FAF has become insanely slow, turtly and boring.

I am very concerned about the balance changes that have been made the past 2 years.

Nowadays, experimentals are completely useless and are a necessary means only to defend against another experimental. Indeed, now the game meta goes by ''who throws/ doesn't throw experimental mass away''. Nothing more. Nothing less. They have become completeley useless and linear in comparison to what they used to be.
This is one major reason why games are insanely turtly and boring as hell, in the sight that there is absolutely no dynamism to neither team games nor 1v1 games.
The recent (years) balance changes made to the game, completely destroyed Supreme Commander.
The worst balance changes made were the ones that nerfed build power, nerfed t3 units (at expense of cost), nerfed t4 units, nerfed air unit speed.
Nowadays I need to have 4 t3 engineers assigned to each my t3 air facilites in order to have a decent usage of mass into ASF production. The time taken to build those engineers (as well in every other technologies, corresponding to any other building) allows for the enemy 3 times as much time to scout my infrastructures and strategies, not only but as well to eco much more easily given that pressure cannot be applied at a normal rate. In sight of such poor and insanely boring build power rate.

I will go as far as to say that many pro players are leaving /have left because the game has become a stale muddy swamp with no possibilty for interesting strategies. There is only one strategy and it is to eco up and to spam as much random units as possible and then finish with arty war.

The game feels insanely slow. This is a serious concern for the future of FAF. I hope that game balance team will take this seriously.
I did not bother to write every thought in detail, because I wanted to get straight to the point. I will be writing a more structured post at a later date.

FAF is only as boring as the maps it's played on. Consider these attributes of maps that contribute to the viability of turtle style gameplay:

• Well defended spawn position (Near map edges or impassable terrain)
• High proportion of mex near spawn position
• Low proportion of mex away from spawn position
• Few mex in total (Most turtly map: Flat with 1 mex per player at spawn and no other mex.)
• Same team spawn positions close together
• Opposite team spawns far apart
• One or few avenues for ground attack (only have to defend 1 spot = very turtly)

Maps that are turtly: Astro crater, Gap
Maps that are not turtly: White Fire, most maps by Chosen

@FunkOff

It is a given that map generation will be quite defining of gamestyle. But your point does not counter my argument.

It's undeniable that the meta has completely changed to turtle on maps that were fairly interesting and fairly open like: Canis, Syrtis, Hilly, etc.

->The point being that those maps used to be seen as more open maps before. Nowadays they appear very limited; Because of balance changes in nerfing BP, damage and speed.

Another way to explain it is if you were given to battle with only Striker as a unit (as units and bp have been nerfed hard to a point of indifference), any given map would result in the same boring motion.

I am playing pretty offensively and it is a lot of fun.
I think the things you described are like u said bad for teamgames. I have not realised them in 1v1 games.
By my opinion the eco and arty play comes from turtly teamgame maps.
I have seen and played some teamgame maps where u can get some epic play.
most of them have spawns all over the place and the bases can be attacked in different ways.

canis hilly open maps nice meme

game has never been healthier, both in player metrics and in balance

Maybe you can give me a real reply FtXCommando?

your post is a bunch of whinging saying the game is dying because t3 is no longer broken and you cant hide shit eco management by dumping 600 mass per second into t4 with 8 t3 engies; im telling you it had no impact on high level games or faf playerbase in general

next

Canis is a classic turtle map (4v4 and higher versions) because all same team spawns are close together but opposite teams are far apart.

I think you'll enjoy this post: https://forum.faforever.com/topic/171/i-think-the-relationship-between-t3-land-and-experimentals-should-be-re-examined/5

Which says a lot of the same things you're saying.

T3 land is suffering against assault experimental unless you're UEF. Experimental units are no longer surprise assault units. For many factions there's little reason to invest heavily in late game T3 production when you can just go T4.

Anyway, they're working on SCU changes that might go a long way towards fixing the problem...

If you want more offensive gameplay, then ACU need a buff. The nerf hit them hard and turned them into a turtle mess.

You also need to increase the power consumption of all t2 shields, and then decrease the build time for t2 fac and t3 fac.

SCU changes wont solve jack. Ras SACU are not problematic. They hare a 600 second pay back time as it is, which is 10 minutes. 10 Ras sacu, is the same as 2 T3 arty in mass equivalency accumulation to payback. The optimal income to build a para is 400.

Tele sacu should be made significantly cheaper, and other non-game ender expendable strategies should be made cheaper. As it stands the infrastructure required to counter Para or other game ender is very expensive, almost as much so as building the game ender itself, which leads such strategies to an inherent disadvantage as they have a risk to them, while building a para does not.

Sams should also be made more expensive. 1200 mass cost should suffice.

Increase strat hp by 1-2k. And you're golden.

Also you won't get anything intelligible from Ftx when it comes to balance discussions he is not interested. He has his own incorrect view. His job is to listen to the community and then provide feedback based on what we say, but instead he just foists his own beliefs in a very dogmatic way. Its a waste of time. I've tried before.

If I can chime in for a bit...
Can you show me the replays where game plays out in that manner?

From my point of view being a turtle is a uphill battle in a 1 Vs 1 game and even harder in team games if we are not talking about maps such as astro crater.

Main focus as I see it is to not have a boring game.

@Psions said in FAF has become insanely slow, turtly and boring.:

If you want more offensive gameplay, then ACU need a buff. The nerf hit them hard and turned them into a turtle mess.

You also need to increase the power consumption of all t2 shields, and then decrease the build time for t2 fac and t3 fac.

SCU changes wont solve jack. Ras SACU are not problematic. They hare a 600 second pay back time as it is, which is 10 minutes. 10 Ras sacu, is the same as 2 T3 arty in mass equivalency accumulation to payback. The optimal income to build a para is 400.

Tele sacu should be made significantly cheaper, and other non-game ender expendable strategies should be made cheaper. As it stands the infrastructure required to counter Para or other game ender is very expensive, almost as much so as building the game ender itself, which leads such strategies to an inherent disadvantage as they have a risk to them, while building a para does not.

Sams should also be made more expensive. 1200 mass cost should suffice.

Increase strat hp by 1-2k. And you're golden.

Also you won't get anything intelligible from Ftx when it comes to balance discussions he is not interested. He has his own incorrect view. His job is to listen to the community and then provide feedback based on what we say, but instead he just foists his own beliefs in a very dogmatic way. Its a waste of time. I've tried before.

your first sentence makes this entire post dumb. ACU already makes t2 and t1 gameplay fucking garbage on Teamgames, there so many ACUs... so much Overcharge and gun upgrades. your basically forced to eco lol. RAS late game is a problem especially rambos with the same amount of BP as Engineer Preset same with RAS preset same BP as Engineer Preset.

Making SAMs more expensive just makes Air... Which is already the most unbalanced part of the game even more unbalanced. Better to just fix the meta of rushing t3 air on every team map into something actually playable considering the fact you might as well not even have T1 and T2 air.
Strat HP is just a random change not sure where that really came from

Also FTX might be an asshole but your post is just kinda dumb.

@Azraeel

Its a paradox in a sense. Strong ACU means weak T1 stage, but its easier to breach turtle bases.

Weak ACU makes turtle bases very hard to breach, but T1 Stronger.

Even pre-nerf acu struggled with mass T2 spam, so I don't think that's the problem. You can grind pre-nerf acu with t1 spam, after it runs out of vets.

Turtle applies whether you are making ras coms or fabricators. You can always turtle with neither as well and just rely on getting t3 eco faster.

Making Sams more expensive doesn't make air more imbalanced. SAMS are overpowered in stopping enemy strats for the mass cost. The alternative is to increase all air unit speed significantly, but that would truly make air imbalanced.

Strat HP is so sams don't basically 1/2 shot them, and so they survive better. As it stands building spam strats to kill enemy coms late game is very high risk as opposed to spending that mass on game enders.

I didn't mention Ftx at all in my post?

To cut off what is absolutely sure to cause a little argument right now.. you kinda did mention Ftx, @Psions.

And to reiterate my colleague from a different thread, please keep the discussion to balance and hows and whys, not assertions or irrelevant ad hominem etc.