Why does everything suck so much right now?

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).

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

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

I think this completely misses the mark. While I often don't agree, there's been solid arguments for or against recent changes by these players. To basically invalidate all the arguments from this group by claiming all their concerns are self-servicing and/or are rooted in insecurity is ridiculous.

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

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.

This is fairly on point though. The idea that only the highest rated players have enough understanding to make changes to the game should be buried in a shallow grave, along with the accompanying elitism. But that too is limited to specific players, not the group as a whole. I've never seen ZLO been anything but polite, to name one specific player.

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

Take a rest @Jip if you need it.

I agree. Jip is one of the best things that has happened to FAF with all the improvements (other contributors not withstanding). One of the benefits of @Jip is that he is very approachable and listens without constantly making snarky, hostile and dismissive comments like others here do. I don't always have to agree with him to see value in that. It's probably really best not to feed the haters and trolls too much. @Jip, if you decide to leave at some point because your sanity is more important to you than arguing with immature people here, then that's the right decision. I hope you can still get something positive out of FAF for the time being. Thanks for your efforts and contributions, they have made a big difference for the better and did not go unnoticed.

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

I think this completely misses the mark. While I often don't agree, there's been solid arguments for or against recent changes by these players. To basically invalidate all the arguments from this group by claiming all their concerns are self-servicing and/or are rooted in insecurity is ridiculous.

Well if somebody puts fortward an actually decently made argument in a respectful way, this does not apply to them. Im talking about the baseline behaviour. Here is what i would like baseline feedback or arguments to look like:

"I dont't like that a new type of control is introduced into a game with already complex controls, because it might be too much."

That is an example for an argument. Now, unless you also try the change to validate that this is actually the case, its not a very convincing argument. So if im feeling even more constructive i might add

"But im willing to at least try it, how can i play with this change?"

That would be the level of respect towards all the work going into these changes i would expect from high level players especially. This is often not what is happing on FAF though. What is happening on FAF often is this:

• "Lol devs ruining the game once again"
• "Lol devs not knowing how the game works once again"
• "Im not gonna explain what i dont like because its useless anyway, <insert untrue sarcastic argument that their opinion is being oppressed/ignored anyway>"
• "Why are you even here typing as though you even matter with your stupid contributive mentality lol, go away."
• "you are deliberatley mutilating the game"
• "this is absolutely terrible, no wonder FAF is dying"
• "i haven't tried it but i already know without a doubt its gonna be absolutely aweful"
• <insert dismissive "funny" comment here>

That is bitching, bickering und bashing, not arguing. People talking like this have no desire to actually discuss anything, this tone is just used to shoot down something or somebody, usually in the hope that some buddies will come along and also bitch and bash it strongly enough for it to go away. Of course there are people that don't do this. And of course there are also players that are not high level that do this.

But if you are a high level player and long time FAF community member and you do this, than i have to assume that the reason you talk like this is because you just bash against changes out of reflex which is where my skill-investment argument comes from (or alternatively that you just like to not behave like a decent human being, which is actually worse).

Changes to the game are reasonably well communicated, and the reasonably presented arguments get heard. Sometimes you get the feeling that some people think they are "victim" to all the oppresive changes "imposed" on them.

And i don't doubt that some people have managed to warp their own sense of reality so much that they actually think they are being mistreated somehow. Sadly, self-victimization is en-vouge everywhere today, but it still an incredibly shitty attitude and it deserves to get called out whenever it is seen.