Why would you have left FAF?
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Legit
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@broker
Honestly, I think the basic problem is that, whatever game you design, the most competitive players will win it.
I've seen this so many times. From streetfighter to starcraft to 4x games to niche strategy titles lilke battlezone or, yes, Supreme commander.
At the end of the day, no matter what game people develop, the 'nerdiest', '"tryhard" players get the wins.
The only solution as a player is just to try harder and learn.
For a developer, it might seem like they could design a game that caters to more 'casual' players, but such a thing just doesn't exist - no matter how much designers 'simplify' a game, the most 'tryhard' players scoop up all the wins.For example, games like 'zero k' are actually designed to ensure that the engine does all the hard work - the units in that game literally not only maintain max firing range, but micro their own dodging from incoming enemy attacks!
The result is always the same though - the combination of harder-trying, more experienced, and naturally more able/competitive players get all the wins.Put another way -
- if the developer codes something that gives an advantage to players that do NOT micro their units, then top players will figure out exactly how long this window is, and play around it.
- If the game rewards players with economic advantage for NOT gaining economy, then top players will figure out how close to the line to ride.
- If the developer programs a 'beer chug' mechanic, that allows a player a 20-second 'beer chugging' advantage every 3 minutes, then top players will learn to hold back every 180 seconds to benefit.
End of the day, ALL games will always be dominated by the least 'casual', most competitive, players.
I think the best a 'casual' player, who intends to just relax and 'have fun' (whatever measure of 'fun' they choose to use), can do, is pick a game with matchmaking (generally, the more popular the better for matchmaking reasons), then play it at their favoured level, and be happy with their 50% win ratio.
Despite a relatively small community, FaF is large enough to reward a very roughly 50% win rate for whatever level of play.
Of course, extremely skilled players making "smurf" accounts COMPLETELY break this (which is why I hate smurfing in all its forms). (low-level Starcraft and league of legends, among many other games, got kinda ruined when great players were allowed to make new accounts for free, for this reason. Basically these 'masters playing bronze' players are good players intentionally breaking matchmaking algorithms in order to beat up on new players. Sadly, people still like and subscribe to every 'bronze to masters' video series that gets released.)
Luckily, FaF requires a paid account for every auto-matchmaking player, while still being small enough to discourage 'pro' gamers from spending pennies to feed their victory streams for views.
Ergo, FaF is very resistant to great players smurfing, and their tendency to ruin matchmaking.So, long story short, just play casual games on matchmaking, and enjoy the mathematically-guided 50% win rate.
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@nflanders said in Why would you have left FAF?:
Congratulations. After two years of discussions and 500 messages, we finally figured out
Why 90% of new FAF players will be gone after 2 years.10% retention rate after 2 years would be wildly successful for any game. For example, here are Fortnite's PC retention rates in 2020. (Source)
Day 1 Day 7 Day 30 Day 120 35% 11% 4% 4% Of course this isn't a perfect comparison, since Fortnite is a free-to-play shooter and we don't even have 2 year retention for it, but companies tend to keep their retention rates close to the chest. I was unable to find data for any other non-mobile game, and even the source for this data is from a mobile game report.
I'm not familiar with our API or if I even have access to this information, but if @Brutus5000 has time can you look up our retention rates? Here's info on how it's calculated and it might be helpful to limit to those players that have played at least 1 game at all.
@broker said in Why would you have left FAF?:
I suggested making two sets. for different players.
That's a mod. You're describing writing a mod.
You're free to write a mod, and we even have some talented modders who you can pay to write mods for you if you can't be bothered yourself. You can tailor the game to your specific needs and interests.
@nflanders said in Why would you have left FAF?:
And who will manage this money?
As FAF's Treasurer, I would.
Determining where money and when money is spent in a general sense is handled by the board, which at present is composed of the following:
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@sylph_ said in Why would you have left FAF?:
At the end of the day, no matter what game people develop, the 'nerdiest', '"tryhard" players get the wins.
Nah, you can make a game completely random. Can't tryhard RPS.
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@deribus Thanks for the detailed answer.
As an official structure, do you have certain indicators that you focus on when assessing the work of a project, in addition to the technical part?
For example, average online, the number of investments attracted, the number of user complaints...
It’s difficult to work without understanding what is progress and what is regression for FAF.
Thank you for your attention. -
What the fuck are these questions even. Especially from someone who seems to not have a single game of FAF played ever.
What is this, an effin shareholder audit? -
@sylph_ The problem with what you wrote is the transfer of balance from single player to multiplayer. If you do this, then you will get exactly what you wrote.
for example, a T2 fighter cannot shoot down a T3 bomber. If you didn't have time to build a fighter, then you lost.
or your ally has lost the air, you cannot do anything against Avasa or the king.
or your enemy beat the Moor in 30 minutes, you in 35. Most likely you will lose. and you can’t do anything else either. wasted time. -
I haven't lost a game in the last month to a strat rush/washer/czar/mavor.
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@ftxcommando are you alone in the game?
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I play the game, not watch Yuri dual gap casts when I try to understand the meta.
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@endranii For real, a new account and basically only trolls this thread with these questions and has no games played. Seems legit.
@Broker I have no idea what you're trying to say but no FTX isn't alone in the game. Sometimes you'll lose to a strat rush though not often unless you're playing clown games, just like sometimes you'll lose to someone rushing gun on acu or rushing a monkey or whatever.
It's a team game. You win some, you lose some. If you're on average better than your opponent you'll on average win more. I think this is something someone said from another game, but imo it applies to FAF as well - 20% of games are lost from the start, 20% are won from the start, the other 60% is up to your level of play vs your opponents.
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Strats have been nerfed so brutally I don't even use them anymore and find vastly more success forcing air snowballs via t3 gunships. Which also goes into why washer needs to be strong, sera has no t3 gunship for incremental t3 stage value and therefore operates in the extremes of complete destruction following a total air win or minimal damage if air is contested.
In fact I might go so far as the say strats became kinda bad unless you are facing someone two tiers below you in game skill. Only reason they are so prevalent in dual gap is because:
- you so often get into a 80/20 map control split and you make 40 strats to suicide rush some game ender and they'll drop because there isnt enough map control for sams to shoot them down
- you can hit double or triple mexes due to aoe since the map has a horrible mex spread, therefore doubling or tripling the value strats would get anywhere else in the game.
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if you don’t want to change anything, then why these questions like proposals, discussions of balance, why are players leaving us?
let everything remain as it is. as you personally want. it's your right.
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How is balance being discussed the sign of a dead game? This thread was made during the highest peak of players FAF had. Players leave for a variety of reasons, the biggest for FAF currently being the legion of connection issues/crashes cropping up during the last few months alongside more viable TA-like competitors existing.
Beyond that, FAF still needs to redo the onboarding test to see if signing up is still a disasterclass experience for the average user or not. Last time it was done, we had like half the test group fail to manage to get passed steamlinking. Dudes thinking balance is some problem for the game are delusional, the problems FAF has always had with regards for players isn't retention related, it's funnel related. Much of the players that manage to get through the current funnels are already too invested to face retention crybaby moments about balance, especially since they're irrelevant until they're hundreds of games in to comprehend the meta.
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@ftxcommando you are not interested in any proposals other than your own.
It’s not clear then why these discussions are needed at all. other players have already written to you about this.I'm sure that if I go into the game in five years, nothing will change.
I think you'll like it.
but others get bored.There are 7 billion people living on earth, and how many do you have? this is a rhetorical question.
I think the discussion can end. bye
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Nothing will change about the game in the next 5 years. Man, when was the last time you played steam or vanilla?
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@ftxcommando said in Why would you have left FAF?:
Nah, you can make a game completely random. Can't tryhard RPS.
It always absolutely astonishes me that the same players win RPS tournaments from one year to the next!
I used to only imagine that 'professional' RPS games rely on some underlying community preconceptions about rock being aggressive, paper being defensive, and scissors being 'tricksy'; but having read about it a little, it seems that body-language 'tells' are probably more important.
(Sorry for the digression - I agree with your point completely - the only way a game developer can cater to less-skilled players, IMO, is by introducing random elements. Game developers either cater to the best players, or make their game a dice roll!)
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@broker said in Why would you have left FAF?:
the transfer of balance from single player to multiplayer
I assume you mean the balance from 1v1s, to team games?
(I absolutely don't mean to tell anyone how they 'should' play the game, and what I say in this post is simply trying to impart a bit of wisdom that has let me, personally, enjoy competitive videogames a little more, with a lot less frustration.)
I've always preferred 1v1 gaming. I had a brief stint of playing league of legends for a while, and it's ok for a shout, but at the end of the day, while I am delighted to lose when I've been outplayed, I absolutely cannot STAND losing because of something I was unable to control - it sucks all enjoyment out of a game for me.
I actually see this same dislike voiced often by gamers that play team games. I recognise that there must be some 'pull' that makes it worth weathering all those awful losses to RNG... But to be honest the only reasons I can usually see are "I like playing with my friends", "I like the free RNG wins more than I hate the free RNG losses", and a supcome-specific "I like a greater chance of someone building an experimental/lategame stuff".
I totally understand the motivation behind all of those reasons - except perhaps that third one - only because I've seen players quite able to force most of their 1v1 matches into T4, making me feel that the game is rather well designed to allow viable options for all types. Regarding the first 2 reasons - I encourage players that are at all annoyed to just play good 1v1 videogames. Playing team games competitively, for me, seems like an exercise in frustration, and the incredible rage in teamgame communities solidifies my thinking in this direction.
All that being said, I honestly don't see how FaF developers could 'cater to' casual players at all. Team games will still be won by the more skilled players, and weak players playing teamgames will still be losing... Granted, they'll get the odd 'free win' here and there, but thankfully FaF's efforts to balance teams seems to reduce that as much as possible - and I don't see a lot of players complaining about the automatic team balance not being accurate enough.
Still, if I better understood what it was, specifically, that you wanted from the game / devs, I could perhaps answer you better. I thought I understood you, and was answering accordingly, but I'm sorry if I was wrong. x
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@sylph_ no . single player it is company.
