Multiplayer needs accountability

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/?forumid=406&aid=300864

wanna read something that shocked me



reply 53 at
https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/post.aspx?postid=300958&p=3

Basically instead of giving the option of non ranked and ranked games, so each community can play the type of game they like (competitive or not) it seems that they dont plan to make an official competitive community at all and this might be one of the biggest downfall of sins in the multiplayer area.

Super post sport but before you go cream your spacesuit in masturbatory righteous indignation you might want to watch the replay again and discover that it was your teammate that was hosting.

Ironically, I agree with your conclusion, I would like my win tallied.

anyway heres there first official reply about profile game history:
https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/?forumid=402&aid=175167

Yeah I've seen that already... They clearly don't get it. So because theres no organization on ironclad online people don't try hard to win "at all costs?" Good thing they are typing that cause I don't know how you could say it with a straight face...

And Bronnieman don't be cross just because we stopped what you and your little buddy were doing. But at least we agree on recording wins/losses

Building 5 frigates to harass isn't a good strategy... as with any rush in sins. These posts clear alot of things up.

Basically, competitive players pay the same money as casual gamers/single player gamers whatever we might call non-competitive players, who don't play for win (or win at all costs) but just to have fun (or play to simply win).

Competitive players, stretching the game to its limits, demand alot more attention in terms of balancing, fixes, stability, and general support. So commercially, for a small company with few resources, it can seem logical to aim for the easier audience.

I still believe the great part of the playerbase is at least somewhat competitive, playing to win and having fun trying to win, not having fun trying to just play. So this strategy will backfire in the long term.

This also will not get the community rid of competitive players alone, who have bought the game and intend to play it unless they give them their money back. What will happen is like it was described in that post, the entire community will be unhappy, shrinking and in a few months, nobody will be playing/buying this game anymore. Which is sad for a potentially great game.

yeah I have to agree that what Frogboy says in that quote is very dubious.

I understand where he is coming from, I think. It can be very frustrating for new players if the "competitive" ones take over the culture.

On the other hand there are many (if not most) players who obviously aren't interested in noncompetitive play. Good players won't want you on their team if you don't have a good win-loss record, and it's a pain to achieve that status when people just leave.

I don't see why you can't accommodate both. Include a ladder system, allow games to be made "ranked" or "unranked" and give players a choice. If a player doesn't want to have a win-loss record at all, provide that option. We have noncompetitive aspects like free for all matches and mod support, why can't competitive support be added non-exclusively?

I don't play WoW but I know it has some pvp and some non-pvp servers. I can't imagine that game being so popular if there was no pvp or arena battle whatsoever. I think the same principle applies for any online gaming community: if you want to protect the roleplayers, the 'casual' players, and the newbies, create a place for them. But provide a place for the competitive players too! Heck, probably the best way to ensure that people can play the game online leisurely is to separate them from the wolves. Creating two areas does this!

It seems to be so good that they're making a very dubious sounding change to the way buildings are constructed to get around it in 1.03.

I agree 500, 000, 000, 000, 000%. They seem only wanting to cater to the casual crowd, when it is incredibly easy to give us ranked matches and keep our scores. That will discourage quiting for people who actually wanna finish the game. I hope this is read by someone important for 1.4.

How long did it take you to come up with such a crazy line of words from the english lanquage?

I have no idea, but it was a good line.

Great post. They've sold enough copies to do this. If they just sit and do nothing they'll have a situation where the more competetive people leave for lack of anything substantial to gauge opponents skill/records and thereby have good competetive matches, and the casuals will leave because they'll complain that it's the competetive people "ruining" games.

Frogboy also seemed to be implying that he only uses certain units for competetive play but would use more of the units for non-competetive? Sounds more like a balance issue. I hate to bring up DoW but through the various balance patches *most* units gained relavence. Anywho that's an aside and I don't want to derail the thread with that. Needless to say we need the migrating thing fixed, better record tracking/ladder, non-ladder matches and a reset in the stats.

The 1.03 preview thread mentions that ICO is getting more of an overhaul in 1.04. Hopefully this means there will be ranked games. At the very least it is simple enough to make a quit=loss in ranked game and non-ranked games do not add a win, loss, or game total to your stats.

If wins & losses exist they should mean something. With the current system you get competitive and casual players in the same game and it sucks for both parties. They are two different mindsets that have very different opinions. Neither is wrong but they just don't mix.

Just kill the constructors instead next patch; those things take a good while to rebuild.

That aside: It was weird how you could blow up the idea/plans to build something that was not physically there. /shrug

Obviously I am just going from their description, but I really don't like the sound of it. TEC and Advent's speed construction research items and Vasari's Repair Cloud can construct things so quickly that if you make structures invulnerable until they're complete you will end up with a situation where you have to chase tiny tiny (regenerating!) constructor icons around a well while someone turtles the planet in front of a huge fleet. It strikes me that people will figure out a way to be just as annoying with this as they are with blowing up pre-paid structures now, only it would discourage attacking as much as the current version discourages leaving a system unguarded.

We will see what they do, hopefully they manage to strike a good balance.

This may be a stupid question/solution, but: Why not add a third column that tracks the drops a player makes (e.g. win/loss/drop). When leaving an active game the dropping player can choose to take a drop or a loss. Wouldn't this be of more use to the multiplayer community?

I've asked for the same thing (and so have a lot of people). Apparently the 'user initiated quit' stats ARE being tracked right now, they're just not displayed in the interface until the next patch.

Context matters. What I was writing about was forcing people to play "ranked" or measured games. We don't want that.

That doesn't preclude us putting in a tournament mode.  We're adding tournaments to GalCiv II: Twilight of the Arnor so obviously we don't have a problem with competitive matching. I just have a problem with forced competitive matching.

Thanks for responding. No one has said though that all games should be ranked. Theres plenty of games that I'll play with friends which I DON'T want to be ranked. IE practice, just for fun ect. We just want both options to be in the game. It's very frustrating rolling the dice when you get in game as to who you're actually going to get.

Just as has been mentioned, you're going to drive both sets of people away if it continues how it is. Nothing drives a competetive player more bonkers than to have someone who wants that special all cap ship fleet, or wants to play empire builder in space, while the rest of the team is working together. And nothing drives the other side of the equation away more than getting yelled at repeatedly for trying to play sim space empire...

I agree with Tackard and personally, I am a very competitive gamer, so I apologize if I come off a bit biased.

I feel that approaching the game from this angle is a bit backwards. I am going to go out on a limb here and say that the majority of the people playing online are there to do so competitively. If they wanted to just screw around, they would be playing the AI. And to assume that just because someone enjoys winning (who doesn't) or is competitive that they will resort to less than noble tactics or some sort of griefing is quite the stereotype.

It's one thing to separate the types of play (unranked/ranked; which other, more popular games do just fine - read WC3) and its another to cater to a niche community who just want to play "for fun".

In galciv II, you can create multiple characters for the metaverse. Perhaps Ironclad should make it where players can make multiple characters, set one for competitive ranked gaming, and another character for just for fun. Perhaps include a metaverse type scoring system for the "just for fun" system, so single players can also have a part in it.

You can already do this I think, your ICO online account is separated from your 'player' account. Check the menu at the bottom of the screen when you login.

What I liked about SC is that I played unranked games for a month before I dipped my toe into a ranked game. I wanted to play for fun and practice at first, then get competative. Odd thing was, not once during a ranked SC game did my oppoents name call, or quit. Heck, a couple even ask if they wanted me to have them surrender, or play to the death (now THAT's good sportmanship). Non-ranked, where I just want to play for fun/practice is where the name calling and quitting was ranpant.

4 MP games of sins under my belt, 3 of which people just "quit". No GG, or "I'm leaving", nothing. And what really ticks me is that they did not quit because they were losing, I think they just quit because they did not get a quick win (being runshed by 3 Kols for example, which my mixed fleet easily dispatched).

Now I don't want to force someone to play a game their sure to lose for an hour more, but, they should just surrender, cause it's just salt in the wound (let alone SO borring) to have to mop up after someone just quits.

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I agree. I think down the line it's goign to need to be added. It's all likely just a matter of time.

I think the most important thing atm is to actually make wins mean a real win, not the other two methods of getting easy wins (mentioned a few times across the forum).