Playing RTS games online has always been a load of horse shit. 'Strategy' is a myth and really has no bearing at all on how "RTS" games are played online.
Define strategy.
I decided to write this because I can't see this MP mode as even being a game it isn't. If this were cards you might have some sense of a game and there would be the random happening of card distribution and player ability that could constitute some feeling of participation and fun. I have discovered that so called players aren't really interested in playing they're interested in stacked odds and exploting the unknowing noobs.
You wish to be taken seriously, yet you have not given any thought to your posts in true depth. You blame the players which you share a social contract with but you do not realize you can shift that contract to others thus rendering your statement invalid. In an easier way to understand: You could find friends and play with those friends exclusively, you would still be participating in multiplayer mode and genuinely enjoy yourself.
Your analogy is flawed in that you assume that the deck is not transparent and that it is completely immune to human judgment thus presenting true randomization. You next assert that this randomization will turn up only poor results. Obviously you are capable of human judgment and the choices are presented with some degree of transparency. You are able to make value calls and figure out where the game is likely to end up. Lastly, not all players are exploitive, some are on some days and some aren't. You also commit a hasty generalization since your sample size is extremely limited. So, in the end, you have the experiences of a human to figure out whether not a game is rigged and your mind set should follow so that you do not waste your time.
In the end, it's your money - you need to figure out how to capitalize upon your expenditures they do not have to justify themselves to you since it is YOU THAT ASSIGN THE VALUE. Figure it out.
I will never partcicpate in any further so called MP game again. Because there was no real game at all. Just a deliberate exploitation that some people called a game. Nor do I believe that there is any possibility for acheiving any sense of entertainment through such a process.
An interesting note here is that one could interpret what you're saying as the MP game being the 'exploiting game' rather than the multiplayer mode. And you're mostly right in that context, but spiritually you went the other way which has been already dissected and destroyed by various other posters.
I don't call that a game. I call that an exploitive bunch of bullshit not worth participating in. Good bye to SoSE and good bye to all so called MP computer games. I refuse to be the sacrificial scape goat to this sort of bull shit. No thanks.
No one is scape goating, it doesn't fall under that definition. You were certainly a victim of luck, poor judgment, and mindset. However, you were sacrificed to that I will agree and I sympathsize as much as I can. Though come to think of it... you are using something as a scapegoat that is for certain to cover your own flaws. Regardless, go play the game offline and with friends or perhaps talk to people on IRC or use Hamachi; communities await to embrace you as a friend and not as victim, the effort to find them is minimal and probably within a hour or so you will have found people who genuinely wish to have fun *with* you and not at your expense. That would make your 40 dollars a worth while investment.
If you want a game that is widely popular with new players then what you have to have is an MP mode that the odds cannot be stacked against the unwitting.
Human judgment comes in play once again, most new players don't jump into FFAs right off the bat they tend to look for 1v1s or 2v2s or they stay offline until they have some mastery of the game. When you log online, you discard your innocence, you have entered a contract that says: You will be competing against humans and some are fairly shady. That goes with all things human. You simply got unlucky and took a bad experience and inflated it.
To eliminate this sort of BS, as I said from my end of it, so that the playing field is more level some simple sensible changes could be made. All open MP maps should be random instead of pre-chosen by the "Host" eliminating map specific so called "strategies" that only the host and his partner can take advantage of. Second all open games should have random player assignments.
Very short sighted to begin with. There is value to having games where opponents both know the playing field, therefore cutting it off is completely pointless since it adds to the possibilities and enriches the playing field based on system merit alone. Random player assignments prevent honed teams from competing with one another. That also is a pointless restriction. Currently, you are able to view the teams and the game settings which feature unlocked/locked teams and what map you're playing. It is YOUR CHOICE to accept those terms both said and unsaid. You pay a certain price for feigning innocence and stupidity when you're clearly at a higher level than that.
One of the ways you should deal with your current issue is to simply host games of your own and have the settings be that: Random map generator + locked teams + have everyone be on separate teams with parameters such as even odd/every other or in a different pattern. Though, I do agree that there should be a team randomization and it might be in there somewhere already or in development. But there are meta ways to deal with the issue right now.
That way each player starts with the same capacity to develop a real strategy for game play.
It's merely obscuring what normally is done anyways on random maps and that is to scout, but there are always preset build orders because of the possibility limits. Your conclusion based on the aforementioned parameters is completely irrelevant and not a current issue as noted by the fact that these are common settings done in both casual and upper tier games.
Third pirate raid timing should be invisible to all players and random.
There should be a randomization option, you might be onto something there but removing it from a static to random and not having any other setting options only serves to subtract different ways of game play. So leave it in , maybe add a new setting where pirates are randomized after a certain amount of time (my own addition).
That being said, note that IC/Stardock refuses a standard method of play take it as you will. In a sense, that should come as a relief to you on an emotional level not a logical level (Let me spell it out to you: it means the eventual death of competitive gaming since no independent organization is currently willing to create a league and is willing to fund it, thus the game will face a normal half-life in regards to online activity).
Partner games should be done in a separate lobby for those who wish to team compete.
Superfluous since you already suggested random teams and with a few tweaks from what I suggested such as turning it into a setting or option you won't have to deal with segregation or creating another lame chat lobby which only serves to shrink the community.
Anyway, the defense of this so called gaming tells me all I want to know. Don't bother with any MP on this. I tend towards cards, backgammon or such traditional games where all this tendency to create a veiled unfairness doesn't tend to exist.
Some defend it, some don't and the real beef is this: You're at partial fault for being naive, but you are a victim of exploitive game play and there should be new settings to evening things up to make a more varieties of game play so that there can be different playing fields. That will enable you to subjectively decide which game play settings are real. Like I said, IC/Star Dock doesn't have a stance on online gaming save that it eases their burden in balance testing.
Exploitive game play happens in card games, chess tournaments, and really any game you join period. When dealing with humans, you will always have the chance of being exploited.
Well, enough of that at any rate, we understand you care not for our individual nor collective opinions - for some of us we are exploiting your post as a mere low level thought exercise or perhaps we might try to improve your quality of life by making sure you are more aware when you deal with human affairs. There is a saying amongst those of the 40k Persuasion, "There is no such thing as innocence, only degrees of guilt. "
Carighan:
The problem I mean with overall strategy is that there is just too much predictability in our games.
And usually, as soon as a game developer adds unpredictability, forcing sides in a battle to make strategic (not tactical!) adjustments to their setup, the whining starts that the game relies too much on luck. (no joke
)
In essence, with any overall strategy it will be utterly predictable unless you're retarded such as the Allies during World War I when they teched up to tanks but kept using them in small numbers (refer to Guderian's rant in Achtung! Panzer!) But I digress!
Overall strategy will usually be predictable. The smaller strategies/tactics are where near infinite variations are included.
Not saying though that it requires no thinking at all. There's a LOT of tactical thinking to SoaSE. More than most other RTS games, which in extreme cases like WC3 are exclusively clickfests and you might as well let a robot play it.
There's just little strategy
Your example is rather retarded. Robots (AI) do play both SoaSE and WC3, both are completely inferior to humans in regards to both micro, macro, tactical decisions, etc. Therefore, it is obvious that WC3 isn't a click fest nor is SoaSE and nor can current robots play well on either game. You are really giving virtually no credit to WC3 be it because of bias or plain ignorance I know not which.
You really also have no way to measure how much tactical thinking goes into both games in comparison to one another unless you take the top 5% of both populations who play the game and somehow reverse engineer the human brain to figure out how much thinking is actually involved. I am more than certain from my own experiences and watching replays of tournaments of games such as WC3 that it takes the same amount of brain power to play that as SoaSE. The mechanisms on the outside differ, but the internalization of them are relatively the same. Thus, Sins falls under a RTS category more so than a 4X and in the end because of how Sins was designed the variance in tactical thought does not differ much from WC3. However, that is not to say that either games are simple. They are clearly not because scripted game play cannot match a human.
Think logically people, stop thinking with such emotional appeals.
