I've come across this sentiment in a couple threads so I thought it might be time for a separate discussion. Does a fear of experienced players and/or pro players keep you from coming online?
My advice is to accept that you have to take your lumps and pay your dues in order to become experienced and also to look over the player records before a game is about to start and politely request that the teams be balanced and mention that you're new to the online game. In my experience if you say that you're new to the online game players will try to balance out the teams.
Also, you guys can play the game online as humans v. computer until you feel a little more comfortable playing online. You might even try to set up some human v. human games with other people who are willing to play human v. computer. You could also title games, "New Players Only".
Another thing to remember in a team game is that you personally don't need to be winning in order for your team to be winning and you don't have to be elite to help your team. Even if you lose, try to enjoy being as annoying and as big of a pain in the arse as you can--delaying the fall of your empire and distracting your team's opponents helps your team. So, even if you get beaten when you're first starting out--try to enjoy the challenge of being a pain in the butt--enjoy the game as a team game and enjoy doing what you can to help your team.
To reply straightly to the question: No, the fear of pro players doesn't keep me out of sins online.
I purchased this game for the main purpose of playing a 4rtx with other people and expected, like in any other multiplayer games, that some people indeed got very pro at it. I did got owned at my first game by obviously pro players (a 6 player FFA), but watched the replay and the stastistics to begin building a playstyle for myself. I will keep playing with the AI for a bit, which seems a good training opportunity. Then, I will come back online, as a stronger, faster and beter player.
To anyone who fear to show up online by fear of more experienced player, you should transform that into a will to improve yourself. It wont only make you a better Sins player, but also expand the currently limited playerbase!
I must admit that I have talked some smack from time to time. Im not sure if I am considered the huge smacktalker or one of my clanmates. Its usually when someone has failed miserably to 2v1 me or someone else talked a little crap first. I mostly do it as my own entertainment and if I have offended someone then I am sorry although i don't remember playing you particularly by name Mr_blunted. Don't take me too seriously about it if I do it to you. I really wouldn't take anyone seriously about it to be honest. Its a game and the worst that can happen is they berate your skills in a computer game as they have no way of commenting on you otherwise even if they make idiotic remarks anyways. Roll your eyes and go on or talk some smack of your own. Maybe it will spur you on to be better to make them swallow their words. People certainly shouldn't let it stop them from playing online. There is always the /ignore command to not have to hear it after all.
[_]-Greyfox
I don't play online simply because of the fact that I don't enjoy RTSes online.
In an FPS or other very small-scale game, I can die, respawn, and go back to doing what I do. Best of all, it doesn't take half an hour for me to die when I start losing a fight, all of this tends to happen in an instant.
Now, move onto an RTS or similarly-styled game. When you start to lose, it can take a long time by comparison. In Dawn of War II, you can lose in well over 12 minutes and know you're losing the whole time. I don't even want to know how frustrating Sins would be in that regard; losing over hours or even half-hours would piss me off to no end. Victory would be a drop in the emotional bucket compared to a loss. I think I get frustrated with TF2 enough, the last thing I need is a game that I enjoy filling me with angry thoughts.
On top of that, Sins has always felt like a more story-driven game than anything, despite its obvious lack of a scripted campaign. The fact that I can rename capital ships and such is one thing, the whole epic factor it has makes it another. With the whole unepic, petty, and annoying nature multiplayer games of any sort tend to have, it just feels like playing online outside of the company of my friends would shit all over that pristine state I see Sins in.
With that in mind, Sins is the last game I see myself playing multiplayer in. I'll leap at the chance to get a game in with my friends, though.
Carnston, you don't have to play the game out to the last planet and the last ship. In fact, players on the winning team don't really want you to do that anyway. Once a Sins game has been decided--once the outcome of the game is known and especially if your teammates agree--you can just say "gg" and quit. There's no reason to feel obligated to keep playing once the game is basically over.
Just one more point (edit is screwed up for some reason). Note that in a team game, it's possible for you, personally, to be losing while your team is still in the game or even winning. In that case, you shouldn't quit but should try to do everything you can to help your team, whether that means migrating to some other place in the map or trying to delay your own downfall. In a team game somtimes it's not always about whether or not you personally get beaten, but how you were beaten.
Allot of point here pretty much hit allot on the head for my reasons, for me it's the crunch micro managment. In a single player game I can build up and take my time (sort of) and not worry out of all the players out there I am going to be aimed instantly upon by a zerging ship army. Also I am into HUGE maps which takes days to play , not small scrims so in a way allot of people would get board. So like many here, the only true people I play online are my friends and that's it because they play like I do.
If this game went into (what was talked to about sometime ago) a persistant huge galaxy online I would be on that for sure, because knowing these devs they would make game play possible so when your not there, at least you can cue and or do other things that will take your place when your gone etc,, allot of things they could do to balance such issues. Then there would be a reason to play online.
I play one rts publicly online and it's not a full born rts thou, it's a card/rts game called saga. adress is something like playsaga.com , but anyways it's a fun game, nothing graphically fancy but the mechanics are fun. Another indi company with a great idea and I support them as well. If these guys did an online version "WOW!" would they get allot of players for sure.
My 2 cents.
Well I dont know if its a fear...but I agree on the hours loss because of it. I would like to play on-line but I dont have too many time also since Im from argentina the hour match is different.....but I will try it some day...
Sebasnadilo, note that most online multiplayer games only take about two hours to play. Also, if you're close to U.S. Eastern Standard time or Western time, you'll find plenty of people to play with online during North American (or rather, Western Hemisphere) prime time--in the evenings.
well, im from Australia, i think im about 13 or 15 hours ahead of US EST... that makes it VERY hard for me to play online (funny thing, i actually bought my retail version of Sins in a Los Angeles game shop when i was there last year)
i have to say, its not so much the fear of pro players, as it is the cheap, exploiting tactics (exploiting insofar as exploiting the nature of games. i.e. this ship WILL have X amount of damage vs that ship, so im going to forget everything else, spam that ship, and rush in for a quick, and boring, win), and also the over-competitiveness (exemplified by smack-talk and the like)
ive been playing the AI for a while and i notice that current AI, in all games not only Sins, simply scales difficulty by giving them a damage bonus, or faster resource gathering, or whatever. which means early game while im still setting up they are giving me a hard time, but once i get on top and on a roll its just as if i were playing against an easy opponent. for that reason, i like playing against humans especially when you have the ability to co-ordinate with an ally, rather than clicking the ping button and hope your AI buddy gets the hint, but the rushing tactics, the spamming certain units, playing to a plan regardless of what im doing, and, most of all, the whining or the insulting, belittling smack talk when losing or winning definitly makes me think twice before playing online with anyone other than people i consider friends, or at least, honest, intelligent... for lack of a better word *nice* players
Play Saturday/Sunday during the day - that is their Friday/Saturday night...
You keep speaking of this rush and stuff. I don't believe it. I play online and it is not a straight out spam fest. Sometimes it is, but things change it. e.g. someone is hitting you with LRM, but your ally rocks up with fighters, or you are losing LRM to fighters and your ally comes in with flak/fighters etc...
Many of the players I play with are NICE. Some trash talk some. Some are dicks. But most are nice, well mannered people. This maybe because it seems Sins has an older audience then other games (i.e. no teenages who play FPS etc...).
Here is a few off the top of my head I can think of: Flip, Scrum, Whip, Tyr, How, Cykur.
Now there are people like Siddy who will trash talk you some, but hey - its the internet and it can even be entertaining sometimes...
Note that some of that trash talking is really just friendly kidding amongst friends.
You got to take your cuts/licks before you are part of the "in" crowd
After following this thread for a while and slogging thru all 10 pages, I gotta put in my 2 cents:
Started playing online mp about 2 weeks ago. My team mates were exceptionally patient telling me what to do and WHY. I watched the replays, took note of my mistakes, and kept playing and applying what I learned. After a couple of days, I dont lose much anymore, partly because I dont quit unless everyone on my team quits. But I'm enjoying the games not because of who wins/loses, but because of the strategy and the unknown of each game map/team.
I play mostly pug (pick up games). Captains choose based on experience and records. I'm in Hawaii, so when I get on after work etc, it's pretty late for most, or early for others. Interestingly, the games I play are with about the same 20 or so players....people who are playing at the same time because of their schedules. Most are pretty decent. Some are outstandingly helpful and instructive. A few are rude and base.
I played over the last 2 weekends and found that most of the games during the day (my time) were a waste due to people quitting when they were "down to a couple of planets" instead of staying in the game and assisting the team; or people dropping a few minutes into the game for whatever reason, etc, etc. However, early in the am (here) and late in the pm (here) the games are EXCEPTIONAL.
So from my experience, WHEN you get on very much dictates how enjoyable your online experience will be. If you havent had that much fun trying mp, try a different time. Hopefully you'll catch a great group of players like I have and enjoy a good game!
(Sunday a.m. I was in a 5v5 that was EPIC, in it's scope and strategy! I got rushed right away (was trying a risky strategy), almost lost everything, but my team bailed me out and fed me till I was back on my feet, and I stayed in the game and played a major role in our eventual win! It was great. It was fun. It's what mp is about and brings to the table...
Hope to see you online.
RM
PUGs have definitely been the epitome of fun in Sins of a Solar Empire
They have definately helped to reduce the outcries over team stacking....
Thank you for the kind words, Readyman. We played against each other at some point over the weekend.
I love playing the PUG matches too. Incidentally...they were introduced to the Sins community by [DT]WHIPperSNAPper/DirtySanchez (that's-a me!). A PUG stands for "PickUp Game". I first learned about them in 2003 when I became a member of the Unreal Tournament (1999) capture-the-flag clan community. Of course, every online multiplayer game that isn't a formal clan match is a pickup game in the literal sense, more or less. So, the actual meaning of the term is "Organized pickup game" or "pickup game amongst clanners and serious players". They were called "pickup games" to distinguish them from formal 5v5 clan matches with the idea being to have games that felt like clan matches but with teams of mixed players and without any schedules or obligations as opposed to playing with disorganized teams on public servers.
The pugs I was familiar with were organized in IRC (Internet Relay Chat) channels which is where all of the UT99 clanners congregated and hung out. (A sizeable but dwindling community of UT99 CTF players is still on IRC, playing pug matches today.) A program called a pugbot would keep track of who had signed up to play and then help with the draft by announcing who's turn it is to pick and listing who has been picked so far, the current teams, and who's still available. (There's no reason why we couldn't do all of this on IRC other than that most people have no idea what it is nowadays since it's old school.) They also use Teamspeak2 voice comm and once the teams are picked, everyone is expected to join their team on a channel at a certain Teamspeak server (which will have a number of Red Team and Blue Team rooms). It would be nice if our community could begin doing that but I'm guessing that most Sins players don't have headsets (headphones with a microphone).
I'm glad that everyone is enjoying the PUG games. They really are a great addition to the Sins online multiplayer community. Playing pugs is also a great way to get know people who are in clans and to perhaps make a name for yourself and get invited to join one. Here's what they look like in IRC when they are being set up:
I, without a doubt, avoid online play (against "strangers") for just this reason. For me, this appears to be a symptom of most/all RTS-type games. There becomes an obvious "best strategy" that early players learn that can maximize their situations to the wonderment of any newbie player. As others have stated, there's not much fun when you've spent 10 minutes setting up your little empire and exploring only to find a fleet of 100 ships already bearing down on you.
For me, that's the issue... the single "best-strategy" that everyone learns to follow, thus defeating the varied options allowable in the game (and is only "fun" when everybody playing knows the same best-strategy startup). I see in the Entrenchment expansion there is some sort of a "quick start" option, which I read in a forum post something like "nearly all players do X in the first 10 minutes, so we just do that for you". That's all fine and well, but I think it also highlights a weakness in the game and raises a big red flag by having a single "best-strategy" from time zero. I personally think this should point to the need for a game balance tweak to ensure that this is NOT the only single time-zero strategy that people must follow in order to compete with the masses.
PUGs definitely help getting high quality games up, i.e. balanced teams and the minimum amount of anger due to stacking. The only thing that annoys me is that it takes ages for people to agree who is captain, who picks first, pick order (1-1-...-1 or 1-2-2...2-1) etc. Still, they help guaranteeing fair matches, so thumbs up
Edit: Ckotchey, the quick start only builds cap ship factory, extractors and max. population upgrade on the planet. So it's simply sparing you the useless stuff that <really> every player does, regardless of strategy, race or personal favorites. That's when the real fun starts: get econ or mil. labs? Try to expand real fast or rather head for your enemy right away? Getting carriers, LRMs or (yes, I'm talking about you, Raging Amish!!) scouts? Or maybe get some quick trade and wager that the enemy won't attack in the first minutes - that's still all up to you. It's not like there's the perfect strategy that everyone does and it's just a matter of who's clicking faster or memorized the hotkeys for each and every unit, ability and building...
the thing is, not building any resources extractors on your home planet is not good in the long run
my most pressing issue is time
Actually Ckotchey, if you're a victim of a hard rush, or whatever strategy, that's where the fun really starts. Not only in the game (cause you have to think fast and make the most of a bad situation--Kobiashi Maru anyone --, but especially after the game. Watch the replay and see what your opponent did. Not that you can copy the strategy (tho that can be fun), but to see how you can better defend against that. I havent been rushed in exactly the same way with the same strategy yet.
Now that replays are fixed, it really adds to the game. A cold beer and a few minutes watching the replay before the next game is great. I think you're missing out. You may lose a few games to some of those strategies, but you wont be losing for long when you see how to counter them.
on pick up games, yes, picking the captains is the longest portion of the process. The hard part is that the captains need to be fairly equal in skill level, or the match starts out a bit unbalanced (thus a newer player saying "I'll captain", along with JJ being the other captain = disaster).
What WAS Amish doing with all those scouts? I didnt rewatch that game, but saw it briefly while it was going on... heh!
Its not 'fear' of good players that keeps me from playing online. . . I could handle getting creamed in a fair fight.
Mostly its the fact that whenever you play online you have to put up with idiots and asshats. Why should I subject myself to that when I have a great time playing solo?
My buddy and I are talking about doing some online play together, but just the two of us, and co-op against the computer. No interest AT ALL in playing with anyone we don't know.
Hopefully the developers realize this is the way most people seem to like to play, and future expansions focus on solo/co-op play. I'll buy expansions like Entrenchment as long as they continue making them.
I think your concern about asshats is overblown. There are a couple jerkwads out there, but are you going to allow them to keep you from enjoying the game to the fullest?
What you say may have been true back in Sins v1.05 (spam out Illuminators), but that is definitely no longer the case today, especially with Entrenchment. There are all sorts of different ways you could build your fleet. That's what I love about this game--it's always a challenge to figure out what you need to do because what you need to do is often unclear. Also, if you start out in a pocket without an enemy flank, then the game really opens up to you. You could go military or eco or some of both.
This thread deserves a <Bump>.
Not so much the fear of being matched against a better player. If they beat me, then they are the better tactician and I have no problem admiting that. I still have yet to bet my grandfather at chess, each time I get a little better. Think of it as a goal to eventally be good enough to win, rather than a discouragement when you lose.
Now let me talk out of the other side of my mouth...
I avoid online play in any setting: X-Box Live (and related consol-nets), Sins, Age of Empires, even Microsoft Flight Simulator. Don't take offense, but I find online gaming to be very cliquey, and difficult for new players or otherwise outsiders to get started in (unless you already have friends in the community). X-Box live is the worst for this; Sins doesn't seem to be particulary bad, but the element is still there.
To statisfy my urge to play human opponents I either set up a LAN party with friends (or yes online), or I will challenge my wife (who also plays Sins*) to a battle over our home network (I tend to be a stronger player in Sins, but she keeps the edge in Age of Empires; go figure). But I never join/host a game with people I haven't met. As yes, I recognize that my methods, in a sense, contribute to the cliquey-ness of online play. No one is perfect.
And as far as human contact, I find the forums are more than enough of an outlet. This thread case-in-point.
It's been over two months since the last post, so it's time for a <bump>. In non-Sins news, I discovered and learned all about the "Boxxy" affair.
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