Why would you have left FAF?
I'm thinking of leaving because of the terrible, terrible networking code. There is absolutely no way that TCP is this unreliable. It is ludicrous how many games are left hanging because of random people disconnecting from each other. The internet would not work if it was this unreliable. It's absolutely ridiculous to pay for 1 GB fiber, be connected via ethernet, have no background applications running and still be responsible for lag.
Obviously this doesn't happen in literally any other games. I play starcraft. Never lag, almost never experience these connection issues and I am virtually never responsible for any lag unless we are 1v1ing in Korea. I play many games flawlessly. Only this game exhibits these issues.
@tstedel There is this https://forum.faforever.com/topic/6182/addressing-severe-connectivity-issues-what-has-happened
which tells you about certain problems and why disconnects happen "recently".
Also FAF is free and unlike starcraft there is no company with any significant amount of money behind it and no microtransactions. If you were paying 0$ for your internet connection, would it really be free of disconnects?
@tstedel I do agree saying this is probably the main issue with FAF atm. Nothing else really matters in comparison.
No, but everyone I read shit from people like you I lose all motivation and rather do something else.
"Nerds have a really complicated relationship with change: Change is awesome when WE'RE the ones doing it. As soon as change is coming from outside of us it becomes untrustworthy and it threatens what we think of is the familiar."
– Benno Rice
It seems the balance team and leadership also suffers under community toxicity. I would suggest a strict code of conduct, that also protects volunteers from 'free speech' to some degree.
To the balance team:
I would like to repeat that your work made me come back lurking to the forums and if I do find myself playing FAF again it is entirely thanks to your work.
I left because I got annoyed with the quirky controls of the game. Attack move and tree groups. Things like area commands being blocked by the council really bummed me out. Things that make the macro control of the game more modern where blocked because they constituted "dumming down" the game. On the other hand, interesting controls on units, like overcharging, got the automation treatment.
But to be fair, I might have left anyway because I don't like to allocate as much time to gaming as I used to anymore.
Asking for FAF to take a clearer stance on the russian invasion of Ukraine is unfair tbh, for various reasons. But I do believe that having people with eastern orthodox mindsets in charge is bad for the community (because they make for poor leaders in general). A very strong example of people with this mindset was Biass - always dragging arguments to a personal level, never able to keep an argument constructive. Always having some bizarrely distorted view of personal pride and what constitutes as a personal attack.
What this community needs more is people who think and argue like Bodir. Always detailed and constructive in his analysis. At least from what I could see on the forums.
@chiefbigfeather said in Why would you have left FAF?:
Eastern orthodox mindsets in charge is bad
You define people by the major religion in their area?
@brutus5000 I'm sorry about what I said. I was very unhappy after having about 4 games in a row affected by these issues. The last of which was one were it was actually me lagging and after leaving and watching the replay, I could see that all lag was resolved when I left. I have downloaded the code myself and it is actually structured quite well and it's obvious you've put a lot of work into this. I hope that these issues can be ironed out.
@melanol said in Why would you have left FAF?:
@chiefbigfeather said in Why would you have left FAF?:
Eastern orthodox mindsets in charge is bad
You define people by the major religion in their area?
Nope, I'm explicitly not defining people. I am trying to describe a mindset that is prevalent in certain cultural circles. Problematic mindsets are of course not exclusive to those circles, but currently on very prominent display.
@nine2 said in Why would you have left FAF?:
We actually get a decent stream of new players in all of the time but we lose them quickly - 90% of new FAF players will be gone after 2 years.
Do you think this is not normal?
There is no regular addition of content to FAF. Therefore, the loss of the audience is quite a logical phenomenon in such situations.
I am wrong? So look at other popular projects. Let's take Dota for example. Take a look at the Dota 2 online chart on Steam Charts on the first day of the Battle Pass release. Online is growing exponentially.
Answer the question, how much will online games like CS:GO and Dota drop if all battle passes and in-game cosmetics are removed?
Many play only for rewards such as in-game cosmetics.
I think it's foolish to be surprised at the loss of an audience until you find a way to regularly add content to FAF.
@nflanders said in Why would you have left FAF?:
Many play only for rewards such as in-game cosmetics.
I will always be pro-cosmetic. It refreshes the game without altering anything.
I'm going to rant a little, so that I DON'T just quit...
The ELO or whatever it's called in FAF is just downright bizarre and infuriating. I only play 2v2 with a friend, we play about the same, sometimes he plays better, sometimes I do. He did get better ranking at first though so he's usually 200 points above me (currently 600 and 800 respectively) and we've played about 50 games together out of which we have less than 10 wins. The first week I was kind of stagnating around 300, but for the last 2 weeks we've been literally failing upwards. Every win is like +50 points and every loss, no matter how bad is like -5 at worst.
Today's 2 games were true cherry on top. First game one opponent suicides his commander in first 5 minutes and the other forfeits. Huge win for us, here you go 50 points. Then we get matched against 1300 (and 250) players, obviously we get our asses kicked hard, but I guess that's -4 points. What the actual f*ck is this?
Like, are there just that few bad/mediocre players that the matchmaker just can't find me a half decent match?
Your shown rating is the rating the system is 99.7% sure you can at least play at. When you beat players, the system is more and more confident that the rating can rise. If you lose to a 500 rated guy when the system thinks you are 99.7% likely to be no worse than a 300, then you don't lose much, because that data fits the distribution. You do lose uncertainty though, which in turn impacts how much the wins will give and also in turn actually results in you losing more rating via your median going down. Think of the game looking at your skill as a player as a statistical distribution. More data means a tighter expectation of performances, losses will shift the top of the bell curve but the shown rating won't show that.
The short of it is that the loss is impacting you in a variable you don't actually see, your median rating, which is what the system actually uses to determine balanced games by messing with the uncertainty it has about you. Wins impact your shown rating because it drastically increases the minimum expectation the system can have of you as a player. You only see that shown rating increase because that's what is used to maintain leaderboards in a TrueSkill system.