If you had just made this explicitly clear from the get-go, I don't think there'd have been any flames/complaints *at all* on this game.  The game is fine if you look at it as Demigod (and fun too).  However, if you look at it as a Dota-replacement then it's not so good.  A lot of the hardcore dota players had their interests piqued by this game because of how it was portrayed as basically dota with production values and generals.  After they paid the money to try it out, they found out that wasn't the case.

Also, saying hard core players tend to want endless amounts of depth is partly true.  However, in the case of demigod, there was a ton of constructive feedback from people giving possibilities on how there could be more depth, higher skill ceiling, etc.  I don't believe any of them were implemented - only the cherry-picking tweakables were put in.  In this case, it wasn't like the community was simply saying "somehow put more depth into this game!".  Rather, they were saying "this game needs more depth, please try [XXX] or [YYY]", or even "why isnt [ZZZ] in this game? the game is too simple without it"

I do understand the dilemma here.  Everyone thinks they can be a designer and ultimately someone needs to make a call as to what goes in.  Also, design by commitee rarely works.  From that point of view, I am also hesistant to listen to the forums.  However, in this case, I think there were a lot of GOOD ideas they could have made the game much better but were completely neglected (I'm talking about ones that probably didn't require too much resources to implement... and others that might have required rejigging some UI).

Amazing, you summed up my thoughts more accurately than i was actually thinking them up.

Taking Age of Conan for example, which i beta tested and pre-ordered, the game looked great early on with its amazing graphics and production values, but as soon as you hit end-game the experience turns very boring very quickly. This is how i see Demigod. It has great graphics and style just like Age of Conan had, but once you get familiar with the game the experience dies out very quickly and i will be left with the question "why am i playing this instead of DoTA?" If i am having these thoughts in the final stages of Beta, and the release will be generally the same game as it is now, then i just don't see anying in Demigod that will keep me coming back for more.

I vowed never to pre-order another game since Age of Conan because of how much of a disappointment it was after all the hype and popularity, i went back on my word and it seems like it's going to happen all over again. A great looking game with great production values that just becomes very flat and uninteresting after a short amount of time.

I hear alot about how Demigod will be greatly improved upon depending on how successful the game becomes. If they are referring to sales then i am fine with contributing my part to the improvement of the game but if they are referring to the actual popularity and amount of people playing the game after a few months, then i think the game will be in deep trouble.

Imo if we're talking about "Depth" of a game. Every single game has its depth, it's just depend on how hardcore and get into it enough. Heck, Mario also has a lots of depth if you considering you have to remember all the position of all enemies and get every hidden coins in the game. There's depths in every game, it's just that you really notice it or not.

For me the only concern is that the content seem to be lacking in the place it shouldn't be. Okay I admit that I'm one of the ppl that interested in Demigod cuz I'm a Dota player. So what I was expecting are : 1) Heaps of Heroes 2) Heaps of Items . That's the only 2 thing I was expecting if Demigod want to compete with Dota in the same genre.

People who play Dota still playing it right now (for 5 years already) becuase of the number of possibilities have never ceased to expand. More heroes and items every few months really make this Dota still alives.Not considering all these UPDATES CONTENTS are all FREE. That's the non-commercial game for you. So can we expect a COMMERCIAL game which cost us 40$ to have the same amount of updates and added contents later? I can safely say I have never seen any commercial games have the same amount of updates as Dota before.

Demigod seem to put efforts into Demigods designs, as in Visual and skills and concepts etcs, therefore those are not the PLAYABLE contents. The fact that you can't even have a 5v5 match with no duplicate Demigods sadden me so much. Okay we got more incredibly detailed arenas to play in and more modes also, which is really makes a lot of different in gameplays. But however we change the arena, we still have to choose from the 8 Demigods which make the core gameplay. For me the number of Demigods are the indication of the amount of replayability of this game. Can I expect like 1 new Demigods every 2 months or so?

The core mechanic of Demigods are far more superior to Warcraft 3 engine can do and the specifically designed engine should be great advantage to the game. No surprise that the game run smoothly and look incredible although I was expecting the game to run as smooth as Sin, maybe we will get a low-end graphic setting later.

I'm also a fan of GPG since the Cavedog era and recently Stardock fan since Sin. I'm confident in the quality of the game they are making, but sometimes quality just can't surpass the quantity.

Jinx -

To play dev's advocate for a bit - It's interesting that you are using MMOs as your example.  DoTA, amazing community support notwithstanding, is niche the same way Everquest was niche.  We didn't know that, of course, (EQ had what, 400k players at one point?), but both games take a great deal of investment on the part of the player.  So you get incredibly loyal, skillful, and small fanbases.

What WoW did differently was build a glitchy, buggy, sometimes broken but relatively accessible gameworld and then grind the buggy and broken parts out over years and years.  What was left was something millions of players could get into.

I know, DoTA has a ton of players.  Fine.  Ask your average 15 year old if they have heard of it.  Ask any non-gamer.  It hasn't hit the mainstream and as long as the community stays prickly and elitist it never will.  Nothing wrong with that - probably a better game for it.

It's an old classic - take something niche but amazing like Carl Perkins and put Elvis in front of it.  Suddenly the little old lady down the road is buying records.  Can you say that Elvis is better than Carl Perkins?  No.  But how many people have velvet paintings of Perkins in their trailer?

Demigod is the first to mainstream DoTA-style gameplay - it is very, very accessible - and if the devs use the first 3 - 6 months of release productively I could see it having a really long tail. 

I believe Demigod will be much much better than Dota in every aspect.

First, there's the automatch function and ladderboard. Also, the game is not dependent on getting the best items like Dota is. I see complaints that items are not powerful, they suck and so on. However, I believe the Devs are going in the direction of "it's the player's skills and not the items that matter". Each item provides boosts to specific attributes, mana items for healers, health items for warriors and the minion boost items for generals.

If Dota players can't see this, then Demigod is not your game. I love the game as it is now.

The more I play, the more I realize that the playing field is still relatively level even in the late game. Can you say that about Dota? Absolutely not as those more experience players would have had the most powerful weapons already.

i guess i have to quoet myself

ITs' not htat the items arent' powerful enough, it's that they're bland.

The items under $2.5k gold cost are balanced well for the most part, with mostly being simple +armor/life/dmg/etc.  But the more expensive ones should be giving more interesting abilities and such, both active and passive.

It's good that the 5k cost items give much less +stats for the money compared to the 500gold and 1.5k ones.  But the abilities and such on the 5k cost ones are worthless in any sort of build right now, mostly, 'cept warpstone and such.

well in my opinion theres always a thread like this about everygame. The game will be what it'll be, some people will like it and some people won't. it's impossible to make a game everyone will like. So far for me the game looks good, i hope theres a campaign in it cuz playing that skirmish over and over would be boring. but i think it looks good for me.

To be honest, the biggest mislead throughout this whole process hasn't been how much Demigod was purported to be like DotA.  I think that aspect of this discussion was really more something which people inferred.  Demigod is clearly modelled after DotA, so people expect it to be a lot more similar than it is.

The thing that many, myself included, feel that the devs have been misleading on, is their supposed commitment to making Demigod a competitive game.  It seems like that may have been the original goal, but somewhere along the way they decided that it'd be too difficult or they didn't want to go that direction.  Now the developers talk about competitive depth and hardcore gamers as if that is a niche market, and making an easier, more accessible game is better for mass consumption.  That's true, to some extent, accessibility does add to a game's popular appeal.  But in my experience it seems like the games with the most competitive depth actually have the greatest mass appeal, as long as they are designed to be fun and accessible at the same time.  That's why FPS like CoD are so popular and remain popular.  Not only are they accessible and fun, but there's a pretty high skill ceiling, which keeps people playing it for a long, long time. Demigod is obviously not a FPS, but I don't think it's out of the question for a game like it to be very accessible as well as highly competitive.

In seemingly casting aside their once proudly stated focus on making Demigod a competitive game ("tournament staple" was a term that was once thrown around, I believe) the Devs seem to have mislead many people who bought this game, and that explains a good portion of the discontent here.

To be honest if you go way back it is not modeled after if you read early posts on GPG forums you will hear the word inspired by quite a few games including Dota so don't put this clone crap out their this is it's own game and will stand on it's own.

I seem to recall that the general marketing hinted quite strongly that if you like Dota you'll like Demigod.  I don't recall reading anywhere (except well after Beta 2) the devs saying it's nothing like it.

However, the biggest marketing blurb that I found completely disingenuous was the "we want Demigod to be the COUNTERSTRIKE of RTS." 

Counterstrike is one of the most hardcore, newbie unfriendly fps games out there.  It's also one of the most competitive.  To say that you want to make a game that's the "Counterstrike of rts" is saying you are making a game that requires tons of skill, probably not newbie friendly, and has a great amount of depth. 

Already in Beta 1, I could see that that wasn't the actual direction of the game.  It was just a marketing lie to amass more interest.  You know how that refund request turned out.  Contrary to what Brad thinks, you CAN often judge a game on its beta state - especially when you are judging based on design and NOT content.

Anyways, as I stated earlier, the game has its own merits and is fun if you don't think it's a competitive game or dota with production values.  However, if you came in here because of your various marketing campaigns and interviews, you might be in for some disillusionment.

Maybe you're right about CoD, I don't know...I'm not a big FPS player, but all I know is when I go on Xbox Live and try to play WaW I get smoked by the people who played it all the time, and there definitely seems to be a lot of skill involved in being aware of where your enemies / allies are, having good aim, knowing which weapons are best in which situations, and so on.  When I played CoD online I immediately got a sense of the great deal that there is to learn and practice to be really good at the game, and yet it is still really fun and accessible for people like me who suck at FPS.  That's the sort of dynamic that Demigod ought to aim for.

P.S. I don't play mostly Pantheon games, only if nobody else is online, since the only real "challenge" is seeing how quickly I can rack up 30+ kills against the AI.

STOOOOOOOPPPP!!!!!

Ok i read through this whole thread in hope of finding a good basic overview of the games quality but nothing but Fanboy-praisings and Doomsayers monologs here.

BTW forgive my (maybe awefull) grammar! I am german.

I didnt have any time to care for Demigods beta so far but i read about the game in different Forums. So what i want is a basic Overview of the game and FACTS!

I know the game shares the basic Gameplay of DOTA (wich ist cool). And now i also know that its alot more different than DOTA (wich doesnt mean its bad). I realy dont care about people saying its cool or it sucks! I build my own opinion in every aspect of my life. But to get me interessted in buying the game i want to know some basic facts about it so here are my questions. Oh and please only facts and nothing like "not yet but most likely in release" or "when expansion comes out".

1. Dota´s strategy is based on the combination (teamwork) of a vast amount of Heros and theyre skills (I know alot are pretty similiar but they differ in sometimes important details). DOTA has around 90 Heros or so with each at least 4 Abilitys making about 360 different skills. Dota had alot of Time to develop so i dont compare the Amount of Heros. But the total number of abilitys is a indicator for the amount of skill-synergies and therefore Taktiks. My expectation is at least a quarter of Dotas Skill array. So 90 or more different skills in total should be distributet on all the heros in Total.

2. Another important thing are items in Dota. Alot of strategy is involved here (not only what to get for each hero but also WHEN to get WHAT can make difference in Win or Loss). Are items involved in Demigod? And if not what else is there to add additional depth aside from skills?

3. The trick in Dota is (with good players on BOTH sides) to make enemy believe in something and then surprise him. Or at least having a realy good Team Movement and reconaissance across the map. What i have heard is that u see almost whole map all the time in Demigod. This is almost a "NO-GO" for a competative game (think about seeing through walls in Counterstrike, Map-Hack in Starcraft, etc...). So what system compensates for that in Demigod? How can u surprise ur enemy with something (cant be skills cause he knows what ur Heros can do)? 

4. Blizzards games (also Mods) are made with 2 things in Mind: Easy learning and starting, and after a while you detect incredible ingame debth allowing those game to be played at a very high skill-level, wich is in turn important to make a game successful over many years. I personaly realy hate blizzard games cause every goddamn game MUST compete with them. But after playing dozens of other games out there i know WHY THEY MUST COMPETE! Far too much trash out there with no Future at all and fit only for the smal play-session after work once a week at best. Is there enough "game" to detect details even Months after release? Or do you feel that u KNOW the game after playing the Beta?

Thx for your patience in reading this. And pls.... no flames needed, if u think those things arent essential for a long-time playing fun then at least tolerate other opinions!