Why would you have left FAF?
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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.
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I recently came back to the game with some buddies -- I'm very much a newbie still. Getting back into the basics of properly managing mexes/power, muscle memory coming back quick though.
Where I'm struggling is how unforgiving some players can be. Joining a "noob" lobby and still having people plant messages all over, not with simple friendly advice but calling me an idiot and berating me for not playing a slot correctly, or not micro'ing my troops like a pro.
The only other item I'd like to call out that plagued me my first night back..... please, please, please make sure people are aware of the Nvidia driver bug. Every game I joined people kept accusing me of lagging hardcore and "dropping packets". I had no idea what any of this meant until I came across the Nvidia fix mod and manually downloaded it. My buddies were confused since the mod is enabled and it should have downloaded when I joined those games -- but long story short, it didn.t My lag problems are fixed now, but holy hell that was annoying and I'm sorry to all who seemed to think I was "lagging" and kept begging my teammates to TK me.
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Yes this Nvidia bug is a huge problem. Two of my friends had the same problem, they played a game and had no clue why it's lagging so hard until I told them.
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Someone could just patch the game to automatically run the console command that fixes it.
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Considering how many people are still having problems with it, I think we should keep it in news tab until the problem is either fixed by nvidia or we have working automatic workaround. Should also possibly make a pinned post on reddit as lot's of folks are also looking there for the fix.
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It might be worthwhile to follow LOUD and intergrate nvidia fix solution into the faf client. LOUD has been doing it for a 3 months with apparently no ill effects. So take that for it is
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@tatsu said in Why would you have left FAF?:
please help us by specifying what that would look like
@Jaybob66 said in Why would you have left FAF?:
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 upi quite like the idea of a new matchmaking queue, with "need a trainer" and "am a trainer" buttons.
A 2v2 queue may work better for that, matching teammates as training pairs. Players join on the understanding the higher ranked player takes the other under their wing and offers some assistance and pointers through the game.
[Edit]
1v1 could again match high with low and the players can decide what training to do in FA. -
@Jaybob66 said in Why would you have left FAF?:
i quite like the idea of a new matchmaking queue, with "need a trainer" and "am a trainer" buttons.
A 2v2 queue may work better for that, matching teammates as training pairs. Players join on the understanding the higher ranked player takes the other under their wing and offers some assistance and pointers through the game.
[Edit]
1v1 could again match high with low and the players can decide what training to do in FA.I really like the 2v2 suggestion, also for non-noobs. It is sometimes awkward to work together and find out who is boss or if you are boss. Make the buttons:
- I want to be master
- I want to have a master teammate
Ingame Master gets title "Master [name]" and the master sees that and feels free to not only take command of the team, but to meddle in build orders etc as well.
This could also be added for 1v1, if you allow a significantly underrated player to have a baseless semi-observer teammate.
- To-be trainer can clikc "Join 1v1 queue as Master"
- A button "I want to have a master observer"
If you are matched with a player like 500 rating higher, a master can be pulled into your game. Not as a real observer with full vision, but with shared vision with you and chat options.
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@Jaybob66 btw we have a channel on the FAF discord where the two can organically match each other up already, it's called "Gameplay and training" : https://discord.gg/eUQdmppkMp
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Game is perfectly fine for me, I've got no reason to stop playing it. I'm actually surprised how balanced it is, and how much QoL stuff there is in the client.
The reason however I'm playing a lot less than I would want to/don't bother starting up the client is simple: if you're not interested in playing Astro/gap/thermo/setons 95% of your games you can't play at my low level of rating. You can make your own server with another map, but it won't fill up unless you have an hour of spare time. With the game time of a match already being so unpredictable, making it difficult to fit in between making dinner and going to work, you either have to play a quick astro/etc/... or not play. Would play much more if more maps would be played.
Perhaps tie in player rating gain/loss to how much he played a map? Winning a match on a map that you've overplayed gives a penalty on rating gain, losing it makes you lose extra rating. Winning a map you've almost never played makes you gain extra rating while losing it gets punished less?
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@CWSilk would you try Ladder or TMM? did you try hosting some mapgen?
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@tatsu
I have played ladder and will do again, though the really big maps scare me away a bit. I do plan on playing more TMM, even got a friend into faf to play together with, but finding a time where both of us can be online simultaneously has proven difficult.I have joined mapgen matches, have not yet tried hosting one. Is it your experience that it gets players more easily than specific maps?
