Is anyone playing Diplomacy?

I am. But not online

I've been playing it a lot. But in LAN. I'll probably never go online.

People are playing diplomacy, when I go online I usually check both entrench and diplomacy, and generally theres about 60% more ppl on entrenchment. But diplomacy is brand spankin new, Im expecting that number to go up. If you play MP or not, Diplomacy is only 10 bucks, and its worth it for the enhanced SP experience. MP, Im not sure cuz I havent many games yet, but my thinking is that while it wont effect the gameplay as much as entrenchment did, it still has a positive effect.

THe problem is just that there were already barely any people online. If any significant split happens, with some choosing to get the expansion and some choosing to stay with Ent., there would be so few in either group that online play would essentially be impossible. 

I'm certainly not buying it just to play against comps all day...

Diplomacy is great I highly recommend it, if not for the pacts alone make the game that much greater.  I would play online more but if I could pause people would get upset, I have kids

Alex take a day off from eatting Carls Jr. save 10 bucks and buy diplomacy and support the game devs.  Whether or not you play the game.  As they continue to upkeep the game and make it better and better.

Which is probably going to be true for 95% of the people who buy it.  I'll be playing a lot of TCP/IP games with my friends and FFAs offline, but I see no reason to go on ICO when it's impossible to find a game except during peak hours.

Based on what I have heard so far, many of the online multiplayer regulars who tried Diplomacy prefer Entrenchment.  So, my guess is that once the buzz and novelty wears off that most of the community will return to Entrenchment.

Personally, I'm pretty happy with Entrenchment and don't want to spend any money on Diplomacy until we definitively find out whether the online community will migrate to Diplomacy or stick with Entrenchment.  Also, it's hard to want to drop $10 on an expansion for a game that so few people are playing online.  I only play it online against human opponents, so if no one is playing Diplomacy online a couple weeks from now then I've just thrown my money away.

Of course, if you play the game in single player offline against AI then Diplomacy might be a great purchase for you and it won't matter how many other people are playing it.

Problem with diplomacy for mp is its really hard to do any diplomacy until you are already winning.It is a major flaw imo for mp.However I have not been able to play any team games with an eco player yet so I not sure.If your frontline player doesnt have like 4-6 planets its hard to get any of the really good pacts.Leaving you to do diplomacy with your eco partner(if there is one).The pacts themselves are pretty good it just takes alot of resources and time to get them.This makes it late game if your winning and have the extra cash sort of thing.The other downside is envoys take up to much fleet supply for a non eco player to use much.

Now for ffa diplomacy works out decently.Only because most people put sb everywhere and eco while forming alliances.However non of the pacts are game breaking or all that awesomely importanat to winning except maybe the last 2(tier 7-8).Not like a sb is.

Its a bit sad to see someone who is a public face to this forum not support the game devs.  Dont forget that these guys update and are active to this game.  Versus other games where they release take the money and move on.  10 bucks is cheap.  But to the guys who make it, it pays there bills and keeps them in a job to make the game better for us.

Nah don't take his comments wrong, he didn't mean it in a negative light.  And don't worry, even if no online MP buys diplomacy, it won't matter - we are a drop in the bucket compared to the SP crowd.  The devs won't even notice if no MP'ers buy diplomacy.

I'm sure it's a fine game.  One of my main problems with it is not being able give or lease ships, planets, tactical or logistics slots, etc.  I mean, it seemed to me that this kind of ability was a no-brainer.  I even suggested it way back on a brainstorming thread, before diplo was even written.  It didn't happen.  Go figure.

Alternate Ways to Support Developers (and Additional Strategies Developers Can Use to Increase Sales)

I go around to other discussion forums, both gaming community forums and general forums, and promote Sins whenever someone asks for an RTS recommendation or whenver I see it on sale somewhere.  Thus, I encourage new people to buy the game.  Also, by being an avid player and poster I contribute to the online player counts and to discussion here on the forums.  Additionally, I have designed and released some custom maps for the game, which essentially adds content to the game (increasing the value of the Sins property to the developers) for free.  Does that count?

Thus, there are other ways to help support a developer than just purchasing their latest expansion, such as, in essence, encouraging new people to buy the game in various ways.

I'll be happy to purchase a Sins expansion or a Sins-2 if it is of interest to me and if it is something that I would want to play.  I'm not sure that a developer could reasonably ask for much more than that.  I bought Entrenchment because my online friends liked it and the community of regular online players moved to Entrenchment and said that it was worthwhile.  If the same thing happens with Diplomacy then I will probably purchase Diplomacy.  That has not happened yet.

I also think that developers might consider other ways to increase their sales than just pumping out expansions.  I do think that producing good expansions is a good idea because it generates fresh publicity and in the case of Trinity, puts the physical boxes back up on store shelves, but I also think that there are other ways to increase sales.  I think that one way to do that is to meticulously support the product and to improve the product and to support and encourage online multiplayer, such as perhaps organizing leagues or tournaments or figuring out ways to generate new publicity for a game.  I also think that having a large, vibrant, and involved online multiplayer community can really help a game because people who play it online will invite their friends to come try it online with them and if a game develops a reputation for having abundant online multiplayer activity and for being a good experience, people will become interested in it, including people who only play single player.  It would also help to build a reputation for producing and supporting high-quality, polished games.

Thus, improving the online multiplayer user interface, stamping out minidumps and desyncs, adding built-in voice comm and passworded voice chat rooms, and adding an auto-download functionality for custom maps.  Encouraging custom maps and making it easier for people to play them allows the marketplace of players to determine which maps are the most fun and which ones make the game better, which very well might be non-standard user-made maps, which means that there is an untapped and unexplored potential for the game to be better than what it is now.

Anyway, I think that there are ways to support the developers other than just purchasing an unwanted expansion, and I think that there are things developers can do to encourage sales besides trying to sell expansions.  Maybe now that they have completed the expansion they can work on some of those other aspects or a first-rate, perfectly polished Sins-2.

Personal Example: I purchased sins in March 2008 and paid the full $40 price because some friends of mine from another online game had pirated it and were playing it online and I wanted to play with them but I'm not a pirate.  (Amazingly, piracy helped sell a copy of the game to a non-pirate!)  Had they not been interested I probably never would have gotten Sins since I had never played an RTS before nor knew anything about Stardock or Ironclad.  This sale came about because of buzz and interest in the community.  Two of those people went on to legitimately purchase Sins and they played for a while but lost interest in the game a couple months after its release.  Perhaps if the online multiplayer aspects had been better--no hosting problems (a problem back then), fewer minidumps, built-in voice comm, auto-download for custom maps, more and better features, etc., they would still be playing and helping to promote it to other people in our gaming circle.  I would also be more successful in encouraging other people to get the game or to get Entrenchment if more people overall were playing the game and if it thus had a higher profile amongst online gamers; I think it would have higher sales if it were known as being excellent for online multiplayer having a large and virbrant community.

I bought diplomacy.  Likely I'll play it in sp, glad to have the option for $10 to play it mp if I want.  At $10, whether to buy it or not is a non issue.

I know I'll get $10 worth of enjoyment out of it, and look forward to whatever is coming out of the gate from IronClad.

...seriously, $10?  I paid more to see Avatar in 3D (and I saw it 2 times).

Splitting the mp community IS an issue, but

this idea of buying it or not deserves a huge HEH!

i wish i could play online. i did twice, and it was awesome.

but my internet took a turn for the wortst and it has gotten so slow it cant handle any MP games, not even COD4.

I really think the idea of buying it just to support the company is ridiculous. How about I buy things based on whether or not they are worth money?

I already paid full price for both Sins and Entrenchment, and I don't feel any obligation to donate extra. If the game isn't worth it, I won't buy it out of pity. Just like DirtySanchez, I have done my part talking up Sins to other people, encouraging them to buy. I only do that for games I like. I'd be happy to pay $10 for Diplomacy, and I still may, I just want to be clear that I am doing it based on whether or not the product they produced is worth it. 

If Diplomacy is not playable online, then it's not worth the money to me. I'll be checking out how many games are going online over the next few weeks, and if I see that Diplomacy seems playable (at least several open games at a time), I will buy it. If I see that Diplomacy has sapped half the players from Entrenchment, but that now neither game is playable realistically online (because there are so few playing either game), I will quit playing altogether, and move on to a new game franchise. 

IVe been playing both entrenchment and diplomacy online. During peak hours there are enough players on both servers to find games, and non-peak hours still have a decent amount of players on entrenchment. I played a 2v2 at 6:30am EST this morning on entrenchment.

I just made a huge realization regarding why Diplomacy doesn't make much sense:

YOU CAN'T USE MOST OF THE GAME'S FEATURES ONLINE SINCE 99% OF GAMES ARE PLAYED WITH LOCKED TEAMS. 

That seems pretty simple... All the intricate relationships you are supposed to work on are totally irrelevant, since almost nobody plays FFA online. Diplomacy is just Entrenchment with the added complexity of using pacts now... 

You still need envoys to boost your relationship high enough to take advantage of the pacts.  Double mineral production at each planet you have a vasari envoy for 1 minute of every 3, plus a resource pact that buffs both empires resources by 10% is not insignificant ...

Pacts, enhanced pirates, pirate missions, and envoy abilities all work fine in locked team games.  The only things that don't work is the diplomatic win option and missions to other players.  If you don't feel this is worth $10, then that's your choice.  But the ICO community attempts to get new players isn't going to work very well if they refuse to use Diplomacy, which 99.9% of offline players will be using.  If anything, this just highlights how jaded the ICO community is by refusing to use new strategic and tactic options; while claiming online play is supposed to be superior to offline due to more strategic and tactical options...

Good luck with that guys.

I equate the disuse of the features in diplomacy to the disuse of entrenchment features like mines. To get the full experience you gotta use em, but its not a huge loss if you don't. Sure, the whole diplomacy screen and allies missions are a big part of this expansion, but pacts and envoy cruisers are still a big part too, and they get used.

REally what I'm hoping is that as more new players join the MP community, more FFAs will appear. But the simple fact is that people don't want to play a game that lasts several hours just to get stabbed in the back by a so called ally or teamed up on by two friends, which is why teams get locked in most MP games, teamed or FFA

I think that there are legitimate reasons for prefering Entrenchment over Diplomacy or at least that Diplomacy doesn't really add all that much to the online game, which is how I see it.  Diplomacy is OK, but for the locked teams online multiplayer games it's really not all that worthwhile.  I don't dislike it, but I don't think it adds all that much to the game.  Maybe it would be different if all players started in non-rush spots near their allies, like on several of my custom maps.  I do like the Faster speed settings (which really only apply for early on in the game before the lag builds up).

Personally, I would have been completely happy playing Entrenchment without Diplomacy.  However, at this point people who want to play online no longer have a choice because the player counts have shifted to Diplomacy, and presumably, like you said, the vast majority of people who are new to the online game will have purchased Trinity and will be joining Diplomacy online.

The fall off in Regular/Entrenchment player counts and the increase in Diplomacy player counts has been dramatic.

I don't see this changing anytime soon for the very reasons you mentioned.  I think they'll be Locked Team FFAs still such as 4 people on the medium random map, but I doubt they'll invest in the Diplomatic functions.

Okay, I've been jaded on Diplo from the get-go, but Deceiver said something that makes sense to me - the chance of recruiting new players to Sins will probably come from Diplo. not from anywhere else.  If they aren't simply chased away again by all the assholes on MP who want their own private party, it would be reason enough for me to buy and support the product.  Good argument, Deceiver.

I look online every day and sit there for 5 to 10 minutes waiting for games to open up and get frustrated then start a game with out any human players. This game is awsome and have been incoraging all my friend to buy it. The maps are better in diplomacy and you can lock all the diplomacy items. So every one should buy the expasion and play only online!

What times do you play, Donmegamen?  Player counts seem to be decent during the North American evening and presumably on weekends.  No matter, if you can get your buds to get Trinity, then you'll have a group of friends to play with.