"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
What irks me more than anything else is that SD goes on this whole deal about why they need Steam...
We want to help MP...we want ladder systems...we want achievements...we want stats...we want all the pretty foo foo shit that Steam offers for MP....
And then they continue to cater it to SP...I'm confused..
Well they are trying to see if they can get away with not providing us what they want(an actual battle.net style interface, even a poorly designed one could be better then the current model!, simple things like easy download capability, matching, etc.), because that takes their money, and they want to use that money on another IP, so they will try to give us less then what we asked for and hope we don't raise hell.
Its the only form of haggling left in this industry. Naturally its mostly one sided as the developers can really pick and choose, and you personally only have one small $40 dollar vote. They don't want you to even have this influence, so they like to culturalize us into believing that prepay is actually good, and that they need it to survive. Every industry has its scammers, and the video game industry is no exception. Now i'm starting to wonder if stardock/ICO falls into that group. Its too early to tell, but in this beta, this is the first time my suspicions are starting to be confirmed.
Endless Space has a variety of pre-order "bonuses" that I've never seen before that stoop to new "culturizing pre-pay is good" levels as you put it. One of them is, I kid you not, your picture on the wall at the Dev's office. It's for the Emperor Special Edition where you get access, not to beta, but to alpha. Shit is getting ridiculous...
On topic to Rebellion - yes, I also feel like the move to Steam and using Steamworks as a selling feature was implying more of a MP focus than it had in the past. I still feel like not enough people are interested in playing Sins MP to warrant a ladder/automatch system though. That doesn't mean there couldn't be some improvements to ICO however.
I saw that...I'm not going to lie, that kind of freaked me out...I mean, the game looks cool and I'll probably by it when it's released...but to tell the truth, I'm more inclined not to enter an alpha knowing they want my picture...I get the gesture, but it just seems creepy...
Hi, long time lurker here. I would love to start playing SoaSE MP but I get scared by threads like these and other threads explaining how SoaSE is based around singleplayer and how the MP in Rebellion won't get much love, some even citing the devs themselves. At the moment I'm not even wasting my time trying to play the MP in Rebellion because apparently it isn't functional (desyncs/minidumps) but please just let me say that if I wanted a fleshed out single player experience in a strategy game, SoaSE would be far from my #1 choice. This is a great game being limited by its own design scope. The multiplayer has a lot of potential simply because it bridges the gap between depth and accessibility that so few RTS games have successfully crossed.
I hate to say this, but at this point in time I regret preordering because it seems like they're adding game content to trinity simply for content's sake, without as much regard to how it affects the gameplay. Seems like this is great for "comp stompers" because it adds short term replay value (raw content), but heavily detracts from the depth/balance/multiplayer aspects which could keep me coming back.
A "stand-alone expansion" should expand on more than just raw content because it's an opportunity to go back and fix/update/overhaul the things that were on the SoaSE To Do list and then sell the final result. It bothers me that the To Do list apparently consisted of "Add Bigger Ships and Update GFX." I wish I could bring myself to start playing the rebellion beta but the devs don't seem to care that much about the MP and act almost like the community is some sort of sick deviant group that shouldn't be taken seriously.
I think maybe there are other lurkers with a similar outlook. I come from a somewhat competitive FPS background and while I enjoy the RTS genre, I typically enjoy it for the "S" (strategy) because the "RT" usually comes across as sort of a gimmick. Games like Starcraft bore me because they're "clickfests" (I saw someone on this forum call it that and I agree) - A HUGE part of the game is micromanagement and it detracts from the actual strategy aspect
When you compare starcraft, quake, UT, and other games that most people consider "competitive" they're really all similar games on much different playing fields - the Starcraft playing field just always seemed unintuitive and awkward to me. Anyway, what I do know is this: SoaSE is different in a good way.The only reason the MP scene never took off is because the devs don't seem to realize it can fly.
edit: walls of text are OP, nerfed post by adding paragraphs
Nice, I enjoy the forum lurkers, they usually have the listen strategy down pretty good, I'm glad that there aren't just us half crazed typists just countering each other for no good reason!
Your wall of texts aren't as bad as mine...hell i don't even really use paragraphs, i just try to space out my main points before jumping into another critical aspect of the discussion. Gentle transitions be damned!
That was probably me, although I was talking about how the game gets really old after all that clicking, which turns my brain into a pile of quivering sludge!
I fricken love this response!
You smoke too much pippin
Well, they don't want to wait until release to get your money. Then you might discover that the game actually sucks horribly and they won't have any excuses like "it's beta!" Or you might learn it from other players posting reviews and not buy at all. Better to get your money before they have an actual product, right? SotS 2 and EWoM are the poster children for why pre-purchase tends to be a bad idea for gamers.
But hey, people keep doing it. Gamers are really good at acting like crack addled fools always willing to hand over money in the hope for another fix rather then acting like discerning shoppers.
what is comp stomping?
Ok, I get it now. What is noob stomping then?
@ seleucia
Wow, thanks for posting that!
Goa, as eco should have researched feed a lot earlier to support his team. Also in general, go for pure power at the start, and then diversify your fleet, and keep the opponent scouted so that your pure power spam isn't totally gimped vs a pure power counterspam. Eyes on!
Goa made the video, its in the OP for "Modder's MP Zone"...
I had an epic "comp stomp" experience today. I defeated the first of many titans with nothing more than 50 - 60 well trained Advent fighters. This was done on "hard". Later in the game after losing track of epic moments I finally took over the pirate base. Haters can keep hating but days like this are beautiful.
It's much more satisfying when you know that you did it against a human intelligence as opposed to exploiting deficiencies in the AI's programming.
So true. This is what I call the "real factor" that you just can't get with facing an AI.
You could you know, not exploit. But guess thats not different than playing against a human. A weakness is a weakness.
Handicapping yourself against the AI works wonders into getting more bang for your buck in the game.
And its much more satifying when you dont have to wait 1 hour for a human game to start. Or spend another 30+ mins while people bitch and moan about team captains and teams.
Or hey, people just play the game to have fun and not get so emo hulk rage at when they start to lose.
Or pull plugs.
Or play on anything slower than Faster.
Or go out of their way to troll.
Or etc etc etc.
When it comes down to it, I rather play the AI. 99% of the time. At least it wants to play and plays the game for what its worth.
You can argue the superiority of human players all you want. And its all vaild, within the constraints that you play how the other human players want to play. The AI doesnt care. It just wants to pew pew pew spaceships. In the end, thats why we play this game.
That...and the AI also doesn't know how to spam bombers
yes, you must be playing a mod Seleuceia, no wonder your AI doesnt spam those.
Who doesn't like that? It's like 50% of fun of playing MP:p
It's most fun when other guy does something massively stupid, like start with kol (THE BATTLESHIP, battleships have like big lazors and kill shit so they're cool) and go trade on flank. He's dead after 10min and starts raging;
" You #$($# rusher, I wanted to have fun!!! How is dying fun?!! <insert sexual insult about one's mother here>"
I miss this game.
Yes, the angrier they are about losing, the more they care, therefore the more you "put them in their place", the more reward you get from winning.
The trick is, don't get angry at losses, get used to playing the game so a loss becomes "meh it happens"(usually takes about 100 games of multi to reach this stage). In this way you will have no bad multiplayer experiences, and you will be on the hunt for the good ones, trying to join balanced games, and give crap to the people who once in a while do emo rage.
Its a great community .
Took me only 1...
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