At the rate the servers are collapsing, I'm predicting less than 50 active players in six months. Heck, its no longer limited to MP folks either. Just read some of the stuff in the tech and steam forums. That and the fact that stardock has mentioned that they will cease all support for the game means looks like another game has bitten the dust.
It is kind of sad because the game has literally around 200 players online. Looking at the devs viewpoint we are actually a "Negative income" source, but they should at least try making some community based support money giveaways. I would gladly give 5 dollars per month to play Sins.
I don't think the future is this dark, the community survived so many years it won't die soon I guess.
While it is one of my favourite games I wouldn't pay 5 dollars a month (I am no millionaire), and I guess most people's opinion is like this. BUT, I would gladly pay 5 dollars for new exciting DLC's and other content but unfortunately no more will be made by the devs.
Considering the fact they have been supporting this game since 2008 says a lot. Maybe not the way the MP crowd likes it but that is only a small minority for this game. But they make excellent trolls.
Where will this game be in six months? Still played by the modders.
At this point SoaSE should have died off yet it's still here. I doubt something catastrophic is going to happen anytime soon.
There's a lot of more pressing issues other than funky netcode and servers that should be addressed. Like making the game 64 bit?
Though it makes sense for Stardock to discontinue support of SoaSE at this point. They've done all they could (the last DLC puts them really close at the 2GB limit I hear) and need to do really. SoaSE is still one of their top selling games. Stardock needs to look forward to create new titles like GalCivIII and the development of the Nitrous Engine possibly in preparation for an full blown sequal to SoaSE as well as other games.
Ironclad is behind Sins, and anything Sins-related, like support and patching, is up to them. After Sins of a Dark Age inevitably flops in this bloated-as-hell DotA-clone market populated by giants like DotA2 and LoL, I hope they go back to Sins as a way to make some money. (Seriously, if you want to make money off DotA games in this day and age, don't bother. It's like making a WoW-clone to steal subscribers away from WoW, not happening.)
Depends on how you define "community"...the MP community can't survive without ICO, though you probably will still see active mods and forums...
People will still be able to play with direct connect (which is more stable than ICO), but that's going to be almost exclusively dedicated groups of friends or mod users...
Far from it in my experience (using VMmap on it). The common crashes aren't due to running out of address space.
Other MP games not only survived but got better when the devs/publisher gave up on MP support. http://www.faforever.com/ is probably the prime example of a community-based continuation and improvement. It seems that very few companies have managed to make a buck in the RTS MP niche, the exception being mostly Blizzard. Jon Mavor also appears to be trying to capitalize on the Faforever craze that with PA, see http://pamatches.com/ and discussion elsewhere on this forum https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/440090/page/3.
I would not pay 5 dollars for sins per month. The developers shot themselves in the foot by forcing themselves to limit the game engine to 32 bit requirements. The minidumps that ensued ensured that the multiplayer community would die, because after just 1 minidump in a long game I seriously considered never playing sins online ever again. It seems that the vast majority of players hated minidumps and never looked back and decided to make the other decision.
Minidumps were the result of shoddy planning, I thought it was back then, I still think it today. That is why Sins 2 needs to be made pronto. If they can provide good multiplayer support they would have a kickass game. Oh, and no game ending errors. That is HUGE. But they already know this.
You know why they did it that way sareth01. An engine built in 2006 (game released in 2008) by an indie company would never have been built with 64 bit in mind. I think they are still in shock about how popular this game continues to be.
Like I said elsewhere, the minidumps encountered nowadays in [unmodded] Sins are most likely not due to the program running out of memory (address space); I looked at Sins with VMmap to figure that out. It's plain old programming bugs that are the likely cause of those crashes/dumps. (See http://blogs.msdn.com/b/lagdas/archive/2008/06/24/debugging-heap-corruption-with-application-verifier-and-debugdiag.aspx if you don't know what those might be.) Which for a game engine in development/maintenance for 6+ years is a little worse than unfortunate. And they happen aplenty in Sins single-player too if you use features that exercise parts of the code for multi-player like recording playback. (Never mind the random logic "desync" bugs that playbacks may show without even crashing the game engine. More on that at: https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/455383/page/1/)
I can probably find out more precisely what kind of crashing errors Sins has (with GFlags etc.) but it would be a rather pointless exercise since I don't even have access to the Sin exe's symbol tables, let alone its source code. What we basically need to do is spam Stardock with those Sins minidump files whenever we get one. There is actually an automated way for them to get crash reports via Microsoft but the devs being a small company, I don't know if they signed up for that.
True, its not a surprise why they did it back then. They continue to pick the wound from the bullet by not making sins 2. I am worried about the risk they are pulling with their opportunity costs making a MOBA when blizzard is coming out with a MOBA as well...the MOBA scene is very competitive as it is, I hope they bring their AAA game to the field. To me, it seems more of a prestige/pride thing (ya we hangin' with the big dogs), not necessarily a smart business move. When you have lightning in a bottle(sins), use it, don't hide it away for later, the charge will dissipate.
The wisdom nugget du jour in the gaming industry is that RTS are a risky investment [and very much passe], while MOBAs are the future. But lets not get into that here... There's another thread for it: https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/440090/page/3
This I will agree with 100%.
I believe it will be active right up until the release of Sins of a Solar Empire 2.
I sure do hope they will release a full blown sequel...
The game's ICO activity can be reinvigorated by STEAM sales. So it's hard to say where the game will be in six months. What would happen if it sold on STEAM for $5 at some point? As the game gets older its price will decrease, allowing for even lower sale prices that could pack the server full of players.
Alas without some improvements in server capacity and client code robustness, new-sale players quit just as fast the older ones did. Only the hardcore ones stay and I'm not really seeing an increase in those. This boom and bust cycle on ICO probably suits the devs/publisher just fine as they're not making any money with ICO, whereas on Steam...
Honestly, the game will degrade like any unsupported game that's been out for six years. Even dedicated players like myself slowly lose interest. It's not that I don't like the game anymore. I still love it and it goes down as one of my favorite games of all time without question. It's just that at this point, the game doesn't hold anything really new for me. I've put in hundreds of hours and have modded the game to oblivion. I've used the mods of others as well. In the end, the game doesn't offer anything new for me.
Of course, the irony is that I keep looking for a new RTS game and I simply can't find any. Nothing I find compares to what I love about Sins. To be perfectly frank, I'm amazed I haven't seen anyone try to make their own Empire Tree.
Some day Ironclad'll probably realize SoaDA is not worth it, but whether or not they'll be able to get the capital for a Sins of a Solar Empire II is another thing. I personally thought their original idea of having a commander+heroes was cool and might have worked, but apparently it didn't so now it's just another MOBA with a smaller playerbase. They'd probably need a massive cash infusion just to make the updates to the engine, let alone the cost of development.
I can't recall off-hand if Dark Age is x64 or not. If it isn't, then that'll be a pain in and of itself because being x64 is the biggest thing about Sins II.
Heck, the only things that Sins II would really need IMO to be successful is an engine update. x64, good multi-threading, some better support for logic in buff chains, more powerful modifiers for modders, and more logical entity files. The new game would probably have a new faction and the combat balance system could do for some changes, but in general, the gameplay itself is solid. Sure, some other changes would be nice like mitigation working somewhat differently, but it doesn't need that.
Releasing a Sins II that was prettier, faster, and bigger would be absolutely amazing. I'd buy it the moment I heard of it.
In terms of gameplay, the single biggest thing I'd actually want is ironically not an addition, but a removal... I don't mind if Titans are a DLC in Sins II, but I don't want them stock. I don't like playing with Hero units in an RTS; I just don't.
So anyways, where will the game be in six months? More dead than it is now, leaving only super-dedicated players. It'll still make some money on Steam, but it'll be a trickle. Maybe in a couple years Ironclad will announce work has begun on Sins II. I hope they do... Sins is such a good game that was always marred by a sub-par engine.
Sins needs more than just an engine update. It needs an online multiplayer update with some sort of an optional match-making system.
I don't disagree. I'm just saying that the most important thing is a better engine.
I think the devs would be surprised on a kickstart campaign for a sins 2. I'm sure they could get fully funded. Maybe a mission ops portion of levels that you can pilot a kol capital ship or others and add that as a incentive to people who really want it. I personally love the sand box and ability to play the way it is. With a better engine that supports over 2GB ram limit. But I believe if they did a kickstart with goals to be reached and added a mission at a higher tier where you Sins 2 would not have to be so far in the distance. An update on steam with a Home screen banner link to the kickstart.
I'm not sure I really want to suggest this as a user, but Planetary Annihilation (which frogboy is well aware of) not only has gathered twice the necessary Kickstarter funds (over $2M pledged, target sum was $0.9M), but also managed to sell alpha/beta access at nearly $200 a pop thereafter (to those who "missed" the Kickstarter phase), something that would make envious even AAA title makers, no doubt. The user reactions have been a little skeptical on the latter:
Oh, and the $200 level is to get all the "stock" game content. $1000 [during the kickstarter] buys you the "customized" one http://planetaryannihilation.gamepedia.com/Commander, whatever that means. This is basically like some rich guy paying more to enter a chess tournament and the organizers letting him move his queen like a knight too. You be the judge whether the level of monetary contribution should change the rules of a MP game. I know it's commonly done with SP these days; the uber-powered startup weapons that DoW2:Retribution came with for the pay-more-upfront editions were already a MOBAization of SP.
Re: Planetary Annihilation: It's been a while since I've really payed any attention to the news concerning that game, but I was in on the Kick Starter for it. One thing to note about the "custom" Commanders on the $1000 tier, is that the devs assured everyone several times that it would have no impact on MP/SP balance. What it allowed was for you to talk directly with one of the designers and work with them on having a custom model made up for your Commander that only you would be allowed to use.
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