Haeso

Numbers Dwindling.

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Numbers Dwindling.

from Sins Forums
So a question for the Devs, the CEOs, and my fellow gamers. Is it me or is the community on ICO dying?

I've seen the number online every day dwindle more and more, the peak was well over a month ago that I saw. Am I just crazy or are we losing players day in day out. Are we just never going to have a real community? Just 20-30 guys that know each other and a bunch of random noobs that play for a week and never go back online? Honestly this game has lost almost all of it's appeal for me, for a number of reasons. Less competition, foolish imbalanced changes that could have been averted just by proposing the changes and letting the players actually... Playing the game, novel idea there, give you some input. The game was fun, but again, it has lost almost all of it's appeal for so many reasons.

Other competitors preferably I want your opinions on this, many I've talked to personally and agree on at least some level appeal for sins is fading. Is ICO forever going to be dead? Or are we just to wait and see and hope 1.1 is some amazing super mod that fixes everything and makes all the people that quit come back and new people want to play online? Personally, I doubt I'm around by the time 1.1 rears it's sure to be ugly head if the other patches were any indication. Are we just babied by games like starcraft, CoH, etc that are all great and competitive games and balanced. Or is this taking too long and we're being ignored? I want to give the devs time to fix things, but stuff like the 1.04 illum, the 1.03 market... a lot of different things have shaken any faith in this game. Maybe it'll be balanced in a couple months, maybe a year. But with this saturated market, can it survive that long? Are any of you honestly going to come back if and when it's balanced? Or are we just going to play starcraft two as it will inevitably be looming on the horizon before this game stands a chance at the rate it's going. Or demigod for some of you, whatever floats your boat.

I'm not trying to make a doom post here, but every time I log on ICO and see less people. I worry. Every time I check the forums, and all the talk of strategy and shit talking between clans has nothing new added to it. I worry. Every time I talk to my own clan mates, they say they're busy, playing something else, don't feel like playing sins. I worry. I've put a ton of time into practicing and learning this game inside and out, and I simply do not want to quit, but I hardly even feel like there's a community, maybe I'm missing something, maybe I'm crazy. But to me ICO is a rotting carcass compared to what it was. And it's only decaying more and more.

 I want to hear what you guys think, I want to be wrong. So do it, prove me wrong someone, show me this game isn't dying.

Haeso, fanboy to some, critic to others, hardcore gamer for better or worse to all ~

multiplayer
166,590 views 64 replies
Reply #51 from Sins Forums Top
sins is at a disadvantage, because the modding tools/online UI/minidumps suck, warcraft3 has been going well online for 5 years and shows NO signs of slowing down, mostly because wc3edit is so damn good, the actual GAME warcraft3 sucks, but the custom games alone keep the game fresh and lots of fun.

basicaly, if u want sins to be REALLY succesful, make the mod tools ALOT easier to use, add in maybe an optional extra skins/texture pack for modders that arent good at texturing and stuff like that

also the ico online sucks, its not the worst ive seen, but it could REALLY do with some improvements. battle.net has everything that ico has and more(exept games with passwords, but those suck anyways) other than those issues, SOASE is an AWESOME game, although a tiny bit more micro based warfare might help(like ship abilities that DO provide a really good tactical advantage, and more ways to combat HC spam that ARENT totally rigged (mass subverters.. etc) (more types of random maps would be good) :)

(i played sins online a few times and it wasnt a good experience, so i just occasionally play a singleplayer game of sins (vs AI) but after one game it gets boring, needs more different strategies (BALANCED STRATEGYS.... if spamming is the best way to win, then the game is has some serious long term playability issues)

(if this post seems vague its coz im tired)
Reply #52 from Sins Forums Top
Trackiet, I think you may be confusing a crash with players leaving the game. This is something entirely different.


I understand the difference. Just trying to offer reasons why ico has seen a declined of players.
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Reply #53 from Sins Forums Top
ive had the game for about 4 days now. i wont venture online until i have seen all the races and am more comfortable managing an empire. but hearing the bashing on online play it doesnt sound like much fun. considering i played st: armada until last week and was happy fighting ai's, then i should be very happy with sins for a long time.
Reply #54 from Sins Forums Top

Regarding custom maps. I agree that Galaxy Forge isn't perfect but it's also possible to make your own maps very quickly once you know what you're doing and the learning curve really isn't that steep. It only took me about an hour to make 5v5 Red Crush LE-101. If you think that making maps in Galaxy Forge is difficult, try making maps for FPS games (expect to spend about 200 hours to make a decent map).

The real problem with the custom maps is that as of this time, they will not automatically download to people who don't have them so in order to actually play a Galaxy-Forge designed map online (as opposed to one made with the "Map Designer") everyone has to have downloaded and installed the map ahead of time. Consequently, custom maps are almost never played via ICO.

Reply #55 from Sins Forums Top
Homeworld 2 has the feature where maps auto download.

I dont see why they cant do this in Sins.

Maybe they are scared people will do stupid stuff like a bias map or completely stacked map , or maybe they want proper stat recording from official maps.
Reply #56 from Sins Forums Top
I stopped playing cause of stinking mini dump mostly. Anyway i think this is going to happen:

there will be no 1.1 patch. simply cause there is no reason to serve a tiny online community like this. Its not economical.
Reply #57 from Sins Forums Top
Supreme Commander was really the first game I started playing MP a lot with; their MP service was great. Casual unranked games or ranked; easy access to custom maps, mods and replays; detailed info on the game your about to consider joining. So I was a little shell-shocked when I tried ICO. I was barley even able to chat in the lobby because of the "joined/left" spam. I could not see or host with lots of people (I did finally get my Port forwarded thanks to great help from people, but my friends refuse to go through this to play). The info about the game you may join is stark at best, and when games can last so long, that's pretty important.

Usually, I would just play the campain on Easy, then Normal, then Hard until the MP or new patches come out, but there was no campain  :( And the few games I've been able to play via Lan here got mini-dumps; we've never been able to fininsh an entire game yet (but we do have fun "while" we are able to play).

The new AI with 1.4 was great, and I'm finally able to beat the computer on Unfair regularly, but, I've found the way to do that is with LRM first, then HC later. I don't build the majority of the ships available, I want to, I want to have a diverse fleet of different ships ready for anything, but, I've found just 2 types pretty much do the best unfortunetly.

But I'm looking forward to 1.1, and maybe even the expansion to revitalize things. For me, Sins has been like buying the best looking, fastest sports car I've ever had, only to notice there was no passenger seats and a 1 gallon gas tank.  :) 
Reply #58 from Sins Forums Top
I feel SINS failed in providing an online ranking system. It's no fun playing game after game where someone quits as soon as one thing goes against them. The online system really sucked IMHO.
Reply #59 from Sins Forums Top
SINS is done for multiplayer. Never had a shot anyway. Look for single player enhancements only in the future. MP is not a viable strategy for this game.
Reply #60 from Sins Forums Top
Lol at this thread...

"Doom! Doom awaits all who dare multiplayer! It will steal your cattle and pillage your RAM! The twin demons Minidump and Casual Ranking will tear the flesh from your enjoyable gameplay!"

Seriously guys, melodrama much? Multiplay has issues, no denying, but they aren't nearly as frustrating as you are making out and the very small team that made this very big, very sweet game are working hard on them.

Meantime threads like this one are scaring the nubs who would otherwise actually try ICO out, which would incidentally solve at least some of your issues.

Please, think of the nubs
Reply #61 from Sins Forums Top
Dont worry, I will be getting the game soon and play my brains out on multyplayer.
Reply #62 from Sins Forums Top
Sins never reached a critical mass of online players to establish itself as a long term MP game.

While the general support is great the MP oriented one is not.
95% of the techs are not only "weak" they are completely useless or even disadvantageous in an MP environment and the patches only made that worse.
On the other hand there are some glaring unbalances with a few techs (subverter, subjugator, RA) which are extremely powerful if you know how to use them and which dominate "high level" and "fun level" games alike.

MP is only one part of a game and depending on how much emphasis developers put on it it might not even be an important one.
MP also is somewhat of a spoiled child though and if you want it to be successful in the long run you have to treat it favourably compared to other areas (MP balance over SP balance might be unfair from several perspectives, with the respective number of people it affects only being a single one of them, but it is MANDATORY if you want an MP game).

Sins doesnt do that and is probably right in doing so as there never actually was a real online community to lose, only a VERY minor number of people who were interested in long term MP and a small number of people who tried MP out once or twice.
Reply #63 from Sins Forums Top
I think the problem is that Sins multiplayer wasn't really strong to start with. Lots of issues with the netcode, complicated and not up-to-date way to get into games (like StarCraft but even more complicated and since StarCraft there have been some serious improvements like auto-matching and so on).

In addition to that IC started to beat the already weak online community with the death-stick by listening to whining of players who never played online and just were annoyed by some stupid AI decisions (like the siege frig thingy ... they were never too strong, actually they always were way too weak but since the AI kept spamming them people thought there was a problem with them ... instead of just fixing the AI the game balance was ruined).

Those mistakes are slowly corrected now, the latest patch was a nice step in the right direction but the online community has taken a serious hit and it will probably take along time to recover, if it does at all.

Let's just hope that 1.1 fixes the remaining balance issues (because even tiny imbalance has a HUGE impact on online play and people do notice) and that the netcode and matchmaking get a serious update. Because in the end, the only thing that keeps a game alive for month is online play - at least a game that neither a campaign nor an even remotely challenging sandbox mode (as RT4X it simply lacks the complexity of GC2 and the bad AI does the rest to ruin sandbox long term).
Reply #64 from Sins Forums Top
Lets play the numbers game to explain things ladies.

Sins sold: 200,000... People online 200 (max)
Supreme Commander sold: I dont know!!!! People online 500? 50? My memory isn't so shard, so help with the numbers.
Starcraft Sold 10 million. People online id we used 1% model, 10,000. I think I see 30k on few years back.

Anyway 1% is best you will ever get most of the time. As people don't play 24/7.