Why would you have left FAF?
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@FtXCommando You've got an attitude, but you also make constructive points. You aren't somebody who rages and lets his ego take over. You're mature enough to recognise what is important for the greater good and I have a lot of respect for you because of that.
@ThomasHiatt is there an endless supply of them though? What sort of people come to play FAF? I reckon that somebody who was 12 when FA came out is probably the youngest person who would be interested in FAF and they would be 25 now.
I got into RTS games with Dune 2 and followed the evolution of the genre with the kind of excitement that only a teenager can have. Every new game had innovations and made big steps forward and then Total Annihilation came out and it was just so much better than everything else. And for reasons I can't explain Starcraft became the popular subgenre of RTS and TA got kind of forgotten.
yadda yadda yadda we are now 13 years after the launch of SupCom and RTS is a dead genre. We aren't going to attract any kids. Do we want to make the finite amount of interested people decide that this is too much effort?
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Plenty of the people active around my rating level are 16-22 years old. I don't understand why people think the FAF player base is only old people. There aren't many options for people who want to play a good RTS game so they have to come here.
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Nah don’t think FAF is that terminally old playerbase wise. First off, I’m 22 so I’m already under that expectation. But we also had TURBO and pepsi in the semis of LotS last year and both are either 19 or 20 from what I recall.
Anecdotally I’d say the players around the 1800+ part of FAF probably have a median age of 23. They’re all mostly around 20-25 from the people I’ve talked to.
No idea how to gauge age at wider rating brackets, I just know I’ve seen everything from 12 year olds to 70 year olds playing the game.
Worth noting that this doesn’t mean I’m agreeing with any of the conclusions Thomas arrives at.
Even developer wise I think we are quite young (mostly the same 20-25 age bracket) with a few developers in their later 20s that have been here for a while and act as veterans.
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I didn't expect that. It's good because it means the game is alive and attracting new players. It's bad because that's probably the same reason that bad players should die and why their mums are slags.
Maybe I'm just an old man shouting at a cloud then. It sucks, but you'll get to join me sooner than you'd think.
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Times like this I feel old
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@Dragun101 perhaps we should settle down round the fireplace and talk of Mammoth tanks and Tanyas, old bean
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@Wainan said in Why would you have left FAF?:
@RandomWheelchair You've made an awful lot of assumptions to back up what you want to believe.
There's absolutely no reason for players of this game to be obnoxious to each other, and back in the more innocent days before social media weaponised trolling and used it to effect worldwide political upheaval, FA players were nice to each other, and were interested in helping each other get better, and did want to share the experience of this most marvellous of games together.
Oh, sorry for years of gaming experience that I have had and my own life experience that strangely extrapolates with what others have experienced.
I've been playing with other competitive minded people for years and I kid you not that I have seen many of them go from toxic assholes to mellow guys just wanting to play a game after taxing day. I've heard them go about how the games we played were much better and less toxic back in the day compared to now. Where funnily enough they were part of what they would now consider toxic bunch.
I've seen people just outright switch 180 degree the moment they realised they can't reach the top as they are too bad. Even though before they didn't care at all as to what others wrote or said.
@Wainan said in Why would you have left FAF?:
There's absolutely no reason for players of this game to be obnoxious to each other
NO reason? Sorry but some folks just need to protect their ego, and mine experience comes before yours. As long as it doesn't break the rules 'ya just gotta deal with it.
@Wainan said in Why would you have left FAF?:
and back in the more innocent days before social media weaponised trolling and used it to effect worldwide political upheaval
Innocent days from before social media weaponized trolling? Dude if you think social media changed anything in the gaming sphere when it comes to trolling then I'm not sure what kind of life you are leading. Or how sad upbringing you had as a kid not to ever troll your best friend while playing in the sandbox.
Ya' really must be constantly looking at your past with rose tinted lenses 'cuz otherwise I have no clue how you could write that sentence.@Wainan said in Why would you have left FAF?:
FA players were nice to each other
Well FA players are still nice to each other, just as much as 4 years ago when I joined. Same to all other games I joined. But maybe that's cuz I don't look for the bad stuff but instead focus on the good parts while not giving a shit about what others do. I sculpt my own experience, and you won't have a say in it.
I would advise you to do the same, after all you have all the options available to make FAF a place just for you. Just use the tools.@Wainan said in Why would you have left FAF?:
and were interested in helping each other get better
Oh but they still do, we have plethora of people willing to assist FAF players. Be it Discord or reddit.
@Wainan said in Why would you have left FAF?:
did want to share the experience of this most marvellous of games together.
Well, I guess they could stop shilling. It's kinda cringe when you look at this people going about how FA is some kind of masterpiece whenever they go. And you are giving vibe of one of them.
@Wainan said in Why would you have left FAF?:
And the reason I didn't come back for so long was because I didn't want to get banned for making a second account!
@blackyps RandomWheelchair is in no position to say what I do when I come home from work or what state of mind I might be in.
I have a very good memory for people being obnoxious.
Well, that sound suspicious.Not being able to come back unless you make new account. I smell lies and half truths.
Maybe instead of focusing on shitty parts of your life it's time to focus on the good parts? Maybe then you won't remember every small shitter that dared to look funny at you?
@Wainan said in Why would you have left FAF?:
I left to play Planetary Annihilation, around the time engie mod was introduced. That predates the examples you're giving
Pointless strawmaning.
@Wainan said in Why would you have left FAF?:
If I accept that there have always been arseholes, would you accept that we've always been better off without them?
I will take capable asshole over apathetic smoothbrain each time of the day. One at least have capability of getting better.
Also can we get the age factor out of the window? Cuz so far in my experience on FAF it was the OLD dudes that were showing the most of the notable "toxicity" that you and others speak off. So kinda lol at you old dudes being the chill ones.
Which funnily also goes with the experience I had in WoT when it was the old dudes being the biggest quantity of people that you would consider toxic by your standards. Though I guess they were tame compared to mah dudes in EFE.
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It seems that you're bothered, @randomwheelchair
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@Wainan said in Why would you have left FAF?:
It seems that you're bothered, @randomwheelchair
Ty for your contribution.
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@Wainan said in Why would you have left FAF?:
If I accept that there have always been arseholes, would you accept that we've always been better off without them?
I'm not a fan of this sort of passive agressive elitism.
Many modern video games - overwatch specifically - enforce a constant feeling of achievement by constantly providing you positive reinforcement. This creates a massive Dunning–Kruger effect wherein bad players will abuse other bad players because they feel they're underperforming.
Do you understand what i'm getting at here? FAF doesn't have any of that. We have a barely usable client and a legacy game made years ago. Sure, people can be toxic - But a lot of the time it's unfortunately warranted. Especially if you talk "down" to others in the same way you're doing here.
A lot of these people spend their time making valuable contributions to the game and the client.
People here are just talking smack about them on the forum.Do you know who I would rather keep?
@Wainan said in Why would you have left FAF?:
I reckon that somebody who was 12 when FA came out is probably the youngest person who would be interested in FAF
You don't need to be born when the game launches to be interested in it. We commonly have users on FAF that barely pass the age requirement. Look at FtXCommando for example 4head
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@biass said in Why would you have left FAF?:
Sure, people can be toxic - But a lot of the time it's unfortunately warranted.
What do you mean about it being warranted?
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I was turned off on teamgames by 2 toxic incidents (out of 3 games tried) around 2013-2014, then did nothing but ladder 1v1.
When I try teamgames now (a whopping 2 or 3 times discounting 2v2) my experience is the same. Small sample size sure.Looking at the streets in real life though, and social media, there is a lot more toxicity in society and even violence now.
I wouldn't be surprised if toxicity has somewhat increased here proportional to real world attitudes, but my experiences don't reflect that. -
There might be a auto-ban from custom/team games probably, You won't be toxic if you play ladder 1vs1)
I am avid dota player and i'm quite toxic then i see people doing dumb shit.
if you get reported for 'communication missconduct' you get banned from chat, but still can use 'pings' or predefined chat commands like 'retreat/attack/etc'. It works pretty nicely.
You also have 'behaviour score' and griefers/players with boosted rank/etc get it low and basically get matched with same low score, so where is like cesspit for all griefers who can grief each other but they get seprated from 'good behaving' players.Also even if y get 3+ reports and get low behaviour score you can play nicely and get commended so your score jumps back. So it's sort of easy to fix by being nice and helping your team and playing properly.
Something like this requires a ton of coding, but maybe something simpler can be coded, even simple system like seeing public comments or negative downvote from someone i know like "zlo" or other 'decent' players, would make me consider playing AGAINST that person in team game. Currently i 'foe' players, but it works kinda bad cause you can't see foes in lobby, half the time i just forget i foed someone and later find out i already foed someone for example.
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@CheeseBerry said in Why would you have left FAF?:
@biass said in Why would you have left FAF?:
Sure, people can be toxic - But a lot of the time it's unfortunately warranted.
What do you mean about it being warranted?
I did a lot of 1v1, where you spam T1, so I entered teamgame and spammed T1. Apparently I was going to feed mass to the enemy and "lose us the game" - second game one player gave helpful ping on my T1 army and said "ctrl-K"
Technically they were correct, it is a shame that many people think that being right and a noob being wrong warrants toxic behavior.
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@nine2 said in Why would you have left FAF?:
FAF has a big problem retaining new players. We actually get a decent stream of new players in all of the time but we lose them quickly - 90% of new FAF players will be gone after 2 years.
I'm not saying that working on player retention is a bad idea, it's a great idea actually. But I will say that setting realistic expectations will help a lot.
With that in mind, I'm honestly shocked player retention is that high, and I don't even think it's that bad. From everything I've heard FAF is growing steadily on what is essentially word of mouth advertising, which is also impressive. I've come back to the game (after not playing for over half a decade) because Gyle casts started showing up in my youtube recommended again.
So in short, FAF is a complex game and will probably always have a pretty low retention level, as this game will only connect with certain people. Trying to go wide to reach as many of those people as possible isn't a bad thing, (though trying to retain as many of them as possible is also pretty wise), but I would honestly be shocked if FAF ever got over a 20% retention level for two years. Two years is a really long time.
So yeah, advertising while player retention is "low" is not a waste of effort. The increased popularity alone can help with retention, as people stick through the NPE pain a little bit longer due to FOMO.
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@techmind_ that's some not-so-bad ideas. we indeed lack the manpower to implement all this and as other have pointed out we don't want to encourage blotting out communication completely but maybe there's an idea to drill down into.
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I think the game could be simplified a little and not be ruined. You'd take some of the finesse out of the high level play but it'd make the game more palatable for a noob. Pro players will always find a way to do more and create a competitive advantage anyway.
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Make initial build order system easier. Make the commander build at his full range instead of walking all over the place. A new player will lose so much build time if he doesn't issue a load of manual move orders.
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Reduce the complexity of the manual reclaim. It requires a ton of map knowlege. It's very esoteric. Again not going to be popular with vets.
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Get rid of 2.5 tier mex upgrades. Having templates and stuff makes placing 4 storages easy but new players aren't going to figure out how to do that. Give people a bit more metal storage to compensate. Maybe simplify the late game eco a bit in general.
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Incentivise lower level players to host more maps somehow. You've got to give them bonus rank for playing a variety of maps. It doesn't have to be 20 different maps just more than 3 (not counting all the minor variations). You want them to progress into becoming average players not stay in a teamplay choke point map ghetto.
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Bit radical but maybe give units more armour (would require gigantic rebalance). They die really quickly in this game which means paying close attention to unit position is very critical or your army can die super quickly. It takes a long time to reinforce.
FAF is balanced by pros which is a really good thing but it also means there's a bit of a lack of vision when it comes to accessibility. As the game continues to age it'll get harder to bring anybody new in so it's important to keep this in mind.
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can't mod in. we tried.
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I strongly agree with this one there is a mod on the chinese FAF called "area reclaim" it's very controversial in the FAF community (or maybe it is that it is not that compatible with FAF code? I don't know)
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Again very much agree. and to a degree we could do this. (and have started crossing that bridge) did you know that in faf right-click on a t2 mass point with an engineer selected will automatically add the cap? you can delete that mass storage template.
but I can agree with the idea of removing that adjacency bonus entirely. -
we did do this. tab where you browse for General skirmish "Custom Games" has a permanently present autohost of mapgen :
it's called "All Welcome (Noobs and Grays too)!...
- maybe try Equilibrium?
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I'm new to multiplayer (23 games, GR:-100, 1v1:306) but not new to FA, i've logged 1000+ hours against the AIs.
It's taken me a very long time to get to 23 games, because exposure to the FAF general community just sends me back to the AI. You need a real tough skin to get started in FAF.
Too many FAF players think NEW==SHIT
Too many FAF players would rather stand on your fingers than help you up.How the F was i supposed to know an "Air Slot" even exists, let alone that I occupied it! FAF wasnt fun anymore so back to the AI for me. Few of the community are good losers, and even fewer are tolerant of noobs (real ones, not the 500+ ones yeah!).
There's an urgency in multiplayer that doesn't exist when playing the AI, an extra pressure that begins at the loading screen, I often find myself stalling mass and/or power. The need to fight and expand takes my attention from my eco.
This time around i've managed to get my rating from -800 to +300 and as i find my feet i get less and less flak and that makes me more tolerant of the flak that i do get.
You can't change human nature, and I'm a big believer in freedom, so trying to stop the hostility isn't really an option.
You can't take away the urgency from multiplayer because thats what makes it exciting.My one and only suggestion is to improve access to training.
There are lots of players who want to learn and lots of players who want to teach.
Perhaps we could have some new matchmaking queue types to connect them up. (players would have to specify languages of course)Edit:
Please dont simplify the game, i dont think that's the problem.Edit2 (lol)
I just reread the OP and voice connection instead of game lobby sounds good too -
@Jaybob66 said in Why would you have left FAF?:
My one and only suggestion is to improve access to training.
we'd like to do this.
please help us by specifying what that would look like
I just reread the OP and voice connection instead of game lobby sounds good too
automatic VOIP channel join? we had that at one point thanks to the mumble API. we should look into getting that back up and running but with Discord instead.
