"The only reason there is multiplayer at all actually is because a few us at Ironclad wanted to be able to fight each other and run comp-stomps. At the time, we predicted the return on investment for multiplayer would be small (and it was as only a very small fraction of Solar Empire players play multiplayer) but we did it anyway, because it was fun for us."
- Blair Fraser
I dont know, but while Ironclad supported SP more... Rebellion is going another way.
Rebellion is being made by Stardock, right? Stardock seems to prefer MP over SP. E.G. a marketing girl from stardock in twitter said "#ilovesinsbecause it´s competitive".
hummm
It is what it is.
I like to say that when you play against the AI, you're opponent is mentally retarded and incapable of strategic thought. It's supposed to be a strategy game, so why would you want to play against an opponent that is incapable of strategy? I don't say this to be mean; I just call it like I see it.
There have been some good points in this thread. It's important to remember that this game was programmed by a tiny team of 9 people working on a shoestring budget and that they needed to build an engine for it, so we do need to cut the devs a little slack. Sins is like the equivalent of a good independent film compared to a Hollywood movie; Hollywood would ruin such a film, and if a large studio had made Sins it probably would have been designed for consoles and then ported over to the PC as an afterthought and it would be crappy.
I wholeheartedly agree with Mecha-Lenin's point about how the multiplayer PvP people (in every game) are the most active, knowledgeable, and dedicated players. I also like his analogy between comp stomping and mining/farming.
Not calling Starclad quitters...Ironclad has moved on to another game, and SD has consistently demonstrated its willingness to support it's game...long term support and listening to the community, however, does not automatically lend to a strong MP experience or superior game balance...they take feedback from the community and act on it to a point, but only to get the game "good enough" so to speak...don't take this to mean that I think Starclad stands for "subpar" products...ask any modder or developer, and they'll tell you no mod or game is ever truly finished...
Well we just got a nice quote from Blair (though I doubt it is recent)...and, becaue Brad has said so...much of his feelings were expressed in many of the anti-steam, SD is the devil incarnate threads...
Furthermore, their actions and track record demonstrate this...they sold impulse, which was by far their best way to make money....additionally, they have followed the same pattern with Gal Civ II, Sins, and magic fairy games...they support them, they consider feedback, they add expansions or new features, and they make excellent SP experiences...but when it comes down to MP, their games just don't cut it...that isn't where SD's market is...
I'm not saying Sins couldn't be made to be MP...by its very nature, it really should be MP focused since it lacks the depth and immersion of other SP games...but that just isn't the vision SD has...they'll open their options, they'll offer MP, they'll add things like ICO and steamworks, but at the end of the day MP games just isn't where their hearts lie...
Sadly this is true...balance matters more to me than anything else, yet I am so beyond hoping that SD will balance the game, especially when I know I can mod the game however I want...
Also, while modders understand the game very well, they don't play on the same skill level as pro players...they can provide excellent feedback in regards to implementation of new things but when it comes to balancing pre-existing assets, pros are a better group to talk to....
Agree 100%...certainly true for every other game I have played...
In case you are interested....
Now hold on a second. It isn't as though they sold Impulse for one penny. In any financial transaction, the seller is not necessarily the party that receives less value than what the product is worth. We don't know how much money Impulse was sold for. What if it were sold for more than it's "net present value" and Gamestop were foolish enough to overpay? For the right price, selling a money-generating business makes financial sense.
People sell businesses and parts of businesses (stocks) all the time, but that doesn't mean that the buyer is necessarily getting the best end of the bargain. My limited understanding of mergers and acquisitions is that in general, when a large company wants to purchase a smaller company, the smaller company's stock price increases and the larger company's stock price tends to go down a bit because companies tend to overpay for business acquisitions like that.
I think Seleuceia meant more about why they sold it. As Blair stated, they would rather make awesome video games rather than run a retail business like Valve.
For me, I prefer SP because I like nice loooooong games; a dozen stars, 4 digit planet count, everyone starting with a star each thats riddled with planet clusters, a true galactic conflict. Thats what I play SP for, since I doubt MP is interested in 15-25 hour long games.
Having a long running campaign that covers thousands of planetary objects is what I enjoy, turning the galaxy into a brutal warzone where battles can erupt at any given time, thats what I'm playing for, and only AI can provide that for me at the pace I want, since naturally there's breaks and what not in those games. Trying to find someone to jump back into say a 14 hour long game thats only 2/3 finished with a lot to still play for? How am I to know they arent gonna get bored?
How am I meant to fill out that full roster with people? Do you know 9 other people that would sit and play a game that long with you? Are they going to mind that I'm going to casually roll across the cosmos in a tide of all consuming war just to assert my dominion over a thousand worlds?
hey thanks, I have a new background.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply!
All I can say is, I hope their hearts are into making excellent multiplayer games.
That's really quite wrong...
I don't know about the part where you mention Rebellion being made by Stardock, seems odd they would swap developers and I doubt that's the case, no idea where you're getting that from but whatever..
But for my point, have you looked at any of Stardocks games? Stardock preferring MP over SP is the complete opposite of reality and is not reflected in any of their games, which mainly consists of the Galactic Civilizations and Elemental series', neither of which has much focus on MP, if it's included at all.
Stardock published games are another story, but the things Stardock develops itself tend to be pretty single player exclusive.
I used to play Multiplayer over multiple different RTS games, completely quit it a while back because all I ever saw was point trading, cheating, and downright hacking. They all have some kind of "Must win" mentality that just makes playing the game pointless because it becomes some massive epeen contest.
I would choose a human player any day over a comp stomp because i played the ai intensively and i know its patterns all to well.. Therefore i can predict the outcomes. When playing an unfair agressive ai i can open with any capital ship and win too easily.
It boils down to 1 thing: When i decide to choose a human player then they should be a match making system to offer me the recommended player by there skill level. For one i don't want to play someone who i'll bash so hard that ill rage quit out of pure boredom. I want to play someone i can say ohkkk-- hes forcing me to hide behind repair platforms--gg or he trapped me with a jump inhibitor and a starbase-shit i should have scouted--gg.#
The only thing i do is play my cousin or play in our party lans. That way i know i've got to be serious and ready to enjoy a good competitive match.
You have a funny way of going about it. Normal people see this kind of jerk behavior and come to the conclusion that MP is full of 'that type'. It just discourages people.
Resilience of character is one thing that us long time sins players possess. Its like an earned personality trait found while overcoming the learning curve of the game. Its not something inherent, we've all had our ego's bruised at some point or another, its the nature of the beast. Its the fact that we open ourselves up to the beating, take it willingly because we see the prize at the end of the tunnel. Its a worthy prize indeed, i've had fun for years once I learned to play the game at that level.
Most games cater to your ego, you are sooo good because you can click faster, fight the AI, etc. Sins is the first game i've played that offered something more. The only limit is your mind's capability to adapt to changing situations. I believe the constant adaptation to the other players allows you to have an unparalleled replayability for an RTS/RT4X game.
Sins is probably the only RTS I've played where I play far more single player and co-op than multiplayer. My friend and I tried to get into Sins multiplayer, but early balance was a damn joke and turned us right off it (oh look, it's the team that rushes with the most LRFs wins. How fun.). I tried again myself later on, but at that point it was just 5v5s only which I have no interest in; I do not believe there's really any balance once you go beyond 2v2 in any RTS. Players can can specialize their build in large games to a degree that isn't supposed to be possible, resulting in a lot of degenerate strategies opening up. I haven't tried to play any multiplayer at all during this beta, because I'm still turned off ICO from previous attempts. If a 1v1/2v2 ladder and matchmaker is made, I'll give it another shot. But I'm not bothering with the 5v5s.
It's also been said by the devs that Sins sold very well, but you would never know from the ICO numbers. Like it or not single player/co-op IS the favoured gamemode in Sins, by a massive margin. Most of these people never venture onto these forums, because there's no real point. This is probably why Sins is the only RTS I've seen that gets any real AI development from the devs. Normally it's something that's forgotten and left to modders because nobody really cares about single player beyond practicing new build orders or something.
Hmm well lbgsloan sins diplomacy had good balance, it just needed something big that could eat through flak frigates and not do too much damage to anything else. Perhaps i'll play more co-op with my girlfriend since she's having trouble understanding what an RTS is (let alone the finer points of why sins is better! lol).
Don't teach your GF to be comp stomper:(
@ mecha
lol! well she's what you'd call a super noob.
most sins noobs have played RTS's before.
Sins is going to be her first serious foray into the genre (shes asked me to train her). You'll see her on as "Crumbcake".
I warn you, be nice!!
Once she has enough confidence with the extreme basics she will be ready enough to start playing some 1v1 matches with me and start to actually learn the human aspect of the game. I don't want her to go to the sharks before shes ready! lol.
I hope to make her a deadly online force of female strategic thinking. Personally, I find that to be very attractive and can't wait to share the higher level of sins with her! -thumbs up
all this bullshit about multiplayer being a pathetic small proportion of sins players.
When is the last time someone did the math?
http://store.steampowered.com/stats/
steam says 498 players playing sins atm
someout count # of players on ICO and someone else guestimate lans.
comp stomps are a part of multiplayer. and shit that benifits 'multiplayer' benifits compstomps./
@ pbhead
good question, it would be nice to know if anyone has done the actual math. The only people with the data are the developers, its their website. I'd be very interested in hearing the answer, as i'm sure many others would also be.
At first glance it looks like 498 people are playing sins rebellion right now, with 78 people playing on ICO (I just logged in, i have no idea what the peak ICO player count was today so i'm going to use this number). Using server peaks would be a better data set, yet we don't know what ICO's peak player count was so that means we have to go with who is online now.
78/498 x 100 = 15.662, rounded up to 16%
this is where we were stating the online community was before, the data is solid based upon this one test (naturally the law of large numbers must be applied if we are going to get serious about this to develop a trend).
just noticed that the steam statistics are lagging. that data point was captured 2.5 hours ago or so. so we need to wait for steam's statistics to update. so 78. lets see what steam says when it catchs up.
and we also really need to pick multiple times and points to be able to draw a statisticly valid conclusion.
you know what, we should make a statistical thread about this so that the community will have its own data set to work off of
Without MDs number of online players would be probably at least 2x higher...
Oh i agree mecha, and what pains me is thinking about how if minidumps didn't occur at all, how large the online community would already be.
Devs stated that ~2% of players ever played online... would be interesting to see what they have to say about these figures.
Steam apparently changed things a bit... they may have 1 less excuse to ignore MP.
Yep steam allows for a better data set so you can actually determine how many of your single players actually play the game. Before this i'm sure they only had a very fuzzy idea about how big their active community base actually was and had to go off of current and past game sales. Thats not a good way to get data about how many players actually player your game, but its what they had.
I can definately see why game developers like using steam so much.
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