New Player Councilor Discussion + Removal Announcements

Actually, the Full Share discussion stems from a problem where a team joining as a party has 1 bored member... or an uneven rating team apparently wins because they lost the lowest ranked ACU.

I read something about a "Demoralization" victory condition. I cannot find much about it. However if it means that you remain in control of your buildings and stuff after your ACU dies, and your team only loses when all ACU's are dead, then this also solves the problem in an even better way for party-based play especially.

...Aside from not seeing half the enemies stuff explode which remains anticlimactic

Demoralization is you and your team quitting the game via Ctrl-K.

FYI, I have now discussed my proposed TMM plan with Askaholic in more detail, and he said that it's not much work for him on the server (since it largely utilizes already created coding architecture). So, from a technical standpoint, that shouldn't be a problem.

Askaholic is becoming Answeraholic as of recent with this PC election...

Anyways, I am going to answer @biass questions now. I would like to respond to a couple others, especially FTX response to my post soon but am awaiting some more answers.

Biass, you asked:

First, why are you here?
You've answered what you want to do. But why are you applying exactly?
Are you applying to do these things specifically, and why are you not doing them already?

I am here because as someone who has played the game for close to 15 years I want to continue to support it and the people that around it. My ideas for accomplishing tasks as the player councilor are very close to FTX's but I believe in certain key areas I can do it better, for example map evaluation for ladder and TMM pools.

I am applying to do these things not only because I could do them now, but set a protocol and open, transparent policy on how they are done. As stated in @Aulex post here there is a need to focus a bit more on some other areas of the community. I want to do that and not distract myself with what should be other's responsibilities such as the promo council not working on FAF live.

More often than not, the primary role of the Player Councilor is to act as the beat-stick. The "Main tank" if you will. What i'm saying is that in the role, you'll cop a truckload of literal shit that you can't actually do anything about.
How do you expect to fare against the tide?

Do you think your past history as contributors here will reflect well on your chances?

Easy: I was M&M council for awhile and was beat up all the time by anyone and everyone, including you @biass . The only reason I stepped down last year was because the pandemic caused a lot of stress on my work where it was a last-ditch effort attempt to save a small company I was working for that lacked funding/resources to operate under such harsh conditions.

FTX may claim that experience as the M&M council has no meaning to being a different council, but I say otherwise as it taught me a lot about how to interact with people here, who are the devs, how to use Github and find severe issues to work out, and so much more.

I think emperor penguin is the best candidate. He seems to be s genuinely nice person who wants to integrate all the strata of faf. What a nice thing to have someone like that running for the job.

@emperor_penguin said in New Player Councilor Discussion + Removal Announcements:

@dragun101
With that sort of logic, you could say that we shouldn't have ladder or TMM at all.
Ladder/TMM options gives the advantage of convenience as well as not having to deal with things like hosting, bad hosts, various custom/global rating-related problems, etc. It also allows players to join the queues for every available option that they feel like playing at the time, as opposed to only joining one custom lobby and hoping it fills quickly. My TMM proposal would give users the ability to do what is almost equivalent to automatically joining every lobby they're interested in simultaneously and then leaving the extras once one is full from people doing that. With users queueing like that, the result would be much faster waiting times than we often get for custom lobbies.

Because ladder is not meant to be a curation for a competitive enviroment. Its not meant to be a one click join custom game lobby.

@morax said:

Askaholic is becoming Answeraholic as of recent with this PC election...

Lmao

@FtXCommando @Morax @Emperor_Penguin You probably all know me as someone who makes a lot of suggestions that are lets say misguided at least in the majority opinion. I'm trying to better explain my reasoning and invisible modesty in newer topics, but not the point now.

The point is community interaction by the Player Councillor. You are free to assume I was wrong in these topics, I would like to invite you to provide a good example of how you would respond to these misguided nooby topics.

@valki said in Aeon T1 PD under construction cannot be hit sometimes:

[Picture removed]
Replay: https://replay.faforever.com/14230328

I have seen this in game quite a few times, where sometimes units waste all their firepower at an unbuilt Aeon PD. Possibly also other structures.

It was easy to reproduce.

It seems the Aeon PD is underneath the ground, units target it and hit the ground instead.

It does NOT affect UEF, Cybran or Seraphim PD. Also tested this in the same replay.

I was not satisfied by the PC's dismissive reply, problem still exists.

@valki said in missiles subject to TMD should ignore shields:

FAF lacks a skill-sensitive siege option, where a player with significantly less economy than its opponent can break its defenses.

MML counter shields fine, but this is in a macro view where MML is cost effective vs TMD. If the defending player has much more eco, then the shields offer him enough time to use his superior eco to spam up cost ineffective TMD and defend the base.

I want a player with less eco to destroy a firebase without TMD quickly, so he has a chance to get ahead purely through superior tactics.

[...]

Sure, bad suggestion, but I was disappointed that the interesting thought behind it - even if it was never worth implementing - was just not picked up. (did not get a bad PC reply here)

@valki said in (A)RAS: reduce nearby building consumption to zero:

I suggest that RAS will reduce the mass consumption costs of nearby buildings to zero. ARAS reduces mass and energy consumption of nearby buildings to zero. Units and in particular engineers derive no benefit. SCU's provide a 50% reduction instead of a 100% reduction.

[...]

I'm by no means a FAF or balance expert, but thought this might be an interesting idea. I cannot really defend or speak on its impact on balance or the metagame.

I was somewhat depressed when I posted this, dealing with lifechanging injury, but still. This was a helpfully intended suggestion that was completely dismissed and nitpicked. Almost quit right there, though in hindsight it doesn't look so bad.

I was wrong, I invite you to tell me nicely

@Valki, my dude, these are balance topics. None of the forum posts you linked are really relevant to FtX or the PC election at all. Also, tbh it's kind of ridiculous to say that "I was not satisfied by the PC's dismissive reply" when he was the only person to even bother replying and giving you an explanation at all.

Honestly no idea what to say if these are the examples of my asshole behavior.

And wtf, I’m an asshole when I respond and when I don’t respond? I didn’t respond to the TMD thread because it just wasn’t an idea worth discussing to me, it breaks way too many of the interactions in the game and converts cruisers into absurdly OP units.

@archsimkat said in New Player Councilor Discussion + Removal Announcements:

@Valki, my dude, these are balance topics. None of the forum posts you linked are really relevant to FtX or the PC election at all. Also, tbh it's kind of ridiculous to say that "I was not satisfied by the PC's dismissive reply" when he was the only person to even bother replying and giving you an explanation at all.

These were well-intentioned but misguided posts by me, I consider the tone relevant. I will not debate whether this response is better than no response. This is more an opportunity for @morax and @Emperor_Penguin.

I hope you can appreciate I am somewhat humiliating myself for this purpose.

@ftxcommando said in New Player Councilor Discussion + Removal Announcements:

Honestly no idea what to say if these are the examples of my asshole behavior.

And wtf, I’m an asshole when I respond and when I don’t respond? I didn’t respond to the TMD thread because it just wasn’t an idea worth discussing to me, it breaks way too many of the interactions in the game and converts cruisers into absurdly OP units.

I'm not calling you an asshole, I genuinely respect you also because you do take the time to explain like in our PM discussions. Not getting what I want does not mean I think you are an asshole. (Note I did not bring up our ongoing discussion about rating)

However, I would like (not need) a Player Councillor who deals with this in a better way, having to get through needless nitpicking can be needlessly discouraging. I am interested in what the others would say.

Okay @Valki I am going to reply to part 1 of your post there to take the "this is how I would respond to you should you make this discussion" road.

In regards to the Aeon t1 pd hit box issue while under construction, let us say it is an issue for simplicity (I did not watch the replay yet - sorry!). This issue would be communicated to the devs/game code manager @keyser and his team. I would not mind doing it initially, but my preferred method would be to also introduce you to HOW the issues are managed.

To understand that, you must at least in some way know project management for software engineering and for that I give you the "FAF Github Repository:"

https://github.com/FAForever

For this particular issue, it likely would fall under "fa" which stand for Forged Alliance Game Lua Code. It might be more of a "hitbox / model issue," but less us assume it is a code issue for now. To address this, you must make a report here:

https://github.com/FAForever/fa

So, Valki, next time you find this issue, you can log it there, and it will be reviewed by someone on the team.

IMPORTANT: we have maybe 7 TOTAL software-capable workers on FAF, and of which that is maybe 1-2 people for the Forged Alliance Game code. If you look at the "issues log" here: https://github.com/FAForever/fa/issues you will notice there are in current as of my writing 348 other issues.

So, yes, I would discuss with you how to get this issues noticed and fixed properly rather the message board, but also ask you understand that the 1-2 people working on the game LUA code are quite busy, doing this for free, and therefore it will take quite some time.

I hope that helps answer you in how I would engage with yourself and others about the issues, hope it is to your and others' liking.

For the second part, will get to that later. I am heading off to dinner now and to watch a nice game of ice canes warriors battling to get a giant, silver bowl with names inscribed on it.

@Valki @Morax that would be useless because, from what I've heard, the aeon t1 pd issue has been known for a long time and previous balance councillors have tried to tackle the issue but found it impossible to solve, since it's one of those things rooted in the engine that we would need to modify the engine source code to solve.

@archsimkat said in New Player Councilor Discussion + Removal Announcements:

@Valki @Morax that would be useless because, from what I've heard, the aeon t1 pd issue has been known for a long time and previous balance councillors have tried to tackle the issue but found it impossible to solve, since it's one of those things rooted in the engine that we would need to modify the engine source code to solve.

Yes, but I was explaining to him how to go about discussing and getting the issue in queue to track for resolution. I never said it can be solved.

This really turned into a “how to respond to forum threads” discussion huh

@ftxcommando said in New Player Councilor Discussion + Removal Announcements:

This really turned into a “how to respond to forum threads” discussion huh

It did... no one is asking any good questions since the reset. I’m going to just reply to your response sooner to make it more interesting I guess...

To answer @Valki’s post, here are some examples of how I might respond to the issues he presented:

1. Aeon T1 PD under construction cannot be hit sometimes:
   I believe this phenomenon with targeting partially constructed aeon structures might have something to do with the hitbox or the aimbone needing some adjustments (but I’m not sure if it is realistic to resolve this particular phenomenon, as I think it’s been known for a while without success at resolving it). However, game bugs can be reported here: https://github.com/FAForever/fa/issues by submitting a new issue (with an explanation, a replay with a specified time/location that the bug occurs, and a screenshot of the bug occurring), but please make sure it’s not already reported as an issue first (our unpaid volunteer programmers are swamped, and creating duplicate issues slows them down even further (you can search the other issues on the linked page to check if there is already an issue created for this problem) – there is already a backlog of 348 open issues, and it can take a very long time to resolve them).
2. missiles subject to TMD should ignore shields:
   Having missiles ignore shields is an interesting idea, but making that change would theoretically require a lot of other things to be rebalanced (such as missile cruisers, tml structures, tmd, shields, arty, etc). While this is technically possible, I believe that it is unlikely to happen, in-part due to the sheer extensiveness of the quantity of changes that would need to be made to do this in a way that is desirable for the overall community. So, if you want to make mml’s have more interesting dynamics where they can break TMD-less firebases faster, perhaps giving them more alpha damage (more damage per missile, but with a longer reload time, for balance) might be a more mml-specific way to accomplish that. Honestly though, a lot of people are already happy with the way mml’s function atm, and they are already used a lot, so I don’t know if many people would want to change them in either way... Any thoughts?
3. (A)RAS: reduce nearby building consumption to zero:
   Your ideas for RAS/ARAS are interesting. Reducing the mass/energy costs of nearby structures to zero could provide some really strong benefits though (such as with hives), and for that to be balanced, it would probably require an extremely high cost. Changing RAS/ARAS to reduce nearby costs by some percent (like adjacency bonuses give) might be a balanced approach. However, to make changes like these, someone would actually have to code them, and the balance team would have to approve them. My advice would be that if you feel very strongly about this idea, you might want to look into making a mod with a balanced version of these changes and then you could play it with your friends and go from there. However, even if you did that, most new ideas that change the game by this much never get incorporated into the main official version of FAF, but could make for some fun modded games (that can be played on FAF) : )
   If you want to look into modding, you could learn some basic information at these links and in the FAF Discord (you may need to get the modder role from the roles-selection channel to see some relevant channels):
   https://wiki.faforever.com/index.php?title=Modding https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SlI4FkKVCP_E8dE1GfxhM5QDkwuAKGAUnkC2iDUaZAA/edit

Am I the only now who thinks that this responses are actually kinda pathetic? And are only made here and now considering they can directly profit from them as they make for nice PR stunts during the elections?

How is it that before the whole election you wouldn't even think about answering those questions. Hell you could have answered those so long ago but do it only now when it's clear that you will profit from it.

So, why only now, why didn't you actually try to make this a better place before you set your sights at becoming the PC?

@randomwheelchair said in New Player Councilor Discussion + Removal Announcements:

Am I the only now who thinks that this responses are actually kinda pathetic? And are only made here and now considering they can directly profit from them as they make for nice PR stunts during the elections?

How is it that before the whole election you wouldn't even think about answering those questions. Hell you could have answered those so long ago but do it only now when it's clear that you will profit from it.

So, why only now, why didn't you actually try to make this a better place before you set your sights at becoming the PC?

I was about to say, now that these responses have been baited out in the open, can the candidates explain why they never bothered to post them in the first place.

I’d also say for a group of dudes talking about their ability to have better communication and transparency with the balance team (still trying to understand the logic of removing me for someone else for better communication with petric) you guys got a strange idea of what ideas petric would even entertain reading. Reality is neither of the last two ideas would get considered and the first is an issue that is about as old as FAF.

@randomwheelchair @FtXCommando
To answer your statements/questions:
I have done a lot of things to make FAF a better place (ie: improving the map generator, making maps, making mapping utilities, making new props, answering other questions, training noobs, working on code, etc), and it is obviously not realistic nor my job to respond to every random question asked on FAF.

I responded to Valki now (rather than earlier) because he directly invited me by name to respond to those posts yesterday (and not earlier)... I generally try to respond when someone basically asks me a question and @'s me, as I think that's the decent thing to do...

I imagine Morax feels similarly on the above, but I don't want to speak for him here.

Personally, I question the value of FTX's choice to shoot down most new ideas very readily. I think that policy makes negative associations with the FAF experience, contributes to a negative atmosphere, and discourages participation. I don't believe that attitude is good for fostering a collaborative and friendly atmosphere. There are many occasions in which I think the way FTX responds to people is worse than if he didn't respond at all.