Dumb it down for me please. My Dumb Brain cant understand this

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

He exaggerates in that smurfing has nothing to do with low player counts.  It indeed is partially responsible.  It is also exaggeration to say that it is the only reason sins lacks an online community.  DirtySanchez is a regular smurfer(dont even recall him playing his DT name in many months) and is minimizing the role that smurfing plays because he smurfs and likely does not want to feel he contributed to low player counts because of it(speculation since I do not know his motives).  There are many reasons multiplayer sins has low counts.  Smurfing is just one of those reasons.  Whether or not it is a major one depends on who you ask.  Its pointless to debate it much though because the devs have shown no interest in getting rid of smurfing even if they could.  It does not change the opinions of those involved to not smurf either.

[_]-Greyfox

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 don't deny that smurfing is a problem and that I'm part of the problem.  My point is that smurfing is not the primary cause of Sins's low player counts and that you cannot blame it all on smurfing.

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.

In other words, what this game really needs is skill-based match-making.  I agree with that.

That is an interesting idea--give players the ability to personally "ban" other players' CD-keys from being able to join their games and likewise to forcibly prevent themselves from joining games the banned people are hosting.

Online multiplayer isn't for everyone.  Sometimes you will get thumped and beaten.  Ideally, if every game had balanced teams, everyone would lose 50% of the time; losing is just part of playing the game.  The fact that it isn't for everyone fails to completely explain the low player counts because some fraction of players would be able to put up with the trials and tribulations of playing online.  The problem is that so few people ever came online in the first place and so many were chased away by the game's myriad problems that the absolute number of those types of player's is low.  Considering that Sins always had low online player counts, it's surprising that it is still able to retain online multiplayer activity at all.

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

[_]-Greyfox

It's a vicious circle problem.  Some people do it, then everyone else wants to do it.  The other problem is that I suck as a Sins player, but if I come on using a recognizable name I'll end up being a higher draft pick than I warrant.

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 am a doctor already so that just may work.  Now to figure out what to charge....

[_]-Greyfox

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

They all share 1 female, thats why they play on-line so much. 

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.

The multi-player for SINS sucks.  Just play the frakkin game and be thankful that people bother trying to get a game of Rock, Paper, Scissor together.

Dirty suggests giving players the ability to ban by CD Key?  Nutz on that.  What happens when a "CD Key" list gets put out by some asshat and the key gets widebanned?  Players don't own the CD key, StarClad does and only they should have such rights.

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

The user interface issues, the occasional crashes, and the lack of auto-download for custom maps and mods suck, but it's so far superior to playing against AI opponents that it's the only way to play.  I can't play it in single player.

If a guy just doesn't want to play with another guy, what's wrong with that?  It doesn't keep the "personally banned" players from joining other people's games or hosting their own; it's not as though every FPS server has banned you.  What if you want to keep certain asshats out of your game and want to keep from mistakenly joining their games?  I thought MyFist's idea was pretty neat, actually.

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.

maybe you should just play better, problem solved.  You should be ashamed after all this time.  lol

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

 LOL Dirty is that excuse you give yourself    

. If you have recognizable name people will know you and know you are good/bad. You remember Panther. Hes not around anymore but he used to loose caps all the time and he was well known for that reason, and he wasn't picked first because he had recognizable name. Actually if you picked him you knew hes gonna loose 4-5 caps in one game for sure.

Another example is |~Sire if you pick him you know he will sold factories on HW go 4 mil labs and build another frig fact on his roid so if he gets rushed its gg for him.....

While Panther was poor player Sire is medicore so you know what you get when you pick him and this is main complain people have against smurfing. You think he is noob and it turns out he is pro player..... And that's why people check scores for player names they don't recognize. Higgy Grey Itchy ..... just a few of them for which you can get quality just by looking at their name. And they are not equal skill...

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

Last night, a game host actually booted a guy from a game because, in a previous game, he refused to quit once it was clear that his team had lost and his allies had quit.  It didn't seem to hurt game activity at all.

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? 

Dbkita, it's not that bad.  I've made many friends online and enjoyed over 1000 games.  I read that you've been playing against Cruel AIs, so it sounds like you're ready to move up to human competition.  I hope you'll log onto Diplomacy ICO and give a 4v4 or 5v5 game with all human players a try.  Just let everyone know that you're very experienced with single player but new to Sins online.