Games of SupCom vanilla, when I played online, also completeed in under 30 minutes most of the time. Turtling wasn't an option if your opponent harassed you properly and took the rest of the map, and it was mostly decided by the end of T1 who was going to win.

If your games were taking an hour your computer was either at -10 sim or you were playing at a low skill level.

Your generalisation of people liking half hour games to 12 year olds is amusing...funny how there is little to no demand for multiplayer games that take an hour or so isn't it? Maybe that's because it's not just the 12 year olds who like half hour sessions.

I don't play CnC3, and have no interest in it, but I'm guessing Starcraft is another one of these games where you just "spam units." Here's a thought: 99% of Supcom units don't have abilities, so all you do all game is spam units. Compare this to Starcraft, Warcraft, Dawn of War, Company of Heroes etc. where you need to activate abilities very quickly and on a large number of units, and you'll see that it's actually the SupCom/TA model that is about spamming units.

I'm going to say that DG is about your hero, and playing against your opponent's heroes, and towers should not be a major factor in this relationship. If your opponent is capping your flags, it is YOU that should be doing something about it, not your towers. If the opposing team manages to play 2v3 and have a third off capping your shit behind your back, you deserve to be punished for poor play.

I don't want a viable strategy in this game to be "Upgrade towers, sit behind them till we get to lvl 20, buy toys, hit enemy." and that is what you are moving towards with your buff towers ideas. There should be engagements at every stage of the game, and by having towers on normal you facilitate that. Putting towers to high prevents it, ergo it is a worse option. Why don't you just put starting level to 5 if you don't want to play early game...

Don't need more tower starting health... what we need are more effective upgrades so that towers can still be strong later in the game.  The ability to somehow rebuild dead towers would also be nice.

Dito - the game I played was a 2v2 on crucible.  Low warscore, high gold, high towers... interesting settings.  I enjoyed being able to buy pretty much anything I wanted fairly quickly, but once we held all the flags for about 4 minutes, it was pretty clear we were going to win... it would have been excruciating if they wanted to play it out.  The high towers didn't make much of a difference surprizingly in this game.  I'll give high towers another shot...

When I played SupCom most games lasted atleast an hour quite freqently, and I did play larger games like 4v4, at good pings and speed. Usually both sides were evenly balanced and thus was a tight/tough match, making it that much more enjoyable.

As for my comment on the 12 year old kids, that is just an observation from many RTS style games I've played. They are the ones who tend to join, spam gogogo and leave if you don't start within 20-30 seconds, and if you do start, they end up quitting part way through because it takes to long or they start losing. I'm not saying everyone is like that, there are more casual gamers around now who may not have a lot of time, but the majority that stick out at the spammers to me.

Still, why do we have towers if they are frequently ignored or easily taken down as they are now? If they are going to be a defense, make them a defense, not just another part of the creep game mechanic, where they are only there to hold back creeps for a short period of the game until you start getting better creeps.

I believe it should be a valid option to get upgrades for towers like you do for creeps, so if your team would prefer to be a bit more defensive they can do so, using the defense to hold enemies at bay then launch counter attacks when possible. Not all RTS players are aggressive style, many are defensive types and there are others in between.

For me the decision isn't about longer or shorter games, it's more of the gameplay aspects that are effected. I've had many, many games using default settings that have stretched well over the 1 hour and 30 minute mark becuase the teams were well matched and everyone playing their A games. These games are very fun.

The game I mentioned above was painfully slow not because it took longer, but because trying to get an advantage or remove an enemies advantage on the field of any kind took far too long - it took far too long to get the towers near the flags down which resulted in the sitting near towers killing the enemies creeps while waiting to regen and because the enemie wouldn't try to advance due to the DPS of the Tower, and then when I pushed them back they'd do the same thing with very little actual Demigod V Demigod combat. Far less emphasis was placed on actual Demigod performance, because by the time the towers were out of the picture we were all rockin' artifacts and strategy went out the window as the game devolved into a focus fire Nuke Fest that still managed to take over an hour finish.

The differences between this - thats High Towers and Low Warscore - and default games from my observations are as follows:
1. More time farming creeps, and less time fighting Demigods.
2. Less time trying to outplay your opponents and more time fighting Towers.
3. Harder to die, and get kills, in the early and mid games thanks to the back up of the Towers.
4. The average gear level was raised quite significantly compared to a normal game.
5. The game progressed much, much slower and despite this even less strategy was needed to win.
6. Upgrades were being purchased as they became available - every. single. upgrade - compared to having to chose which upgrades to purchase as the average gold earnt per Warscore Rank was significantly increased.
7. Much greater emphasis on serial capping flags.
8. Less emphasis on correct or intelligent use of abilities mid-to-end game due to the nature of the match forcing Demigods to stick together more often. Nuke fests ensured. This isn't unique to this type of game, however it was much more pronounced. 1v1 never happened once Warscore 3 was reached.

It just feels to me like this type of match encourages turtling the game; hiding behind your Towers until you can simply buy bigger and better gear than your opponents. The number of deaths before your opponents have a clear advantage is also increased; 2 deaths can turn the tide in a normal game, 5 deaths didn't really appear to make much difference. Less emphasis is placed on intelligent use of abilities as by the time the Towers go down and your forced to face your opponents, the auto-attack DPS is compareable to the end-game of a default match. I believe we had an Oak rockin' some nice artifacts by level 7 and he simply bullied us around until we reached level 13 and stacked Ash-es and just brute forced them down with little strategy involved. It was, frankly, not that much fun.

Sly - let's get some games going together.  Happy to play w and against. It seems like in this past 1-2 weeks alone I've been able to get some great matches against good highly ranked opponents (premades and when I am puggin).  I know quite a few people who would make great premade teammates and very solid puggers.  Realistically, if I can keep 1 good player playing demigod, odds are the game will continue to hold my interest.  So, let's play!  Add me as a friend or I'll do the same if I think of it first. 

If you prefer high towers, I am ok with giving that a go. 

how do high towers do anything but lengthen the game

this thread is full of whiners who lost because they didn't protect their towers

god forbid you actually have to do something to keep the other team out of your base

not really. games were 40-60 mins. action started in feudal age at like 11-13 mins and you would reach castle age at like 26-30 mins.

High towers changes the pacing of the game, demigod's balance changes with time, therefore they affect balance. Also DGs like rook, frost TB, and regulus clearly interact with towers differently than players who have to just tank them out.

Towers aren't there to save you or your base, they're there to give you a home field advantage, which they do if you bother to defend your home.

Do you guys need the Happy Gilmore ball speech?