Why does everything suck so much right now?

@blackyps Im just very much against area reclaim and reclaim rate changes (in their currently proposed states) and am nervous to see how, if at all, they are implemented. Otherwise I'm generally happy with my faf experience training players and grinding to reach the higher echelons of 1v1 when I have time/energy. One man's opinion.

if you are good at a game that means you probably understand it
lower rated dudes should ask for advice

@ftxcommando said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:

I bet I’ve written more code than you for FAF. Aren’t all you good for is hosting games for random new dudes? Why are you even here typing as though you even matter with your stupid contributive mentality lol, go away.

No - lol - you go away. What the f*ck is your problem?

@phong has been a monumental pillar of inspiration and actually did contribute, whether that is through discussions or by designing various banners for tournaments and YouTube thumbnails - including the one for LOTS. He also never made any claims of his contributions and was just trying to have a constructive discussion. Until you came around and decided to attack and ridicule him for absolutely no reason.

Similarly how @Blackheart comes around and decides to do a personal attack and call me deranged. And instead of calling him out for it we have, wait for it:

Fifteen upvotes. Fucking brilliant. Almost all top faf players too, just pointing it out for those that are unaware . The majority of this topic is full of attacks on character and intentions. All unnecessary, but all of it is a good example of the attitude problem that I mentioned at the very start.

@katharsas said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:

The FAF community has always been conservative regarding changes that touch gameplay in any form. And parts of the community have always been rude, ignorant or lacking empathy with other people's opinions when discussing anything.

It is not the FAF community that is conservative. It's not 'parts of' the community that are rude, ignorant or lacking empathy. It's a small group of players - less than 0.1% of the 17K unique players we have playing each month - that create a toxic, unfriendly and motivation draining environment towards contributors the moment they feel their status quo is threatened. Let that sink in for a bit - less than 0.1% of the total number of unique players playing each month.

The majority of this topic is the perfect example of that. There's only a few decent contributions to the discussion, some that are even left ignored such as the post of @Lowki even though I think he manages to capture some of the essence of it at that moment. He actually took the time to read through some of it!

With regards to area orders - or as Ftx would call it 'the toys I want to add' - I've mentioned all over that I have no interest in dying over this hill. I think it can be a healthy change, together with area commands for all the other orders. Area reclaim blows up the economy a little, but that can be fixed as anything else.

Unlike the imagination that is running wild in this topic, at no point have we been 'close to having these features in the game'. They're available on FAF Develop for you to experiment with. To gather arguments based on actual games to have a constructive discussion about it. To see how we could make it work if we would want it to work. To discover the pros and cons based on replays. And then once everything is on the table we can weigh the pros and cons and make an actual, informed decision. We can document that informed decision. And then we can all understand why something did (not) happen. Forever! Something about exploring the idea, appreciating the novelty of it and then decide on whether we want it or not.

But instead what I receive is immediate rejection on all grounds based on the imagination. And I know that for a fact, because looking at the vault a lot of the players that shit on area (reclaim) orders did not even participate in a single game using the FAF Develop game type since the feature is available on it. Some of you, and @FtXCommando in particular, are just attacking character and intentions and the post I am referencing when you attack @phong is exactly what I am referring to. Again, what the f*ck is wrong with you @FtXCommando ?

To come back to what the topic started with:

This is why everything sucks as a contributor. It's not because of connectivity issues, even though I spent three full afternoons fixing the most obnoxious bug related to it recently together with a group of people including @IndexLibrorum, @Ravandel, @Tagada, @Strydxr, @Rowey and Brutus with effectively no thanks to almost everyone else in this topic. It's not because of bugs that players perceive. It's because of the relentless harassment on contributors from all angles from a small, group of players that can't even be fckng bothered to give something an honest try or help fix something if it does not suit them. And then the same group continues to create the biggest nonsense, lies, personal attacks and whatever they can think that drains the motivation out of contributors that put in hours, days, weeks or even months of their free time with the sole intention to create a better environment for everyone.

And I'm done - I'll probably be leaving soon because of all this nonsense. I'm a reasonable person. You can convince me with good arguments. Everyone I actually talk to about things know this of me. I don't want to fight people that attack my character and intentions. I've spent too much time writing (forum) posts such as these against the wildest claims that people make based on their imagination. The majority of them never even spoke to me once. They don't know who I am. The majority of them not even bothering to ask me questions about it. No, instead they just bash and bash away at it until the 'problem' - read, the contributor - loses the motivation to continue.

And you've succeeded. And apparently after a small discussion with some (previous) large contributors the same group of people succeeded again and again over the past decade. The same thing happens every few years - great contributors come up with ideas that may or may not work and the contributor is simply attacked until the motivation drops below a critical threshold and not just the idea but the contributor as a whole just decides to move on.

Imagine if all that effort into attacking contributors was put towards actually contributing to the project. Towards having healthy discussions. Towards accepting the fact that sometimes decisions are made that you do not agree with, but in the bigger picture it does not actually matter that much (the backlash towards the username changes, hello! What the f*ck was that?) We could've had so many nice things years ago that would've been such a positive impact on the community. That would actually attract new players and maybe even new competitors for tournaments.

But no, instead we have the comfort of knowing that once great player such as @Blackheart may eventually come back. We don't know when. We don't know how. There's no ETA. But when he does, everything will be exactly as it was when he left so that he can pick up where he left things.

Oh, except for the sim rate problems. Because that is something that we can all agree with. You're welcome by the way . If it were up to me, which it is not because we have an amazing moderator team, I'd perma ban the f*ck out of some people in this topic. No questions asked. And as @phong stated before - the average player wouldn't even notice the difference.

This got sour quick

There's nothing sour about it. BlackYps asked to remove the mask. This is what it's been like, with the exclusions of course when people actually do come in and have a constructive discussion. Even when they disagree with my point of view.

The point is that it matters what you write. Mean one-liners, people that talk shit about you behind your back, people that attack the character and intentions of contributors. It all happens, everywhere. It all matters. And all of it is damaging to the project much, much more than it feels like that the people responsible for it realize.

Here is the pull request to disable area commands before we do a release somewhere next week.

@jip After seeing what you said about the pain of developers, I feel very sorry and sad. Imagine how much FAF would have changed if these developers had stayed. In any case, there is no RTS on the market that can achieve the same quality, good visual design, and large-scale combat as FAF. I would rather the FAF changes and even becomes a completely different game to the FA than to see it remain stagnant.
Imagine if all these developers had stayed and contributed, we might now have multiple versions of FAF with different focuses to play! (For example, some focus on AI combat, PVE, or cooperative missions, some focus on 1V1, and some focus on 4V4)
Unfortunately, the unhealthy atmosphere of community discussion continues to discourage developers. While I hope you continue to contribute more to FAF, I also hope you find joy in what you do. Whether or not you choose to continue writing code for FAF in the future, I thank you for bringing us these exciting optimizations, thank you.

Jip I'm just a lurker who plays occasionally but from what I'm reading I would say take a break, do something else you really enjoy, and please come back. You've done so much for this game. And remember that RTSs are largely played by young men who aren't exactly known for being reasonable, well mannered or socially adjusted, I.e. there's a lot of d***s about (and we've probably all been guilty of it ourselves).

To be honest, I think the FAF community should have some protections for developers, such as banning personal insults. Developers have been contributing to this game for love and a sense of accomplishment. We can't keep losing developers because of community engagement issues. The problem is that there aren't many active developers in the first place, and allowing the community to crack down on developers will only lead to FAF being abandoned.
The premise of the discussion is that everyone can express themselves politely, rather than letting off steam. One person's emotions do not represent the whole community; But a person's great emotions can really cause harm to others. Banning people who make personal attacks doesn't make community discussion worse, it just makes community communication more effective.

@zhanghm18 said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:

Banning people who make personal attacks doesn't make community discussion worse, it just makes community communication more effective.

While the tone of some of these comments has been a point of continued irritation and disappointment for us, we are hesitant to police these threads too strongly.

Even when moderated with the best intentions, any action will inevitably result in accusations of censorship, despotism, and preferential treatment. Add to that the difficulty of determining when something has crossed the line—which we've seen before differs greatly between players—and we're back to mods getting called nazis or worse and a second batch of threads clamoring for our heads.

That's not to say that we're not keeping an active eye on this thread however, and we continue to internally discuss comments where necessary. If this thread further devolves into mudslinging, we'll reach a point where we will have to clear comments or lock the thread altogether.

This would be the worst outcome, because BlackYps has asked important questions that warrant discussions. I believe that such a discussion is not beyond what we may expect from our community.

@jip It's fine, I rattled his cage, I'm no better. What's actually funny is I was asking @FtXCommando how exactly a thousand new pros might improve his or my faf experience more than the features I like and he hits me with "we could have been real tryhards and prevented you from playing TMM alongside your friends, but relented". Insert tyrant extolling his benevolence to his subjects meme.

My dude, you're not even an actual pro, you're a 1900. "We"? Pffff

No wonder the lobby server dev quit after TMM was up and running. Imagine working to help players more conveniently find games and having to deal with some endless-essay pretend-pro busy-body actively trying to sabotage your main goal, because, you see, the trueskill data (a mere means to an end) would otherwise be a bit noisier than it already is. Then, to top it off, they go and take partial credit for the work, calling themselves Collaborator, since starting, then losing futile arguments about dumb shit technically counts as labor, right? Also, they get indignant should their effort not be valued over yours, the actual dev.

Regardless other contributions I have you to thak for, this one's not helping change my mind about whose activity benefits me more. The boastful claim this was actually within your power and we were spared such an outcome only by your willingness to compromise would be worrying if I actually took it seriously. I'd I'd rather hope someone reasonable will always be here, willing and able to step in whenever your lot fails to be brought to your senses, which is why I'm speaking up before you drive them away.

@indexlibrorum said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:

While the tone of some of these comments has been a point of continued irritation and disappointment for us, we are hesitant to police these threads too strongly.

The solution is not in more extensive moderation. All it requires is this:

@dorset said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:

@ftxcommando nobody is shooting anyone in the head here so don't be so dramatic.

We just need everyone to speak up and point out the unnecessary drama, just like one would do to people around you in real life. And I appreciate that Dorset did that here.

@indexlibrorum I think the problem is that we can't let a few people have an impact on the community that hurts the majority. Some players like to express their opinions in bad language, maybe. But a small minority of people who like to say nasty things should not be allowed to do so on a continuous and frequent basis. Polite comments are then drowned out in a flood of impolite comments. Thus, the minority who take no responsibility for what they say actually represents the consequences of the majority's opinion.

@zhanghm18 within the organization I work for we have something in our employee code of conduct called incivility. I'm sure everyone knows what that is but essentially it allows the company to dismiss an individual for disrupting the workforce and bringing down morale. They don't have to actually specifically attack character or be abusive or harassing. Essentially if they are inciting others to have a negative view of the company or are being disruptive in similar fashion then we are allowed to dismiss them for incivility.

I've never been a moderator in any type of online forum but I think a similar clause in the code of conduct should be considered.

In my opinion if certain people only seem to want to be part of this community to tear it down in some way then we don't need them. This would tie back into the topic at hand and would be one less way why certain things suck right now.

I think people should be allowed to be negative just there should be consequences if they're abusive. It's perfectly OK to say a change is bad because of x, y an z. Of course it's better if you have a solution or can point out why a perceived problem isn't one but that's not always easy. A lot of this comes down to idealogy and tribalism: to me Jip is trying to improve the game for everyone and ftx wants to improve things primarily for high level players (who are probably a bit cliquey) . The two approaches don't always result in agreement. Please correct me if I am wrong about these assumptions. The trick is disagreeing so everyone can live with it and not taking things personally (or being personal about it).

As someone who has been around in the FAF Community for a While I was to become the team lead for the balance team but with just how the atmosphere is towards development and contributors who want to work on improving the game has gotten to the point where it stale and is just a vicious cycle. I've now started to move my contributions over the the BAR community as my work is at least more appreciated over thier.

@reckless_charger The key is to be able to disagree and express a differing opinion while remaining civil. To not like something at all one bit to the core of your being but yet remaining civil....

I pretty much agree with you @Jip, ive just mostly given up arguing for this kind of attitude, because it seems to indeed be pointless on FAF. But i will add some points now in a harsher tone than previously because you are right and you deserve the support, and it fits in.

Oh boy here we come.

The primary interest of the average high level player is to protect their skill-investement against any real or perceived threat.

Grubby on the other hand is a pro player (that is an entirly different player category). He earns money by keeping up with changes, which is pretty much the opposite attitude to the majortiy of top rated players on FAF.

Blackheart and most other top FAF players are not pro players. In fact there have never been any respectable number of "pro players" in FAF. A pro player gets payed to keep up with changes to the game and to re-invest time to re-learn every change that happens.

If you do not have the mental energy for that, or your ego is not able to survive temprary drops in rating (which can of course even happen entirely without balance changes when new metas are discovered), you won't stay at the top for long anyway, in a real e-sport at least. Real e-sport players require (and some receive) high mental and physical well-being (psychologists etc.).

For an example of extreme changes look at Dota and the insane changes in the last year or two (complete character base stat mechanic changes, complete map changes, insane hero skill changes). Didn't hurt their competitive scene like at all.

Blackheart is probably a good example of the quintessentiel non-pro player, and his balance mod is probably on of the most conservative (conservative here meaning "if we just turn back time enough everything will be awesome") mod in the FAF vault. Or maybe its more nostalgia than conservatism, or maybe both, not sure. From a pro-player perspective (which i do not share), this would probably be seen as mostly a self-serving "i want to stay in my comfort zone" attitude.

On the other hand this is mostly just human nature. The average human is not mentally healthy enough to be a pro player.

What is also seemingly human nature sadly is the accompanying tone. And yes it seems that often the better the player in question is, the more "deranged" their elitism gets. Like imagine thinking that only >2300 rating players (probably the top 0.1%) should be allowed to propose game design changes. Like literally no game in the world is being desgined or balanced by the 0.1% top players of that game because that is a deranged idea.

The problem is also not just about games. The "status quo bias" exists, which is normal human bias against any changes.

Whenever any big software anywhere on the world changes almost anything, like it might be the position of a single button, people flip the fuck out. They create discussions so unrespectful and unconstructive that you would think somebody was murdered.

This is sadly, what anybody that actually is trying to improve anything is constantly fighting against, and it is of course tiring. Take a rest @Jip if you need it.

I can only say that i would (and have) stopped engaging entirely with people that I know are not interested in actually at least sometimes changing their own opinion or at the very least trying out changes before complaining about them. I consistently just ignore their posts in this forum, and i have no advice other than that strategy.

Such people just suck your energy it into a black hole. @zhanghm18 banning that behaviour is imo both pointless and ethically questionable, poeple have enough ways to suck up your energy that does not require bannable offenses anyway.

So for anybody that does not want to constantly fight resistance, the "do things for yourself" is in some ways "giving up", but in other ways it might just be the wiser thing to do in terms of personal happiness.

Last but not least, let me say that this video "Dear Developers, Stop Listening to Pros" is not a good video. It does not seem to produce any actual argument as to WHY this should be the correct thing to do for devs. Which is sad because its not that hard to formulate actual potential reasons/arguments (like preservation of skill investment).

@Dorset I would say disagreeing to the 'core of your being' might be over stating things a bit in the context of a computer game (or you might want to think about your priorities).