Some Questions Regarding Beta, DoTA, etc.

From a long-time watcher considering pre-order

from Stardock Forums

I've been combing the forums and FAQ's and wanted to make sure I had current information (much of what I have found appears to be dated.)  So here we go:

  1. If I pre-order now, can I get into the Beta and start playing today?
  2. Speaking of beta - I hear it is LAN only currently (but Hamachi can work.)  If I pre-order and have some friends over for a LAN partaaaay, would they need to pre-order it too to play or...?  And when do we expect to have only lobbies, matchmaking, etc.?
  3. Are there going to be more options for custom heroes and such?  8 Heroes doesn't touch the 90+ in DoTA.  This also makes it each game less unique than the one before it.  Would be nice even to have a hero builder like in LoTR: BfME games.  Or are there plans to make content patch drops with many more heroes put in the game, or are we relying on the community to produce these (and are there enough unique models in the game for different visual appearances)?
  4. Speaking of community - what kinds of support for mods - I heard this was hoping to be the Counter-Strike of Strategy Games, does that mean big support for mods, etc.?
  5. Can you mix and match teams and team sizes?  Could you have a 2v3v4?  How about a 1v1v1v2, etc.?  I'm very used to 5v5 or 3v3 etc, and would love to have more flexibility there.
  6. What about the AI.  The AI for creeps is supposed to be decent, and follows pathing as expected, but howabout Hero AI?  Sometimes you wanna team up against some comps and go to town - Can you insert AI Heroes into Human teams, or have them on their own teams, etc.?  Do they do all the human things like heal, buy items, etc.?
demigod
5,178 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Demigod Forums Top

1. No ypu have to wait until beta 2 starts (november afaik)

2. I don't know

3. we have to wait till beta 2 (1 is an engine test)

4. I don't know

5. Every map has room for a certain amount of players and you can choose to leave some places open, so yes.

6. At the moment it is, hm.. well not bad but not good either.

I hope that helps a bit.

Reply #2 from Demigod Forums Top

1) I'm pretty sure that you have to wait until the next phase of the beta.

2) I think everyone needs a copy.  Eventually Impulse will be used as the multiplayer client, although I don't think they have announced when that will be happening.

3) It may sound like there are "only" 8 heroes but there is some variety in the skills you choose that makes them different.  They also plan to release a few new Demigods in free updates soon after release.  I am almost 100% sure that there will be no hero builder but modders will probably end up making more Demigods.  I don't think there will really be a problem with the number of heroes though.  The different team combinations will be enough.

4) As far as I know, there will be no mods allowed in ranked, but custom games can have mods.  There probably won't be big support for it for a while but there is already a community-made mod-manager, and the Supcom engine (which Demigod is based on) was pretty moddable.

5) Yes, you can leave spots empty.

6) They aren't as good as humans, of course, but they use items and spells and heal and etc.  They will hopefully be better by release; right now I think they just want the game to work.

Offworld Trading Company
Reply #3 from Demigod Forums Top

To clarify my question #5 - can there be more than two teams?

Reply #4 from Demigod Forums Top

Quoting Yuriken, reply 3
To clarify my question #5 - can there be more than two teams?
End of Yuriken's quote

We don't know yet but I hope there will be.

Plus I see no reason why blocking that option (although I have seen most map that will be in launch and it looks like all of them are two teams maps so I don't know)

Reply #5 from Demigod Forums Top

I (unfortunately) doubt that there will be more than 2 teams.  The layout of the maps and the way that creeps are AI-controlled, not human-controlled, means that 3 or more teams wouldn't work very well.

Reply #6 from Demigod Forums Top

from what I have seen in the editor already it should be very easy to create maps with more than 2 teams, I guess it needs to be some kind of king of the hill style then to make any sense gameplaywise but it can be done.