensive stuff (I do believe that the programs and high end computers + 10% of the rent does not equal about $160,000). So 2-4 more doesn't seem that unreasonable, even if it is $100,000.




No about 15% of the models are custom, and almost evrey unit has new skins.





I never mentioned DotA, I mentioned 3 other maps that are similar to DotA but only have two dozen heroes or so. And I would like to hear it too, but I think art is what you've used so far and I can understand that partially, and you give reasons below so we'll get to that.




Thats not what I am saying, I am saying 2-4 more, like another race. Not like 10 times as many.




Do I hear beta? And while you're making the pretty models, what are the programmers doing?




Again only 2-4 not 10 times as many. Like one new mode in the CS:S analogy.




I did and I loved it! I am merely arguing the point of the majority of the people. And in the first post I was merely disliking how you keep pushing the unique thing. When I originally heard you pushing it, I thought you guys were gonna have some stuff that would blow me away, what I got instead was something that blew me away visually and story wise, but was meh thats kinda cool game play wise. But I still like the game a lot.

Also your post kinda confuses me, as I never said anything to the number only to the 'very very' unique aspect as that was bugging me. Project Pet Peeve much? Mine at the moment is you guys pushing unique, and it's very understandable that yours is people with huge numbers.

So I still love the game, I'm just an argumentative person and I feel someone needs to argue the point of the majority of the people, and 2-4 makes sense, as it is you have a whole game mode that is unplayable. (5v5 unique)

That's fine for me.

I simply hope you will not make the mistake of releasing booster-packs 1-2 months after the game ship(instead of delaying it). It would sound to me like an unfinished game that the company try to sell the game parts by parts.

But wait, this is as stupid as saying "in CoD4 there are 40+ weapons", how can you compare a pure RTS game with a "Revolutionary strategy/action game", not because there is "strategy" in both that they're made to be played the same way.

 

In my opinion 8 Demigods is not enough, 8 will surely make your game boring in less than a "casual month", and how would you sell dlc to someone who doesn't want to play a boring game?