Why would you have left FAF?

I left because I got annoyed with the quirky controls of the game. Attack move and tree groups. Things like area commands being blocked by the council really bummed me out. Things that make the macro control of the game more modern where blocked because they constituted "dumming down" the game. On the other hand, interesting controls on units, like overcharging, got the automation treatment.

But to be fair, I might have left anyway because I don't like to allocate as much time to gaming as I used to anymore.

Asking for FAF to take a clearer stance on the russian invasion of Ukraine is unfair tbh, for various reasons. But I do believe that having people with eastern orthodox mindsets in charge is bad for the community (because they make for poor leaders in general). A very strong example of people with this mindset was Biass - always dragging arguments to a personal level, never able to keep an argument constructive. Always having some bizarrely distorted view of personal pride and what constitutes as a personal attack.
What this community needs more is people who think and argue like Bodir. Always detailed and constructive in his analysis. At least from what I could see on the forums.

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

Eastern orthodox mindsets in charge is bad

You define people by the major religion in their area?

@brutus5000 I'm sorry about what I said. I was very unhappy after having about 4 games in a row affected by these issues. The last of which was one were it was actually me lagging and after leaving and watching the replay, I could see that all lag was resolved when I left. I have downloaded the code myself and it is actually structured quite well and it's obvious you've put a lot of work into this. I hope that these issues can be ironed out.

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

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

Eastern orthodox mindsets in charge is bad

You define people by the major religion in their area?

Nope, I'm explicitly not defining people. I am trying to describe a mindset that is prevalent in certain cultural circles. Problematic mindsets are of course not exclusive to those circles, but currently on very prominent display.

@nine2 said in Why would you have left FAF?:
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.

Do you think this is not normal?
There is no regular addition of content to FAF. Therefore, the loss of the audience is quite a logical phenomenon in such situations.

I am wrong? So look at other popular projects. Let's take Dota for example. Take a look at the Dota 2 online chart on Steam Charts on the first day of the Battle Pass release. Online is growing exponentially.
Answer the question, how much will online games like CS:GO and Dota drop if all battle passes and in-game cosmetics are removed?
Many play only for rewards such as in-game cosmetics.

I think it's foolish to be surprised at the loss of an audience until you find a way to regularly add content to FAF.

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

Many play only for rewards such as in-game cosmetics.

I will always be pro-cosmetic. It refreshes the game without altering anything.

I'm going to rant a little, so that I DON'T just quit...

The ELO or whatever it's called in FAF is just downright bizarre and infuriating. I only play 2v2 with a friend, we play about the same, sometimes he plays better, sometimes I do. He did get better ranking at first though so he's usually 200 points above me (currently 600 and 800 respectively) and we've played about 50 games together out of which we have less than 10 wins. The first week I was kind of stagnating around 300, but for the last 2 weeks we've been literally failing upwards. Every win is like +50 points and every loss, no matter how bad is like -5 at worst.

Today's 2 games were true cherry on top. First game one opponent suicides his commander in first 5 minutes and the other forfeits. Huge win for us, here you go 50 points. Then we get matched against 1300 (and 250) players, obviously we get our asses kicked hard, but I guess that's -4 points. What the actual f*ck is this?

Like, are there just that few bad/mediocre players that the matchmaker just can't find me a half decent match?

Your shown rating is the rating the system is 99.7% sure you can at least play at. When you beat players, the system is more and more confident that the rating can rise. If you lose to a 500 rated guy when the system thinks you are 99.7% likely to be no worse than a 300, then you don't lose much, because that data fits the distribution. You do lose uncertainty though, which in turn impacts how much the wins will give and also in turn actually results in you losing more rating via your median going down. Think of the game looking at your skill as a player as a statistical distribution. More data means a tighter expectation of performances, losses will shift the top of the bell curve but the shown rating won't show that.

The short of it is that the loss is impacting you in a variable you don't actually see, your median rating, which is what the system actually uses to determine balanced games by messing with the uncertainty it has about you. Wins impact your shown rating because it drastically increases the minimum expectation the system can have of you as a player. You only see that shown rating increase because that's what is used to maintain leaderboards in a TrueSkill system.

big ups for acu cosmetics

Your shown rating is the rating the system is 99.7% sure you can at least play at

I'm sorry I don't understand what does that mean? Clearly I can't play at that level if I'm loosing >9/10 games? And what about the people who absolutely destroy us? Why is their rank so "low" then? But I suppose what you are saying is that the number is kind of meaningless? Then I would honestly just prefer if the number was hidden, this just makes it more infuriating.

Anyway, I think I'm going to try 3v3 since it seems to have lot more active queue, with some luck there might be more players closer to my rank. 2v2 seems to match me with just about anyone available. But then I would still need to spend several games loosing in 3v3 for the game figure out my rank and I'm not sure I have patience for another series of overwhelming losses.

Oh well.

You won a quarter of your 2v2 games. The rating is meaningless in the sense of the system doesn't care about it for balance. However the number is valuable for leaderboards and categorizing players, hence why it gets used for that. Otherwise new registered players would pop up in the middle of a potential leaderboard with 1500 rating before they even play a game.

boring, there better games
+it dont work on linux like before(great updates btw!)

@brutus5000

local conflicts
blm
lgbt

imagine thinking that almost ww3(54 countries coalition against russia(chinese proxy)) is same to blm

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

boring, there better games
+it dont work on linux like before(great updates btw!)

Works on my machine, what are you having problems with?

@mazornoob said in Why would you have left FAF?

Works on my machine, what are you having problems with?

Works for me too.

Game is not well balanced, and there is no reason for cheese gameplay (no usable units or ACU features) only standard eco or spamming is worth considering.
To summarize:

• Mavor is way to strong when compared to other T4 end-gamers;
• there is no defense against T2 bomber spam on T2 game phase;
• there are no end-game upgrades for ACU;
• experimentals Megabot and GC ale basically the same;
• since there is T3/T4 artillery why there is no T4 shield? It is hard to defense against 3 x T3 arty fire;
• when playing like 3 vs 3 , if one team build together an end-gamer they will win... joint effort vs non-joint effort should be irrelevant because you play with random people;
• many ACU upgrades are not usable;
• more cool units for more cool tactics are needed (https://supcom2.fandom.com/wiki/Experimental_Units; https://supcom2.fandom.com/wiki/Infinite_War_Battle_Pack_One_DLC)
• units Veteran status needs overhaul - it should be more noticeable.

Please please please add a RPG elements to that game, to extend diversity of a gameplay:

• each player should be able to customize his ACU on: unique Experimentls or Units (some options to choose what they can build, for example UEF player can build Noah Experimental Unit Cannon while other UEF player can build just regular arty but also Super Triton Experimental Dreadnought - it would be so cool);
• specialization like: better mass production, better energy managment, offensive or deffensive stats boosting;

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

Game is not well balanced, and there is no reason for cheese gameplay (no usable units or ACU features) only standard eco or spamming is worth considering.

What? I’ve played since gpgnet was a thing and this is probably the best balance has ever been.

To summarize:

• Mavor is way to strong when compared to other T4 end-gamers;

It’s barely top 3 out of 5. Paragon and salv are both better than Mavor these days imo. I find Mavor easier to defend against at least.

• there is no defense against T2 bomber spam on T2 game phase;

Make inties and flaks. Make your own t2 bombers and win if it's so easy. I'd recommend this approach since you'll either A. quickly learn it's not that easy, or B. rank up enough by winning with this approach that you get people you no longer win against with this approach. At which point you'll also learn that it's not necessarily a free win.

• there are no end-game upgrades for ACU;

Why is this necessary? Have you seen what maxed out ACUs can actually do? Why would you expect them to hang with massive t4 units anyway?

• experimentals Megabot and GC ale basically the same;

Mega, GC, and Monkey are completely different units that fit different roles. I suppose the GC and monkey are similar-ish, but still quite different - one is cheaper, faster, stealthed, and the other is more expensive, slower, and better vs t3

• since there is T3/T4 artillery why there is no T4 shield? It is hard to defense against 3 x T3 arty fire;

You’re not supposed to defend against t3/t4 arty without effort.

• when playing like 3 vs 3 , if one team build together an end-gamer they will win... joint effort vs non-joint effort should be irrelevant because you play with random people;

This is fundamentally how team games work. There are no team games that I know of at least that work better if you don’t play as a team. Kinda defeats the point of a team game. They all have this problem.

Everything else is defeats the point of FAF - it’s forged alliance forever, and it’s not meant to be something that massively changes what the core game is meant to be. That’s what mods are for.

Guy must play astro too much

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

when playing like 3 vs 3 , if one team build together an end-gamer they will win... joint effort vs non-joint effort should be irrelevant because you play with random people;

Statements dreamed up by the utterly deranged.

@rancor1223 said in Why would you have left FAF?:

I'm sorry I don't understand what does that mean? Clearly I can't play at that level if I'm loosing >9/10 games?

The ENEMY ratings are ALSO what the system is 99.7% sure THEY are better than.

This is probably the factor that is making things unclear.

Ultimately, trueskill systems tend to 'work' best if you just ignore the numbers, don't sweat losing, and rest assured that you will get reasonably decent games, which get better the more you play - win or lose.

(The worst thing players can do in these systems is alt+f4 / similar exploits, or otherwise get too concerned with trying to avoid losses to their rating. I find that if you don't sweat the losses, the systems work very well.
Although, I mostly play 1v1, and can understand how issues might occur in team games, particularly when highly-skilled pre-arranged teams are involved.)