Biggest game flaw and MP breaker?

from Sins Forums

Well I bought the game, but after playing around, beating 3 teamed hard AI 1vs3,  20 MP matches (in which I was undefeated in 1 vs1), it seems like I probably should not have bought it . Well at least ironclad is a small dev which distributes online without copy protection   so money is not lost ( I support devs like that in principle) .

So what is wrong? -Simple game is MP only basically and in MP is the average game time.  A good ,fast 1vs1 on small map takes anywhere from 2 to 3-4 hours.  Before you even see enemy at all a good 10-15 minutes passes, and first battles  do not happen until 1-1.5 hour mark. This is outrageously slow. Even on the tiniest map  (e.g. point blank) it takes up  to 20 -30 minutes- and that is a game with 0 development, research and expansion. With a medium map...-forget it  , you not gonna finish it at all .Most medium team/ffa games player quit at about 3nd-3d hour and there is no sight of game end at that point.

And proof that this concept is failing is declining MP population .It is been only a few weeks since release and lobby population already halved ( form 500+ to200-300).

 Compare that to a game like Supreme Commander (especially FA expansion) - 1 vs 1 typically is under 30 minutes and epic, big battles with highest tier units  rarely last past 1 hour. And this 1 hour is one intense heated action, not slow pointless build up like in SoaSe.

I like the concept, I like races, I like game play, but the pace is just way too glacial imho. I do not know if it is possible to fix it  but imho devs should seriously consider drastically revamping game to speed up multi player  pace.

A lot of things imho needs to happen -faster research and build time,faster combat and travel. Better conditions to win (very often it is pointless to continue after you eliminated opponent fleet- he has no chance to recover, but you still have to wipe their colonies and that takes very long time ). All of this of course would take complete rebalance of most aspects of the game and it is sad that this didnt happen in beta.

 

 

 

68,248 views 41 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Only huge ffas take that long, a 1vs1 on point blank is usually done within 30 minutes or less. The enemy homeworld is at 1 jump on that map, you start fighting right away, if you don't, it's your fault that the game doesn't progress. 1vs1 and 2vs2 playing times will get shorter as people learn to play, and start being more aggressive instead of building up and parking their fleet somewhere without using it. When i first started playing, games were very long, because i was slow. They got shorter with time. They will get even shorter while i learn to progress faster in the game.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
Assuming decent players and no quiters, our locked team 2v2 games on random medium sized maps take about 1-2 hours on average, and they are slowly speeding up.
Fences - Organize your desktop icons today!
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
I finish 6 player FFAs all the time. :LOL: They don't take more than 4 hours usually.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
So what is wrong? -Simple game is MP only basically and in MP is the average game time.  A good ,fast 1vs1 on small map takes anywhere from 2 to 3-4 hours.  Before you even see enemy at all a good 10-15 minutes passes, and first battles  do not happen until 1-1.5 hour mark. This is outrageously slow. Even on the tiniest map  (e.g. point blank) it takes up  to 20 -30 minutes- and that is a game with 0 development, research and expansion. With a medium map...-forget it  , you not gonna finish it at all .Most medium team/ffa games player quit at about 3nd-3d hour and there is no sight of game end at that point.
And proof that this concept is failing is declining MP population .It is been only a few weeks since release and lobby population already halved ( form 500+ to200-300).
 Compare that to a game like Supreme Commander (especially FA expansion) - 1 vs 1 typically is under 30 minutes and epic, big battles with highest tier units  rarely last past 1 hour. And this 1 hour is one intense heated action, not slow pointless build up like in SoaSe.


Has the thought occurred that something is not necessarily 'wrong' just because you don't like it? The whole point of SoaSE is that it offers an alternative to click-fest games like Supreme Commander without going the whole hog, as it were, towards the pseudo-turned based approach of games like Europa Universalis 3. As with any new idea some will like it and some won't, but with Stardock the publisher is was inevitable that a great many people getting interested in the game would be GalCiv players wanting to see an emphasis on the '4X' side. I would tend to agree that a falling MP population is an indicator that, unsurprisingly, many people prefer their MP games to be somewhat shorter but that is no reason to turn a unique game into yet another example of a genre that has more than enough games already. In terms of 'failure' you are wrong; you are assuming sales would have been the same if SoaSE had been a click-fest game. I disagree, I think the game you would have preferred to see would have ended as as a mediocre bog-standard RTS title that sank without trace... as opposed to the best-seller it turned out to be.

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
this game isnt in a sense your standard RTS...think of it as a real time turn based game...those games take hours to...games can go on for days and weeks.....sins with its real time attribute doesnt take that long..but its could if you wanted it. this game was set out from the get go to not be some fast paced knock a whole game out in your lunchbreak game. if you dont like it....move on..or get much faster..because the game turned out how the devs wanted it and how most of us that have been following the game from before the days of stardock joining in have known how it was going to be and were perfectly fine with that.
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
even on the larger 1v1 random small maps (14 planets, not 6-9) the first battles between competent players usually occur within 20-35 minutes and the game barely ever last over 70 minutes.
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
A large 8-player game of Rise of Nations lasts a bit over an hour. It's roughly comparable to a Sins game of 50-60 planets, single star system - Twin Empires is a good example. The Twin Empires game lasts at least two to three hours, usually ending because one side has quit or surrendered.

Rise is a fast-paced game, yes, but it's also quite a lot deeper than Sins. Yet all that fits in a much shorter time and most importantly, it's a predictable time - you know what you're committing to. You can also expect to see the entire spectrum of the tech tree from Stone Age to Information Age, unlike in Sins.

Sins really does need more scaling options to be a good multiplayer game for anyone but those people who can spare hours at a time. Research cost (not only speed) scaling, victory conditions, accelerated start options are pretty much standard issue in all 4X games and also in the Civ/RTS hybrid genre, so why not in Sins?
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
I want see this 1vs1 "competent" player's replays who finish medium game in 70 minutes. The only time it happens if one of the players (maybe both?) is complete retard and gets steamrolled after first encounter.

Fact is if the game takes 2+ hours to finish a map it is not a good MP experience. SoaSe is in fact more of a clickfest than SupCom due to some bad interface decisions (for example you can only queue things up AFTER you have resources, not beforehand- kills the queuing idea altogether).

How broken Soase is is easily observed on 1 hour+ battles. Both sides can put new ships into battle often even faster than old ships are killed (ridiculously slow kill rate). You can easily bypass fleet guarding system basically with no loss (another broken point of the game) , but killing anything will still take ages, let alone taking over a planet. Again in any decent RTS killing doesn't take much that long,big battles are spectacular but fast paced, in SoaSe they drag into boredom.

Sins is an rts not 4x games like GalCiv2. In fact it is MP only RTS (non existing campaign and retarded AI) .And one of the most important in online game is Fun to time spent ratio. With SoASe it is rapidly approaching zero.


I finish 6 player FFAs all the time. They don't take more than 4 hours usually.


Yup. 6 player ffa doesnt last more than 4 hours- at this point even the most hardcore players usually quit in disgust regretting 4 HOURS+! of their wasted time.
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
I have played a lot of Supreme commander, COH, homeworld2,Rise of Nations, and many other RTS's online and they do usually play at a faster pace, but Sins is a different kind of game targeting the 4X audience, that may be smaller but enjoyed a more strategic/economic experience to the clickfest. I also play a lot of civ4 and other Turn based games online and those can take three or four hours or longer to reach resolution as well.

I think that Sins is a great online experience, even if games can get long, I have the patience to enjoy them and find them pretty exciting from start to finish. A patient audience will definitely be smaller than what you see on FPS's and smaller scale RTS's (which are fine, I like those too), but I do think that SINS is deep enough to hold the interest of a strong player community (much like Civ4).
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
Rise is a fast-paced game, yes, but it's also quite a lot deeper than Sins.


Man, what are you smoking??? It's "deep" only in the sense there is more stages. Might as well talk about Empire Earth II if that's the kind of mindless "deep" game play people want.

I think there will always be some fast-twitch RTS players that don't "get" Sins. Speed does not equate to strategy. :SURPRISED:
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
Rise is a fast-paced game, yes, but it's also quite a lot deeper than Sins.Man, what are you smoking??? It's "deep" only in the sense there is more stages. Might as well talk about Empire Earth II if that's the kind of mindless "deep" game play people want.I think there will always be some fast-twitch RTS players that don't "get" Sins. Speed does not equate to strategy.



Funny I rarely play RTS, in fact I do not like genre at all with the only exception being supcom. I prefer 4X games like Civ,MoM,MoO or more recent one GalCiv2 (can't wait for Twilight of Arnor)


Speed does not equate to strategy.


Slow speed does not equate to deeper strategy.Slowing same old RTS gameplay down to molasses does not magically transform it into 4x game.
Reply #12 from Stardock Forums Top
Ah, the choice to play or not to play. I enjoy this right. I exercise it all the time.

I'm glad that the people who are apparently holding guns to people's heads, forcing them to play Sins, haven't appeared in my town yet.

Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
Ah, the choice to play or not to play. I enjoy this right.

I exercise it all the time.I'm glad that the people who are apparently holding guns to people's heads, forcing them to play Sins, haven't appeared in my town yet.



 :CONGRAT: 
Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top
Rise is a fast-paced game, yes, but it's also quite a lot deeper than Sins.Man, what are you smoking??? It's "deep" only in the sense there is more stages. Might as well talk about Empire Earth II if that's the kind of mindless "deep" game play people want.I think there will always be some fast-twitch RTS players that don't "get" Sins. Speed does not equate to strategy.Funny I rarely play RTS, in fact I do not like genre at all with the only exception being supcom. I prefer 4X games like Civ,MoM,MoO or more recent one GalCiv2 (can't wait for Twilight of Arnor)
Speed does not equate to strategy.Slow speed does not equate to deeper strategy.Slowing same old RTS gameplay down to molasses does not magically transform it into 4x game.


Dang!! why did they skip me!??!?! finaly I'd have an excuse to give my teachers why I stayed home all day playing sins instead of going to school!!

....Yes, this game has problems, But, in heart, it is a good game. With a little patching, it will change gameplay forever.

I also belive that as multiplayer gets more skilled, games will get faster, less of the tree will get reaserched. As a noob in HW my games were no shorter than my Sins games now, and I did reaserch the intire Tree. As a skilled in HW, I'd only reaserch a small portion of the tree, and games would last as short as fifteen minites.

Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top
darkmadmax you claimed that your first battle is only after 1 hour, this means that both you and your opponent are actually colonizing planets that are not in the direction of the opponent at all and then both just sit there when you guys reach each other or just avoid each other, till one thinks he has an upper hand.

most 1v1 players who focus on 1v1 spearhead their colonization towards the enemies planets (easy to figure out on small maps even random, with early scouting) and thus the battles begin quite early on and theres a lot of pressure on each other from around the 30 minute mark (if the distance in jumps between homeworlds is over 10+ jumps its around the 30-35 minute mark that both start fighting).

now this has nothing to do with how well the player does in that game, but it does show that they are players who played a lot of 1v1 or watched replays.

oh im not saying the game is fast enough for small maps and I would like a faster setting, but claiming that all your 1v1 games had there first battles only after an hour means you didnt play against people like recon.au, spiceant..etc.
Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top
I'm really looking forward to playing this with my lan group soon. I'll admit, the game does have some flaws, but I'm really digging the length and strategy of it all.
Reply #17 from Sins Forums Top
Compare that to a game like Supreme Commander (especially FA expansion) - 1 vs 1 typically is under 30 minutes and epic, big battles with highest tier units rarely last past 1 hour. And this 1 hour is one intense heated action, not slow pointless build up like in SoaSe.


In the Beginning of SupCom, when the rules were different and the players were less skilled, if a player turtled, the game could last for 3 or 4 hours or more, I remember seeing people on the boards being frustrated about how FFA games could last 6 hours. Yes, by the time the FA expansion came out things were streamlined a lot, but FA was like 8 months after the game itself. This game has been out for not even a month.

Again in any decent RTS killing doesn't take that long,


Funny I rarely play RTS, in fact I do not like genre at all with the only exception being supcom


You say that you dislike all RTS games, and then you say you don't like this game because it's not like all the other RTS games. Which one of your contradictory statements is correct?
Reply #18 from Sins Forums Top
Funny I rarely play RTS, in fact I do not like genre at all with the only exception being supcom. I prefer 4X games like Civ,MoM,MoO or more recent one GalCiv2 (can't wait for Twilight of Arnor)

Slow speed does not equate to deeper strategy.Slowing same old RTS gameplay down to molasses does not magically transform it into 4x game.


The strategy is deeper because there are 4X and RTS elements to manage together. I'll say off-the-bat that I'm not playing SupCom. One of my friends (old-time RTS player) played it extensively and didn't really like it. It was just another RTS, but with grander scale. I think "annoying" was the way he summed it up.

I personally play Sins on "fast", but there are 4X players that find the game too fast. Some players find having to rush through the game would make it a waste of time, which is flip-side of your POV. Besides, Ironclad already stated they'll add faster and slower options.

And of course, it's possible to bypass defenses going from system to system. This is SPACE - the vastness of space - we're talking about. Cutting off planets isn't like having a mountain in the way.

Perhaps you're not enchanted because it's not deep enough as a 4X game, yet not fast like SupCom. If you believe all RTSes should be like SupCom (which I can't even be bothered with), then yeah, you're gonna be disappointed.
Reply #19 from Sins Forums Top
Hi Durikkan
Been reading your posts all over the forums trying to "defend" the 4X aspects of
the game. Unfortunatly I think were in the minority. keep up the good work!
I've noticed a few posters on the threads you've been on claiming to be big fans
of 4X games, but all of there arguments belie this claim, especially the longer the
thread goes on. Most of there arguments tend toward nutering the 4X aspects of the game. I don't think DarkMaDMax has posted enough times yet to assertain this viewpoint
for certain but he's well on his way.
Reply #20 from Sins Forums Top
Of course, all of this could be fixed really simply by having a slider "game time", which just modify's stuff based on the selected time
eg, fast would make everything half price, build 2x as fast, and 2x as fast moving units
normal would be normal
slow would double costs, times, etc

This would be so damn simple to implement, can't believe they haven't done this. It would be perfect for having crazy 4v4s done in 30 minutes of manic clicking. I know SINS wasn't designed for this as such, but hell, why not give people the most options possible when playing your game which you spent 2 years+ developing?????
Reply #21 from Sins Forums Top
Been reading your posts all over the forums trying to "defend" the 4X aspects of
the game. Unfortunatly I think were in the minority. keep up the good work


Yeah, I got this game because it was advertised as a RTS/4x hybrid, but I consider this game as it is to be like 95% RTS and 5% 4X. It's still a good game, though. I'm just trying to prevent that 5% from becoming 0%. If I ever find myself completely outvoted I'll just withdraw from the forums and make a mod, instead.
Reply #22 from Sins Forums Top
Of course, all of this could be fixed really simply by having a slider "game time", which just modify's stuff based on the selected time
eg, fast would make everything half price, build 2x as fast, and 2x as fast moving units
normal would be normal
slow would double costs, times, etc


I take it the time acceleration commands don't work in multiplayer? Maybe they're working on a way to make it work for multiple players.
Reply #23 from Sins Forums Top

Look guys, the OP has a very good point, a lot of people don't have the time for games that last 3-4 hours a session, but still want to experience the game above the first couple of tiers and 1v1 on small maps.

I don't see why you can't have faster settings as an OPTION. That's all it will be, no one is holding a gun to your head and making you play everything at twice the speed, it's simply an option for those who want to enjoy the game a certain way, it wouldn't be that hard to implement and would increase the appeal of the game.

I'm 100% behind giving us the option of faster settings.
Reply #24 from Sins Forums Top
Ah guys, didn't Frogboy already mention faster _and_ slower options in v1.03? Let's just wait and see. :D

Reply #25 from Stardock Forums Top
Actually, it is kind of hard to have that perspective at times. Frankly, this game has only been out less than a month. They've made some improvements already, but if you're familiar with how things go with Stardock (and I assume by extension Ironclad), then you're probably aware that they take their improvements seriously.

They really try to offer more options.


I guess the main question is...where does the line of "Vision of the Game Designers" end and "Vision of the Game Players" begin? Because that is the purview of Mods, making the game different than intended.

It basically comes down to the fact that the game is still very much a new game. Expecting it to be perfect and to satisfy your every need right out of the box is a little...premature, I would think. Plus...this is the first in a new style for this developer. I really think we need to let them express themselves.

That being stated...I look forward to the mods and other people's vision of the game. Perhaps the critics will find one of those to satisfy them.