WRONG.... do what the man says and email Stardock.

Stardock is taking returns on retail copies and eating the loss. As the above poster said, it helps to do some research on the matter.

But again, your game has to actually not work and you had to have contacted their tech support with your issues.

Releasing unfinished games, or at least games that dersperatly need patches after release are common in the gaming world nowdays.

I don't like that, but that's the way it is.

I bought this game in knowledge of this. And even more: I bought it even though I knew it has more problems than normal.

I did this because I really loved the concept, gameplay, style etc. of the game. And because I knew it's normal that games are released unfinished I had the faith in GPG (and stardock) that they will use the great potential of demigod and use all these release problems.

Or in other words: I had spent the money as credit/deposit for a company in which I believed.

If these problems will never been solved I would actually lose my faith not only in GPG but also in the whole gaming industry. Especially since I bought a lifetime subscription for hellgate:london...

And I don't think I ask for too much

- ~95% connection stability 

- Balancing of Demigods and Items

- to add at least add enoaugh playable demigods so the roster can compete with any common beat em up OR to give the community the abillity to add them on their own/help them to implement those demigods.

Lack of modding and good clan support is absolutely killing this game. I expect SC2 (with whatever AoS equiv comes out for that game) to be pretty much the nail in the coffin in this game.

Not to mention League of Legends.

Also there is a ton of client problems, for example yesturday while trying to get a 5v5 started (and later a 4v4) my friends and I were experiencing a ton of problems (crashes, client freeze ups, connectivity issues). It was basically musical chair with crashes.

The game is still very broken, and unfortunately is riding on the same engine as SupCom (which still doesn't work right).

I don't understand how this game would have to pass on more information than a game like Warcraft 3 with just as many and even more players. The problems Demigod is experiencing cannot be just the "Internet."

Of course, W3 did have its own drop-outs, but I don't recall such a flood of problems with BNet.

That being said, this game is still awesome and I hope it continues to be developed and comes out with a Demigod Expansion.

To be fair when the illustrious B.net started out it is to my recollection was acutally a bit worse. I remember having a good laugh with my friends about the complete lack of stability and ability to play. Then there was all of the lag, hacking, and training going on. So why bother playing online Diablo when you can fire up WC/WC2 on a LAN?

Doom started off pretty bad too. Plenty of thrid partys launched Doom lobby software, APCI/EPCI(?) Doom being one, that "worked" some of the time. That was playing at most 3 other people SLIPed to a server or, gasp, connecting to a server on a BBS.

Bottom line is building a lobby/matching service from the ground up is a rocky road at best. If the Internet was an appliance then the problems we see now wouldn't be an issue. But the only thing anyone is shareing in common is protocols. ISPs, backbone providers, and end user hardware all bring complications to the table.

So if your friends can't connect one instant and then can another if you could examine your trace routes to all of your repective hosts I would bet your paths would be different in each case. Load balanacing, QoS, and other traffic shaping protocols all screw with traffic. Then backbone facilities could be routing your traffic on a flapping circuit that doesn't meet the nessesary error load to be considered a problem. Heck, maybe you have a multiplexed packet switch between you and your buddies that causes just enough delay or errors to cause an issue. Who knows, the rabbit hole is fairly deep.

Agreed. Especially Diablo 2 had an horrible start that no one seems to remember. And I don't wan't to talk about the WoW release here...

So you think that GPG who put in most of the work into the product and basically made a damn nice game with some pretty good gameplay and while doing so outsourced some of the work of the game engine (seems including the netcode) screwed up their publisher by making the game broken in something that is taken pretty much for granted in other games.  Being an independant studio they probably get a good share of the sales and they probably didn't receive any upfront funding.  So they most likely depend on the sales of the game to recover their investment and make a profit...

GPG would be completely foolish to be done developing Demigod to go make SupCom2 or something. There is so much potential for this game, and they can still make some good money with paid expansions. I would have no problems if all they did now was work on the bugs and come out with a paid expansion sometime later down the road. Worked fine for Blizzard in Starcraft and BW, and Warcraft RTS series as well. No one bugged them about releasing extra free units.

Remember this isn't an MMO. Extra content is how they will make money.

I hope no company interested in getting their product published by Stardock is reading that right now.

Sacrificing revenue for principles is so unamerican.

Nonsense, the days of hacking in Diablo 1 were some of the most fun I've ever had.  Some guy entering the game, walking to the fountain in the center of town, then dropping rare items he's creating on the fly from a trainer like some kind of legendary loot fountain.  That same guy town killing any who walks up to grab the items using nova.  Everyone else alt-tabbing out to turn on their own town kill hacks and the battle was on!  Tricking people into coming into town portals to be mobbed on the other side and lose their gear, only to hack a new set onto their bodies.

....sigh, those were the days.

there is some flaming in this topic, but i think otherwise it's an interesting discussion - if the devs can provide a bulletproof MP, should they just move on? 

i love SD and GPG, and it's a neat/fun game, but i think that it would be better to move on and put DG behind them. once the MP works "as it should have on day 1", DG will be complete. supcom2 and elemental are already in the works, and would probably benefit from the extra development resources that are currently working on DG.  just my opinion anyways.

Amen!

from a long term perspective i think they should support demigod.  I am seriously considering getting elemental but neglected to pre order it after taking hours to get into one 3v3 match with my friends.  If they do well with demigod i can be assured they will do right with elemental. 

they need to fix this game to keep face with the newer customers otherwise GPG's and Stardock's growth will be stunted. 

i am honestly confused on how it made it out of beta testing like this.  Maybe next time a 4 day open beta should be used.

Be we (Stardock) will take it back if you can't get it to work for any reason (which includes multiplayer). We don't care if you bought it at retail or over the Internet.

I really can't say. The game is fun, and if supported TF2 style, "real" expansions, could keep going for a good long while, being fun for the players and profitable for the owners.

It'll need to overcome it's initial bad publicity and improve on current connectivity. The optimist in me remembers things like Steam when it first came out, all the connection issues they had, predictions of doom and gloom, and yet...

Umm, no. The problem is the p2p system itself. Before throwing rocks at me, please read. P2p is a good system on paper. But in real word, with all sorts of different ISPs, routers and PCs, the thing can go boom in a second, if the right conditions are met. No other p2p RTS game that i know of has support for 10 players at a time. Maybe there is a reson for that. The more people in a p2p game, the more chances are for something to go bad for everyone in the match. The client/server system is superior to p2p in an imperfect world, regarding the type of game. When some user plays on a dial up connection with a 5 year old pc, then it doesn't break the game for anyone in the game. You don't hear about sim speed on client/server games. You only have to worry about your ping to the server and the ability to connect to it. That's all. Not so with a p2p system. The only thing is that client/server system is more expensive to maintain. Blizzard can do this, their servers probably cost an astronomical figure to maintan, but on the other hand they have millions and millions of users. Demigod has only about 100k to care for. So the costs should be much lower. Anyway, the thing is i know that you plan to build a client/server system for Elemental. Maybe you could make Demigod a client/server game, when the infrastructure is ready for Elemental? If they will be enough players left, that is...

Demigod is at it's core a great game, with a lot of potential. It's still has a chance. People are complaining because they LOVE the game, but can't play it without frustrations. If i didn't love the game, i would have sold my copy and never posted here again. I don't think 40 bucks is that much for most of us, in order to make such a big deal because we felt like cheated; and after all, anyone can get a refund. So, it's not about the lost money, it's about the love for the game that we have and the frustration that we can't play it the way is meant to be played.

If you, GPG and SD, want to support this game, in order so the game can flourish and expand it's user base, then you need to do this (imo), in this order:

• SD needs to finish fixing the Raknet code (essentially SD's part on DG's netcode) . Also you need to add some options to the impulse overlay in the game (invite friends to some game, for example). After you have done this, the ball is in GPG's court.

• GPG needs to fix their netcode and make 5v5 games reliable, for all modes of games (custom, panth and skirmish). Fix all the connections problems (in lobby and in game) as much as possible for a p2p game. The clock is ticking, this needs to be done faster. It's the number one priority and you can't expect sales when you have such a broken game. I'm still amazed how this game sold in more than 100k copies, given the bad reputation for unplayable mp and not so much initial publicity/hype to begin with. Maybe this could be a hint for you of how much need is on the market for a game of this type.
  

• Next on GPG's list are mp features that should have been in the game in the first place: rematch (back to lobby) option, group joining, invite friends, etc. I think almost everyone is pissed on GPG for not including such features in a game that's been marketed as a mp centric game, and releasing it with such basic mp functionality. This also needs to be done faster, not by fall or winter. I know that you want to make a Clan Wars DLC, but if you only plan to include only clan support and not the other features that i've told you about, then i suggest not doing it at all: it's only money and time wasted.
  

• Add replays. Good for new players to learn some new things from more advanced players.
  

• Add mods. Give all the tools the community needs and enable in-game auto-downloading of mods. This could potentially boost the game enormously. After all, popular games like CS, DOTA and L4D started as mods.

• Last but not least, add the promised free demigods and maps. I know they can't be too many, but i think 2 dg and 2 maps would be good. It's free (for us), after all.

• And only after this, make a BIG expansion for the game (not standalone), adding a lot more demigods and maps and other community requested features. Advertise the game agressivly, at this point in time.

• Watch the game as it grows.
  

But all of this needs more GPG's implication and dedication. And this is where i have doubts about this game succeeding. This game had a rough start and needs special treatment. No other GPG had this much problems at it's start, afaik...GPG are not very communicative in general and they don't showed in the past much after release support for their games. And this type of game needs badly a form of community feedback, a two way kind of feedback. Right now GPG is silent. For what we know, they started working on SupCom 2 (a very, very bad move imo, because StarCraft 2 won't have mercy on SupCom2's sales) and pushed Demigod aside, instead of concentrating all their effort on this game, that has a lot of potential to make more money in the future. Think about it for a second. Think about al the millions players of DOTA. If DOTA was such a badly designed game, then it wouldn't have all those players. DOTA it's not perfect, far from it, but the core gameplay is unique and DG is the first game that uses it. Soon will be League of Legends. And i bet there'll be others. This is a new game genre, don't miss the opportunity, i think you (GPG and SD) will regret it in the future.

Providing either a better tutorial or an online bracket for new players will be (IMO) the deciding factor as to whether or not this game survives and grows.  Right now, you can either play a lame single player match that you either mop up easily or get raped by cheating AI that bears no relation to playing against good humans.  Your only other option to learn is to go online and get yelled at by some acne-laden 13 year old because you didn't realize buying priests is an 'only-sometimes' proposition or because he doesn't like the lane you're farming.

Having a seperate bracket for newbies would be nice for two reasons:

1)  Newbies don't have to deal with assholes

-and-

2)  Assholes don't have to deal with newbies.

Seems like a win/win to me.

Just like majority over here my opinion is as follows:

- game will go down, in fact, it is going / went down already

- reasons? simple! lack of clan support and major connectivity issues with few other bugs thrown about...

- someone also needs to take a blame - question is who exactly? imho it is GPG who obviously aren't as "pro" as some might think since if they are such disaster of release would never happen... SD is partially to blame too since they indeed did release it in such state...

biggest shame of it all is that actual game design is awesome!

DG is easily one of the best and most original games to come out recently...

Sadly though handful of utter noobs at GPG team failed it...

I would also like to add another thing - not only that this game is "yet another" example of fuked up PC games industry but also another nail in the coffin of PC gaming in general...

RIP

If GPG's support "roles on" the game has a future !

In the moment they are focused on "fixing".

The community is still waiting for Replay & Clan function, which is much more important than adding new Demigods or maps !

but something has to happen NOW -> since release, nothing new was put into the game.....except some fixes !

so give us new Stuff (@GPG) and the community will be more optimistic !

Speaking from Stardock's side, I don't think they should abandon support for Demigod and just move on. As Frogboy said, Stardock is not a typical company/publisher, and a lot of its fan base was earned because they are known to provide extensive support for the games they develop and publish. Simply cutting out on Demigod would erode a lot of that and make its fans and outsiders much more cautious.

When Demigod was just launched, the forums were a mess. And those of us who are familiar with Stardock and how it operates kept on reassuring people that they're not going to turn a blind eye and will try to fix these things. And that's what they've been doing, I don't think anyone can argue with a straight face that they have not.

Cutting out now would be more of a slap in the face to everyone - fans and people with problems alike. Obviously as the publisher, there are limits to how much Stardock can do, and it's normal that as the major issues get taken care of and as Stardock runs out of things they have a say in that they shift focus to their other projects. But there should never, ever, be a case where GPG wants to release content or a patch only to be stopped by Stardock because they decided to not spend any more money on it.

May save Stardock some money in the short run, but it certainly won't do any wonders for their fan base (whether from Demigod or other games).

The game has plenty of potential to continue to grow if it is given the care we all expected it to get. At a core level, the game is ridiculously good. I've been playing it as an MMO substitute relatively happily, whereas I have never not had an open MMO account in the last 10 or so years. Stardock has made a lot of good decisions (coupled with some bad ones) and the game is generally getting better. They need to get 1.1 out, and then quickly throw a new ingame bone (youve been great about out of game ones) to spark interest. Send out all those emails (and make sure they get to everyone). Then the clan wars stuff. Do some of the steam style discount and preview weekends. Do some advertising or interviews/shilling on some of the big game podcasts/vidcasts like listenup, giantbomb, co-op.

Quitting on it this early, is just going to sully opinions on both stardock and gpg, especially those who have continually stood up for the product and companies only to be burned.

Well if they do decide to divert funds from this game's continued development and move on, I really hope they consider creating an expansion at some point in time.  This game has all the nuts and bolts of a great game except the connectivity (the lobbies work great for me thoug).  It really is incredibly fun, and that's saying something because most multiplayer games don't really get good until they've gone through a number of post-release balance iterations.

I think an expansion would be the ideal fix for the bad press, as it would generate buzz and give SD a second go at all the ratings websites without having to beg or plead with them to re-review the game.  That being said, please don't give up on this game's development.  However, I really enjoy Stardock games and if it's the right decision for you to make as a company, then so be it.

Good luck with elemental btw., I'm really hoping it'll give you guys a big enough cash infusion to do things how you want to do them.

Don't worry we don't intend to stop releasing updates for Demigod.

In my early response, I was trying to point out to those who spread doom and gloom that that by doing so, they might be creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.