Why would you have left FAF?

@nine2 IMO it's because new players start with 0 rating. The issue is, I think, that hidden behind that zero is a rating of 1500 +/- 1500, which is actually a pretty high rating. Most players have an uncertainty of around 200-300, so really the rating that new players start as can be thought of as being around 1.2k-1.3k. That means most new players, unless they have significant prior RTS experience, will lose the majority of their initial games. I think that's pretty discouraging for a new player.

I remember when I first started on FAF in like 2015. I played around a hundred games before I quit for 4 years. For a bit of background, I had pretty good general RTS experience: having played a ton of Starcraft 2 (diamond 1v1), Supreme Commander 2, CNC3, COH, etc. I had even played a ton of FA skirmish and campaign and watched like 50 Gyle videos.

I played exclusively teamgames (Gap of Rohan, random 4v4s, mostly whatever lobbies were available) and lost the majority of games I played. I am almost certain my winrate was <50%. I'm pretty sure I started off much stronger than most new players on FAF, so the experience is probably even worse for your median new player. Also, I think hosts can and will systematically stack games against new players (as I think was the case for my early games) - taking away some of that power could help too. It was pretty discouraging - I know you shouldn't expect to start playing and be good at the game, but in a lot of other games you start at a low rank and you can win your way up. First impressions matter, and I think the impression of the first few games will determine whether someone stays on FAF or leaves.

Maybe lower the actual rating players start at, so they have a higher chance to win the first few matches they play? Not sure how that would affect the rating system overall, and perhaps FtX developed an aneurysm just reading this suggestion, but I think something like this would make the game more accessible for new players.

Also, on the flip side of the coin, one thing that kept me on FAF - doing well and seeing my games casted. BRNK casted a game of me back in like 2015, where I did well and outperformed my 1600 mirror in a 4v4. I was super hyped and probably watched that cast from start to finish like 5 times over the years. More recently, Jagged casted a 2v2 game of me in like 2019 where I carried 1v2 against some random 2300 noob. That was super exciting and gave me a pretty big impetus to get good at the game. This would be up to the caster, but maybe Gyle could start something like Low Elo Legends in AOE2, featuring entertaining gameplay from noobs. Getting featured in a cast and watching yourself on the big screen is a big part of the draw IMO.

We could actually look at the data instead of just guessing what the winrate of new players is. I found two files on my hard drive that I used a while ago to plot the rating evolution of new players. Should probably alter it to give you wins and losses instead of rating, but it's a good starting point.
Don't really know why I have two files here, but you can have a look. I don't have time at the moment to do it myself.

They are python scripts, but I had to rename them to be able to upload them.
get_rating_evolution.py.txt
get_rating_data.py.txt

@AlleywayJack a quick glimpse at your replays shows you haven't tried ladder yet. Now I don't want to pick you out as I'm assuming this happens to a lot of new players.
I agree that it might be daunting, expecting to lose the first few games, but there is a system in place, designed to put you against people at your skill level fairly quickly to give you that chance of winning. I'm wondering if you knew about this.
It would be nice to hear your thought process behind what made you come to FAF, what games you want to play and why you're leaving. It would also be nice to hear how you've developed these opinions of ladder or competitive play after very few games in them, possibly a difficult stigma surrounding ladder or other reasons. Any response would be appreciated!

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

It's popular with Russians almost entirely because of Yuri and his casts.

I'm sure that's a big contributing factor, but we do have popular English language casters as well and that doesn't seem to have as much impact.

I might just be talking nonsense based on stereotypes, but it occurs to me that Russians really like chess. FA is comparable to chess in a lot of ways and so I think that whatever it is that the Russian national mindset likes about chess is also present in FA.

So thinking along those lines, would targeting promo material towards chess players be worthwhile? If so, how best to do it?

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

I'm sure that's a big contributing factor, but we do have popular English language casters as well and that doesn't seem to have as much impact.

Yuri has 747k subscribers. Gyle has 40k subscribers. Yuri is almost 20x bigger.

(and the best caster, which is of course Jagged Appliance, has 4k subscribers, making yuri nearly 200x bigger)

Yuri was still making casts but not releasing them on the channel, just giving out links with casts. He can't afford to post unpopular videos on his channel cause it hurts the channel.
He now made separate channel for supcom casts https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKucg78eVWN8ud_6dF-9D5w

@Blodir wow.

I still think it's because Russians have a natural disposition towards strategy games but that's seriously impressive.

<disclaimer> I am not fully aware of the history of FAF and the iterations it's taken to get to this point. I'm a Total Annihilation player that never liked SupCom when I first tried it, but rediscovered it this past year thanks to the FAF community, and enjoy it now. </disclaimer>

I 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.

So, in that regards:

First - I think Heaven on YouTube said this in a similar way at one point... This game is not an RTS. This is an efficiency manager. This is a supply chain manager. For Low and Mid Tier players, there's no way to overcome a player who has better eco than you. This essentially means that people who are looking to take units to battle(what you normally do in an RTS), will lose. Because unless I get in a match that restricts T4, Exps, Nukes, T3 arty... it's just a tech race to end game. Sure you build some units to stop some attacks, but most games start out with action to probe for weakness/easy ACU kills, and then there's a noticeable lull... then there's the finale of whoever built T3 arty and EXPs first.

The problem is that even if you take that aspect out of it (no T3 ARty, Nuke, Exps, T4 Units), then the better eco-ing player wins by higher tech spam. I don't know how to solve this problem. But I've witnessed other new players talking/complaining about the boredom of the tech race.

Second, what's great about this game is never used. All the units!!! When the game is "advertised" you see all these units working together LAND/SEA/AIR... when in reality it's 3-4 units from each Faction that get play... when are we going to use all these other units and what strategies do they get used in? (Hint, you don't, they don't) Because by the time you get to the point where you could use them, it's 19 minutes into the game and there's a nuke inbound... soooooo you better tech up to match the tech race(see above)... i.e. this is now about who's the most efficient with getting to the highest tech level ASAP. Heck, I feel like I'm seeing ASFs showing their face 10 minutes into a game on Setons. So its like 1-3 minutes T1 Air, 3-9 minutes, AA built up, skip T2 entirely, T3!. Why even bother having T2? Especially when 1 ASF can seemingly take down a very large amount of T1 units by itself.

Third, the lack of a large English speaking community makes me feel like it's dying off and I'm sure that turns some people off. But honestly, I don't feel like the RTS community has every been that large in the US, when compared to other Genres (FPS, Sports).

What does this community do right? It changes. That's the biggest thing. If you're willing to change to ensure a higher rate of player retention, then maybe things can work out. But at some point you may have to come to the reckoning of "Do I want this to be more popular or do I like this game the way it is? And if it's not for everyone, so be it."

I'm here cause you guys cared enough to keep it going. You may only have me for a little while, but I appreciate all the effort you guys have put in to making this what it is and keeping it going.

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

<disclaimer> I am not fully aware of the history of FAF and the iterations it's taken to get to this point. I'm a Total Annihilation player that never liked SupCom when I first tried it, but rediscovered it this past year thanks to the FAF community, and enjoy it now. </disclaimer>

I 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.

So, in that regards:

First - I think Heaven on YouTube said this in a similar way at one point... This game is not an RTS. This is an efficiency manager. This is a supply chain manager. For Low and Mid Tier players, there's no way to overcome a player who has better eco than you. This essentially means that people who are looking to take units to battle(what you normally do in an RTS), will lose. Because unless I get in a match that restricts T4, Exps, Nukes, T3 arty... it's just a tech race to end game. Sure you build some units to stop some attacks, but most games start out with action to probe for weakness/easy ACU kills, and then there's a noticeable lull... then there's the finale of whoever built T3 arty and EXPs first.

The problem is that even if you take that aspect out of it (no T3 ARty, Nuke, Exps, T4 Units), then the better eco-ing player wins by higher tech spam. I don't know how to solve this problem. But I've witnessed other new players talking/complaining about the boredom of the tech race.

Second, what's great about this game is never used. All the units!!! When the game is "advertised" you see all these units working together LAND/SEA/AIR... when in reality it's 3-4 units from each Faction that get play... when are we going to use all these other units and what strategies do they get used in? (Hint, you don't, they don't) Because by the time you get to the point where you could use them, it's 19 minutes into the game and there's a nuke inbound... soooooo you better tech up to match the tech race(see above)... i.e. this is now about who's the most efficient with getting to the highest tech level ASAP. Heck, I feel like I'm seeing ASFs showing their face 10 minutes into a game on Setons. So its like 1-3 minutes T1 Air, 3-9 minutes, AA built up, skip T2 entirely, T3!. Why even bother having T2? Especially when 1 ASF can seemingly take down a very large amount of T1 units by itself.

Third, the lack of a large English speaking community makes me feel like it's dying off and I'm sure that turns some people off. But honestly, I don't feel like the RTS community has every been that large in the US, when compared to other Genres (FPS, Sports).

What does this community do right? It changes. That's the biggest thing. If you're willing to change to ensure a higher rate of player retention, then maybe things can work out. But at some point you may have to come to the reckoning of "Do I want this to be more popular or do I like this game the way it is? And if it's not for everyone, so be it."

I'm here cause you guys cared enough to keep it going. You may only have me for a little while, but I appreciate all the effort you guys have put in to making this what it is and keeping it going.

Hi,

Efficiency manager: this was always a really fun part of the game for me, but I can see why players who like other parts of the game more would be frustrated. It's a difficult problem to solve without ruining the game for players like me who like the optimization. However pretty much any buff to aggressive strategies will in turn reduce the importance of efficient eco management and increase the importance of micro/unit management. I would like this direction to be taken... (and as I have previously mentioned in another thread I have a bunch of ideas on how to buff aggression eg. rebalancing reclaim, unit hp/dps ratios, unit movement speeds)

Units not being used: this is not exactly true, there's only a handful of units that don't see regular use, however for lower rated players it is much easier to stick to a few basic unit types. The noob teamgame setting also self selects for simplicity, so you could easily come to the false conclusion that only a few unit types are actually useful.

That being said, many unit types are very specialized and while they are strong in their own right, it takes some experience to figure out how to use them and even then they come useful only once per game if that. There's an argument to be made for transforming certain units into slightly more generic roles so that they see more play. Eg. giving mmls aoe damage so that they act more like t2 lobo, buffing torp launchers so they act more like t1 pd (where destros are the arty), giving yenzynes even more speed (on land) so they can be used to raid and catch raids more easily (as opposed to the slow t2 tanks) etc.

Ftx not to toot my own horn, but I wanted to mention, I noticed in Aeolus for a week or so, after each SCTA show match, 3-4 folks come in asking about SCTA Mods. And kinda like Biass said earlier, I think its that kind of thing is also important.

Like yeah its only 1 Cast about once a month, and maybe not really news worthy for Nine. But its one of those things. I have noticed increased people joining SCTA Discord. The biggest windfalls after Full “Release” in September

Morax adding SCTA to then FAF M&M Discord

TAU Promoting 1st SCTA Tournament

The First SCTA Show Match between Postal and Swkoll.

All saw biggest mentions and most repeatable of SCTA in Aeolus and/or new faces in my discord. The third show match in Feburary will be interesting. Saw a bump from Jagged’s stream but not as larger as one from Postal-Swkoll’s. Maybe it was due to different time or how the former got a week of proceeding advertisement and the latter only a single week mentioning it occured.

I had a point here and I forgot

@Blodir Look at your rank though. I watch Gyle's casts, and I see variations in units and different strategies you guys use. But those are at the higher level. Most people will never get there. They just aren't as skilled.

Those of us playing down here (the ones that are leaving), there's not a ton of variety because of the way the tech race is structured and having to defend yourself from the higher tier players. Games last 60 minutes, and you need to be T3 by minute 20.

There's no room for slow growth because the opposing side doesn't use the middle tech tiers.

The only stuff I see from T2 is Cruisers to bombard bases that haven't figured out how to build TMD yet.

@khabume
Imo most of your observations you pointed out fall back to the maps hosted and played. Unfortunatly those are mostly Astro/Gap/Thermo in the lower to mid ranked area. Those maps are known to promote turtly playstyle and often feel like an eco-simulator without much interaction and use of all the units in all tech stages you got. The map layout simply just calls for it to be this way. On top of it, having such a distinct focus on eco and an overall clear meta seems to provoke quite some toxicity at time if someone didnt yet understand how those maps play out or just screws up. Overall, its pretty unfun if you like interaction und you may think, this is how FA is meant to be played. Lucky you, its not. There are alternatives but there should be more.

There are some players in the community trying to help to overcome that issue by hosting "all welcome" games on decent maps. E.g phong already deserves a medal for that as he is hosting 4v4 all welcome games on mapgenerator maps on a rather regular basis. Those are very welcoming to new and unexperienced players, usually have spread out spawns and no dedicated air slot. Games are rather dynamic and highlight the importance of map control.
I feel, FAF could benefit alot of such kinda moderated lobbys (mapgen or not is not the point) to present an alternative to the majority of teamgames hosted on the same 3 turtle maps in the lower rating area. (Dont get me wrong. If you like DG, well you like it - nothing terribly wrong with that.)
It seems to me, players in this range are often simply to intimidated to go 1v1 ladder or want to play in a team. Team Matchmaker could/will somehow solve that issue, although players need to overcome their fear to be thrown into the fighting pit and any many new players may be reluctant to do so after getting crushed horribly a couple of times.

It seems to me, it may be very beneficial to have some dedicated and welcoming FAF guys hosting newbie-friendly all welcome games (FAF kindergarden-bootcamp games if you like) on a regular basis on half decent maps. Just to have a low barrier/threshold alternative available opposed to the majority of "crap" lobbies. This could be a good and low effort way for new players to highlight all the different ways how the game can be played.

So, how to achieve that? Is it feasable to introduce "official" FAF lobbies for newbies hosted by well known community members?

I think there is an underappreciation for 1v1.

It was a bit of a chore to get the eco right (in terms of t1 stalls), but you seem to win or lose 75% of games on tactics and map control. Failing to spot and stop a run-by feels like the way you should lose an RTS match.

@cocAurico 100 % agree. I'm just playing 1vs1 and I'm happy with it.
So I don't have to argue with some 20-year-olds!

@Amygdala
You are definitely on point. Alot of it has to do with maps that incorporate a defined choke point and give players enough eco at their starting point that they do not need to move very far to have everything they need.

However, it's difficult to get a match going without using one of those maps particular maps. People who are interested in the efficiency aspect of the game just want to play SimCity to the higher tiers.

I don't believe that the experience I have is true to the entire experience that FAF can give you. It's a much broader game than that and the potential is phenomenal.

However, it is indicative of what most players are presented with the first time they start FAF.

You go to the Play Tab, the first thing you see is a list of Custom Games.

Right now, while I'm writing this, here's the maps:

Astro, Gap, Gap, Gap, Astro Gap, Setons, Gap, Astro, Rohan, Gap, Setons, Vale of Isis, Canis, Astro, Plateau of Arracis.

@khabume on the new client you have to click off of matchmaker to see the custom games, so that's a bonus and also while yes, there are many gaps and astro's hosted people do have the ability to host their own games on maps which they want to play. If new players come in and see those maps hosted then it's because the a large proportion of the player base enjoy those maps and statistically speaking, they are more likely to enjoy those maps too. There is a large enough variety in maps/ game types that people aren't going to leave because they see one experience but play another.

As for Amygdala's points, as much as it would be nice to have moderated lobby's for new people, that won't happen, you could get some people who enjoy hosting all welcome games like phong, but at the end of the day if they don't enjoy it then they wont be hosted and it comes back to the point that those games can be completely imbalanced with one decent player which could demoralize new players.

@F-Odin
Well, if the current player base enjoys those maps, but you have a 90% drop off rate of new players, I don't think that means that the majority of new players like that play style too. Otherwise it wouldn't be 90%, it would be 49% or lower.

This thread is about the inability to retain new players.

You're not going to figure that out by asking the people who have played it for years and are involved in the community. You need to ask the guy that quits after 5 games.

Frankly my best guess that it has a low retention rate is not due to it at all, people pick up Supcom for like $5 because they had the game 10 years ago, they come to FAF for whatever reason, be it the mod database, coop campaign, multiplayer, they play their games and the nostalgia wears off. 2 years is a long time to play any game, especially one which is already 14 years old.

These players are the majority of that 90%; the ones that hop in and hop out unnoticed. They may not even play custom games or ladder, so for the community it's nearly impossible to keep them, as you can't give someone that nostalgia if it's already worn off.

I can't see why there's the suggestion that the problem with retaining players are the games that people choose to play. The assumption that people drop out because of a map or game style which benefits them and is majorly popular is remarkable.