Make modded games visible and ranked

FAF has a problem with how modded games are treated - the combination of having mods hidden (unless the user specifically requests they are shown) and automatically unrating the game introduces significant almost insurmountable barriers to anyone introducing a mod to try out new features beyond their friend group*.

While I can see some arguments for this approach, I think the damage done outweighs this, and my suggestion is that modded games are rated by default, and that all custom games are shown (with information on of they are modded or not included). Ideally this would be with no option to hide modded games, although I'd also be ok with the current checkbox for modded games being something you check each client session to hide modded games.

• In terms of changing the UI approach to encourage the showing of modded games, the reason is that FAF doesn't have a huge number of games or players, and the current 'hide by default/1-time checkbox to always hide' option essentially by default splits the community. While some people may feel strongly about playing modded games, for many people it might not be a significant preference, yet just by defaulting to not showing mods it means they won't even consider modded games. There will also be cases where people think they don't want to play a modded game, but if for example given the option of astro/gap/setons, or a mapgen that uses a single sim mod 'reduced prop reclaim rate' (to take the current 'contentious potential game/balance change as an illustration) they might decide that actually they would prefer to play that game. People's choice of whether to join a modded game or not isn't impacted (since the client would still show what mods are active), and they could also filter by mods (to group all unmodded games together). I'd also be happy with a 'mod blacklist' type approach similar to how I presume the current map blacklist option works, although I presume this would require significantly more dev time.

• In terms of the argument for rating modded games, this is on the understanding trueskill/rating is to try and estimate the rating at which you win approximately half your games. Hence, if 100% of the games you play feature 1 particular mod, your rating would be far more reflective of your skill on the games you play if such games were modded. The benefits are similar to being able to see the rating of people that play only setons, or only astro, or only dual gap - sure a 1500 gapper might not play as well on a mapgen as a 1500 mapgen player, but if most of the games they play will be on gap then their rating is serving the purpose of showing how good they typically are.

The main downsides I can see with these proposals:

• Allowing modded games to be hidden - removing the option/making it harder to use makes things more awkward for people who either never want to play modded games, or who would always toggle whenever they might contemplate it (however if this was just a 'once per session' toggle it would be a minor inconvenience).
• Allowing sim mods to affect rating could allow people to 'farm' rating using an unbalanced mod (that they understand but few others do) - while I agree this is possible, there are rules against rating manipulation that could limit the most extreme cases, while we already see something akin to this with people achieving very high (well over 2k) ratings playing astro and dual gap exclusively.

Combined, my expectation from these changes is they would lead to less community fragmentation, encourage modder contributions, make it less likely people who want to play with particular mods leave FAF altogether, and will also allow for more flexibility with potential changes (e.g. it would be more feasible to take the approach of 'lets try it out with a mod', and/or for a solution to a change people dont like being 'heres a mod you can use that reverses the change'). Neither feel credible options at the moment unless you have a large friend group willing to try the same mod.

*I should note i'm assuming that mods are still by default hidden unless the user requests they are shown based on how I recall things being for me initially, and other posts by people I've seen (on discord and reddit) indicating this is the case for them as well. Even if this has been changed, I still think moving to a 'apply filter to hide mods each client session' instead of remembering the configuration the last time the client was loaded up would be preferable since someone might have checked the option to hide mods a long time ago and forgotten about the option.

FAF has a problem with how modded games are treated

It's not a problem. It's different opinions that lead to on/off checkbox. There is no problem with having different preferences to how play the game.

FAF doesn't have a huge number of games or players

So we shouldn't make it worse by forcing the players who don't want to play mods to use black magic to determine which mods are on. Especially when there are multiple of them.

People's choice of whether to join a modded game or not isn't impacted (since the client would still show what mods are active)

It's not. Client UI is buggy and the only way to do it for sure is use the filter. It's the case with many survival maps when you're using list game settings in client. The only hint to figure out is looking for "survival" keyword, but there is no guarantee that a modded game will game one.

Maybe you're using tiles instead of table lobby listing? Then it's easier to determine mods. But I would not like to be forced to using tiles just because I don't like (most of the) mods (most of the time).

they would lead to less community fragmentation

The goal you are trying to achieve is exactly community fragmentation. If the more modded games will be hosted, the same amount of players will be sprayed among them. For the same reason why if 33% games were FAF, 33% games were FAF Develop and 33% games were FAF beta balance it would spread the small pool of players in a bunch of semi-empty lobbies that will take hours to fill.

Community fragmentation is not pure evil per se. Matchmaking & custom are also splitting the lobby in half while playing only astrocrater approarch doesn't split anything at all. But it's foolish to propose exactly what will create more of splitting as something that will make create less of it.

@sainserow said in Make modded games visible and ranked:

It's not a problem. It's different opinions that lead to on/off checkbox. There is no problem with having different preferences to how play the game.

The problem is people not being aware the modded games are being hosted (as mentioned in my post). People still choose whether or not they join the modded games (based on their preferences of how to play the game).

FAF doesn't have a huge number of games or players

So we shouldn't make it worse by forcing the players who don't want to play mods to use black magic to determine which mods are on. Especially when there are multiple of them.

I'm not saying we should use black magic. As mentioned in my post, I'm saying we either show the mods being used alongside each hosted game, or have a filter that you check to hide modded games. That's not black magic.

People's choice of whether to join a modded game or not isn't impacted (since the client would still show what mods are active)

It's not. Client UI is buggy and the only way to do it for sure is use the filter. It's the case with many survival maps when you're using list game settings in client. The only hint to figure out is looking for "survival" keyword, but there is no guarantee that a modded game will game one.

Even if the client UI showing what mods are active is bugged in some rare cases (I've yet to join a game which the client shows as having no mods active that has mods) I fail to see how that prevents changing to having an option, mentioned in my post, that you check to hide modded games.

The goal you are trying to achieve is exactly community fragmentation. If the more modded games will be hosted, the same amount of players will be sprayed among them. For the same reason why if 33% games were FAF, 33% games were FAF Develop and 33% games were FAF beta balance it would spread the small pool of players in a bunch of semi-empty lobbies that will take hours to fill.

You seem to be operating on the false premise it's a zero sum game where people will play FAF, and just choose whether to play modded or not. My point (as mentioned in my post) is that by making it incredibly hard to host modded games outside of your friend group, you lead to people leaving FAF. Hence fewer games.
In addition, by having modded games visible to people so they can join if they decide they want to, you decrease wait times for games, meaning more FAF games on average.

The problem is people not being aware the modded games are being hosted (as mentioned in my post). People still choose whether or not they join the modded games

AFAIK modded games are shown by default unless you press the checkbox to hide them. Which is pretty self-explanatory action.

or have a filter that you check to hide modded games.

We have one and we shouldn't make it broken.

Even if the client UI showing what mods are active is bugged in some rare cases (I've yet to join a game which the client shows as having no mods active that has mods)

Not hard to show. Let's look at this example. How should I know that it's a modded game? This game might not be named "survival" and have a perfecttly simmetrical map, etc. The only hint is three dots in red box. Which is the broken UI i'm talking about.

Let's wait for a minute. Now client is alive a little bit more. Now it showing section "Моды" (Mods) which wasn't present on a previous screenshot. And the mods are total something. There is no way to tell what total something is there. No matter how much i will drag my mouse on it.

If I swittch to tiles I will discover that there are total mayhem and 11 other mods.

But there is no way of reading it if you're using table list instead of tiles. Client UI is buggy and this happens constantly. I don't want to switch to tiles or to be forced to wait for a minute to determine whether game is modded or not. Checkbox is the most convenient way to avoid this issue. Disabling this function will significantly decrease quality of life.

About the hidden modded games - How about slightly refactoring how it is presented in the UI:

As a new user, you see it like that:

New users may get overwhelmed from all the tabs and buttons at first.

"5 from 21 items (which could be renamed to games) are filtered out" - as a brand-new player, you have most likely no idea what that means.

How about moving the check-box buttons one layer up. That should catch the user's attention and should self-explanatory what it does.

If someone has a better idea on how to present it, I'm happy to hear it.

No games are hidden by default for new players or new client installations. So if someone has modded games hidden they have actively chosen to do so.

@magge
I think renaming would be simpler. "6 from 20 items are filtered out" -> "6 out of 20 games are hidden by filters". Imo this should be pretty self-explanatory to not require any UI refactoring.

Yes, the renaming-part would be nice. I am not sure where/when the rumor started, that new players do not see modded games initially - I have heard it even before maudlin27 mentioned it in the first post, but I am glad that Sheika cleared it up.

It can always be tested by renaming your client.prefs file. You would then have the preferences any new player would have when installing the client.

@sheikah Thanks for confirming.
My guess is then that the rumour has started in part because people have checked the option to hide modded games a while ago, forgotten, and then at some later point realised modded games are being hidden.

I.e. that was why I'd prefer needing to re-apply the filter each time the client is loaded (alternatively but not as beneficial, would be reapplying the filter with each install of the client - at least that is likely to be every few months rather than indefinitely).

Magge's suggestion would also be nice - i.e. having it clearly showing how many games are being filtered out so people are more likely to realise they're only showing some of them.

It would be far easiest if modded games were grouped together and had say an orange font to differentiate them, but the choice was made to make it so you can just hide them because the people who asked for and implemented it that way decided that is what they wanted. Many survivals are heavily modded and get played because for survival that's ok I guess but a meaningful number of people hide them because they want to only play rated PvP games and unrated games they don't take serious. Those games lack that risk reward element. It is not really about it being a modded game because lets be honest, FAF is a mod of SC:FA. Me personally I cannot understand people who say they only play regular FAF when FAF is modified every few months and lacks both consistency and definitive form to meet the definition of regular but people throw out words that sound good even though they clearly have no idea that they are contradicting themselves in what they say.
Anyway, the key problem is that the Balance Team's Game Team's combined mod has taken over the role of the base game. It doesn't even matter that they do not share the same view of what the game should be like. So there is no static dataset considered a real base game. A base game would be a fully functional unaltered set of data that every mod would use to not break each other, but the balance and game team have decided that their mod is the only mod that matters so when they change their mod, they affect all other mods. So the main issue with making mods ranked is that whenever a patch is released, the changes in those patches can alter/break the mod which would make players of that mod unhappy plus gives the modder extra unwanted work to do. I believe if mods were ranked and the base game they modify was stable, then that would improve competition but I just do not see that happening since the base game has been monopolized killing off any competition that could make the game better in preference of one size fits all and "we don't care if you like it or not, we know better".
A common misconception by the malthusians is that mods fragment the community but that is so untrue, they add a lot of diversity to a game and in a free market of ideas the best ideas would trump the lesser ideas and that is what improves a product. If we just think back to Equilibrium, the running gag was sort of "First fixed/seen in Equilibrium". A number of my ideas in the past were taken without asking me or people presented my ideas as their own, or maybe they really just had the same idea after I published them, but they did got into FAF. The issue though is that a lot of people who make mods and have innovative ideas and skills relevant to the task at hand are ignored for the leadership roles because skills such as fast clicking speeds, memorizing build orders on maps are preferred because of the much higher ratings that are associated with those skills.
I can imagine that you are thinking, if they didn't like the mercy change they can just make a mod called Mercy useful again but would that not lead to games having 12 mods eventually just to undo the nonsensical changes over the years.
Anyway, there is a long way to go for what you are trying to achieve and no will among those who have the final say to do it. I personally would like if people played the Superior FAF Experience but people who have never played it have opinions about how shit it is and then make claims that are completely untrue because again, they have not tested the product but are experts on it. Yet when someone sees something they like in it, they don't want to play it, instead they say, lets take this for ourselves.
*Another thing, the replay vault does not even say if it a game was modded or not...

Another small UI change that could help would be to add a message like this to the bottom of the game list:

Just to remind people these games are there. Ideally, clicking the message should un-hide the modded games.