What Are Your Thoughts?

For a completely new IP that's been out for a good 7 months, I think it's still doing all right.  Most new RTS's are lucky to have any noteworthy following beyond the first month.

I honestly don't believe that it's going to attract a whole lot more new traffic in coming months (especially with huge titles like Starcraft II and DoWII on the horizon) but considering the circumstances, I think it's had a pretty good run.  It sure wouldn't hurt to get that bloody 1.1 patch out, though.  It's been... what?  4-5 months now? 

I think you may be right.  The patch delay has hurt online play a tad, but even with it I doubt you'd be seeing a HUGE number of players.  I can't speak to why.  Sins is an awesome title and has a lot of players.  Maybe it's the length of the games that keep online play down.  With so many "casual gamers" out there, I'm hard pressed to find partners that will commit to muliple hours of gameplay at a time.  Doesn't bother me much though.  I LOVE the single play experience too. 

I wonder if a small skirmish mode might help online gaming for SoaSE, say, if you could start with small, medium or large fleets, determined by the devs as to what kinds of craft make up those sizes of fleets. In that way gamers could jump right into a battle without the necessary build up time that is normally required for the start of the game.

My thinking is that hard core gamers could opt for standard mode and spend however many hours they want, 2-3 or more, and the casual gamers could select skirmish mode and play for an hour or 2. Just a thought. It may be what the patch is all about anyway, since i am new to the game, 2 months now, and am not familiar with the details of the 1.1 patch.

Anyway, SoaSE is awesome!  I mean i liked HW and Nexus and MOO and some of the others as well, but SoaSE has worlds better graphics and the game play battles are more cinematic. There are just a few things i can think of really to make it better than it is now. And the devs are probably way ahead of me.

Anyway, i am a casual gamer as well, and find online games daunting for the time reason, that and im not very good, i would hate to join a team and have them lose because of me    So for now i play single player mode, but the interaction of real people is always more fun, and unpredictable.   

-Teal

Considering that in the past we had 200+ people online during North American prime time and now we don't see over 100 very often (if at all) I'd have to say that, sadly, the game seems to be dying.

The biggest reasons for this are probably people's frustrations with hosting their own games (set to their liking) and the minidumps.  If 1.1 works properly it's possible that it might bring back some of the folks who've been waiting for 1.1 to come out.

People keep saying that it takes too long to play.  It really doesn't take that long.  Most 3v3 or 4v4 maps (large random single star or even huge random single star) are decided within an hour-and-a-half's worth of game play.  What makes it take long is when there are noobs who are too noob too realize when the game is over or insist on fighting it out to the end for some dumb reason when, instead, they could have already started a new game with an unknown outcome.

I am mostly not a multi-player, so my understanding of why people dont play online is probably off, but it seems logical to assume that if there were no problems the multiplayer game would be proportional to sales, which seems to be alot. So why not?  I dont know, but im assuming you are correct in thinking there is 'something' wrong, just exactly what that is, may take some digging though.

-T

Ive never seemed to have a problem with finding a game. I host all my own games and ive never had to wait more than a ten minutes for the game to fill up. Not sure whether its my time bracket which is GMT? I read this forum before I bought the game and I was thinking about not getting it as it sounded like a nightmare to find a game so I was pleasently suprised when I found how easy it was. Also you said your playing patch 1.1, maybe that is why because I think mine is patch 1.3.

  Noobs are people too    I understand you may game alot, and in fact play better than alot of other players, but games should and do appeal to a broad audience in order to broaden their sales. Hard core gamers are the core fans that buy games and play them hard and demand more. Or dont buy them as the case may be. Casual gamers, or noobs as you call them, bring numbers, more numbers and more sales, and a good game will have modes to accomodate both. Either that or they are shooting for a different market. But look at WOW, what are they shooting for? How does the game play? And how successful are they?  They are HUGE! and they are not just huge from the hardcore. They are huge because they appeal to alot, alot of people, that play all different kinds of ways. Some casual, some hard, some rpg, some fps, some fantasy... there are a lot of reasons WOW is a success. Go easy on the newbies okie?

-T

Teal, did you actually read my post or did you just see the word "noobs" and decide to go off on some sort of rant?  I am one of the friendlier people online and welcome noobies to the game.

The substance of my post was to say that the games themselves don't take as long as people think but that because sometimes noobs don't know enough to recognize when a game has been decided, instead of quitting or surrendering they choose to fight it out, adding another (boring) half-hour or hour to the length of some games.

Ambro, currently only patch 1.05 is out, and 1.1 is in beta, so you don't have 1.3 unless you're from the future (does the economy get better?)

Yea sorry I got my games mixed up. lol

There are way too many versions and beta patches around to scatter the online community even more. Updating to the latest beta patches I haven't been able to play a multiplayer game in months. I still drop in every now and then to see 0-1 afk people in the lobby.

Theyre were quite a few people on patch 1.05 but you are right that on the beta there is virtually nobody. Plus once youve installed the beta ou have to unistall it to get back so im just waiting for the patch to go official now before I play online again as I expect many others are.

i think for the absolutely amazing sales the games has achieved, the online is not reflective.

i mean if they just got the betas straight and released a 1.1 patch. but unfortunately i don't think entrenchment will help the online.

but honestly, this game isn't battlefield, it doesn't live on online play. if you took a poll, the majority of people that play sins play singleplayer.

that simple

I dont know why, single player gets really quite boring after just a few games I found. I think a lot of people probably play lan though instead of on ironclad.

Online aspect of the game is disaster...

No clan support...

No competitive initiative of any sort...

No competitive game modes (or in other words - game lasts way too long for serious online presence)...

This was all obvious since day 1 and anyone who ever thought online presence is going to be great was clearly mistaken

It is gaming shame of the decade imo simply coz game as such is awesome yet no real attention was paid to designing proper online aspect of it... makes me cry really...

I've been gaming a long time, especially RTS. The reason why sins probably is not that popular online is because it does take some time to gain a victory. look at Homeworld, homeworld 2, Master of Orion or even the Star Trek Armada series - an online game there would take a max of 2 hours tops provided you had two equally gifted players. I've seen online RTS games last 20 minutes, some even shorter. You will never get that with sins unless the map is less than 5 planets.

I played online for the first few times and it was just gets laboured after 3 hours of building and scrapping when it looks like it could go on for another 2-3 hours. These days me and three of my friends play thru himatchi. A few weeks back we played on a 9 star map with about 100 planets and the game went on for a full day - we started playing at 10am on a saturday and it literally finished at 9pm that nite. I have been part of games that last for hours on end. The average game I play against friends lasts 4 hours.

Also, sins needs a campaign with high levels of difficulty, the same way that in Homeworld you start off fighting easy AI and end up fighting extremely hard AI in the endgame missions. A campaign, gives a player more ability and skill therefore making them more confident of fighting online instead of going online with little or no skill for the RTS concept of the game thus getting cut down by far superior skilled players. It also needs small maps with fast jump times with high resources that allow players to build large fleets with only resources from 2 or 3 planets. Maybe these can be special "Tactical" deathmatch maps intended for use on MP

also I wouldn't mind having a CTF map. I once played a capture the flag in Armada 2 and it was crazily fun. imagine chasing around the galaxy in sins after a stolen flag?

QUOTE FTW!

edit:

by the way i made rather similar topic earlier this morning 

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/329926

no replies - but i am 101% confident that it is covering fundamental issues with the game in rather urgent need of fixing...

I think they need to get a single player addittion before the game starts taking off really.

A campaign is really going to be a waste of time for sins in my opinion. For me to play through a campaign it would have to have a really good story with high production values whilst remaining challenging throughout. I cant really see the sins campaign being anything other than half baked, we know the AI is poor already and even on hard it is pretty boring and predictable so it is just going to feel like a grind. Also all the great single player games are usually built from the ground up with the campaign in mind, to add one on later is just going to be a waste of time.

Also I think it is going to be unlikley that sins will ever be a competitive multiplayer game, the games go on for a long time and as most people dont have enough patience to even complete a ten minute game of DOW before quitting then I doubt they will have the patience to play sins. Most people just play online as it is more challenging and enjoyable than playing against a predictable AI.

I think the best direction for the future of SOSE is to build upon the sandbox element which at the moment is fairly bland and then that way instead of having a half baked campaign players will create theyre own story with the decisions they make in the game. This will also improve both the multiplayer and the singleplayers aspects so its winwin for everyone.

You are right of course, i am sorry i went off like that, i can only blame not quite understanding your point. i thought it was a put down, but even that, in forum should be shrugged off rather than commented on. So i will try to not be so quick with my mouth and to try to see what is being said. Not just for you, but i apologize for taking your comments out of context, but so i dont put my foot in my mouth so often elsewhere as well.

Thank you for being polite in your answer, i was expecting a flame-back, which i should of course try to avoid at all costs.

-Teal

I like that alot, it sounds like a wonderful suggestion, player created scenario's in sandbox. Some of the terms are beyond me, but the player created part sounds wonderful to make our own stories. 

Thank you,

_Teal

Well players are already doing that, I am actually doing that myself. Instead of writing out a big plan of what I would like to see as a storyline dealing with the Vasari-TEC-Advent War, I am just doing scenarios based on what I would have liked to have seen.

I believe most players play in small groups over Hamachi with ventrilo. The main benefits of this is: less of a chance that people will leave mid game and we can schedule matches easier. It allows us to play other games and be in the know to when a game is about to start.

If you would like to join us get on our vent server at: Tungsten.typefrag.com 42231

I en fact have never played over IC and have something like 20 complete games and millions of know winner games.

Look forward to playing with you

I'm going to have to ask you how you do that.    I dont want to steal your idea, but it would be wonderful to setup some storylines that i have in my head. Just to play as a personal mod. 

Thanks and take care,

-Teal