I think the best way to sum things up is:

If you want something changed, make a calm, reasoned case for it.

The way NOT to get something changed is for someone to make multiple posts with titles like "1.03 SUX" or whatever full of "the game is just crap now, I'm uninstalling it, I had high hopes but it's now crap".  I'm sorry but I'm not taking some guy's "word for it".  We listen to what people have to say and the ones making the most logical, compelling arguments are the ones who are likely to get their way.

Anyone who's been with us since the Galactic Civilizations days knows that we take feedback responsible. Heck, the starbases in GalCiv came from player feedback! Can anyone whose played GalCiv imagine GalCiv without the starbases now?  But the people who suggested starbases didn't start out by saying "This game sucks, only adding starbases will save it." 

Or maybe, just maybe, it's that (as I said already) I missed the post he made 20s before mine (ie, while I was composing my original message).

Frankly people like you bother me. You're full of backhanded insults like the above, but talk down to others who 'bicker' and 'name-call'. Style over substance. I can appreciate Brad's wariness of the forum (again, as I've said several times), but I think his focus on single player might be misplaced in an RTS where multiplayer is very important. Oh no, I'm bickering!

Cykur, yeah, sorry about that. Balance isn't a relative thing: that's something I see on many RTS forums. If you don't have a balance problem, that DOESN'T mean the game is balanced: it means you haven't found a balance problem. That's why I think the kind of players who poke around and 'optimise' and all that will identify issues faster (unlike me, who can play the game in a pretty casual way and never notice), but as I've said that information quickly percolates around the community and can become a real problem. The popularity of the game probably doesn't help either: I imagine IC/SD have a relatively small team involved in a high-selling game community, so there'd be a lot of work involved in following up every thread about 'zomg imba nerf plz'.

There are several people on the forum (not I, who is pretty hopeless at this sort of thing) who have made detailed, referenced threads about issues that can be demonstrated in play, and I think they should be thanked rather than tarred as 'elistist' because they were quick to notice things. Regardless of what you think of them, their ideas will spread to players and if effective will become important in multiplayer. If multiplayer sucks, sales will suffer. That said, IC/SD are doing a great job with support, so no doubt we'll see some great stuff in 1.04.

EDIT - Brad, the Stardock reputation for updates/support is certainly important to those players like myself who've been playing your games for years.

I was just trying to clear up what I thought was a misunderstanding on your part. I didn't mean to insult you or make you look stupid or something; I was just trying to get everybody on the same page. I don't make a habit of reading the post times since 90% of the time, posts are made in the order that they appear.

That is the only part of my post where I was referring to you. The other 90% of it was aimed at others. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

By the way, your point about balance not being relative is the ULTIMATE KEY to understanding what game balance is. There is an objective and a system of rules. Your goal is to meet the objective by doing whatever you can within the rules. If there are are only two ways to meet the objective within the rules - way A and way B - and way A has 90% success rate and way B has 20% success rate, way A is overpowered. Period. It doesn't matter if you CAN do it with B. The only optimal choice is A.

The fact that this game has a single player and multiplayer doesn't affect whether or not way A is overpowered. It is overpowered in BOTH single player and multiplayer. (Note for the pedantic: this is just an analogy, there are more than two ways to win in this game.)

/edit - By the way, Boxox, I would disagree in principle about the idea of having some gentlemen's agreement not to use overpowered stuff. I say it'd make a little bit more sense to use and abuse the overpowered stuff to really get a good understanding of all the nuances that makes it so powerful so that we can possibly guard against a similar change in the future.

I swear these people must be the same people complaining over at World in Conflict's forum. I see very similar words and writing style being used.

Thinking42Man is talking about "competitive play and casual play" and goes on and on about it...... There's another dude over at WiC forums that keeps on jabbering about the same stuff.

I also think it was rude of Thinking42Man to use Frogboy's name in the subject line as if it's some kind of personal attack. If not for Frogboy and his talented team we would't have this wonderful game in the first place. Some people can be so rude. It's a good thing I'm not the owner of this company because I would ban Thinking42Man from the game and refund his money. LOL!

I *love* the WiC forum, but I bet the devs hate it. So much whinging, and it leads to things like v1.006, where they nerfed HAA and heavy choppers for NO REASON other than people were complaining. It wasn't unbalanced, people just didn't like the change from 'chopppers kill everyone' to 'choppers need to be careful'.

Mettra, yeah, that's cool. I agree with your statements about balance: many people on this forum talk about how they play in a more 'roleplay' or 'natural' way, where they decide on 'out-of-game' stuff like 'need more heavy ships' or 'trade is good', instead of the nitty-gritty number-crunching '$5000 worth of LRMs beats $5000 of anything else' kind of perspective. Many people will never notice balance issues, but like me once you read about them they're impossible to ignore.

The idea of 'gentleman's agreements' are, again, an admission of failure. The only rules are the rules of the game: if those rules mean 'spam x unit to win', you have to change the rules to change the behaviour. Technically, the people exploiting balance issues are playing the game 'best' because they're making decisions based solely on in-game stats and performance, however crap it might make the game.

Keep up the great work Frogboy. Step by step sins is becoming a great game like Galactic Civ.

Dont get bogged down with a couple peoples point of view.

Well that's fine, but that's not really what I mean. Last I checked everyone is still alive with all limbs attached after 1.02's market exploit, people who spend a lot of time in the game found it and decent people didn't use it. If you can find one other person who thinks the BM is still broken and exploitable then there is nothing compelling either person to abuse it. It would be nice to have a patch early patch often philosophy at work instead of having a demo release in between now and the next fixup, but in the abscence of that, it's like the old line, you know..

'my computer crashes when I do this!'

'well, don't do that then'

I wish you guys would start locking topics more often, and I hate saying that. I know you guys try to be liberal about criticism, but some of these topics are getting ridiculous. One topic has people complaining about the game being unbalanced because their enemy outproduced them. And lets not forget "what the heck (or harsher words) was IC thinking!?". "No, Campaign!?"

My computer crashes when I read unsubstantiated whining posts.

It crashes a lot because they are everywhere.

This is exactly how I've been starting to feel. The gaming public seems to get hostile over things like they never have before. The causes of that are debatable and it's not necessarily completely their fault (this is not the place to discuss this). I have to applaud you people at Stardock and Ironclad for not being asses like another company and someone named Wartourist, who singlehandedly caused an ongoing multiplayer boycott of a game he produced. Things seemed balanced in Sins and fine to me because I'm adapting to the change and if I really don't like something then I'll figure out a fix myself. It looks like you're handling things right because complaining has so far been isolated to this forum. It's not like you've got an entire legion of people attacking you like some other game made by some other company...

The problem here (and in the other billion threads on this subject) is that Sins, thank Heavens, doesn't fit neatly into a "box".

It's not really an RTS, and it's not really a 4X game, and that makes a number of people very uncomfortable. Some people seem to like boxes.

Now that the community has Sins in their hands, the hardcore RTS fans are trying to push it more into being an "in the box" RTS, and the 4X fans are pushing the other way.

The people (such as the devs) who understand that a game doesn't have to fit neatly into one of these arbitrary, boring "boxes", seem to be a minority, and so it's hard to find a peaceful resolution to this problem.

The more the game moves toward what will make one group happy, the more it moves away from the other.

This is, interestingly, a complete fallacy.

Competitive play doesn't have the same requirements as casual play, and has very little in common with single-player play.

This shouldn't be surprising to anyone that gets outside, much.

Your weekend baseball, tennis, parking lot basketball, chess, or poker games don't use hardcore tournament rules, because that'd be stupid, and actually lessen the fun for everyone involved. Video games are no different.

Hardcore, competitive RTSs are played in a completely different fashion than normal matches, and have different needs and requirements. Thinking otherwise just means you don't understand how to play the other way.

Single player is all I ever play and please don't get discouraged by the negativty. Just ban them and their IP address if they are too childish. There are many people that spend more timing playing than posting. The ceaseless whiners are just more vocal...


Great game and please keep the great improvements coming!

I disagree. A casual game of chess will probably be just as enjoyable if the players don't understand the rule of en passant, or how castling works. They can play their game and enjoy it at their level of play. However, in a game between world champions, it is very important that all the rules of the game are defined, understood, and followed for it to be a fair contest.

The important thing to understand is that implementing and following these rules does not make the casual game less fun. In fact, it makes it a deeper and more engaging experience. However, failure to implement and follow these rules, at a high level of play, will have a detrimental effect on the level of equality and immersion involved.

I think you're mistaken. I did not mean to be negative or harshly criticize, only to communicate a constructive commentary and hopefully inspire discussion.

The following quote is from Frogboy in reference to this thread and my post which started it:



Obviously Frogboy was not offended or displeased.

In light of that, Kruelgor, I suggest you calm down, and reconsider your own tone and sentiment, which are obviously far more negative and harsh than mine can possibly be construed as being.

I do not take orders from those who lack respect for the game.

It's not that hard to tell.

I do not pay attention to or take seriously anyone who lacks due respect for me when I have been nothing less than cordial.

Bad idea and here's why: Using a ban as a first reaction to negativity only causes it to go underground. Complaining happens with everything, but it's best kept isolated in a single place like this forum rather than floating around all over the net. People complain because they want to give the product a chance, but there's something significant enough preventing them from that. Banning typically breaks the threshold to cause attacking instead of just complaining. Attacking consists of a person complaining truly going negative and causing a ripple effect. One angry customer can create dozens or even hundreds of angry people. Banning causes that to happen. Listening and discussing can outright prevent or slow that from happening. If you use banning or other administrative features as a quick reaction the problem will only go into a tailspin. Don't believe me? Ask Epic Games, who have sold only a million copies of their UT3 game 5 months after release, have an active boycott going on against the multiplayer and modding (there's only roughly 400 or so unique players online in a given 24 hour period), enjoy relentless bashing in every press interview they have, and have hundreds of disgruntled customers voicing their anger over the game with fuel being thrown on their fire by managers of the company and their way of interacting with customers.

You can't please all the people all the time. Someone will always complain. Better they complain than rampage against you or completely write you off as not worth their time. People will go overboard sometimes and need a swift kick in the butt, yes, but whenever possible it is better to discuss or lock things down as opposed to outright kicking someone out for voicing dissent.

How about you make the AI not take over controlled players after loading a saved game after someone disconnects.

Someone minidumps ~ you save, give them the files, start game, AI and the player are using the same stuff.


And as far as the other stuff, if you don't agree that balance effects everyone fine, but I'm not going to bother making more suggestions, all I wanted was the market reversed and a 30 second lockout on the prices going up/down at the start to avoid crystal spiking.

The rest of it was just changes to LRMs and siege frigates, LRMs whatever, they were super easy to counter already. Flak decimates LRM 1:3+ and only slightly more expensive. But that's again, whatever, doesn't matter.

That and the resource slider, market and resource slider back untill 1.04 would appease all of us. We can't play anything but TEC unless a TEC player pools us .

And honestly, just saying one of two things would end of all our posts.

1: there's going to be some sort of "hotfix" for balance. 2: an ETA for 1.04

If you don't care enough to change balance with a hotfix fine, let us know so we can stop wasting our time posting and you can stop having to read the thread.

And why are people so against balance, what's with all these posts hating on people who actually enjoy the multiplayer aspect of a game without even a campaign? The balance changes we're talking about do not hurt single player in any way, and honestly, if you want reliable balance advice instead of just throwing this stuff out there. Why not beta the patch publicly? Or post ahead of time your ideas for the patch so we can give our input at least.

We love the game if we didn't we wouldn't care enough to post. we have the greatest respect for what you've done so far, but if you're just going to completely skew the balance like this do you want to just tell me to go find another game to play? I'd rather stay here but if balance is just going to be radically shifted back and forth maybe we really should find something else to do untill you get this shit together.

And if people need examples, I can start posting 1v1s, 2v2s, whatever you want. Of tec vs other races. It's absurd how powerful TEC are right now, and it's foolish that you guys put all this in at once with nothing to counterbalance them. I don't want to flame, but it sure feels like you guys don't give a damn about us, that's why I'm being so vocal on the forums. Throw us a damn bone for an eta or if a hotfix is in the works.

Thanks for reading, sorry if it sounds like a rant, but it probably is.

First things first, please do get the forums running full time again, influx of people and traffic all that must not be easy.

Do you really think I'm just complaining because vasari was overpowered and I want them to be the way they were? I can understand if you do - but let me know and I can back up my claims about this being more skewed towards tec than it was towards vasari. As far as AI, the AI in multiplayer is pretty terrible, it's a step forward nonetheless, and can be appreciated, but fix the bug I outlined previously if at all possible. And anyone claiming to be the heart of the community from our crowd is being silly, ignore that and read the rest of what they're saying, it's probably valid.

As it stands we always just reload the game or just stop, but I can understand if some people don't want to, though I must say frog. If someone drops, it's still FAR FAR FAR more likely the other guys just quit rather than play with the computer, and I don't think the AI being better will fix that attitude. That's just my opinion though.

And no, my shitty post wasn't thought out, it wasn't kneejerk either, my predictions were all true as anyone who plays multiplayer frequently will attest to, TEC are powerhouses now. And the only uses the other races see are in FFA if they are ignored, or if a TEC pools them.

How you go about fixing them is up to you, but as for a hotfix, I still think the best solution is to change the marketback and add a lockout for 30 seconds at the start of the game and give us the resources slider again. I know it doesn't fix with the current theme of options, but I believe it's really important for race balance for resources to be more plentiful.

If you want suggestions for 1.04 just ask and I'll actually think it through, but I can't remember the last time a Dev actually acknowledged my advice, and without that it just feels hopeless.

As with innocivs post, it pretty much sums up everything we've been talking about with a few random things thrown in that I really don't care one way or the other about. I can't stress enough how important an ETA or a hotfix in the work would be to most of us, I know I'd shut up unless asked for input with either announcement.

We like variety Why are you guys so hostile when we mention imbalance, are you so affected by fanboyism that you cannot see very glaring issues? I can't stress enough, we like the game, we support the game, I've gotten 6 people to buy the damn already. Just because you don't like the WAY we convey our criticism doesn't make it less valid, you can hate me all you fucking want to be perfectly honest, I don't care. But the balance issue is important and I will not drop it untill I'm either banned, told the game will not BE balanced at any planned date, a hotfix is in the work, or I'll just play casually untill 1.04.

I really can't stand people hating us, just because you don't like MP, we're no bloody heart of the community, the single player community is fucking massive by comparison to us, but just because of that we can't have balance issues addressed? I'm sorry that the computer doesn't use absolutely broken ass strategies, but I have to deal with them online, and just to improve your game (which the balance changes didn't mind you, they were directed at MP frog even said so, I can't recall the AI LRM spamming me, can you?)with AI which is totally a different aspect? come on that's a little unreasonable.

And it's much easier to get a patch working for single player made by one person to their liking, than it is for all 30 or so people in my clan to agree on, much less every single other player online we meet since we can't play against ourselves all the time. And we don't have any way to just make them play with our balanced version.

We like variety Why are you guys so hostile when we mention imbalance, are you so affected by fanboyism that you cannot see very glaring issues? I can't stress enough, we like the game, we support the game, I've gotten 6 people to buy the damn already. Just because you don't like the WAY we convey our criticism doesn't make it less valid, you can hate me all you fucking want to be perfectly honest, I don't care. But the balance issue is important and I will not drop it untill I'm either banned, told the game will not BE balanced at any planned date, a hotfix is in the work, or I'll just play casually untill 1.04.

I really can't stand people hating us, just because you don't like MP, we're no bloody heart of the community, the single player community is fucking massive by comparison to us, but just because of that we can't have balance issues addressed? I'm sorry that the computer doesn't use absolutely broken ass strategies, but I have to deal with them online, and just to improve your game (which the balance changes didn't mind you, they were directed at MP frog even said so, I can't recall the AI LRM spamming me, can you?)with AI which is totally a different aspect? come on that's a little unreasonable.

And it's much easier to get a patch working for single player made by one person to their liking, than it is for all 30 or so people in my clan to agree on, much less every single other player online we meet since we can't play against ourselves all the time. And we don't have any way to just make them play with our balanced version. Seriously it's really hard to get everyone with the same mode, versions, etc. you can't underestimate how hard getting mod checksums the same for everyone when you go through balance tweak after tweak.

But i'll tell you right now, if someone tells me from stardock told me they'd play and test out our balance changes, if we went out and made a full fledged mod for it, it'd be done in 2-3 days tops.

The attitude that balance issues either don't exist or aren't a problem for single player/casual is simply wrong. Even in friendly games, I could use unit spam to win whenever I wanted, just like a competitive player would: I had to consciously not do this because it's not how I want to play. The statement 'if you think it's unbalanced, well, screw you' is so ignorant it beggers description.

Again, just because you don't -notice- balance issues doesn't mean they don't exist. Balancing in most multiplayer games is a constant thing, even if it continues only on a small scale - the implicit idea that Ironclad got balance totally right on the first go is absurd, and smacks of 'I love the devs more than you' highschool nonsense. The game is great, but nothing is perfect and it could always be improved by the standard Stardock support we see in their other games.

Aside from IC/SD being a smaller developer/publisher, I'd say the 'mainstream' appeal of Sins attracts a different sort of player than SD's usual offerings. Being an RTS, it instantly inherits all the RTS idiots, so the forums might seem quite different to the GalCiv2 forums to them.

I don't think we're playing the same game here. I don't have a problem with the game's balance right now and neither do a lot of other people. Exploit the quirks of your units and abilities if you want the upper hand. You could spam Long Range Frigates against me all day long and I'd have no trouble handling it. In fact, you'd likely start calling me a cheater once you realized what I was doing by using my knowledge of where you can fire, when you can fire, and the behavior of your weapons once fired. Face me later in a game when I have a Guardian and Halcyon(s) and you'll never even get a shot off with a spam fleet. Use the limitations of enemy units and unique abilities at your disposal to your advantage and there's no way a blob of spam units could ever be successful. Sins is half RTS and half Chess.

Double post, go forums. Not sure how that even happened, two versions of one post.

And uh, the biggest point is balance was -better- in the last patch, a step backwards in balance is a very, very bad thing. And it does alienate a lot of us when we're blatantly ignored and this stuff actually goes live.