Username rules updates

[CaptainKlutz]

long time players are being way too elitist about this and the moderators are being way too tough in their proposals. constant renames and casual imitation with no persistent IDs are super annoying for the casual half of FAF and for those who don't play but still watch the game. let's be real, some people are dumb with respect to renames, they're allowed to be, especially if they happen often and imitate other users' names. I don't blame the 20% of people who have trouble keeping track of how many people WillowWisp, WillowNoob, FemboyWillow etc are and how many are just renames. But the reaction from the mod team is absolutely medieval. This sort of problem merits like, you know the thing that highlights which players spawn where with markers at the start of the game? Yeah, something like that, but with the unique username of the player. Like discord, steam, any serious gaming infra does, you have a name you signed up with and then a display name. You don't add nothing at all to the system and prevent people changing names for a full year. That's absurd

[boom-]

@deribus response to post #2.

@deribus said in Username rules updates:

In-game communication
Tournament player recognition
Player reputation

I believe I covered these already in my previous posts, but I'll go over each briefly here and outline why they either aren't problems, or are not fixed by this update.

1. In-game communication

I don't really see renames causing an issue here. Firstly, I've already outlined how player identity transcends renames, and people who regularly play together manage just fine despite there being 8 wheelies right now.

For players who don't regularly play with each other, they can always find a way to communicate what they need. For example, if a name is difficult to type, like "8o12s2s8j1j" (which is a totally allowed name), you can simply refer to a player by colour. You might even do this in the heat of the moment if you don't have time to type even a simpler name. Or, employ the dual gap classic and put pings on their base.

Limiting renames will not fix this issue, in my opinion.

2. Tournament player recognition

This is rather a silly point, as FtX pointed out earlier tournaments could simply force players to rename to their "tournament name" 1hr prior to start. Pretending for now this isn't possible, any player who wants to gain recognition could stick to a single name. But to be honest, the best way to gain recognition would be simply to win tourneys. If I were to win LotS every year with a different ridiculous name, I would be "that guy with the renames" and audiences might be wondering what I'll be next year.

My main contention with this argument, however, is that I simply don't think this is a problem. I remember before I even downloaded FAF watching a legendary bo15 between zock and blackheart. Blackheart starts off named as "Banana" and ends the bo15 as "Horse". He renamed mid tourney, and it was easy for me to follow, as a person who hadn't even played a faf game. I don't know of any instances where players have deliberately renamed in order to make casting or following games more difficult, so I think the problem solved by the rules update is almost non-existent.

3. Player reputation

I assume by this you mean the ability of players to track good or bad behaviour by others. Luckily, the friend/foe system as well as player notes transcends renames, so a player you foed can't sneak into your lobby by renaming.

The only arena where "reputation" is a significant factor, is the 1800+ arena where players who consistently under-perform can get blacklisted from joining lobbies. I'm sure it's a thing on gap too if someone keeps stealing mass or something. By making renames less frequent you're essentially trying to "brand" badly behaved players, so others can spot them and kick them from lobbies if needed. You're creating a system for a minority of players that affect the whole player base, when the simpler solution of just foeing players you don't want to play with already exists. You can even see the foe icon if they rename and are sat in a lobby.

Moderation angle

@deribus said in Username rules updates:

In addition, there are some benefits specifically on the moderation side of things. I wanted to stress the ones above because it seems like there has been a focus on the benefits on the other side of the moderation curtain, which was not the intent.

Ease of reporting the correct player
Reduce impersonation (of moderators or otherwise)
Reduce the frequency of inappropriate usernames
Make it harder to evade moderation action by rapid username changing

I'm surprised to hear this, as these are the only reasons given so far that I considered legitimate. As mentioned in my previous post, I think we'd all better understand the scale of this benefit with any sort of stats - even approximate will do (e.g. rename abuse makes up about 1 in 50 reports, so about N reports per year).

I don't think many of us consider the three primary reasons sufficiently justify the rename changes, but if your lives are a living hell because of renames please share.

The discord example

Frankly I'm surprised this is even mentioned. In all my years as a personal trainer on the FAF discord, not once did my discord nickname align with my FAF username - past or present. In fact I doubt most people in here even know my discord username. I like the forum system that uses people's in-game usernames to make them recognisable, but this has never been the case on discord.

So this comparison is simply flawed, as any player could have different usernames on discord and FAF, regardless of any suggested update to the rename rules.

Response to my post

I don't know what the mod client looks like, I don't know the steps of actually processing a report. I'm not suggesting to use only player ID in reports, but it would function as the unique identifying token in the case that there was a rename. It's impossible to give any more suggestions without knowing how processing a report actually looks like to you.

Do we have any stats on how often the average player renames, or how often it poses a problem in a report? I feel like I've been asking for this the whole thread, but it would help inform all the people who don't process reports on the daily.

Backlash, mod hate

I'd like to say that I never suggested that the number of upvotes/downvotes should be used to dictate policy. I understand the mods are people too, so I include the upvotes on the original post from mods as valid opinions. If most of the people in support of the change are mods, there must be some reason, right?

I think another factor that fuelled the fire was the lack of discussion - after the initial post, weeks went by without any moderator providing an opinion. As a player this really offended me, as this change was made and it looked like feedback was essentially being ignored. The first mod response then stated :

@giebmasse said in Username rules updates:

Therefore, the moderation team believes that user identification should not be compromised for the sake of having a humorous name.

Which to me reads "ok, but we're pushing this anyway." Bear in mind this is still is all from a single mod at this point. I understand FAF runs on people's free time, but it does feel difficult to halt a change once someone has decided it's going to happen. You can stick your arm into the cogs of the machine, but the wheels are just gonna keep turning - I'm currently thinking of weighing in on the area reclaim issue, but I'm not sure what good it would even do.

If rename abuse really makes your lives miserable, let us know the scale of it so we can actually understand the reasoning behind this change. The other points - tournaments, player impersonation etc, I don't think any of us players consider an issue currently.

Who cares anyway?

A common sentiment I've heard from people supporting the change is the idea that it's not really a major change, renames might be fun but all in all not much is being lost by this update. For the most part, I would agree - it's not a huge change, it doesn't even touch gameplay.

The problem most of us have is that if you shave off 1% of the fun of the game enough times, eventually you are left with a game and community you no longer want to be a part of. See Sladow and Terari both leaving - neither of them are ragequitting purely because of this change, but both have stated that there have simply been too many 1% fun reductions in the past, and they've had enough. Especially when trying to stop or even discuss changes before they are implemented can feel feel so futile, as an overwhelmingly negative response is dismissed by referring to the invisible silent majority who must be ok with it, or by ignoring posts that aren't dissertation length.

Sladow summarized it quite well:

@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've made the effort to voice my concerns this time, but there will come a time and change where I'll simply log off and never look back.

To Wrap Up

I don't think the issues in player to player interactions warrant these changes at all, for reasons I've outlined. The moderator side, which you've said are actually just "additional benefits", have some merit - but we still don't have anywhere near of a complete picture of the scale of this issue to justify limiting renames in this way.

[Gorthaur]

This post is deleted!

[Nuggets]

As i read what Gorthaur said i would be interested if it got removed by a mod or by himself lol

[TheWreck]

Now we have to wonder...

[IndexLibrorum]

@nuggets As far as I know, Gorthaur has removed the comment himself.

[RudePlayer]

Why do we feel the need to want to micromanage this? I get that renames may cause confusion, but as others have stated, it gives us the freedom to change something. The rest of the game is stale as it is. Now we are making a fuss on something simple as a name? Provide a solution that provides some flexibility please.

[ObliiLaCybrance]

Suggestion:
Add pronouns to faf names!
such as "Oblii (she/they)"
them pronouns can be changed every minute (to fit the faf player base's ever changing mood)
Your name will stay the same, but you can identify as whatever you want !!
Subscribe to my OnlyFafs
Oblii

[Strydxr]

@obliilacybrance Genius! I need my T3/GB pronouns

[BlackYps]

@deribus said in Username rules updates:

Please, I'm genuinely asking, help me understand why a 6 month rename period is unacceptable to the point of having a 157 post thread on it.

It's a conceptual issue. I believe that a community should be liberal in nature. That means that by default everybody should have as much freedom as possible. Obviously you need some rules that decrease individiual freedom to ensure that other people can have a good time. We don't allow grieving of all sorts because that negatively impacts other people even if some people might have a lot of fun doing it.
I don't want to turn this into a lecture of obvious stuff, I'm just using this as introduction to make it clear how I mean my message: All rules that limit what we can do need proper justification. Yes, nobody will be unable to play the game just because the rename interval is increased to 6 months, but when there is no good justification then why do it at all? I think that's why there is so much discussion. The way this rule was announced possibly hints at a severe conceptual problem about how rules get created in this community and that warrants a thorough discussion.

[archsimkat]

@noc said in Username rules updates:

In terms of tournament recognition I personally would love to see a stream where TheWheelie (Farms) in this case would have to figure out who the 8 players are as they all have the same names.

Think it would make rather good casting.

The wheekienoob is attacking the wheekie while the ThewhekieNoob is fighting TheWhekeNoob

A preview of the tourney:

https://clips.twitch.tv/TangibleBraveCrowMcaT-EIcbNo1RgClv4JX7

[Karl-]

I think its to be expected that people (moderators in this instance) who give their time for free for a thankless job would want to make said job less painful/long/complex.

I dont know the effort they put in, the hours to understand each individual report. Coming from someone who doesnt know I obviously dislike the year long name change. But I understand where they are coming from. And if it helps ease the workload of having the track every shitposter/report ticket/etc than so be it. Maybe in the near future the timer could be reduce, or another solution all-together might come along.

[FtXCommando]

Index already said the backlog was cleared here and I recall a mod saying they can respond to reports in 48 or so hours. Which I can personally verify because I got banned within like 6 hours of a reported game a few weeks ago.

So I don’t really see how anything involving the rename is relevant at all for shitposters/report tickets/etc.

[Firv]

Real question though, Why can you rename yourself anyway? How else are you susposed to identify someone?

[Nuggets]

@firv said in Username rules updates:

Real question though, Why can you rename yourself anyway? How else are you susposed to identify someone?

Better question, why do you need to identify someone outside of a moderation setting?

[waffelzNoob]

@nuggets said in Username rules updates:

Firv said in Username rules updates:

Real question though, Why can you rename yourself anyway? How else are you susposed to identify someone?

Better question, why do you need to identify someone outside of a moderation setting?

Better question, do i have a level 99 skibidi gyat?

[Firv]

@nuggets said in Username rules updates:

@firv said in Username rules updates:

Real question though, Why can you rename yourself anyway? How else are you susposed to identify someone?

Better question, why do you need to identify someone outside of a moderation setting?

Its nice to know who you are playing with, some people you want to avoid, some people you want to play with more often.

[FtXCommando]

I do this by utilizing the renowned friends list feature

[Katharsas]

I think that there are technical, social as well as UI/UX aspects to this problem that go way beyond just "what moderation would like to have".

1. Technical

As @BlackYps said, when names are referenced in a tool in any way, the ID for that name should be lookup up and used internally as soon as possible (so if there is a UI form with a name input in the client, the client should resolve the ID right after the user inputs it).

2. Social (recognition)

Members of a social community (which FAF is) want to be able to recognize other members (even after coming back after leaving the community for some months). This is really a basic social need in any community for mainly two reasons:

2.1. Social self-policing

Every well-working social community has some form of fluid social contract between each other. Moderators/bans can and should never police all behaviour that is taking place inside a community.
Instead, the community itself enforces certain standards of behaviour. This happens automatically and is important. It is a major part of the "culture" of any community, and it requires people to be able to remember social misbehaviour of its members, which requires recognizing other player on FAF.

2.2 Social hierarchy

In every community, there is some sort of social hierarchy. In FAF there are two major hierarchies, skill and contribution. Generally, community members want to be able to respect other people inside this hierarchy. This is how legends are born inside a community and also requires recognizing other players.

For example, if a random player joins my 1200 rated games and absolutely destroys me, i will probably not react positively (i got smurfed?!). However if that random player is instead Blackheart, my reaction will be totally different because a legend player just joined my game.

3. Social (self-expression)

However, it is also true that self-expression is a good thing! Popular communities often provide a whole range of customization to how you appear to other people (not just name but usually also additional bits and pieces). Im not going to go into detail here because plenty of people have expressed how important this is to them.

4. UI/UX

The goal should then be to make both possible through UI/UX. And it is important to realize that a player ID is not sufficient to address the recognizability problem. Humans are not good at memorizing a random number per player.

One solution was already mentioned: Fixed player handle and changable player name. In addition

• the player handle must be shown in conjunction to the player name
• OR it must be trivially easy to look up the player handle for a given playername (for example by showing the handle when hovering with the mouse over a player name)

Another solution is to move the self-expression from the name to some other self-editable part of self-presentation (many games have "titles" or "status text" that is shown under the names of players).

[Gramplex]

silly billy