I'm really curious if the rating system for this game is supposed to function the same way but simply doesn't because there's so few high ranked players fighting each other and everyone is stuck in the middle or if all the premades got together and fought each other, inflating each others' points, if a lone wolf pub stomping team could still climb their way up by sheer quantity of games.

Judging from the number of people who have voiced support both on the boards and in games, yes, absolutely.  That would be the only game mode I would play if it were implemented.

Thats kinda hard to swallow.  I've ran this on two different machines and experienced equal abbort boxes, error codes, and just suddenly locking up on both of em.  I have a friendslist of around 30 people, and I don't know of a single one of them that has no crashes or lockups, and we all have pretty different machines and configurations.  Some do have it less than others, to a point where it does become virtually non intrusive, except for when it does happen of course. It's hard to immagine that the problem is with a single bug racting to a specific factor all of these computers have in common.

I will say that the crashes/lockups/etc only happen after duration playing for most of the people I play with, or talk to about it.  That is, it rarely just locks up on your first game or two.  But a string of several games seems to increase the odds of this happening.  I have one friend who can't host 5v5s because it crashes out every 2-3 games, where as others can host without problem but still suffer from random crashes and abort codes. 

I've also observed on atleast 3 occasions where a match just hangs at the screen, and as it turns out, someone had an abort code and as soon as they accepted it, they d/ced from the match and the rest continued.  I've only known it to be related to the abort code for 3 occasions because on those 3, it was someone on my friendslist who had the abort box pop up. 

It's just hard to immagine a common factor for all the scenarios that cause a crash or lockup.  My old machine was completely different from this one, barring one thing, a Windows OS.  I ran XP on the old one, and Vista on the new, but both are comrised of completely different hardware and no similar software except for Pidgin and Firefox (so far).  No drivers are the same, completely different chipsets and vid cards (ati from nvidia), etc.  It's hard to immagine that as many people are having this problem have any more similar a setup to mine, than I did to my old computer. 

You know a lot more about it than I do, not disputing that or trying to challenge you.  It's just, as I'm sure you know, the marketing and development teams and their PRs have become so ready to deny any potential faults or problems and try to shuck responsibility.  And they often try to pass that onto the consumers, blaming configurations, or certain incompatabilities, or whatever else.  And its probably true a lot of the time, just like it may be here.  But what kinda machines are you (the development community in general) testing these games on?  I mean my new system is a pretty typical setup, one you would ecpect to be at the forefront of upper mid ranged gaming systems.  I really am curious to know what type and how many machines are tested on in the QA time of a PC game.  I've always wanted the chance to ask a developer what he/she considered the typical setup to be, just because so many games are so bug ridden, and a lot of them fall back on those compatability issues.  It's a natural process of the development cycle, I understand that.  And I know its harder to account for that on PCs than the other media forms since they are a static system of the same components. 

My two pcs are so different in hardware/software setup that its just hard to fathom that one incompatability bug is able to cause this kind of stability issues.  I'm also curious to know if your statement about most people not crashing is an assumption or fact based off of data (And if its data, hopefuly not just the small bank of test computers that apparantly don't crash for ya'll or GPG).  I talk about this in the game lobbies quite often, and I've never had anyone, anyone at all, say that they don't crash or don't have issues with the game. 

Anyway if ya'll open a thread or something asking people to post dxdiag, info, and 'what was going on stories' or such about systems, but only systems that are crashing, would that help you (GPG) pinpoint the problem?

Oh, also, several people I used to play with were more stable, as in rarely crashing, but the last patch made them start having a lot of crashes, especially when trying to host.  Just a little more info from what I've experienced, incase it intrigues or gives any insight (doubtful, and I know you've heard elswhere most likely, but it does add more to the specific configuration bug to think about).

If you're playing against the same people, as in your friends, it won't matter what machine you play on you're still going to see the crashes if the person causing the crashes isn't you. I have experienced no crashes myself, however I have crashed to the Desktop once. Doesn't make sense? The host of the game crashed, and this 'paid it forward' and crashed everyone else. One person's issue literally appeared 5 times bigger because we all thought we had something wrong - turns out it was only one of us.

This coming from someone who's only relationship with punctuation lies in staring at it longingly from across a crowded room.

I'd like to see this implemented.  I want to have the option of playing games that don’t “count”.  I’m one of those who plays with friends almost exclusively.  My reasons for doing so are twofold:

1 - In all community oriented games, I like playing with my friends more than playing with people I don’t know.  We get the same jokes and can talk about “That one game where….”  ( This can be done in the game lobby and during game independent of whose team I’m on.  Random teams are fine. )

2 - I don’t mind losing because the opposing team plays really well.  I do mind losing because someone on my team plays poorly.  ( 90% of the time, randoms play more poorly than my friends.  Random teams are not fine. )

Additionally, there are other considerations to make this idea worthwhile.  I’d love to be able to try out wacky builds, or help out those new to the game by showing them the ropes.  I’m not going to do this in a ranked match unless I’m darn sure ahead of time I’m going to win.  I’m a competitive person when ranking is involved.  If the match doesn’t count, I’m much more laid back.

As to the topic of priorities, I think mods need to take a back seat to incorporating the things that other games in the genre already do… Team auto matching, stats that work, removing exploits (DGs seem balanced very well otherwise), and friend/buddy communication.  Why these items, not counting the issue of exploits, weren’t in at release is a mystery to me as they seem to be near universally present in other games.

I feel DG needs to play catch up before it starts innovating new features like modding, bonus maps, bonus DGs, etc. 

-- Tukulis

Your first point is NOT an issue.  Oh add the feature if you want, but not on some pretense that there is an issue with premades.

Your solution to that problem lies in problem #4.  Correct stat tracking, more robust stat tracking, and a proper ladder system that ranks people depending on the ranks of the other individuals they won or lost against, not just based on wins and losses.  And create an easy to see, in game lobby mechanic to see the relative "skill" of opponents so that people can decide if they want to play against perceptually better people.

Seriously, just color code people relative to the user (ie, a much higher ranked player is red, much lower is grey, even rank is yellow, etc).  Address the issue (that is, lack of information present for people to decide if the game is likely to be too challenging for their tastes) - do not create a work around.

+1 for alt tab issues

and +20 for pathing and bugs. like auto attack issues.

How about 100% modding, since GPG isn't going to support this game post-launch. Just throw the game to the community if you're only going to care about making SupCom 2.

The only problem I see with random placement on teams after game start is griefing and rage quits.

If a player from a premade doesn't get on the same team as their buddies they may feed their friends on the other team or simply end game and start a new one until they get on the same team.

Pantheon or skirmish already does the random placement to some extent but still has it's issues.

ETA on the newpatch?

I know you are dooing your best and are stressed but I would really like to know when we can expect it

Also fix the trying to run away and the dg keeps turning back around to smack a creep or dg.

And stats...

Fix the darn bugs before going to implement new features....

Sorry for the edit forgot 1 last one achievements at least every dg has several achievements that don't complete or complete when you haven't done anything toward that achievement. This has been broken since release. Achievements are broken in multiplayer and single player. This should be fairly simple to have this system working as designed. As far as I am aware they are just counters....