New Player Councilor Discussion + Removal Announcements

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

Do you not actually have a plan to help further the lower level tourney scene unless someone does it for you? Are you expecting to vote in someone who will do it? Helping newer people is supposed to be the point of your application. is it not?

There are many points to my application, which are addressed here. Anyway, I do plan to help with the lower level tourney scene as well as act on community feedback., as I have already gotten enough relevant community feedback to know that there is substantial desire for things like ‘Average Joes’ tournaments and “Map Gen’ tournaments. So, even if there is a 'Tournaments Leader' elected, I could still hold additional tournaments personally in addition to whatever tournaments the 'Tournaments Leader' personally does, in addition to whatever tournaments everyone else does.

pfp credit to gieb

@noundedelkwoob
I have already gathered a lot of community feedback over the years, and I would continue to do so. In fact, if elected, I plan to gather substantially more feedback per unit time from the overall FAF community than any individual has done thus far in general, as I would be well-positioned to gather such feedback and act on much of it..
If you want to know how I would gather feedback beyond what I already do, my initial application post includes examples of that, including new systems that I would set up for PC that increase community involvement as well as transparency.

My initial application post also shows how I plan to have different map pools available in TMM. So, for example, both conventional ladder players as well as more casual players, can be satisfied. Each individual option combination (such as with different map pools) could technically have its own rating within the coding design that would be used, so sensible different ratings could be used if desired for balance/etc. However, that is something that can get highly technical and warrants further discussion and would be tangential to get into here. You are welcome to pm me about this today if you would like, but you can rest assured that that would be taken care of well.

In regards to FTX's polling based on map-size, that is so imprecise that it's like asking someone what they would like to do today, and giving them the options to either play an unspecified sport with <=5 people on a team or play an unspecified sport with >5 people on a team. You can get some data from that, but it's better to ask more questions so that you can actually get a proper understanding of why someone might like soccer over basketball over baseball, etc. The same sort of logic applies to surveying for TMM. FTX's data gathering there was too basic.

pfp credit to gieb

@Emperor_Penguin Can you provide us with any extensive evidence of your work for FAF excluding making maps? In your posts it sounds like you've been doing a lot but they are just that, words. You never were in any official FAF position as far as I know and never done anything official FAF related (you weren't member of either ladder, mapping, trainer or modding teams.) You say that's because you didn't like Ftx and that he was rude to you. I remember when you came to ladder team and argued with us about maps and gameplay showing us that you at that time had very little knowledge about map gameplay and yet you didn't take constructive feedback well and just left instead of trying to overcome your weakness and learn. How can you prove to us that you indeed did all the work you are talking about and improve in so many aspects? Your vague statement contribute to nothing and 1 or 2 discord DM screenshots won't do it either. There is very little trace of your work.
Every time someone asks you about it you answer that you have done polls about vague things (I have never in my life seen any of those polls) and "learned" from them but what have they actually accomplished? Have you every presented results to anyone that could take any action? They are not in the statistics mega thread, they were not on Zulip. What good came out of your polls except for you to "learn" and see how bad Ftx is?

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

  • Unfriendliness. I don't struggle with this myself, but I can see why people would think this way. Besides this, ftx has done a great deal of work for FAF. People mention to add an additional councillor role who would interact with players and this might not be a bad idea, but it is not a reason to remove/replace someone from his position when he's done so much good for FAF.

This is effectively my opinion, I'll be voting for FTX, but I do think a friendly face is definitely needed.

@emperor_penguin Unless you have someone already lined up you should probably be prepared to have the "Tournament Leader" position go unfilled. You should go into this with the expectation that you are going to run ladder league invitationals and LotS yourself if you want them around. This is in addition to whatever other tournaments you want to run.

I was also hoping you'd pledge to run specific new tournaments yourself and not just have a plan to make a plan. I would expect PCs to have a vision of what they think the tournament scene should look like and a plan to achieve that vision.

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

This isn't action. You have no activism.

bee6b5e5-0551-4b52-8037-370759dc7517-image.png

I have even repeatedly confronted you directly in support of a number of causes, FTX. Don't lie and say that I don't have activism.

I have gathered community feedback and resultantly actively campaigned and pushed/argued for things and rallied others for them on many occasions (ie: campaigning against not removing/hiding global rating, campaigning for a better TMM with (specific realistically codable suggestions), getting more support/integration for map gen, keeping the 'most recent' tab (where people can see recently made maps) on the vault, etc).

Stop making false accusations, FTX.

pfp credit to gieb

I would like there to be a more equal level of
evaluating/analyzing/nitpicking/questioning of each candidate, rather than seeing conversation that is dominated by biased interactions, involving things like FTX's forum warriors criticizing his opponents ferociously while ignoring/disregarding FTX's flaws.

I could get my friends to go and post against FTX and criticize/question every last thing about his posts and policies too, but I don't want to stoop to that level.

In fact, after I saw Judah very actively supporting me and passionately arguing against FTX, I actually asked him to take a break from posting in this thread for a few days, as I think it would be better to have a more proper/balanced/constructive discussion.

So, it would be good if others could try to be bit a more proper/balanced/constructive as well and try to act without such bias. After all, the proper goals here should be things like improving FAF, growing the playerbase, and improving the community experience; not getting your friend elected.

pfp credit to gieb

You completely lost the moment you deemed everyone that disagreed with you "ftx forum warriors"

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

You completely lost the moment you deemed everyone that disagreed with you "ftx forum warriors"

I never deemed that everyone who disagreed is an 'ftx forum warrior.' There definitely are certain people here who are heavily biased in favor of their friends and act with substantial bias though.
To quote one of them, "I support my comrade FtX no matter what" -biass
One might say that biass is biased.

pfp credit to gieb

Alright, @Swkoll, here are some additional specifics: in addition to my previous pledges, I pledge that if I am elected PC, there will be at least two 'Map Gen' tournaments within my first 2 months as PC, and at least one of those tournaments will be an 'Average Joes' tourney and at least one will be open to pros.

pfp credit to gieb

Why can't you do that right now tho? With good tournament settings ftx would surely approve of it

profile picture credits to petric

Penguin here the problem:
You have dodged every critique thrown at you
Ignored contradictary evidence you claim polls all mighty listen to the mighty polls-
If I listened to mighty polls fundamental basis of how scta is balanced would be torn asunder. Now I do as many here now canvas opanion, messaged folks I respect, and talk to people of every elo.

But when half of the feedback I got when mod was new “TA NEEDS ADJACENY AND SHIELDS KTHYXSBYE” and if were to poll a FAF beyond reasonable doubt I can say those two things be true.

If polls told you something blatently not just dumb but harmful, as a PC would you ignore the results?

You said Ftx delaying MapGen incorperation ladder had no impact on his quality. But that is percisely the point. Its quality wasn’t ladder worthy.

The power of no isn’t the power “of stfu I will never let this be a thing”

“Its go back to the drawing board. Its not good enough. Come back later.”

To note this:
You famouslt uploaded eighty billion versions of the same map with the most minor of edits. As a person you are willing to say “this most minor change is an important enough change it requires me to upload this change to faf and waste faf storwge with x versions - 1 of a map that will never be downloaded or played again?

Pot calling Kettle Black I admit. As I 100% could have better versioning for SCTA. But its partly why I have forced myself to updates once a week. And why I have tried to slow down or not do emergency updates unless something is exceptionally borked.

As PC while less obviously than Creative you are still a Steward of Perception of Quality. And more. You are the man who gets thrown dung all day. Your job is to be the person everyone beats up on. The face.

But that means responding and correcting criticism. Notice Ftx (And Morax here as well to some extent, but more Shit has been thrown on Ftx than Morax) when approached with criticism have been upfront and honest about their mistakes or percieved mistakes.

You pulled “Not my fault!” You have not taken responsibility, you have not accepted critique. And when toughing gets going, and Thomas/Feathers/Adju etc gets a punching. Will the Penguin get a toughening?

I have reasons to doubt

I’m a shitty 1k Global. Any balance or gameplay suggestions should be understood or taken as such.

Project Head and current Owner/Manager of SCTA Project

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

Why can't you do that right now tho? With good tournament settings ftx would surely approve of it

@noundedelkwoob
I am not currently the PC, and I have been choosing to work on other things for FAF that are also hopefully good for the community. For example, since there seemed to be decent interest in creating a casual matchmaker option but a relative shortage of fast-paced casual FAF mini-games, I have recently coded/created a new and fast-paced casual FAF mini-game (you can download it from the vault as the map 'Pit of Doom' btw - it is still open to more changes based on feedback btw). I am currently working on another new FAF mini-game that could be even better. This is in addition to this very time-consuming election...

pfp credit to gieb

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

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

Why can't you do that right now tho? With good tournament settings ftx would surely approve of it

@noundedelkwoob
I am not currently the PC, and I have been choosing to work on other things for FAF that are also hopefully good for the community. For example, since there seemed to be decent interest in creating a casual matchmaker option but a relative shortage of fast-paced casual FAF mini-games, I have recently coded/created a new and fast-paced casual FAF mini-game (you can download it from the vault as the map 'Pit of Doom' btw - it is still open to more changes based on feedback btw). I am currently working on another new FAF mini-game that could be even better. This is in addition to this very time-consuming election...

Define time consuming you seem to be avoiding the hard questions here

I’m a shitty 1k Global. Any balance or gameplay suggestions should be understood or taken as such.

Project Head and current Owner/Manager of SCTA Project

@dragun101
Dragun, I think you misunderstand me, and you and I have VERY different perceptions regarding FTX owning up to his mistakes... Anyway, I am not claiming that FAF should become slave to all poll results. I am claiming that I believe that the desires of the majority of FAF players should be given more value/weight/focus than FTX gives them. That includes polling more than FTX does and giving more weight to poll results than FTX gives. That doesn't mean automatically caving to the majority opinion on every issue. There is a good middle-ground, and I intend to achieve it. I want what's good for FAF, and that involves caring more about the majority opinion than FTX does while still analyzing things sensibly and listening to reason. So, for example, if Jagged or Skwoll had an opinion on something for LotS, I would give it substantially more weight than the opinion of randomdude324. I would still care about both, but I would actively weight opinions sensibly, where things like relevant knowledge and experience matter a lot.

pfp credit to gieb

@dragun101 said in New Player Councilor Discussion + Removal Announcements:

Define time consuming you seem to be avoiding the hard questions here

I haven't been logging my FAF-related hours on a time clock, man. I've certainly spent more than 40 hours on FAF-related stuff this past week, for perspective.

pfp credit to gieb

I put in until work started this week. Easily 60 hours a week on working on faf related context (albeit alot of that is me starring at scta code for 8-10 hours and pm’ing relavent parties). Also polls don’t show random dudebro opanion as different from Swkoll. They should be annoymous. Or you get weird confirmation bias.

For something like you are advocating rhere isn’t much of a real middle ground.

I’m a shitty 1k Global. Any balance or gameplay suggestions should be understood or taken as such.

Project Head and current Owner/Manager of SCTA Project

@Dragun101 There is a large middle-ground involving giving different weights to the opinions of different members of the community in different contexts on different issues. My stance is covered pretty well in my initial application post. I want to give more weight to the desires/concerns of 'regular' FAF players than FTX gives them, but I would still heavily weight opinions based on important things like relevant knowledge and experience.

pfp credit to gieb

Alright, @Tagada, you asked for a lot of information, so here's a long post that discusses things and provides several examples of things I've done:

But, I'll start off by explaining something first; knowing what makes maps good (including understanding the impacts of various things on gameplay/variance/aesthetics/etc) has a lot of relevance to mapping, improving map gen, and map pool creation/selection. So, there were certainly times when I gathered data (such as via talking to people or creating publicly available polls - that I admittedly should have logged better) to learn more about community preferences for mapping that taught me valuable insights/understandings that helped me to improve map gen and would also help me to be a better PC. I have learned a lot about FTX's system, and I have certainly improved my understanding of what makes some maps more desirable than others over time, and I've also passed on some of what I've learned to others along the way.

If you look over my maps, my mapping quality has certainly improved over time as I've learned more about what makes for good gameplay/etc. In fact, here's a recent mapping tourney which I created a new map for (I also made lots of new custom props (including lots of colorful Autumn trees!) that will be included in a new FAF update for all mappers to use in FAF), and my map received the highest total rating for gameplay/variance (not aesthetics) in the tourney. So, I have certainly improved my understanding of gameplay/variance/mapping a lot over time.

Anyway, while I have learned a lot about FTX's system for evaluating maps, and I see its value for certain niches, I have observed that FTX's system caters to a particular type of FAF experience, which is not what everyone wants. A decent portion of people do want it, and so, I think the types of map pools that appeal to that group (of satisfied current ladder/TMM players/etc) should continue to exist for those people. However, I also consider maps from other players' perspectives that are conflicting with FTX's. There are some good reasons why global is so much more popular than ladder/TMM, and a large part of it is that ladder/TMM doesn't satisfy many of those perspectives, even when they're desired by the large majority of FAF players... So, I would like to make TMM better by offering additional options that are more suited to satisfying people with different types of preferences. That involves having different perspectives/criteria for evaluating maps for some new optional map pools that I plan to add.

Most of my data gathering has been from asking a lot of people questions and talking to people. If it was worthwhile, I could spend several hours/days gathering a vast collection of evidence of countless conversations I've had with hundreds if not thousands of people in Discord, FAF lobbies, FAF games, etc where I was asking people questions about what they want in a map, or what they want changed, or what they disliked, or what they thought about the gameplay on it, etc. That seems really excessive. So, if you really want some massive quantity of evidence, you are welcome to go and watch all my replays where I hosted my maps (and got feedback and often made changes accordingly) as well as a number of my mapgen games where I asked people questions as well. If you read all of the chat in all of my replays/lobbies, I believe you'd literally see thousands of examples of me asking people for feedback regarding things like what they like about a given map, what they would think should be changed, if they have any suggestions, etc. I have done some polls as well, but that's honestly a small minority of the feedback I've gathered, and most of them are buried in old conversations. Here's a couple random polls anyway:
Mapping Features
2v2 TMM Sharing

Here are some examples of suggestion threads that I have started based on trying to address problems that I've found via feedback I've gotten:
Create a casual noob-friendly matchmaker queue (to increase player retention)
Create A New Matchmaker Councillor Position
Unofficial tournaments should be allowed on the forums
In case it's not obvious by now, most of the FAF community (and consequently most of the people I talk to) are not really active on the forums. That communication divide is something I want to address with changes that encourage and lessen barriers to participation.

Here is some of my activism from this very election from before I decided to run for PC.

Here are some examples of work I've done on map gen:
https://i.imgur.com/nx3sj6R.png
https://i.imgur.com/U7qZQyR.png
https://i.imgur.com/qmiymt5.png
https://i.imgur.com/BMwo9pD.png
https://i.imgur.com/VQjhcVT.png

Now, I have responded with a ton of information to a large variety of questions. If the same people (who have been questioning/criticizing/nitpicking me while basically ignoring/disregarding FTX's issues/flaws) want to keep bombarding me with questions/criticisms while continuing to basically ignore FTX's issues/flaws, then I will draw the line somewhere, as I have already provided way more information than I should reasonably need to in this 280+ post-long forum thread that is nearly the longest thread on these forums already despite only being 11 days old.

pfp credit to gieb

Hello all-Mizer here

I am sure most people on FAF know who I am. I am so old my player ID is 517. I have played since the old Supreme Commander GPG days. What is that 2007.

Anyway I have heard and seen a couple of things that concern me. And I would like FTX, Morax and Penguin give me their perspective on this.

I have seen posts FTX talking about getting rid of the Global Player Rating. Why is this? FTX says in another post that If I want to see improvement in my rating that I have to play matchmaker. This just doesn't add up. He even calls out Setons, Asto and Gap players like there is something wrong with playing that map.

I play Setons, Setons and Setons.
You should be able to play any map and have the opportunity to become the number #1 rated player. I mean if I want to be a 3k rated player that only plays ISIS so be it. Everyone knows and can check a players replays. I am not interested in playing ladder or matchmaker. IMHO what ever map players want to learn and play go for it. For me it's Setons.

I think most players want to know who is the best. It's kind of a challenge to best that person right?

I will review your reply's and base my vote on what I see. And I hope players votes actually count.

Thank you
Mizer

First we will be best, then we will be first.
Never argue with an idiot, they drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.