Some questions regarding ICO

Considering to buy the game, want to know what features I can expect from ICO

Hi,

Let me start by saying that this game is fantastic. I've played it at a friend's place and I'm all but completely sure that I'll buy it the moment there's more than 18 eurobucks on my account again, which will be soon. I don't buy games often, being on a tight budget, and the last time I did shell out money for a game it was for Hellgate: London, so I'm somewhat scarred. (Yes, I've been flagshipped)

Now for me the Single Player experience is irrelevant. I played one game against Hard AI and beat it into a bloody pulp. This was my very first game of SoaSE, so as was to be expected, the AI sucks donkey balls. That's okay. I've yet to see an AI in any strategy game that serves as more than an extended tutorial (unless they cheat). In the absence of a campaign it becomes clear that this game was made for multiplayer, and that serves me well. I love multiplayer.

But that leads me to my actual question: what is ICO *like*? I can find precious little information on it on the internet. Ironclad's own webpage has an empty section under the ICO tab. That does not bode well. Is it more than a big internet lobby? That is to say, how does it compare to Blizzard's Battle.net, specifically to the Warcraft 3 experience? What I'm driving at is, how robust is the matchmaking? Can I just click "play" and expect to be matched up with someone roughly my skill level (or at the very least, win/loss ratio?) Can I team up with my friend and tell ICO to find us another team of the same skill level (or ratio) (aka, "Arranged Team")? Will there ever be profiles on the web? What else am I not thinking of, that is, what other great features are there in ICO?

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Can I just click "play" and expect to be matched up with someone roughly my skill level (or at the very least, win/loss ratio?) Can I team up with my friend and tell ICO to find us another team of the same skill level (or ratio) (aka, "Arranged Team")? Will there ever be profiles on the web? What else am I not thinking of, that is, what other great features are there in ICO?

No.

No.

Dunno.

You are missing that it is behind battle.net from Diablo. 1.

They will probably fix it. Eventually.

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So you're saying that essentially ICO doesn't really add any value to the game? I can't see joining random games with people who'll quit halfway through being much fun. In Battle.net, a disconnect meant a loss, no matter for what reason, so with the automated match making, once you got a few wins you'd move beyond the quitters and play other people who are serious about the game. I really can't imagine that this can be all that much trouble to code.

Can anyone say anything POSITIVE about ICO?

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*tumbleweeds*

Errrm... I don't think ICO has ever actually killed anyone. Yet.

It's not a great service. It's not as bad as it could be given the game design in Sins. For team games, the level of coordination required tends to mean that 'player level' has a diminished role compared to your communication skills with whoever you've paired up with. People who don't use chat at all are worth much less as a teammate than someone who is just, well, new. So ideally someone you team up with is going to be someone you've played with in a game before and added to your friends list or organised a game with in advance, etc. The inability to pick similar skill levels for games seems to be turning a lot of new players off though, going by the number of I'M LEAVING FOREVER posts from newbs.

Quitters are now replaced with AI players and while the quitter might not take the loss, you will get a win recorded if you beat their AI replacements. The issue of dropped players tends to be of lesser importance in FFA games, and FFA seems to be where a lot of game design features in Sins really pay off. So again, it's crap, but .. not as bad as it could be.

There is nothing much good to say about ICO. I am sure they'll get around to it in a few months time, but I also don't think it's terribly easy. Right now there are maybe 2 good/great services from Valve and Blizzard and both Steam/Chat and Battle.net must have racked up millions of man-hours of work by this point.

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