At least someone is on the ball.........

Oh I think Yarlen is clearly stating that Starclad doesn't want anymore honest feedback for whatever reason, that anyone opposing his companies views on their project is a "troll".

For some reason it seems that he is starting to get emotional about things, as if everything in every creative endeavor is a success because a "longtime group of industry veterans" designed it.  When you get emotionally connected to a design it really will hamper your efforts to take effective constructive criticism that will help you to improve that design.  There is still plenty of constructive criticism on these forums, in between useless troll threads full of my little ponies.  The point is the devs don't want to hear whats wrong with their game because they are too emotionally invested.

Its a great game, its a great expansion, the numbers online are proof enough.  Yet, these numbers are predictably dwindling because the Single player experience favorite, the vasari, have an unplayable multiplayer faction because they are grossly OP. 

Denying this is just rampant, IP damaging denial.

Good developers don't treat their population as an "enemy group".

Good developers maintain a dialogue with their fans that fosters good communication, after all you don't need to keep many patch notes secret...

Good developers realize their players are partially responsible for their paychecks.

As for trolls on these forums,

Their activity is dwindling.  Other players providing useful feedback aren't going to be thrown in the bin and labelled as trolls just because some developer has personal issues that they need to overcome.

Well to be fair while Yarlen did get a bit overemotional, the criticism that was being thrown around wasn't exactly constructive.

Saying "X is still a problem" is one thing, but "The devs don't have a clue how their own game works" or "The devs are incompetent for letting problems persist this long" are entirely another.  And frankly in the last month there has been A LOT of the latter sort of comments.

Honestly I think those sort of comments are the sort that set Yarlen off- there were quite a few in the thread that got locked. 

To be fair, there are some things I wish the devs had handled a bit better- most notably I wish we had a bit more communication.  In Yarlen's big post he specifically mentioned that "just because we don't think your ideas are best for the game and implement them doesn't make us incompetent" or something to that degree; That's entirely reasonable as it's their game.

 BUT, it would be nice to hear the devs say that they don't like said ideas and explain why rather then just maintain a silence with the community while doing something else entirely.  Obviously they don't have time to respond to every half-brained idea that spews out of the forum, but there are occasional ideas that get repeated and argued for nearly unanimously among the community for months on end(example: starbase jumping as a module).   If the devs have decided these rare heavily-embraced ideas are no-good, I think it would ease tension a bit on the forums if the devs would inform us that they don't like the idea and why.

Of course, this does nothing to justify the amount judgement and denouncement on the part of the forum, nor make it any more productive.  But the point is there are two sides to this:

Players: stop being such immature whiners with an overinflated sense of self-entitlement when frustrated.

DEVS: be a bit more understanding that the aforementioned whiners are frustrated and take reasonable action to reduce said frustration-such as via a bit more information on the dev's standpoint on game balance and why commonly embraced ideas don't fit their vision for the game.

NOTICE:  My thread would not have been locked if the comments on it had been limited to criticism.  What was posted there towards the end(while I was asleep I will add) was nothing more than outright hate for stardock and ironclad.  It would have been locked much sooner if I had been awake to request it.  This thread has(for the most part) remained civil-ish, and is has acceptable levels of ACTUAL CRITICISM.

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As for the topic at hand, first of all, a lot of the "balance" requests the MP community are asking for are simply not reasonable.  Someone finds a way to exploit a part of the game that make a faction good to the point where they break the game, everyone else starts doing it, and the only responce anyone can come up with is "the game developers screwed up"

I guarantee that if they "fixed" every single thing the MP community claimed was OP, they would find something else to break, and the whole thing would start all over again until we had 6 factions with ships and researches that exactly mimic eachother, with the only difference being the in-game ship designs themselves.  (Jumping Starbases I will admit need tweaking, and I suggested moving that to a base to base upgrade on top of phase stabilizers.  (Well, I suggested it, or agreed to a suggestion....don't remember at this point.)

 -Twi

You're trolling, making the same kind of moronic post that keeps getting these threads locked.

I haven't seen a thread yet that was locked for balance criticisms.  Attacking the developers is not a balance criticism.

Edit: Directed at Rep #53.

I could not agree more. Everyone plays a little bit differently and the different types are there to help match with the different ways people play. And Twi hit it right on that if they fix everyones complaint the game would turn dull. So keep doing what you dong Stardock/Ironclad

-Hawk

Most of the serious OMGWTFLOLBBQ trolling is gone. Now it's more subtle stuff hanging around.

The issue isn't that "so and so's" idea didn't get implemented....the isssue is that nothing really got implemented for some of the most pervasive balance problems...many of the so called "trolls" here, including myself, are not here to stroke our ego's or get rises out of others...we genuinely want balance to be improved, and for those that have been here through all of Sins and even previous titles, it is extremely frustrating...

It's not about getting my idea into the game, or your idea into the game...it's about having at least something implemented to fix the issue...take for example SttC...some, like Zombie, wanted it to be affected by fleet upkeep...others wanted it to be a titan ability, or simply reduce the resources earned, or require multiple technologies, etc. etc...at the end of the day, no one really cares who's suggestion got into the game...what matters is that something was done and that that something adequately addressed the issue....

Explain to me how requests to nerf Starbase mobilization are "unreasonable"...we aren't looking to take it out of the game, we are looking to keep it powerful without being overpowered...how is that in any way unreasonable???

This is just absolutely wrong...diplomacy v1.34 was actually fairly good, with the Vasari vs. Advent matchup being the only serious balance problem...there were some "variability" problems (techs, caps, and what not that were useless) but near perfect balance was most certainly within reach...a few tweaks to the damage tables and buffs to Advent PM blocking, and the game would have been pretty much fine...your are so biased against those who enjoy MP, it boggles my mind...

Sareth is simply being honest (and doing it more kindly than I did)...most nearly everyone here agrees that Starclad has made a great game...many of the "trolls", including myself, have even lauded Starclad for all the things it has done right (it seems those comments of ours conveniently get ignored or forgotten)....balance is just one area Starclad is particularly weak in...that doesn't make Starclad bad nor does it make Sins a shitty game...what it does mean is that Starclad cannot perfect game balance on its own...it needs continual and substantial feedback from players who have the time to get good at this game and understand how everything actually plays out....

A while ago, around the time of the beta and official release, there were big clashes between fanboys and peeved members of the old guard...some felt Rebellion was perfect and the best thing since apple pie....others felt it was absolutely horrid, atrocious, a waste of money, etc....my stance was, is, and probably always will be that both of those viewpoints are misguided...the game is not awful (though there have been times when it was in an awful state), but y'all are kidding yourself if you don't think there are problems...Rebellion has a lot going for it and seems to be shaping up fairly well, but if there's room for improvement why wouldn't you try to make it better?????

People have gone on here and said Starclad is a terrible company because they don't know how to make a good MP game...I try to tell those people as much as I can that Starclad is not terrible, they simply have a weakness in game balance...what we the forum members can do is provide constructive feedback, because the devs do not have the intuition and experience with this game that competitive MP players do...

Why do I continually reiterate that Starclad has this weakness?  To point out that the solution is not to expect the devs to change...that is out of our control...all we can do is continue to provide suggestions and feedback, and hope the devs make the right choices...

You're quoting me out of context.  The focus of my post as a whole was not that people are pissed about their ideas not being implemented.  

Also let's look at the sentence you partially quoted:

In Yarlen's big post he specifically mentioned that "just because we don't think your ideas are best for the game and implement them doesn't make us incompetent" or something to that degree; That's entirely reasonable as it's their game.

I was merely bringing up Yarlen's complaints and commenting on them.  in fact my overall message was precisely that: that although it is the devs right to take or refuse whatever ideas they choose, people are getting somewhat frustrated.  you'll notice the section you quoted springboards into the next topic: things the devs can do to reduce that frustration.

It isn't about "breaking" the game. It's about learning the game more deeply and really seeing what is actually effective and what is not. I'll repeat. Players are not breaking the game. They are discovering what it contains - what can be done with it. Breaking the game would mean hacking. If it's in the game the devs designed, it has nothing to do with any "breaking". It's identical to any game or sport. You see what average people can do and then you see what the pros can do. You see what a chess grand master can do with his pieces and then what a high school chess club player can do. It then comes down to, for what level of play do you want to balance the game?

ahh k; misinterpreted that a bit 

Last I checked it seemed that he didn't like the attitude in which the suggestions were made. Or the insults that you so subtly make. Nothing is wrong with criticism. And the devs don't have a problem with that. Just make them without the insults.

This is just wrongheaded, the game most certainly can be balanced without taking out all the diversity...to consider a trivial example, Advent have more shield techs and extra shield mitigation while TEC and Vasari have more armor techs....there is absolutely no reason why this difference needs to be removed in order to keep balance....so long as the increased shields Advent get is comparable to the increased resiliency the TEC and Vasari get from more armor, you have both balance and variability...

I play both SP and MP...I have worked on mods designed for SP and MP...I have been part of community efforts to make a balance mod...not only is balancing the game entirely doable without killing diversity, but balancing the game for MP is not always to the detriment of SP...in most cases, it will benefit both...I'm a diehard Advent fan, but I don't play AL in SP because they aren't fun...they don't have any cool toys to use, and thus they are boring....buffing the AL not only would make them more competitive, but also more fun...I also hate the Ankylon because it is boring...it doesn't really do anything that is useful, and thus I'd rather have 3 extra marzas with missile barrage....buffing the Ankylon to make be competitive also would make it (and the TL as a whole) more fun to play in SP...

SP and MP "balance" and not inherently contradictory, and in fact most times are conducive to eachother...