Title: A Time For Change: FAF Community Balance Team

I think the balance team is overly conservative and too biased towards how balance impacts high-level play compared to how they impact most players. However, I think the balance team puts more thought into things than a lot of people realize. Part of the problem is that the balance team appears like this black box with seemingly sudden changes that can appear quite detached from what the general community thinks the focus should be. There should be more transparency. FWIW, while I still disagree with a number of the balance team's perspectives, after being able to view their discussion channel, my understanding of and respect for their thought-processes increased. Additionally, I think the situation would be greatly improved by the addition of several active lower/mid-rated non-voting members to the balance team. They could help guide the team's focus to better consider regular players' perspectives and concerns, while also helping out and connecting the balance team with the community more.

PS: FAF has been growing for years and is continuing to do so. With a relatively recent average of something like 5,000+ games per day, I'd expect it to continue to exist for many more years, even if good new games come out.

PPS: It would be nice if we could figure out some system for an alternative balance mod that doesn't have the practical disadvantages that regular mods do of getting people to join them. For example, if we could have a balance mod that is presented to players more like how featured mods are, but without the backend issues, that could be a helpful solution to the conservative versus progressive balance divide.

@spikeynoob said in Title: A Time For Change: FAF Community Balance Team:

@mr_blastman A bad job? What makes u someone who is able to claim changes are a bad job?

• No concrete suggestions or ideas
• Plays one map
• Not even good at it

He’s built for a career in criticism

@spikeynoob said in Title: A Time For Change: FAF Community Balance Team:

@mr_blastman A bad job? What makes u someone who is able to claim changes are a bad job?

My vote is just as qualified as anyone else. That's why everyone gets one vote.

@ftxcommando said in Title: A Time For Change: FAF Community Balance Team:

@spikeynoob said in Title: A Time For Change: FAF Community Balance Team:

@mr_blastman A bad job? What makes u someone who is able to claim changes are a bad job?

• No concrete suggestions or ideas
• Plays one map
• Not even good at it

He’s built for a career in criticism

Exactly, why not make suggestions then have them discussed rather than making baseless claims of a poor job being done. It would accomplish way more than complaining here.

@penguin_ said in Title: A Time For Change: FAF Community Balance Team:

Additionally, I think the situation would be greatly improved by the addition of several active lower/mid-rated non-voting members to the balance team. They could help guide the team's focus to better consider regular players' perspectives and concerns, while also helping out and connecting the balance team with the community more.

I feel like a lot of this is accomplished from forum threads. Things like the bubble shield fix or the addition of UEF jamming on spy planes and strats was added directly from @ComradeStryker's posts (afaik ftx also had a bubble shield post so maybe im attributing idea to the wrong person) on the topic. Not that im opposed to the idea of adding more members.

The point of this thread is not individual balance changes, as mentioned by the OP, but the need for balance councilor changes.

Reading comprehension is hard, but I understand that real life is complicated, beyond the computer screen.

Have a nice day!

Speaking of votes and deciding how various aspects of FAF should be run, the FAF Association's annual general meeting is happening within a few weeks, and I'd like to encourage those who care about FAF and want to influence its future to consider joining. Click here to learn more.

Reading comprehension is hard so let's see if your inductive reasoning ability rotted away with age.

Reality: FAF provides player with the democratic ability to play and create whatever maps they want to.

Reality: With this ability, players converge to playing heavily passive maps with simple meta

Proposal: Have a balance team that is democratically voted

Outcome: The passive, simple maps become the new frame of reference and as balance is fixed to make them "better" you get new simple, passive maps and the cycle continues anew.

@penguin_ said in Title: A Time For Change: FAF Community Balance Team:

Speaking of votes and deciding how various aspects of FAF should be run, the FAF Association's annual general meeting is happening within a few weeks, and I'd like to encourage those who care about FAF and want to influence its future to consider joining. Click here to learn more.

Should be stated it's very pointedly NOT the job of the Board nor the Association to micromanage teams. They have their own independent statutes governing how they operate that were agreed upon by the people doing the work and the Board in turn.

In fact this exact scenario and your attempt to bring the Board in as a solution is the exact doomsday situation that made half the people in the Association worried about it existing when it was first being proposed.

I actually wasn't trying to bring the Board into this..... I was trying to encourage people to participate in the Association and thinking some might draft some proposals as well.....

@lord_asmodeus said in Title: A Time For Change: FAF Community Balance Team:

-- Fire beetles are by far not obsolete.

Beetles mentioned

1 T2 transport with 1 mobile stealth gen and 5 fire beetles can wipe an air grid.

3 T2 transports of Medusas are about as expensive, as hard to get to the enemy air grid as 1 transport, need less micro, can target T2+ mexes as well as pgens and out-DPS beetles mass-for-mass after 2 volleys.

They can be used to clear large armies of units.

Why not just make more rhinos so you have a bigger army? They shoot all the time and need way less micro.

They can be used as a fast attack and wipe upgrading mexes.

Mantis also can for a fraction of the cost, and they don't kill themselves on a T1 mex.

Hell you can use them in your army to snipe acu's

If you made enough beetles to make it through, you could've made more rhinos to the same effect.

3 transports are easier to see

Medusas provide more reaction time (means you can stop chain pgen explosion)

Cybran can't win a war of attrition against pillar or blaze spam with rhinos due to mobile shields existing. Beetles force ACUs to stop pushing and trade efficiently with both of these units by getting under shields and into clumps.

Ah, beetle drops are also significantly less telegraphed because nobody is going to see the beetles in your base, just a t2 transport which can exist for a billion other reasons.

@penguin_ said in Title: A Time For Change: FAF Community Balance Team:

thinking some might draft some proposals as well.....

Proposals like what? Changing how balance team gets appointed?

Transports can stack on top of each other. It doesn't matter if you have 1, 3 or 5, it's about as easy to maneuver them around enemy vision. I made beetle drops with T1 transports, I know. Actually it's better since only 1 transport needs mobile stealth.
Since you're not reaching a T3 air grid if you get scouted along the way, you actually get more of a drop since you can drop stealthed and medusas will start firing once they get in range. And of course you can just start killing mexes in 3 different places, something a single transport of beetles can't really do.

Beetles aren't intended to kill mexes, of course medusas are better. The post you quoted was primarily talking about air grids which I have seen plenty of successful beetle snipes on even in late t3 air stage. Medusa drops are going to fail because they miss decent dps in initial volleys and the first 5 seconds are absolutely imperative in making those sort of drops work. Beetles give near zero time to react and the lack of experience with how to notice they're happening just adds to their efficiency in that.

Even with all of that, 2 beetles going around killing loose t2 mexes in a large 2v2 map is way harder to notice and stop than a random group of mantis.

Alright, I suppose beetles are better specifically at ambushing air grids, if nothing else. I still can't imagine a map where a T2 mex would be raidable by 2 beetles (implying no radar) and where at the same time 8 mantis or a corsair wouldn't do the same job better.
Regarding stopping ACU pushes, T2 PDs can do the same thing more reliably and without killing themselves.

PD can't move and you need a pretty ridiculous clump of them to actually stop an intentional t2 push from either Aeon or UEF. Lack of AOE on cerb hurts against shield spam.

In terms of maps, I can just say like a lot of the 15x15 or 20x20 custom map gens that got hosted over the last few months. Corsairs leave reclaim and might work for a few early mexes but by then it's getting intercepted and a mass donation. I really can't say I ever see mantis productively kill t2 mexes, they take forever and are easy to intercept with air.

I believe this calls for a community poll.

I don't see the argument with PDs. If you don't have some units with you, beetles won't save you either. Assuming the enemy is preparing for a T2 push, would you rather have:

• 8 beetles and a deceiver which will stall the push for 30 seconds and maybe kill half their mass cost if the opponent is not an idiot, or
• 4 PDs and a shield which will deal 400 DPS for however long you can stall the push with your ACU and units and give you a chance to actually stop the push?

As for raiding, I suppose people prefer raiding with units that can defend themselves and keep raiding if there's no response, even if they take a few more seconds to kill a mex. Versatility matters. Nobody builds beetles preemptively for that reason.

I'd choose the beetles against 20 pillars, 6 parashields, and an ACU tbh

Best combo is like 1-2 PD so the enemy gets confident and walks in and you bomb half or more of the pillars.

I kinda agree with thomas on the point that the game is pretty linear/predictable and there's not a lot of variation that you can do strategy wise. Nowhere near the lvl of other rts games that is anyway. I do not however think that making factions tech stages and/or units more balanced towards each other is something that negatively impacts that. I'm not saying here that all units should become similar to eachother. I'm saying each unit should have their own unique strength that's good in atleast 1 scenario.

If we would go back to old balance then there would be tons of units that would literally never be made and could simply be removed from the game. Aeon t2 stage was so bad you would always rush t3 land. I'm not saying the old t3 land rush power spike for aeon was a bad thing, but the lack of t2 certainly was.

In an ideal world we would have both together, and it is kinda true to some aspect that some of the strongest units were made weaker to be more balanced. Maybe too much, idk, it's hard to tell, but i still do think that some of them were more than justified considering their dominance.

I'm not sure what your (thomas) idea is for an sacu change that would make is less linear to fit in the tech paths that exist in the game. It kinda feels like an empty shout that everyone agrees with. Let's make these units special and unique so they're great to play with! Sure, how?

Personally my ideal future vision of the game is that it gets unit upgrades, armor types and weapon types all balanced to make the game a lot more complex and interesting. I wouldn't even mind adding new units. You can make snipers have special penetration dmg against heavy armored units like percies while making them tickle titans, you can add an expensive upgrade to give spearheads a homing ability, etc. The problem however with this together with other suggestions that were proposed in this topic is if people even want this and from the general understanding i have the answer tends to be no. It's to leave the base game as it is aside from some minor balance changes. This aside from the fact that making such things will cost a tremendous amount of time and manpower which faf in general doesn't have a lot of.

One remark to the OP: I honestly don't know why you even wrote this. Balance team members, both past and current, tend to be evolved in tons of different areas in the community. They make youtube content, cast for FAFlive on twitch (that was co created by a balance team member), make maps, are in the matchmaker team, are faf moderators, host tourneys (some donate their own money), you can continue. Most are in the faf association as well.

Now why do you think these people tend to be on the balance team. Do you think this is because they care about faf and want to help it in some way? Nah no way right. They're just evil dictators that want to change the balance in their favor to win some more games.

At the end of the day everyone spends their free time to try and help improve the game. Now you can disagree with the changes made, but instead of screaming like this maybe it would be more usefull to start a proper discussion where you use proper arguments instead of going full conspiracy theory.