My biggest issue with this game!

That sounds like your biggest issue with this game

It's not gonna happen. This game is 99% made for single player.

Um, no.

10:30 PST means its 1:30 EST -- most people are either long in bed, or at work, at that hour, depending on the AM / PM.

8:15 PST now and 5 people in Lobby, and no games to join.

Definitely no excuse for that... Should be hundreds of players online and a mass of games to pick and choose from.

Am I alone on this?

There is 128 people online now. There use to be 270 or so around this time. My biggest problem with the game is the amount it takes to complete a match. I'm sure many people agree and it might be the reason why there aren't a lot of people online.

People want to play a fast-paced game. So they play smaller maps. Smaller maps cause less strategies, and people start using the cheapest ones (spamming lrms, rushing, ect)

I wish sins was made for an even slower paced game, aka: single player. =/

how many full online games have any of you had?
this game has serious issues with its multiplayer that NEEDS to be addressed with this upcoming patch. no one will stick around for very long after that patch comes out if it doesnt fix anything.

"Stardock's CEO, Brad Wardell, has stated that the game has sold nearly 200,000 units in its first month of release ..."

i've never seen the online player list break 200
so where are the other 199,800 players, stardock?

I'm sure there are many like me who rarely get open windows for games let alone a window large enough to play a full Sins game online. Add that to the fact that my lack of practice would mean I would get rolled over by anyone with an ounce of competitive nature.
I'll only ever play this game single player.

Singleplayer power !!!!!

The fact is wrong but the sentiment isn't that far off from a population breakdown perspective. Sins is a game that appeals more to the single-player audoence than to the multi-player, even if it wasn't designed specifically to do that.

I'd be curious to see the ratio between the number of unique users who honestly tried to play at least an hour or two online versus the total number of Sins sales. If the total number of distinct MP Sins users with an hour of play under their belt is less than 100,000 [and I think I can predict that it's much lower than that...], then less than half of Sins purchased software ever even tried online multiplayer. If it's less than 50,000, then I think that says the money to be made is on the single-player side, and that's where the majority of the game's future energy should go.

I'll also mention that I think it would be COLOSSALLY difficult to have the exact same stats for units in the single-player and multi-player experience because the games in both behave differently, but Sins seems to have been able to pull this off. In my book, that's pretty darn amazing.

-- Retro

I'm extremely happy with SINS as a SP game, and I believe they (IC & SD) should capitalize on their huge SP customer base.

The (very few) experiences I've had on ICO have been very frustrating & time-consuming.

As it has been said on other threads by many advocates of « singleplayer power », they should boost the SP/4X empire-building dimension of the game (what some fast & furious MP fanatics call « SimCity in Space) : a hybrid of real-time GalCiv2 and relatively slow RTS.

Anyway ... StarCrack 2 is coming : SINS MP will be deserted by the F&FF.

This is far from the truth. I speak as someone who plays online everyday and as a former-beta tester.

What is happening now is that the typical online sins gamer , prefers 8 player games with a range of skill levels. 8 player games exist on the large random singlestar map , and they are usually 4 vs 4 or ffa. The players who call themselves "online sins gamers" ,are neither Casual gamers nor are they Competitive gamers. These are players simply addicted to playing games with tons of people in them.

yeah P5yy , that would possibly describe the category Im in . The way I see it though is you will have both single and multiplayer devs, I bought the game as much for mp as for sp, now consider sp doesnt even have a campaign I think they owe it to the community to work on mp every bit as much because when you get sick of trashing the ai in sp you have lots of replay value in mp. Also gciv 2 is a single player only game and as I recall many wanted it mp, now if you want a diverse sp game why not buy that then you have the best of both world? I personally dont see the point in making sins a gciv 2 clone in some respects. I also dont think that making mp balance tweaks are eating into sp in a significant way and cant understand why people would in effect say to a corp "we arent worried about mp" because thats giving them cart blanche to let mp die and truely all the game would then have is skirmishes with ai so I ask how long before you get bored with that when you can trash the ai? See while I dont agree with everything Haeso says there is alot of things he says which I do agree with and can see where he is comming from as a player who is really skilled and most likely the ai is a joke to him(People in clan x and GE probably can own the ai as well so really all they have is sp skirmishes with not much challenge). Thats why there is a need for MP, it extends the life of the game.

I can understand where alot of you are comming from regarding the ego play online but not everyone is like that and if people keep portraying such a bad picture well it is just going to scare people away. (Just a suggestion to SD but would maybe be an idea just to let people know how you are getting on with the patch? I am happy waiting because I know its a content patch and content is my number 1 priority in any game, I would rather see you folks take as long as you need to make the patch great but maybe would be best for the sake of others and to stop the hysteria just to say whats happening, what you are working on without even saying an official release - just an idea)

Just to say the few times I have been online I have been treated well but I do agree there are some serious issues online that need sorted but taking into consideration the patch is content+fixes I dont want it put out half done.

Also to be realistic if we are talking about making sins a SP only game more or less well that would take at least a year of solid development, when you consider a proper campaign would need to be added and much other stuff. Go down this route and you will get comparisons made with gciv 2 and I think the game would just die, plus theres really no real way to know how many people are sitting playing their game SP so its a bit of an assumption and changing whole game mechanics based on an assumption is bad, I think its more realistic that many people will see it hasnt got any kind of campaign or real sp diversity so it will sit on their shelf (This to is an assumption though hehe )

Point is I dont see why they cant work on both, I mean think of all the work put into the gciv 2 series? thats why I have a bit more faith here than other places and I think the actual speed and scope of the game is nothing short of awesome but yes it does take a serious investment of time and I wanted to finally play a strat that went beyond 5 to 20 min games.

Just to finally say I agree with the OP about the MP numbers though I have seen a sharp fall even since I started playing but I think thats because some factions have been dumbed down and others are overpowered and many may have liked the way it was prior to the patch? People want their respective factions to pack a punch in their own ways and that isnt always happening and many who have played from beta have waited a long dam time.

Heres the thing I think sins is good enough that yes people will leave but that leaves a space for the current newbies to become the best in the community with practice and for a time MP will be filled with newbies and hence will be getting more enjoyable games with less ego play. Maybe Im crediting SD too much but I really think this game has potential and I think since the devs are working to fill so many requests for the patch they should be encouraged not lambasted, these things take time and sins is a newly released game. (Devs please take your time do this patch right and consider how you could make the MP lobby etc better, I know you folks at SD know the value of consumer confidence so I have faith in you folks thus far)

It's a very, very legitimate issue because it's 20 times more fun playing the game in online multiplayer than it is playing against dumb AI. AI is great for testing tactics and learning the game initially, but it's much more fun competing against a human intelligence.

They’re all playing, they’re probably just not playing with you. If they’re like me, they’re playing with a group they know, who schedule a time to play. Let’s be honest, this isn’t a pick-up kind of game. With the average game around 3 hours, I want to know that A) everyone will stick around for that long and they’re not going to be jerks. If I’m going to play a 3 hour game I want to enjoy myself, not fight off LRM rush after LRM rush. This game just isn’t compatible with the typical hardcore RTS gamer who wants to prove his l33t-ness 1v1. Most of us are playing private 4v4 or 5v5. Sorry.

Join a website, forum, clan, or something who host a regular game. Ours is a regular 1pm EST Saturday game, every Saturday, sometimes a 2nd on Sun, and that’s enough Sins multi for a week (for us).

That's a good point.

I'm just learning the game, and I'll give online a fair try, but I'm much more likely to play single player most of the time. I don't have a problem with further development of multiplayer, but I hope they improve the AI as well.

Good AI is the key to a satisfying single player game. We don't need a story driven campaign. My favorite game of all time, Rome: Total War has a great (IMHO) single player campaign that doesn't have a story at all. Instead it has goals: To win the Julii Imperial Campaign the player simply needs to crush the Gauls, win the civil war and occupy Rome, and control 50 provinces. It's an epic campaign, lotsa fun, no story.

I disagree. It's not 20x more fun in mutli then SP, it's different. I enjoy a good 1v1 in single player but hate it in multi. On the same note, 4v4 in SP sucks completely where as it's the only way (that and 5v5) to play MP. Different experiences.

Lots... probably approaching one hundred by now.

A) Singleplayer
Online at other times.

QFT. I *don't* consider Multi to be more fun than Single for several reasons - I like to do puzzles (which, if you think about it, is exactly what Sins RTS is), I like to watch big fleet actions and enjoy the fireworks and you can't do that in MP, and I am in a special situation where the most time that I can guarantee I have available in a row to play Sins is about half an hour.

So I have very sound reasons to prefer the SP game.

-- Retro

Counterstrikepointsix (#7) :

« i've never seen the online player list break 200
so where are the other 199,800 players, stardock [if we suppose that there were 200 000 games sold] ? »

Ron Lugge's reply to that (#19)

« A) Singleplayer
Online at other times. »

__________________________________________


My own reply to Ron Lugge :


You're being a little too « smart ». Your caricatural reply does not do justice to Counterstrike.6's issue.

If 200 000 people bought the game, of course many of them are exclusively playing SP and never go on ICO !

Counterstrike.6's question, in the context of the thread's OP, addresses this problem :

Of those 200 000, how many have had any significant gameplay time on ICO ?

The only way to know would be to compile statistics based on users' product-key associated accounts (not their ICO game avatars).

Stardock and Ironclad probably have those statistics, but they have not released them. They wouldn't dare...

My opinion (which is as credible an hypothesis as what the SD/IC fanboys might declare) is that very, very few of those « 200 000 » SINS buyers have ever spent any significant time on ICO. (Guess why...)

The OP's concern and Counterstrike.6's concern are legitimate.

Dismissing them with « smart » fanboy missiles does not resolve the issue :

SINS MP on ICO appears to have become a desert or barren world (in MoO terminology).

My other hypothesis is that following the release of the Demigod beta, and especially, the release of StarCraft 2 ... SINS MP on ICO will look like a black hole.


(I suppose that I won't get a +1 karma from the SD/IC fanboys for this post. I'll never be able to catch-up with Ron Lugge...)

Its the darn speed of online play.


The resource caps need to be droped and the cost of capital ships droped from say 3000 to 2000.


games just TAKE so long and planet defences are far cheaper easier to get and stronger then majority of ships and it turns into turtle wars.

Each race should have a military research that increases speed of ships by 10% each research to a max of 3.

Also colonizing worlds colonly ships end up waiting around for 2-3 mins eariyl game just for enough antimatter after losing antimatter jumping into a new system.