While I don't agree that patches have been slow, the game is probably not in a great state right now, and those that argue it's currently healthy will probably be swayed when HoN and LoL are released.

Not gonna lie; I gasped when I found no replays, no mod map maker, and limited skirmish options (> 2 teams, FFA?).  I figured right then and there the game was going to get played out very fast... and I was right. 

I apologize; I hate contributing to doom and gloom threads as I think they only sink the boat faster.

Haha, hardly dying. Demigod was never going to be Team Fortress 2 or Counter-Strike 'big', and despite what the DotA fanboys would like to believe, Demigod was never trying to be the be-all-end-all of this subgenre. If you don't like it, don't play it. I'll be here for a while.

Also

I think this is an obvious exaggeration. There has been several patches over the course of the last months, so unless you came from a game community the developer of which releases patches every week, I'd challenge you to find another developer that had been as hard at work with the patch releases as GPG/Stardock.

I'm definitely in agreement that the game still needs a lot more patching up for stability and community features though.

You might be the last one here. I enjoy playing this game as it is right now casually but I will move on when SC2 finally launches probably after another delay in release.

Demiflop.

 

LoL is out soon.
HoN not for a while, but god damn it plays like a dream.
Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 will prolly take up a lot of gamers time when they are released. 

3 months after UK release, and 5v5 is not playable for a lot of broadband users, only 8 character choices, overpowered / underpowered demigods + items, dc issues, stats issues, pathing issues, only a handful of maps which are actually played.

If this game was perfect on release i.e. 5v5 worked for anyone on 1MB download / 0.25MB upload, balance issues were fixed quickly (<1 week), dc, stat and pathing issues did not exist, replays, team automatch + more maps + demigods coming out monthly.

It's a tall order, but when you sell youself off being based on DotA, you have large shoes to fill.

Stardock have done a very good job of supporting the game and keeping in contact with the community.

Dunno where it all went wrong, but looks like the game was released WAY too early.

Here's what I was thinking when I made the original post...

Demigod, being multiplayer, requires a critical mass of players to be viable and justify ongoing support and content generation.  To acheive and sustain that critical mass requires ongoing sales, just like an MMO.  The sales figures I referenced were from NPD, and you'll find old chestnuts like Starcraft and Warcraft Battlechests still ranked in the top 20 after all these years.  When Demigod drops off the NPD charts after just three months, and doesn't even top Stardock's own online sales chart, it can't be a good sign.

I think the premature release of the game really killed its chance at long term success.  Had the issues been addressed early enough, it could have made a difference, but we're four months on now and the state of the game speaks for itself.  Regardless of how hard Stardock/GPG have been trying to recover, they really screwed this one up.

Show me a game that was perfect on release and i will show you super mario brothers !

Actually when Blizzard released Starcraft and Warcraft (not WoW), over 10 years ago now, they were still relatively independent too.  Those games were extremely polished on release, which is why Blizzard has such a great reputation for quality to this day.  I singled them out only to illustrate my point in needing ongoing sales to sustain a community.

Someone also asked whether any game is perfect on release.  Certainly not.  But, there are software quality metrics that can be used to determine whether it is ready for release or not.  I'm guessing that when Demigod was released, the rate of incoming software defects was still high, and the ratio to fixed defects was still low.  This would have been a management decision, but if they really thought it was ready based on metrics, then the QA team must have been doing a poor job.

Well Demigod practically killed itself because of a few key mistakes:

- Crappy Netcode. If more than half of the games played are lagfests people will give up on the game cause nothing is more frustrating than playing a slideshow. Why no server client model? I will never understand why devs still use p2p.

- Price. People won´t pay 50$ for a game with no singleplayer and just a few simple maps and a handful of demigods. I mean look at maps in your favorite shooter released the last year and compare them to this game. Every noob can understand that this game was not as expensive to develope as a triple A game with single and multiplayer like for example COD so why isn´t demigod 20$. A reduced price would have gone a long way to lure people to the game.

- Availability. Why isn´t this game on steam? Not a lot of people know or are willing to install a second service just for one game and one they probably didn´t even hear about since it wasn´t heavily marketed. Millions use steam and they miss out on a huge potential customerbase. The battle for online games download services was decided years ago, and only steam and maybe d2d are left. A newcomer in this space is sure to fail since people won´t go through the hassle to manage half a dozen accounts for all those steam wannabe clones.

Uh yeah thats why shooters who are much more sensible to lag than rts´es use client server. If you want performance you go client/server no way around it. Cause with p2p you never know what hardware and what services the players are using and one running bittorrent download on some retard´s machine ruins the game for everyone involved while it would only screw up the game for the retard in the client/server model.

[quote who="[ShakeNBake]" reply="11" id="2341782"]Demiflop.

 

LoL is out soon. - graphics dont look that great in the screenshots (i have no ingame experience)
HoN not for a while, but god damn it plays like a dream. - i dont think i can play another game where the FOV is so limited.  I have even put off downloading the beta for this reason.  Plus with limited time, i'd rather play demigod. 
Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 will prolly take up a lot of gamers time when they are released. Dont forget Mechwarrior, Dragon Age and the FPS's


Stardock have done a very good job of supporting the game and keeping in contact with the community. agreed thanks Frogboy!

Dunno where it all went wrong, but looks like the game was released WAY too early.[/quote]

1.  And I definitely agree with your above statement.  I had heard about demigod but the networking issues discussed by everyone on the internets definitely kept me from buying the game.  After hearing the reviews on MaxPC, PC Gamer, and maybe even Extreme Tech I decided to look into it.  Plus I had read on the forums that the fixed the networking issues rather quickly which was definitely a point in Demi's favor in regards to response time.  However this certainly hurt sales. 

2.  What?  No Demo?  So i had to take a gamble to see if i would even like this game? (no i didnt play Dota).  Ebay had some good deals for $20 boxed copied until the fine print was read.  I think i ended up downloading my own "trial" version to check out the single player to see what the mechanics were like.  I then bought the game within 24 hours and have loved it since.  But my point is, the demo would have undoubedly generated  a lot of buzz around the game.

But, as a side note - i truly wonder if this was purposeful:  GPG / SD released the game without LAN play so the initial release's copy and therefore the primary pirated copy would have to be updated to play in lans.  This prevented people from firing up himachi and playing with friends.  Essentially this could be viewed as a "trial" version lol. now back to my rant:

3.  Seriously?  A Teambased game without a teambased system?  Even now?  You gotta be shitting me.  This is funny but not in a haha way. This would give a place for premades to play and the current system could be for random match-ups.

4.  No in game VOIP?  This actually fine with me. As i enter middle age i find my tolerence for the idiot console kids who get to use their daddies computer to be waning.  It would be useful though.

And for the rest:  GPG i wouldn't think can be considered a new or indie developer now.  They have a number of excellent games under their belt.  They should have had the experience to not make the mistakes for issue #2 at least.

Balance, mod tools, new demi's et al could and are obviously being taken care of now.  There is no doubt in my mind though that #1 and #2 hurt game sales significantly.   #1 is a bit forgiveable though since it was new tech for them and they jumped on fixing it.  The negative reviews can't be ignored though. 

I hope this game gains in people and stays around for awhile, it is awesome.

You are right that most rts even today still use p2p technology. But that isn´t an excuse to do a rush job and its time rts games evolve and improve machmaking and technology. How many of those p2p games support drop in drop out multiplayer? Servers have huge advantages and its time all games make use of them. The only reason p2p works for rts games is player count is usually very low. But Demigod can be played by up to 10 people and if only one has a shitty connection or pc its a crappy experience for 9 other people. And the more people you have the higher the chance someone has some kind of problem.