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Brutus5000

Don't confuse lack of opposing opinions as absolute stance for your arguments. The majority of people don't participate in these kind of discussions. I am
completely against changing names because I see no value for the community as a whole. I personally find it is annoying to but be able to recognize people. But I get that some people want it every now and then... but that might be sufficient like one a year in my opinion.

Giebmasse

May I then correct your memory if you wish to bring it back up and by doing so also claim incorrect things.

Initial:
https://forum.faforever.com/topic/7653/username-rules-updates?page=1

After feedback:
https://forum.faforever.com/topic/7653/username-rules-updates/201?page=11

Brutus5000

If we hadn't addressed issues fast you wouldn't be able to post your issues in this forum. Also you are throwing a lot of things together that need to be separated.

When the first DDoS wave in November 2023 hit us we had to restructure lots of things in a very short time to make FAF work at all. We are talking about changing that would haven taken months in regular companies that we did within 2 weeks. Still then we had plenty of issues going especially with connectivity due to our Coturn servers being killed by DDoS. For that we found a partial solution too with the Global coturn.

When the more sophisticated 2nd DDoS wave hit us this year we had to restructure even more things. Hence we rushed a few things and even pushed out a broken client update (2025.5.1) that was only available for a few hours. Then it was replaced with a fixed version 2025.5.2. If this isn't fast then I don't know what you expect. Then over time we fixed more and more things like the Newshub again.

This is client and infrastructure. Then there is game patches. A different team with different problems (less of a manpower problem, more of a difficult-to-test problem). There things went very chaotic on the last patch day (but game patch day always has been a meme in FAF for the last decade).

The last part is connectivity with in particular ICE adapter. Of course we know the problems. And I am working on this topic for almost 3 years now (see e.g. my first blog post on the topic here). But things don't always work out the way you want to and even after initial success (blog), I was steering myself into a dead end and started with a new approach. This new approach by the way is currently in testing. And the first larger test was a bummer and failed on all Windows machines. So we see, rushing here doesn't solve problems either.

This topic could have been much much further if we wouldn't have been busy fending of DDoS attacks for months (basically getting nothing else done).

Also telling me to rush things will have more of the opposite effect. I have a full time job, I have a family. I don't want to spend all of my free time on FAF anymore. We have asked for help multiple times. People showed up, consumed a lot of my time and then disappeared again without contributing anything. I am no longer pursuing this approach.

Apart from the game team nothing moves fast in FAF anymore. The glorious time where connectivity was working and multiple devs where putting in 20-40 hours per week are long gone...

Brutus5000

It's not you. It's an error we cannt reproduce locally. We reviewed the code in question multiple times with several people, yet the issue cannot be determined.
Just try again unril ir works

Sheikah

@Nuggets said in Change the handling of Reports - When is a report valid?:

Regarding the “just don’t do X and you won’t get banned” argument — I get it. But that doesn’t address whether X should actually be bannable in a specific context. That’s the discussion I hoped to have: not about misrepresenting moderators or sowing drama, but about refining where, when, and why enforcement kicks in.

This desire to have the context come into play will almost certainly cause more issues that it fixes. Over the last two years almost the moderation team has been working to remove contextual cases from the rules. This was because this directly lead to the situations where moderators had to judge the game state. And that just leads to endless back and forth and interpretations. Then the reason they sought to clarify and remove context was because of complaints from the community around lack of clarity.

It is better that the rules are very clear cut and free from interpretation so that everyone knows what to expect when they report and handle reports. I think the desire to add ambiguity back based on game state or how people were feeling at the time will just lead to a worse situation overall with regards to moderation.

Jip

@Nuggets said in Change the handling of Reports - When is a report valid?:

I didn't know these kind of changes had to go through the association, and was expecting to get more done here. I will be looking to make a proposal, but have to think about it myself first how exactly to form this idea into words

They don't have to go through the association. It's only encouraged that you do so. As an example, this is a discussion about when one is considered leaving a game too early, and these are the corresponding votes on Discord. It's one of the best ways to have a meaningful and transparent discussion with people that are all sympathetic to the objectives of the association, as described by the statutes paragraph 2.2.

Note that if you want to discuss this with the association, it's encouraged to use the association section of the forums. It may also be interesting to collaborate with @Tagada, as what he's writing up is also a suggestion on adjustments for this rule.

@Nuggets said in Change the handling of Reports - When is a report valid?:

The ctrl-k rule is just one part of a bigger problem. Its the enforcement of rules in games where no participant asked them to be enforced. I'm not trying to say you should just exploit or whatever in your average teamgame. But what I am trying to say is that anything that happens (lets take my example) in a 1v1 game should not be held accountable to some rule where BOTH / ALL players in that game know about it AND are fine with it.

I think it's already been explained. If the breach of rules is minor (like a CTRL + K), and nobody of the game makes a report about that then you're 'fine'. If you are still moderated because of a minor infraction then it clearly means that someone in your game was not actually fine with it. Or you gave them the perfect way to troll you. Think about that.

Meanwhile we specifically introduced the recall feature to allow you to end a game gracefully. We even took the effort to refine it. This was often also based on feedback. The request for such a feature originates from the same group of people that are now again complaining about CTRL + K. Now, the recall feature is not perfect. But it is transparent. The intentions of everyone is recorded in the replay. It's clear what is going on.

Which brings me to you @Nuggets . Let's say that the entire team wants to concede in a full share game. This is the assumption you make throughout this thread. Then why do you insist to use the one method that's not transparent about everyone's intentions? The one method that is against the current rules? If you CTRL + K in a full share game you, as an individual, force the game to end. It doesn't say anything about the intentions of your allies. Why not just recall and make it transparent that it's the whole team (minus 1) that wants the game to end? Or just leave on your own, and let full share run its course?

@Nuggets said in Change the handling of Reports - When is a report valid?:

I'm not trying to say you should just exploit or whatever in your average teamgame. But what I am trying to say is that anything that happens (lets take my example) in a 1v1 game should not be held accountable to some rule where BOTH / ALL players in that game know about it AND are fine with it.

I personally would strongly be against allowing exploits to only be moderated when there's a report. Or rating manipulation for that matter. Or other issues that may have long term implications to the community. And above all - I would definitely not approve to streaming how it is done to a wider audience.

Because we can't fix the majority of the exploits they rely on what is called 'security through obscurity'. It's a common term used by security engineers stating that we're not really protected against it, but because nobody knows it is 'okay'. This is the only defense we have against these exploits because - as I started this paragraph with - we are unable to fix them. That makes obscurity our first line and often only line of defense that involves no labor to prevent a wider adoption of exploits. Our second line of defense is moderation, which is very labor intensive for exploits. You have to start the replay to analyze whether the exploit was used, which can be 45 minutes in a slow running game. And before you know it you'll miss it, having to start the replay all over again. Great.

I hope that now we can both agree that it's not in the best interest of the community to create more exposure to exploits. Regardless whether everyone in the game is 'fine' with it. And that we should take moderation action against such exposure.

It feels to me that there's a shared miss conception in this thread by some participants. As if there's a 'good way' of enforcing rules. To make it very clear: there is no good answer to enforcing rules. And when enforcing rules, there's always the risk that one party feels wronged. I don't know who of you got in touch with the police in real life - I can tell you based on experience that the feeling of being wronged is (initially) unavoidable.

One of the objectives of the association is to 'maintain a healthy community environment'. For contributors this responsibility is managed by the board through the contributing guidelines. The responsibility of the wider community is delegated to the moderation team, and is managed by the rules. This is why we have rules: we want to create a healthy community environment.

Late 2024 the moderation team spent their time on reworking the rules. Early 2025 @Giebmasse made an announcement about this. You can read about it in this announcement. These changes originate from feedback from the wider community over the years.

One goal of the changes was to make rules less ambiguous. Less ambiguous means more objective. Objective here should be interpret as 'context free'. This makes the system a lot easier to reason about:

A user does X.
A user is reported for X.
Based on (replay) data, user did indeed do X. If relevant, and reporter was part of the game.
Moderation keeps track of the infringement, based on the history of the user it takes action accordingly.

The rules depict that doing X does not contribute to maintaining a healthy community environment. And because X is objective, any additional context of the situation is ignored. If you do not want to get moderated again, then don't do X again. The simplicity makes it transparent. It being transparent makes it harder to feel wronged. Everyone can understand it. And, when necessary in an appeal for example, everyone can confirm it.

In practice these rules are the best type of rules. They're easy to understand for the user. They're easy to process for the moderator. It's a win-win for everyone.

@Nuggets said in Change the handling of Reports - When is a report valid?:

This is a previous statement from the moderation team:
“Sharing resources — Resources such as reclaim and mass extractors do not have to be shared evenly, but be open to sharing them fairly with your team.
There are no reserved mass extractor slots or reclaim. Teammates taking available resources does not constitute as griefing”

As @Deribus points out - this is as objective as we can make it. Objective as in, context free. It's easy to understand for all players. It's natural to new players. And for more veteran-like players such as yourself, I'm sure that you're in the position to talk to your peers about it. After all - as is often used as an argument for 2k+ players - you're playing with the same group of people all the time. You know one another. Why should this be an issue at all? Why do you bring it up?

And yes - the reclaiming of allied structures is against the rules. Because if your ally wants to give you something, then they can do that! Just like recall, there's an in-game feature to share units. By sharing the unit you clearly communicate your intentions. By reclaiming your allied units you're making the whole situation vague again.

Last, but not least I want to have people understand a few things. This is in particular relevant for association members or those that contribute in general.

Moderation is by far the most thankless job there is. As a moderator you get to deal with things that are absolutely ridiculous. With people that are trying to manipulate the moderator. With people that want to do you, or your loved ones harm. With people that are outright gaslighting you. They take the worst of the worst of the community, and filter it out for us. They are the 'maintaining' part of the 'healthy community environment' that we are talking about.

Maintaining it is not trivial. Moderators are humans too. Not only does this mean that they have feelings, it also means that yes - they too can make a mistake. They process over 400 reports each month. This is time that they spent on sustaining the 'healthy community environment' instead of literally anything else they could be doing right now.

They also process over 40 appeals each month. The process to appeal can be found on the website. Based on what I've seen as owner of both Forums and the Discord - if you are truly on the 'right side' of the argument then you will win the appeal. But often that is just not the case. It's not the case because a lot of the rules are objective. They are context free. You did X. You got reported for X, usually by someone playing with you in the same game. If all boxes are checked, moderation action is taken. It's not difficult, as I tried to ask @Nuggets in this topic: to me it feels you make it difficult for yourself. Just don't do X. Nobody can report you. Nobody can troll you. Problem solved. Why are you so hung up still wanting to do it?

When the rules are discussed it's often not really about the rules. It's about the decisions of the moderation team. Those are done by the moderators. And therefore it is often about the moderators themselves. About how much wrong they do. And about how awful they are. About how unfit they are to make such decisions. About how they don't understand the game. 'Complaints' that are written in such a way that they're at the edge of the rules, but definitely long past the spirit of them.

Let me be quite clear: if it were up to me I would have banned some individuals of this community a long time ago. No appeal process possible. Just get out, do whatever you're doing somewhere else.

Spreading miss information, (practically) harassment of moderators and/or other contributors, miss representing facts, attacking the board, creating conspiracy theories, making 'silly' lobby titles - it was fun the first time. Especially being the target of a conspiracy theory that is about one self. Now, as president of the association that represents the community I have access to all the data. I am owner of the forums. I am the owner of Discord server. I see everything. With all this data reality hits. And it hits hard. Some of the people that I would like to outright ban are not just being silly, they are being ridiculous. Downright damaging the community in the long term, and the 'trust factor' between the players, various teams and the association. Outrageous in my opinion.

Sadly, it is not entirely up to me. According to the statutes 3.3 expelling a member of the association requires 3/4 of the board to agree. And I assume that dismissing team members based on the Governance structure would be similar, al though the procedure is not described there. I do not (yet) want to go through this.

Time and time again, the greater majority of interactions by* the moderation team abide to not just the letter, but also the spirit of the contributing guidelines. I want to thank them for that. Not only do they filter out the worst of the worst for the rest of us. For some reason, they are still decent enough to respond to these topics in a civil manner. Topics that I feel are less about the rules themselves, and more about moderators enforcing them.

In response to @Deli, @Giebmasse described the 'normal' approach to discuss rules. See also his response here. If you truly want to discuss rules, then please read the contributing guidelines and make sure that you understand it. Then proceed to actually discuss the rules - not the decisions. Not the moderators. But the rules and its implications. Why does it (not) contribute to a more healthy environment, according to you? I hope you'll soon find out that it's actually really hard, if not impossible to make (a set of) rules that 'just work' all the time, for everyone involved.

With all of that said - I look forward to the suggestions by @Tagada and @Nuggets to try and help make the rules better.

If you want to show a token of appreciation of the moderation team, then please take the time to upvote the response of @Giebmasse about how to actually discuss the rules. Or just any civil response from a moderator in this topic, or the topic of Deli. It's a small gesture. But sometimes it can be really meaningful to show some appreciation - even if it is just an up vote.

Sheikah

A new beta version has been released that fixes the issue of the ice adapter not starting at https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/releases/tag/v2025.6.0-pioneer-beta-2

Jip

@magge said in Constant crashes of late:

I noticed you have:
warning: SND: XACT3DApply failed.
which usually cause "random crashes."

All known solution are in this thread.

Totally missed that !

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