I should hope it wouldn't. Mainly, because most of the better players would help you with any questions and pointers to be a better player.

The flipside of the coin: I'm an experienced player and I want to fight other experienced players. It gets extremely boring to just bash wave after wave of beginners.

Even if I for example label the game "2 vs 2 skilled", still tons of totally unskilled players join.

One particular problem is the general lack of players on ICO. Sometimes it takes ages to start a game. People join a game, see my stats and then leave. "No thanks, I stand no chance".

Unfortunately this leads to smurfing, which means deliberately creating new accounts in order to pose as a beginner. If some skilled players are unable to host a game for some amount of time because people do not want to fight them, they just make a new, fresh account with null stats. This makes them appear far less threatening, people join their games and once ingame they get totally humiliated after a few minutes by a huge fleet.

The reason is that it is not possible to distinguish a legitimate new player and a smurf, their player stats look exactly the same.

The result is that skilled players get bored and eventually leave the game due to lack of challenge, while new players on the other hand leave because they get run over every game.

My advice: Don't smurf if your skilled.

If you're a new player, don't fear the pros. It's like this in almost every game, as the new guy you are at the bottom of the food chain, that's just the way it is.

If you get defeated, try to find out what you did do wrong or did not do the best way possible. Watch the replays, try to understand and imitate what the skilled player is doing.

Last but not least, communicate! Most skilled players will eagerly tell you what you did do wrong after the game. You just need to ask them.

I totaly agree with Raknor. Some "pro" players might be a jack@$$, but there are jack@$$es in every game don't let that ruin your online experience and decide not to play MP anymore. The only way to get better on MP is to keep playing and learn new strats from other people. There are plenty of people out there that are willing to give you tips and help you out. So people come on and get out there and play MP!

I haven't played online against random people, no.  Friends, yes. 

Its not "fear" that stops me, its just that I've found most people don't play casually, and they seem to like eliminating parts of the game that I really enjoy.

Example, in HomeWorld2, when playing online (the few times I tried) everyone wants to set starting resources to *Highest* and ResourceRate to *Highest*.  Why?  They don't want to deal with deciding how to spend their resources.  They just want to build a big fleet and fight another big fleet.

Admitedly, I havent' tried, but I expect Sins will be the same.  I imagine most people will set the resources as high as possible...  probably disable Pirates and ignore diplomacy.  Oh, theres another one...  the *few* games I've played online that have a Diplomatic componant...  well, lets say most people don't seem to honour it.

Maybe I should start a Clan but the Clan isn't a team that plays together against other Clans...  its a group of people that know they can play together online because other members are not jack@$$es.  Hmmmmm...

Snazzed

Personally it's all about the speed, I'm sorta cursed in that department. I enjoy huge games with long durations, not too big fleetsizes or too fast resourcegathering either, wich means every cap is a true investment and seeing it blow up is truly painfull. But many hour long games don't make for good online experiences, I assume more people want faster games online, and even with the save feature I assume it'd be hard to reassemble the players to continue the game at a later time for a huge and slow game. Ontop of that, I'd like to see some real diplomacy going on, as much of a "Roleplaygeek" thing it is, Alliances shouldn't be taken lightly

Anyways, I'd be willing to throw myself out there and test it out, but I do have a few questions though, how about 2v1 etc.? Are truly skilled players able to take on 2 lesser ones and make for an interesting match? Would a 6man freeforall with diplomacy make for some "intergalactic politics" going on, or aren't people that interested in these game modes? That could be fun with the right people

A fear of playing online?  No, I've played many other games competitively.  Sins just doesn't feel like a competitive RTS.  In a 1v1 2/3 of the tech trees do not come into play, and above that games will take over an hour to finish.  That's totally fine when I'm playing single player at my own pace, or a co-op game with friends.  But with strangers I will likely not be able to save and continue later with?  No deal.

While selfish, I concur with wbino that most updates should be aimed at single player and co-op players.  The fact that I see so many threads on 'nobody online' should make it fairly obvious to all that most people play this for the same reasons.  The focus of the first expansion makes it clear that Ironclad is aware of this (stronger defences = longer games) and is not catering to the competitive online crowd.

As for Raknor's discussion on smurfing, this happens in every single online RTS.  It's just worse in Sins; because it doesn't have an automatch ladder system, people have 100% control over the oppenent's they play.  Few people will willingly play someone who is 150-15, so those players are forced to smurf to find games...then run over casual players, who often get disgusted and leave online play for good.  It's an unfortunate little death spiral, and there's no solution.  I refuse to do it, but most of friends have done this at some point in other RTS' because they just want to play; but can't because the custom game players keep booting them.  I can totally understand the arguements from both sides, but what can you do?  Pros need to accept that not everyone wants to play someone well beyond their skill level, while some less skilled players do need to 'man up' and take their lumps if they ever want to improve.  I suspect I have better odds at learning telepathy than people have at coming to this understanding though...

Does a "fear" of experienced (or pro) players keep you from playing Sins online?

NO!

Its fear of wasting 2 or 3 or more hours of my life just to find someone disconnects or indeed that i need to spend 5 hours more just to finish single game...

Sins simply MUST introduce number of smaller / shorter competitive game modes together with proper clan support if it is to see remotely serious presence on line...

Something I have been saying since day 1 pretty much - but instead of getting something like this we are getting 3 mini expansion that will most likely make games even longer... Not that this is bad for skirmish - in fact - I will be buying all of them coz I love the game however online aspect will never properly come to life without what I said above... It is as simple as that really... 

What the online game really needs is an "advanced start". Start with a higher pop cap, a small fleet and 2-3 close together worlds, and advance the pirate npc's accordingly.

I agree that the lack of use of diplomacy absolutely sucks, basically it's a trust issue. A ceasefire will buy you time, but unless there are locked teams, noone signs a peace treaty or shared vision, though trade is common because of the credits. With an advanced start you can cut out an hour or two of play so that slower strats like proper resource managemnet on normal or low resources is effective and culture can be more effective than fleet wars (although sly culture is a great offence in fast games when you have more or less equal fleets but cannot yet risk them in confrontation).

The point is, this is just too long a game for random players, and multiplayer is the best part of ths game but it is better suited to scheduled matches inside clans or LAN fests. Online multiplayer saves need to be able to replace human players who cannot resume with AI players, who can then be replaced by the human player if they become available later in the game (especially as part of multiple saves). Although the AI difficulty might be a bit of a problem, a custom AI scheme created as part of a profile would go a long way towards balancing this, though to prevent broken configurations being used by unscrupulous players, there should be a lockout of players who play less than 50% of a game's running time (stops them basically having a better player farm for them then coming back to clean up). I don't know if these suggestions can be implemented or if they are feasible as far as net traffic is concerened, but we need something to keep the game alive online (though this is truly an aewsome game at LANs, everyone needs to try it!)

Maybe scenario maps are the answer. A set of well-known, incredibly tough scenario maps would give smurfs the chance to really bend some muscle against unfairly boosted Ai or N00bs and see how good they are. The whole scenarios thing would also reduce the learning curve, which has been stated many times (no need for a story, just a few objective based maps so people can get a feel for the game that tutorials simply cannot impart)

I am hoping that we, the community, can prevent the death of SoaSE online so that everyone can enjoy the agon y of seeing your entire empire being eaten by some high level Advent DPS freak, or feel the exhilaration of leading a beefed up Vasari force through phase space to strike faster than the enemy can respond, or of creating a TEC commercial juggernaut and coordinating your strike with a pirate attack for devastating effect. Sins is the bomb!

Why is it that everyone who hasn't played online assume an online game takes so long? Big tip. Online is quicker as allies work together - SP takes ages as AI ignores your requests/advice most of the time, and wimps out of fights which make it hard to smash a fleet. Two humans who commit to a fight can knock another down quicker. Therefore quicker game.

And yes, if you are new, I probably would beat you one on one. But you can also learn as you go. And if you are in a larger game (4v4,5v5), you may end up winning due to allies etc... Just come and have fun...

I do not play online simply because I haven't got the time to do so.

I should reserve over an hour to play a game of Soase online, but I simply have too much REALLY important 'real life' stuff to do to sacrifice myself completely over a piece of entertainment programming.
As a comparison, during a typical medium 2v2 skirmish game which takes me ~1,5 hours to the point of the game is won/lost (usually won ) I pause the game about 50 times and save/leave/reload later about 3 times, because there is something requiring me to close the game.

Hey guys, I've played about 6 mp games of Sins, my friend who just got Sins, well, it was his very first computer game EVER (not counting WoW) and he's never in his life played a RTS game vs another human so far.  So he and I are looking for another 2 players who want to play a game for fun some time in the future.  We know we may not win, and that's fine with us, but we just don't want to be slaghtered by someone calling us "gay" while we try to learn (that's another topic completly, but we are really shocked how much that word is used given that it's like 2008, not 1958).

 Oh, and we can beat a team of 2 AI on Hard now, but we know that humans are much more of a challenge.

Two sides of this coin: 

- New players - need to play 10-20 games against good players and actually study the replays from the other guy's perspective.  Yes you will get crushed going up against better players, but you will never get better if you are looking for an evenly matched "5 games played" set of teams.  Put your ego on hold for a little while, ignore your stats, and learn the game.  Then if you want to you can start a new nick when you actually have the ropes down.  

Replays are key!  For example, I watched a replay last week where the opposing team was talking about how to use a giant resource exploit (since removed), and how everyone in their well-respected clan could do it.  Very instructive :/

Read HuntingX's old threads on build orders.  They don't really apply in full any more, but the formulas were helpful in getting everyone up to a certain level of play.  (Someone should update these for 1.1)

- Experienced players - need to make sure everyone knows what they are getting into before the game starts.  Yes you are going to win this game if your team has a combined 1000 games and the other team has 100.  But a) the weak team will be less likely to play you again or get better the game will be less fun c) you will quickly run out of people to play against. 

Be good sports, don't use exploits, make evenly-matched teams even if it splits up your little group of buds, and spend some of your time teaching the nubs how to play.  In the longterm it will really pay off by raising the level of the community.    

Peace