First let me say that I don't post much. If I do, it's because I have something to say that is important to me. It might not be important to other players. I have been gaming on Sins for months now and it is comon knowlege that the chat interface (ICO) does not do the game justice for a minute. That being said, the casual forum junkies with thier snide coments and those who delight in stating the obvious; just save it for this topic please. This is directed at game admins and developers, or whoever can make the necesary changes to the interface to make it workable or mention it to someone who can. 

I was playing Sins today and noticed a player in my "friends" list trying to set up a game. After attempting to establish a couple player's skill level in order to balance the teams, those players became annoyed and decided to chat spam and continue to come into room after being kicked for making many rude comments and insults directed at host and the other players in the room. The problem was there was no way to keep them out because of the limited ways there are to keep the players that are wanted and keep the players you don't want, out of the game. Now let me just go ahead and try to de-rail the nits. Everyone who has hosted more than one game should know that you have a few options to choose for available slots in your game. For example, to allow only friends, lock the slot, or to select various difficulty levels of computer oponents, instead of the default setting of letting any online player join your game. The problem with these options, as I found out while hosting a differnt room for the 10+ players that we wanted in game,(who were competing for an open slot with the two disuptive players) is that it is very hard to add friends into your list while they were not in your room and and no way to set all the slots to "friend only" before the disruptive players could take a defalt slot. I know this is starting to sound very complicated. However, try to do this under these circumstances and you will see just how complicated this really is. Furthermore, ICO has had this wonderfull problem lately of dropping everyone from the room after a couple of people pops in and out. We think that is the cause but no way to know for sure.  We couldn't just kick untill the legetimate players we all wanted in game were in the room at the same time; because of the "dropping everone including host" problem, So I then resorted to trying to set a password for the room. Trying to get the password to only those that we all wanted in the game. However this was just as hard to coordinate because you can't see where all the players are unless they are all in the same room at the same time. Even then, I would have had to Whisper to each person what the password was. Now let me take this moment to de-fuse the nits once again. I know that I can Whisper to anyone from anywhere and they will get the message no matter where they are. However, I do not have the mental capacity to remember every player trying to get in the game and every variation of spelling for those names. Maybe others have that ability but I do not, and I wouldn't imagine that the majority of Sins players do. Although I could be wrong about this and mabe thats why there are so many better players than myself. I hope I described the situation where it can be understood.

I would like to suggest ways I think these and other comon problems could be averted, though some just might not be possible I guess.

1) Having the ability to see all of the players in the main lobby from any room or game chat room with the abilty to just hit TAB to whisper to the player of choice as you can do now if they are in the same room, without having to change chanels and lose contact with the room you were just in.

2) Have a latter system.

3) Make IP adresses and or CD key link to player accounts. This solves the majority of the "smurfing" issues as players in another player's "friends list" would still show up as a friend even though they are using another name. They could easly be rated by someone in the joined game by assuring other players as to thier skill level and so on.

4) Maybe the most important because of the growing number of players on ICO. Allow the host to have more power in who gets in the game by having a kick/ban option added to friend, lock, computer, etc. This should also exclude a banned player from accessing the chat in that room to avoid further disruption and chat spam. This intergrated with 3rd solution would also stop the banned player from accessing the said room by simply logging out and back in under another name.

5) Fix the dropping problem. The game will just suddenly kick everyone including host out of the room and it has to be created all over again. The whole process of teaming up etc. has to be done again and by then it has kicked us all again. That's primarily why I'm here and not playing the game.

I'm sure there are more ways or even easier ways to improve and solve these major problems and I would like to hear other players thoughts on how this can be done. Constrastly.......if you want to tell me how I can go through more trouble just to host a good game using the current ICO interface, please don't. I know I can add everyone that I would have in my games to my friends list and /f speak them passwords and set the slots to friends. The problem is that I do listen to what teamates are saying to me and other players in game and and having thier allied chat being over-run by the long list of friends logging in and out and changing channels and /f speaking stuff to other players that does not pertain to my game or me is not an option at all. It also doesn't solve the chat spam ability of disruptive players to make it hard to talk to players in game room.

While on that subject I would like to point out some conservative and speculative demographics, since the online multiplayer numbers are obviously increasing. I belive there are atleast one a-hole for every ten people playing games online. I'm sure some would say the ratio is higher. But lets be really conservative and say that the ratio is only 1 out of 100 that play Sins. Some lose intrest and move on to other a-hole activities or whatever a-holes do. Now lets say there are 170 players on ICO as was the case today. That would mean there are 1.7 a-holes online and your game happens to carch all 1.7 of them. That 1 guy and the other 7/10 of his buddy can disrupt 10+ players enough to cause them to not play a game at all or aleast not play the game they want. Now lets say the year is 2010 and at the current rate we now have 340 players on ICO. thats 5.78 a-holes on ICO all at one time. Now lets say they decide to do what they do best. 30 + players are now unable to play the game they want. Thats almost 10% of players tied up with a-holes and not playing. I think you get the picture. We are in dire need of major improvements ICO. If you don't think so and don't think there is a problem at all, you are probably an a-hole or atleast 7/10 of one. In which case it does me no good to tell you not to post because you will anyway. I will give whoever can fix this a couple of more months before I uninstall for the last time and give the game to a relative thats an a-hole, as a gift.

Sincerely, Athilis