(1) Nice strawman. The 'hardcore RTS players' are not your enemy, and there is not some kind of 'battle' going on between competitive and casual players. Competitive players spend many hours getting to know the guts of the game and can see things that are imbalanced. They are making a case to get these things changed.

(2) Whether the game fits into a 'box' or not is a totally pointless completely subjective discussion. What we're talking about here is game balance. Since this game has soooo little micro method, almost all of the game balance discussion can be demonstrated with simple math (and there are several good threads where this is going on right now). So it's as objective as it can possibly be.

(3) This seems to be an ongoing theme in the 'everyone hate the competitive players' crowd. All the competitive players want is game balance. Your point might be relevant if there were two games being developed, and the devs would only work on one at a time. But this is not the case. If you can play TEC and spam trade ports by exploiting the new low-cost/low-risk black market in multiplayer, you can do it just the same in single player. The presence or absence of AI has nothing to do with whether or not TEC trade spam is too powerful a strategy or not.

(4) This isn't true. Maybe if this game were Starcraft or something where advanced micro methods made some units much more powerful than using them the naive way, but there is nothing like that in this game at all. All the balance in this game has to do with 1 of 2 things: either the order of the tech tree or math. Anyone that owns this game has the SAME ability to go into multiplayer AND single player. There are no extra 'requirements.'

(5) Insulting people will get us nowhere. It will get nothing accomplished. Insinuating that 1) competitive players are all weird nerdy types that live in their basement and 2) that this is somehow a bad thing are uncalled for.

(6) I like your analogy, so I'm going to use it myself. You are probably correct in that a lot of casual players of other games don't use 'hardcore tournament rules.' For example, two tennis players may decide to play a game without using the out-of-bounds boundaries. There's nothing wrong with this, and I don't think you'll see any competitive tennis players decrying them for trying to destroy the game. However, these two players are not playing tennis. They have made up their own rules for their own game.

Similarly, players that simply choose not to use overpowered strategies or that choose to 'ban' them from gentlemen's games are not playing Sins of A Solar Empire. They've changed the rules of the game to their needs. It's just as if they had made a mod that did away with the possibility of using overpowered strategies - it's not the same rule set, so it's a different game altogether.

However, this doesn't mean that they don't use any rules at all. If my friends and I are playing poker together, it isn't fair if the specific rules we're playing by say that Don wins if he ties with someone else. That's unfair and tilted towards Don. Most people realize that unfairness is a bad thing. I won't go into this since it's basically a huge philosophical argument.

(7) In games like Starcraft, competitive matches ARE normal matches. In this game, there are just too many options to define what a normal match would be. Is it slow research? Fast build, fast movement? 1v1 or 3v3? What is a 'normal' match?

Besides those questions, what difference does it make? There isn't an option in the game to 'Balance Black Market so It's Not Skewed Towards TEC' so your point is moot. If something is overpowered, it is overpowered regardless of the setting or the situation or even occurences. Even if you lose miserably using something overpowered, that doesn't make it any less so.

(8) Declaring yourself correct isn't the best way to proceed in an argument . I would respond to this by saying that thinking the game is balanced just means you don't understand how to play the game competitively.

Very nice post Mettra, I agree with you 100%.

And to Thinking42Man:

Do not call people out in your header. You can use your own name in the topic if you like, but do not use Frogboy as if it gives you some sort of seal of approval. Furthermore if you are responding to something he said in another thread, do it there! No point in starting a new thread just to flame him.

Also I like how you quote his response starting with point 4 and going to 5, where is the rest of his post? For all I know you are taking him out of context.

Lastly I can see why you are Thinking42Man, and not ThinkingMan42.

He's responding in this thread because the original thread (from which he is quoting) is locked. Splitting up the post isn't necessarily taking things out of context. I do it all the time to reduce post/page size and to only address the specific points brought up.

(Admittedly, the OP should have mentioned all this in the first post. ;))

I just want to say that Frogboy and Stardock did a tremendous job with Galciv 1, they're doing a great job with Galciv 2 and its expansions. As far as I can tell, Frogboy has always welcomed good, constructive suggestions for the game. And he deserves nothing less than that. Honestly guys, I find Sins to be a great game, a fun game, and I'm positive Frogboy will do his best to improve it and make it the best possible Sins. Let's give him time to do that. And let's appreciate his efforts by being constructive and polite.

Well ... if there is such a crowd, I'm not part of it. I don't « hate » high-level, competitive players. On the contrary, I admire them, reading all their posts to study their concepts & models, in the abstract, realising that I will never have the time & willpower to try to apply their ideas in online, competitive multiplay.

My crucial point has only been this : since that competitive elite possibly represents less than 0.1% of Stardock customers who purchased the game, I don't see why Stardock & Ironclad should bend over backwards to « cater » to their elitist requirements (even if those were legitimate, from a very particular perspective).

As Stardock CEO "Frogboy" has stated yesterday, most SINS users are single-player gamers.

And then, a few hours later, Frogboy put his foot down by explicitly declaring that SD & IC would not change the game to satisfy the competitive elite : a point that I have quoted in red on two threads.

It has nothing to do with « hate ».



Well ... if you take count of the insults, on this forum, the scale is heavier on the side of a few self-glorified « high level » competitors, who have repetitively used & abused terms such as « noobs », « morons », « idiots », « stupid » to qualify ICO gamers and Forum users who do not meet their extremist standards.

Yesterday, I did not stick any nasty label (such as « weird nerdy ») to qualify those elitist competitors : perhaps somebody else did ... but I didn't.

Instead, I asked the following question :

How come a tiny minority of SINS gamers have so much time on their hands that they can practice, practice, compete, compete to become so skillful ?

I suppose that 99.9% of Stardock customers have full-time jobs or full-time studies, a family life, other hobbies & leisure activities, other games to play.

The 00.1%, I don't know who they are, where they live (in a basement or not), but I am surprised that they dispose of so much free time on their hands to regularly invest in whole evenings of intense practice or online competition.

Just wondering ... not insulting ...

u make it sound like Sins requires 10h of practise a day. It for sure doesnt, especially cause like others pointed out Sins hasnt big requirements on ur speed with mouse and keyboard.
Also i dont know why any of these other activities should stop someone to be an active Sins players.
Yes some ppl do have other hobbies but why shouldnt be Sins your whole "Hobby" for example?
Btw if u use terms like "practice" and "online competition" u make it sound like we/they take this absolutly serious and our only aim is to win.
Thats for sure not true. I played for a long time in a low league football club. Sure did i want to win but did i play football because of it?
No, i did because it was simply fun and competing with others is part of this fun, competetion simply forces you to work on urself and if u do this and see the results of it this can be quite satisfying => fun.
Then there is also the whole other "stuff" that goes hand in hand with competitive gaming. It creates a community that u rly know cause u play with those ppl each day or hang around with them on irc, ico etc.
That is all part of it and tbh a pretty important one. I played starcraft for 10 years and this is for sure the most competitive RTS out there but at least 90% of the players i know there didnt play this game for so long cause they just wanted to win or improve themselfs, it was simply the great community, the friendships etc. which kept them playing this game.
Online gaming is not all about winning and losing but u need a solid gaming balance to make it fun for ppl to play so that more can become out of it.

I'm confused. This game is balanced? I'm pretty sure that everyone who uses the red-headed step child of this game, the Advent, would have to disagree. I just got finished (and by finished, I mean completely annihilated) with a 4v4 clan match between [HH] and [GE]. I lost due to an LRM rush about 20 minutes into the game, I hadn't had enough time to even research up to Defense Vessels, nevertheless even Drone Hosts. There was no way for me to win against such an early rush. I'd love for someone to tell me a counter, or even a VIABLE strategy that works with Advent. I am a casual gamer that is a member of a clan, nothing more than that. I enjoy playing online because the computer is just, bleh...IMHO, and it's always more fun to see someone run and talk trash.

I'm a fairly casual player of Sins; I play the odd game here and there, and I've yet to take it online -- in part because I just don't have the time to play long matches with people I don't know, and none of my friends are fans of the RTS or 4x genres and thus don't have the game.

I've been amazed at how balanced the game has been, from launch to now. There are some problems here and there, of course. Balance is always partially coloured by preference, which varies from person to person. With 1.03 the only issue I have, personally, is the price issue on the black market, as it seems to de-value crystal and metal compared to credits. But I've also never understood why Ironclad made the Black Market a pit of never-ending supply.

On the whole, its a minor issue for me. Maybe that's because I don't play multiplayer, but I'm continuing to enjoy the game singleplayer, regardless of which race I end up playing as, and found 1.03 balanced the game a bit better than it had been (and introduced some neat stuff).

On the whole, I guess I'm saying I don't really understand why there's such noise over the patch in the forums. Ah well.

Rock on. Now starbases are not only an integral feature of the game, with the famous 24 Military Starbase Array being some kind of achievement, but they've also grown in importance to the point of necessity for the Ascension Victory, and have also evolved in design, into the Terror Star superweapons.

The GalCiv 2 community didn't raise a hue and cry when Dark Avatar patch 1.8 came out(and they probably won't when 2.0 arrives), except for the technical issue of a broken ship upgrade system crashing the game. They may have debated and complained about things such as the Beta 4 TA upkeep system, etc., but there was no "OMG imba! Can't stand the losing!!! Nerf plz!" going on. People regularly complain about Mega Events even to this day, but they always seem to get satisfied upon realizing that the event is supposed to be Mega. And also upon learning the power of Autosave...

So lets count the stuff on the Sins nerf list now:
Nerf Black Market.
Nerf LRMs.
Nerf Returning Armada.
Nerf siege frigates.
Nerf Novalith.
Nerf superweapons.
Nerf flaks.
Nerf carriers.
Nerf bombers.
Nerf Phase Stabilizers.
Nerf TEC.

All of these were on the nerf list at one point, and most of the complaints died down as there threads hit the 2nd-3rd pages of the Strategy forum. The current top spots in the nerf-calling business/fashion/art/trade/whatever are occupied by LRMs and the Black Market.

After playing Sins for a solid few days on patch 1.03, I feel finally able to judge some of the implications of the patch.

The unit balance kicks big butts! Well I'm not American or even African American so that probably is the wrong phrase lol. Suffice to say, the there are no real cheese units that I can find and everything seems to have a counter (unit wise). That isn't to say some units still aren't great (or better) but everything seems to have its place. I even use the siege frigates now as they aren't so over the top (when a planet busting manouver is needed).

The black market dramatically favours the TEC and does stack things in their favour quite nicely (for TEC fans). To be honest, for real competitive players this is going to be a big problem. I don't think the changes to this should be over yet. There just has to be a better way of managing this?

The AI rules in some situations now. My first few games I was still finding it relatively easy. The last game I am playing (still haven't won), I may be number one for everything but I can't break through. In fact, the AI has put me into a stalemate. I have three stubborn gits who keep raiding my exposed teroritory and I cant lock it down. It's turned into a game of cat and mouse with fienting/holding manouvers. Whats worse (or better) is my closest ally teched up to RA early long before I was ready for my end game techs. We fought tooth and nail on one side of my empire for a couple of hours before I could get the upper hand. This isn't a tale of a game that needs a lot of fixing.

Sure the competitive player who enjoys nothing more than out-thinking and out-playing other real skilled opponants over the inter-web aren't going to enjoy the imbalances caused by the black market changes. The units are very well balanced though, heck even the AI can use them effectively. Perhaps if the game is giving you so much trouble online, you should really consider finding some new strats or taking it a little less seriously.

The black market is broken in so many ways, and LRMs are balanced, noobs can't seem to understand that

FLAK BEAT LRM

FLAK BEAT LRM

FLAK BEAT LRM

FLAK BEAT LRM

I can't stress this enough FLAK BEAT LRMS

(1) You honestly had me fooled.

(2) No one is saying Ironclad should bend over backwards to cater only to competitive player concerns. The discussion is about game balance, which is ALSO a single player concern.

(3) Game balance issues are valid from any perspective. Now if you're talking about stuff like making a ladder for multiplayer games, you might have an argument since that IS only for competitive players.

(4) No one disagrees with this. More people play SP Half-Life 2 than play CounterStrike: Source. That's true for almost any game, and no one will disagree with it.

(5) He never said that, and you do him a disservice in stretching the meaning of his words. He said that some people were demanding that multiplayer issues be priority, and that he thought it was more important for the single game issues to be addressed first.

(6) You don't get the point of what I've been saying. The count doesn't matter. If one 'side' has 3 more or less jackasses than the other 'side', neither 'side' are better. What matters is that people stop doing it, stop making emotionally charged posts, and start making reasoned cases for change instead of throwing insults around and trying to rile up a certain group of people to hate another certain group of people.

(7) You're correct here.

(8) And if you had read my post (particularly directed to answering your question) you would see that I had answered this question. It's because they want to. The same reason anyone else does anything.

(9) People spend their free time all kinds of ways. Some people write music. Some people work on physics problems. Some people excercise. Some people spend their time getting to know Sins.

I'll start with #4, that's obviously meant to be some kind of insult, though clearly poorly crafted. Based on that I expect the other members of this forum will forgive me for taking this post less than seriously. If you want insight into my handle, read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

1. I only used his name so people would know who I'm quoting and responding to.

2. Firstly, you're way off thinking I'm flaming him. He even posts here on the first page saying the thread is just fine. Second, the conversation in the original topic had gone off-topic by the time Frogboy wrote the here quoted post, so I reposted it in a thread where discussion would be on topic. As a side note, the original thread was closed.

3. Each of the numbered points were numbered as such by Frogboy. They were separate points addressing separate issues. You have jumped the gun in your assumptions.

It's a little discouraging that people can't recognize a cordial commentary when they see one. More disturbing, still, when people are overeager to become defensive and be the first to flame.

We have new strats, it's that we don't want to use them, want some replays of how broken TEC are? The devs seem to ignore that offer - but maybe the community will appreciate it and understand how truely imbalanced it is. And I'm glad YOU can understand that there's a problem, but really I have to stress enough, we are using the new strategies, I've got several maps down to every single strategic layer, and most of the tactical, already planned out using this new TEC overpoweredness as it's basis. I'm definately adjusting, but I'm saying the fact that every single effective strategy involves TEC in some way, is foolish. The fact that the only reason the other two races are EVER viable is the fact that a TEC player can feed them. And that's just a mockery of balance.

What if Stardock tried moving to a reporting tool (like Mantis or Jira) instead of using forums to gather suggestions? That would eliminate a lot of the pessimism and duplication, since you can search and upvote/downvote (or leave comments) instead of having to read through flame wars to find good ideas.

The competitive elite that identifies problems before they become widespread and the non competitive players start to lose against other non competitive players with more or less skill just because they've figured out these broken strategies.

Or are you suggesting we just sweep these imbalances under the rug and agree not to use them (If you have much experience with the internet I'm sure if you think about it, you'll understand that's not actually an option)

wow, flak beat lrm's, now thats new...

Maybe u shouldnt forget that LRM's are still usefull for pretty much anything else (killing caps, buldings and other ship types) while flaks are just a counter to LRM's and strikecraft, not to mention that they have a slow killing speed which means that LRM's will simply kill ur cap or ur buildings.
So just cause LRM's WOULD get beaten by flak in theory if someone let them fight each other that still doesnt mean that LRM's are balanced.
The reality in the actual game looks different and that is why there needs to be a little nerf.
I mean that only advent players built flak (due to the suckage of illums in early game) should tell u that flaks arent a viable counter/option.

mettra:

about your reply (51), I fully agree with that reply. I was going to write something like that but after reading all the anti-posts I just didnt see any reason to enter this debate.

heres the factor that many posters are totally ignoring:
if the imbalance came from some stratetgy/tactic that only the top 10% of the competitive players could do (some intense macro/micro that most people cannot do ,even most competitive players), then it could somehow become a competitive vs casual issue, but in this case (market place favouring tec) anyone even a player with less than a dozen games under his/her belt (if she/he played tec and understood how to use the market and noticed that trade ports are worth making) is impacted by the market imbalance, so the casual vs competitive stuff shouldnt have even come up when debating the market imbalance.

The competitive "elite" players are the ones creating all the imbalances. You guys want to win so bad you go about looking for every single little thing you can do to get an edge on your opponent regardless of how they're playing. Casual, non-hardcore, non-competitive players like myself can't even talk about a couple of little tweaks we'd like to see without you guys blowing everything up and running around like the game is a sinking ship because it doesn't fit your play-style or you can't adjust your strategy to win under any conditions other than by doing what you call spamming units. The "elite" players are sensationalizing everything and driving people away, as usual, rather than hearing out the non-"elite" players who give much more important and realistic feedback about how the game really plays when it's played the way it's intended to be played. You "elite" competitive people are just trying to screw up Sins just like you all screwed up the UT series with your brightskins, hitscan weapons, and your atmosphere-, visuals-, lighting-, layout-deprived maps all in the name of fairness, skill, and balance. Enough is enough! GTFO!!!

now thats defiantly one of the most stupid things i ever read.
Its so stupid that i dont even need to comment and explain why.

Btw some million ppl in korea wont agree with you that competitive play destroys a game.

Brad, you are 100% correct here. I have been with you since GalCiv1 and you do listen to the users more than another other game studio out there.

Your attention is needed elsewhere and doing more imporant thinkgs than listening and responding to this thread.

If they don't like they can make a mod...

Flaks kill LRMS great if you fight them in an empty space with no caps involved.

Throw in a cap, some buildings, and the lrms have done way more damage than the cost of themselves, and will finish up those things before the flaks kill them then simply retreat to build light frigs.

Lrms are imbalanced when you put buildings and caps into the mix.

While this appears to be pure trolling....

I think whether a player is "elite" or not, everyone tries to mold the game to their vision of how they want it to be. There are a lot of good players who just adapt to the changes and play different races and styles. Also, the funny thing is, I know good players who don't agree on what should be changed.

In every strategy game I've played, players have devised killer strategies....and they showed up in multiplay ages ago...from the first zergling or zealot rushes, to the guy who suicided a tank into my factory entrance in TA so I couldn't make anything until I reclaimed it, there have always been annoying, hard to counter strategies. It is ironic you makes accusations of sensationalism, because your GTFO flaming is counter to the whole point of a forum...to discuss what needs to be changed and come to a better, more fun game.

I would personally love it if something were put in that would promote a role playing atmosphere. For years I've been role playing my RTS's in MP just for fun. Not "building the biggest army to smite my foes in 2.37 secs" or "force quitting because my first strategy didnt work" mentalities, but rather, focusing on building up my "bases" and strategically placing them in places where they are asthetically pleasing as well as functional. That sort of game play, while you are taking a few missles to your backside is far more challenging and fun then simply winning as quickly as possible. But, alas, most people dont have the attention span or creative talent to produce a story line on the fly incorporated with a diplomatic hand that also gives rise to real life social and interpersonal communication skills.

For this game, it would be nice if "times of peace" would yield greater incomes in the economy or "times of war" would allow for increased production of units or structures. A well thought out and implemented espionage system would benefit the level of strategy for this game (perhaps in an expansion).

Finally, a reward system for using the diplomacy systems (as spartan as they are right now, maybe not, but in future implementations) would encourage community in MP rather then simply playing to win. Players would actually have to PLAY the game and INTERACT rather then hit the "I Win" button. Community is what makes an MP game fun, not hitting the "I Win" button and being done in 4.78 seconds. Stats become mundane and diluted much like the players attempting to afix themselves to them. The reflection of how good or bad a player really is isnt determined by stats, buy rather by how well they actually PLAY the game and how much fun they AND their OPPONENTS had PLAYING the game. Some of the best strategy game matches I've played were ones in which I lost, but my opponent was a good sport about things and throughout the game there was alot of communication between both parties (some taunting, but mostly general role playing communication, very civil tongues).

For me, personally, the mentality has always been, help the opponents have as much fun as possible, win or lose, and the personal fun will be increased 10 fold. And it has.

For all you whiny little babies that think LRMs are overpowered and will cause more damage than their cost against flak and buildings. play me 1v1 and lets test our your solid mathcraft and theorycraft. Lets see how your on paper experience goes against my in game experience. I've got over 150 games on all my accounts to back up my side of this argument. How about you?

Little pissants probably won't even accept the challenge. 12 pm est after that I can play, not sure how long I'll be up, after that monday I'll be on all day untill 7-12 pm, then after that I can play. like that most of the week untill wed-thurs can't play for the most part those days. Send me a whisper on ICO and lets seriously test your "theories" that are supported by "math" and "experience" and see why my experience is different.

Here's a little tip for you guys - frigate factories are actually quite inexpensive. Focusing them is only effective if you kill the construction frigates and he has nowhere else to put a frigate factory. The amount of LRMs you will lose will be far far far more expensive than dropping another logistics or tactical slot to get another worker and build that factory again, or just building it somewhere else, one of my favorite strategies when I get my factory focused is to simply build it at another planet, and an even funnier one is to start upgrading my tactical or logistics slots to get another worker as they start to leave. I kill 4 LRMs and lose a frigate factory, that's still pretty much breaking even, and in the time it takes to kill that factory, you're going to be losing a lot more than 4 bloody lrms my friend.