Why would you have left FAF?

@tankenabard said in Why would you have left FAF?:

Strong modding communities usually keep games fresh. People still play the first Neverwinter Nights even.

Nwn is very similar to supcom as there are no games like it.

Supcom and nwn are the only games I play anymore and if nwn had a good pvp server you'd see me hitting that up every night

@broker
My man, nobody stops you from playing modded games. Feel free to host them and enjoy them to your hearts content.

@xiaomao 1. no one will come.
2. the audience will remain small.

However, I also left.

@ftxcommando said in Why would you have left FAF?:

The funny thing is that casters are aware of what games are the most popular

Please clarify What games are the most popular?

It's almost like SupCom has always been a niche RTS. IMO it's delusional to think it'll ever have more than a small dedicated playerbase. If you want a popular, simplified RTS there's are plenty of other options.

@nflanders said in Why would you have left FAF?:

@ftxcommando said in Why would you have left FAF?:

The funny thing is that casters are aware of what games are the most popular

Please clarify What games are the most popular?

1 hour long games of 40k mass armies of t4s or game enders being thrown at each other, doesn’t matter if everybody in the game stopped playing 30 mins ago or if it had about 6 trillion obvious errors of dudes donating mass to each other back and forth. Whole point is to look at the spectacle and not care about the reasons it exists.

@ftxcommando Do you offer to play matchmaking? Does anyone play in matchmaking? If you count, only 10% play matchmaking. FAF spends a lot of time developing a matchmaking system but very few people play it.
Why are you doing it? Shouldn't we focus on the majority?

Majority = pve, time to pack up 90% of faf's contribution boys

Majority of pvp play dual gap/astro, time to make dual gap more dynamic, oh no now quad gap exists for old dual gap players. Or is the idea that we need to make dual gap gameplay extend down to every 10x10 and 5x5 too? Why? Doing this would likewise ruin dual gap and just cause everyone to shift the map the other way. This notion of balance based on "majority" is built to fail because there is no control of maps in custom games.

@nflanders bla bla bla

@nflanders Re focusing on the majority, more than half of FAF games are against AI. FAF provides numerous AI, including both an improved default AI and various different custom AI (https://wiki.faforever.com/en/Development/AI/Custom-AIs).
So if measuring by the type of games played a lot of time is already spent on the majority.

FAF is also welcoming to people who want to volunteer to develop features so if someone wants to fix one of the various issues noted for the game, or create their own mod that implements their particular vision, they can. FAF is also supportive of such efforts with significant increases in documentation, tutorials, and the availability of support from various other FAF volunteers to help with questions/issues.

As for why developers are volunteering their time to develop certain features such as the matchmaker, that'll be a matter for the person in question and I wouldn't want to speak to them (although I'm very grateful that they have implemented such features and many others). Since we're talking about volunteers though ultimately it will be down to the volunteer what to focus on - trying to force volunteers to look at something they dont want to is counterproductive and will just lead to fewer improvements to FAF.

@broker I honestly can't recommend enough playing 1v1 ladder.

I see so many players that resist this type of game, and I think it's absolutely tremendous... Far better for getting involved in a game.

I often think that the 'reason' people avoid 1v1 a lot - not wanting the responsibility of everything on their shoulders; is exactly their complain about the game - being annoyed when X player does do Y and thus loses the game.

Come play some 1v1 - you'll never be annoyed at an ally failing a certain goal, and we're all a friendly bunch, waiting to welcome you in!

@maudlin27 said in Why would you have left FAF?:

@nflanders Re focusing on the majority, more than half of FAF games are against AI. FAF provides numerous AI, including both an improved default AI and various different custom AI (https://wiki.faforever.com/en/Development/AI/Custom-AIs).
So if measuring by the type of games played a lot of time is already spent on the majority.

FAF is also welcoming to people who want to volunteer to develop features so if someone wants to fix one of the various issues noted for the game, or create their own mod that implements their particular vision, they can. FAF is also supportive of such efforts with significant increases in documentation, tutorials, and the availability of support from various other FAF volunteers to help with questions/issues.

As for why developers are volunteering their time to develop certain features such as the matchmaker, that'll be a matter for the person in question and I wouldn't want to speak to them (although I'm very grateful that they have implemented such features and many others). Since we're talking about volunteers though ultimately it will be down to the volunteer what to focus on - trying to force volunteers to look at something they dont want to is counterproductive and will just lead to fewer improvements to FAF.

I am curious how many of those AI games are just "I needed somewhere to set up templates or change settings" since that's (as far as I know?) the only way to do so.

@redx You don't need an AI in the game to do that. I guess if you wanted to estimate you could try a random sample of replays to approximate the amount of 'setting up template' games that feature an AI vs those that dont. You also have people who play FAF offline (which wont be caught by the stats), who I'd have thought most likely to be playing against AI.

@nflanders said in Why would you have left FAF?:

@ftxcommando Do you offer to play matchmaking? Does anyone play in matchmaking? If you count, only 10% play matchmaking. FAF spends a lot of time developing a matchmaking system but very few people play it.
Why are you doing it? Shouldn't we focus on the majority?

A lot of time was spent to improve matchmaking beyond 1vs1 hoping that it would shift more players into it and avoid having managing manual lobbies, waiting times etc. Maybe it didn't work out that well, but that doesn't mean the time spent there was only for "the pros".

Also there are many different teams working on different things. One group works on coop, another on maps, another on matchmaking, another on map gen.
You just can't tell all these people to just concentrate on a different things. They are experts in that area and their motivation relies on doing what makes fun there.

@brutus5000 said in [Why would you have left FAF?]

You just can't tell all these people to just concentrate on a different things. They are experts in that area and their motivation relies on doing what makes fun there.

Does FAF have no common goal? By goal, I mean a metric that can be measured, such as the number of players. Or do you not have a common goal and are you just free artists where everyone does what they want?

The overarching goal is the open and continued development of the game. There is no single metric to be measured that stands above all

@blackyps said in Why would you have left FAF?:

The overarching goal is the open and continued development of the game. There is no single metric to be measured that stands above all

The topic has the title "Why would you have left FAF?". Then why is this topic needed? Can't keep audience. Well, people are leaving FAF, but that doesn’t matter, the main thing is to continue development. I think the topic can be closed.)

If people state certain pain points we can address them to the associated team and ask for prioritization.

Dude what is your problem that you are so cynical?

I don't think he understands you can't force volunteers to do things they don't want nor care about.