Did anyone notice that against a lot of skilled players, right as you're about to win...

Yes ... some of my friends have reported that too ... but it concerned newbie players as well as « skilled » gamers who wanted to protect their prrrrrrrecious win/loss record.

Personally, I never play on ICO : the situation you describe is one of the many reasons I don't.

Too much macho pride & vanity seems to be invested by some of the power-players.

Yeah, this, along with having to fast tech to heavy cruisers in any truly competitive online game makes me very reluctant to play.

I'm getting very tired of being forced into rushing Skarova enforcers, beating my opponent and then getting dropped because he doesn't want a loss.

I have seen this in many games, I remember playing pro evolution soccer 6 many times , with 0 lag then all of a sudden it goes crazy until they get ahead, I reckon people put the downloads on or something as the host so they get the wins. All you can do is note peoples names who are like that and dont play them, its a case of big egos, small minds

This is the exact reason why stats are bad and destroy even the best of games when someone decides they don't want their performance on record. Try playing with friends. The scenario you described of the online matches against random people or clan members is typical and has been going on for years. People did this way back with Duke Nukem 3D and Command and Conquer, and they do it today in modern games like Sins too. With today's networking technologies it's actually quite simple to lag your opponent to death too if you know what you're doing.

Can the developers make a rule in the game where if you accidentally (or not) disconnect you get a loss ? Seems like that would solve a lot of the problem. I don't play Sins online yet, but I have played online games for years. Like the above poster said, this is a problem in many games. Of course if you disconnect from a bug in the program (as seems to be happening) you would get a loss and nobody would want that, but still everyone has the same problem over time so it should even out.

If The devs fix this issue I hope you and many others will come back to ICO because it is pretty dead and could use some more people.

or maybe they could make it so that if you dc that the game will pause for 1 minute or till everyone clicks continue without waiting for you to reconnect, after which it would call forfeit.. that way if you say gg, and drop, everyone else con continue right away if they want, but if your isp drops you for example, then you'll have a chance to reconnect..

The one game I played with you, you were the one that lagged out!!!

Although I was the one hosting, we were allied, and clearly superior. I actually liked you enough that I stayed allied with your AI all the way...

But more seriously, yes, it's a problem. It's actually the reason I spent 3 hours configuring my router so I can host, which is now something I do almost exclusively when I play. I'm too tired of having to circumvent an hostile host for a long as possible in order to avoid him leaving the rest of his hanging. When I'm the host, I can at least ensure that this doesn't happen. I don't understand why more players don't take honor in surrendering whenever they're beat, afterall, the way the stats work in Sins currently, the only player that knows whether or not they're valid is yourself. It's actually reached the point where I, in diplomacy games, ally up to share the win with player's who stick it out until the end and doesn't just leave to keep a ludicrously clean record. Especially if I've turned against a former ally.

Alright, that one just sucks. I never play online just because of this type of behavior. You're either an ally, or an enemy, not both. The player you're playing with depends on the fact that he's allying with you and probably leaves his colonies right next to yours without nearly any defenses, while his fleets are far away, helping you BOTH clean your enemies.

I would hang up on you as well, and F*^% the loss. Shame on you

Didn't the designers design this game to take advantage of precisely this sort of behaviour?

It's a diplomacy game, it's expected that players turn against each other, and it has been done to me a lot more than I have done it to others. Leaving a backdoor open for a somewhat unknown ally is done at your own peril. Furthermore, I normally only turn against allies if the teams are stacked in one way or another, in order to make the game challenging. And I often provide fair warning.

The one time I've done something a bit dastardly, which was stealing a planet from under the grasps of a temporary ally (by accident, actually), the teams were stacked. I made up for it by telling my two allies to refrain from giving me any help in the resulting 1vs2, despite the fact that I took a lot of verbal abuse from my former ally, who tellingly had a 100-50-0 record and just quit when his defeat was evident.

I'm going to venture forth and say that you won't find many players as courteous as me in diplomacy games, it's actually quite stupid of me... Finally, if you don't like diplomacy games, just play with locked teams, it's that simple.

[quote]It's a diplomacy game, it's expected that players turn against each other, and it has been done to me a lot more than I have done it to others. Leaving a backdoor open for a somewhat unknown ally is done at your own peril.[quote]

Q! E! D!

Even in HW2 players did this and there wasn't even a stat system, Company of Heroes has a method of recording drops as losses not entirely sure how it works but I think it had something to do with lossing connection to Relic on Line. Basically if you lost connection and your opponenet didn't then you lost.

However where it all went wrong is that lame players soon figured that by introducing lag into the game they would get an oppourtunity to kick, and so did and on occassions scored a win!

They also displayed stats on how many drops were recorded against you.

The only way to sort it out is to make multiplayer accounts stick to registered users, allow players to change their names but the stats are persistant. If you screw about too much then soon no one will want to play with you which is how it should be really. Go buy a new serial and be a good boy...

Honestly, I think a lot of the regular player change their names from time to time for whatever reason......thereby resetting their stats to zero.

The bottom line is that in this game, the online score means absolutely nothing....it is not descriptive of a players ability at all:

-You get free wins from people quitting.
-Winning a 1 on 1 is not the same as winning a 10 person FFA.
-Tonnes of people get beaten and hit "quit" instead of surrender to avoid a loss.
-Many games die soon after creation due to a drop which results in a game remake (and this counts as a game for everyone...usually not a win/loss).

I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would even CARE about their record (nevermind ruin games to improve their own). People can be unbelievably petty.

I am really looking forward to the new online system that is part of the latest merger....I love the game but the online setup is circa 1995.

I like the whole betrayel aspect and out with a geniune crash there is no excuse for hanging up, I lose in strats alot and I never do this. Keep going though and soon nothing will be unique about this game.

My point was that since I normally only "betray" allies if the teams are stacked, I'm robbing them of a sure win. Some people just can't handle that, and leave. So I tell them I'm more than willing to ally up with them in the end if they are defeated and have put up a good fight. Not that I expect the same kindness from them. Heck, I normally also remain on the sidelines if it's a 2vs1 and my ally has engaged the enemy, sometimes giving the enemy player resources to make the fight interesting (I play the game in windowed mode). It's all about having fun.

maybe because they lost many ships they activated a cheat then the game crash
because the game versions dont match anymore

I respect people with losses more than people who are perfect (at least on paper). THis is for 2 reasons:

I respect them as a gamer because it shows that they are battle-hardened. They know that there is someone better than them out there and they give that person their rightful W. Also, they know what it's like to lose, have hopefully learned from that loss, and are now both strategically and mentally mature.

I also respect them as people. Even if I can't see them, I want that person on my team because they will stick by me and work with me no matter how much I suck (hopefully).

If anyone here disagrees with what I'm saying and has a perfect #-0 record, then try facing me or anyone else with a loss or two, or someone who knows how to play, and you'll see how good your record really is.

P.S. No one likes you if you are #-0 and you know it. IT'S NOT RESPECT

Ha-ha, word.

However, the entire ironclad set-up is a mess. There is this ancient game I still play, Diablo2, and I have Titan Quest, but its multiplayer is so messed-up, what, even with outrageously good graphics in comparison, I proffer Diablo2 sometimes, and what’s just one of the few examples.
This game, minimums aside, luck of the campaign aside, should have a multiplayer accounting for the luck of the two foremost, it’s not the case however. It should have a ranking list, and it should be optional, for those who wont to play such, and those who doesn't. This game definitely should implement a separate column of: wins # Lossesses#; Quits# and NO game counts!!!!!!!! Also it should have available achievements record in ranking option available for public view. Those improvements can (yet im not saying it absolutely will) make the game a true classic, such as Starcraft, and most importantly VERY MUCH PLAYEBLE.

Yeah, this was one of the few minidump issues I had. Completely random too, obviously not intended. We were winning at the time IIRC.

That's another problem with the online is the dang minidumps. I have the latest drivers and everything, but I've still crashed a few times, and some of the crashes were highly suspicious.

Anyway, Ironclad needs to find a way to fix this stuff. Obviously Blizzard and other companies found a way, so mimic them. There are probably thousands of Sins players who aren't participating right now because of these issues, and that is unacceptable to me.

You shouldn't be at the mercy of any player during a game, especially the host!

I have pretty much stopped playing online entirely on Sins now, after yet another annoyingly lame disconnect.

And unlike a lot of people, my forum name and online name are the same, and will stay that way. I don't care if I get 50 registered losses on my account, I'm not gonna change my name. But for now, I'm taking a break.

I guess I'll give it time and see what happens in the future.

Later, and thanks for the interest.

12 years ago, there was a game called Quake, my brother was really good at it, and went to these online competitions with a service called Mplayer, back then we only had a 28.8k dial up connection. During the competition when he was winning he would get flooded with ping attacks from people mostly college kids who had T1 and T3 connections in the dorms. And then came the other denial of service attacks which causes your computer to have a BSOD "blue screen of death". It took Microsoft months to fix it, but the damage was done, my brother did not win any matches because he would get nuked every time he started winning. Fast forward 1999, we got DSL and the flooding stopped because we could take the attcks, but then later the people hacked some computers with fast connections and used them on us again, so we had about 5-6 zombie computers flooding us. I tried to contact my ISP, but they where no help, and the FBI does not look into the attacks if it does not cause $20,000 in damages.