I'm considering buying this game but since it's effectively online-only (no singleplayer worthy of note), I'm worried about the competitiveness...I generally suck at fast paced RTSes which I'm glad this isn't, and I don't have much time to spend learning a game.

If I'm going to be a scrub my whole career, is it still a worthwhile community to play in? I don't know much about the game finder--is it possible to find a game with other weak players, without spending a whole ton of effort?

My first post on this game's board

Do you mean players that are better than you have been ruining your gaming experience for over a decade?

I think "competitive players" have increased the interest and the number of players that participate in online gaming.

It wouldn't be any fun if everyone just kind of clowned around in the game without trying their best to win.

I've bee playing games for 20 years now (and I used to be online almost exclusively with a lot of competition up till 6 years ago), and I do see a difference between competitive players ad jerks.

Typical competitive players I've encountered in my time: Generally short on words and decently skilled; and don't like to leave unless it's hopeless or RL interrupts. Starts games with "GLHF" and ends with "GG".

Typical jerks I've encountered in my time: Condescending, usually (not always) unskilled, vulgar at best, refuse to adapt to the situation choosing to yell and curse at everyone who's beating them or drop hack (if available) instead.

Sounds like the OP encountered a jerk rather then a competitive/elitist player. He must not have seen that many scouts before and felt they were loosing; thus causing them to get pissed and preform like a small child.

This is an interesting argument; but I think it suffers from an immense flaw.

Your thinking of gamers (people) in two terms only, casual or competitive. But there are lots of other quirks and factors that determine how the player interacts.

I for one would under these circumstances be a casual gamer; I don't game to achieve a good score; that being said I belong to a clan and I play to win in my games. But I don't harass a weak player its not nice.

Other factors to consider are things such as general 'self control' which many people lack, but this is exacerbated on the internet where the penalities for a lack of self control are rare and easy to get around.

A competitive player with self control will not be a jerk, he will quietly try his best, and maybe offer pointers but he won't resort to insults or cheats.

Thats another aspect; fairplay. Many competitive and casual players adhere to a sense of fairplay because they feel it is essential for fun. Contrary to popular belief I often find the more casual players endorse and use the cheat or abusive tactics... why?

Because they have motivations other than winning. They want to rile people up and insult them.

In short; people are not so easily categorized, just because we reduce their identity to a wierd name and a tag does not mean they lose the depth of being a human being with complex motivations and backgrounds.

Some of them are crappy crappy people... but it is not somehow caused by a desire to win games by being good. For many of us being good at the game is the fun; and its not neccesary to win each battle; just that we play competently and make a good showing. Some of my best memories in gaming are losses... others are wins that should have been losses.

I loled at this. I played in this game (allegiance) for quite some time and saying that there is only one strategy, and its a rush to see who gets one ship type first, is very deceptive, in fact an outright lie. I'm guessing you played a total of 4, 5 games tops? No doubt in small servers with not many players?

I will say that the game has a steeper learning curve than any I have ever played. You might have heard of the phenomenon of "Stacking", right? This is when a whole bunch of the "good" players, generally the more experienced ones, join the same team.
This is what ruins allegiance, for everyone, not just newbies. Not some bizzare "Everyone rushes to get one tech, and whoever doesn't reach it first looses" thing. That said when you have a balanced game its the best game I've ever played, by a wide margin.

The problem is there is no competitive field in Sins. Only pub games. Either way that certainly is rude but just because someone is competitive does not mean they are going to act that way. I may laugh at noobs in my own little world but I'd rather play out the game and help them improve than run away and quit. Chances are there is someone equally as new to the game on the other side...

Is that why it's standard practice in an FPS game to raid a server with your clan, stack one team, and then dominate the other until everyone leaves because the score is 192-3? It's not a rare occurrence. It's not even an AVERAGE occurrence. If you deny that this happens on anything less than an everyday basis, you're an idiot or a liar - pick one.

Don't forget the part where you get pissy when the admin tells you to break it up or get the hell out.

Well, as long as the competive player comes to the game's forum to share their 1-2-3 step experience, we can only hope that developers will be smart enough to listen to them, so that they learn what should be modified to make the game less repetive, and hopefully, as deep as possible, if they can spot something that the developer team hasn't ^.^!

You know, Uranium - 235 you are right about alot of things in your posts but you are wrong about stereotyping your views on clans & competitive gamers in general.

You said that you never have been in a clan; obviously I can see how that reflects your opinion. Although I can accurately recall my opinions on clans was nothing but a pool of drama, but one day I said "screw it" and signed up for the first appealing clan.

Not every clan is about using every exploit and every glitch to win a competitive match. I am a member of a BF2142/COD4 clan and your poor statements and insults to clans in general did not reflect my experience being in a clan since the day I joined up. It is true that many clans out there do not hold high the ideas of fairness, common courtsey, and respect. But that is not just clans, it's people in general. One thing that alot of people don't understand is that respect is nothing without honor.

It is normal for people to group together. It is normal for these groups to resent eachother and fight eachother. Joining a clan has its ups and downs, but for the most part it's an experience you don't know anything about until you try it. Politics, competition, new friends, new enemies, coordinated efforts, broader horizons.

From reading your posts you have an extreme black and white point of view on this subject. Although, that is nothing new, the rest of the world fight eachother because nearly everyone is posessed by a black and white prespective. It is too easy to stereotype and label something you know little or nothing about. You can sit there and speculate all day, but you will never really know until you try it for yourself. So cut the arrogant comments and look at the situiation from both points of views first before you judge them. The ability to look at a situiation from more than a single point of view is a trait that should be highly valued.

As a competitive gamer, let me tell you a little about myself.

If you are a normal human being you should enjoy winning and naturally dislike loosing. I for one love winning; I don't like loosing, but I don't hate it. The only time I hate loosing is when it's against jerks; cocky jerks, cheaters, or all of the above..

If I get stuck in a situiation where I will loose repeatedly, I will leave and find someplace easier to play. If I don't have a choice I will become frustrated, but I wont resort to pathetic name calling, glitching or other despicable acts. I prefer easy play, where I can have fun, win, but not have to output 90-100% of my concentration and skill to play. You would not believe how difficult it is to find a game fitting this criteria if you do not have a clan, or group of friends to play with.

The only times I do try my absloute best is when we are doing a scrim or w/e against another clan. Since this is a clan affair the stakes for reputation and respect are higher than ever. So obviously losses are more frustrating, and winning yields greater value than a normal pub match. True that stress takes away from the fun, and loosing a clan war is shameful, but the feeling of winning these matches with your friends and everyone cheering in union is worth it, every time.

Although, sometimes in pub matches the pubbers will put up a hard fight so I fight harder. As well as everyone else in the clan on the server at that time. It's almost like a random challenge. Dont get me wrong though, not every fight is one sided. Often larger clans will get seperated onto opposing teams during a match and be forced to fight anyways. Personally I think this is the best time to test yourself and your clan mates at the same time.

As far as server raids. I have only seen it a few times. We typically ended up fighting eachother except on someone elses laggy turf.

As far as team stacking, if I join another clans server I will naturally join up on the same team as the clan members, because I prefer to play with people who actually know how to coordinate, watch, and support eachother. Obviously over a group of people who run around doing whatever it is that un-organised people do...

I play to have fun and to win, but I won't use glitches, cheats, and exploits to win. As for my clan mates and I the only time they or I would ever exploit or glitch was on our pub when we were messing around. At this point winning doesn't even matter, as long as everyone is happy and having fun i'm game here. Still I might be a tiny bit dissapointed if my profile was damaged from all the messing around. But knowing everyone had fun outweighs that feeling by far.

Often I will smack talk and toss around worthless jokes and insults for fun, but if someone really gets worked up I will let them know I am just messing around. Or if it is not accpetable behavior in the current server I will respect their rules and obey them. Everyone that plays COD4/BF2142 or other M rated games should be grown up and should be able to have some mature fun anyways.

Sins is no expection. I prefer to play PvAI in RTS games though, I don't enjoy watching hours of work slowly fall apart by someone who knows the game inside and out.

Anyways, you shouldn't join a clan because I think good of them. You should join a clan to broaden your horizons. Then you should have the ability to see it from a second point of view so you can later compare your experience to your arrogant self-restrained point of view you once had.

Well there is a reason some of us don't play online.

I see a lot of mention of 'exploiting' and 'cheap' and 'abusive' tactics and such.

A competitive player, by definition, is playing to win. If you are not playing to win at the moment, you are not currently a competitive player. If a competitive player decides to play a game for fun, he takes off his competitive hat and puts on his 'casual' hat.

If it can be done in the game, it's a valid tactic. Period. The game does not acknowledge whether you won by doing something 'cheap', it only acknowledges a win or a lose (and in some, cases a few extras like points or whatever). There is no fuzzy moral quandry, no unanswered philosophical debate going on in a competitive player's mind. All that's there is a win or lose.

Then there is cheating and exploiting. These require things to be done outside of the game (third-party program [wallhacks etc.], 'kill-cam' [it looks even Sins has this issue now ], and others). If you are using something outside the game (metagame), you aren't playing the game. You are playing a cheat/hack/exploit/whatever. I think most competitive players would agree on this point.

But if it's doable with a fresh install/patch of the game, it's completely valid. Though some might have 'moral' issues with this, competitive players do not. It's not because they are 'a-moral' people, it's because they play the EXISTING game to win.

Just thought I'd clear up some of the ambiguous terminology here .

« Spot on » !

The casual players must account for well over 99% of Stardock/Ironclad SINS revenues :

A few millions of $$, for the past 12 months (since the start of the beta-phase pre-orders).

It would be financial suicide to « cater » to a tiny « elite » of MP experts*.

A few days ago, Stardock CEO "Frogboy" made that crystal clear.

(* who will eventually migrate to a more fast & furious RTS frenzy ... and dump SINS)

(1) I was really just trying to clear up some ambiguous definitions, my intention wasn't really to make anyone happy.

(2) I don't think anyone wants the game balanced more than competitive players. When you can totally annihilate someone without any challenge, it's boring. This is why competitive players thrive on each other, because they give each other what they want naturally. (By the way, I'm not a competitive player in this game, but I understand who you are addressing.) Also, I think exploit is a very serious term when it comes to computer games - it alludes to hacking or otherwise using third-party programs to gain an advantage (even if this was not what you meant).

(3) I know that people get angry over things like that because they choose to play by different rules than the game rules. They choose not to play to win, and so when defeated by a tactic/unit/etc. that they consider 'cheap' and wouldn't use themselves, they feel they have been cheated. The problem just lies in the fact that they were giving themselves a handicap. Trust me, competitive players understand what stuff is imbalanced, and they understand that it won't be this way, but they play to win. It's not malicious in any way, they are just using the rules of the game to their advantage - this is mainly what I was trying to do in my post, just to tell people the perspective of the competitive player.

(4) I personally have not talked down to anyone, and have tried my hardest to get both competitive and 'casual' players to agree on imbalances so that Ironclad can get solid, consistent feedback and we can all get a 1.04 that is balanced and has good diverse gameplay. (But I understand that you are addressing those who do lord their skill over others [for no apparent reason, really].)

(5) One of my themes in most of my posts here is that competitive players and 'casual' players want the same thing - a good balanced game with diverse gameplay. If Ironclad does a good job, the competitive and 'casual' gamer will both be rewarded. One does not gain by the detriment of the other. If the game is improved, the game is improved. It really makes no difference whether you're playing 1v1 competitive match or a 10 player FFA against the AI.

(6) Or I (if I were a competitive player, of course) could just play to win.

(7) I don't think Ironclad could make a game that's good for 'casual' play and bad for competitive play at the same time. If there's imbalance in the game, it's there - whether you're in a competitive match or playing vs. the AI or doing a LAN with some friends on the weekend.