To be honest, SOASE is about as bad as DoW, which is quite acceptable for me.

You guys must realize that more than 90% of people buying computer games in general DO NOT play multiplayer, yet (according to Stardock) making a reliable multiplayer system may takes 1/3 of total budget to create a new game.

This leads a conclusion that, from dev/publisher's view, investing on multiplayer feature is the least effective way to gather people.

Guys be realistic.... this game does not aim for multiplayer. I mean, a heavy cruiser takes AGES to kill a colony frigate. The time needed is about same as needed time for a lone marine to kill a not-attacking battlecruiser in Starcraft.

Look carefully on game elements and you get the idea.

I am actually surprised to see this game actually have online playing feature. I don't except much from it.

Ah.... I cannot remember now. Search around Stardock forums and there must be mention about developing multiplayer.

.....nevermind I found it.

By Brad :

....Ask any game developer whether they be at Ensemble, Paradox, Firaxis, or Big Huge Games, most people play strategy games by themselves on a single computer.  What % that is depends on the game. But on a TBS game, I would wager that greater than 95% of players never play a single game on-line even if the option is available -- that includes Civilization IV.

But developing multiplayer is incredibly time-consuming and expensive. In our last game, The Political Machine, a full third of the budget was for multiplayer. The game was ideally suited for multiplayer, published by Ubi Soft it would sell a ton of copies.  The game came out and sure enough, only a tiny percent of people played the game multiplayer.  That tiny percent didn't justify the 33% budget dedicated to them....

Notice even ideally suited for multiplayer game only brought a tiny percent of people for online, yet they had to put some big chunk of money on it.

Again.

But developing multiplayer is incredibly time-consuming and expensive.

This applies to most of games we are talking about. Oh, since SOASE is 4X game, gciv2 and SOASE have a lot of similarity, including incredibly complex gameplay and slowness.

In the end, online folks, we are minority here.

By the way I too play online with all Fast, still slow as hell.

Play RA3, Starcraft or other games other than gciv2, and play SOASE again. You will feel as if you are playing in slow motion.

That's no reason for it to be half-baked. If you're going to have a multiplayer feature then make it good and make it work. If it's too much trouble for too few people then don't make it at all then.

hmmm...great to see months of free work is recognized.

I've always wondered why the hardcore online players don't just form an IRC channel for Sins.  TCP/IP play seems far more reliable than ICO, and the same was true for Dawn of War and their terrible Gamespy hosted online.  Most good Dawn of War players use IRC and the DCPro mod to play these days; Since there isn't a ladder for Sins anyhow, why bother fighting ICO to play?  Be happy Ironclad is nice enough to provide the TCP/IP and LAN alternatives, as this seems to be disappearing as companies think they can reduce piracy by forcing people to use their 'battle.net' equivalents.

The overwhelming majority of gamers today, including those who do online multiplayer, have no idea what IRC is.  They might know about AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger, and XFire, etc., but most have never heard of IRC even though IRC is far superior in terms of its ability to handle group chat.  Sadly, IRC is now "old school".

The problem I think IC and stardock have faced with this game is that it was supposed to be another progression on the Galactic Civilizations theme.  It was not meant to be a AAA title when first concepted.  When it came to the crunch and the game was elevated to a higher level of expectation,  there just wasn't enough manpower to do everything needed to make the game feel 'complete'. 

Hence you have the lack of a campaign or hosted online play.  They did a good job with what they had,  but it is a shame that after sins huge success they have not been able to hire and build their developer teams to a level where they can snowball this success into something even greater. I consider bug fixes and patches run of the mill these days.  It should be a budgeted and forgone assumption that a large post release cost will be needed to support a game for up to 3 - 5 years depending on just how popular it is.

I've personally always just wanted a homeworld that was accessible and had a great multiplayer experience but sadly no one has delivered on this. I was really hoping Sins would be the first.

I don't think it would have been overkill for IC to create a battle.net style experience,  they need to get something like that in place if they want to compete with anything that comes out in the next decade.  The sacrifice may have been too much of a gamble previous to sins release,  but now with goodness knows how many copies sold,  they really should be stepping up to the plate and building a SOLID multiplayer platform. 

I would put the importance of a reliable multiplayer experience far above any single player aspects of this game.  Some previous comments were made about how bad DoW is,  but it really isn't that bad compared to ICO (although never let it be said I do not hate the shit out of gamespy).  I have been able to complete many DoW matches without a problem.  The initial match making is perhaps what people are complaining about in that example, but after that point, disconnects were fairly infrequent and if they did occur, were commonly intentional (ie people disconnecting to get a draw).  In contrast,  I have maybe finished 50% of my sins games that went over an hour in length.  Thats not exactly the greatest success rate.  A lot of those problems were due to the host leaving the game.  There should be absolutely no problem handling the hand off function in a game made in this day and age. 

I know its very easy to critisize a company when you don't know the people its made up of,  but if we look at all of the success stories out there,  its also hard to believe that they should be having this many issues one year later.  I'm starting to be reminded of NAMCO and their brutal handling of the Mark of Chaos games.  Although I have to give IC credit,  at least with version 1.0 you could finish a game. 

Please dont get me wrong,  stardock and ironclad are the model I would use to build up a games company.  I love their 'eyes open' approach to piracy and copy protection,  but they must grow - and grow quickly - if they want to make a lasting mark on this industry.

Yes but this is usually because the infrastructure created to play these games in a multiplayer environment is TERRIBLE.  Unless you use a direct connection 90% of the RTS games out there are brutal experiences.  The only one that was bearable in my experience has been starcraft.  And look at that game.  Still between 20 and 50 THOUSAND players online at any one time ten years after release!  I mean,  sure that is a complete exception,  and not all that applicable to Sins, but seriously,  doesn't that show anyone anything about usability and long term investment in architecture?  Sure you can argue that the majority of that audience are Koreans,  but what if ICO was a masterpeice?  Who is to say ten years from now, the Polish or Iranian or Swedish multiplayer community hadn't adopted this game as their own?  You have to look for starving markets in this industry, and the companies with real vision will find them.

We have a group of players that we use Direct connect Via IP address, so we bypass ICO alltogether. Thats one way to solve most of the issues with ICO until they get them fix. Its also a great way to screen good players!

-Aaron