Super Nerd Sundays Presents: Demigod and DotA!

It’s understandable that DotA fans might feel frustrated upon seeing Demigod for the first time. “Hey!” they might cry “We’ve been playing this for years!” Some of the brighter proponents of Demigod might respond that no version of DotA has really been around for years, that the community of DotA shuffles players in and out with remarkable speed, and that version changes are so prolific and at times dramatic that a period of even a few months can result in an unrecognizably different game. These people will then be stoned amongst cries of “lagging bitch” and “QQ more noob.”

More astute, less psychotic DotA players (of which there are, in fact, several) would look at the game and see an indictment of the problems of DotA. The reductive combat, the catch-all nature of the end game and the nearly identical ideal builds which inevitably emerge, and the single, pathetic map, the mod’s only unchanging feature after over half a decade of prominence, all present serious problems. To say nothing of the balance issues or the unforgiving learning curve which, as previously stated, requires constant vigilance to outpace.

These astute players might also point out that Demigod has retained all of the finicky technical issues which eventually made me stop playing DotA all together. At time of writing I’ve had a blue screen of death resulting from playing Demigod, one that hit my computer so hard it corrupted my operating system’s install files. I spent three hours doing automated repairs after thirty minutes of failing to find a game. So DotA’s legacy of mind numbing frustration remains intact.

As does the amazingly fun core of its gameplay. Sure, fun is a reductive word, but in this case it’s accurate. DotA captured a certain immediacy which most RTSes lack, while maintaining the importance of resource management and foresight. It paired reflex centered play with a focus on resource management and collection through unconventional means, and it did it without losing a whit of the complexity so critical to the RTS genre.

Demigod is slavishly faithful to this trend, taking it one step further by removing DotA’s flatlining end game. Demigod doesn’t offer players anywhere near enough resources to purchase any sort of idealized loadout. It also prevents stacking low cost items in order to try to give your hero an early game advantage. And it forces players to specialize, instead of simply requiring that they generate an order for selecting powers.

It also presents an intriguing interplay between heroes. Unlike DotA’s rock-paper-scissors system between general hero types, occasionally interrupted by specialized heroes created with the intention of breaking that balance, Demigod draws from larger archetypes. The mage, the archer, the heavy warrior and the quick warrior. They’re presented in familiar, yet original ways. The Rook is, strangely, simultaneously the most familiar and original hero I’ve ever encountered in a game. Towers on his back?! The novelty! But he’s still the big slow guy who stomps on his enemies. Regulus is the typical ranged guy, just there to do damage and make other players wish he was dead. But his mines and his AOE powerup make him something so much more, especially late game.

These characters present archetypes we’ve seen in other games and subvert them while standardizing gameplay in a way that doesn’t make it boring. They capture the essence of what makes real-time strategy games great: an apparently simple system possessed of remarkable depth which is easy to learn and difficult to master.

DotA, for all the good memories it’s offered me, never really grasped the first part of this equation. The game is almost impenetrable. Properly playing each hero requires intricate memorization of how to properly utilize each of their abilities in tandem, not just with one another, but with the abilities of every other player on your team and in response to the strengths and weaknesses of the entire opposing team. It also requires a well thought out build order for your hero, a carefully crafted equipment build and razor sharp reflexes. A single mistake and some of the more skilled DotA players will take you apart in seconds.

It is as unforgiving as most 4X games and lasts about as long, but it plays at a breakneck pace. And while Demigod has done a great job of maintaining these epic back and forth struggles, wherein something is always happening somewhere and you always feel that your demigod should be engaged in some kind of activity, it has offered a few solutions to the overlong games. By allowing players to switch up modes and change the rate at which characters and victory conditions progress games can end in as few as 15 minutes, an impossibility in DotA (unless an entire team drops prematurely, which any DotA player will tell you absolutely never happens).

It’s also fair to say that DotA, with its reused characters, animations, textures and scripts, is pretty unpolished. Demigod, though, is polished to a fine sheen. Everything about the game is sleek and original, well designed and well crafted. Everything, that is, except the technology allowing players to come together.

It’s easy to excoriate Gas Powered Games for screwing the pooch as badly as they did in Demigod, and to some extent they deserve it, but Demigod’s remarkable attempt at peer-to-peer matchmaking, even if it didn’t work out, was well intentioned and a worthwhile experiment in changing the way developers and publishers allow players to connect. If it had succeeded it would’ve allowed designers to circumvent the costly process of purchasing and maintaining dedicated multiplayer servers for their player base, an issue which becomes even more problematic when you consider that the player base might outlast the publisher’s support of the game (or worse, the publisher themselves).

For great examples of this happening please look at Bungie.net and Cavedog’s Boneyard service. The former has found life in a bevy of matchmaking services, while I am totally unaware of the current status of the latter. As far as I know, it’s still buried.

So while it’s fair to compare these two games, even to call them out for being nearly identical, it isn’t really fair to call Demigod a downgrade of DotA, or a reduction of DotA’s hero count. Instead it’s a new take, an attempt to bring DotA to a larger audience, particularly to those players who are less willing to sit in front of their computer for hours on end and learn a system nearly as complex as state tax code.

It’s also an expansion of the concepts around which DotA is centered. Demigod’s Favor Items, persistent items which can be carried between games and used to exploit the strengths or compensate for the weaknesses of various heroes, add a great twist to the process. And the large scale tournaments, or Pantheon games, add a much needed sense of camraderie and persistence to the slog of games, although there are some serious problems with this process (Why can’t I play with my friends Pantheon, Stardock?). Demigod attempts to direct the constantly shifting learning curve and offer some incentive for participating in the constant conflict which both these games offer, and I say power to them for doing so. DotA, for all its depth and mix of action and strategy, was never about anything more than bragging rights.

So in closing I’d like to say that Demigod is a great game, and while I can’t honestly say I think it would be here even if DotA hadn’t been around I have to say that I think it takes both the real-time strategy genre and the single-unit RTS concept to some great places and stands on its own merits rather than resting on DotA’s laurels. I just hope it keeps running with the ideas it has introduced, and that it sees some major technical overhauls in the near future. At present the matching service desperately needs work, and the game is missing a number of multiplayer features now standard in RTS games. Playing with non-custom games with friends and, more importantly, playing ranked games with friends, isn't just a chore: it's impossible. Much as I hate to say it, they could learn a lot from Games for Windows Live’s matchmaking process, or more accurately the options with which it provides players. And a few new heroes would be nice, too. Not that the heroes we have already aren’t nice and deep and hard to master. Variety is just the spice of life, and watching ten people slog it out, each with their own unique hero, is tons of fun. Even more fun than watching eight people do it. So keep up the good work, Demigod, and don't stop now. We’re all rooting for you.