What would be an efficient use of FAF's funds to improve FAF?
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In my opinion a series of challenges would be better than an actual tutorial, as they would be easier to make and dont baby sit players through timely scenarios, simply choose a map, create said task and record the time it takes for a leaderboard it would also create a seperate area for competative play.
the challanges could start with easy but essential basic skill tasks such as fastest time to create 100 tanks
then fastest time to claim all mexes on a certain map like miricleto eco challanges like fastest time to break 1k mass income
or fastest time to create a strat bomber then kill something with itthen to more complex things like breaking through a very well defended base
and then these could be placed into another tab where you have matchmaking, custom and co-op
this would allow people to learn things at there own pace and practice particular skills and see how good they are against other times and also allow the top players some bragging rights to the fastest times and the first to use certain stratagies to accomplish those times.very similar to campaign missions and recorded times but far more specific in nature and smaller in scale
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@brutus5000 apologies then
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i think casting wise we are more than blessed with gyle. this guy talks like he is and an broadcaster at the bbc for live.
imho the main problems why new players leave (wihout having any data to prove it) who maybe dont have any special connection to rts or remember the game from their youth is the pathfinding combined with the nealry non existant multicore support (and this in an engine that highly relies on cpu). seeing a 6v6 going down in speed after 40 min while everybody got i5's, i7's and ryzens in a game from 2007 is not very pleasant while used-to players still consider a it a fluent gaming experience.
i wouldnt state toxicity as a characteristic of faf, its even lower than in most other games i think, bcs due to the relativly small playerbase you have to play at some point with the same people. i always have a very family feeling playing it:) also i lost it myself here and then i never had any trouble with players over a longer period of time. also i want to emphasize the fact that those bad lobby names indeed stopped (e.g.)
besides buying the royalties and the game code to make a complete 2023 makeover of the engine i think the tutorial campaign would be very very nice. maybe push modded fun modes more with an own ranking (i know we already got so many different rankings). Its incredibly what the sup com engine is capable of, but me, as most i think, never play fun modes. I think there could be even some battle royal with the coms be possible. warcraft III footmen style if anyone remembers:P the coms get tons of upgrades and can vet like 50 times (level up), maybe you can even implement more ultimates trough the over charge function. also im a big friend of the challenge idea. crazy made up scenarios and some objectives. easy to make bronze but hard for 2k's to get platinum, like trackmania.
all just ideas which would be a shitton of work i cant myself do bcs i didnt learned something useful:P
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@penguin_
No spec work
https://www.nospec.com/ -
Maybe bring back Galactic War Multiplayer?
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We're already paying our good friend gyle 1800 bucks a month for casting
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@thewheelie said in What would be an efficient use of FAF's funds to improve FAF?:
We're already paying our good friend gyle 1800 bucks a month for casting
No FAF funds are going to any caster at the moment. I suspect you are just referencing his patreon which is from non FAF individuals
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Its called a joke my man. I think its pretty obvious faf isnt spending 1800 a month on 1 caster
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@thewheelie said in What would be an efficient use of FAF's funds to improve FAF?:
We're already paying our good friend gyle 1800 bucks a month for casting
H-hey, c-could I get s-some of t-that for fa-faflive?
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@thewheelie
Some people read jokes like that and take them literally. I'd suggest not making those sorts of jokes on the forums...
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@thewheelie said in What would be an efficient use of FAF's funds to improve FAF?:
Its called a joke my man. I think its pretty obvious faf isnt spending 1800 a month on 1 caster
Yes as Penguin said not everyone reading this would know it is meant as a joke so I had to clarify to make it obvious.
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I honestly wouldn't have been surprised if faf was spending 1800 a month on gyle since he has such professional casts.
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Because farms is always serious @Penguin_ ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
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the only thing worth using money for would be to get the IP back and hire developers to rewrite the engine without touching anything else (impossible task in itself), but that would need FAF budget to be in dozens of millions
I don't think there is anything else worth using money for other than keeping the servers and services (like this forum) running
about promoting FAF, everyone on steam forums seems to get triggered whenever FAF is mentioned unless they specifically asked about it, as do some people on supcom reddits, so idk if it would not backfire to go on an advertisement campaign instead of attracting new players
things that matter, improving performance, increasing modding capabilities, reducing friction for joining (recently someone complained they don't use FAF because it is a hassle to set up), derp's new player tutorial system meme, etc all don't seem to cost money to do, but only voluntary effort, adding money to "official" people to do stuff would be toxic to people who already do it for free, and afaik doing things for free is where 99% of FAF development comes from in first place
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@edtjuh this has been ongoing for years as it a technical issue that just required people who know what the are doing both the GW back and front end are on the fa repo
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I know very little about how open source projects work and how devs choose the features they work on, but would a bounty system be worth the headache? Maybe someone knows of a tool or website that allows communities to suggest and pledge money towards desired features? I think that would avoid a lot of pitfalls. If what you're asking is how to use funds managed by the association, maybe the various elected councilors could receive a budget to manage take on the task of assigning bounties for things they'd like devs to focus on. 50 bucks will obviously not mean much to seasoned devs doing this on the side, but it might attract hobbyists or beginners, that, under the guidance of our senior devs, could help with the less glamorous aspects.
And since the thread has somehow also become about marketing vs player retention, I'd like to mention 2 great features, one still in need of some polish, the other only a suggestion for now, that could help with the latter:
The league system was a move in the right direction to emphasize ladder more over custom games, and the system is in place, the icons are very nice, but we don't use them enough in the client and ingame right now. The client UI needs to be checked meticulously and modified such that every instance where a player is mentioned and their global rating displayed is modified to emphasize league first and foremost. Those league icons should be like the country flag, always attached to the nickname, only then will the true potential of the league system be within reach, that is, shifting the culture away from custom games and global rating.
Another proposal I thought was very very promising (apologies, I forget who suggested it) was a chat wheel ingame. Managing toxicity in competitive team games is partly about removing sources of frustration, and a good, formalized, useful and fast communication tool does just that. Something to bridge the gap between the fast but vague ping and the tedious, unreliable (because of language barriers) and potentially insulting team chat. Even the basic pings could be improved upon if they showed an arrow towards the location when you're too zoomed in to see them. As they are now, a new player might not even realize what the sounds are about and miss them completely.
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@ftxcommando said in What would be an efficient use of FAF's funds to improve FAF?:
This is currently private money only. There would have to be some kind of mechanism for the community to assign FAF money to issue bounties. If the devs do it, they would kind of assign themselves FAF money.
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We discuss this once a year. Putting money on issues causes more problems than it solves.
There are 2 facts:
- We lack and overall amount of manpower.
- We have decided not to pay (core) developers.
People always want more features. So you put money on these features. Core devs don't have time for these features (otherwise we wouldn't need putting money on it), so potentially new people appear solve it and get money.
This leads to the situation that core developers who do not get money need to guide and review people who get money for their work. Also while they work on cool new features while core developers can still mop the floor. This is not a healthy situation.
Alternatively if you put money on groundwork issues it will most probably redeemed by core developers. Which we didn't want to pay in the first place. Also this wouldn't improve their work hours, just shift their direction.I see no win scenario here.
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Thanks for clarifying Brutus. I understand it's not trivial to turn association money into manpower in this situation, especially given the 2nd fact you stated. What are your thoughts on encouraging donations directly through Issuehunt instead of redistributing donations made to FaF? Would that avoid enough headaches to justify the attempt? If so, maybe we can promote that instead for a while.
