(1) Scary .

(2) Game-balance is only a two-way street if your game is badly designed. Having formerly worked on game design in the past (and still doing it occasionally as a hobby), improving any aspect of the game should improve every aspect of the game. If this statement isn't true at ANY point, something is broken on a more fundamental level than game balance. If balancing a multiplayer game ruins or badly hurts the single player game, your game is broken somewhere. In most cases the problem is that single player games often have different goals from multiplayer games but share the same ruleset. So one can be improved, but the other will always suffer as a result. See Guild Wars as a good example. They implemented a lot of PvE-only skills so that PvE players could cope with the balancing of PvP. They ought to be on different rulesets entirely, but they at least mitigated the 'damage'. In a game like Sins, the single player and multiplayer goals are essentially the same. The rulesets are the same. So there is really no argument against balancing the game.

(3) First off, let me say this. When balancing a game, one should never ever listen to what players say. Always look and see what they DO. Apart from outright lying, players at the highest level of the game often don't have much muscle in the part of their brain that explains how they win. All the muscle is concentrated in winning. So while they might THINK something is X, it might be Y instead. You have to WATCH what they do, not listen to what they say. This is the number one fundamental flaw that 90% of game designers make when balancing their games (I'm looking at you, Relic).

It's not impossible to say whether competitive gaming drove the balance. As a witness to the whole spiel, I'll enumerate what happened. The thing about game balance is that there's a feedback loop between the designer and the players. In other words, the more balanced and interesting your game is, the more likely it is that (good) competitive players will latch onto it, the more likely that they will show you how to improve your game balance.

Starcraft never became the phenomenon it was without the intervention of the Koreans. At the early stages of the game, most players (including me) had it in their minds that your player skill was determined by your micro ability. Silly stuff like that carried on through a number of patches. We still drove balance (oh did we drive it...) by exploiting things like 4-pool etc. But when Boxer hit the scene, things started really going. The feedback loop had finally ramped up to the point where it just grew and grew exponentially. This guy was considered inhuman back in the day, and he single-handedly mastered the game (at least the Terran game).

No one could sit around in a 'clan' anymore and bullshit about how good they were. This is a problem with a lot of multiplayer games - the competitive play isn't high-level enough. No, if you were gonna talk shit, you better beat some of those Korean guys or at least not get your face run over. The Koreans understand how to play competitively. They don't form these groups of yes-men around them like Westerners tend to do. They don't bullshit around. They play the game until they kick ass. I saw the same thing in Guild Wars. The top two guilds were almost always Korean, the same two, and they won every tournament I can remember. You don't do that by bullshitting around. These are the guys that drive game balance. The players that can SHOW you their mastery of the game.

(4) I should have stated this more completely. What I mean is that if there is a widespread competitive community and people start paying attention, they will become better at the game. They will realize that 'pieces' of the game exist that they had never considered before. The easiest example is when newer players 'discover' micro. That opens up the game for them. Other examples are specific strategies - in Starcraft, a lot of people have a sort of epiphany when they see that you can block a ramp into your base by building structures there. Things like that is what I was referring to.

(5) Unfortunately, this is almost always true. However, the community has only become 'fractured' into two stronger 'halves' when something like this happens. What if there was no strategy section on the forums, and no one played multiplayer? A lot less people would be excited about this game for sure. The tragedy of it is that competitive and 'casual' players want the same thing, a good fun game with diverse strategies. Multiplayer-oriented balance is what is needed here. If the game is balanced for multiplayer, it's balanced for single-player - period. There are no fine lines in this game to cross (no dancing units, no micro-oriented imbalances, all numerical fixes).

The 'casual' players shouldn't complain about ships being nerfed/buffed/whatever, they should complain that the AI doesn't use the best strategies against them. After a while, it's like the AI just lies down to die for you, waiting for the dagger at your liesure.

(6) It's not the competitive player base. It's a subset of them that form groups of yes-men around themselves and think of themselves as better than everyone in every way just because they might be better at playing a game. I've never been able to tolerate the bullshit these people tell themselves, so I've never been in a clan like this.

The good competitive gaming 'clans' are people that are really the competitive backbone of the game. These guys don't want to win just to gloat, they want to win by improving themselves in the game - 90% of the satisfaction of winning a game is in knowing that you did it because of how you played. I alluded to this slightly in the Stellar Frontier post - the competitive players that were given an unfair advantage could never feel the satisfaction of winning. Real competitive play isn't about being better than someone else, it's about testing your skills against the best. Losing to Boxer in Starcraft is a badge of honor if you played your best. If you're just some pathological asshole, you're not gonna get any satisfaction from playing your best, only from gloating after you win.

The best friends I've ever made in competitive games are those who were excellent opponents - we enjoy learning about each other and playing against each other. This is the spirit of multiplayer gaming.

(7) And I suppose all the people that play single player and all those that casually play multiplayer are perfect angels? You can't pick out a subset of a group and judge the whole group by them. People are even complete assholes in real life when you're right in front of their face. Any community anywhere in the world will have people like this.

There are also some subtleties when speaking about this issue. There are often different opposing philosophies (though they have the same goal) that meet and cause sparks. The philosophy of a lot of competitive gamers is that of Sirlin - play to win. This is a well-defined 'field' full of terminology such as 'scrubs' and whatnot that you've probably heard.

There is nothing wrong with this philosophy, only the way in which people weild it. When someone says something is 'cheap' or 'lame' in a game, they are usually attacking the validity of a tactic in a game. The problem with this, however, is enforcement. The game doesn't know the difference between a 'cheap' and 'lame' strategy and an 'accepted' strategy, all it knows is who won the game. Furthermore, it's difficult to define what is 'cheap' - the definition might differ between people. So the play-to-win gamer decides that any tactic that can be done in the game (apart from using third-party programs/hacks/etc.) is completely valid. Those who decry the use of 'cheap' tactics are, in effect, not playing the real game. This is where the term 'scrub' comes in. It is simply someone with any view of the ruleset of a game other than the real ruleset. In other words, anyone who plays by their 'own' rules instead of the real game rules.

The other philosophy(ies really) is not quite so well-defined but generally comes down to 'play to have fun.' The eternal problem with this is that no one can agree on what fun means. That doesn't make it an invalid philosophy, it just makes it less easy to communicate. Both philosophies' goal is the enjoyment of the game, the first is simply more specific and more well-defined.

The trap people fall into is not agreeing to disagree. Instead they view themselves as completely correct in every way and turn to attacking the other side. This happens in just about every aspect in life that involves groups of people.

(8) I played this game as well. The #1 killer problem with the developer was they listened to what people said instead of watching what they did. Classic fatal mistake.

(9) This is a design mistake. Halo 2 (I think) had the same problem - no standard gametype. The developer dropped the ball here in not providing a standard game type that people wanted to play. So the community was less likely to meet critical mass because they were, in a very real sense, fractured (unlike the use of fractured addressed earlier).

(10) A lot of the conflict just proves that people care about the game. There's a lot of noise for sure, but that happens anywhere. A game staying alive longer is pure proof that the community is invigorated. There is a certainly a lot of crap and noise going on, but the game is better for surviving it.

Never is a long time, by the way .

I don't think so. Let's take two old games off the top of my head - Allegiance and Natural Selection. Both of them still have players, but 'died' long ago.

How many people are still interested in playing these games? A game that is alive has a somewhat steady flow of new players still coming in. That, more than anything, more than any number of ridiculous ladders or whatnot, is the biggest indicator of a game's health - new players join, and want to stay.

Both these games are still maintained by a hardcore competitive playerbase. They got good at the game long ago, they all know each other, and have been playing since the Dark Ages. Occasionally a new person will join the game, but are immediately chased out by both groups. Be it the skill level, the learning curve, the attitudes present. While one could say that the competitive scene is driving these games and keeping them alive, would you call that alive?

I wouldn't, they're both in a state of zombified undeath. There's no POINT to them being alive any more. One could even say Starcraft is in this state. How many new people are joining Starcraft? Despite how huge it is, I think anyone who gave a damn about that game was playing five years ago.

While sure, a dedicated community (frankly, the competitive scene has nothing to do with this) will keep a game 'alive' longer than normal, it's not alive in the sense that the game's existence serves any purpose any more.



This actually wasn't supposed to be in my post - a leftover from an older chunk of writing. But anyway, I feel it brings up a valid point since you mentioned the "play to win", in which case, balance *IS* a two-way street.

One thing I find is that competitive gamers will cry about 'skill' everywhere they can. In FPS games, if the game doesn't have bunnyhopping it doesn't have enough "skill". If it doesn't have hitscan weapons, it's not enough "skill". If it doesn't have headshots or instagibs, it's not enough "skill". What competitive gamers seem to want is every game to be exactly like the last one they were good at.

This *IS* a pivotal point of game balance. I can bunnyhop. I'm not the best, but I can do it. I have better than average aim, I'm pretty decent at FPS games. However, I will not play games with such "SKILLZ"-driven features in it, because they make the game suck. This ultimately degrades to a great game debate about which playerbase to market the game towards. The casual scene wants a game that is fun, unique. See Tribes 2 - slower paced, heavy focus on teamwork, more focus on your tools and less on the player - The competitive scene seems to always want a game that is extremely fast-paced, adreneline-driven, and 'twitchy'. See UT. Frankly, the kinds of games competitive gamers want bore me to tears, and you can easily say that both games require just as much 'skill', but the competitive scene simply wants games that are designed around what THEY do, rather than vice versa.

One could even make a point that the competitive drive is what is contributing to the death of creativity in games. IF you followed what the competitive scene seems to want, you'd be playing the samey games over and over. Hell, the T1 competitive players wanted T2 to be the exact same game, and were furious that it deviated from what they were used to. The TFC competitive players wanted TF2 to be the exact same game, and were livid that they removed grenades.

So it comes down to balance. Do we leave bunnyhopping in, a competitive 'staple'? Or do we take it out to even the playing field for the 'casuals'? Me? As I said, I'm no FPS nub, and bunnyhopping should NEVER be in ANY game.

Another example is micro - how do you balance that? There used to be an 'exploit' in Starcraft that was based around micro - it involved a transport and putting units in and out to avoid damage. As far as the micro players were concerned, this was legit - so why did Blizzard remove it? Technically, it wasn't imbalanced, but it did need to be fixed, so who is right? There's other things as well. Sure a Marine vs. a Zergling is a basic number crunch, but if there's things you can do to dance your units around and increase survivability, when does it become a balance issue? It's like bunnyhopping. It might be 'TEH SKILLZ', but that doesn't mean it's not a broken mechanic.

What about build orders? I think they're a broken mechanic in strategy games as well, as they break what should be player-driven strategy apart into number-driven formulas.

If developers simply watched what people do, it really doesn't matter if you're 'casual' or 'hardcore'. Any experienced player at any game, tag-wearing retard or not, is going to be good at it. Just because I've never been in a clan doesn't mean I'm not better than most of the morons who are. In fact, most of the justification for competitive-based balancing *IS* from developers who listen to them (and then the game invariably falls to shit). Decent stat-collection systems that echo back to the main server alone will serve as a great guide to balance.

As I can't agree that competitive gaming is vital to balance, and competitive gaming keeping a game alive longer is something of a fallacy, what exactly does competitive gaming do, then? Especially, as you pointed out, the difference between Eastern and Western competition. All I can think is that professional competition makes more money for whoever is sponsoring the tournament - the developer of the game actually gets a pretty raw deal there.

To this end, I still see no point in 'catering' to competitive players. They're an extremely small portion of the community, far smaller than they themselves like to think, and their impact on the game is negligible. Games that aren't friendly to a competitive environment (Tribes 2) weren't hurt by that fact, and in fact even 'big name' games that are designed to appeal to competition, like Quake Wars, actually flop pretty badly. Natural Selection's popularity was higher when it had less focus on personal skill and other competitive-driven 'changes'. The difference between 2.0 and 3.0 was night and day, and the game's popularity plummeted once 'competition' took the spotlight. Now nobody gives a fuck about Natural Selection, except the aforementioned die-hards who fought to make the game that way.

Agreed 100% BG2 Redux or something would make a bloody fortune. The closest thing available right now is the NWN series and thats so dulled down from BG2 quality its barely even worth mentioning. Bioware is losing too much of its creativity to corporate commands to keep the game rating low :/ BG2 would've gotten a Mature rating now, and for good reason, but its still awesome, and getting a mature rating doesn't really reduce your target market by much. All you've done is get rid of the kids with overbearing parents who apparently want to shelter them from anything and everything. While there are quite a few of those, a teen rating usually has almost the same affect on those people that a mature rating does.


Back to the fees/xpacs thing...

Since I forgot to mention it in my last post. I think the persistant multiplayer world would get some subscribers, I can't say how many for certain, but I'd definitely give it a go.

The toruneys/events for everyone thing might be a good idea. You'd have to work it well so that its somewhat fair, and you don't just have the korean situation where a guy was making $120k a year playing in starcraft tournaments. Something like how an MMO would do it. Like do a christmas event, everyone gets a free copy of , or all units online are temporarily converted into psychopathic snowball-rocket shooting elves, or both. You know, be creative. Or tournaments where everyone that participates has a chance to win something, like an xpac etc, make sure there are extra prizes for placing high, but give everyone a chance to win something, regardless of skill level. WC3 did this just after the WoW beta started. top 3 players on the ladder at the time got an invite to the beta and a free copy of the game when it was released(along with some other stuff, can't remember what) but anyone who was above a certain number of games played(or a very low # on the ladder, like #2000 or some such, again, I'm not overly good at remembering details) was put into a draw for beta invites as well. Competition is good for a game as long as its not the centerpiece of the game. Having it well balanced and having a good competitive community is great, but you also have to remember that they are only that small % of the community. Having them around at all is going to help the game along, as long as the devs don't just start bending over backwards at thier request.

Just thought I'd interject with a short post.

There, done.

-- Retro

Maybe you could charge for Clans members to have certain features.

You can log on to a normal server for free

To log on and play for your clan, you would need to pay a small premium membership fee. This would get you things like private lobby where only other subscribed clans can meet, clan ladders etc... People can also advertise matches/events etc... to the other clans.
And of course, if their are tournaments/prizes etc..., people are more likely to pay some money towards subscribing.

Another option could be to come to some arrangement with some of the modders - e.g. the mods everyone wants (Star Wars, Star Trek, B5, Stargate, Battlestar etc...) could either have a small fee to download OR could have a small fee to play on a server dedicated to that mod - you could have the following lobby arrangement maybe


General Server - normal games (free)
Clan Server (subscribe)
XXX Server where XXX is a populate mod
General Mod server - take your luck finding someone to play the mod you want on this free server

Maybe this won't work - I haven't played Multi yet as I am still waiting for the game to go on sale in Australia...

Also-
What you may want to try is to 'reward' players who spend time playing the game and getting stupid acheivements (Like Space Ponies, Woo!) with 'tokens' that allow them to access the games on your Totally Games Network, much like how Wii Points work.

Frankly, I'm not sure how many of your older games sell. Most people have probably pirated the heck out of them now. But if you reintroduce them through the point systems, people will start downloading and playing them again.

Now this introduces people to the possibility of playing those old games again. And when they finally get tired or frustrated with that oh so hard to get acheivement, they'll just shell out 5$ for that Gal Civ I game since it's a really good game anyway and they've wanted to play it for a while.

This is a great model that takes advantage of your library of old games and requires minimal support. There will be some issues though, like ensuring legacy games work, and refunding points spent on non-working games, etc. Or you could just make it so you have a policy of not supporting legacy games won through points.

It's free money, and a great tool to boost consumer confidence and your company name. Afterall, how much do your older games contribute to your budget? $500,000? $100,000?
I think the sporadic sales you receive would be better aided through the PR shot you'd gain for this move. Just think how many people would buy your new game (Sins, or whatever) just for a shot to download all the games in your library for free.

And how many of them will just give up after discovering they don't have the time and break down and pony up the $10-$20 to cherry pick the best titles in your legacy library?

You'd have a point, but from what I've seen, 1v1 Starcraft games, Quake 3 deathmatches, are all 'crowning points' of competition. The most money is made and the most hype is made on these tournaments. I can only recall one time I've seen / heard of a team 'victory' in some major event.

(can't edit my post for some stupid reason)

People really need to stop claiming that there's only 200 people playing Sins of a Solar Empire online at once.

The number of people online represents the number of people in the chat forum (or were recently in the chat forum). It does not represent the # of people currently playing games online by a long shot.

Can I ask what's the biggest difference between say, a full-sized TOTA expansion, vs. a handful of your 'mini' expansions rolled into one? Especially since TOTA isn't going to be on store shelves, the difference becomes a little less distinct.

Or rather, what is the driving decision behind TOTA being the 'last' expansion pack? Were sales numbers for DA not promising, and therefore TOTA isn't expected to sell that well? Or is it simply requiring manning on other, bigger, newer projects?

If people are willing to pay for these little expansions, why wouldn't they want to pay for larger ones?

I kind of agree with this statement because of the way the vast majority of companies are. However if you folks for instance stuck with the current game, released many updates and got to a point where peoples concerns with the current product were addressed then maybe in future a system like that could work. The problem is many companies get carried away , chopping a game in tiny parts and calling them expansions. If you spent 8months to 1 year on sins adding content to get it exceptional then I would know this company is in it for the gamers and aiming to make each installment great as opposed to just churning one out with issues and then moving to the next before the first has even met its potential. (I would like to see MP ranking and true all round research done into whats the best MP balance for all, not just veterans, obviously they are a big big factor though+catering to veterans is in some small way catering to replay value because most veterans become so by proving themselves in MP)

To speak about the oblivion packs , some of those were a joke, for example the horse saddle one. Also if your talking about a persistant world , well the problem is I have played many MMOS and I feel when a company is getting monthly fees they just get lazy, why add much more content? money is comming in anyway. (I have played every major MMO on the market and they all lack diversity Im afraid to say, if you are going to go that model I would say make it like eve online where you can pay monthly but when a full expansion comes out you get it free or better yet, go like guild wars business model wise where you have a persistant world which is completely free and people buy expansions if they get good reviews. Even the eve online example isnt too great because from a gamer perspective its very seldom and expansion comes out and by the time content does come out youve paid way way more than the price of a game/expansion.

I believe a company if they have a good enough base product it will get sales for years and they can make money on advertising. At the time when everyone used to lambast me for saying persistant worlds can do it without monthly fees well then guild wars came out. I guess Im saying whatever you come up with it needs to be done in a way to look after gamers since gaming is costing a fortune and at least a portion of us are gradually getting more and more cynical as we get taken for gimick after gimick.

I actually think a persitant world would be great but having seen so many schemes Im sorry if I sound downhearted its just I see games not meet their potential many times over and out of all game genres persistant worlds I have found to have the most lax standards. If you do go this route you need to take your time, concentrate on getting diversity as opposed to monotony to get the project finished on a basis 100% regarding profit and 0% regarding gamer enjoyment. (So many persistant worlds go wrong hence my caution, let me say though if it were done correctly it would be epic)

Just to finish well I must say I am loving sins , I would like to see devs making pledges to make sure MP in this game stays right and perhaps to add small things to give ultimate replay value when time permits but aside from that it is one good game. You folks really need to keep this open mentality going, its a good thing and trying to find something that makes your company money while giving gamers true value for money is key.(Im sorry to say the majority of newer games fall short massivly in this - Myself and a friend played a premium priced fps and finished it in under 4 hours, sorry but this kind of adopted philosophy to make games like this is not good at all, yet the mainstream reviewers like gamespot gave it a good review, it just leads me to believe its one big "racket" sometimes. )

For example say you go a way similiar to guild wars and make a good lot of money, well actually go above and beyond and now and again provide something GOOD to your gamers for free, just occasionally. True give and take between business and consumer , it just doesnt happen and if you did go down this route of after X amount of cash back giving say the odd expansion out free after many months perhaps even a year then the kind of exposure your company would get would be astronomical.

I wish you folks luck , I hope you dont mind me be honest and if I hadnt noticed previous forum posts of how you folks are nice with your community then I wouldnt have bothered writing this. Just to finally say going by past experiances I agree with the below quotes , quoted from the above post.



I also agree with much of what TarlSS say and some of what he states is looking at things in a pragmactic way and is all the more reason to invest more time in the current game to get a superior base product that boasts a massive playerbase. So if your going the MP route well if the base product doesnt have everything the best strats have how will people know that subsequant products will not just be a pre finished pre-cursor to another product and in the end you have something like the sims, all expansions, 0 substance. (Waits for someone to quote the sims sales figures )