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.
This is so true...
In fact, I am not sure how many of you on this boards are aware of the fact how cool this community is and how fantastic support we are having from publishers and devs...
I mean for Hezuz sake we have Stardocks CEO as well as main IC guys here chatting with us on daily bases!
Just wow, keep on smiling and enjoy this wonderful game
Online or off-line...
...Then you can thank the new expansion for allowing people to turtle with their defense upgrades and star bases
[quote who="-=XX=-Nephilim" reply="1" id="1955919"]In fact, I am not sure how many of you on this boards are aware of the fact how cool this community is and how fantastic support we are having from publishers and devs...I mean for Hezuz sake we have Stardocks CEO as well as main IC guys here chatting with us on daily bases!Just wow, keep on smiling and enjoy this wonderful game Online or off-line...[/quote]
i wish lionhead were like this. has anyone played Fable 2? that game is crippleled by game breaking glitches and bugs, and more are being turned up. and aside for a couple of posts by staff, there is almost no contact or feedback from them. we got maybe one admission that there is a problem, but we were brushed off with "it seems to be a minority problem"
kyogre12, i do the same. i turtle to the extreme, and then when i'm confident in my position, i lash out with many, MANY top-level units, same in SupCom. i will sit behind 3 complete layers of each tier defensive structure (wall, 3 layers of T1 air, ground/sea, wall, 3 layers of T2, and the same with t3, and shields/cloaks everywhere, the whole lot backed up by too much artillary. and then i throw nukes and experimentals around like there's no tomorrow.
unfortunatly, everyone else is more concerned with winning quickly, or are able to turtle faster (very rarely, cos no one seems to turtle on line, ever)
Too many hacks online for a good experience.
off line play is far more fun in the end.
Granted, if i had a few friends who played and we were to "gang" up on others, then it would be fun for the 1st 2 or 3 games, then boring after that as smashing player after player gets to be no fun real quick.
This game is just not cutting it as an on-line game. The numbers of players online clearly show that.
Oh yeah, I can't wait for Entrenchment. Then all of the defences that I build will actually be useful!
And Archaon: You should see my defences. I almost always play as the UEF, and in FA they have those awesome T3 point defence. 2 walls, then a ton of T2 PD, then a ton of T3 PD, with enough T2 flack and T3 SAMs to stop two of those Serephim bombers from getting over my base. Plus, I have a ton of air superiotity fighters circling my base. And you can never have too much artillery. Oh yeah, and I forgot about the sheilds. Everything is covered by at least 2 sheilds, usually three, and every sheild has at least one of those little engineering drones next to it. Plus I alway like to have at leat 5 fully stocked nuke defences, just in case. I love my defences!
i always semed to have problems in FA. i played it at a mates house, and i always got my ass kicked by the AI, even with a 20min rush block on, i could never get my shit together enough to be above T2 when the count ran out. i always tech up slowly. remember Age of Empires 2? honest to god, it would lake me 20 minutes at least to leave the Dark ages, because i was always to busy getting some sort of defence, doing all researches, and getting lots and lots of basic fighters together. i always had this thing were i wouldn't go up a level, until i as finished researching everyhting in the current one.
same problem with supcom, except i'm more concerned with getting a stabal energy economy going, then upgrading my ACU for building
This is my point - there was one bug which a few people found out about and it was fixed within days as 1.11
Yet people keep rubishing online, which stops people trying it as they assume that people are cheating when they lose. That is not the reason. The reason is because online is far more brutal as humans can get better then Unfair AI does....
It would cut it as an online game if you didn't keep putting up posts without anything to back it up. Explain to us (and the devs) an online hack THAT STILL EXISTS IN 1.11!!!
In FA I always just skip T2 and go straight to T3. By the time the 20min no rush us over, I'll have at least the line of defences directly facing the enemy done, and will be about halfway done with everything else. I just build about 7 t1 engineers, then upgrade my land factory to t2 and t3 and start building a ton of t3 engineers. With the air fac I ugrade it to t3, then I build a bunch of t1 air fighters, then some t2 gunships, and finally a bunch of t3 fighters. By the time the 20mins are up, I have about 15 t1 fighters, 10 gunships, and 5 t3 fighters in the air. Upgrading your commander is your friend. Then you can pump out a t3 power gen every minute. Upgrading the mass extractors to t3 also really helps, but you want to make sure that you don't do it when you're low on mass. Mass storage also really helps.
Hacks? This game is pretty "hack" free, and when there are exploits, they seem to get fixed relatively quickly.
I do hope that you'll reconsider online multiplayer. Have you thought about coming online and just playing humans v. AI games (comp stomps)? There is a market and some demand amongst players for humans v. AI games.
I have a hard time believing that in every game you played or the majority of games you played online that it was as simple as you and your friends merely ganging up on another player. Perhaps you weren't up against decent competition. (When two people gang up on one player, one of them is liable to be wide open in the back.)
I tell you what - you bring your friends and I will get Centurion and a few of my online "friends" together and your can try ganging up on us and see if it is fun??? Maybe with a challenge you will appreciate MP????
I played my first online game today a 3v3 and we lost.
But it will say I tried my damned hardest
Pace is way faster online but I think I did rather well for winging it. And I learned a few tricks too.
Do I have to create another account in order to be able to login to ICO?
You need to register - same account as forums I think, and then upload your CD key (if you didn't dl). Then click on the ICO button (I'm a bit hazy as I did this months ago, pre-Impulse )
my version is of someone elses disk. a mate recommended SINS to me, and lent me his disk. as it doesn't require the disk to run, i kept going, so, as i understand it, i can't get 1.1.
however, i'm getting a gaming rig soon, and SINS will be among the first games i buy to go with it, and it's power (i'm running off a laptop that can't support it very well, but it manages... just)
I haven't played online, because historically I'm a rotten RTS player. I love RTS' though; Starcraft, Total Annhilation, Homeworld 2, Dawn of War... I love 'em. I just don't have the time to invest in becoming adequately competitive online. I also like being able to pause a long game, or save it and come back to it whenever I want.
And as much as I love(and I feel I'm competitively skilled at) online team-based FPS', I'm usually the guy who's more interested in the single-player campaign of any game.
I'll probably dive into Sins MP some day, but for now I enjoy playing by my lonesome.
...Also, I've been playing Left 4 Dead until my knuckles bleed.
I agree with Snazzed and Prancey; Most of the games I see available are ones that are on mostly fast settings. I prefer to play a more relaxed game where I have to seriously think about how to spend my money and suffer the consequences of it.
Fortunately for me, I play with 3 other people that feel the same way twice a week, so we can have our long games and count on each other to be there to continue the saved games.
Anyone interested in gaming with us should send me a PM on this forum.
I don't worry about experienced players kicking me around.
However, I do mind when players don't take the time to check the win/loss records of who they are playing with and check what comes out of their fingers when they type.
On example is a guy came into my FFA game I had created and was patiently waiting for more players and leeched all my players by saying a 3v3 needed 2 more players. I made the mistake of following this guy too as I had been waiting 15-20 minutes already for 6 players.
Now mind you, this is my 3rd game of sins MP and I still haven't absorbed all the information on proper counters despite reading the forums.
So we start playing and I spend 10 minutes trying to direct my allies to, you know, start actually communicating. They refuse to come up with a plan initially while expanding for what units we were each going to build. Strike one.
Strike two, I came up against the game host's units and had to lock horns with the guy. I had built too many Gardas and he had spammed LRM's out the wazoo (we were both TEC). There was no way I could get enough splash damage to eliminate him, I expected him to change his tactics when my kol started to chew through his LRM's but he didn't. Meanwhile I didn't pay attention to how many gardas I was building because I was going the mantra 'Anything but cobalts' from what I'd read on these forums under strategy so far.
Strike 3, I was trying to do some friendly banter with the host and finally the host overran me. The player leech during the course of this three hour game started to feed me resources without asking me what I needed specifically (I was woefully short on crystal the entire game) and he had spent the entire game helping our 3rd ally while the other two teammates dropped from the game and let AI take over.
By the end of the game when I was trying to see if Finest Hour would let 30 gardas, 17 flaks and a kol take out 51 lrm's (I took down 11), I was bored around hour 3 and wasn't in the mood to keep retreating while the other two teammates built a fleet. I understood they had their hands full but they assumed I didn't do anything, while if anything I had put up an extremely good fight on the host till that point.
The player leech, when I didn't want to retreat my fleet:
Cursed me out and demanded I leave the game,
After not examining exactly what I was up against or advising me on how to change my unit makeup
Didn't know what countered illuminators when I asked (I remembered it was fighters after the other 2 had managed the illum spammer already) and claimed you had to just upgrade past him with kodiaks
and continued to feed me resources indiscriminately, when I only needed crystal.
Pro players don't make me afraid I'll lose, it's the intermediate players who think they're skilled and don't communicate at all that make me not want to play online, and the fact that I never see more than 20 players in the lobby when there's sub-30 games going on and sub-100 players online and a hosted game doesn't fill up as fast as it probably should.
I play online sometimes, but to be honest I almost get more enjoyment out of playing against computers. Online is all about spamming 1 or 2 units. It gets really boring jumping in a game only to find out the enemy has 40 lrms and countering such a specialized fleet really isn't all that effective.
When I play against computers I use all my ships including caps. I have well rounded fleets and enjoy the battles. Online I find it's the same old same old everytime. Spam this or spam that.
Scrimbul, just stick with it. This game has a learning curve and everyone had to take their lumps at the beginning. But if you try to learn from your mistakes you'll improve and become much more competitive over time. Eventually you'll be on winning teams and start to contribute to the victory. Also, it's possible to find humans v. AI games. As for the online player counts--they won't improve unless more people come and play it online; it's sort of a vicious circle, which is sad for such a great game.
Scrimbul - you make an interesting point and valid point. MP requires you to help each other.
I played a 3 v 4 and was locked in a battle with the other teams best player (based on stats) while my allies went for the other 3 players. The guy I was playing was BagsX. I admit he was beating me at one stage. But I got a feed from one of my allies which allowed me to get carriers. Plus the fact I got his cap (at the cost of most of my fleet), but kept mine (just - jumped it out with a few hundred HPs left). This allowed me to repair the cap, build some more ships inlcuding carriers and thereby get a tech edge on him. But I was only able to do this due to getting a feed.
BagsX thought I had outplayed him at the end when we were talking prior to him surrendering. I told him I was being fed by my ally for a lot of the time and he would have probably gotten me. He was a bit down on hearing this. At which point I made the following point (which my allies agreed was valid).
"Being a "pro" is not always being about a better player. It is often about working with your allies better...."
I admit that while I am reasonably good, I am not the best online and can list you 10 people easy that would own me 1v1. But I have a good record as I play as a team with my allies as much as possible - I share resources if I can, and I help them when I can. This is the difference.
So thanks to Whip for the resources - he payed me back for a previous game where I saved him... That's us working together...
Just tried online play for the first time last night. The experienced players were nothing but supportive of myself and another new guy in our game. There were some jokes ("Our noob is better than yours, ha, ha"), but it was all in good fun
So yeah, I'm pretty glad I tried it
Glad to here it stratobot - I hoep you were the better newb
Really, as long as your take it in good fun, and don't disrespect the players who have been online longer, they will help you out and teach you a few things....
I give myself a C+ rating; only played about a 10 games Online so far I think. I NEVER just quit, I always GG and surrender. In games I won, sadly, only once did someone do the same, they usually just quit; or one guy just left his comp (I think he went to watch a movie) and I had to mop up for almost an hour.
But I think a really good player can win (or put up a great fight) even WITH a noob. A good general wins regaurdless of the equipment and/or allies he has to work with. Imagine general Paton screaching and flailing "Whaaa, my ally only has 1 star on his coller; Whaaa, my tanks are not all platinum X mega tanks!".
Finally winning against 2xhard AI, playing with my friend who just got Sins (not to mention it's his first RTS ever) was not a challenge to my skills, it was a challenge to my patience and maturaty. We were slaghtered the first couple games, and I had to fight my urge to yell or lose my temper, not the enemy AI. I also realized something when it was over: Most new people just do NOT have the time to read the chat screen while they are frantically trying to keep up. And they also really don't know what in the heck most ths stuff you are typing means. My friend had no idea what PD, or Kol, or SC, and most the other terms we take as a second language. A discussion after the game made it apparant that he did not see most my pings or chat warnings, and did not understand half of what he did have time to read. If your online and people are "yelling" at you, I can't imagine how discouraging it is if you have to choose between playing the game or reading the "latin" instructions being spammed at you.
I also find it funny how people get angry at good players, or pros that just run them over; like winning is rude??? If they are not cheating, and they win, they are not bad or evil people, and I don't expect them to "not win" to spare my feelings. I got creamed over and over at Surpreme Commander, but as long as they didn't type rude things while playing (and some actually typed helpfull things) then it's toatally my problem if I get upset at losing.
Anyway, IMO, playing with noobs and new people is the best challenge to YOUR skills, and the best way to increase the player base. So, if anyone is interested in a Normal speed game (no pirates) vs 2 people for fun (small or medium random map) then look for Star Paladin and Star Wolf. . . And may the best noob win.
I'm 36 with a wife and 4 kids. Years ago I could sit for long stretches and play uninterrupted for hours. Now, I have to play games that I can wrap up in 90 minutes or less, or have the ability to pause/save and restart later. I know how long it takes to play an SP game of Sins. I think I would have to drop out of MP before the game was finished.
first thing you should try is hae a fun game, i made alot of friends this way, even enterd myself a clan.... tough practicly dead now, i learned alot from everyone i now consider a friend
MOST fun games are played with friends, it's pretty rare to get the same satisfactional feeling playing with unknowns...., even if you do lose... losing = learning (if u lose the good way "with friends")
now, for serious, im getting thrown out sometimes using my "original" account becuase it has over 200 games played, fact is, i'm just a medicore player, just cuase i play alot doesnt mean it'll unbalance the game
in order to play more then 75% of the time i have to switch name to actually get playing a game and in the end, it doesnt always result in me winning..... so to be honest, some "pro" players are actually scared of playing newer players, cuase they get thrown out, and are left behind in the lobby... ( trust me i've got left behind more then once, for that particular reason)
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