No Tutorial???

There's a video tutorial on the home page if you'd like to try that one out.

Thanks FB, I'll take a look, and send the link to my friends before they try it on my Lan.  And, oh, btw, my friends were very interested in DoW2 and Demigod.  Due to Dow2's harsh DRM (I never did get it to work on my lan either, due to the fact GFWL was so sure I was a pirate), and the ease of installing DG and how easy it was to get Lan to work, I'm almost positive several of my friends will be getting DG for sure.  I think it was a coin toss which they would get, so be sure and let your "higher-ups" know the lack of DRM, and not treating them like potential pirates made the sales; I'm sure my friends and I can't be the only ones that feel that way.

Frogboy is the CEO, Brad Wardell.

P.S. Please move your topic out of the Demigod Journal section.

Luckily, the game really doesn't need a tutorial that badly. I was able to just play a bit and then figured it out all on my own. It's easiest to start out as an Assassin and work into the minions later because that makes the game more confusing.

I am going to check out that video tutorial myself so I can show my sister who has yet to play. Sins's tutorial was too long and slow (much as the game is) so I'm glad I didn't have to sit through something like that with Demigod, but it also made jumping in the game really difficult at first. There was a lot of dying and a lot of me saying "what's going on? I have no clue what any of this is". Since everything has a tooltip, that makes it easier once you realize you can sit back and read things over on Easy mode because it's easy .

*Chortle*

Since release I've noticed a trend for people to post things in the forums along the lines of "From my 2 hours and 16 minutes of play I have graduated from Knee Jerk university and for all my learning I do not understand this aspect of Demigod... which is an outrage!"

Then a slightly confused mob gathers with pitchforks and torches and hurls abuse at the gates of Stardock Castle while Dr "Frogboy" Frankenstein speaks from the battlements "No no... you do not understand ze nature of zer work I am doing..."

Its crazy. No this game does not need a tutorial. Or a campaign. Or a DotA makeover. Or DRM. Or a cluttered UI spewing information directly into your visual cortex faster than you can process. Stop!

Instead of logging into the forums with the beginnings of a bile fueled manifesto straining to be released from its cerebral hate cage why not... ask for help? ask why something is the way it is? Since when was inexperience with a new product such an assault upon the ego that people feel compelled to establish their "knowledge" through a derisive and damaging tirade?

Does a father issue his son with a 600 page manual and a comprehensive step by step tutorial of advanced theory... or does he just give him a ball and let him kick it around for a while and figure things out himself?

Which is more fun?

In my extensive experience of computer games the manual is that thing you read on the crapper to see if you missed anything after you blow your weekend playing the actual game. (I still do this with the Dread Lords manual despite it being horribly out of date)

I would say the primary function of the AI in this game is to educate a player on the basics before they move onto live opponents. This provides the perfect arena in which to learn about the game, experiement with different ideas and after you close the program none of the AI will remember how well you played - but you will remember what you learned.

edit: I forgot to say that I think Frogboy is a saint for always coming back into the forums to speak reason. What a Sysiphean task.

I couldn't decide whether to laugh or obsessively flame PurplePaladin for this.

Brad usually goes by one of two nicknames — Draginol or Frogboy. The first tends to be a personal screen name, while the latter is often used instead of his name when representing Stardock. - from Brad's Wikipedia page.

anyway what is this thread doing in the Journal section?

I to was disapointed with the lack of tutorial. However I played 2 rounds of the parathon/campagin single player and started picking things up fairly quickly just by relying on standard RTS and RPG knowldge. However, I would like a way to pause the game in single player while I am decideing what skills to level up or what items to buy, at least untill I learn them.

The bigest suprise for me was when I started the parathon/campagin I thought it would be a one on one fight not a all out good vs evil. I assume this is unique to the campagin and you can chose 1v1 1v2 etc when you go online or play scenarios.

Post moved.

You can pause by using F10 to open up the menu. Early in the beta the pause key worked, but for some inexplicable reason they took out that keybind so now you have to open the menu.

Unfortunately, you won't be able to actually look at any skills while the menu is open.

There are 3 different online modes: Custom, Skirmish, and Pantheon. Custom lets you set maps, teams, victory conditions, and other settings (starting gold, tower hp, creep strength, etc). Skirmish is a basic auto-matcher by player rankings, you don't get to set up anything. Pantheon is also an auto-matcher for the persistant MP Tournament of Light vs Dark.

Making a joke, AND, complementing FB for the lack of DRM (comapired to DoW2) gets people all riled???  Being surprised there is no tutorial in a game that is so unique and has so very many items/consumables/spells upsets people??? YEESH!  Consider Xanx and meditation.  All I can say that I KNOW all my casual gaming friends, I want them to like/play the games I play, I want them to play DG with me, and I'm totally sure if they have to try this game without me there to explain things and hand-hold, they would very likely get really flustered and probably give up on it.  Not everyone is an expierienced long time rts game player or beta player with built-in knowlege of how these games work.

Despite libertarian, Republican drivel like this, I read manuals and appreciate it when given a good one. I don't appreciate it when I am expected to figure out games by myself. I'm on  the fence concerning Demigod and came on this board seeking information. Learning that the manual is poor (no surprise, Stardock manuals are invariably poor), that there is no turorial, no campaign (I wanted one in Sins also), and you cannot pause the game to ponder decisions (I really, really hate this) have pretty much pushed me off the fence  and I will probably give the game a pass.

libertarian != republican.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Party_(United_States)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_parties_in_the_United_States#Politics_comparison

i know its off topic,  but this kind of thing just irritates the piss out of me, and highlights exactly why it is allowing everyone, educated on the issues or otherwise, have a vote is such a bad idea.

I love a good manual too but only as a resource of information for things that I may have missed after spending at least several hours playing.

Due the high frequency of patches Stardock manuals are rendered obsolete very quickly. Stardock know this and produce manuals that touch on the broader ideas that are less likely to change. Give it a couple of months and I'm willing to bet something that is in the manual will be flat wrong despite the efforts to avoid it.

Even the day 0 patch would have rendered an extensively detailed manual useless.

Btw I'm Australian so accusing me to be a Republican is silly. Why bring up politics anyway? Libertarian is something I'll look on as a compliment instead of an epithet.

If you want to know what irritates me it is people full of piss and vinegar who come on these forums and spew bile about a game they have never played and try to influence people not to buy it.

It's your money I suppose, but Demigod is really easy to pick up the mechanics of, especially compared to Sins.

Having a pause key while in single player so you can take your time to read EQ, skill powers, etc would be really really nice.

Along with if you're dead, being able to still pull up the skill tree so you can plan/research what you'll get next.

Hopefully those things will be included in a patch soonish.

You're free to do that, but I think you'll be missing out on a great game.  While I found the lack of pause and being able to read menus annoying it was not a deal breaker.

• As you play the game you get more familar with the demigods and thier skill trees.
• As you play you get more familar with the equipment.
• As you play you get more familar with the Fortress upgrades.
• As you play you get more familar with the maps.

It's all a learning experiance, and it's not _that_ bad to be thrown in the deep end (granted that's also how I like to learn/play) but I reconize that others like to take it slower.  They like to use the stairs to go into the pool and move slowly so they can have time to adjust to the water tempature.

The best advice for those players I can give is:

Start a game with the easest AI, and try not to worry about the game.  I.E. who cares if you win or lose, just spend time in the game reading your Demigods skill tree and looking at the Equipment as well as the Fortress upgrades.

Once you're done examining stuff, restart the game and try playing for real.

Exactly, in the end you're just complaining about nothing. I personally hate tutorials. They treat you like an idiot and offer next to nothing about _actual_ gameplay. The only useful stuff are things you find out RIGHT away like clicking moves your character.

It's very simple. Open up a skirmish, open up options and take a look at all the hotkeys. Pull up the shop, go through each item. Pull up your skills, go through each skill. Bam, you're done. Now go play to memorize the items\skills over time. The only other things a tutorial would of covered would be things I honestly hope you do not need help with, like moving and targeting.

And as I said, a tutorial wouldn't help you with the important things. No tutorial would go through each item one by one or through a list of builds that might work for you. The actual content of the game you'd have to figure out yourself. Just like nearly every game, go figure.

Demigod is one of those easy to learn difficult to master games, the only way you're going to get better is by playing. a tutorial would of been a waste of time, in my humble opinion.

While I stand by my previous remarks, they really have been rendered moot by further research. Call me dumb, but I did not realize that Demigod was primarily aimed at online players with the SP mode an afterthought or merely training for multiplayer. Since, except for MMOs, I never play online, I no longer have any interest in the game.

Meh.

I like the SP game.

Although i am enjoying Demigod and think it was worth the money so far.. I have to say i am also disapointed at the lack of a good manual. The manual they included, they might as well not have, since it is very insulting to the player's intelligence. I wanted to be able to read about the individual skill abilities and item stats while taking a dump! The tutorial and pause features arent especially missed imo.

Cerulean_Shaman,

 I think youre dismissing the complexities of a game like this! Its not like players can look at the shop, citadel, "secret" shop items ang go bam! i get it all. Plus youre ignoring the fact that if im playing as Oak, I dont know what Regulus' skills are.. No sir, This game requires some diligent studying of skills and items, and then it requires thought about how to combine the skills and items into a proficient build.. All the items and skills couldve equaled a great fucking manual. .. or at least we should have all that info consolidated unto a web site... which will probably happen, but i dont see it yet...

I don't understand what you mean by your comment. It looks like you only play MMOs online. Doesn't that mean the Pantheon mode is for you? In this game, much like others I own, I play them multiplayer online, but over my own personal LAN. That's the only way I play PC games these days. Sometimes a game like Braid will cause me to beat it, but I had a friend force me to beat Mass Effect. If you play MMOs, then you like a lot of the same all the time. This game adds some randomness into the equation and the Pantheon game is a persistent world so that should fix things up just fine in MMO style.

You can get nearly in-game pause by hitting the numpad - key down to -10 speed if you want to look through skill trees, shops, etc. in single player.  Also handy is hitting plus a bunch of times to get through the respawn timer and * with 1 second to go to jump back to normal speed.

Oo, nice tips there counterfeit. That's gonna be how I teach people to play. Wow.

I can honestly say I was initially surprised that DG didn't have a tutorial. I thought to myself, "A RTS with no tutorial? This is madness!!" After playing for about 30 minutes I started to realize, "This is Sparta!!!!" DG doesn't play like a conventional RTS from what I have seen and it really isn't hard to pick up and play.

I would suggest spending time playing against the computer A.I. Even at the default difficulty, you have time to learn about items/armor, favor, and upgrading the fortress. Admittedly, I haven't played against any human opponents yet, but I am sure I will be in no time at all.