Are all accounts not linked to Steam? Could users not be tracked via their Steam IDs?
Username rules updates
"Usernames can be renamed:
Once every year"
This is a terrible decision. Your post has -18 downvotes and counting @Giebmasse.
There is little support for this as a community. Are you going to implement this rule against the will of the community?
With regard to impersonation too, of all the thousands of players that play this game, who actually cares about this? Even in the most literal cases of players literally impersonating others by merely using their username or something close to it, that is not a big deal.
Players can easily check their username history to see who said player really is.
I am sure there has only been a handful of players that don't like this for whatever reason. By and large, I am confident that most players simply do not care. They are here to play the game.
I vote for allowing people to change their username daily. If the community wants to have fun with usernames then let them.
Being a moderator is likely the most thankless approach to contribute. On one hand you're critical to keep the community sane, yet at the same time you not only get shit on while processing reports but you also get shit on by everyone else in the community for the tiniest of perceived inconsistency.
This topic is an example of that where one and the same user cherry-picks the posts of a moderator without a reference to the discussion and then proceeds to question whether the moderation team can be trusted at all. edit: this is apparently not the same person, cheers for that.
Meanwhile that same person is impersonating a balance team member and the only reason I know it's not the balance team member is because the actual balance team member that I thought he was made a post (who also changed his name) with a type of humor that only he write. Oh, and the tag that states he's part of the balance team.
@theweakienoob said in Username rules updates:
I also dislike the "we're gonna do change XY and THEN wait for 10 user pages of good reasoning in order to revert them" mentality.
I don't even know what team you're a lead of (something name change something) but you like all the other team leads know that you can't possibly discuss every change with every community member.
The far majority simply doesn't care and just wants to play and of those that care enough to post (like here) the majority is usually not informed, miss informed or are unable to look at the situation objectively. Just look at this topic, there are about four people (@OcelotFIST / @TheWreck / @Sinerium and @StormLantern ) that are in my opinion constructive comments out of ~38 when writing this.
And to top it off: the team responsible did not only took the time to discuss it internally, to make an extensive post about the change and the reasoning - they even have a separate paragraph at the bottom where they state they're open to constructive comments 
!
What more do you want?
@giebmasse said in Username rules updates:
We'd like feedback on:
When renaming an account is required due to rule breaking, should the account be locked until the account owner contacts the moderation team, or should the account be reverted to the last used acceptable username?
I'd revert to the last user acceptable username and if it happens in quick succession you lock (ban-lite?) the account.
edit2: and for if it is unclear; I fully support the moderation team in this decision and I thank them for taking the time to write up a post to be up front about the changes and their reasoning.
edit: while trying to figure out who @TheWeakieNoob is (sladow?) I found out that when a user changes their FAF name all the soft links (the use of @) break on the forums. See for example this post, where the use of @TheWheelie is no longer referencing a user.
Which makes me wonder what happens when someone renames to the old username of someone else; would the soft links then suddenly reference the wrong user ?
A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned
@jip said in Username rules updates:
I don't even know what team you're a lead of (something name change something) but you like all the other team leads know that you can't possibly discuss every change with every community member.
Ye I'm Sladow, which you can quite easily tell by 1) my profile pic as it's unique and 2) by simply clicking on my posts for a second. There are projects like the FAQ or tables from the Trainer Team which should make it pretty clear. Also the tag should also do its thing.
Besides that, using me as an example for that is not the best idea because I'm quite literally the guy asking on several Discords about changes to get opinions of different players, basically representing every rating range from complete beginner to high ranked from different parts of the community. So yes. Before doing any change I discuss it with the team like other Team Leads, but I also discuss it with a lot of different people.
Also as I spoke with other "higher" FAF community members, FAF built in polls are a thing which just noone uses. So it's possible to ask a majority of people.
Also if a name history on the Forum is possible, that's also a fix to "who just wrote XY" so you don't have to check in FAF which is extra effort. Just a short note though as it shouldn't be the main focus.
Inactive.
@theweakienoob said in Username rules updates:
Ye I'm Sladow, which you can quite easily tell by 1) my profile pic as it's unique and 2) by simply clicking on my posts for a second. There are projects like the FAQ or tables from the Trainer Team which should make it pretty clear. Also the tag should also do its thing.
Thank you for making a point for me - you want me to remember your specific profile picture? Did you scroll through this topic and noticed how many derivations of this there are:
I'm not going through the effort to look at your posts. Or to open the client. Come on, these suggestions are ridiculous and I hope you know that too. We have a username for a reason - just google it and everyone on the internet mentions the first reason they exist is to be identifiable to other people. That is in my view exactly what the moderation team is trying to achieve here.
@theweakienoob said in Username rules updates:
Besides that, using me as an example for that is not the best idea because I'm quite literally the guy asking on several Discords about changes to get opinions of different players, basically representing every rating range from complete beginner to high ranked from different parts of the community. So yes. Before doing any change I discuss it with the team like other Team Leads, but I also discuss it with a lot of different people.
And that's great, so do I. But what is your point? In my view the moderation team is doing the exact same thing:
- (1) They discuss it internally.
- (2) They make it public what their intentions are.
- (3) They're open to feedback (it is literally in the last paragraph) and every user with an FAF account can respond and give their input.
My bet is that in a few days we'll come to the conclusion that the majority of the community doesn't really care and just wants to play the game .
@theweakienoob said in Username rules updates:
Also as I spoke with other "higher" FAF community members, FAF built in polls are a thing which just noone uses. So it's possible to ask a majority of people.
You won't reach the majority of people. And these polls can be extremely skewed the moment 1 caster with a large audience asks its audience to vote a certain way. This happened in the past, and it's far from productive.
There are also no 'higher' FAF community members. The notion of that is ridiculous.
A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned
@jip said in Username rules updates:
This topic is an example of that where one and the same user cherry-picks the posts of a moderator
Absolute insanity
@jip What is so difficult about right clicking ones name in FAF, right clicking "show user info", then selecting their name history.
You can determine who the user is that way. Doesn't that by and large negate much of "player impersonation".
@jip cool that you think checking the name history or posts is too much effort, I think otherwise.
"There are also no 'higher' FAF community members."
A member of the board is pretty much higher in the FAF scene than e.g. a trainer. That's what I was referring to. As in "higher instance".
Inactive.
@Jip once again did not get the gist of the impersonation part. Noone is saying that everybody should be completly free to take on the name of someone else. Look at the example of the name TheWheelie. Everything is fine until Farms says he is not fine with it. Then this is a completly different scenario, because then it is harmful (or whatever you want to call it). But as long as its all in good fun, where exactly is the problem?
The "biggest" counter argument is that people get confused. Ah yes, every player must at all times automatically know who someone is. As gieb mentioned in his post, might aswell remove rename altogether (i don't even have to talk about how ridiculous that is).
Of course i get what you are saying Jip, wouldn't it be great to know everybody instantly based on their name? Unfortunatly / fortunatly this is not the real world.
Jip accusing everyone who is disliking this change of not seeing this objectively. I personally do not see the point of this extensive change. Just get rid of this rule and only disallow "impersonation" / renaming or whatever when the "original" holder is NOT fine with this. (you do not even have this in other communities, literally nobody cares until something malicious gets posted which is something else entirely)
FAF development is known to go at breakneck speeds so as soon as a dev might have to deal with dudes with meme-of-the-month names on the forums/client (the two most imperative zones of contributive development), all capacity for FAF development hits a wall and we must wait for the next month
You wouldn’t even have a problem with these usernames if you didn’t have to read a forum thread about it being a problem
Completely disgusting take about “majority of the community just want to play the game” btw
“Majority of the community” doesn’t give a single shit about this whole situation because you guessed it, they just wanna play the game and do not interact with this feature nor moderation nor people doing this at all.
I’m sure the so called silent majority once again only actually factors into decisions when some random faf team has no other basis for their decision so it seems like they actually do something beyond what they just want to do.
faf is my life
@jip said in Username rules updates:
What more do you want?
For it to be reverted? Because it's a terrible change with zero purpose?
Very nice of you to demean people about "not reading the last part of the statement" when it looks like you didn't read the middle part specifically saying what feedback is being looked for:
We'd like feedback on:
When renaming an account is required due to rule breaking, should the account be locked until the account owner contacts the moderation team, or should the account be reverted to the last used acceptable username?
I should be thanking people for making terrible decisions because they explain them terribly and then give me some trivial chance to give input on something that isn't related to the problem I have at all.
@nuggets said in Username rules updates:
might aswell remove rename altogether (i don't even have to talk about how ridiculous that is)
I am pretty curious as to how and why renaming every month became an essential part of FAF. What are the downsides to not changing your name all the time? To me it is just an arbitrary technical feature that some online services have and some don't, and I don't care either way, but it seems people here think it is an essential human right or something? It's very rare for people to change their legal names, and they almost always use the same name when they go to school, go to work, or meet someone at a grocery store, so why do you need to change your name every month on FAF?
Why do some games give you an account name and then let you pick whatever name you want in lobbies?
Why do some games give you a rename policy that is always open given you follow rename principles?
Why do some games let you rename every week? 2 weeks? month?
Because people like messing with names via community elements because there are orders of magnitude less ways to make yourself part of something relative to real life.
FAF might as well as remove color picks in lobbies and just assign a color per slot while they’re at it. Remove flags too. Assign a generated name at account creation. We’re just here to play games after all who cares about this stuff? Silent majority sure doesn’t.
When will any silent majority enjoyer come out and explain why the supporters of this policy are:
- devs
- mods
- grimplex shitposting
And the supposed not silent majority is currently cut from contributors, players, regular players, not regular players, high rated, low rated, english speakers, and not english speakers based on thread feedback?