Warcraft II? ...No one buys Warcraft II anymore. Starcraft? Yea, on occassion. WOW? Definitely. Warcraft II? Not so much. I don't see Warcraft II to be the game to beat as far as resellability goes. If you want truly epic games that have stood the test of time, take a good look at Starcraft, Half-life (Counter Strike) and Total Annhilation.

You are also failing to note that the creators of a game make money from sales to the store, not sales to the public. That constant "drip" of income out of the bargain bins isn't going to the producers of the game, it's going to the store. It's in the bargain bin for a reason, by the way.

You don't make an epic game by catering to the "elite" crowd. A game becomes epic by having solid, balanced multiplayer game play. No one player or even group of players can deliver that in a forum. Blizzard didn't balance Starcraft by reading forum posts from any percentage of players. They got the facts from actual games that were being played by the entire populace, looked at the strategies being used, looked at *how* people won and how people climbed to the top, and reacted to that.

Regardless, I don't think your looking at an epic multiplayer game anyway. There is no persistence to the world and the action time is way too slow, so it has neither of the key components of the epic online games like Starcraft or WOW. If IC offered a persistent universe to take over and control, or the action was stepped up for shorter, more exciting (and balanced) game play, then it may stand a chance. But as it stands, Sins just doesn't fit that profile. Yea, you could play a smaller map, but if you can't expand through the tree of technology in the time span of a small map (like starcraft) players are left unfulfilled. So the idea that the game should be balanced at the discretion of a small percentage of "elite" gamers to solidify it's position as an epic multiplayer game is ludicrous, it just isn't going to happen. You don't see Supreme Commander (sequel to Total Annhilation) in the hall of fame do you? Why? No persistence, and a long, drawn out multiplayer game play. It tried to be too much. It is too tedious and drawn out to offer fast, exciting action and still leave the player fulfilled.

My .02. It says in the description that Siege frigates trade off armor for firepower, that is how they should be. They should not be armor-work horses absorbing damage, they should be planet pounding siege engines. Your units conversion also fails to mention the cost of capital ship crews v/s frigate crews, and also fails to mention that 4 siege frigates can effectively bombard a planet faster than 1 capitol ship. They are meant to be cheap, effective, utilitarian bombardment vessels that can be used in swarms if necessary. I can't say whether they are balanced or not, but I do know a swarm of them takes out my planets very quickly and the AI favors them.

Anything the AI can do, a player can do.

Community is peoples too!

I think the lesson learned here is to find balance in all things.

good job devs, keep up the great work, and as monk said, stay pure to your original ideals they have worked well so far, keep it up

Uh yeah starcraft become popular due to it's solid multiplayer play.

A good competitive game is what keeps it alive, it's how you have people still playing when the expansion comes out to buy the expansion.

Advertising for IC is largely word of mouth. People badmouthing it's medium and high level multiplayer play is NOT good. And most people, I don't, don't stay newbies, but after them getting rushed by X unit become better and figure out how to counter it.

I'm all for better in game tool-tips and such to explain better what counters what. Ingame I try to be as helpful as I can and give people advice on why they lost and what they could do better next game.

Just here on the forums I get annoyed with the stupid arguments people try to make against stuff, and not listening to what people who know what they're talking about have said. In the game I beat people and they listen fine to my advice. Here it's "OMG NO SOMEONE BEAT MY 5 DISCIPLES WITH 50 LRMS YOU'RE WRONG THEY'RE UNSTOPPABLE THERE IS NO COUNTER AND YOUR BUILD ORDERS ARE BAD." How helpful do you expect these veteran players to be when the people they're trying to help spit in their face when they try to explain intricacies of the game?

And being new has nothing to do about not being able to do MATH.


And as I said.. How does making the game balanced so high level play isn't about repeating one thing every game bad for the new players? Eventually the new players learn these.
You can't make X unit worthless because noobs REFUSE to learn how to counter it.(really the issue is there is no unit with a tooltip saying that it counters LRM except somewhat the carriers description, while flaks do great against them, and scouts do okay. The flak research icon doesn't flash when lrms attack you.)
A tutorial for how to build a fleet and counter others would be nice too probably.

I don't think anyone's arguing about the lowered armor as I think it's generally agreed that these things aren't meant to solo-stomp empires in a large swarm (frankly, I wouldn't care if they had one bloody hit point. I'd probably get the same amount of use out of them). It's the 'cheap' part that's becoming a concern as they're neither cheap in resources or fleet points.

And while comparing directly to a cap ship might not be an apples-apples way to go, the point is that you can get a 'much' more effective piece of hardware on the field which can function well enough as a bomber (especially if you go with a siege-specializing cap ship) along with all of the other uses a cap ship can be put to.

And yes, the AI did use these things entirely too much (which was specifically addressed by the AI tweaks in the patch) and doing so just made them that much easier to wipe the floor with as they generally had nothing else that could stand up to your fleet in reserve.

having great fun w/ the game now guys (not that it wasn't fun before). thanks much for your hard work, and don't let the turkeys get you down.

so, uh, what's planned for the expansion pack, and when can we expect it?? j/k!

We don't enjoy pwning newbs.. we enjoy pwning other competent and competitive players. Which means they cut the game in 1/3 by making the only competitive race the TEC.

Ahh...the cancer is here too!   

Wow. The competitive gamers are what keeps every online game going. And by word of mouth, I've gotten 8 of my friends to buy the game and play it. Some are not competitive, but then again... the CASUAL <<- low level ->> players never stick around. They casually move on to the next game. The competitive players stick around, and get more competitive players to play and stick around as well. Casual gamers obviously dont care about balance... so why do they even say anything? Step aside and let the pros decide. After all... you'll enjoy the game for what it is no matter what.

I'm cancer?

The more we play games the more it's becoming apparent the only race to play is Tec unless you want to gimp yourself.

And the sad part is that this was apparent to people the first time we've all seen the new market, just from ONE game, yet QA didn't see this..
But we still kept playing, thinking oh maybe not, lets see. But no, game after game, it's apparent TEC has gotten massively buffed and Vasari is hopeless.


At 15 minutes into the game you're getting aT LEAST 18credits/second while the other races have 12. This is 50% more credit income than the other races, and you can cheaply buy anything else you need.

Not 20 minutes, not 25. 15 minutes into the game. This is a VERY short time. At only 2 civ for those trade ports, you can quickly get 2 mil up for the lrms if you haven't already killed your enemy by overwhelming them(vs lrms or not) with ungodly amounts of cobalts.

There really is no defense against it because while TEC is getting those tradeports he is marza or embargo rushing you, embargoing your HW or taking out your roid so you have to stay and defend rather than go and take out the civs. It ties you up longer than it takes tec to get 2 or 3 tradeports up, and then it can pump out tons of cobalts before you make the jumps to them.
They don't have to worry about cobalts metal cost, or the metal/crystal cost of javs when they get them soon. :/

It is stoppable, but it's soooo hard to. I've been doing it every game and it feels like cheating.

I've never posted on this forum before, but after seeing this thread, I felt the need to say something.

There seems to be this argument between so-called 'casual' players (those who don't necessarily play at a high competitive play-to-win level [by their own choice and not by some deficiency]) and the competitive players. However, a lot of mud is getting slung around and the topic is getting shifted away from game balance into the territory of 'casual vs. competitive play.'

I am a competitive player myself, although not in this game (and not in many other games). In this game, I would be considered a casual player. Somehow, there is always a false dichotomy in any multiplayer-capable game of 'casual vs. competitive.' (note: I am NOT talking about MMO's, which are a complicated subject unto themselves...) It is in my experience (as both a competitive AND a casual player) that both camps really want the same thing.

So before, I go on, everyone give everyone else hugs. 'Casual' is not an insult in any way (remember, it's not a deficiency, it's completely by choice). Nor is a competitive player an elitist. I will explain both of these points and will elaborate on why game balance is good for everyone.

A lot of casual players are put off by the competitive players' attitude. They say (from the perspective of a casual player) that they know everything and that everything should be a certain way while seemingly ignoring the objections of casual players. There is a reason for the actions of both sides, and it's not pretty.

I occasionally play BfMEII mainly because I find the animations and such entertaining (why? no one knows...). My goal, therefore, is to tech up to the units that have animations (ooohh shiny) and such that I find amusing. Note that my goal isn't to win, EVEN THOUGH the object of the game (pretty much by definition) is to win. This is kind of a stupid example, but it's a good one. My goal in that game is not necessarily to win, but something else.

I also used to play (for several years) Starcraft. In that game, my goal was to win. I played at a high competitive level in Starcraft. I didn't care about animations or ANY OTHER GOAL, my goal was to win, and this was what brought me enjoyment. To meet this end, I STUDIED the game. I made spreadsheets. I did summations and used power series and other calculus to make mathematical models in my head of what to do given a certain situation. I also playtested, playtested, playtested. All the time. I knew the game intimately. Every minute detail and nuance was open to me.

Now, I don't think anyone can really make a good argument at this point that I know the mechanics of BfMEII better than Starcraft. This is the unfortunate position of the casual player in this particular instance. Someone who played Starcraft in order to make large Zerg swarms or roleplay an alien invasion would not know even half of the stuff I knew about Starcraft (assuming of course, that their goal was always to roleplay and they never did the INCREDIBLE WORK it takes to get to the level of knowledge and proficiency that I did).

Being more knowledgable about Starcraft doesn't make me a better person or a smarter person than the roleplayer. It just makes me more knowledgable about that particular game and its mechanics. That said, those who play at a competitive level have more knowledge of the intimate details of the game than those who don't. It's not about just opening up the files and looking at the math. There's situational analysis and pre-formed 'paths' and microing and 1000 other details that casual players just don't make use of (and why should they if they don't want to?).

Hopefully, we can all agree that competitive players are more knowledgable and in a better position to balance the game than casual players. If you still disagree, at least state your argument without calling someone elitist. Different people are better at different things (and mostly because they choose to be - a person more interested in game mechanics will be better at them than a person more interested in music or Greek literature or astrophysics). Someone who has more knowledge than you is not necessarily elitist. It's all about the attitude. (Also, competitive players - you don't gain anything by insulting casual players and calling them noobs or in some way implying that they're deficient other than by choice. If you can't make a good argument for your case without insulting someone, then you don't have a good argument.)

Now on to the subject of WHETHER OR NOT the game should be balanced in a particular way. I say it should, and that multiplyaer-centered game balance benefits everyone. Here's why. If multiplayer is not balanced, the game itself is not balanced (including single player). It's sometimes difficult to see why this is. But let's look at a particular example.

Let's say that strategy A is overpowered. What does this mean? Well, it means that competitive players have determined (through their advanced knowledge of the particular subject) that strategy A is more powerful than any other strategy. This isn't always completely clear cut. A more specific definition would be that a player has a much higher chance to win with strategy A than any other strategy. Usually this happens because all the counters to strategy A are weak against strategies B, C, D, etc. (in other words, very weak in general).

Why is this a bad thing? For one thing, it takes a lot of the complexity and strategy out of multiplayer games. This makes multiplayer games less fun. Instead of playing 'Sins of a Solar Empire' you're playing 'See Who Can Execute Strategy A the Best'. The loss of DIVERSITY is what makes this very UNINTERESTING.

Why does someone who never plays multiplayer care about this? Simple. If you have some other goal (we'll say for example, that you just wanna see really big fleet battles), you will have FEWER ways to reach your goal. You'll either be forced into strategy A by the AI (assuming the AI is 'competent') or at the very least, you'll have fewer decisions to make since lots of things may be too weak to your liking. Now obviously anyone can go into single player and just play against easy opponents and the problem goes away, but the problem is still there for everyone else. In effect, if you just cater to the easy-mode-single-player guy, everyone else kinda gets the shaft. (note that I am NOT saying that all casual players are easy-mode-single-player guys, this is just a particular example of a particular group that likes this play mode).

But there's a way that EVERYONE can be happy, and that is to simply balance strategy A so that there are other counters for it or so that it's somehow weaker in some other way (and also make many other strategies stronger). That way, everyone can have a good diverse game with lots of options for players NO MATTER what goal they have (whether it be competitive play or pretty fleet battles). The more diversity there is at the ultimate high level of the game, the more diversity there is all around - everyone wins with a balanced game.

Again, if you have an argument against this, please post it without insults or other logical fallacies. Whenever you type a response to someone, always remember to respond with reason instead of emotion. An argument argued from reason is simply a way to arrive at an answer to a question. An argument argued from emotion turns eventually into an attack, and that never solves any problems.

Sorry for the long post, but it had to be said.

Thanks.

(Also please note that 'whining' and 'complaining' are completely different. 'Whining' has a negative connotation and is used to insult someone. 'Complaining' has a pretty neutral connotation and someone's complaint can be either well thought out and valid or not so well thought out and invalid.)

Diversity is great, but when one race is clearly better that's bad.

Even if all races are even, but they only have one way to be played, that's bad.

"Different, but equal" is the way to balance things.. Which Sins has achieved pretty well, mostly with abilities, but firing arcs and turn speeds come into play too, except that SOME of these things aren't balanced to each other .


But that's the whole thing, sort of like you've said, if the game is balance for competitive play then it is BALANCED period.
As I've said before, what is really imbalanced is the KNOWLEDGE gap between players. People simply don't understand how to counter LRMS, and for some reason think light frigs will counter them(despite on the LRM description it says "Counters light frigates"..). Somehow, to so many people, that makes these ships unbalanced..

No it just means one person knows you don't know how to play and is exploiting that by spamming lrms.


If it turns out 75% of players are making 75% flaks on ICO data does that mean flaks are overpowered? Maybe it just means it's not clear enough to people that light frigates counter flaks.
Not everyone looks up the effect of shield mitigation, armor, does math for cost/supply per hull/shields/armor, and has discovered the ship armor/damage type chart.

(1) Just to be clear, I don't disagree with you. My whole point about diversity being important was referring to the diversity of the good strategies available to choose from. One race being overpowered is clearly not in line with diversity of good strategies (since good strategies are now limited to playing one race, in that example).

(2) You have to consider that there is no 'fix' to this. If people want to play at a competitive level, they will make themselves knowledgeable. Some people would like to do this, but don't want to devote the time. Others don't even care in the first place (those are people with different goals than being competitive). Despite all these different groups, there will always be a layer of competitive players at the 'top' of the game (meaning they have the most intimate knowledge of game mechanics and systems) who are able to, more clearly than anyone else, see imbalances. These are the players that have the best idea about balance in the game AND can demonstrate imbalance where it occurs.

On a side note, it seems that there IS no good counter to LRMs (besides more LRMs). (Disclaimer: I'm not a high-level player in this game, but I do follow all the discussions and [more importantly] watch relevant replays.) LRMs (before this patch, mind you) could be teched fairly early by all races. So early, indeed, that everyone was at such an early point economically that it wasn't feasible to tech up further into support ships and have a varied fleet (because you knew you were soon to be assaulted with LRMs so it made more sense to make more of your own LRMs instead of invest in economy).

There was a proposed strategy for a while of using flaks against LRM's, but the problem with that is: if the only counter to your strategy is an overall weak strategy, then your strategy is too good. In other words, using flaks to counter LRMs... maybe, but using flaks for anything else was very weak. This is all in 1v1 or 2v2, smaller maps. The larger maps seemed to always go past the economic point where players built up a varied fleet.

Sorry for the slightly off-topic.

Here is Stardock's point of view on updates so that everyone is clear:

1) There will continue to be updates in the game. And just like with other multiplayer games, there will be people who don't like a given change.  Even I don't like every change in the update but we all have different opinions on what makes sense and what doesn't.

2) Users who don't like updates do themselves a real disservice when they make melodramatic posts about it.  If people aren't going to show us even a basic level of respect, why would they think we would want to cater to them?  Someone posted today how we need to release an "emergency patch". Why? Was the game crashing on them? No. They don't like missile frigates having longer range along with several other disagreements on changes of equal relevance.  That sort of thing tends to make us (or any normal human being) want to simply ignore those kinds of people.

3) As soon as the demo is out, Ironclad will be working on 1.04.  1.04 is the first actual update where we're making serious strides to enhance the balance based on REAL WORLD gameplay and not people playing with spreadsheets (that includes ourselves).  What people often don't realize is that what looks balanced (or imbalanced) on paper doesn't work out that way once you get into the game because of the law of unintended consequences.

4) Overall, we believe that Sins of a Solar Empire is a pretty well balanced game out of the box. The fact that people are quibbling over whether "LRMs" should have 15% less range or whether a given unit should use 5 supply versus 6 supply I think speaks to this.

5) Lastly, Stardock nor Ironclad are going to make changes to the game that are to the detriment of the single player game experience.  Why were siege frigates nerfed? Because it was a "quick fix" to help improve single player which is where most people play the game most of the time. Similarly, you will see updates that you may not agree with if you're a multiplayer user but helps single player. Similarly, some single player users may disagree with a change that improves multiplayer (this is particularly true about the market for instance).  A little empathy can go a long way.  But remember, we are making a game that is designed to be enjoyed in two very different environments.

 

Here's the deal. The developers made changes to the overall game play to suite it to everyone. Too many players here complain of unbalancing issues when the fact of the matter is simple. YOU need to change your strategy and not use your OLD strategy. In the current game setup (v1.03) the reality is the Vasari can pump out 10 Assailants before the TEC can even build Trade Ports AND LRMs. That's is a very important issue since the TEC has little hope of fending off Assailants with COBALTS! I play as both TEC and Vasari (still learning Advent) and as a Vasari player I know (even in v1.02) that if you sit back and let a TEC player econ up - YOU LOSE! It is your strategies that are failing the economic fight, NOT the balancing issue. A TEC player that rushes Trade Ports is an EASY target since their fleet will be very weak.

Yes the nerfing of siege frigates happened cuz you could murder a noob's econ super easy with 10 siege frigates with the right strategy. For better players it isn't a big issue since you still kill the noob off it just lets them live for a little longer. Any argument that makes any sense is that your just letting the noob have a slower more painful death and loss. Single player is easy enough to where it isn't a big issue.

That sounds pretty reasonable..... but:

When you make huge swinging changes (siege frigs, -50% development mandate, black market) it looks a lot like nobody knows what the hell they are doing. Anything more than a few percent change from any original values suggests that maybe a longer-term rethink of the entire concept is worth doing. While I appreciate that you have two different audiences for the same game, mashing up the underlying data in order to fit it into what the AI code wants to see is just a terrible idea and likely to end in tears.

If you HAVE to do it that way, please consider either

a) quarantining the single and multiplayer data from each other

making the AI code independent of the sins executable and putting whatever selectable values drive it into (hopefully editable?) data files

From reply #65, posted by "Frogboy" :

Stardock nor Ironclad are going to make changes to the game that are to the detriment of the single player game experience [...] which is where most people play the game most of the time.

That very recent statement by the CEO of Stardock goes to the heart of my (previously posted) perspective : the vast majority of Stardock's customers do not spend a lot of time (if any) in online, competitive MP.

Those numerous customers, who have recently purchased well over 100 000 SINS game units, are not « idiots » : most of them simply do not have the time, energy, and competitive power-drive to spend whole evenings on ICO to practice MP and efficiently compete.

I can't prove it with statistics, but I suppose that most of those « numerous » casual gamers do not even have the time and/or interest to visit the SINS forum ... and if they do, I would be surprised if they read all the posts within long, complex threads where sophisticated strategies & tactics are analysed & debated to death.

Consequently, especially before version 1.03, they started a SP game, got bullied by some gross A.I. spams, and said to themselves « What the f**k, I don't have time for this non-sense! ». (And if they went on ICO and succeeded in joining a viable game, they risked being bullied by human spammers and by smart-aleck manipulators of the Black Market.)

Who has time for this ?! How come that tiny minority of self-glorified, « high-level » arch-competitors disposes of so many hours of leisure-time to practice, and practice, and practice ... until the fast & furiously efficient executions of their build-orders and their mouse-clicks become optimized routines ?!

Many of Stardock's customers have full-time jobs, a family life, other hobbies, other games to play ... or serious school study & reading to do (which is my case).

How many financial revenues can Stardock & Ironclad obtain from that tiny minority of self-glorified, « high-level » arch-competitors ?

My excerpt from reply #65 is then very eloquent ... even if you do not agree with my « stupid » « noob » arguments.

4) Well you're half right, but when a majority of balance complaints revolve around one unit type or one faction, it certainly is an indicator that the balance is significantly off and that the game hasn't reached the stage where finesse tweaks are the first order of business.

5) A game that is balanced for competitive play will be balanced for casual play. A game that is balanced vs. Human opponents will be balanced vs. AI opponents, because it will be decades before AI can play at the same level as a living breathing player. This isn't chess, and I know that IC has wisely not spent as much time on the AI as others have programming AI for such games as chess, which it should be noted is far far less complex and zounds more linear than a game such as SoSE.

I don't differentiate between "casual" or "competitive" when discussing serious balance problems and I think it's a red herring here.

The fact is, it doesn't matter if you're casual or competitive when someone throws 50 LRM frigates at you 15 minutes into a game.

It doesn't matter if you're casual or competitive if the black market completely nerfs your faction.

It doesn't matter if you're casual or competitive if siege frigates are nerfed to the point of being useless.

It simply affects gameplay for everyone. What I see now is a game that might be really fun if everyone just stopped hitting the LRM button and played it out. That usually doesn't happen.

(1) Your previously-posted perspective seems to consist of almost nothing but the demonizing of people who like to test their skills in multiplayer. Frogboy stated that no changes are going to intentionally hurt the single player game. Somehow you assumed that this meant that the multiplayer game has to suffer. This is not the case. Single player and multiplayer are intrinsically joined. The only difference is the AI. Otherwise, when one is better, both are better.

(2) I don't think I've seen any reasonable poster here call any group of people 'idiots'. This seems to be just a strawman that you've set up. In addition, I would say that these people you speak of simply don't WANT to spend time and effort, they just want to play and enjoy the game. However, this makes them less qualified, unfortunately, to give accurate input about things so esoteric and nuanced as game balance. While they're doing other things, competitive players are spending hours and much effort in getting to know the intricate details of the game.

It's not some kind of elitism. You don't want a doctor replacing your sink, and you don't want a plumber prescribing your medicine. Different people choose to be good at different things (i.e. they choose to spend their time doing different things).

(3) On this point, you are absolutely correct.

(4) And that issue has been addressed thanks to the work of Ironclad developers.

(5) So you're saying that spamming and broken markets are overpowered? I agree, and I think a lot of competitive players would agree with that as well.

(6) You keep using this term to paint a bad picture of people that just want the game to be better. Sure some people have been jerks, but there are jerks in any given group of people. By trying to cause some kind of divide between people you're just making things worse.

(7) You ask why they do it. They do it because they want to.

(8) I don't see how this point is relevant. Maybe it would be if the multiplayer game and the single player game were two different games.

(9) Funny how no one called your arguments 'stupid' or 'noob' except you. Stop trying to paint competitive players as 'the enemy.' They want the game to be better. This benefits you unless you want the game to be worse. There's not some kind of silly black vs. white war going on here between those who like single player and those who like multiplayer - we all like Sins of a Solar Empire.


---The poster above me (Carbon016) astutely gives clear examples of how multiplayer balance affects single player gameplay.

Stardock CEO post #15


Excerpt from reply #15, posted by Frogboy :


Some people have explicitly said that the hard core multiplayer players are the heart of the community and must be made top priority. And that's something I can't accept. Our goal has to remain to make sure as many people as possible enjoy the game.


/end of story

@Sorceress: You seem to not be reading my posts. As some are lengthy, I can understand that. So I will keep this one short.

I agree with your quote there 100%. I'm sure most competitive players do too.

We're not on 'different sides' of some kind of war.

Improving the game balance improves the game. No one is saying that improving the single player experience is bad.

We all want the game to be better.

/end of story

Hi Frogboy, I think it's great that you post on this forum and talk about your opinions on things. However, as a professional, it's good to keep in mind to not disregard a message simply on the basis of how it's delivered. These people complaining are your customers after all. I completely agree that many suggestions are bogus, but many are also very constructive and shouldn't be dismissed because of their tone.

I'm a developer for Electronic Arts, arguably one of the most villified and hated game developers in the world. That said, I agree there's a lot of things EA doesn't do well but they do at least listen to complaints even when they're dripping with venom (however, we can't implement all the changes due to budget constraints which we're not really able to do anything about...). I'm on an internal team working on multiple games and I can see the stress that everyone has trying to figure out ways to implement/fix/fullfill certain wishes of the community within the project budget and without intruducing too many risks.




I must disagree with this... the quick fix is an easy way out. It also serves to break things in the long run. Particularly this fix makes the game against the AI easier as well as changes the dynamics especially in multiplayer games. If this "fix" was simply put in place to reduce the amount of siege frigate spam the computer uses, wouldn't it have been easier to tweak the AI (I've never seen the AI code in this game, so I may be completely wrong here)? The only people who were complaining bitterly about siege frigates were, I'm sorry to say, people who didn't really know how to play.

There's little point in ordering people not to express their opinion of the game here. I understand that it can be disheartening to fans to see forums clog up with threads with negative titles... but it's a natural process.

People who buy a game, play it and enjoy it will often just put it lovingly away in the collection and move on to the next new game, maybe without spending all that long posting on the forums. Conversely people who have trouble getting into a game will haunt the forums hoping for news of a patch, gameplay tips or even just a flamewar or chance to wind people up.

I think the Stardock team understand very well that what matters is pleasing paying customers so that they pay for the game and give favourable consideration to buying another one. It's not so important they hang around the forum. Ironclad probably understand that too, but Stardock's Frogboy (Brad Wardell) is quite exceptional. There are very few CEOs who'd even consider choosing to discuss their products in public with a disgruntled customer. Basically I'm trying to say that these guys can cope with the normal forum lifecycle and we don't need to worry about a few negative threads.

Let people post their peeves and some of them will engage and learn something new about the game or contribute a useful change we'll all enjoy later. Stifling criticism wouldn't help anyone. That said... we've got a right to expect civilised behaviour, and once in a while someone really earns a red card.