Noob matchmaker queue

What I'm getting from this discussion is that what the community ultimately wants is not just MORE players, but more QUALITY players. This is a funny game, in the sense that I regularly see rather highly rated players completely beating themselves up in the chat over how bad they are. There's a unique level of acknowledgement of how difficult this game is, but also how enjoyable it is, even when most of us aren't that good at it. And so everyone wants everyone to get better, so that we can all get more from this game. So that's a good place to start.

So my own views on the issue, as someone who's sorta new to FAF (tried playing it over the years but got completely humiliated and ran crying back to vanilla SupCom skirmish vs CPU where I could satisfy my addiction to the pause button in private).

First off, the attempts to educate players need to improve. It's easy enough to find tutorial content, but it's hard to find the RIGHT tutorial for a given skill level and skill deficiency. This is a common problem that exists also in music education: the best guitarist in town is not necessarily the best person to teach you how to play guitar. I find the tutorials in the FAF application to be useless to someone of my skill level. "Build a Land Factory, 2 pgens, mex, pgen, mex, pgen, mex, mex" or whatever it is. OK, simple enough, you're scaling your power production to meet your needs. Then it gives you this list of units to build from your land factory that a new player would have no chance of memorizing or understanding the logic behind. It's just way too much for a "first tutorial" and it feels to me like it was created by a player with very advanced skills (best guitarist in town) that just assumes that everybody understands very basic things.

And so these discussions about a "noobie ladder" and the Stoneage mod and other attempts to make better matchmaking are valid, but I think that if what the higher-ranked members of the community want is more skilled players to go up against, they really need to invest more time and energy into education, and I think the first thing they need to do is find someone who's good at making tutorial content, because that person is rarely going to be one of the better players (those who can't, teach, right?).

Beyond that, I think the Stoneage mod is a good concept that could be expanded on. It immediately made me think of promotion and relegation in soccer. Maybe there needs to be ladders for every tech level, and maybe you need to play yourself into a promotion before you can play ladder games at higher tech levels. Maybe the current 1v1 rankings can be used to initially slot players into different "leagues", but after that it should just be about who you beat and who beat you. If player A is demolishing everybody in the Tech 2 league and player B is getting walked on by everybody in the Tech 3 league, it doesn't matter what their rankings are: player A deserves the opportunity to go up, and player B needs to go down to make room. Something to think about.

The problem is you cannot divide the game like that. If you lock the game to pure t1 stage you have essentially turned uef v aeon into a complete autoloss situation. If you lock t3 stage how in the world do half the factions deal with uef t2 stage once they really get going with pillar/shield/arty?

You simplify the game but it’s to the detriment of actually learning the game, instead you just learn what faction has an advantage and accept the fact you have been restricted from half your tools to respond to it. Imagine getting a navy map and you have Aeon frigates against Cybran frigates AND you can’t even use torps. The game is just boned.

We have a couple guides written out to set people on the right path:
Blackheart’s guide is intended for you to get in the right mindset on what you need to do to see improvement

https://forum.faforever.com/topic/1222/how-to-improve-forever-6-laws

My guide here is meant to teach you the macro relationships in the game which allow you to scale up properly. This is often all you need to focus on to get to around 800-1000.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/13S4nBDfcBK4WmFtykXGKNmvIPe9L2nbiriISpHNgE4U/edit?usp=sharing

arma here wrote a guide focused on more of the gameplay nook and cranny elements that can help you slowly improve from a rating level to another rating level once you fix the errors.
https://forum.faforever.com/topic/766/ladder-1v1-beginner-intermediate-and-advanced-topics-by-arma473

Generally there are two more guides I want to write. I want to write a guide on engie managements to explain how you can decide where to send engies on a map and I want to write a guide on tempo in FAF to explain how to zoom out and gauge the game situation to then decide on a strategy.

There were also plans to write guides that explain how to expect to play maps that go into the <500 pool on ladder but it kind of lost steam.

What about having these guides linked to in the Tutorials section of the client? (in addition to the current build order tutorials and link to heaven videos)?

Don’t have a problem with it but would need to talk to some devs about it.

I guess that's my point - there's no lack of tutorial content out there, but if FAF is to be the central nexus (pun not intended) for this game, then it needs to do a better job of sorting out what the best tutorials are and what order they should be consumed in. Just like how a university doesn't give you any information that you couldn't theoretically find elsewhere, but it structures it in a way that increases the chance of actually being able to retain that information, because you've already learned the things you need to be able to understand what you're learning.

And again, I think because of how difficult this game is, you really need to find somebody who is particularly qualified in the field of education. I will take a look at your tutorials and I'm sure there's a lot to learn, but my experience has been that I usually retain about 5% of a given tutorial because 95% of it is all way over my head, and then I'll learn a bit more and can maybe take away another 5% on rewatch. That way of learning can be incredibly hard to keep track of and can potentially tire out new players.

On the subject of faction differences at different tech levels - I just assumed that the attempts to balance factions were being done with respect to tech levels. So you're saying factions aren't balanced until we're able to build experimentals?

Factions have advantages at certain spheres at certain tech levels. Cybran has the unquestionably best t1 frig but considered to be the worst cruiser and the 2nd worst destroyer. Aeon has the worst frigate but the best destro.

If every faction had parity at tech levels there would be no significant pressure on players to tech up and progress the game since why would you want to risk the 2k mass investment into new tech if it doesn’t improve your situation much at all. Enemy could just react to your tech up and you would be at the exact same situation as before except now you lost map control for your earlier tech up and likely have a harder time pushing in to recover it.

@ftxcommando said in Noob matchmaker queue:

Factions have advantages at certain spheres at certain tech levels. Cybran has the unquestionably best t1 frig but considered to be the worst cruiser and the 2nd worst destroyer. Aeon has the worst frigate but the best destro.

If every faction had parity at tech levels there would be no significant pressure on players to tech up and progress the game since why would you want to risk the 2k mass investment into new tech if it doesn’t improve your situation much at all. Enemy could just react to your tech up and you would be at the exact same situation as before except now you lost map control for your earlier tech up and likely have a harder time pushing in to recover it.

Fair enough. That makes sense. But maybe that imbalance can serve as another learning tool rather than something that breaks things. I'm not unlike many players in that I've always played one faction, UEF in my case. Maybe part of the progression up the different leagues is finding out about the strengths and weaknesses of the different factions at different tech levels, forcing players to learn how to play a different faction if they want to be promoted to a higher league.

I think that the most engaging way (not the most efficient in terms of time spent) to learn stuff as a very new player is by "tutorial campaign". Unlike the vanilla campaign (which really doesnt teach much, it just restricts units/buildings) it would be much more focused and showcase specific mechanics, encounters with specifically restricted toolkit.

• Start with the player only controlling the com and having to escape from an invasion, pretty much a on rails mission, teach about ACU health, survivability and overcharge specifically.
• Teach player how to evade an incoming air snipe, let them run to allied mobile AA safety (teach about T2 gunships vs com health vs AA relationships), dont let them control units yet.
• At some point force the players to have certain upgrades and teach the difference between a no-upgrade sera com and a double nano double gun monster for example.
• Have a situation where player is required to collect X reclaim in Y amount of time so that they can overflow enough mass to let allied AI finish a needed experimental, otherwise player looses. Reward is of course cool experimental saving the day in the nick of time.
• Put the player in a sitation where he can clearly see how having radar affects effective shooting range.
• Have a situation where a player needs to surround kill an enemy com with a fixed number of T1 spam that he cannot increase and one where he has to fend of T1 with com (the beginning of prothyon is quite nice in this regard, but i don't like the second half)
• Have situations where the player needs to counter higher tech units with cheese / lower tech units, and the other way around where they micro a small number of higher tech units against lower tech ones.
• Basically make it fun and interesting first (good story is important for that) but weave in lots of situations that all teach one specific thing.

Some things cannot be thought well like that, for example general tradeoff between eco / tech / bp / units and general game progression, but make sure that the player is aware of the entire toolbox that the game gives them. Its much less frustrating to get beaten in PVP if you at least have some idea about all the tools.

Problem with this is that of course if big balance changes happen, that might cause certain situations to play out differently than planned. The idea itself is not new, i think several people have mentioned the small starcraft missions that you play with fixed units, but those seemed a bit boring because its just the same thing over and over with different units (and im not suggesting to always put the player in fixed unit situations, that is too repetitive).

At the end of the day, if learning is not enjoyable, not many people are gonna try to get gud. When you first joined FAF, your goal was probably not to dominate ladder rating. The competitive aspects comes after you have seen the potential of all the tools that the game provides. The game must prove that its going to be worth the time spent to improve.

Agreed that custom campaigns to teach specific lessons with each mission would be the best way of learning, but it'd also presumably require a hefty amount of investment by someone to set up.

In the event that something like that was considered though, a couple of ideas I'd have of lessons to be imparted via this to add to the list:
-Player given land factories, a few mexes, access to only T1 land, and told to break a turtle who has lots of T1 pd and a couple of T2 pd (i.e. learn that in large numbers T1 arti can overwhelm a couple of T2 pd and is a good counter to T1 pd, to encourage the use of aggressive land)
-I'd adapt the 'overflow to ally to let them build experimental' idea to one where you get to build the experimental (mainly to avoid teaching players to overflow which is a bad habit while still getting the 'experimental payoff' benefit to make things interesting) - e.g. you have access to engineers, power, mass extractors, mass storage, and a land experimental blueprint only, and just have to break a turtle base with the experimental before the enemy constructs a T3 artillary (to put a timer on things). It's on a fairly small map, and you're told the enemy won't expand. The time is set such that you have to upgrade your eco optimally (T1 mexes, T2, storage, T3), manage your power to avoid power stalls, and make use of available reclaim, to complete the experimental fast enough to stop their artillery.

I think there should be a progression that only locks already unlocked units/buildings for important story reasons, so building it yourself would have to be late mission becausei t would require T3. Alternatively, you could still let the ally start building the experimental, but player needs to send T1/T2 engineers to assist, so no overflowing.

But yes, while its fun to come up with these ideas, and we could definitely collect a good bunch of them, putting them into a logical story progression and actually building the missions would be the hard part. But having to incorporate certain situations is i think benefitial to coming up with a good story, constrains can elevate creativity.

T2-t3 Mex upgrade to show when to do it and also to show if you do it too early you will die

What about some mini-games that help develop APM as opposed to getting into the higher theoretical concepts like build-orders? I find this game has a lot in common with playing a musical instrument - there is a higher, theoretical concept that needs to be understood to be successful, but there is also a certain amount of "skill" that needs to be developed before one can ever make use of their understanding of the theory. Musicians practice scales even though actual musical pieces rarely involve playing scales, because it improves overall manual dexterity. I'm just now getting into the hotbuilding thing, and even though I can see the long-term benefits, it feels really unnatural right now. The only way that I can really "practice" using the hotbuilding keys is to play a game, but I find myself quickly abandoning it in favor of just doing everything with the mouse when things start getting hairy because I'm just trying to survive. Maybe before getting into the build-order tutorials, which kind of depend on a certain level of hotbuilding dexterity, there could be some mini-games that help develop those basic manual skills.

You don't need any special skills or knowledge to implement a build order. You can practice build orders in a "sandbox" (a game with no allies or opponents, not even AI). You can repeat them over and over again until you can do it.

If you think you need to be good at hotbuild to do build orders: (1) that's not true, plenty of players just use the mouse and (2) a good way to learn hotbuild is to practice build orders while using it.

There is basically no bar to practicing a build order. If you don't have a build order, look one up in the replay vault.

Every skill you need to be good at for build orders, you can learn by practicing build orders.

The sandbox is a great place to practice certain things because removing opponents means you have the exact same situation every time you restart it. You're in a race against yourself with no interference from the outside. Whatever you get good at doing in the sandbox, you will have an easier time doing during a match when you're under pressure.

Practicing apm is comfy because it’s something clear and evident that you can easily keep track of. However, that is almost entirely worthless as a sign of real player improvement. 5 right clicks beat 80 wrong ones.

Two schools of thought on hotkeys. You have the “sink or swim” style dudes that need to make a hotkey for anything and everything and only use those hotkeys. You also have the dudes that just slowly introduce hotkeys as they notice they click the same thing over and over again.

Personally, I fall into the 2nd and would say new players really should just have like move, reclaim, attack move, fac, pgen, mex, and template hotkeys. Add more once you’re comfortable enough with these to start noticing you are clicking certain icons often in game.

@arma473
I wouldn't say that there is literally "no bar" for practicing a build order. First and foremost, you gotta find a good one, which is harder than it could be.

BO tutorials on Youtube are great for that but they only cover generic BOs afaik. For the most popular team maps (Gap, Setons, Astro) you have to find many of the most interesting build orders/example games yourself.

While full out tutorials for all of them would be great, a more realistic goal is a library of example games.

Like:

• Here are 5 replays of 2k+ players doing a T3 com drop on Setons
• Here are 7 replays of 2k+ players rushing a nuke on gap.
• etc.

I agree that practicing apm in FAF is of questionable usefulness. I'm mostly certain my apm is generally higher when I'm playing well compared to at least a few different 2k players, all of whom would wipe the floor with me regardless of how well I was playing. The main time apm really becomes an issue is in large full share team games when teammates start dying. Even then it's not so much apm as it is how quickly you can think to make good decisions and movements. My apm has actually gone down when I'm in the situation of taking over multiple bases because my game sense or whatever just wasn't up to the task of managing three different bases made by other people with three different factions fighting on every front.

The exception to this is if you're doing highly optimized manual reclaim dependent builds, then yeah you can need good apm and clicking accuracy. Look at Yudi for instance. But for the vast majority of players in the vast majority of situations you'd be better off not doing that anyway.