Chris, regardless of your concerns about balance (and I also think balance needs work), you're totally exaggerating the state of online play. I've never seen it drop below 50-60 people and peaks are around 180-200 still. There's lots of old players and new players I see regularly. Maybe you're just going on at weird hours?

He said 2 people in the lobby, which is actually not unusual at all during weekdays...

How many old players do you actually see?  Cause I don't think there's that many...

Here's an off-the-top-of-my-head list of old guard (not necesarily skilled, just big players from before Rebellion) that to my knowledge still play:

1. Auqia
2. DieHard (Greg)
3. How
4. CarpetBomb (Sareth)
5. KoK/Sire (goes by various online names)
6. kbroke
7. Eros (can't remember who he really is from before Rebellion, but I know he's old guard)
8. Zombie (well....he doesn't go by Zombie online)
9. BOMBSHELL
10. jbaum
11. HuyMac
12. VeteranCorp
13. Made.For.War (Dirty)
14. Faernal
15. Daknife
16. Efejao
17. Higgy
18. Zoomers
19. Slackah

Here's some old guard that I have seen play Rebellion, but haven't seen or heard about them recently:

1. Ooloo (Qu4r)
2. Radioactive
3. Kenn (JohnJames?)
4. Pbhead
5. Dwish

There are a decent amount of skilled or above average players I haven't yet mentioned because I'm not aware of them playing before Rebellion (I really only played ICO in late diplomacy):

1. UR Solar / Nayru
2. White Chapel / Jezeus
3. DumDeeDum
4. Dino
5. Panther
6. Ekko_Tek
7. DistinctShadow
8. DisgruntledWorker
9. Fallen One (haven't seen him in a while)
10. Warneverchanges (goes by various names)
11. Red or Soviet something (there's like 2 or 3 of them I think, don't remember their names)
12. JameX
13. PlayerSlayer
14. KingKaing
15. CandidoBrazil (or something like that)
16. Doci

No doubt I've forgoten several people, this is a list I just threw together in a couple of minutes...but, if I sat here for another hour, I doubt I'd recall more than a handful of people....so, I'm going to over exagerate and say there are ~50 pro and skilled players (with some above average players who play a lot thrown in there)...if someone has a more comprehensive list of active pro or skilled players, by all means enlighten me....but as far as I know, the amount is very small...

Even at the peaks of 200+, many of the hosted games are "friends only" or "password" games with lots of AIs...that player count includes a large amount of people (maybe half?) just playing comp stomps with friends...as far as true MP games go, there really aren't that many...I think maybe once I've seen 2 mostly full 5v5s or 4v4s in the lobby at the same time...

Ah, sorry in the lobby - well yes, but that's not really an indicator of much in itself - there's not much point in being in the lobby anyway other than afking until a game comes up you want to join. To add to your list, I've seen the following off the top of my head play semi-regularly:

Shadow86
King-Kaing
Higgy
Zoomers
Jezeus
Nayru
Player Slayer

So around 50 active skilled players is probably about right. Then there's usually a dozen or so semi-regular new players with very few games played trying to learn. And of course the dozens doing friend only or comp stomps on ICO that don't count for our discussion purposes. So, yeah, it's bottom of the barrel in terms of healthy RTS MP comunity numbers. It's enough to get a game still with good competition but that's about it. Is this any different than before though (200 online, 50 skilled)?

I don't consider Zoomers skilled (maybe above average, I'd lump him with kbroke and KoK), but I do believe he is from before Rebellion...

Higgy is definitely someone I forgot to metion...there's another very skilled player I played with recently and I can't remember their name...

King-Kaing and Player Slayer are definitely names I forgot and are worth mentioning, though I don't know if they played before Rebellion or not....

Nayru and UR Solar are the same person (can't remember the steam name)...Jezeus and Whitechapel are also the same person...

I'll update the list I made above with those 4 additions....

This game is sins of a titan if you play as VL.  VL titan lvl 6 kills whole fleets in an instant and can get away unscathed.  One particular player uses this to completely ruin MP games and he will stay in forever once his titan is lvl 6 just munching away at fleets. 

So yes, this game is in fact sins of a titan because one titan is so good it is too good.  Oh, and sniping it early is almost impossible because overseers will be researched early and 10 of them ensure this thing won't die for the first 2 hours.  that is plenty of time to get it to lvl 6. 

Its so broken.

You can counter it by being VL with a lvl 6 titan of your own.

Its like some idiot designer made a god unit.

Anyone know when 1.04 is meant to come out?... Since 1.04 is the collectors edition you would think the devs would have everything sorted in it. Although I had the same theory before 1.0 came out!!!

What do you mean by that?

Anyway, Yarlen has said that a beta for the update will come this week.

@Sel - we forgot our very own forumite Candido...as well as Doci and Slackah (just remembered), probably many more. Perhaps needs its own topic elsewhere although I'm not sure to what end. Predictions on 1.04 at this point? Beta is a promising sign. I'm hoping it will re-vivify things. Still, isn't the peak players on ICO still held by Rebellion?

Damn! Added....

Also I have no idea who Shadow86 is, never seen that person....

Lol - did a ninja edit on you as well...

So who is going to eulogize Rebellion?

I do recall something official stating that Rebellion had largest ICO count ever...however, I find that number meaningless, because the only thing that actually matters is the number of players who still play...

Now now... when its level 6 you forget frigates.... go to capitals only.... I agree it is still nasty but so is about everyone Titan on that level. First kill the overseers, then the Titan.

To be fair... the might of Titans also means that there are now less stalemates.

hmm aresIV, I don't think you play many players who know how to do some fast tabbing with the hotkeys to quickly keep a titan alive with their overseers.  Also, the Vasari player doing this naturally is going to have a crapton of lasuraks to ram a whole lot of bombers up your tailpipes.  So if you go to build capital ships, you will just get them sniped.  The vasari fleet has always excelled at building super strong anti-capital capabilities.  Lag plays a big factor with abilities like telekinetic push, flak burst, jam weapons, and magnetize hull.  So the big mass of bombers has the advantage in that it lags out the fight, and in doing so weakens the defenders ability to protect their capitals.  

This means that capital position is critical so you HAVE to have overlapping capital defenses on auto cast to have a chance.  in the time it takes for your capitals to move into position you would lose quite a few with a strong bomber spam.  Then all your opponent needs to do is jump to the next gravity well (usually on the attack) to increase your risk that your caps will be spread thin and also to deplete their antimatter.  Considering the vasari movement advantages in attack and defense, your fleets will have on average little to no antimatter while the vasari fleet is enjoying almost full antimatter.  

When I say a high level VL titan is unkillable, I mean it is.  All other lvl 10 titans have movement weaknesses.  It can retreat across the map at a moments notice using phase node spawn, has enough firepower and durability to kill phase jump inhibitors relatively quickly under constant fire from a defending starbase, and if it gets in a tight spot carefully crafted by opponents it always has the microjump to escape.  A skilled player will scout, so there really isn't any surprise that the VL titan isn't ready for.  That is why its a god unit that makes the other god units look puny in comparison.  Even the VR titan is pathetic compared to the VL titan, because you can bomb the slow VR titans smaller HP pool down to nothing quite fast with a decent bomber cloud.

Also, the VR titan doesn't kill an entire fleet in one hit.

In the hands of a skilled player it can single handedly win a 5v1(constantly avoid massed enemy fleets, bomb planets out quickly with lvl 6 space eggs), and encourages vasari loyalist players to stay in the fight long after their entire team has left.  This makes multiplayer games a "who has the most time" time sink that steals the rightful victory from players.

There is one player in particular who does this constantly.

I'm pretty sure there's more than one...MDs alone usually net you a win...

@ seleucia

that is true, yet i've only had one minidump, and that was on a multistar with large fleets and a highly developed solar system.

So i'm sure we just broke the games limits

Lucky bastard

ULL NEVER KNOW WHO I AM I WILL ALWAYS CHANGE MY NAME AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA AAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAAHHA

There's a simple fix to this:

Give each faction a new frigate that is designed specifically for attacking titans and nothing else.

Make them cost half as much as a Titan.

Make them Kamikazi units that reduce titan shields to zero and HP by half upon impact.

Example: The Tec's could be essentially a Novalith Warhead atop a pair of phase drive engines.

The advents could be a small ship full of clerics who use their spiritual brain powers to make the Titan crew go mad and kill one another. W/e works.

Vasari's could be some kind of nanite swarm that enters the gravity well and eats away at the Titan's hull.

Make them slow, lumbering things so that either the Titan wielding player has to make a stupid mistake to hit it, or the titan killer wielding player has to use good strategy to get his titan killer into a position to ambush the titan. If you really want to make it challenging, give all titan hunters an ability that makes them invisible upon entering a gravity well for a short duration, and invisible to enemy phase lane radar.

Problem solved. Balance restored. Game fixed.

Disclaimer: imho

Also, if someone wants to work this into a mod, that would be awesome. I really think it would restore a lot of strategy to the game.

Edit: It's also a matter of realism. There has never been a war that had a technology that could not be countered. Nukes will someday be countered and made obsolete.  Don't ask me how, but they will.

30 people online.  At 2AM CST.

-Twi

Yesterday during the day there were ~60 or so...enough for about 2 and a half 5s games (most of people are doing comp stomps)...not very encouraging, but weekdays aren't the best for ICO....

Derp

That explains 0 Karma since 2007.  Nobody knows who he is.

-Twi /)