Hi everyone. I just bought that game (the retail box) for 50$ CAD (40$ USD) yesturday and I don't really know if I am glad or not. Let me explain myself.
First: That search function on this forum totally suck. It's totally useless so I have no idea if anyone already mentioned what I'm about to.
Second: I have been looking the forums for long time and I found that this game came out this summer so it's still a young game. When after installing the game and all the updates, I saw the introduction movie wich is really nice. Showing the 3 races with their background and their story. At this point, I was really excited to start playing that game. Unfortunatly, after watching that nice introduction video, an incredible sadness appeared into me; that game has no Story or Scenario at all!!!!
Let me explain. I compare SOSE to Starcraft cause almost everyone will know what I'm talking about. In Starcraft, in single player mode, you have missions related with the gameplay with all the races and you have a story that reunite those missions together. Can you imagine how cool it could be to have same kind of missions/story/scenario in SOSE? Like taking a really well guarded planet, or destroying a specific target, or going to a planet without beeing killed. There are so much possibility of missions you guys can incorporate to that game. Yes, I think it's a big lack that this game do not have any story or missions in single player mode.
Dunno if the dev team have ever thought about that but I think that it should be a primary feature of SOSE cause what I'm doing now? Starting a game that will land for more than 6 hours against computers on random maps? Anything else?
Don't miss understand me. I really like this game till now and I will surely continue to play it alot. I know that there is a lot of work behind this and i can't wait to see the Entrenchment expansion but I think you guys should think about that cause I am sure it could bring something fresh/new and really interesting to SOSE.
Very nice idea, i like it. Now just a little more map differences.
-Teal
Please forgive me CenturionJixra, i understand, or think i do understand what you mean. It is just that the 14 planet single star map, is very little different from the 105 planet 14 star map, yes it is bigger, and takes longer, but the strategies are not different from map to map. Yes i play against the tec in one and the vasari in another, or both on another, and yes, i take planets, or have them taken from me, but my strategies are pretty much the same from game to game. I understand, but i dont think it is the difference in making the game different to play. I dont want to be critical of your good idea to try to help those who evidently aren't enjoying it as much as you. I like the game, but feel... well... hmmm... I dont want to go on and on, im long winded and that is sometimes a bad thing. Anyway, with regards to the maps, it is a good suggestion, and perhaps i should give it another try. Or see if i can make the maps as different from one another as i can and how they play. But i wish there was some major differences in maps. Like fog, or rain, or mine fields (Entrenchment) or half rations for a small squad (smaller fleets for specific missions) Different terrain (differences in the grav-wells characteristics, slow movement, one and a half hull damage, beams disabled, projectiles explode prematurely, etc... these are just off the top of my head. But anything that would make you or me go back and play a new mission in Call of Duty, or DOW, would be nice, very very nice. Anyway, just my two cents and opinion, so its not a big deal. But thank you for the map suggestion, it is certainly worth a try.
I agree, sins needs a campaign! I bought this game when it was released, but after like 2 weeks i got bored and didn't touch it until now, but after a few days of playing i get bored again.
I don't even finish my games because it takes way too long, today i played over 4 hours against 3 hard AIs. And it's always the same, grab planets, boost economy, fortify them and build up a fleet. The first 2 hours or so the AIs usually have a fleet that's alot bigger than mine but they can't overwhelm my defenses. I slowly take over planets from one enemy and in the end i don't even know where to spend all the money...with about 100000 spare credits and 10000 spare metal/crystals. One of the AIs was dominating and the other two were almost dead. So i send my advent fleet to engage the last AI's fleet, it was tec. Although fleets were equal size, the AI was fleeing, so i chased him up to to his homeworld where he engaged me, but on the way it lost quite some ships, i had 2 >lvl6 raptures and captured some of its carriers. In the final battle i totally owned his fleet with me losing 3-4 frigates and him losing ~1800 supply of ships, so now i actually won, but i also didn't because i didn't want to waste another 30-60 minutes to clear all the planets.
Just playing the AI is not fun after a while, like in most RTS-games...but i don't want to spend hours in a multiplayer match where i can't do anything else. WC3 was always alot of fun in multiplayer and you could be 95% sure the match is over after 15-25 minutes.
Most RTS-games do however offer a campaign: SupCom, DoW, AoE, HW2 just to name a few
Some people say sins has no campaign because it is a 4X based game. Maybe it tries to be one. I'm a big fan of 4X games, especially Master of Orion 2, Galactic Civilizations 2 or even games like Star Trek: Birth of Federation. Why do these games don't need a campaign? Usually these games offer a big variety of distinct races, some are agressive, some economic, some diplomatic etc...it's easy to feel the difference in these games, the races differ in behaviour, in sins they don't, they just have different ships and technologies like in any other RTS-game. I find it kinda hard to feel unique in the sins universe, no matter what race i play. Are there people living on my planets? I don't hear them...no morale that drops when a battle is lost. Sins is all about war, in 4X games you don't need to win by war, you can win by influence, technology, diplomacy...which brings me to entrenchment that is all about defense.
Why has defense to be improved, why should players fortify their planets even more, turteling is already quite possible, at least against the AI, it just makes games even longer but the win conditions are still the same.
I don't know how many people who bought the game actually play sins online, but it surely won't be more than 5% which is probably already too much. As i hear is not much competition going in mp and matches perhaps take too long for the majority of players. The rest of the people is probably playing maps against the AI or they dont play anymore. If you want people to buy expansions, you should offer more than than mines and starbases...
so long...sins is a good game but if you don't play online, it has not much to offer
try 9 unfair AI's for a challenge
play small maps for speed( a small map can be won in less than 2hours)
and plz elaborate on how a campain would keep you playing longer? (why play it again is the point im trying to make)
well the game is aimed at multiplay mostly, and vanilla sins is not very turtle friendly in MP
Sorry but i don't see why this game is mostly aimed at multiplayer, especially compared to other rts. Where is the community? i can google for replays and all i find are replays that are like 6 months old...an active community is imo the most important thing for a mp game, aswell as some sort of competition...
A campaign usually keeps you playing because you want to experience the story, if it's a good story, and with multiple factions you could have different campaigns. Games could be totally different from the random skirmish stuff, scripted events and missions that keep you struggeling, but in the end sins is all about massing units...no choice between quality or quantity, but you have the cap ships that could play a much bigger role in a campaign. There could be done alot to make the campaign a much better sp experience...
And playing against 9 unfair AIs probably won't change things at all, same stuff as usual, build up the economy, fortify chokepoints, mass up a fleet and take them down one by one, either way it's a very slow path to the victory or you get totally destroyed
afaik the original plan was for a fast paced space rts aimed at multiplay, it just took a new path after release( i may well be wrong but im pretty sure this was the case)
I have never played a game where the campain has taken more than 5-6 days to complete and wth are you talking about no choice in units quality/ quantity??? wanna try a game where you only make light frigs and i can build whatever?
or you could rush them and win faster, to each his/her own. (rushing 9 unfair's is a bit much prolly but still)
my point is i can't see a campain giving SP a longer time span, as you said yourself, it's scripted encounters and they are not hard
but i could go for the idear with diff map types,
KotH - first player to hold X planet for a totalY time wins
etc etc etc
that would give some ( i admit)needed veriaty to the gameing xp, at an (i assume) fairly cheap price. I simply can'tsee an argument that convinses me that the mony spent on developing a campain would not be better spent elsewhere.
Well, the campaign would be vastly different.
Armadas would carry over, you'd have a battle map of the entire universe, and engage a specific area at a time probably.
As TEC you'd have to defend on two fronts against an invading fleet of massive proportions, having to switch core worlds from trade to WAR! Massive development, tactical and diplomatic options to play with.
Vasari would have to vacuum planets for resources, quickly rebuild fleet or use returning armada, and move on to escape some vast fleet of an unknown enemy before they reach them.
Advent would be massing against the TEC, and suddenly face an agressive vasari faction in their rear raping their planets for resources..
I can think of many interesting battles this way, but we really need expansions to deal with the diplomatic aspect of the game, and many other balancing and development issues have to be resolved before a campaign would make sense, but it'd be excellent.
Also, please give me 10000 max fleet supply.
Well, technically, now that custom maps can turn random positions off, you could make your own story if you wanted. I'd guess it's possible as the tutorials seemed to have some features that would support a story mode (Limiting what you can do, displaying text, really all you need for a perimitive story). Could (ok, will) take a bit of work, but you'd likely get your story mode quicker that way.
And I totally support more game types, plus some more game options (Rush rules, a seprate handicap feature, etc.).
I read all your post and I am feeling the same way at you. I agree that SOSE needs something really new to brake the routine in a game. Will entrenchment bring that with starbases and mines? I think that it will bring new stuff but will that be enought or it will work for few weeks?
On another note, I started a game yesturday. It was FFA 6 players (me and 5 hard AI) locked team (so it is really a FFA) with pirate active in 1 star system with like 32 planets. It took me 10 hours... I'm still noob at the game so ofc it could have been shorter but I'm not THAT noob. I have already beated hard AIs in smaller map, but 10 hours!!!
Anyway, all the AI (no exception) used the same way of building their empire. On side note, they almost had all the same army wich was 70% of strikecraft cruisers. Wow, 5 AI in one map and each time I wanted to attack someone or each time they were attacking me it was always with 30-40 strikecraft cruisers. How can we have fun if all the AI do the same thing? As an advent, I just realized that they doesnt have any effective way to beat mass strikecraft and their defense vessel (a frigate supposely good vs strikecraft) are just totally useless cause I had 40 of them and it still took like 10 mins to almost kill all the strikecraft of my enemy. It was really boring. The only good thing about that game was that I completed many achievement. (Even the space sheep one. BTW what the fuck is that achievement?)
You mean space ponies?
If you do, its top secret. Though there is a thread about it somewhere...
Yes space ponies sry. Well I did a research on a planet and when I wanted to see the information card of that planet, I saw space ponies on it. But I saw any ponies or any particular thing about that planet so it is kinda weird lol.
As far as map sizes go, one difference on a larger map is that you'll go further through the tech trees, so to that extent the strategy would change some as different ships and technologies become available.
You might also consider coming online for online multiplayer. The AI is pretty good as far as computer games go, but it is still AI and can only do so much. You'll find that playing against other human players presents a far greater challenge and that you'll need to revise your strategies and adapt, etc. It's very challenging even for experienced and skilled players (who play against other experienced and skilled players). There are also humans v. AI games which would allow you to chat with other players and make friends before having to go up against other human players.
Just so that you know, most online multiplayer games, at least locked team games and not free-for-alls (FFA), seem to go for about two hours, some more, some less depending on the size of the map, the number of players, and the balance of talent between the teams. Most games are actually decided in under an hour-and-a-half and some end earlier when the losing players quit or surrender once they see the writing on the wall.
Even though the player counts could be higher, it's still a blast because the online multiplayer game is very challenging when you're playing against good players. It can get really intense and rather suspenseful.
I recently brought the game and I'm absolutely happy about it. The Game is incredible, the Graphics look awsome and you don't really know how much time you played after finishing a match ("Why is it so dark outside?"^^).
The only thing so far which could be better is the Single-Player section of the game. Yes I read all of the posts above and I absolutely understand the position of the "No-Campaing-More-MP!" People, but I have to admit that the Intro watered my mouth and I was quite dissappointed when I found out that there is no real Story-Mode - SP.
Sins has the unique opportunity to create an immense Campain! How many years can the campaign cover? Over 10.000 years! The race's campaigns could be spread over centuries!
So please, DEVS, give us a Campaign!!! (ya, Cylons ftw!!!!!)
And for those Hardcore MP-Players, lets talk about the idea of a Co-op Campaign, or user created campaigns!!! Like in Command and Conquer Red Alert 2, where you could play alone (offline with a computer buddy) or online with somebody else! (There you go "No-Campaing-More-MP!"-People, you could benefit from it as well^^) And since the story line is nearly endless, Users could create their own Campaigns, which would create an ever-growing world of Peace, War and Tention
Since Sins is already very Modding-Friendly, I assume that - given the needed tools - people would be eager to create their own campaigns which fit into the world of Sins.
Just think about the Intro. Why do the Vasari run away? How long have they been running away? What are they afraid of? What happens to the guy under the tree in the intro, when the Advent-Fleet was approaching the Trader-Planet? I could go on and on...
The real question is why do the vasari have similar characteristics as humans (terrans and advent)? For example, the Vasari have the same logistics/etc slots on terran worlds than on say volcanic worlds. Maybe the Vasari should have been like love a volcanic world, but can't stand terran worlds and stuff like logistics slots should have been reversed on that? Or maybe Terrans need to research Artic colonisation, but the Vasari needed to research Terran colonisation?
Unless, the Vasari are actually Terrans from the deep, deep, deep, deep past of human history... Err...
Just think about it. Do you know how hard it would be to balance maps that way. Even if you always started on the most advantagous home world, the devs would have to concider THREE diffrent sets of stats for each planet. The advent would own on maps with alot of desert worlds and likewise with vasari for volcanic. While I agree that its not realistic, its sci-fi, though there should be more emphasis on the fiction part.
if you mean any game for any platform, then that statment seems juvinile because I can think of about 50 games off the top of my head that have awesome storylines.
if you mean just one the comp, i can think of like 8 right off:
Crysis, Starcraft, Warcraft (NOT WOW), Diablo, Half-Life seires, left 4 dead, spell force series, C&C, etc.
@the guy that said games were for jocks.
obviously you've only started gaming in the past 5 years when onlines became popular. Online games are for people that have that "i have to be the best at this game" attitude (which is a load of bs imo anyway lol), and you know if you are one if you play any online game more then 18 hours a week.
Gaming is in general a form of entertainment. for some, people get a rush, others play games to escape reality. some people do play games like its sex though (were talking WAY past hard core gamers, people that play games more then 18 hours a day [aka no-life ppls]), those people give gamers a bad name.
now, @ the op and everyone else from the first page (didnt read any of the other pages )
I agree with anyone that says this game is screaming at the top of its lungs for a scenario mode. I have been waiting for a good year for one and I wont return to this game till it does. Sins is fun for the first few battles, after like 3 days i got board with it, theres no substance to the game, its flat as bread.
I dont know what planet some of you come from, but i cant play a game like that, i'd be bored out of my skull too fast.
Now, if there was a senario that explains everything about whats going on at present in the sins universe, then i can get into it.
See, lots of people play the races how they want too, I on the other hand play them as they would play themselves.
For isntance, say the scenario reveals that the Vasari (we already kno this kind of though) just want to go out and conqure as much of the universe as possile.
That's how I would play that race.
If the scenario said that the Vasari were a peaceful race (fat chance lol) before some poor bastards had the luck to screw with them, then I would be more about killing off that perticular race then conquring all the planets. crap like that, I like to copletely immerse my selse in a game, learn as much about the back story to the races as possible, learn how their thought processes work, think like they would, do what they would do.
without a scenario your just flying blind as far as I am concerned and thats why I havent played this game since november last year.
too damn boring.
i meant on a comp ofc
kinda good 7/10 but very low replay value
i want some of what your smoking, that was a shit campain
im pretty sure warcraft was before FO2 so even if it was a great camp my point stands( can't remember tbh)
diablo diddent haeve a campain as such. It was just a world
not really imo it was wayy to easy, but i know alot of ppl that liked hl1.
again wayy to easy
never playedcan't coment
i became a *true* gamer with this game and NO the campain was not good.
thats a load of bs bro, online gaming started with C&C for rts games (dune started the lan games) while fps was started by doom2 (doom1 for lan) and lol 18h a week get a grip, most of us (the top end of competetiv gamers) hold down a job and have gf's/family. Just because you are bad does not mean the rest of us are.
this is where english fails as a language, most other have diffrent words for playing kid games and more serius games
(playing with barbies and playing football-- in english both are playing)
and again with the no-lifers. LOL you are one of the really bad's i geuss. as a quick eksample top end wow guilds raided for about 8hours a week to clear all content while the bad's had to play 18-20hours -> hint stop suxing and l2p
ahhh so you'er saying that you have zero imagination and needs a story teller to hold your hand, ok now i get where you are comming from. Read a fw books it may help that imagination problem you seem to have
here is where I stopped reading.
for several reason.
1. you dont even know me, if you did you wouldn;t be so quick to judge me as having no imagination.
if anything I have too much.
Secondly, It's nott hat I need it, it that I am curious.
Imagination leads to educated guesses. While these guess maybe close to what the actual events were, they are still just guesses. I want to see solid background story.
What you said amounts to reading the last book in the series then 'imagining' how everything go to that point. It doesnt work like that.
You have to go through the whole series as the author intended for the story to have any meaning.
It's not about if you have imagination or not, its about the facts.
For instance, we can assume that the Vesari and the TEC had a bad run in or that for some other reason they decided to go to wr with each other.
But what it thats not it at all.
Let's just say, for the sake of making my point, that at one point the Vasari were a peaceful race. Then they formed an alliance with the TEC or Advent or some other unknonwn race.
Then lets say that the Vasari got attacked and the race that they were allies with did not come to help them. In turn, the started warring with this other race, maybe they got their arses kicked.
Maybe then the Vasari became enslaved, then after some odd years, rose up against their slavers and became a hostile race.
Sure that sounds good, but is that what relaly happened? we wont know unless there is a scenario mode.
Someone else could come up with a diferent plot line for the Vasari, and then when they read what someone else has speculated, they might not agree with it and it could erupt to a flame war.
I like dealing with cold hard facts, the kind that a three minute movie doesn't provide. Sure I could just make something up like I just did, but then that defeats the purpose, which is to know what really happened.
Another point,
I am not a hard core or no-lifer, but I have known alot of them. I consider myself a moderate gamer. Though as far as being on the computer 24/7 I am close to that, but I do a lot of stuff that deals with comps so it's not really wasted time (programming, dealing with my RO server, working on my half life 2 mod, working on a few books etc.).
you seem to be assuming I play WOW, which I dont. second I know how to play online games, and its not the amount of time it takes you to clear a dungeon or w/e its the amount of time you are in the game, either playing it or just chatting.
8 to 12 hours a day is bording "no life" general gamers get maybe 1 to 3 hours a day, moderates I would say are 3 to 6.
and you are personalizing what I said about the No-Lifers. It was not directed at you, just at people who play online games more then the above mentioned time frame. If you feel that I included you in that group, then that is your problem, not mine.
almost all games have some amount of story in them, most of them. Online games it's in the form of quests. The quests never change from player to player, they stay the same. That's what a storyline is essentially at its core, information in a fantasy world that never changes.
of the few exceptions, the only one I have ever seen is this game. There is very little, if any, story information.
A game's storyline is not mesured by its easy, its mesured by how you liked the story. Hl1's plot line was epic, and for that its fan base is huge.
Same with Star Craft. While its story is not as epic, it is good enough to have a very large fan base.
One thing I should have rephrased is when I said that online games were for jocks, because they are not. But they tend to be frequented by them.
For instance, Gunz.
If you are a sniper or use SMGs/ARs and you kill a K-Styler, they accuse you of spraying and either leave or get you kicked because they think that they are the best player in the entire game and that the only possible way you could kill them is from randomly shooting.
this is a perfect example of what I am saying.
I am not going to say anything else on that subject.
But I would be interested toknow out of everyone that does and doesnt want a scenarion mode, which of you started gaming on consoles and which of you started gaming on computers.
It's no secret that few pc games have very good storylines, and maybe thats why people do not want on on this game, thay assume that its either not needed or that it's going to be horrible.
On the other hand, us console gamers have only ever had storylines in our games to its is damn near essential to have one in order to call this a complete and perfect game.
I, for one, started on the NES around 1990, I didnt get into the pc games till around 1998 with Half-Life and Star craft, and ever so I was not into online games until 2003 with Shattered Galaxy.
a scenario can only improve SoaSE, so I dont see why there is reseistance to the idea. It's not going to directly effect multiplayer, and if you dont want it, then dont play it. It can be as simple as that.
anyway, thats my 20 bucks, say what you will, but imo SoaSE will be incomplete and broken until the day it gets a scenario.
edit: sorry for the typos, almost midnight here and my typing goes to hell around 11 pm usually lol.
first of, /salute.
nice to see ppl that uses paragraps on online forums.
now here is where you messed up a bit about the educated geusses.
they did not. read the manuel
this did not happen. read the manuel
etc etc, for someone that wants more of the background story you seem to not be that interrested in what has been reviled.
i did not, but you seemed to = between nolifer and hardcore gamers. when all my xp tells me that hardcore in general play a lot less than *bads* who in turn play alot more to compensate.
well at some level you are right, but it is also hugely dependant on genre, this game(sins) is an 4xrts game, BUT the emphasis is on the 4x part and if you do some reshearch you'll find that the no campain is fairly standard in theese games
civ series - nocampain
MOO series - no campain
etc etc
again this has alot to do with the genre of games, console games are in general vastly diffrent from pc games.
cost in development is the issue, there are lot's of things that will improve the game and so a choice must be made.
That choice in making a campain(that is good enough to be rememberd) will (estimated) cost about the same as developing the game did, the amount of tuning/playtesting and making sure it wont get screwed up by balacing updates is rather steep fyi
------
the bottom line is that while we can all agree that a (good) campain would be a + the cost of doing so would stop the development of alot of other things.
what would you rather have
a good game with a campain
or
a perfect game with no campain
&
part 1:
I have read the entire Lore page and Wiki page several times through. While that certainly paints the picture, I would wish to see what colors went into making it.
to explain the metaphore, there is just not enough detail in what I read for me.
I want to know exact dates, names of generals and ships, system names where battles took place, some anmes of the races that the Vasari assimilated, more description of the unknown assailants that are forcing the Vasari into a corner, more details about exactly how/why/and the fall out of the TEC expelling the Advent. Unless Stardock wasnt to write a short novel (25 to 80 pages) on the backstory, the only other way to achieve that is with an in-game story.
part 2:
For me, I would rather have an ok game now, that's complete with a campainge mode, and then prefected over the course of the next several years, then to have a perfect incomplete game right now.
fair enough, but do you think it's *fair* to spend all that energy on ½ the playerbase (online player wont play it)
looking at the big picture i can't see how you would justify that, balancing / fixing bugs etc will improve both sides enjoyment and not just one or the other.
what is best for *the greater good*?
I have no interest in a possible Sins campaign. Sins does NOT need one.
An rts campaign is simply a series of skirmish battles with cutscenes and fewer options.
I would MUCH rather play a perfect game with no campaign.
I think you misunderstood that last part.
I meant make the campiang mode, then prefect the gameplay over the new few years. The game play, as you said, crosses over both sides of the game.
who said we could not have both?
If it was stardock then their perogitive is to make as much money as posible and say to hell with the player base, which doesnt sound like their mo at all.
Touche, but I could say the same about the online players. Is it fair that Stardock ONLY focuses on the online players but leaves those seeking a more rich understanding of the SoaSE universe hanging out to dry?
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