Different view on ICO

I think you mean Sins of a Dark Age, not New Age and I don't think the code involved for the servers of the two games are necessarily compatible as they have different publishers. It would be nice to see a more stable ICO for SoaSE and it is definitely disappointing that a game that has been released for this long still can't manage to have a stable MP server that doesn't drop people every 2nd or 3rd game - which, no doubt, drives players away from the MP component and makes them regret purchasing. There is no equivalent I know of in RTS MP games for this kind of lack of stability of the MP server.

Ironclads new game is going to be a F2P MOBA game like LOL, comparisons would be zero.

I stand corrected It is SINS of a Dark Age Indeed 

As difficult as it may be to accept, we might have to face the fact that the game just doesn't have much staying power for 99% or 99.5% of the people who purchase it.  It may not be an ICO issue.  It's possible that the game is great, but that there aren't enough gamers out there with the interest or mental acuity needed to like it and/or that the game itself really just isn't that compelling compared to other offerings.

I think part of the problem is very different from the technical problems of ICO.The crashes, lag etc are not enough for new players to discourage them from playing I think.. maybe if there were crashes in every 2nd game or such.

My view is:

In many games we had to face complete total absolute noobs totally ruining team balance, who haven't even played on singleplayer, or just played 2 matches before coming online, and they got surprised from the not warm welcome of them (((we tried to be as polite as we could, but their attitude wanst the best, and one time even ruining an 5v5 game for 45 minutes by not responding and it turned out that *ss was there, i saw his constructor moving and etc but he only gave up 45 minutes after his team lost and we begged him all time to give up but no answer...))), MAN how we could handle noobs that cant even colonize the asteroid next to them and be patient while it was totally clear we lost the game because he couldnt even decide who is enemy and they dont even warn us this is their first week of this game and they dont even know how to play (i had a teammate like this, who thought of my Marza that its of the enemy and warned us, i laughed for an hour so hard ). Many of those 700+ players were like this, have no sense for this game or how you say it in English, they didnt feel the game mechanics yet, and they didn't like the difference between a total noob (like they were) and between even a moderate player who could so easily defeat them because they had no experience in this game at all. It's mostly their fault I say, I would NEVER go online in a game I just recently bought and I had never played with it before, and i couldn't master at least some parts and strategies. When I came online I admitted it was my first matches so my allies could prepare for it, but I wasnt as bad like only fortifying my homeworld and then move on fortifying next world and so on, leaving no chance for him to stay alive even against hard AI...

Or did they switch to LAN play instead? I don't know. It would be good to have many more people playing online and not those stupid password or friend only games I will never be able to join.. But its not that much of a request from the new players to be able to play normally and not like my grandmother, they should expect players online know some things and their knowledge level is far from it if they don't learn before competitive matches.

These are my opinions, maybe not the kindest but I think there can be truth in it, please correct me if not.

This is a multiplayer game and its boring playing single player. However , as we can see, ICO is horrible in terms of latency or interface or features.

We are in 2013 now....and a multiplayer online game still do not have a proper match up feature...thats disappointing.

If ICO is similar to battlenet...i'm very sure we have lots more players.

ICO could definitively use a little patching from time to time...the minidumps are pain in the ass...

If so many of those 700+ were noobs yes occasionally they got lost and they walked into skilled game and got kicked from it or if they managed to play it they got creamed but there were plenty of noobs only games hosted during that time.

I do not believe chasm between skilled and noobs is reason why crowds did not stay.  

It's so strange that ALL of them got lost in some weeks.. i wonder what is the true explanation of it..

They needed a matchup feature for them to play against similarly skilled players. A noob going against a pro is never fun for the noob or the pro.....at least in my opinion.

And a noob do not need to play with pros to learn. Guess what? I watched like couple of replays , played a few single player games before I came online to play. I have only bought this game like 5weeks. This game isn't hard to learn to play decently if you do it the right way.

JustAnotherName

there isn't even anything to measure player skill, even win loss ratio means almost nothing, and played games number is not so reliable as good number in both can be achieved by playing against AI or just friends. First something should be done to measure player skills but this would be too complicated I think..

Ranking systems are easy.  Basically everyone starts at some base rating and then gain/lose points based on the respective ratings of their opponents.  Playing AI would recieve no points, and I think you would have to factor in your allies ratings into the equation so noobs dont get silly rating boosts because they are teamed with Auqia, as an example. 

Ranking systems sound all well and good, but are an absolute bitch to deal with in practice....it isn't hard at all to completely break them or throw in a hiccup....

If you want examples I'll give them but for now I'll just say I'm vehemently against any attempts to have "rankings" in sins...large team games that suffer from trolling or player drops simply cannot be used to evaluate player skill...we have a small enough community where honestly the player base knows people's skills better than any ranking system could...and considering how much shit How has gotten for his list, that's saying a lot....

There is also the issue that only a minority of people actually ever attempts to play online. Many people are quite happy with SP only.

Is it? I would claim that a large majority of people who bought it are more SP focused - like in most games. They may not frequent this forums as often as the MP people do, but they probably are the silent majority.

As for ICQ being horrible.... I strongly disagree!

The people who bitch about ICQ have NEVER seen a truelly bad online system.... Seriously you have no idea what kind of shit other companies - with 10 times the budget - delivered in the past.

And while ICQ certainly could use a few fancy features, lets not forget what the first and foremost duty of any online service is.

To connect players successfully to others. Without problems and  illogical connectivity issues that drive everyone nuts because you can never be sure if a game will work out.

There are games that have terrible connectivity issues.... so if players A B C D E F G want to play they hav to join A D C F G E in the hope it might work today Or maybe today the game demands that they connect A D C E G F today... expect random issues like this to plague you. So have fun for half an hour trying to get everyone connected. 

Compared to such things..... ICO is holy.I dont remember having any trouble joining any game I want to ever.

ICQ may not be fancy and spectacular but

it gets the job done! Connecting you to other players without issues.

That doesnt mean it has no room for improvement, but to claim it is horrible is ridicolous and uncalled for. 

If ICQ would be like battlenet I do not think there would be any reasonable larger ammount of players online. The large majority of people who dont play online choose to do so because of lack of interest.

And if you are not interested in online MP, not the best online system of the world, is going to change that.

No match up feature is going to help you if there are not enough players online. If there are 3 noobs and 3 pros online you can match make all day.... you wont get a - balanced 3v3, if you understand my point.

Yes, when there is high activity on ICQ, a few more features would be nice. But they are not imperative, because you will survive searching a fitting game for 2 minutes.

Minidumps seem to be a game problem with certain system configurations. They are not necessarly related to multiplayer.

As for Lag:

ICQ uses P2P matchmaking.

That means, the server (=ICO) does very little once the game is started. So any lag you may have in MP comes from

• other players having a slow connection
• on or more player CPUs being stressed to the limit due to the scale of the game.

Both of which Ironclad cant really do much about, as the first one is beyond their control and the second one does require a full engine rewrite from scratch. (Multi core support, 64 bit support)

Now, I am certain that if you send Frogboy 30 million € in cash, they could do the necessary engine rewrite.... so you could enjoy your lag in 64 Bit because the other guy is downloading porn in the background!

Most probably loss of interest. They might try a few MP games and then - aside from being steamrolled - find out that the pace of the game does not fit their way of playing.

The games played tab is a rough indicator.

I could imagine that an display of that number in the lobby without having to click the player would be an easy to implement feature that would help the MP crowd, because balancing teams gets a little bit easier and faster.

We, as the MP crowd should be very grateful to the developers for supporting their game in such a awesome manner. Support like shown here is highly unusual nowadays, especially for the minority of players that focus on MP.

Not sure how much you've played online but one could argue that it fails in this regard semi-regularly. Also, minor nitpick but it's ICO, not ICQ.

I've played many other MP RTS games that rely on P2P but they do not result in the same amount of crashes/MDs.

Looking at my steam friends list, most of my steam friends who own this game have less than 60 hours, and all of them were predominantly SP...

Yes, numerically more people play SP than MP....but on a time basis, it's the MP people who are more likely to keep coming back and playing this game again and again...

Crashes and minidumps are a game problem. They have probably nothing to do with the multiplayer itself.

I regularly play online.... and I had maybe 3 minidumps since Beta 1. I realize other people have far more problems, but I have to wonder if for some of them third party issues may be the cause. I am running an old Core2Duo on Win XP..... so I think it is a safe bet that Minidumps are not caused by lack of processing power.

Agreed.

But from the developers point of view, sales are the important factor. As a developer you rather want to have a SP guy that maybe played 40 hours in a year and will happily buy the successor instead of an MP guy that spent 400 hours but wont buy the successor because he considers the online lobby still inferior... ect.

Have you heard of the game starcraft 2? Check it before you say ranking system is impossible or too complicated. Starcraft 2 is so successful for a good reason.

Quoting ARESIV, reply 15

 




Quoting DirtySanchezz,
reply 5

quoting postIs it because game is bad??? I do not think so.

As difficult as it may be to accept, we might have to face the fact that the game just doesn't have much staying power for 99% or 99.5% of the people who purchase it.  It may not be an ICO issue.  It's possible that the game is great, but that there aren't enough gamers out there with the interest or mental acuity needed to like it and/or that the game itself really just isn't that compelling compared to other offerings.


 

There is also the issue that only a minority of people actually ever attempts to play online. Many people are quite happy with SP only.

 




Quoting JustAnotherName,
reply 7
This is a multiplayer game and its boring playing single player. However , as we can see, ICO is horrible in terms of latency or interface or features.

We are in 2013 now....and a multiplayer online game still do not have a proper match up feature...thats disappointing.

If ICO is similar to battlenet...i'm very sure we have lots more players.


 

Is it? I would claim that a large majority of people who bought it are more SP focused - like in most games. They may not frequent this forums as often as the MP people do, but they probably are the silent majority.

 

As for ICQ being horrible.... I strongly disagree!

 

The people who bitch about ICQ have NEVER seen a truelly bad online system.... Seriously you have no idea what kind of shit other companies - with 10 times the budget - delivered in the past.

 

 

And while ICQ certainly could use a few fancy features, lets not forget what the first and foremost duty of any online service is.

 

To connect players successfully to others. Without problems and  illogical connectivity issues that drive everyone nuts because you can never be sure if a game will work out.





There are games that have terrible connectivity issues.... so if players A B C D E F G want to play they hav to join A D C F G E in the hope it might work today Or maybe today the game demands that they connect A D C E G F today... expect random issues like this to plague you. So have fun for half an hour trying to get everyone connected. 

 

Compared to such things..... ICO is holy.I dont remember having any trouble joining any game I want to ever.

 

ICQ may not be fancy and spectacular but

 

it gets the job done! Connecting you to other players without issues.


 

That doesnt mean it has no room for improvement, but to claim it is horrible is ridicolous and uncalled for. 

 

 

If ICQ would be like battlenet I do not think there would be any reasonable larger ammount of players online. The large majority of people who dont play online choose to do so because of lack of interest.

 

And if you are not interested in online MP, not the best online system of the world, is going to change that.

 

No match up feature is going to help you if there are not enough players online. If there are 3 noobs and 3 pros online you can match make all day.... you wont get a - balanced 3v3, if you understand my point.

 

Yes, when there is high activity on ICQ, a few more features would be nice. But they are not imperative, because you will survive searching a fitting game for 2 minutes.

 




Quoting ZliMojsije,
reply 8
ICO could definitively use a little patching from time to time...the minidumps are pain in the ass...


 

Minidumps seem to be a game problem with certain system configurations. They are not necessarly related to multiplayer.

 

As for Lag:

 

ICQ uses P2P matchmaking.

 

That means, the server (=ICO) does very little once the game is started. So any lag you may have in MP comes from

 


other players having a slow connection
on or more player CPUs being stressed to the limit due to the scale of the game.
 

Both of which Ironclad cant really do much about, as the first one is beyond their control and the second one does require a full engine rewrite from scratch. (Multi core support, 64 bit support)

 

Now, I am certain that if you send Frogboy 30 million € in cash, they could do the necessary engine rewrite.... so you could enjoy your lag in 64 Bit because the other guy is downloading porn in the background! [e digicons][/e]

 

 




Quoting Turchany,
reply 10

Quoting Greg30007, reply 9If so many of those 700+ were noobs yes occasionally they got lost and they walked into skilled game and got kicked from it or if they managed to play it they got creamed but there were plenty of noobs only games hosted during that time.

I do not believe chasm between skilled and noobs is reason why crowds did not stay.  

 

It's so strange that ALL of them got lost in some weeks.. i wonder what is the true explanation of it..


 

Most probably loss of interest. They might try a few MP games and then - aside from being steamrolled - find out that the pace of the game does not fit their way of playing.

 

 

 




Quoting Turchany,
reply 12
JustAnotherName

there isn't even anything to measure player skill, even win loss ratio means almost nothing, and played games number is not so reliable as good number in both can be achieved by playing against AI or just friends. First something should be done to measure player skills but this would be too complicated I think..


 

The games played tab is a rough indicator.

 

I could imagine that an display of that number in the lobby without having to click the player would be an easy to implement feature that would help the MP crowd, because balancing teams gets a little bit easier and faster.

 

 

 

We, as the MP crowd should be very grateful to the developers for supporting their game in such a awesome manner. Support like shown here is highly unusual nowadays, especially for the minority of players that focus on MP.

TLDR but after some lines , I sense a huge stardock fanboy. GJ Mr fanboy.

Of course a ranking system is possible but it wouldn't be very accurate or useful in Sins. An elo system like SC2 (and others) uses is most accurate for 1v1 - then it is a good measure of skill. With 5v5 being the main MP mode in Sins and factors like planet layout/feed further diluting the connection between w/l (or elo) and skill, it just wouldn't be worth implementing. It might be better than nothing but there are so few players really that everyone already knows rough skill level without it. Maybe for a Sins2...

WOW really 

I think It is more likely that you will get 2nd sale from a person that spend a good amount of time on something than someone who played it a day or 2 and never looked at it again. 

No, there is definitely something about Multiplayer that causes it to crash more often.

I shall defer to my earlier statement...

StarCraft 2 has significantly shorter games and generally smaller games (lots of 1v1s and 2v2s)...

Regardless of the quality of its servers, those shorter and smaller games naturally lend to better stability (or apparent stability), meaning that player drops (so for sins MDs and DCs) are not a factor in a games outcome...shorter games also decrease the chance of someone quitting because "it's gone on too long" or "I'm tired of kbroke trolling"...

Smaller games on balanced maps also means that the outcome of the game is very much tied to each individual's performance...in a large team game with a random (and sometimes unfair) map, it is harder to determine a player's skill based solely off of which team won...

Shorter games also drives up the total number of games played....it should be obvious how that helps give more accuracy to any sort of statistical analysis...

StarCraft has a seemingly good ranking system because it is a relatively easy game to do ranking for....sins games last longer, are bigger, have player drops, and utilize random maps....all of these factors make Sins a far harder game to make a good ranking system for....

Starcraft 2 had the insignificant advantages of having a brand name worth millions and a huge and wealthy developer that could afford  to sink a few million € into development.

Considering that Bl$$ard removed LAN play and the - expectable result - that several larger pro tuniers lagged like hell and a few similar nasty things towards the players their success is somewhat undeserved and if SC 2 will really one day reach the level of greatness of SC 1.... we will see.

In any case, I dont know any other game but starcraft that sold good because of its Multiplayer. And even for SC 1, that long after it outsold all SP expectations by far.

Bottom line.... just because Starcraft can live with MP buyers... dont expect that other games can.

It is a steam game.... no refund, no rights and no selling. Period.

Company of Heroes

Too hasty = comprehension fail.