First Impressions - Post yours here

I thought the game was fun, I don't like the other gods other than the big guy for some reason.

The game runs very smooth on my 8800gt on max settings at 1680x1050 and also looks good.

I totally agree though, if there is an area attack it shouldn't be forced to click on 1 unit.

If this beta wasn't suppose to be fun, then I can't wait to see the fun version.

Well, my first impression was, golly - Graphically its very nice - Smooth too! (1680x1050 maxed with AA - 9800 GX2)

This impression grew in size as the game went on with all the unlocked skills etc

Gameplay wise, who said this beta isnt suppost to be fun? If this is stardocks/GPG's idea of "not a fun beta" then i cant wait for the full version!

And not a single crash, even with my constant tab's out

Also nice to see that the camera controls are similar to SC

Great so far, and being a beta, can only get better!

I've played full releases that aren't as fun.

Needs some polish, but is vey good.

This games hurts my eyes: there's just simply too many elements on screen at one time. The lack of strategic icons doesn't help much either.

First impressions are mixed but rather positive.

Graphics and atmosphere:
- I have to say it looks beautiful, and seems well optimized. You can zoom all you want turn the camera in every direction, no problem. They kept it simple, but it will definitely help with low specs computers. Buildings are definitely too small though, and the ones where you buy stuff are just plain ugly. I wish they had some textures on them... Other than that, the design is good and original.
- The animations are ok, could be better overall, more fluid, because some are definitely nice and some seem very basic. The most annoying thing for me is the way units overlap and don't feel solid sometimes
- Music fits well with an everlasting fight at first, but it becomes repetitive during one single game. After 5 minutes actually. It's like the same notes played over and over again. I hope they have lots of different musics. Probably only one per arena though... They'd better add an option to customize your own tracks (TA soundtrack forever!).

Gameplay:

-First, Why in hell can't you scroll the screen when you point your mouse at the edge of the screen? Did I miss an option somewhere? It's a basic feature of all games. Ok there is zoom, but the map is so small that edge scrolling with mouse would be expected. It's in every game!
- First impression was that the action was repetitive, didn't know how to target enemies properly with skills. I thought the arena was too small, but since you're quite slow, it's probably better.

-After some time, I began to get the clink of the game, and saw more advanced creatures, discovered new skills and it became a bit more fun.
Some things are not very intuitive (maybe because I'm not a Dota player?), but I sense fun potential in this, especially in teams of course. 

My greatest concern is about the diversity and the lasting appeal of the game.

??? It works fine if you click the skill then where you want to cast.

For my first playthrough I used Torch Bearer (because with a name like that and ICE spells, I definitely needed to see what was going on with him).  Overall he felt somewhat......  Incapable, with only a single spell that did damage considerable enough to harm an opposing demigod.  Definitely need a balance check on him I think.  My second game was with Rook, and I must say I did a hell of a lot better with him.  He has so many sources of damage by comparison, and they're higher damage overall, that there might as well not be a contest.  Torch Bearer was doing a paltry 300ish damage with several damage boosting pieces at the end of my first game.  Rook was doing over 700 per swing, which is close to Torch Bearer's fireball spell(!).  Third game I used Regulus, and I was back to doing low damage, but I feel he was compensated because of his extreme range and low recharge on his useful skills.  Plus passive attack bonuses.

Particle effects are great, and really give you the feel of the battles.  Animations are a little on the weak side for some of the units (particularly the melee guys who seem to do nothing at times).  They need a little more variation and flow I think.  Textures look nice and crisp when zoomed in all the way, models are well detailed, though somewhat samey (it got to the point where I had difficulty telling allied Rook towers from enemy Rook towers), so perhaps some stylistic changes could be made there.  One thing I WILL say though is the game lacks a colour palette.  It can be very difficult to tell the difference between enemy and allied units, particularly amongst the demigods, and I even once found myself confused between ME and another demigod.  Adding vibrant colour shaders for your team and perhaps individualized colours for your demigod in particular would be a great boon so you can tell at a glance that "Oh, green's on the enemy team."

Controls and UI were a little unintuitive.  I had gone into this thinking it would play like a typical RTS, and it DOES a little, but there are a few nuances which are missing.  For one, no minimap as said before.  It's not such an issue because I do zoom in and out a lot (and grateful it goes out so far), but I like to know at a glance where all the enemies are without having to zoom away from my guy.  The shops too are a little confusing.  Right click to sell, but left click to buy?  Wouldn't it make sense to use the same button to do both?  The icons for skills and consumables could be a little bigger too I feel, or perhaps customizably scaled (they're fine, but I'd like them larger).  No scrolling by moving the mouse to the edges of the screen seems odd too, but I muddled by.  The means of rotating the camera is not obvious if it exists as well.  I often times find myself trying to target an enemy that's on the other side of something, only to get the something that's in the way (targeting an allied Rook for instance).  There's also no confirmation of orders.  When I try to roast an enemy with a fireball, there's no single noise which confirms I've given an order.  There's no confirmation for attacking specific targets either.  There's confirmation that I'm ABOUT to use a skill, but that's about it.  And attack moving is only confirmed by you attacking nearby enemies.

While we're on the subject of attacking, the demigods seem rather....  Dumb, shall I say.  They don't auto attack nearby enemies at all, even if they would be in range.  Regulus would attack move and attack the first target he'd come across, but then sit there and act rather dim.  I believe this is a bug though with the AI because making him do an attack would cause him to default to an attack everything around me mode.  Also, attack moving doesn't attack move to the target like one would expect.  It merely stops you at the first place you find an enemy and you don't move onward.  The computer also seems rather bold, sometimes advancing well beyond his front lines to attack me when he's clearly out matched, and doesn't attack on the way in at all.  This usually leads to the computer getting dropped to half health before it can unleash its onslaught, and by then I easily out damage it (except as Torch Bearer).

Level wise it's a straight forward fight.  I'm a little disappointed by the lack of size, I could walk across the map end to end in no time at all.  The enemy unit pathing is also....  confusing.  It would seem to make sense that the units would take the shortest path possible to reach its goal, but instead they seem to take some awkward zigzag pathway, and will completely ignore the opened side entrances which I've cleared.  The theme of the level is quite nice, coherent, well textured.  I agree with previous posters that the building designs leave much to be desired though and need some sort of variation to differntiate them between each other.  I'd love to see a more foresty area released with the next phase of the beta, I imagine we could all use the variation by then and lifeless stone can only hold one's interest for so long.  Here's also to hoping that it'll be at least 3 times larger than this current level.

I'd have to say audio-wise I have the least to say.  Since that's so, I'd say they did their job right, because you only tend to notice sound when it's wrong, not often when it's right.  >)

I could certainly use some confirmation sounds though for skill use.  Let's get the units roaring (Rook) or making quips about the enemy's chances when we level our skills and attacks against them.

Overall I did enjoy myself, and I've had no problems with the stability of the game at all, even after tabbing in and out several dozen times mid game, or leaving it in the background while I tend to clipping the puppy's nails for 20 minutes or so.  Drastically changing the configurations also seem to be a painless transition, even from highest to lowest resolution and back again with high detail settings.  I've only noticed several graphical issues with the consumable items, particularly in regards to cool down, but that's been reported already.  All in all I'd say it's a job well done.  I'll continue to stress the game out to make it cough up some issues.  Let's get to testing internet multiplayer soon guys, we'd all love to have a chance to take a crack at the dev team.  >)

I've only played a few games (and without hotkeys due to crashing) but here are my first thoughts. Bear in mind that I have played a lot of DotA in the past, and yes I do realise we're in the first phase of a beta. I also won't talk about things like the Rook being OP :

Good things

- The gamestyle - I can see that it's definitely been developed with the intention of improving upon DotA, which is awesome.

- Accessibility - the UI is clear, uncluttered and is not difficult to navigate.

- Capture points - good idea, these bring something different to proceedings.

- Named/categorised shops - very useful for beginners. In DotA it's not uncommon for new players to stand around in spawn for half the game clicking confusedly through the shops since there's no organisation or useful naming available.

- Skills tree - nicely done, very easy to use.

- Designated equip slots - seems like a nice idea; avoids crazy item stacking.

- Game lobby - functional and works fine. I'll be very interested to see how the matchmaking/community system works.

- General gameplay - there are a number of little elements that I really like that aren't worth their own points, so I'll just say I like how the game feels and plays right now, I really didn't notice anything too annoying or found issues that made me curse to the hills when playing.

Not-so-good things

- Game speed - this may be engine related and the fact that there hasn't been much tweaking in this department yet, but the game's pace seems a bit slow. I also never seem to find myself in the situation of either being run down or left for dead by anyone (without stuns and so on) - differences in hero pace seem within a very tight range.

- Creep power - in DotA, creeps are comparable in strength to heroes in the early stages of a game. You would never be able to run into a bunch and tank them without losing some serious health. In this game, you rarely have to worry about them after the first level and can absolutely annihilate entire waves with the Torchbearer from the get-go. 

- Creeps ignoring towers - alright, I realise the AI still has a lot of tweaking to do, but here's something that needs to be considered when it is. In a game today, I noticed that despite a tower being in front of the creeps in my lane, they decided not to attack it and for some reason charged the enemy creep wave that was some way behind the tower instead. Towers are always the priority if there are no creeps ahead of one.

- Building damage - in my opinion, hero abilities should not hurt towers and buildings as this makes them far too easy to destroy (this was the case in DotA - only auto-attack usually worked). At the moment you can dominate towers with the Rook's slam ability, for example.

- On-screen congestion - when there are a lot of creeps on-screen and a lot of abilities going off at the same time, it can be difficult to see what exactly is going on with regard to the heroes involved.

- Colour direction - this may help with the previous point - hero colours need to be more vibrant and obvious. Team colouring should also be an option.

- Hero sizes - the Rook is obviously easily seen and the Torchbearer isn't too bad, but Regulus is too small at almost the size of a creep. Heroes should be more obvious than this, and if they are to be small, they need design elements that easily make them stand out.

- Not clear enough on-screen messages - in DotA, you KNOW when somebody dies. There's a nice multi-coloured message across the screen and the sounds from Unreal Tournament blaring in your speakers. While Demigod has its own 'UT sounds' (great!) the onscreen messages need to be more obvious and stay on the screen for longer.

- Lack of item recipes - this is probably one of my current biggest dislikes, though being the beta, I'm aware that this situation may change dramatically as we continue through the builds. In any case, there simply needs to be recipes available and lots of them - they bring a whole extra dimension of customisation to your gamestyle and give a great deal more depth to the game. A large factor in the learning curve of DotA is knowing how to create recipes and understanding which will benefit your hero the most depending on the situation of a battle.

- Being unable to scroll the screen using mouse alone - this is pretty much a staple thing to have I feel, considering a lot of the time you need your fingers on ability/item hotkeys. I don't actually mind zooming in & out (as I used to do this on Supcom) but there are times when I do need it and I know others will be infuriated about not being able to use it all the time when playing.

- You cannot go 'out of range' of an attack - during the games I've been in, I've noticed that heroes do not seem to go out of range of attacks. For instance, if you load up Regulus' charged shot on someone but they run out of range during the casting time to try and avoid it, he will still use his ability on that person. In DotA, a target going out of range means that the attacker will not be able to cast an ability that they were in the progress of casting while the target was in range. This is quite an important escape mechanism to have.

- Health bar numbers - there needs to be a way to enable the numbers on your UI permanently rather than just displaying on hovering (kick me if there's an option which I haven't seen).

- A 'primary attribute' system - I haven't seen this in the game so it might just be me being blind, but it would be really useful to have an icon (or something) similar to DotA in specifying what your hero's primary attribute is. If you aren't totally familiar with a hero, this make things tons easier to decide what items to go for in the heat of a battle. It also helps beginners a lot in understanding what items to buy.

I realise I seem to have listed more bad points than good here, but don't get the impression I don't like the game - right now, I'm delighted with what has been created and the direction in which the game is heading. If this is the first beta then I'm ridiculously excited for what's to come later on. 

Excellent work GPG & Stardock, keep this up and you'll be onto a winner.

Oh, and as some others have said, I would also like to see a minimap, if only to get a quick overview of the battle.

First Impressions:

PRESENTATION ( 7 out of 10 )

The presentation was not too bad, actually; much better than I had expected for Beta 1. The title screen was great and it was very obvious and simple to get started. Chosing a Demigod felt nice, and everything about the game seemed pretty smooth so far. Starting up a new game I instantly felt at home with the 3/4th view, and DotA-like controls. Although buying items was a bit of a chore, because I had to open up a clunky shop window that blocked my screen, and didn't open up smoothly. It feels like there is a delay when opening up a shop, and overall the shop-system didn't feel clean.

Going out into a lane and starting to fight creeps, it was very hard to tell if I was hitting enemies or not; in fact it was hard to tell what was going on in general. Nothing about the combat felt smooth -- overtime I got more used to it, but it was never altogether clean. With plenty of UI tweaks and minor convience changes such as putting unique "borders" for passive and active abilities to tell them apart, showing HP bars above NPC creeps, making shopping faster and easier, etc.: I can see this being a great game.

GRAPHICS ( 8 out of 10 )

The graphics didn't exactly feel top-notch, and seemed slightly choppier than I had expected at first. However after fiddling with my graphics settings I completely changed my mind. Very smooth, clean graphics, with no real signs of lag even when things on the screen get heavy. The artistic vision and overall graphical style of this game just feels "nice". It's sort of futuristic, sort of medieval, and it's entirely got that mythological feel. The only thing, graphically, that I disliked were the lack of boldness in the NPC units; it's hard to tell them apart. This feel of things being to small scale and hard to see who's who or what's going on when things get too cluttered seems like it'd give me a headache after awhile. If not for this, the graphics would be virtually perfect.

AUDIO ( 9 out of 10 )

Fantastic sound effects really go with the animations on screen. The attack sounds are pleasing and the announcer yelling out "WRATHFUL!" and "THE SCOURGE!" is just as satasfying as playing Unreal Tournament. The sounds for the UI are also very clean and nice; luckily there's no pingy/beepy/whining sounds that piss me off when it comes to a lot of interfaces. I barely noticed any music other than slight ambiance, but that's just how war should be.

GAMEPLAY ( 6 out of 10 )

Here's where the game takes a bullet. Although keep in mind I am rating the game in its current state, Beta 1, and I do believe improvement is on its way. Honestly "laning" early game is not nearly as exciting as it is in Defense of the Ancients, and since attacking doesn't feel very smooth yet, it's hard to judge the gameplay. Fighting heroes isn't exactly a rush, and pushing into the enemy base is kind of bland so far.

Playing through all the characters, the Torch Bearer seemed like he wasn't really doing that much damage for how fragile he was. Even Regulus felt like he was doing more, and wasn't nearly as fragile. The Rook just seemed flat-out overpowered. He has an AMAZING close-up attack that tears enemies' life to shreads in a split second, a boulder stun that lasts for ages, and he's more durable than most of the buildings in that game. Basically the game needs some balance tuning, and a few other changes to clean up the gameplay. This game is absolutely great for Beta 1.

Don't get me wrong, this game is still playable, it's just not really that exciting yet.

Balance wise. Rook is very overpowered.

I know this is beta 1, but I haven't seen anyone flame this yet.

I mean. . . Rook is supposed to be slow, but he can go up to Regulus and do a 1200 nuke with some decent aoe in the time Regulus charges his 600 damage single target nuke. (Rook > Magey > Creep sized hero)

I like all the hero ideas right now though. Keep em coming!

From Reply #10 : " Going out into a lane and starting to fight creeps, it was very hard to tell if I was hitting enemies or not; in fact it was hard to tell what was going on in general. Nothing about the combat felt smooth -- overtime I got more used to it, but it was never altogether clean. "

I agree. Battles are often a confusing mess, where precise targeting is difficult.

Here are my first impressions.

Demigod runs very smoothly on my machine at all zoom levels while all kinds of spell effects and other such things are going off everywhere.  Load times are not bad at all.  I noticed no glitches or artifacts of any kind, and I found the light v. dark color scheme to be simple yet effective at differentiating units under most conditions.

I found gameplay to be smooth and relatively easy to figure out (a tutorial, which I'm sure the final game will include, should be easy enough to do well).  I did find the waterfall map to be a bit small, and I found the lack of third party creeps to be a bit disappointing.  I think there'd be more of an rpg quality to the game if the maps were a little bigger and included "natives" or "wondering monster" type creeps in addition to the faction armies.  Of course, I suspect the waterfall map is more of an arena type setup than some other maps would be, so hopefully not every map in the final game will be so small.

Item purchasing works reasonably well, though I suspect one will need to spend quite a bit of time looking through shop inventories and examining each available choice before one can get really efficient in the buying of gear.  The tooltips are nice, but perhaps some more detailed explanations of a few of the special item effects (thorns for one, if I remember the name correctly) would help things a bit.  I also think it might be a worthwhile thing to limit access to the artifact shop to only the side that has captured the central flag (I'm pretty sure it's not limited already).

I really like the Rook.  He's relatively straight-forward in his operation, and his size serves both to make him look more interesting and to make it easier to target him.  His abilities work pretty well from what I can tell, and I haven't noticed anything terribly overpowering in any of them.

The Torchbearer is pretty good too.  I've only really used him with a full frost spec, so no testing of the fire spells on my part, but he doesn't seem to lose too much functionality if your main goal is to support the creep army.  He does run out of mana very quickly, but then he's a caster, so that's to be expected.  For the most part he seems well enough able to autotarget creeps with his basic attack when they're in range.

I haven't tried out the archer guy yet, but from my experiences fighting against him he seems rather useful.  His incredibly long range works very much to his advantage, and dropping mines just makes things more interesting.

I like that stuns and other incapacitations last longer against creeps than they do against heroes.

Pathfinding seems ok, though I think it would make sense for the creep army to reroute if you destroy the defenses along one of the sides.  It makes little sense for them to rush headlong into the teeth of a determined defense if a hole opened up on the enemy flank.  Maybe if you increased the frequency of the spawns while decreasing the numbers brought through the portals each time, and then allowed for alternate travel routes with each spawn, which would shift as the flow of the battle changed...

The main thing I'd say against the game right now is definitely the size of the map and the lack of third-party creeps (I suspect larger maps would be better able to handle those).  I miss being able to run off and go exploring, killing the non-aligned creeps to level and get money before upgrading and joining the fray against the enemy.

All in all it is an enjoyable game.  I may try testing out teams composed entirely of one hero type, to see if I can discern any lack of balance.  If an all Rook team always wins, and an all Torchbearer team always loses, then perhaps the balance might need some work.  However, my initial impression is that each hero has a role to play, a role which can change based on the skills the player (or AI) choses upon level up, and which is useful for achieving final victory in the match.

My first impressions are certainly positive. 

Runs beautifully here on my brand new ATI 4870  

Only played one game so far as rock, hammering the enemy is fun And yeah, if this beta version isnt supposed to be fun.. man.. Looking forward to the coming updates.

Very impressed with a first beta release here! 

 My first impressions   I've played arrund 10 full games now, and I've played all charactors.

Stuff i like

¤ The map we got in the beta, has 2 "choke" points, at each side, + 1 strat. point in the middle (the flag)        

¤ The Artifact Shop at the flag. Suggestion: only have 1 shop, that would be accesable for the team who has the flag.

¤ The Skill tree! The spells are round, (looks good) they are lots of passive abbility's -maybe not enugh "select spells" for Rook and Regulus

¤ The texture and visiual effects, The game runs well ( not totally smooth) I have had no chrashes or wired stuff  , but i do lag sometimes.

¤ The Overall Came Consept :CONGRATS:  But, more of those flags or stuff just as important.

Stuff i dont like 

¤ Rook is too overpowered. Suggestions: Less HP, Less damage, and reduction of the speed. he is 2 fast :Dfff

¤ Buildings are to small, so are the units. // also, Regulus is WAY to small he's an angel, they are big? //

¤ When you die, the box wich tells u how much time untill u respawn, overlaps the: (some1) kill (some1) text.

¤ Are there only gonna be 3 assasins and 3 generals??? hope not

¤ The towers are also too weak. More hp is needed in my op.

¤ The Torch Bearer's spells like: When TB uses Ring of Fire and Fire Nova, he has to go into the battle, or stay in it, 2 use. As vulnerable as he is in that situation, he would probably die right after, or be extremly low on health.The same with Frost Nova.

Suggestions

¤ Corpes should burn or vanish in some cool way, instead sink into the ground.

¤ A shop were you could buy units. ( that u could control or not?) Maybe: Dark Shadow. Health: 1500. Energy: 1500. Spells: Shadow of the dead??... kinda

Thats about it