online gaming

Unless you're playing LAN, you must be updated to the most recent version to play online.  Organizing a mod game is very time consuming, and you'll probably need to advertise it ahead of time on the forums, so I'd advise avoiding mods as well.

Generally if you want to get strangers to join the game, use the following settings:

• All speeds on fastest setting
• Quickstart enabled
• Pirates off
• Locked teams
• Randomly generated map

This is the widely accepted standard template for multiplayer games, and many people will refuse to play if you deviate on any of the above settings.

Got to love the multiplayer arena in Sins. And people wonder why so few play online. You've effectively squashed people who don't play online from ever being able to.

Want to explain why?

This type of problem with the lack of (actually played) map variety and game settings isn't unique to Sins.  It seems to happen in many online games when the player counts are low.  Consider the game Unreal Tournament, released back in 1999, for example.  People still play, but if you want to play capture-the-flag with standard settings, the only servers that are populated offer just one map--and people play that one map over and over and over and over even though there are hundreds of decent maps and about 100 pretty good maps for that game.

New people still log onto ICO and become regular players now and then.  However, to do it today you need to be patient and very determined to want to play it online (against other people) because you're going to get whooped by the pros who've played 1000+ games against other people while you learn the game.

If anyone's interested in multiplayer but wants to play without being horribly massacred by the more expert players on ICO or on nonstandard settings or maps, feel free to PM me if you want to set something up. I'm decent (I think) and can give tips even though I haven't played that many games.

The online community has it's own "rules". Don't play by them and you won't get a MP game at all. Play by them and you get crushed and scorned by the experts, who of course are massively skilled with the one specific playstyle permitted.

Effectively, online Sins is an elite old boys' club.

It's kind of cliquish.  However, many of us are aware of the fact that we need new members and that we need to encourage noobies to play the game online.  Most of the time if you just tell everyone that you're newish and follow your allies' advice in the game and be polite, you'll be welcome.  If you make the investment of playing 50 PvP games you'll get up to speed and be able to hold your own.

What "rules" do you take objection to?  The Faster speed settings?  We need the Faster speed settings and Quickstart to reduce the amount of time it takes to play the game.  The problem with most of the standard non-random maps is that they just don't work very well for PvP games, such as the multistars (which take longer to play and result in lag).  Sometimes people will host non-random maps for 2v2 and 3v3 games because some of those maps are OK.

Of course, the more people who have the cajones and desire to play online multiplayer PvP, the easier it will be to host and fill games on the non-random maps or with different settings.  The percentage of pros online who play PvP would also decrease.  Instead of whining about it, why not come online, be patient, take your nooby lumps, watch replays where you can study the pros so that you can improve, relax, and just enjoy the process of becoming a tougher and tougher player and an increasingly bigger pain-in-the-ass as you gain more and more experience?  Treat it as though you were a noob just learning to play an FPS game--you're going to get killed 5 times for every time you kill someone else and you're not going to bring the enemy flag home, but you enjoy those frags that you do score and you try to become a better and better fragger.