Where are the players ?

not everyone plays multiplayer online i guess And games last a long time, most people you see in lobby are in the game already.

Games that are "in progress" are removed from the list of games.

I'm waiting for 1.03 before I start playing multi again, for me the games are just too long, there's not much to do between fights and there's always the chance that a game will go for 4 hours and I don't really want that. I'm looking forward to the new speed settings.

Thank you for your answers

Hope there will be more of us (multiplayer) after the 1.03 release

Well...for me, I have been waiting untill they actually fix MP. Right now, it is pretty much unplayable as after an hour or two of play, one player will inevitably mini-dump to desktop and you have to start all over again. I haven't been able to complete a MP game yet becuase of all the constant crashing/mini-dumping. It is so irritating....

I tend to play with personal friends.

Me too, I tend to LAN more then I log onto ICO.

I mainly play against the AI and sometimes with friends. However, the matches get to be too long commonly so that's why I only ever played online twice. People always end up leaving or doing something stupid. I've read enough horror stories about people getting ganged up on online by people and their buddies or clan mates so I'm completely avoiding it unless I can find some friends now.

There are not many gamers who actually can host games because it’s a player who have to host and not a dedicated game server. In my case I can’t host because it’s out of my hands – have to buy a dedicated IP from my ISP first. But if it’s because of some wrong router-settings you can read The_Monk’s excellent thread and guide on how it should be set up.

Read this thread : WWW Link

Monk’s guide :WWW Link

Multiplayer has many problems, playing with friends is a workaround for most, since you can always revert to a saved game, something hard to do on ICO right now.

On ICO you have :
- exploiters (exploits fixed in 1.03, at least the known ones)
- host leaving for whatever reason (defeated, crash, ragequit) will interrupt a game, and this problem is found in sins only, i don't recall any other rts having a client/server setup for multiplayer games (in a p2p setup there is no host) - NOT fixed in 1.03 afaik;
- client crashes, occuring for various reasons, mostly attributed to mods and drivers, i can assume they are partially fixed in 1.03, i recall the devs saying they were getting minidumps and were working on them;

Right now it's unplayable, you have mostly new players on ICO who leave after a few games (usually out of 10 games, they manage to finish 1, these are pretty common stats for ICO players). The next patch will help alot, but still the issue that when the host drops, the game stops, needs addressing.

Personally i'll be back after 1.03, but i will avoid large games, and will mostly host myself.

As said before, 1.03 will bring a lot of players back to the fold.

Hmmm most German sins players are testing the game against AI atm like me too.
So i think if they are done with testing the gamemechanics they will looking for new matches online.

I only play online Fridays and Saturdays because of the time commitment required to get through a solid game of Sins. Other days of the week I play single player since the +/- speed controls help the game fit into my busy schedule better. My online experiences have been a bit of a let down when I play against people I don't know.

I would be open to helping newbies learn the game though. I've thought about setting up something like that one of these days.