RANT: and something the devs should consider more.

Actaully, thinking about it, it's not even hard to make it so new comers can prove they are new and not smurfs. Where we have the button that brings up the player's game win/loss stats, if they have multiple names (which may imply smurfing) just have a button that links to the stats for the other player names associated with that account.

This would at minimum give people like me a way to prove we are new to the game.

Probably not a bad idea to tie your account stats to your registration code. Even if you change your name and avatar, the rest will still be there.

Meanwhile, yes, I find that it can be a pain in the butt. Aside from some treating newcomers like crap, there are also others that constantly berate single players for doing what they like. Since single players make up the bulk of the game owners, they really should have more say in any changes that occur within the game. It's not a case of majority rules, but bloody 90% rules.

So yeah, the MP crowd needs to get a bit more friendly.

I wasn't aware I could do that, I'll look into it.

I meant something for the devs to have automatically done

Agreed. Many players on ICO are unreasonably distrustful and are unwilling to give those with few games the benefit of the doubt... and more importantly, the community doesn't seem to realize that this sort of thing drives player counts down even further. Smurfing sucks, but having a nearly dead online player base is even worse.

There has been a solution, of a sort, which will allow players to much more readily identify newbies and smurfs: all player names will apparently be tied to a permanent ID of some sort, that other players will be able to view, so that even if someone creates a new handle to play online with, their record (or name) will still be visible to all who look at their ID page.

Or something like that. The bottom line is that smurfing in an attempt to confuse identities will probably become a thing of the past once Rebellion comes out.

The thing with team 10: you were most likely in the lobby of a 5v5 match. Online etiquette is that everyone goes to team 10 until team captains are decided, and then the team captains go to some other team (like team 1 and team 9), pick players, and then the other players switch from their team 10 to the team of the captain which picks them.

Perhaps. I used to play day of defeat and they did similar picking schemes. Though if that were the case one would think they would be chatting in the game's lobby about who was going to be who, not pointing fingers about smurfing. But, I digress.

Btw, welcome to the SOASE ultra-competition among the 50 who still play multiplayer.

I still can't (*^& believe StarClad thought that strict MP would sustain the game and a campaign totally unnecessary -because all the companies who came before and put in a good campaign were noobs.

Yes, the lack of a campaign does make it appear more geared toward MP. But since the majority of players do SP, I think they need to be given their due for their patronage.

Here's the thing about people who play against the AI.  They aren't as sensitive to game tweaks as the PvP online multiplayer crowd because the ramifications of most of those tweaks will either never be obvious to them or never make much of a difference.  The AI is such a completely retarded opponent compared to human players that it just won't make much of a difference.  The AI isn't going to be able to figure out how to exploit increased damage or increased shields or hull on a ship like a human player can and it won't really matter anyway since you should be whipping the AI.  (When you play AI, your opponent has severe Down Syndrome; it's completely incapable of real strategic and tactical thought.)

Thus, the focus should be on improving the game for the online multiplayer PvP crowd--the most discerning audience.  Changes that are good for the PvP game should also benefit the crowd that prefers to play against retarded AIs if they notice the changes at all.

That having been said, I'm in favor of having better tutorials and even a single player campaign.

On another note, I always laugh when I see players online with "tough" or vulgar names (who think they're cool) play against AI.  It's just ROFL.  "Uh, dude, if you play against the AI, you're not cool; your opponent is retarded."

Sadly, there's a group of fanatical anti-smurfers who will boot players with either new records or who look like smurfs.  Often the games are named "Skilled/No Smurfs" or some such.  In that case, even if they peg you as being a smurf, if you're not you wouldn't meet the skilled qualification.  You could just join the chat channel and explain that you're new and see if they'll let you fill a spot (and you'll end up being last pick).

Anyway, welcome to the Sins community.  It's an awesome game once you get up to speed and learn how to play human opponents.  It'll probably take you about 50-100 games to be able to hold your own and to figure out how to make a contribution to your team.  Hang in there, it's worth it.

Fixed it for you.

^^

That. Can't say it better if you hired an English professor.

I just got here. Yes, I concur.

For the most part i enjoy playing games with my friends and not online with random people and i don't have that many friends who play this game  so i play against the ai mostly.

I don't mind changes to help the online player vs player community as long as they are just minor tweaks i used to play command and conquer 3 till one patch when the did a major change to the economy specificly for the player vs player games and it ruined the game for me because me and my friends prefer comp stomp we quit the game not long after and after buy the expac and trying it for a while uninstalled both and never looked back.

I guess my point is don't ruin the game just for pvp or any one game type it is hard to balance both i know but as long as they are careful to not ruin the game for one type of player just to help another as i have seen done in other games like command and conquer 3 the i am all for it.

This isn't about changing anything in-game. It's about tweaking the profile system to reduce smurf potential.

Smurfing is bad.

Got booted from a game for "smurfing" with my forum username: KrdaxDrkrun

????

That's... very bad.

There are tons of newer players around nowadays anyway, no one should be kicking players for "smurfing" unless they have a really good reason. Kicking those with fewer games nowadays is simply inviting Sins to regress back to the days of almost null player counts.

It's possible that you (and your friends) will get to the point where playing against the AI just becomes boring and that you'll then crave a greater and more interesting challenge.  The problem with playing against the AI forever is that the AI is pretty much a retarded opponent.  If you get to the point that you cringe when the AI suicides itself on a starbase or wastes money building a starbase in a gravity well full of your ships or fails to manage its capital ships properly so that you can easily focus fire them to death, etc., then you might consider playing PvP against <gasp> strangers on Ironclad Online.  (Your parents may have taught you about "stranger danger" when you were young, but no one can actually physically touch or kidnap you over the Internet, at least not yet.)

stranger danger was also a massive failure, so no worries.

The fact is that in the past year before the launch of sins on steam ~85% of the new accounts where smurfs, of which about half to a third claimed to be noobs (or claim to be less skilled then they actually where). Because of this the majority of the non-smurfers would rather play with recognized accounts, in a way they win either way, either the smurf unmasks or you aren't forced to play with a lousy player.

You might think I'm being a little harsh on the noobs, perhaps I am, but stomping down noobs doesn't satisfy me (in the same way beating a easy ai doesn't give me satisfaction) and watching your team fail miserably is frustrating.

Ideally players would play most of their games vs players of about the same skill level; unfortunately sins never really had the player base for that, which left the noobs to play vs hardened veterans where they wait 30 minuets for the game to fill then get kicked from 3/4 of the games when a *non-smurf* comes, then when they do get to play a game they get crushed and their allies complain about how bad they are; Finally (if you made it this far, few do) after you play 10-20 games you start to become recognized and other players will start to vouch for you.

I'm hoping that with the influx of players from steam there will be enough players for *noob matches* where the new players aren't thrown into the meat grinder in their first online game. This doesnt fix the smurf problem but it should give noobs an easier time.

I'm fairly certain we've already mentioned we're going to address the issue with the multiplayer updates in Rebellion. If not, consider it "mentioned".

I was more troubled by the fact that it seems he was kicked for being suspected of being a smurf, given the number of Steam sales and recent ICO newbies. The more that newer players are accused of being smurfs and kicked out of games, the less likely they'll be to log on again.

It's not that I'm against differentiation by skill or that true smurfs should be tolerated.

Same thing happened to me...a week later I got PMed about whether Seleuceia was a smurf name for some uber pro...

The person who PMed me was not to my knowledge in the game that booted me....but still, I had to wonder if the two events were related...

That I was PMed did not bother me...but that I couldn't even get into an ICO game was just...well, suffice to say, I've pretty much given up on ICO...I'll stick to my LAN games from now on....

Well, I think that's why the pro players have to be an active part of the forum as much as anyone and, hopefully, run across most people here, getting to know them by their forum names as well as ICO names. And maybe a little, friendly approach before booting might get to the heart of it too.

And here I always thought it was a Hellenistic empire.

I actually use the same name on ICO...but to be honest, I've been tempted more than once to use a different name just so I don't get harassed...