ICO Suggestions
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Sins Forums
Sins Forums
I'm hoping that the online experience is made a bit more user-friendly. As of now I have a hard time telling who's on my team, both when playing and when looking at the diplomacy window.
I recommend making the "fog of war" and alliances more clear.
Also, the system of finding games is a bit old-fashioned. Just sit and watch the game lobby until one pops up...
Other things that are occuring to me:
--There is no key stroke for allied communication. It is a huge pain to have to hit enter, then /a each time. That's dumb
--There is no way to see how large (# of planets) a system will be when joining a game. At best it says things like "small," or "medium."
--It is difficult to access other players' ratings. You should just be able to hover your mouse over their name to see basic info like win/loss record.
--the available games window should auto-refresh.
--in general the game should focus more on shorter games, I think. Very few people want to play for 10 hours straight, or continue over multiple days. Who is really going to agree to meet up again the next day and reload a saved game? That's silly. Focusing on that makes is seem like Sins is only for mondo computer nerds who will devote their entire lives to video games.
--definitely there should be a way to chose starting positions, or at least make allies near each other. How does it make sense that allies are all the way across the solar system from each other?
--You should not be able to chose Surrender vs Quit. That is rediculous. How can you not see that 99% of people will disconnect without surrendering to preserve their records? Furthermore, disconnects should show up negatively on people's records too, otherwise people will just unplug their ethernet cables when they start to lose.
--the online game lobby should not announce each person who leaves and joins the lobby on the main screen. There are 5x more announcements of "so-and-so joined the lobby" than there is conversation.
I recommend making the "fog of war" and alliances more clear.
Also, the system of finding games is a bit old-fashioned. Just sit and watch the game lobby until one pops up...
Other things that are occuring to me:
--There is no key stroke for allied communication. It is a huge pain to have to hit enter, then /a each time. That's dumb
--There is no way to see how large (# of planets) a system will be when joining a game. At best it says things like "small," or "medium."
--It is difficult to access other players' ratings. You should just be able to hover your mouse over their name to see basic info like win/loss record.
--the available games window should auto-refresh.
--in general the game should focus more on shorter games, I think. Very few people want to play for 10 hours straight, or continue over multiple days. Who is really going to agree to meet up again the next day and reload a saved game? That's silly. Focusing on that makes is seem like Sins is only for mondo computer nerds who will devote their entire lives to video games.
--definitely there should be a way to chose starting positions, or at least make allies near each other. How does it make sense that allies are all the way across the solar system from each other?
--You should not be able to chose Surrender vs Quit. That is rediculous. How can you not see that 99% of people will disconnect without surrendering to preserve their records? Furthermore, disconnects should show up negatively on people's records too, otherwise people will just unplug their ethernet cables when they start to lose.
--the online game lobby should not announce each person who leaves and joins the lobby on the main screen. There are 5x more announcements of "so-and-so joined the lobby" than there is conversation.
--of course, making connectivity (such as hosting games from behind routers) easier would help.
Stardock Forums
After being "chastised" for skipping the rest of the guide, he went back to it, actually read the entire thing, fixed his problem and was on his merry hosting way!