well said freddiel...

A good point, and one that other RTSs (which DO have ranking systems) do not ahve to contend with to be sure.  however, it seems to me that there could be an option of "quit and save game", adn then all the players in the game click "accept", and then it does not apepar on any of their records.  where as if you simply leave, then it counts as a loss.

Okay this is a very good point.

This is in my opinion how the Sins community should operate.

It is OKAY to quit and protect your score. Reason...the scores are rather pointless , a win could be against a skilled player or could be against easy AI , kinda makes score a bad reflection on skill.

It is NOT OKAY to quit without first discussing it with a) Teammates and Opponents.

Heres a story. I quit a mp game the other day... . Did my opponents get pissed off? no they didnt. The reason being that I said "gg" , well played guys , commented on their well executed gameplay and asked if we should "call it a day" with this game since its dragging , and nobody wants to spend the next 2 hours watching planets get bombarded. I decide to quit , and my opponents decide to quit. They dont really care about the stupid victory screen. You can just host a game vs Nobody and get insta-victory anyway. What they do care about is that having defeated me , ive acknowledged it , and its this sort of human interaction that makes it all worthwhile going online.

Now this cant be said for my partner in the same game that I loss. He goes in with a big fleet and tells me hes got this awesome plan. I see that his plan gets easily countered. And *poof* , without a single word he disappears. This makes my opponents pissed off as one of them has to now play the AI for the rest of the match. Why go online to play AI?

Now if my partner thought about discussing it , rather then quitting... maybe I could have helped him , maybe he could convince me that since hes about to die and that would leave me 2v1 , that its a lost cause . Maybe then we can explain this to the opponents. Maybe the opponents will think "okay , so we have won , lets keep the game going for another 20 mins" . This I can LIVE with.

I got a different suggestion: remove ranking completely.

It leads to nothing but trouble. People being kicked for being beginners, Newbiecrushing for stats, Quiting to circumvent bad stats and of course the the abuse of every possible exploit and hacking to get good stats.

Seriously... to hell with it. Its the bane of each multiplayer community.

My suggestion is instead makling the game less predictable and employ mechanics wich keep the players on a compeditive level (as some already have suggested).

Competidion is a part of a game but FUN is also important. If a game is FUN you have less people giving up. If you are at a disadvantage and have no hope of recovering there is no fun. Thats why people quit. That and their precious records.

There could be a set of more or less random events wich could in turn be used to constantly push the game back to a compeditive balance,

It would ease recovering and staying ahead difficult. Like in MOO2 where Antarans struck the most powerful player to a higher probabiliy than a weaker player.

So the beginners get their support, the pro's a dampening and a fun and compeditive enviroment for various skill levels is created wich ANYBODY can enjoy. And they would less likely give up because they know they are in for something positive most likely soon, plus it would not ruin their records if there were no records.

THAT is the way to go. Not a confirmation dialogue - wich would surely fix the stat problem, but if you ask me stats ARE the problem.

I for one hate playing with people who just play to win. I prefer having a good time and just plain old fun, a concept most have forgotten. In one of the more memerable games I play we all spent more time talking then actually killing eachother LOL and when their was killing it was still fun and everyone had a wondefdul time, even the losing side came back for another round.

In another game my team got our asses kicked but it was still fun, everyone played fairly and used decent tactics (no gay early game rushes ect ect) The atmosphere was very friendly and thats what I like in a game.

People IMO have forgotten that their are people who want to play just for having fun and enjoy good sportsmanship, not just rush rush and kill your opponent in the shortest amount of time. And you know perhaps even make new friends at the time. Game stats mean nothing to me. So if someone quites because they are losing or just plain needs to do something else I dont think they should be penilized for that.

Game evolution?  Sadly, I think gamers are getting consolized.  PC literacy doesn't seem particularly high amongst online Sins players.  For example, few online Sins players will go out of their way to figure out how to download and add custom maps and mods to their game, which is actually very easy. 

Back in the old days of 2001 when I played UT99 over a dialup connection, I often had to wait five--even ten--minutes for custom maps to auto-download and I used to figure out what new maps my favorite servers were playing and downloaded and installed them when I was just surfing the Net.  Today, many Sins players don't even know where their Sins Application Data folder is located.  Like I said--consolized--today's computer gamer expects everything to be made extra extra simple for him.  I'm surprised that some people even know to put CDs into their computer so that they can install the game.

Whilst I am sypathetic to what you are both saying (being computer litterate, I get the $#its with someone who asks me "dumb" questions all the time), the difference between now and 10 years ago is:

"More computer users, most of which are less technical" - e.g. Grandparents etc...

They just want it to work. Unfortunately they don't understand that computers do what you tell them to do, not what you want them to do.

The other issue is that the Internet is more dangerous then it was back then. People are less trusting of files they get from unknown servers due to the risk of a virus etc... The Paranoia Factor is high!!!

That's the sad truth of the world we live in today - we aren't all friends on a BBS...

Sportmanship + making friends and all that jazz should be a separate entity to whatever gamestyle or ability you have at the game. Rush or no rush , sportmanship should never be dependant on anything that is done within the confines of the rules of the game . Sportmanship should be dependant on your ability to NOT quit permaturely (whole point of this thread), and to be humble in victory and defeat.

Instead of a ranking system, why not a way to speed up a game? Like what Demigod has.  Sins of a Solar Empire

multiplayer is just so lengthy that it makes you want to speed up your death.  Maybe like strategic points that make the

player owning them really powerful.  It could be an option for every multiplayer game.  Newb players would lose quickly

and they would know why, how, etc.  Important questions that need answers in order to improve.

from what i've read on the first page, most of you seem to think that a great big scoreboard that shows everyones stats will help reduce the number of people quitting a game, but have you thought about the fact that most quitters are players lacking the sense of competition to continue till the bitter end ?

And since they lack a sense of competition, why should they bother about a few numbers and stats placed beside their account name ?

I dont think thats the solution,  i dont even know if there is a way to solve this problem.