New player - first impressions & questions
Hi all,
Firstly, I’ve split this post into two parts - the first being some initial thoughts and feedback to the developers (and anyone else who might be interested, perhaps other would-be new players) and the second being various newbie questions I hope some of you will help answer.
First impressions
To start a little back I’ve had my eye on Demigod for a while but couldn’t quite decide whether to get it or not. I’ve read about it having a bad launch, networking issues and such. In the end what tipped the scale and make me "take my chances" was Stardock’s no-copy protection policy - I wanted to reward a company that doesn’t incriminate its legal customers.
On the technical side I’ve so far had little trouble though I must admit I was a bit put back when I installed Impulse and it said my Internet Explorer might be too old (v. 6). I don’t use IE and don’t see any need to upgrade it and find it odd that third party programs use it. I ignored it and tried to register the game but it failed. After an IE update I tried again and it worked.
In-game I’ve had one crash to desktop without warning and a flag text "Flag text error" (or some such) so on the whole I think it runs pretty stable. Then again, I haven’t played online yet so I’ve yet to see about that.
As for starting up with the actual game... well, while it installed I flipped through the manual but didn’t get to the “Walkthrough” part (page 16). In it you write: "the two most annoying ways to learn how to play a game are the user manual and an in-game tutorial.". I disagree on the tutorial part, I for one love to get a quick tutorial to get into the basics and maybe get a few tips along the way too. I haven’t played DotA so my only knowledge of the gameplay was what I’ve read here and there, including the manual flipping.
When I started my first game (a simple skirmish, 2vs2 easy) I felt lost... which is a quite rare thing for me with a new game. I eventually got to walk around the base, use the Item shop, use my skill point, all of which involves a lot of reading. I managed to get up to speed and join the fight to help my poor AI ally. From that point on I had learned the gameplay and could begin learn the game in earnest but it didn’t have to be that hard. Please, don’t forgo a tutorial.
If there are any (potential) new players reading along, try watching this YouTube video as it’s a nice tutorial (I only found it today, a bit late for me): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ek55bIQwlo
I’ll just wrap this up with a few comments. All in all, this game rocks! Even while having only played single player I think it’s worth the pricetag. It’s beautiful, the visual style is great, the sound is good (I love the Unreal Tournament like announcer), it runs smoothly and the gameplay is addictive. There are a lot of layers and you can enjoy it both for casual and competitive play. Well done - I'll be playing this a lot more.
Questions and such
Having learned the basics now I want to get better at the game and learn more about the details. However it seems like it’s hard to find more in-depth information anywhere, despite having searched the forum and google (please, bear with me if I missed it). Questions:
- Where can I find a list of what all the announcer calls means? Some of them are obvious ("First blood", "Smiter", etc.) but what about "Apocalypse", "Wrathful" and so on?
- Likewise a list of what all the awards mean would be nice, though I think I’ve finally understood them all.
- Favor and Favor items - how does it work? It seems like you need to earn Favor to unlock the items. You earn Favor in each battle, is that managed by account? What about online play, is it just a matter of playing enough battles so you can unlock it all or what did I miss?
- Has anyone made a list of how much War Score is needed for each War Rank?
- The announcer sometimes says, "The Light/Dark Citadel has grown stronger". What does this mean? It seems unrelated to Citadel upgrades and War Rank. Sometime I see new buildings (at least Fortresses) spawn. Is this related to that?
- When does the AI purchase Citadel upgrades? It seems pretty random. Some games they don’t get anything, other games they seem to buy every one of them.
- Are the Citadel upgrades "Blacksmith" and "Armory" any good in the early game?
- Is it possible to see your current Health and Mana pr. second anywhere?
- Is there a key for taking screenshots in the game or do you have to use external tools?
I think that’s all for now. I hope you can find the time to help me out
PS: I’ll just share this little screenshot with you. It was my first hard tournament (having only played one on easy before and then some skirmishes). Prison with killing Fortresses. It was a bit of an uphill battle trying to help my allies all the time but we failed at the end. Funny enough I got the most favor and if you watch me below the scoreboard I was a couple of seconds away from destroying their last fortress ![]()
(desperate rush since my teammates were fooling about near the crystal)
Thanks for reading. Comments are welcomed.
