You murdered my fantasies, I cannot let you get away with that!!!111

I thought at first you guys were just fps gamers, then I looked thru found you were the best rts gamer.

Even so, you did get some things wrong. I think that's why you got lambasted. If you gave a bad review while getting everything right, no one would have a problem.

It just seems suspicious, if you get thigns wrong.

I mean, if you gave UT3 a perfect 10 calling ti best rpg ever, people would think your a fanboy.

Best of luck though.

Here's the main issue I would take with your review:

You don't gotta change the score, some people have agreed with you. But just remember to not get things that are obvious wrong.

I personally agree with alot of points you made, but when you said you played the game and yet got obvious things wrong...

If you want my opinion, don't get mad at this. Anybody who makes professional or amatuer journalism must listen to critics, and guess what? We are here.

If you ever want to make money off of this, remember what we said.

After all the negative criticism, I hafta give you positive. It's very bold you of you to make a negative review of a game most people agree positive.

But like a dev said, if your gonna do thatm, remember to back up what you say.

I don't give a damn about the score, since the way games are scored generally is so broken. The only blatantly incorrect fact that jumped out at me was when the reviewer said was that metal & crystal extractors decay over time or something, and many of his other complaints (tedium & simplicity) I at least partially agree with. To each their own.

ROFL. One of the highest rated strategy games on their site is "Faces of War".....It out scored this, Supreme Commander expansion, was .1 behind Company of Heroes (LOL!), and, well, that's general it, since they scarcely review strats, and do about six reviews a year. Why is this site being taken seriously? Who knows.....

Anyway, Let's get to the review that "picked out flaws in your game".



Funny, I recollect being able to turn off automatic engagement, and being able to micromanage my forces, but why I'd want, particularly when the a.i. does a superlative job on its own, is beyond me. But meh!! It's disappointing, right?

[quote]Ships are generic and adhere rigidly to a rock-paper-scissors structure. Some cruisers hold fighters and other cruisers have flak to shoot them down.[/quote[

You don't say....



Funny, I recollect HW having the same type of rock, paper, scissors format as Sins (flak frigs kill fighters, cruisers need protection from bombers, corvettes need protection from missiles, etc.). And in terms of borrowing, don't most games do this, particularly when they are ideas that could be improved upon? "Doom 1 had a first person perspective and health bar, shame on HL 2 for playing like Doom, but for being slightly more advanced!!!" Weak sauce.....But what am I expecting from a site that a reviews an RTS every blue moon.



Trap? Are we playing the same game here? When have PJI's ever been able to completely prevent enemy fleets from running through planets? Also, planets usually have multiple access points, but meh. And perhaps the game limits the ability to prevent random jumping willy-nilly, because it would be aggravating to chase down enemy forces all across the "expanses of deep space", where there are not limitations. I'm glad that you perceive such tedious gameplay as being "exciting", but it isn't surprising....




Yes, what they needed were 20 different resources.

Just wanted to provide a long, immature opinion of your review. oh, and if I am not mistaken, planets cannot support as many research stations as they want.

You know, this whole people traveling around in space in things called "spaceships" is SO ripped off from the old television series, UFO, which, as we all know, totally invented that entire concept.

You can just as easily discredit several of the 9/10 reviews by pointing out factual inaccuracies in them as well, does that mean that they are worthless reviews that should be discarded as well?



There are still a few reviewers that actually rate the game on the 1 to 10 system, where 1 is bad, 5 is okay, and 10 is good. Not all reviewers are so ego driven that they only rate in the 6-10 range.





Well... The place that gave Sins a 96/100 (the best score I can find), gave unreal tournament 2004 a 100% score. Does that mean that you have no interest in what they have to say, either, or do make exceptions based on random personal criteria?

Ego driven? Maybe it's more fanboy pandering / advertiser pleasing / status quo driven.

That works better than what I said. I was just thinking of the games that get 90% on the review scores and then the average gamer rates it a 70%.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but I like how 4 stardocks reply on this thread, and none of them every reply to the desynch bug which prevents 50% of us from playing this game multiplayer, and although this isnt my issue, because I can't play the game, I haven't seen too much discussion on improving game balancing either (I really dont like the sound of "ship spamming without expanding to another planet" as being a viable strat AT ALL, but again, how the f*^% would I know. I CANT FINISH 1 GAME)



Sins is in my opinion one of the biggest cons PC gaming has ever been swindled by, and its really sad because I looked on this game as its salvation.

ROFL!!

I wholeheartedly agree. I clamored earlier that the game quality needs to be improved and got no reply from anyone from SD/IC. I have no way of knowing stats. or percentages, but given the amount of references to install issues, desynchs. and minidumps there seem to be real issues with the stability of the game. As much as it may be easier to blame it on the inidividual user, I know I've had plenty of games install and run with no problem or perhaps just a port forwarding tweak or two. You would think that people who are fans of the game would be all for a better product, instead of just blindly defending it (read, fanboy). Anyway, this is probably on the wrong thread by now.

As for the review, everyone is entitled to his or her opinion...even if it is wrong.

Hmmm, I see them frequently replying the technical forum, and they've provided three patches and working on a fourth. Even if there were an issue with your computer, and not the game, how many people would admit that? Likely they'd say it was a game issue, particularly when they haven't updated their drivers in over a year. Just saying.

Its not that the game doesn't run, it does work in singleplayer perfectly on my system, although i havent played a singleplayer game since 1.03. It crashes during every multiplayer game, about 10-15 minutes in.

That could feasibly still be caused by my computer, but lets see now, what games do work on my computer:

World in Conflict
Crysis
Call of duty 4
Ron, SC, War3, DoW, CoH, even (if I bothered to reinstall it because their patch raped my install) *gulp* SUPCOM...

the following games dont work:

Sins of a solar empire.

Yeah, sure, its a problem with MY system, not with THEIR code. But yes this rant is increasingly off-thread, I will shut up now and go back to my hole.

The average of the review factors is 7.25 !?

Well seeing as how you initially weren't being very specific (there is difference between mp issues and a game not working at all), and that I wasn't referencing to you, but merely mentioning how people frequently blame games for their problems, I'm confused by your statement. "GULP" indeed.

But who cares, according to you IC are a bunch of con men.


The average of the review factors is 7.25

What?

very well said.

Hi.

I actually agree with some of the points the reviewer made. However, although I too would rate sins between 6 or 7 out of ten, my reasons for doing so differ from the reviewers.

Now, unlike the reviewer I have played sins for quite a long time, including a number of different beta versions.

Fandangdo (aka BetaAlpha)

Sorry I didn't know this had turned into a technical thread, i was speaking about the OP post.

Oh! As I don't seem to be able to edit my posts any more, I just wanted to add that at least this review does not read like a press release as do many of the other reviews scoring sins highly. If these latter reviews were essays submitted for marking, questions would be raised regarding plagiarism.

Betas 1-4.



Seeing as how its crashign bugs that most of the complaint threads are about, I'd love to know where you're getting your... information. In fact, I don't think I've seen a single desync issue since release, and I've played plenty of games. Dropping players, crashing games, those I've seen (though crashes are rare) but not the desync.

Uh, in the current format.


Which ones? Most of the ones I read didn't make much sense.

(1) That may be true for you, but Ted here next to me thinks about mollusc shells every time he plays Sins. In other words, I would assert that your association is a little bit far-fetched.

(2) Instead of saying 'Warcraft III' you could have said 'any RTS ever made' since your description was rather nebulous and ambiguous.

(3) I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make here, but from my perspective you are mauling yourself. Taken in a 'step back and look at the RTS genre' way, your statement describes, once again, every RTS ever made. Forces are stronger when combined, damage piles higher with more units, kills are made faster with more damage, deaths are made slower with more kills.

Taken, however, in terms of Warcraft III vs. almost every other RTS made, your statement couldn't be more incorrect. WCIII gives a player huge penalties for having large numbers of units, the macro is braindead easy (remember, this is in comparison to other RTSs like Starcraft), the mere EXISTENCE of heroes - all this leads to an extremely micro-heavy situation where, in fact, every single unit is MORE important than they would be in other RTSs. In Starcraft, if you lose a marine from a damage spike, no big deal. You've got 11 more. And 2 other CTRL groups full of stuff. In WCIII, however, losing a single unit is a big loss since your army size is limited, and you are therefore more dependent on the actions and abilities of each individual unit.

Yes, you won't split your units all around the map, but each one is incredibly important to your overall scheme (when compared with other RTSs).

In Sins, there is also a penalty for having more units. But it differs in a lot of ways from WCIII. The first thing is that it's almost ALWAYS desirable to have more units (even at the expense) - in WCIII, it's almost ALWAYS desirable to have fewer units (that is, fewer than the penalty amounts). Also, in small games, where one might imagine that WCIII and Sins can actually have some kind of valid comparison, the first 'tier' penalty is almost negligible. You have to have quite a large, long game, before you reach 30% and 70% penalty.

The next thing that differs is the nature of the penalty. In WCIII, some of the very miniscule macro that you need to do (if you even need to do it, depending on how long the battle takes) revolves around resource gathering. In Sins, there is no resource gathering macro. All resources are essentially tied together by the 'strategic point capture' method. In Sins, you are being penalized less heavily (even at the same percentage) since you don't have to manage your resource income (expand, build mills, move dude to resource B from A).

(The other obvious difference is that in Sins, you take the penalty forever and ever amen until the match is over.)

(4) Here, we can agree.

(5) There is a fundamental difference here in that the resource macromanagement in DoW is essentially nil and is more a function of your micromanagement ability in that you capture these points at the DIRECT expense of the other player through battles. In other words, the combat capability and economy of both players are very closely related functions. In a game like Starcraft, not nearly as much. In a game like Sins, very much so (with a very similar 'build a spy station here' mechanic).

(6) In (1), (2), and (3) you seem to have set up a case against this point (this point being true).

(7) You'll never see this in WCIII, as you said. This is one of the fundamental differences between the two games. Large armies ('Starcraft-style') vs. small strike groups ('Warcraft-style').

(8) You can make a good point here, but that is not a good example to choose. Making a 'hero' unit too powerful in this game is a recipe for disaster since you can build more than one. Heroes in this game are already extremely powerful (way more than worth their supply) at level 8+. Having them being any more so would see this game become a hero rush game, where everyone rushes up to more caps and sends them to each other's homeworlds. In other words, it is questionable or at least up to debate whether the complaining about this particular facet is legitimate.

(9) Here we can also agree. If you read reviews from IGN and their ilk, you can see that they display at least SOME level of professionalism in that they have a system of points, and they talk about important (to players) aspects of the game such as bugs, crashes, gameplay, niggling idiocies, and a whole list of things you will see in every 'professional' game review. This review is a big pile of sophistry. 'This game tries to be like Starcraft, and I didn't like Starcraft, so I don't like this game, and you shouldn't either.' is not a game review, for example. It doesn't speak about the GAME ITSELF which is what people really wanna know about - not that kids that played Starcraft beat you up in high school.

"The concept of restricting travel between planets to a few pre-established lanes is a bit wonky in a game that's supposed to be simulating the wild, wide-open expanses of deep space."

-This game didn't meet my expectations that it would be MoO in 3D.

"After several hours of this incessant buildup, conflict becomes almost inevitable."

-I only played two games against the easy fortifier AI on a huge map. Notice the very unbiased 'incessant.'

"If you can balance pluses and minuses and click the right ship-creation buttons, then you too can conquer the galaxy, it seems, which is profoundly disappointing."

-Learning how to play Go is too easy, so Go must be a trivial and uninteresting game.

There are numerous other logical fallacies in this rather small and incomplete review (where are the racial differences?). The biggest thing that got me was the high density of weasel words ('it seems like', 'essentially *blunt hyperbole*').

Nowhere in this review did he actually REALLY criticize anything apart from saying 'I didn't like it.' At least the 'pro' reviewers will give us analogies to explain problems or provide videos or hilarious screenshots of idiosyncracies - they'll give us concrete examples like 'unit movement is quirky', 'AI pathing is dreadful', 'the framerate dives during X', 'textures are ugly and the artwork is patchwork' or SOMETHING. This guy just doesn't want to tell you what's wrong with the game, he just uses words with negative connotations whenever he describes an action.

Really, it was a waste of time to read that review, and even worse that I should respond to it!

http://xkcd.com/386/