So far from the BETA what are peoples opinions of Demigod?

As someone following from the sideline who decided not to get into the Beta what do you all think??



Thanks in advance.|||You didn't include any negative options.|||D'oh.. fizxxoered.|||well, Generals are pretty iffy at the moment... granted they've had less time to be polished up like the existing Assassins.



Assassins on the other hand, moderately well balanced considering the position the game is in the beta process. each is drastically different to the next, all are pretty good fun to play as.



maps look 'effing awesome, but that's because they use a dirty-great model instead of a height-map. custom maps are going to be in the domain of modelers.



if you're into DotA and the like, then it would've been wise to pre-order.|||Demigod has really ****** me off about the Generals. Not only did they completely not meet expectations or advertisements, but the devs have fixed their gameplay BEFORE the gameplay beta. **** you, GPG. If I could have a full refund, I would take it. I might take the 75%.|||I already preordered. I think the game is a good one. Not great, not bad. FA has depth Demigod will never have. I don't regret my preorder because I'll gladly play the single player game and a few multiplayer games, but after a short while, i'll probably go back to FA, and maybe Dawn of War 2.|||I have to agree with DeadMG. I preorder expecting an RTS-RPG hybrid in which generals would allow for atleast pseudo RTS gameplay.



Generals and their units take absolutely no RTS elements into account at all, you would;ve expected atleast some things learned from supcom to be applied, but no.



They devs ignored player feedback and have completely stopped the demigod that was advertised, in favour of a Dota clone made only for themselves.



I want my money back.|||Im right with you, they advertised rts and role playing but no rts at all what so ever. I dont really care if its a dota clone or not since I dont play it. They got three months left and if they cant fix it by that time then I will be pissed. Also if this fails my expectations then I would have to reconsider GPG games from now on even if its Supcom 2 regardless after they ditch out games like space seige.|||To be honest, the MAIN thing that ***** me off is that they fixed it before gameplay beta. Why the hell are we paying to beta test, if they're not going to listen to our feedback? Which is universally atm the Generals are not infact Generals at all.|||I think it is pretty good right now and some patches could make it even better.



I'm probably one of the more vocal of the make-Generals-better people. I'm not really mad at GPG though; just disappointed that they have gone so far from what Demigod was supposed to be.|||Demigod is fun to play but its nothing like what I expected. The generals have nothing to do with RTS. But if you are looking for a game to blow off some steam and have some quick fun, its probably a good game for you. If you are looking for a game with depth and important strategic decisions you will be most likely bored after a while. The devs will argue that there are a lot of important decisions, like which flags to capture and which items to buy but well...



Then there is modding and mapping: Frogboy said they wont support it. Meh.|||Col. Jessep|||DeadMG|||GPG was looking to be one of those companies you could trust, and Stardock definitely has a positive track record.



I can't say i'm very surprised that they fell down on keeping their promises however. Dissapointed yes, surprised no.|||OrangeKnight|||The wording was that they won't support it. How does that equal can't be modded? I don't recall much support from gpg for supcom modding tbh and the few that did are no longer with the company.|||It can be modded, has already been done. And I can edit the maps too, reposition buildings, change stuff in maps... But honestly, with a publisher who doesnt support custom content in online gaming thats just a huge waste of my time.



Imagine you could not play custom maps online in SupCom/FA in GPGnet, why would I spend many hours on making them? One of my maps has over 11000 downloads on the vault (Desert Planet II), I dont see something like that happening for Demigod. How could you distribute a map to more than a handful of players?



But its not about the number of downloads. How would I play a custom made map online? What about a mod that adds new skills to Demigods or new items? Sure, you can mod it in but then you have to play on Hamachi or single player.|||It would be rather silly on stardocks behalf to not leverage impulse for mod/map distribution but I'm sure they know that already.

Are you saying demigod has no ability to use custom maps or are you assuming thats what it'l be like when its released?|||I know Sorian managed to get a working mod manager in beta 1. I don't know if it will be possible to do it with Impulse though, and distributing it would certainly be difficult.|||It depends on how they implement what they are calling their anti-cheating system.



Here is how it works, for those that do not know. The game executable is hardcoded to recognize the md5 hash of the zip file that has all of the lua files in it. change any lua file or anything at all with that zip file and the hash changes and the game will not start.



So far, you can trick the game into loading custom files by renaming the zip and creating a folder called dgdata.zip and loading all of the lua files (changed or not) into the folder.



I am not sure how this is going to work with Impulse, however, or how long this will continue to work at all. If Impulse is set to check the hash and is not fooled by simple folder slight of hand, then modding is screwed.



Is Demigod moddable? ATM, yes, with a little slight of hand. But, for how much longer?



I'm with Col. Jessep. Once I play a game for a while I start to get more enjoyment modding it than I do playing it. Modding Demigod is easy, but if they setup their anti-cheating system to prevent it then they are going back on their previous statement of: "we are not going to prevent modding, we are just not going to actively support it".|||"He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" will happily circumvent any protection methods which will make modding impossible.|||Now heres a rather simple solution to make modding and mapping possible AND prevent cheating in ranked:



You make the exe with md5 hash check and god knows what, including the SupComDataPath.lua. The lua includes a mod and map folder like SupCom. If you play ranked or 'unmodified' custom games those folders are not loaded and you run your little md5 paranoia check.



But in singleplayer and a new section, the custom games with mod support you allow those folders. Simple and good to manage, hard to work around it for cheaters too I think.



@ Sorian: would that work?|||The game will already load mods in the mods folder (if you do the folder trick). It is all still there, they would just have to set it up like you said and run the md5 check for ranked only.



However, I doubt that will happen. I still believe the real reason (or at least the main focus) behind the md5 check is to keep a monopoly on dlc (downloadable content). I really hate believing that and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but I don't see any other reason for the md5 check just to start the game.



If it changes, by some miracle, and they allow custom content except in ranked I will happily update my Mod Manager at release.|||Of course they intend to have the monopoly on the new Demigods : it's additional money for them every month that can keep the game fresh and profitable. The question is : how expensive an additional Demigod will be? How many will they release each month? Will there be package formulae?



That's the reason why they released so few Demigods at start and did the MD5 thingy. They'll probably allow the game to be moddable only if this economic model doesn't work or reach its limit. I believe that when the players buy less and less Demigods as the interest in the game dwindles, they'll allow the game to be more open to mods.|||To be honest, if no mods are there then I really won't play the game much.



I'd have stopped playing a lot of games if it weren't for mods.