We could never agree if smurfing was cause of minimizing numbers for SINS online. I can and already did expressed my opinion and how it did affect me and a lot of people in various other threads expressed their opinions regarding this subject. 

What I'm trying to say lets not make another pointless thread about it.

The fact is until change is forced by devs nothing will change and if we want to play SINS online we have to tolerate it if we want it or not.

Community is too small to make 50+ games played or 30+ wins cuts to be allowed to the game.... So we are stuck with it..... Unfortinately

Grey I agree with you completely.

If you remember in January when ZOOMERS was still around with his anti smurf crusade. Back then you couldn't play a game without getting smurf into it a lot of people retired from the game.

Hell i was one of them but as i said i love this game too much..... actually it is only game permanently installed on my PC since i got it. I know why i left at that point and i know what people that left stated for main reason for leaving but whoever smurfs will never admit ..... so its pointless debate.

I do. But it is not just Sins, its basically every RTS game. I have wrote this before but here it is again.

People do not want to read a hundred different forum posts on whats best to spam and what not to do. When they say they want a beginner game they don't want some no life loser kicking there ass and insulting them for not having 10000 hours of play time. Again this is not just Sins. Every person I know will not play RTS on-line because they want to play for fun and not have to become an expert on every patch change. Every person I know that plays RTS on any game will only play LAN or IP.

To me this is a smurfing problem where beginners are not aloud to grow at there own pace without insults and harassment. Again like me and my friends, we gave up on on-line RTS long ago, its not just Sins.

I absolutly refuse to have any part in an on-line community until I have the power to not play with curtain people that I have played with and not want to play with again. Not a fan of Steam but it allows me to ban a player by there Steam ID no matter what there login name happens to be at the time. Because of my great hosting and the rules I had, my games were always full and the banned people wanted in, well if you want in, you best change your attitude or go blow.

When that day comes you will see me come kick some butt, but an a-hole by any other name is still an a-hole and I wasted to much time on this post already, let alone playing a game with them.

The first step is admitting you have a problem.  With our help, I think you can get off the smurfing addiction.

[_]-Greyfox

Grey i have an idea, y dont u open a clinic?

DR Grey will cure your smurf addiction in less then 2 weeks. Satisfaction guaranteed or cost refund.

50% disscount for BIA members.

... I assumed Smurfs were little blue creatures with funny hats

I have 1 female, but I don't share.  I do agree that women + Sins and computer gaming in general are a bad mix.  Women don't want their guys to play games and ignore them.

That was me with the CD key thing that Steam allows me to do and yes people wanted my list. To bad for the asshats that disrupt games or make racist or belittling comments. Bye Bye.

But it was not the CD key, it was Steam ID

rcon_password mypassword // logs you in as admin

status // lists all players ids and slots

rcon kickid 35 //kicks slot 35

rcon banid 0 35 kick //bans id 35 permenantly and kicks them (0 for perm or # of mins ie 15)

rcon writeid //writes the bans to banned_user.cfg on the server

rcon removeid steam_0:0:454545 // removes that steamid from the ban lists

Kicking people because of skill level, especially with a small online community already, is only making the situation worse. I can tell you there is nothing more frustrating for me then sitting waiting for a game to start for 10 minutes only to be booted. Or to be booted multiple times across different games. Who wants to waste 30 minutes just trying to get into a game when you may only have an hour to play.  It's no wonder why single player is still so largely important in the gaming world. I will say though Sins by far is not the worse offender when it comes to discouraging new players from multiplayer.

I feel...I feel so ashamed!  I can hardly live with myself!  I'll never smurf again, honest!

i have never seen more than 45 players online

most of the time i log on, the players are either nonexistent or afk

allowing players to 'ban' others from playing with them would probably make it almost impossible to find a game

It's funny because in WoW, 'smurfing' was a national pastime for members of decked out guilds. I don't know how many times after a long night of raiding, I had a blast logging onto my level 19 smurf / alt and tearing things up in Warsong Gulch (relieved the stress of being the main tank in BWL or AQ40). Or logging onto my juiced up lvl 39 warlock and vaporizing people in Arathi Basin. Even worse my main(s) could finance a new smurf / alt instantly. My guildmates could help me tag mobs to level to the desired target in a one or two off-raid nights.

I guess all I am saying is all online play has 'smurfing', some worse than others. Seems to me the biggest issue with SoaSE is the very low online population. In a game like WoW, the server pops were so large (at least once they allowed server transfers way back in the day) that no one really cared. Everyone did it. Everyone had to survive it and people found ways to cope. But at least they don't get booted. At least they got to play whenever and however long they wanted.

Personally I would have less an issue with smurfing and more with people who are rude / jerks. While I played alts all the time in WoW, I tried hard to not be an &^%*! to others. It is a slippery slope online to be a jerk. So many people are jerks online since there are no real repercussions and they can say things to someone they would never do in real life without getting punched. Online play is not for the emotionally immature but in games like WoW they are in fact the dominant fraction of the player population. Personally I got burned out after years of dealing with internal guild feuds, betrayals, and in general socially handicapped people that I up and quit.

In the end I had wanted to play online to get a break from the rigors of reality but in the end all the politics and people garbage ended up completely detracting from the experience.

I am sure smurfing has contributed to low online play. But hundreds of people (at best) is pitifully small and will have all sorts of issues. Now you are back to situation like high school with cliques and 'castes'. Woot! I left that &*^# went I went off to college and never looked back.

And for those who say life isn't fair ... yes you are absolutely right but applying that concept to online play in a small community is completely off-base. Real life has far more checks and balances, far more opportunities and at least some modicum of rules and punishments. Online play has essentially zero, regardless of the game.

Ironically at this point the majority of people getting booted probably really are new to the SoaSE and those who do the 'booting' are over-reacting to the mischief and past abuses of various smurfs. If anything the over-reaction / cure is probably worse than the original problem / disease. But isn't that human nature?