Although i may not use the same kind of language   as yourself. lol. I think you have a point. There are so many times i have played online and asked for the teams to be set evenly, only to be told that if i don't like it i can leave. Fair enough i suppose but this has stopped me wanting to play online any more. Whats the point in starting a game you know you can't win anyway? At least if it was even teams then you could learn/have fun and be satisfied that you were beat by skill rather than a bunch of people, pretending to be level 0, all on the same side, destroying you in under 10.

I know i have to take the knocks to learn the game. I'm not saying i want an easy win online on all my matches, but at least give those of us a chance and make it fair. getting 3 super players against 3 noobs really shouldn't be fun for either side.

I suggest looking for 5v5 games on the huge random single star map and then requesting a "pug" (pickup game) match.  In a PUG match, two people (often skilled players who know the other people) become team captains, everyone else joins Team 10, and the two captains draft pick the other players in an A-BB-AA-BB-A pick order so that the first captain has the first and last picks of the other eight players.  This often results in balanced teams and better games.

"Smurfing" is a problem you just have to learn to accept.  I am not a big fan of it either and don't have a smurf name myself.  I can understand why some do it.  Sometimes it can be hard to get a game if someone sees a clan tag or stats much less a group of clanmates wanting to play together.  I don't see it as a lack of courage because obviously for you posting negatively about it then you lost and they had no reason to be afraid.  If you in fact won your game, then why would you make a fuss about it on a forum since you beat someone that was skilled to begin with.

You are right that stats count for nothing in this game.  That can go different ways though.  If they count for nothing, then they have nothing to fear by losing and your rationale for them being afraid to lose is faulty.  If they are losing but without dignity then maybe they weren't expert at all.  After all, you don't group yourself as an expert yourself and if you beat them fair and square, how expert can they be.  Maybe they are just generally a jackass(there are plenty out there in game or out of game) and there skill or lackthereof is an independant factor.  PUGs mean little with smurfs because they represent an unknown variable and the team could be easily stacked without knowledge of the captains.  PUGs are fair when everyone's skill is known or can be estimated easily(ie. by stats). 

I agree that smurfing can be annoying.  I think you are overreacting a bit though.  If you had a clearly labeled "Noob only" game and a smurf came and wiped the floor with you just for the pleasure of noob bashing thats one thing.  If a smurf joined a non labeled open game and beat you though, there is not much to be said other than GG and move on with your life.  You are letting it get to you too much.  It doesn't deserve such anger.  Its just a game after all.

[_]-Greyfox

Ive been playing this since the day it came out and ive never had that problem, well maybe a couple times but no one that would really unbalence the teams.

The problem i see is that these "experts" forget about everyone else you try to join their server with no record or new, automatic kick i mean come on. How supportive is it for your first time playing to get kicked off every game. If your going to kick them at least NICELY tell them that your looking for a more experienced group of players but if your new you could help them later sometime. I mean have some manners people regardless of real life or game.

And even if they ruined 1 game for you at some point. Forgive. People have lives they can't sit for 4 hours for a game. Now if they do this on a consistint basis without even letting their team know then they do deserve what they get but leaving once doesn't mean that they are satan.

But in then end its all a game so if your feelings are actually getting hurt by a game and people thousands of miles away on that game that means you should stop playing a bit and go outside and play some football

So you set up a 2v2 with your friend as teammate, neither of you is that good, but at least you've worked together a few times before.  A new player joins, he has some super witty nick like 'Rubbishtron', there's another 0-0 player and they suggest 'balanced teams'. 

So you can't team with your friend and have to spend the next twenty minutes coaching some player who hasn't practised enough before going online, plus not everyone can take being coached and one of them is 'called away' after the first combat leaving an easy 2v1 victory for someone whose main talent is in not having a partner of their own, yet demanding to play team games...

So if you want to play team games, here's a suggestion: either bring a team, or play FFA.  Even two new players playing together can improve quickly- if they can handle losing, and watch their replays.  Players with some experience of online are almost always better behaved than new loners, and smurfs tend to want to fool each other more than unknown 0-0s.

I really haven't seen all that much smurfing in pugs because the game hosts will just kick out players with 0-0 records and insist that they come back under their main name.

Are you really going to allow a small handful of asshats to spoil the game for you?  It's really not as bad as what you think.  There really aren't all that many jerks around.  As for people who spam out units--if they're going to make it easy for you to beat them, then spam out the counters to those units and smile.

that isnt fun. i respect what you are trying to do. in all of your posts regarding SP or MP or the difficulty of AI you always talk about the pros of MP, trying to get more people to play. i respect that, but seriously, unless i am going to play with my friends who i know are going to play seriously, rather than following a set of instructions like a 4-move checkmate, i cant bring myself to waste my time playing with people who could be real tossers.

 

Pretty much this.  From what I've seen of supposedly 'good' Sins players and replays, online Sins is plagued with spam.  Mass LRM/Carriers, attack homeworld, someone wins.  Yawn.  If one unit spam satisfied me, I'd still be playing Warcraft 2.  When playing single player, I can play the game my way and screw around with strategies and units that would lose you the game against a 'good' Sins player.

To the OP, I don't get the point of smufing in this game either.  ICO is mostly a barren wasteland at this point, so I have no idea why anyone would bother trolling unskilled players and turn them off ICO.  However smurfing will always be around so long as games allow multiple accounts.  I've never really heard a good reason for it either.  You don't need a damn 'practice account'; play the AI if you want to screw around without hurting your stats.  And if you keep geeting booted from games because your stats are too good, then it sucks to be you; try playing people your own skill level/stop exploting for wins.  Or host the games yourself so you can't get booted.  But hiding your true skill level is flat out stupid, and defeats the point of having stats at all.

i do enjoy that, very much, and no, im not saying i want to be able to just build X and win, im saying i dont want to HAVE to build X to win because the other guy decided to go for the cheap, quick win, rather than playing to the extent of the game (i.e. capturing a certain number of planets, fortifying, constructing an economy, tech-ing up, building a bada boom fleet etc). it just smacks of poor AI difficulty levels where the devs have given the AI a massive resource, construction and damage boost just to make it more competitive. im playing how i imagine the devs imagined Sins would be played, and the other guy gives up all strategic thinking for a quick and decisive tactical win. yes, its a viable strategy, and in small maps, its probably the only really viable way to win, but, i have to say, im personally not interested in that. so shoot me.

first, excuse the use of the term asshat, it had been used very recently and i liked the ring of it, despite how ambiguous it is. now, im not saying someone who tries to win the game is a loser or a cheater or an asshole. it ties in to the fact that a tactical win achieved by ignoring all strategic planning and simply building one type of unit to take advantage of a weakness is not my idea of a fun time. if he used a combined fleet, LF, LRF, caps, maybe a few carriers and flaks for diversity, and simply out manouvered me early on because my fleet was in the wrong position and i made mistakes, fine... even if it was just an LF spam, i could probably get over that because its the only ship available early game. but when a player foregoes simply research upgrades like ice and volcanic upgrades, or trade networks or phase lane monitoring, just so he can spam 30 LRF that would be nearly uncounterable that early in the game, and kill the whole thing before it begins, bleh. thats competition, not fun. i mean, that early in the game you dont need more than 5 LF and LRF to beat most militia, so unless you forego usual expanding speed to build a adequate fleet to defend against such a rush.... challenge etc is great, but its exactly like an engineer rush in Command and Conquer, wow, the guy built some seriously low grade units, ran in, captured you shit and sold it, wow, arent you an idiot. thats not a challenge, thats stupid.

i agree that its fun to beat a guy who was trash talking 5 mins earlier, but why should i have to endure someone going, oh, haha, you idiot i drilled you with my fully hectic LRF spam, man, you're an idiot? im not saying it has anything to do with anything, it may be nearly unheard of in Sins. But i have no patience for it, nor should i be asked to. come to think of it, ive seen a number of posts from self proclaimed spammers whinging because their spam got drilled by someone elses spam, or by better tactics overall. thats another thing im not that interested in, spammers whining cause they got beat at their own game. i know it has nothing to do with me, but it really detracts from the experience for me. energy i could be putting into the game gets re-directed to dealing with immature dweebs. again, i dont know how many are out there exactly, but from what i hear about how ICO is deserted atm, how pros are smurfing to get games, and all the stuff on forums... i think its a safe bet that there are alot of... idn what to call them... less than mature players, lets say.

once again, i want to say i really respect how you try to put MP in a good light for other players. i did pick up on a few barbs directed at me in your post... which i didnt exactly appreciate, but still. good on you for trying so hard, and its not your fault, its just i really cant be bothered to spend time and energy on an exercise that could prove to be seriously unfun because of a just a few people

I'm actually sympathetic to your concern about early-game rushing, Rezonator.  It sounds to me like you'd prefer to play on larger maps where you start near your allies and/or are just further away from the enemy to begin with.  As Greyfox suggested, you might consider the large random multistar, the huge random multistar, and Areolian Sector maps or the large and huge random single star maps with fewer players (say 4 or 6, respectively).

There is, however, another solution.  That solution is custom, Galaxy Forge-made maps which can be designed so that you start near your allies (and not between opponents) and don't start out real close to your opponents.  Unfortunately these are difficult to play online since the game does not support auto-download for custom maps, which means that people have to go out of their way to download and add them to the game.  (Why--I don't know--every other modern online multiplayer game I've ever seen does, just not this one.)