@evildrew said in Title: A Time For Change: FAF Community Balance Team:
@Wheelie Why I wrote this... Well I could have just watched you and your group continue to fail the community and just looked away and ignored all the comments that I read from people having meltdowns wishing the bleeding would stop, but the truth is; I had to do it because somebody had to do something and looking to my left and to my right there was no one who was going to say what needed to be said.
You say it maybe would be more useful to start a proper discussion. Well I was open to give it a shot and bring many of my improvements to the game on Github but I got these types of replies like the one SpikeyNoob referenced. What would anyone conclude who gives a flawless mathematical demonstration and receives an answer decrying the methodology which is logical and sound as "criminal" and blasting out conceptually and factually false statements about T3 Pgens and T3 Mass Fabs vs RAS SACUs. Who would compare a RAS SACU to Mass Fabs and Pgens and not just the RAS upgrade without the SACU cost when specifically adding that the SACU has all these other benefits. It is called double counting. I can't help people who get the equation wrong and then refuse to listen to someone whose analytical skills are superior. He may decry that he is the balance in a Faucian fit because he carries the title - fine - but that does not make any claims relating to the balance of the game true and this is where a major problem lies.
"First of all, calculating the income of T3 mexes without mass storages is just criminal. A similar is true for mass fabs without their adjacency to T3 pgen. If you calculate the efficiency of a 2 T3 mass fab + 2 T3 Pgen grid you will see that they are more efficient than RAS SACUs. On the other hand, RAS SACUs have BP, are less volatile, can move, don't take space, can fight etc. " https://github.com/FAForever/fa/issues/4365
This is not the only incidence of double counting/double buffing/double nerfing we have seen over the years where only 1 targeted change should have been done, even the last patch has some of the same problems. So is that really me being unwilling to have a proper discussion?
You see Wheelie you are in the wrong about this, portray yourself as the victim and accuse me of being the person you are seeing in the mirror. We all do this from time to time so I wont hold it against you.
The question I ask myself is: Should I waste my time trying to collaborate with people like that? No, I will not avail my time or material to a group of people who from my point of view lack the wisdom to recognize its value. Tools can do a lot of good if used correctly but can be very harmful in the wrong hands, especially in the hands of people who do not grasp the underlying concepts.
I'm somehow accusing you of.. something? Meanwhile in your OP you are comparing me with a self centered dictator that uses conspiracy theories, blocks progress on purpose and puts his friends on important positions.
You have not shown us any evidence of what is wrong with balance and it's general direction. The only thing you've done is nitpick a few issues that people dares to disagree with your opinion. You call your own analysis a flawless mathematical demonstration and if someone thinks you're wrong they're the devil incarnate. If the balance team would behave like you are doing right now any possible balance discussion could be removed from the forum.
At the end of the day there are 2 main questions in this topic: 1, Should we make the balance team a democratically elected position, and 2 should the balance team be more open about its vision/decisions.
The first one is definitely a no for me as there is no good reason for it. Yes, lower rated players can be good at game design/balancing too, but if that's the case, what's stopping them right now? Spikey joined the balance team last year, not as a top player but as someone who wanted to help and had a positive attitude. Exotic retard used to be in the balance team while he was 1400 since he was a great coder(although i wasn't there at the time). Sure you have a higher chance to make it into the balance team if you are better at the game, but that's nothing to be surprised about since it means that statistically you have a way higher chance to actually know what you're talking about.
Both Rowey and Deribus, around 1k-1.5k rating, have roles that give them access to the balance team chat. Both sometimes make a suggestion or join in on a convo. Ask them how much we laugh in their faces for being just a mere 1k.
It isn't that hard to try and involve yourself. You just need a positive attitude and are willing to actually listen to others, while also staying critical of yourself. Being high rated is a pre but not a necessity.
As a small sidenote: Keep in mind you don't need to be in the balance team to have an impact on changes. Multiple changes in this patch were suggested by people not part of it.
If on the other hand we would democratically elect the balance team you would get tons of issues, a lot Ftx already mentioned. There's absolutely no way to stop it being a popularity contest. It reminds me of a story bh told me when he was facing zock in an election and he pmmed every random guy online on faf and he got 100+ votes from them because they new him from cool casts. So what happens now? T_R_U_putin gets elected by the russian gap community because he want to make the gameplay be more adjusted for gap. Tex gets elected by the 1v1 community because he wants to make all units fit 1v1 more and tryth gets elected by the teamgame community as a meme. Now what happens? 3 People with completely opposing views will never come to any coherent decision.
If on the other hand we would be electing 1 winner who would get to decide his own team then it's all the more dangerous. T_R_U_putin wins the race because the russian dual gap community is huge and he simply gets more votes. Or even better, yuri tells his audience to make him win for fun without even promising anything.
I know these aren't very realistic examples and pretty over exaggerated, but it certainly can happen on a smaller degree as the example with bh shows. In the end the cons far outweigh the pro's for me when it comes to electing the balance team.
Now for question 2: We probably should yes. I don't think anyone on the balance team is particularly against sharing information. It's just that nobody goes out of their way to actively share the information in the right place. I myself am guilty of that since i generally find discussing/explaining balance related issues on the forums boring and tedious even though when i'm streaming i can rant about a single balance question for 15 min.
This is why i suggested that i won't mind doing a Q&A every now and then at all since i would actually find it quite fun to talk about it / explain things. I didn't really think of anything else yet though, although the talks about things like making the balance team chat public is something i'm against. I don't think it will be efficient at all since it's nowhere near the only place were discussions are being held (other discord servers, in voice, on stream, in the client). I wouldn't mind something like releasing the meeting vods though since they tend to be more cohesive. Issue with that though is that they're kinda sporadic in nature.
