Title: A Time For Change: FAF Community Balance Team

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

Starcraft has millions of players all pushing a meta that evolves even without balance adjustments. FAF sees such things sporadically because it’s simply 100x or less the playerbase. Take walking mid on sentons, that came from zero actual balance decisions but simply an adjustment of map meta.

If FAF was pushing itself as hard as Starcraft, you would actually have the constant babyraging about maps meta make sense because everything would have timings down as hard as sentons with gameplay kinks like the midwalk being found.

I appreciate the response thanks for the insight!

I am at a loss for words here honestly. I would really like to see your " flawless mathematical demonstration" but unfortunately, you've decided to remove and render all of your issues on GitHub useless since the balance team disagreed with some of your ideas. And yes, calculating the efficiency of a T3 mex without considering the mass storage is "criminal" and I stand by it, I don't think there is more to add here.
Over the years there has been a lot of talk about mathematical models that would model the game and its balance and be able to answer questions about units' power and their relative strength to other units. However, it seems like every time important aspect is omitted which is the sheer complexity of the game and all of the relations between different stats of units which often have very complicated and highly unintuitive or situationally dependent relations. That's why a single formula for a unit's strength doesn't and probably never will exist.
The other possibility is simply collecting lots and lots of data and creating some models based on that. The issue with this approach is that surprise surprise, we don't have that data, and AFAIK collecting it would introduce a lot of potential issues and isn't trivial to do either.

Just for clarification, I am not denying your contributions, you have suggested good changes before and found bugs, some of the most recent one like the crash damage of 2 Transports and Notha has been fixed with the most recent patch. However, it just seems like whenever someone disagrees with your POW on a particular balance issue you simply walk away from the discussions and blame it on their ignorance since obviously, their arguments are inferior compared to yours which are backed by flawless mathematical demonstration that couldn't possibly have any flaws in its reasoning.

As far as RAS SCUs are concerned it is true that theoretically, the RAS upgrade is more efficient than the mass fab grid. However, this ignores the fact that

• You can't get the upgrade without paying for the SCU itself
• If you are interested in the purely economical aspect of such a unit the extra value you get from the HP, DPS, and BP may not be worth the extra cost

Here are some of the stats:

The BP adjustment simply subtracted the cost of T1 engineers with the same amount of BP as the SCU (56). This is to more closely simulate the cost of the SCU since we can assume that its BP would be used in most cases contrary to its defensive capabilities.

As you can see for pure economical scaling the Mass Fab grid is more efficient however the RAS SCUs have other advantages such as more hp, having DPS, being able to move, being a lot more compact, being less volatile, etc. etc. Simply speaking it's a trade-off. That doesn't mean that we, as the Balance Team, believe they are in the correct spot right now. On the contrary, there even is a PR that adjusts the SCU. It's currently in the development and testing phase and it will be merged in the next patch.

That doesn't change the fact that calculating these numbers without taking into account adjacency is bogus and far from flawless mathematical demonstration, and the proposed changes stemming from those flawed calculations were absolutely not acceptable.

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

I thought the ultimate point of balance is to increase number of viable strategies and options while maintaining the existing gameplay, not "keeping things fresh and new" ...

Which is why I prefaced the my argument that even scenarios where bad balance decisions are made, its still at the very least keeping things fresh/new. Ie. changes for the sake of change is bad, but even then its not like such an approach is entirely bad. Yeah its not ideal, but crucially its not boring.

Going back maybe 1 year or more some of the complaints mentioned in this thread idve agreed with more:

• balance discussions being a black box where points discussed in the forums seemed to be ignored while units no-one mentioned as being an issue were changed without warning, with no visibility of the reasoning
• changes seemed focused in what was best for top level play in 1v1 games, with the impact in other popular parts of FAF and at lower ranks ignored

However Ive seen a notable improvement in both these areas - potential balance changes were highlighted in advance for discussion this time with the reasoning for then explained to some extent; planned changes that needed more time but were recognised as being required (eg GC nerf) were also noted.
Some changes were also clearly with a non-1v1 mindset (eg considering the power level of units and strategies in team game scenarios)

I still think things could be improved further (eg while I dont know how prevalent the view is in the balance team, Ive seen many people be automatically dismissive of the impact of a change on a dual gap game-however as one of the most commonly played games on FAF I think it should be considered as part of any balance decision). It’s also not always clear the extent to which feedback will be taken into account (but eg Tagada has often posted responses / explanations on points so this has improved from what I recall when I first came to FAF).

However I dont think balance by vote or user popularity is the way to go. Someone new to the game is going to have far less of an idea of what changes would be good/bad than someone with lots of games played at the highest skill levels, and if balance decisions become popularity contests it could result in very harmful changes and unintended consequences.

It sounds like FAF’s playerbase has been growing so I’d also caution against extreme balance changes for the sake of it/to try and mix things up, since they risk losing more players than they might gain.

Meanwhile if balance team members were voted for I expect it would lead FAF to being balanced around a handful of popular maps which would be worse long term for variety.

It’s REALLY funny you want to do some democratic system and then say

“should I collaborate with these guys that don’t share my opinions? no”

What are you gonna do when some of them get elected, genius?

I enjoy your vague proposal getting even more vague solutions to problems. Now a jury exists? Who chooses the jury that decides the candidates? How do you decide when they are abusing authority? Can you be a jury member and a balance member? If not, doesn’t that mean the jury needs access to balance team talks to know what can be a good idea? Doesn’t that mean these guys are now unelected dictators you were just now schizoposting about?

“your sparky change would be instantly dismissed”

uh no cuz I would win a seat on the team with my natural charisma and then put it into patches not caring what a bunch of dudes that dunno what they’re talking about are saying. Nothing in my mandate said I had to work with guys that play essentially nothing but maps I don’t consider decent FAF environments.

I'm essentially never going to agree with dudes that are centered on dual gap/your map/astro/whatever in custom games because my point of reference is the matchmakers and I discount gameplay concerns that can be addressed by people simply adjusting the maps that were only originally created as a baby-proof variant of FAF meta 4-5-6 years ago. If the frame of reference is different, it makes massive amounts of discussion pointless because that is what decides your analysis of problematic units or game states. The nuke cost feedback is already an example of this. You can't compromise there, there are people that STILL think nukes are OP with the current change. You can only get somebody to see what you consider as the frame of reference and why it led to these changes.

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

its still at the very least keeping things fresh/new. Ie. changes for the sake of change is bad

I fail to see the difference between changing something to keep things fresh and change for sake of change, if you are changing something to keep things fresh, that is a change for the sake of change as far as I can tell

and I am not saying every change is bad, but all of them must have proper reason to improve existing gameplay, not just to do something "new", the change must not be to keep things fresh but solely to balance the game

And to address this insane shit about "people I play with" do you know why I play with them? Because they're people that play near my skill level in the games I enjoy: matchmaker and just random high level custom games. The reason the balance team tends to be people that are friends are because it's a small community. Balance team members:

1. Have to have a similar framework to talk about changes coherently, t2 navy being good on astro is simply not a discussion that can happen.

• What does that mean? They're often playing together.

2. Have to have a decent basis of understanding of the game to gauge the impact of adjustments on said agreed upon framework.

• What does that mean? Either they have fairly large knowledge of the codebase to the extent they have played around with values theoretically or they have practical game experience which in turn correlates with higher rating.

So you're left with a bunch of people that play a similar type of games that are also all generally good at those games. Is it strange that dudes that invest their freetime into playing the same game in the same niche of that game would become friends? Especially if they then work to improve that game together through the years? Why is this some random conspiracy to you?

This reminds me of the conspiracy about how I was some evil dude that rigged tournies for his friends or only cared about the maps/ideas his friends made. Maybe it's because the people that I regularly need to associate with for things related to improving my area of FAF also end up becoming closer friends with me. I don't really get why this is so weird to understand. Do people not become friends with people at their workplace that they probably would have never spent a second thought thinking about in other environments?

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

The difference between several suggestions and the entirety of a set of changes getting implemented can be the difference between the overall idea behind the changes working or not working. If I did an extensive navy rework f.ex. and they then said 'yeah, we like half the changes let's do this but not that', the chances of many of the core concepts underpinning those changes would not be observed in game and it would not achieve its goal of enhancing gameplay to the intended extent.

To translate and summarize, your position seems to be essentially: "Unless all my suggestions are accepted, it is not worth making any suggestions. Also, this means the balance team is the greatest evil that has spawned since the fall of the Third Reich."

I have tried to read through all of ComradeStryker’s posts which I have seen before but to me those are mostly small proposed changes that do little to affect the game overall.

I guess this just reinforces the point above huh? "No changes are worth proposing until the whole system is adapted as you think is needed." We'll just ignore the fact that perhaps the existing playerbase does not like to see the game's balance do a 180, further ignore that gradual changes over time is the main method of game balancing across the industry, and just conclude by dismissing the 7 chapters of suggestions provided by Stryker.

Anyone can get small changes approved when they are obviously needed. That is not what is being discussed here.

Yes, and that's the problem.

I would be happily participating in a discussion about required changes, if you were to care to name specifics and propose solutions. But you've not been doing that, ostensibly because doing that takes actual work and is difficult. You'd rather dismiss this option entirely, even though you've seen that that is a proven and productive method of getting your proposed changes into the game.

Alternatively, I would have been very supportive of a proposal to open up the balance team's discussions and thought processes to the public. Others have mentioned that a lot of thought and planning has gone into these changes, and I for one would enjoy reading the details.

Yet, instead you've thrown a temper tantrum.
I suggest you put some thought into what exactly it is that you want to achieve, and what the best way would to to achieve that. Trying to incite a revolution against imagined tyrannical oppressors and accordingly getting publicly ridiculed might not be the best course of action.

Man does not even dare to respond to my post.

So to move the conversation to what would actually be required to see anything changed here:

The way the balance team works and operates is defined by the Statutes that define this as a team under the FAF umbrella. This was created after the last GM, same as pretty much every other team.

The Statutes define
A) how the Team Lead is chosen (balance team is an election between all members)
B) how to choose new members (balance team votes internally on new members)
C) how to change the statutes (afaik, balance team is a vote on that as well since basically every team operates that way)

So to get the balance team to actually become some democratic utopia then you need to get the team itself to agree with that premise leading to a better FAF, since they are in control of their own statute. You called them dictators with no capacity for thought beyond what benefits them, so you already failed on this one.

This leaves you with the nuclear option on FAF: using the Board to force a change on the balance team. This is something that everybody strongly disagrees with both in the Board and the Association as a general principle because this is a volunteer project. Motivation is currency and forcing huge change involuntarily is how everything dies in that area.

So you would need to get the Board to agree that this is not only a positive for FAF but so ridiculously necessary it must be thrust upon the team, which is pretty much a diagnosis that the team is incompetent making their statute baseless. This would not only require (I believe) a supermajority vote from the Board but more than likely an entire EGM meeting where the whole Association meets to discuss whether this action is correct because every other team does not want to feel like something similar is going to happen to them.

So not only are you getting the whole Board to agree with it, but you are going to have to make the Association, which basically includes some proportion of every team working on FAF, to agree with you.

I guess you have the option of trying to make yourself the new Board by electing your opinion as the majority. But if you do not follow the steps above, you would be more than likely removed through an EGM and the balance team would simply be reinstated.

Good luck with your game plan.

Skimming the people that responded, I'm not even sure you have more than like 2 people within the Association itself that expressed any level of a positive response about this, let alone anybody on the Board or balance team.

@maudlin27 said in Title: A Time For Change: FAF Community Balance Team:

potential balance changes were highlighted in advance for discussion this time with the reasoning for then explained to some extent; planned changes that needed more time but were recognised as being required (eg GC nerf) were also noted.

even if the changes are announced ahead of time, does any feedback from anyone who isn't on balance team have any effect on them or are they just early patch notes that nothing anyone (not on balance team) says can change

Beyond the obvious UEF stuff I gave feedback on, an adjustment to hive I suggested like 3 days before the patch was released got implemented (making bp efficiency go down as it increases in tiers).

if someone wants to change something, let them throw a picture of a unit or a building before/after

it's easier to discuss the idea of the player, his vision, maybe it will work.

the main thing is that the changes in the figures are objective enough (no nonsense)

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

So to move the conversation to what would actually be required to see anything changed here:

The way the balance team works and operates is defined by the Statutes that define this as a team under the FAF umbrella. This was created after the last GM, same as pretty much every other team.

The Statutes define
A) how the Team Lead is chosen (balance team is an election between all members)
B) how to choose new members (balance team votes internally on new members)
C) how to change the statutes (afaik, balance team is a vote on that as well since basically every team operates that way)

So to get the balance team to actually become some democratic utopia then you need to get the team itself to agree with that premise leading to a better FAF, since they are in control of their own statute. You called them dictators with no capacity for thought beyond what benefits them, so you already failed on this one.

This leaves you with the nuclear option on FAF: using the Board to force a change on the balance team. This is something that everybody strongly disagrees with both in the Board and the Association as a general principle because this is a volunteer project. Motivation is currency and forcing huge change involuntarily is how everything dies in that area.

So you would need to get the Board to agree that this is not only a positive for FAF but so ridiculously necessary it must be thrust upon the team, which is pretty much a diagnosis that the team is incompetent making their statute baseless. This would not only require (I believe) a supermajority vote from the Board but more than likely an entire EGM meeting where the whole Association meets to discuss whether this action is correct because every other team does not want to feel like something similar is going to happen to them.

So not only are you getting the whole Board to agree with it, but you are going to have to make the Association, which basically includes some proportion of every team working on FAF, to agree with you.

I guess you have the option of trying to make yourself the new Board by electing your opinion as the majority. But if you do not follow the steps above, you would be more than likely removed through an EGM and the balance team would simply be reinstated.

Good luck with your game plan.

Skimming the people that responded, I'm not even sure you have more than like 2 people within the Association itself that expressed any level of a positive response about this, let alone anybody on the Board or balance team.

To avoid misinformation being spread, I just want to clarify that some of what FTX said here is wrong. For reference, you can read the FAF Statutes of the Association and the proposal that was passed regarding FAF's teams (you can also read some additional information regarding the balance team on the wiki, but the wiki can be inaccurate). Basically, it is my understanding that the balance team could theoretically be changed via internal balance team decisions, FAF Board intervertion, and or proposals that are passed by the FAF Association (at the General Meeting). All Association members may submit proposals, and the General Meeting decides on proposals by simple majority vote.

PS: I am not suggesting a course of action here. My motivation for this post was to lessen the spread of misinformation and to encourage more people who care about FAF to join the FAF Association.

If I know something, is to let people do the work they want to do and learn from their betters. If your ideas don’t get accepted then you need to learn more probably. Most contributors will happily take new people, just don’t expect to have your every change accepted.

The moment you make it a popularity contest, the people doing real work leave and some kids with thirst for control come in

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

@maudlin27 said in Title: A Time For Change: FAF Community Balance Team:

potential balance changes were highlighted in advance for discussion this time with the reasoning for then explained to some extent; planned changes that needed more time but were recognised as being required (eg GC nerf) were also noted.

even if the changes are announced ahead of time, does any feedback from anyone who isn't on balance team have any effect on them or are they just early patch notes that nothing anyone (not on balance team) says can change

Not saying communication is perfect but most things suggested (that are worth discussing) are actually discussed.

I wouldn't mind doing some live Q&A from time to time if enough people are interested in it.

I'll make a hot take: the reason this thread exists is because posting standards on the balance subforum were raised to the point of requiring a dissertation on why something should be changed. This meant that people with bad balance ideas weren't posting and weren't being corrected, so their ideas and resentment towards the balance team grew until this thread happened.
How about we change posting rules again? Remove the "you need a 3 A4 page essay with data on why the idea is good" requirement, make it clear that the balance team is not obliged to read or respond to any of the threads, and lock threads that flame the balance team.