Why would you have left FAF?

@arma473 said in Why would you have left FAF?:

There are people who come back to FAF after a few years or a decade's absence, we don't need to force them to play 30 matches before they can unlock the real ladder. And there are people with 1700+ global rating who barely play the ladder, we don't need to make obstacles for them.

one half of me wants to agree with you, making it optional, to play the baby ladder only if you want. the other half has this feeling, that most of the players will want to play with all the toys immediately, they get crush, frustrated and they leave the FAF for good.

as long as there would be enough of new content so the player wont get bored, it should be fine to force it (not on players with 100+ games) (and lets face it, standard supcom had 3 races and you get access to all the stuff after how many hours of gameplay? 30 games on small map might be 5 hours of gameplay)

@FtXCommando said in Why would you have left FAF?:

Zero. After watching several dozens of 0 rated games from people that are new and ask for advice, I can tell you that if a new player prepared by watching a 5 minute BO explaining 1 land fac 4 mex hydro land fac or 1 land fac 2 pgen 2 mex 2 pgen 2 mex pgen land fac they would already be about 500 rating underrated.

Why do you guys think that new people in ladder are facing 1600s?

Sorry to say it, but you are completely out of touch with what it is like to be a real noob. I got 25 games in 1v1 and got messed up good. After spending about 1-2 hrs watching tutorials and BOs. So I spend almost as much time improving as I played.

I got a 400 rating and constantly get raped by 500s and 600s. Quickest game I had was against a 1200 who wiped me in 5 minutes. Got a 40% WR.
Hard, just hard.

Now my own thoughts:
FAF isn't the game I want to have but I am stuck with. I really dislike the efficiency simulator aspect, as I come from the original TA. It was way more about tactical decisions and unit composition as FAF is. But to my knowledge there is no usable TA version around anymore so FAF it is. Credit where credit is due, FAF has its glorious sides!

Now about my experiences when I started about 4 weeksa go. Sobering is the best word to describe them. You come into the custom lobby and there are only camping games. Not what the tactician in me wants. I play Setons because it is the most action packed map aviable. I get raped and flamed because 600-700 players are 5 leagues above my skill level even though I am ranked the same for some reasons. In other games I tried to prevent seal clubbing parties by being outspoken and begging overly experienced players to leave. Got seal clubbed anyway, as predicted.
Hosting games myself is out of the question, I am too unexperienced. Still tried, no one joined. Reasons unknown.
In the end I had 1-2 very fun games on maps usually not hosted where the balance was somewhat okay.

Went for 1v1. As in my first post, that experience was pretty hard too. But at least I got some good games out of it.

The community is very weird. In lobby chats you have a person talking back from time to time but most of the time it is like talking to a wall. Russians spamming the team chat in Russian even though you beg them to talk in English. Ocasional flaming. The Client chat room 'aeolus' has a very weird toxicity to it and everybody seems to know each other so I don't dare to ask anything. Newbie chat is deserted. Here and there I met with friendly players but really just here and there.

Pretty sobering all in all...

@FtXCommando i think its not about losing itself, its about the reason of losing

have you ever played a board game where you have lost because of some special rule nobody told you about? and later again, you played well but you lost because there is a special rule you didnt know about...now you know, but the game is already lost. and you would ask why didnt you tell me before? well because there is just too many of these little things so we just cant tell you all of them, you will have to learn as you go. but many people wont. they leave

i will list some of the reasons why people lose their games (my opinion only, no research done apart from playing the game myself

• not aware of guncom strength and cost (could be solved with nice 10x5 map with chokepoint)
• special units from aeon and seraphim such as aurora and zthuee with floating capabilities
• too big map (20x20) too many things to do
• new map, no idea what to build, where to go
• bad T2 timing

i dont think its about small differences between units as you mentioned. i think you mentioned T3 bombers to partly disqualify my point

but maybe you are right about ACU movement and mass overflow. on small map, they would learn better that ACU must be used, and they wouldnt get easily overwhelmed by the size of the map

now your talk about 1000 rank i cannot take it seriously but you can prove me wrong, you play rank under 1k and win with mass sky slammer spam

the point of the baby league is to keep the player long enough in the game to teach him the basics. as it is now, ladder will teach them the same, but only if they wont get frustrated before. and that might be the case why people are leaving.

• problem with guncom is that its not easy to see it is a guncom. i imagine new people are quite surprised what killed them. not everyone is methodical and watch their own replays, not everyone zooms in to check for the gun, some even might not know how it looks like.

• t2 timing most of the time depends on the map right? hence the low map pool i proposed, and new maps only with guide

• define a new player. i might be one, i lost games because of this in combination with new map. i wont provide any replays as i dont really thing such a replay would prove my our yours point. i think most of the people imagine what kind of shit zthuee can do on maps with water and clifs

• i think there is difference between people. you are talking about map diversity yet most of the people in the lobby play 1 or 2 maps
  yes some people will never be happy with even 100 maps but if you play competitively and ladder is such place, then i believe you want to know the map you are going to play on. now since you cannot choose which one that will be, nor you can ban any map, you must learn them which takes time and not everyone is willing to invest it into a game. i imagine they want to play as soon as possible. then they get to learn the hard way. losing the match and maybe, i say it again, get frustrated

• and i didnt propose to limit the rank under 500 with X maps only. i proposed to base the map pool size on number of the games played, and THEN on the rank. how many maps do the 500 rank access to right now? its certainly not 15 or 20 anyway

i think the rank has many faces. cybran vs cybran, cybran vs UEF, UEF vs sera....on small map, map with water or without..

of course the number of games you played matters. if you played only 10 games i can guarantee you didnt play every map. you want to tell me that when there is a tournament, nobody prepares for specific maps? that it doesnt matter because they already played more than 10 games?

and the number of race vs race combinations is exactly 10 so in the best scenario you played every variant only once. did you learn all the sera tricks after you played 1 game against them? or is there a chance that people get better to certain degree after simply playing on the same map vs same enemy again and again? and then, some later, they hit their maximum rank.

we dont need to differ between 10 and 30.000 games. i proposed to differ between 0,5,10,15,30,60,100+. and they are not the same skill level.

how many hours, days, maybe weeks did you invest into this game? how many hours? maybe 1000? thats 25 weeks 8 hours a day.

its all about new people. they need to learn everything, everything they didnt see in some youtube video that attracted them here. i only propose to teach them bit by bit.

its not like you go to math class and they want to teach you all the tricks at once, is it?

@olp-O-mat said in Why would you have left FAF?:

But to my knowledge there is no usable TA version around anymore

There are plenty TA like games, or even just improved versions of TA. Like Balanced Annihilation, the Escalation mod for TA, Beyond All Reason, Zero-K, Planetary Annihilation and probably others.

Anyway, I think this thread is going nowhere. Should be about collecting data/problem identifying and not for problem solution.
A "baby league" is not going to solve anything; other games (AoE, StarCraft) don't need such excessive hand holding either.
There's been a massive focus here on the game being "too hard", but there are plenty games that demonstrate that difficulty or a lack of a tutorials is really not as big a problem. Would be nice if people could discuss something more useful again.

And another note, this thread is also barely readable with what feels like half the comments getting removed. I doubt what FtX said was so offensive that it had to be removed? He's not some random guy talking shit without basis, he's the Player Councilor lol
And if it wasn't a mod, we need a better indication of whether something was removed because of mod action or the user doing it himself.

I removed it because I dominate the discussion and kill any input from new players. So instead I will act like a proper Councillor and not respond to anything to encourage greater discussion.

@olp-O-mat said in Why would you have left FAF?:

But to my knowledge there is no usable TA version around anymore so FAF it is.

Total Annihilation Universe discord server:
https://discord.gg/QpaRbek9

@kokoryba said in Why would you have left FAF?:

think about how much time does a new player need to be properly prepared, to know all the races, maps and tech thats in ladder?

Feel the need to step in here.
For you to jump in and start playing ladder, you require NO prep whatsoever.
Don't say any dumbass dismissals like "you're not a new player so you wouldn't know" because I've been training new players for mutiple years.

Ladder is not like the final Darkest Dungeon levels where you cannot reenter the level if you lose, all the system does is give you a point score. You do not need to know anything in order to play ladder on a constant basis. Not needing to do so is the point of ladder.

No matter how bad you are, you will always find someone as bad as you on the ladder. The only time you will find yourself constantly losing is if you're either A: Entirely overrated or B: You're new and the system is trying to figure out an accurate rating score for you. The game will inevitably start giving you close to a 50% winrate no matter your skill level.

New players sneer at the concept, but I am and forever will be stalwart in my opinion that you don't need to learn a build order until you're 800/900. This is because new/bad players are so slow to punish you that if you focus on learning the fundamentals of the game, players who don't know them will lose anyway.

(Even when you do "learn a build order" you're only learning a cripple build order that normally loses out to others later on.. anyway..)

Teching is a vital part of the fundamentals of the game. You're not going to teach anyone properly using the baby ladder, you're just making people play the way you want. Not only do you cripple your retention as people who like to play tech rush styles essentially cannot play, you segregate a small playerbase into two ranked queues for the same thing, and you don't even train people correctly.

A casual queue was already a stretch, I don't think a "baby ladder" is an idea that should be entertained in any capacity.

Anyway.

@FtXCommando said in Why would you have left FAF?:

I removed it because I dominate the discussion and kill any input from new players. So instead I will act like a proper Councillor and not respond to anything to encourage greater discussion.

Extreme cringe

I think the whole training thing is a moot point and doesn't lead into any actual viable data on retention rates. Most other games do the same thing and frankly, have harder learning curves than FAF does. If you're too weak of mind to play the game, I don't think we can actually do anything to keep you here. I think it's better to focus on the persona who "does" brave it out and then gets fustrated and leaves due to a sticking point in the FAF UX. Not because of "game too hard"

There are plenty of people around who are still in the community but don't really play anymore. Which is fine.
You should ask yourself not "what made me stop playing FA" and ask yourself "what made me leave FAF" as the op asked.

Also, if you have a skill:
The primary goal for a lot of veterans here is to convert you, a user, into an active contributor for the community's various systems. If something is stopping you from doing this, you should also explain why here too.

I have only played a few games. It is incredibly confusing what to do and very daunting playing your first match. I stopped playing and just watched casts, this one caster called Willows Duality and TheDuelist both intrigued me and needed replays. I though I might try and lost a bit. I lost and won some games. I'm not good but being pitted against rank 1000's wasn't very fun. I couldn't do for me to re-watch and learn. these two casters helped me learn and feel comfortable queueing up. It sounds very cheesy but if I did not find these two youtubers I would not know what I was doing and wouldn't have wanted to learn.

Not sure if I fall under the older players or the newbs who leave within 2 years.

I started on PvP on FAF over 4 years ago (was living at my old house), I played for a year or two regularly and then was playing other games for a time. I had played SC since release, discovering FAF and gradually getting into the PvP after a couple of years of just getting maps & mods. I did ok, could hold my own against most players of similar rank.

Came back and played some more the last year or so (the last 4 years my schedule also fucked my gaming as it didn't give me much time to actually play). Have only played a couple of PvP games, did ok, actually the last one I probably did really well - I got trash talked by another 1000 ranked player that I flat out punked on Gap of Rohan (we were Air on opposite sides, I hit him early with a LAB squad, followed almost at the same time by some bombers to screw his power, later on Mercy sniped him - asked a team mate afterward and he was ecstatic with what I'd done as I had that particular player locked down all game playing catchup from the early damage and removed him before he ever made a meaningful contribution). Thing is, 2/3 of the games I've joined you spend 15-20 minutes getting it together, and 3/4 of the time someone DC or leaves the game early because they screwed their build order and don't have the balls to just play it thru. Then everyone quits and you wasted what is now a half hour... To play a PvP game I generally have to figure I have over an hour I can spare with no interruptions.

Thus, I play against AI a lot, because I can pause, I can save, and I can complete the game. very frustrating to start a game to have to pull out early. Similar issues if you start up with the wife and are done in 5 minutes...

For newbs I think that it is a steep learning curve, I got beat, I watched replays of most games I was in to see what I did vs what everyone else was doing, and what worked and what didn't. Had a guy punk me once playing Rock on Setons, he was on the island from Beach before I even got a transport off. Replay told the story, after that I shaved 2 minutes off my launch time thanks for watching how someone else did it. The problem is, many people don't have that patience.

Second problem as I mentioned above, disconnecting players. It is extremely rare in my experience for someone to lose connection and get back in. In most cases a player disconnects it screws the team - though someone might inherit the units and economy, they also now have far more to task than before and for many players they can't suddenly take that on without dropping the ball in some fashion.

I'm not a noob anymore but I did play FAF intermittently in 2016 and then I quit and came back a year later. Back then I only played dualgap because it's what was most welcoming for >100G >500R noobs. I had a very hard time finding games outside of dualgap/astro that would let me play at 600 rating and there was almost no chance that I could get into a wonder/1k+ random map team game. Eventually I gave up on improving to an acceptable rank and stopped playing altogether. Only did i manage to come back and git gud was when I found some friends to play with that would vouch for me in 1k+ lobbies.

Well by reading this thread it's good to know I'm not the only one who can't take any more astro/gap.

So for the moment, if I summarize, the most common reasons mentioned are :

• Lack of map diversity in lobby games/can't play other maps if you don't want to spend 20min in a lobby.
  --> This is starting to get solved with 2vs2 TMM (that really lacks communication towards it for the functionnality that it is) and planned 4vs4 TMM. 4vs4 TMM will allow more maps, that will still be more forgiving for individual mistakes (so new players can hide) and attractive for new players because you can often build the "big stuff" in those games. If you tell people they can get in a 4vs4 match quickly, with people with similar level, I think they will naturally leave their beloved Astro to save 10mins spend in the lobby. So the matchmaking instead of custom lobby could solve both maps diversity and time spent in a lobby problems.

• The learning curve/community aspect
  **-->**By reading this thread, the ressources are there. They are just unknown from the average new guy. It should be the easiest to fix. You're 100% sure that the guy will end up on the landing page after launching the client so might as well use it to it's fullest. Currently there's 8 differents news on the landing page + the various links on the right. It's just my opinion but I would divide it in 3 or 4 big windows instead :

  -One BIG ass discord icon with a catching phrase like "need help to get better, join the FAF discord to meet experienced players blabla". The discord icon is on the top right (away from the rest of the menus that are on the left) I think a lot of people are missing it. Could also link the forum there.

  -One big news related window like, "download the new client and play TMM now".

  -And a third for the streaming/youtube content community aspect. Who even knows Nexus has a youtube channel with POV commentary ? And he's the number one player in FAF. If you say to a new guy that keeps losing "here watch #1 ranked player Nexus POV in the last tourney", he will click to see how the man plays. It just has to be catchy. Even a link to the replays section auto-filtered on top players could work.
  It's just another example but when I finally downloaded the last client, I can see that there's a BO tutorials from Heaven in the tutorial section that could be useful to any new players. Why not put it in the landing page ? You're 100% sure they will at least see that it's available, you don't even know if 10% of them will click on the tutorials tab.

Well those are just ideas out of my head but you get the point. Ressources are already there to help new players to get better. I know it may sound dumb but a big part is just a matter of using big shining windows and catch phrases on the landing page (that currently seems overloaded to me) to improve the chance they click on it and see that help is available.

Way to delete FTX posts when it is his job as player councilor to engage with the "players" and give/receive feedback.