Demigod nails it with beta 3B!

I only got to play a little bit this afternoon but I agree. It feels good. I can't remember the last time I've had this much fun with the game. I do hope they keep working on the computer AI but otherwise, it's playing nicely. Great work!

Sounds like you guys havent been playing much of beta 3A

i played beta 3a some but last night played beta 3b. spectacular game.

Unless they've drastically improved connectivity and significantly lessened the prevalence of disconnects, I can't see how you could possibly be having so much fun.

Heres to hoping!  If this game won't be all that competitive, I'm confident that it can at least be pretty fun.  Need to be able to consistently play a full game with other people without lots of lag before that's possible, though.

The disconnect problem is pretty bad. I think that's a nature of the Internet. But Demigod doesn't handle disconnects as graceful as it should.

I haven't had any problems connecting to people. I've had trouble keeping them in game though.

Thanks.

We're feeling pretty good about Demigod at this point.

I have a short list of things left that need to be done for the release date:

#1 More graceful handling of disconnects.

#2 Continue to improve connectivity. Luckily, there's a lot of time for that. I remember only 2 weeks ago someone saying that the connectivity is so bad that there's no way we'd ever nail it.  I think now, most users (Based on what I see on the chat channel) have no problem connecting to games. Yes, there are some people still but they're increasingly edge cases and now we have a solid month to work with those people.

#3 More Strategic Depth.  Little things like making it so if you teleport your abilities are disabled for 3 seconds, items and powers that address rebounding, more pacing changes, additional balancing of certain Demigods.  But again, we have an entire month to tweak that sort of thing.

Then, after release, we can look at other things like adding more Demigods -- based on customer feedback, adding more items, adding more types of powers, etc.

I think we have a really solid foundation to work with.  

Next week I hope we get beta 3C out so we can start to see the skill ratings and more serious ladder stuff. I've seen previews internally and they look great. You'll be able to see which Demigods are the best statistically, you'll be able to see the most popular maps, the most popular game types played.  And by release we should have clan support in, friend support, filtering of who you play, etc.

Lots of exciting stuff.

Nice Frogboy you've really nailed what needs to be done with those three points. Abilities disabled for 3 seconds after teleport would be really great as it would actually give the victim a chance to do something instead of helplessely being killed straight away.

However I am not too sure connectivity is as good as you have mentioned. From what I've seen in chat people are still finding it pretty hard to join games and I have found it a bit harder to start those larger games going - however, to be fair, I have only had about two days of playing Beta 3C and havent had that much time to test it out with lots of different people. But still, I dont think anyone really thinks that they have "no problem connecting to games". Best way would be to just ask around.

well, they have. I have some problem with the new beta though (or just bad luck in the choice of my opponents?); the netcode starts to be really efficient, some polishing is needed, but there is still a month for that. fingers crossed, i hope this game will have the success it merits.

Just as a kind of suggestion; I think the strategy is pretty tight as it stands. It could be better, but I think time is better spent largely on other things. I think you should wait for a large update (after the release) to make more changes, not only to get more player feedback, but also to give yourselves time to reflect and simply observe. Right now you've got a narrow bandwidth of feedback. Also in adjuct with that comment, I think a form, a feedback form that can be launched from the game would be a good thing. Not every thought deserves a whole conversation (i.e. a forum thread). A simple multiple choice form, with a comment/description section might serve you well. Just thoughts on the matter.

I disagree, adding strategic depth to the game is very important - that is, if they still care about this game having any success as a competitive game.

how is the persistent part f the game coming along? Any news on that?

Still unable to connect to games.

Getting kinda worried ... seeing release getting closer and closer.

Sure would suck ending up with a Multiplayer game where one can't play multiplayer LOL.

Just curious... did you test your netcode with international/transatlantic connections at all ?

None of my friends over here in Germany can connect to games (not even when we try to set up 1v1) and i saw a post here earlier with someone from the Netherlands who has the same issue.

If only we could get old style netcode (i.e. WORKING netcode lol) where one can fix any problems ... simply by tweaking the router, i couldn't be happier at this point.

Game is looking great otherwise... , but playing vs. AI gets old fast

Well i hope that you take the time to take the time to contact Cari at the Demigod IRC otherwise is you're partipation in the beta is pointless. This beta is mainly because they want to avoid all router stuff so every one can play multiplayer and i must say that it is a relief to be able to play online from 2 different computers (same router) without setting all those ports.

I hope that not too many nat traversal problems arise because of all the previously settings for other computers....

Connectivity has improved greatly. When i first started beta testing i could connect to 1 of about 30 attempts, where other people could connect to half of the games. I hoped my participation in cari_elf's network testing lead to some good results, being one of the more distant players (Australia).

There are still some very minor issues with connection but a restart of the game usually cures it. Kudos for the connection fix.

I hope the connection speed will be improved

My main worry is that we are dealing with such a small group of testers that even a few people who have issues could be a lot more. Did they say they would do open beta at any point to at least attempt giving the online a larger base of testing?

I highly doubt there's going to be an open beta at this point. The connectivity stuff looks pretty close to resolved from what I've seen.

The closed beta will stop a week before release then shortly after release there will be a demo available.  As far as I know there has been no mention of opening up the beta.