Why would you have left FAF?

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

the only way to rank up for my new account was to play endless toxic gap games

the ... ONLY ... way?

how?
You can host your own games.

and when you do you can pick any other map.

and when you do, trust you me, it'll fill. not in a billionth of a second... ok... but it'll fill... at worst in a minute, on average in 25 seconds.

I'm just trying to help here.

We think gap is a plague, you think gap is a plague. good. let's get you out of there.

Best way to not play gap, is to not play gap.

If there is no good games on at my time I play a coop with just me

tmm (2v2 queue) ranking disappear.. I mean, I don't play only for increasing my ranking, BUT the feelings of improving is something every human get satisfied by and just have your improvements disappear and having to start from scratch could be a reason to quit FAF.

The 2vs2 rating was reset but there was an error which caused it to be 0 instead of basing it initially on your Global Rating. The fix is done and will be deployed soon.

@tatsu i dont think you understand, below 1k rank 1/10 games is not gap and the players cant function very well so you get 5 minute steamroll matches half the time and everyone because of the rating system gets toxic blaming and screaming, if you do get to 1k rank everyone in non gap games will racistly kick you constantly saying your a gapper or saying that you dont have enough total games and your gray. ----when you finally do get into more normal matches half the players with high ratings are terrible and will drive down your rank by throwing the game constantly. dieing to guncom, mercy, and t2 bomber snipes over 1200 rank in first 10 minutes is embarrassing and constant which causes more toxic blaming. all of this goes back to the rating system and how it works at the beginning going all over the place, and then later on when it doesn't want to move and you get rusty players and teamstackers with 500+ rating points higher than they can play at

@humanpotatoe let me tell you one secret only high rated players understand. Once you are high rated, you don’t care about all the shit you just mentioned. You are just good enough to foresee all the bullshit, prepare for it and deal with it and compensate for it. Far is a hard game, lower rated team members are one of the harder aspects of it.

Without having a rating for each map, which would be impossible, you cannot fix those problems.

Best thing to do is start cracking down on toxic players with bans.

Game got thrown? It's a game......

@humanpotatoe what bennis means is that on your end you should be perfectly able to match up with higher players and just play.

if they join your host that means that they are willing and perfectly happy. don't take the toxics to be the spokespeople of the entire community, they're not.

in fact you'll quickly find that statistics disagree with them.

people will join your hosts and play with you.

Host it, try it and you'll see. also step out of your comfort zone a bit, try more frontal and aggressive spots, these spots have less responsibility tied to them.

everyone that was playing in the team gets the same amount of victory points even if they were dead when the team finally wins.

which is why sometimes sacrifices can be acceptable. I get the feeling you've been mostly playing slots where sacrifices wern't acceptable.

anyways I get your pain. bottom line is we've all obviously been where you are now. and we've found ways to break the cycle and are trying to help others break out too.

@khabume
<<am a technically newbie with less than 100 games. I am most likely one of the people you're going to lose in 2 years. If I try to look forward, here's what I see and feel. I mostly play custom games, because that's the first thing that presents itself when you start Downlord's FAF Client, so I've stuck with it. I'm not a huge fan of 1v1. I like Team Games.>>

Also:
<<tech race and units rant>>

Well, the first thing is the cause of the second thing, in big team games everyone goes for the fastest eco -> higher units, at least one player in each team. For better FAF experience go to 2vs2 ladder games, it just gave us so much fresh air where more tactics are avaliable.

Very late reply from me to the original post.

But the reason why I would leave FaF is, that the majority of the player base has a very different taste in maps than me. At almost any given the majority of maps being hosted consists of dual gap, astro etc. This means that it takes longer for a normal map lobby to fill, so longer lobby sim time. When having a full time job and a being married there isn't that much game time to start with.

Luckily, there are more players than there used to be, who like normal maps. So it still makes sense to open FaF.

This has been discussed extensively I assume, but still this is the number one downside of FaF for me.

@H-master said in Why would you have left FAF?:

Very late reply from me to the original post.

But the reason why I would leave FaF is, that the majority of the player base has a very different taste in maps than me. At almost any given the majority of maps being hosted consists of dual gap, astro etc. This means that it takes longer for a normal map lobby to fill, so longer lobby sim time. When having a full time job and a being married there isn't that much game time to start with.

Luckily, there are more players than there used to be, who like normal maps. So it still makes sense to open FaF.

This has been discussed extensively I assume, but still this is the number one downside of FaF for me.

Married + part time + primary caregiver also suffers from the time issue. I would love to have a FAF mod "Action FAF" or something that optimizes the game for much shorter and more reliable playtimes.

Alas, I don't have time to make that

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

@H-master said in Why would you have left FAF?:

Very late reply from me to the original post.

But the reason why I would leave FaF is, that the majority of the player base has a very different taste in maps than me. At almost any given the majority of maps being hosted consists of dual gap, astro etc. This means that it takes longer for a normal map lobby to fill, so longer lobby sim time. When having a full time job and a being married there isn't that much game time to start with.

Luckily, there are more players than there used to be, who like normal maps. So it still makes sense to open FaF.

This has been discussed extensively I assume, but still this is the number one downside of FaF for me.

Married + part time + primary caregiver also suffers from the time issue. I would love to have a FAF mod "Action FAF" or something that optimizes the game for much shorter and more reliable playtimes.

Alas, I don't have time to make that

Haha, what works well, is a mate to play with. For me it's my cousin, a.k.a. C-master. Then the lobby fills faster and you have a much higher chance of having a good game. At least one person on your team who you can rely on.

You could also try TMM together!

I started to play recently, hit slightly above 200 games now.
Things that lean me towards quitting are:
1)no interactive tutorials for build orders and other aspects. AoE2DE for example have pretty good interactive tutorials, much better then FAF. You get comments and instructions while you are doing tutorial rather then "watch and then try to repeat what you just saw". And absolutely no in-game interactive tutorials for late game.
2) toxic community towards new players. It is really hard to find a game when you have 0 rating, at least in NA. Every time I host a game and grey 0 rating player would join in the rest of players would tell me to kick him. This "rating segregation" problem is annoying.
3)Dual gap and astro. I have a feeling that 99% of the games are Dualgap and Astro. Feels like game should have been called SC: Dual gap. And it is hard to compete with someone who played dual gap 100K times.
4)Luck of random maps. This is somewhat related to previous one. It is hard to compete with someone who knows specific build orders.
5)Luck of player base. At least that is a problem for NA. Have to wait full lobby for 30-60 minutes
6) Nobody plays with new content. Srlsy, we have nomads, why nobody play it?

SC have the best RTS mechanics: strategic map, build queue is awesome, physics of unit interaction but some of the above listed drawbacks are in the way

Having tried a few times to get into the pvp of FAF, the main thing I keep running into is players either being very hostile to newer, low rated, and especially grey players, as well as not understanding how the trueskill system works and entirely trusting game quality, resulting in new or grey players having a terrible experience since often if you're lucky enough to get into a game it'll be stacked against you. Another thing is how when you're grey you still impact the ratings of others fully, so players who've got a decent rating will refuse to play ranked games with greys lest they ruin their own rating.

@h-master said in Why would you have left FAF?:

You could also try TMM together!

Yep, the problem of lobby sim and poor map diversity was the primary reason why TMM was built. It’s limited to 2v2 for now but we are still working on expanding it to larger team sizes.

Bit of a late addition to the topic, but am a new player and noticed it. I think how many players stay for 2 years isn't that interesting. What'd be more interesting to me is how many stay for say 50 or 100 games.

As mentioned the lobby can be a fairly hostile place for new players. I'm at about 50 games now and around 900 rating, but still 'grey', which means I still get excluded from a fair amount of games. Now, I understand, because balancing with grey players can be difficult. But it doesn't help new players get into the game, and feels discouraging.

That said, the game is great, and the community is passionate, and a fair amount of resources are available. I find Jagged's stream an excellent resource. And the 1v1 and 2v2 matchmaking are a lot of fun. Also a bit discouraging for the first few games perhaps, but as long as the rating gap isn't tooo large, it can be quite good/educational. And some higher rated players will give you some advice after or during the match, which is awesome.

If greys are such an issue, isn't there a way of "bribing" players with an in-game or out-game reward?

Maybe for each grey player in team each non-grey ACU starts with 1 rank of veterancy - to compensate for potential absence of ACU, or a 1k mass donation to all non-grey players at 8 minute mark. If this is somewhat overpowered, grey players will get lots of games and stop being grey.

Or some commendation, maybe just a spam in #aeolus "Players A, B, C, D and E gracefully accepted and educated a new player in their game" - have an achievement count the number of grey players they played with.

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

If greys are such an issue, isn't there a way of "bribing" players with an in-game or out-game reward?

Maybe for each grey player in team each non-grey ACU starts with 1 rank of veterancy - to compensate for potential absence of ACU, or a 1k mass donation to all non-grey players at 8 minute mark. If this is somewhat overpowered, grey players will get lots of games and stop being grey.

Or some commendation, maybe just a spam in #aeolus "Players A, B, C, D and E gracefully accepted and educated a new player in their game" - have an achievement count the number of grey players they played with.

Giving in-game bonuses would reward smurfing and in general it's very bad for a competitive RTS. People also resent having things taken away from them. Some people would quit as soon as the bonuses ended.

I don't remember having a problem finding games when I was gray. Sure, I couldn't get in to some, but others were available.

Gray players are "rewarded" with losing the gray status if they just play ranked games. In the current system, the right people have the incentives to modify their behavior (the gray players themselves).