I think the problem lies in the ridiculously OP rewards given for killing a demigod.

You get gold (500+level*100) and XP (not sure how much, but i guess its proportional to the gold gain), and the opponent gets benched for 20-30 seconds. Even worse, if someone just so much as coughs at the victim, they also get half the gold reward.

He gets no gold during that time and not XP, while you also keep your regular income and can farm further XP from creeps.

More gold means you will be able to afford better items, and more XP will mean more HP/Mana/Armor/Skills. So what happens when the victim respawns? He will have an even harder time against you, making it more likely that he will die again giving you even more gold and XP.

A vicious cycle that will spiral towards the eventual doom of the side that gets behind in kills.

This is why there is practically no chance of a comeback if the opponent knows what it does.

What they could do: Fix gold rewards for killing demigods. There is really no reason a level20 is worth more than a level 1. If anything, killing a level20 is easier (as you also have comparatively better skills/equipment) than killing someone at level1. So fix the reward and modify it based on level difference inside a -90% / +100% range and 20% steps. So if a level10 kills a level10, the killer gets the standard reward 500 gold. If he kills a level 5, he gets 500 - 5*20% (capped at -90%) = 50 gold. If he kills a level 15 or 20, he gets 500 + 5*20% (capped at +100%) = 1000 gold. Optionally, you can forget about the cap for killing higher level demigods.. after all, killing a level 20 at level 10 might sure be worth 1500 gold as well.

Also.. instead of giving fixed reward for participating demigods, pay them based on the damage they did. (divide the reward between them)

Obviously the numbers above are ad-hoc, they are merely meant to illustrate the principle i think the game should follow. Nonetheless.. not giving insane rewards for killing demigods 5 levels below you would go a long way towards helping the weaker side recover and would also make sense.

I've just come out a game where the opposing team had a godlike player and 2 others with streaks, while I was 0 - 5, the rest of my team being 0 3 and 0 4. Needless to say, we were getting owned. We turned it around and eventually won. What did we do?

1) I bought all the gold upgrades as soon as they were available. Yes, even currency 3 at level 7. This gave my other two teammates the cash influx needed to catch up to them.

2) My teammates bought creeps as soon as they were available. This means that they never had a creep advantage.

3) We avoided all fighting and cap locked our portals when retreating. This way we didn't feed. When we did fight, it would be guerilla warfare, meaning spits, mines, and fireballs before promptly retreating. Then, we healed, came back, and tried to gank someone.

Eventually we got to wr lvl 10, got giants, got a bunch of cap locks and perma cap locked their portal. We then used that distraction to cap the rest of the maps and cap lock as well. We by this time had significant amounts of gold, and I was able to get Aegis of Giant (16k). This allowed me to tank their entire team all by myself. And thus, we turned it around, cap locked both their portals, killed their cit, and I ended with a 9 kills 7 deaths score. Not bad

So: gold, creeps, cap locks, and harass. The golden rules for the losing team.

Creeps means monsters or reinforcements or minions or whatever this game calls em. I call em creeps. We got priests and angels at lvl 7, after I got currency 3, then Catapults right away at level 8 and Giants right away at level 10.

Feed means dying repeatedly to the enemy team's heroes, who were vastly superior. We simply retreated wheneever there was an engagement. We were way behind in experience, about 3-4 levels on average iirc. But we still pulled through.

Much like RTS games...

The greater the disparity in skill level/coordination in teams the more likely that a comeback won't happen.

For example:

Lets say player skill is rated 1-10, with 10 being god like and 1 being noob.

Game #1

Team A: Player Skill = 10

Team B: Player Skill = 1

No matter what team B does, the chances of a comeback are pretty much impossible.

Game #2

Team C: Player Skill 5

Team D: Player Skill 5

In this game the odds of a comeback actually happening is very high, because the skill level of both opponents is very close.  This type of match up tends to lead to some of the better experiences in a match/game.

How much should demigod try to force a more even match?  It's a great debate in game design.  Some designers think that very little should handicap the winning team or likewise very little bonus should be given to the losers.  This is a harsher system and the main argument is that it highlights player skill.

Other games like DoW2, have an upkeep system so that if you have more units built then your income slows down.  This basically penalize the winner and allows for the loser more of a chance to catch up.  It's overall a fairly minor tweak but it helps draw imbalanced match ups slightly closer.  I suspect it does nothing for a 1 Vs 10 skill match up -- but it might help in a 8 Vs 10. 

Of course if it help is very little it leaves the question, should a 8 skill beat a 10?  If that's all it does, should not the 10 skill player deserve to win?

-------------------------------------------

As far as Demigod is concerned I like the ideas that player skill could matter.  If I've got 100 games under my belt and my ELO ranking is really high, killing me should net more gold then killing someone who just started playing.  This could be a very interesting system.  But not sure how fair or balanced it would be.

Other ideas I've read on these forums and liked is, diminishing returns.  If Y player keeps killing X, after the first death they would start getting less and less reward.  Maybe after Z time, it would reset to full reward.  This would mostly be a system for helping newer players.

It might be as simple of just decreasing the gold gained at lower levels so that the game ramps up faster as people level up but the weight of killing someone eairly on is not as great as it is now.

Anyway... lots of rambling but hopefully it makes since and gives you some thing to think about

-Jara

That all gives you a chance of a comeback, if the opponent refuses to do the same even after they notice you doing it.

If they start out using caps and beat the living sh*t outta you that way, then theres just no way you will turn the game around.

In other words: turn a game around? definitely possible.. as long as you are better than the other team.

Doing that is very artificial and would push good players to create new accounts to get benefits.

On the other hand, if the cash gained from kills in game would depend on the amount of cash already available for both players it should balance things and leave more room for comebacks. Let's say player 1 has got 5k worth of equipment and citadel upgrades and gets killed by player B with 20k worth, player B would get 500 gold, if player A kills B he would get 5000 gold instead => he'd still be behind player B equipment wise but he would catch up quickly to him whereas B would not be able to get too much ahead but would still keep it's advantage as long as he doesn't get killed 4-5 times in a row. It'd help a little to mitigate the slipery slope effect without ever completly negating the advantage one got early, unless you make many mistakes.

I received no replies to the scenario above.

Perhaps with a little bump and the following analysis, people might be able to view the game from a new direction:

The green line is the winning players while the red line are the loosing party.

The point I'm trying to make is that in classic RTS games, both sides have roughly equal amounts of fun (Zerg rush excluded) which lasts quite far into the game. However, in Demigod, the downward spiral starts very early in the game and keeps deteriorating as the game keeps stacking bonuses onto the winning side.

I wonder if part of the reason is because GPG eliminated the "strategy" portion of the game, in favour of it being almost purely tactical?

To the person who started this post.

You are 100% wrong about the losing team not being able to come back.  2 weeks ago, I was doing a 3v3 on Exile.  Was an even game til around lvl 8, one of their players just started tearing it up badly.  We couldn't keep any flags...and they pushed us back hard.  We were AT our citidel...defending the best we could, and when it said their side had Giants...we all said GG and it was fun...   but, we kept fighting.  Feeling our doom was inevitable, we just kept fighting.  The close quarters fighting, and high xp and gold gain from their units, especially giants...we quickly spent all our gold on the citidel on unit upgrades.  One of our guys ported to a tower we still had up they didn't get, got behind them, and reclaimed a few flags...  was enough for us to get giants of our own.  They kept pushing into our base...but they just couldnt get our citidel down.  It got to half way when we killed all their Demi's, including the one that was tearing us up.  We made 1 push into their base...and won. 

To this day, it is my favorite round I've played.  We were dead...defeat was definite...but we didn't want to stop...  So, if you wanna cry and say the losing team can't do anything...do us a favor.  /Uninstall, and give the game to someone who won't quit so easily. 

Kthx. 

Just got another idea.

How about adding a purchaseable wave for 1 turn?

This gives the advantage to the team closest to their citadel. If your a demigod making the push, it behoves you to continue making that push, but if your backed into your corner, being able to buy an extra wave might help.

ie. Creeps come out every 10seconds. So it's 10-10-10-10-10

Buying an extra wave for one turn would effect timing like this: 10-5-5-10-10-10

Price is affected by level (the lower you are, the cheaper the cost).

Lets say you can only do this 5 times a match.

Last idea.

A aura buff you can purchase for the citadel that effects Hps/Armor/dps the closer you are to your own citadel.

Effects everyone on your side (minions, creeps, demigods)

I don't think it's all about unmatched opponents, but yes that is a big part of it.

Also, I think this problem is a lot more common than what those who don't agree with me believe.

I just noticed this on Penny Arcade (which is quite an influential site), written by one of the creators:

That sounds very much like a description of the curves in my Demigod diagram...

Okay, lemme point out a few things here:

All the feedback defending the way the game is, explaining why certain things are fair, reasonable, well-implemented, etc. are missing the point.  The point isn't what you think is fair, it's about what's causing the rage quits.  The word implies the subject is being irrational.  

You tales of comebacks mean nothing, because clearly someone who's losing fairly badly isn't concerned about the 10% chance of pulling out a win, they're concerned with the more probable scenario of getting trounced for the next 15-30 minutes and would rather do something else.

Rage quitting is about PERCEPTION, not facts.  The perception of futility needs to be addressed, and I think there's a handful of really simple ways it could be done:

• Player discussion about comebacks.  Yes, I just disparaged this, but on some level I'm sure it helps with the minority of players who both read the forums and rage quit.  I would wager this is a miniscule portion of the total game population though
• Better loading screen tips.  Rather than just instructions on your DG, some of the advice from these posts here would really help.  Side capping, buying upgrades (or not buying them, for god's sake, priests are the worst), flag locking, a one-liner explaining that you need armor to survive ("for only 1200 gold Nimtoth's Chest Piece or whatever it's called can increase your health by 20% and reduce auto-attack damage taken by 20%" would go a long way).
• Revenge!  When you end someone's kill streak, have it scream combo breaker, revenge, etc. etc.  Maybe even go so far as to give a gold bonus for it, just give players something to keep playing for.
• Stop blurring out the map on death.  It's too much and it bores/frustrates players.  Just make it black and white, or for color blind players have it display a high transparency lemon party image.
• Mute enemies option.  People who are easily upset by enemy chatter might enable it and reduce the chance they'll get frustrated and leave.