Player Councilor Election 2021
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The PC position is important enough that I’d suggest the conversation be shifted away from discussing previous moderation, and be refocused onto more important things for determining who the next PC is.
And so:
I have read this entire thread, and it seems to me that there are some misunderstandings about the powers of the PC. @FTXCommando, could you post a relatively comprehensive list of all of the “responsibilities of other councillors [that you] do because nobody else wants to do [them]”? Perhaps a better system could be put into place to handle some of them…
@Suzuji , you brought up many good points/ideas for using the PC position to make FAF more inclusive and to better-serve many underrepresented parts of FAF, but you seemed to have misunderstandings regarding the PC position. Could you post an updated application based on the feedback from FTX and others regarding the realities of the PC position?
FTX, a lot of your platform/stance/activity seems to cater to the 1800+ and 1500+ crowds while giving a disproportionately small focus to the wants/needs of the large majority of FAF players. I don’t presently know who I will vote for, but I would like to vote for someone who will give more value/weight/focus for the desires of the majority of FAF players, which is what I thought the PLAYERS’ Councillor was supposed to do…
For perspective, the current focus for things like ladder/TMM map pools, forum attitudes/rhetoric, tournament funding/attention, etc, seems to cater primarily to high-level gameplay for the top 1%-5% of FAF players, while giving much less weight to the 77.1% of players with less than 1000 rating. AFAIK, most FAF players play FAF to have a good time, which generally involves playing a fun game with people in a friendly environment.Giving a lot more weight to the desires of the lower and mid-level players will create a better experience for the thousands upon thousands of noobs and mid-level players rather than catering to the <1% of players who are 1800+ players or even the top 5.2% of 1500+ global FAF players. Having a PC who is focused more on improving the experience of the ‘normal’ FAF player would help FAF to grow more and retain more players.
Some current statistics from today’s leaderboards (using unrounded ratings for players with 10+ rated games):
For 1v1 Ladder:
1221 players with 10+ games = 100%
26 players with 1800+ rating = 2.1%
63 players with 1500+ rating = 5.2%
~941 players with <1000 rating = 77.1%For Global:
8782 players with 10+ games = 100%
83 players with 1800+ rating = 0.9%
342 players with 1500+ rating = 3.9%
~6,053 players with <1000 rating = 68.9%I think the numbers speak for themselves.
Things like ladder/TMM map pools for lower-rated players should be changed to be a lot more like what the bulk of those players would actually like to play, or an additional matchmaker queue option should be added for them. (Currently, the lower-rated players’ map pools seem more like they’re designed as feeder-pools to weed out everyone who doesn’t like the basics of the types of gameplay enjoyed by high-level FAF ladder players and to get them experience with that sort of gameplay. While this isn’t the worst thing that could be done, it’s far from the best, and it doesn’t prioritize regular player preference, fun, playerbase growth, and new player retention anywhere near as much as it should.)
So, I presented a lot of stuff… what’s the point?
TL;DR
The right Player Councillor with the right attitude could have substantial positive impact on the FAF community and community growth, not only by making changes that benefit more of the players, but also by helping to change the atmosphere on FAF (in Discord, forums, etc) to be more friendly and less dismissive/toxic to noobs and to new ideas.
The PC should put a lot more time/effort into improving the experience of ‘normal’ FAF players by:
• Not using a toxic/derogatory attitude/rhetoric on the forums and elsewhere (this is a real problem that discourages participation and creates bad feelings associated with FAF)
• Changing low/mid-rated players’ ladder/TMM map pools to better match what is desired by the players in those brackets
• Actually polling a lot more and taking greater efforts to reach regular FAF players with the polls (this could be as easy as getting weekly or monthly news posts for polls and a polls channel on the FAF Discord)
• Making greater efforts to bridge the big language barriers on FAF (this could largely be done by actively seeking out translators more)
• Having a new channel created on the FAF Discord specifically for discussing ladder/TMM map pools, the maps in them (and their gameplay), and the processes used to determine what maps are put in the pools
• Actively giving more (useful) feedback to map authors when they submit a map for ladder/TMM and it doesn’t make the cut (oftentimes, people submit maps for ladder/TMM and get basically no response from the PC or his team, even after several months… this is obnoxious/frustrating to the mapper and it lowers the odds of the mapper creating good maps for ladder/TMM in the future)
I encourage the candidates to embrace this perspective and to put much greater emphasis on improving the experience of ‘regular’ FAF players, as that would be better for growing FAF and better for getting more votes.
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Why don't you run for pc emperor, your angle seems to be the right one for the job.
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The normal FAF player is a 300 rated AI Player that plays for approximately 3-5 hours a month. They do not care what I do here. This entire election is literally irrelevant to them. For the VAST majority of FAF nothing I do here matters whatsoever. They don't care if I host a tournament for them, because they don't read about tournaments. If they did, they wouldn't participate. They don't care about training or getting better. They are here to play against AI or with some friends whether from real life or online.
The people that DO care about the vast majority of actual PC responsibilities are competitively inclined players which coincidentally are higher rated players. And what a coincidence, the people in this thread and the people talking about things like training, tournaments, and things like TrueSkill are focused on that player element. And yes, this element is hugely important. The people that spend the hours investing to get good in this game have a high correlation with the people invested to spend the time on literally every part of FAF that isn't development (though some developers are also quite high rated). This part of my job is not only creating a stronger competitive scene but to literally keep the blood that are constant new volunteers pumping through FAF.
"But FtX what about your ladder choices?" Yeah people don't care about that either in the grand scheme of things. There is a good 7 to 8 years of data about ladder. Activity at lower levels doesn't change when we have them getting 15 maps with a 20% chance of a 20x20. It doesn't change when the pool is 5 maps. It doesn't change when it's 7 or any other number in the sky with any number of 5x5/10x10/20x20. The only time there was any general uptick in ladder participation was during the choice pool under Zep but even that was just a few percentages of more activity.
More rating = more 10x10, more 20x20, less 5x5
Follow that, and you're at the optimum. Map style hardly impacts it. Whether it's Williamson or desert arena, the 400 rated guy isn't gonna reclaim enough and will win the game when the opponent walks into 40 tanks by accident.
And before that paragraph gets misconstrued let me say that this is built on basic map principles. The lower the rating pool, the more strict the map rules must be followed. This is why experimental maps are not given to lower rated players. Likewise, neither are new maps. They strictly get the classic maps that DEFINE good map design for FA which have been played for years if not decades.
So what do I do? I address the larger playerbase through structural adjustments. These involve things like the Division system to remove the misunderstandings about TrueSkill held by players while leading to there being less general reason for trashing on players for a singular game (your high score isn't being visibly lowered anymore). Beyond that, I intend to make a global-rating based matchmaker to overcome the bump of the catch-22 faced by new players in needing experience to play games but every host kicking them. IDEALLY I’d like to work to remove steamlink and stop the absurdly horrible bleeding of players that results in.
Also, FAF does not have a retention problem. Like at all. I fail to see why this meme continues to live on. If anything FAF is an example of retentive success. Doesn't mean you can't improve the new player experience but I also recognize people getting lost searching for El Dorado when I see it.
Once again, I do not plan on changing my behavior and I don't really see any problem with how anything operates on any of the FAF communication mediums. You being a new player does not result in you getting protection from calling a spade a spade.
Don't see a point in a poll every month. If I needed to poll the playerbase for every issue there wouldn't be a point to a Player Councillor, everything would operate through referendum. You elect a person to make the right decisions for FAF. Sometimes that involves polling, sometimes it doesn't.
The solution to me needing to pick up slack from others isn't the creation of new council seats. It's making old council seats do their job or get replaced by someone that will.
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OMG @FtXCommando can you try harder not to get the point @Emperor_Penguin is making?
@Morax do you care to respond to your view on the points @Emperor_Penguin is making? -
@valki said in Player Councilor Election 2021:
OMG @FtXCommando can you try harder not to get the point @Emperor_Penguin is making?
Was something missed here?
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@biass said in Player Councilor Election 2021:
@valki said in Player Councilor Election 2021:
OMG @FtXCommando can you try harder not to get the point @Emperor_Penguin is making?
Was something missed here?
Sorry, will clarify a bit:
@emperor_penguin made a general point about:
- Low rated players are a massive group
- Low rated players not being given what they like
- Not being interested in low rated player feedback
@FtXCommando responded by, deliberately or not, making a straw man by focusing only on map size. This was not about 5 km vs 20 km maps, this was about just NOT getting what they want. What they want is not measured in kilometers but more complicated. I play at 700 and more people tap out or cheese on Williamsons Bridge (5 km) than Strife of Titan (20 km).
Not only do they not get what they want, there is no way to communicate that via polls or Discord and the bigger problem is obviously that there is no interest in it.
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valki said in Player Councilor Election 2021:
Not only do they not get what they want
I'm important to realise that, while "lower rating players" are not ignored, most requests to do something to improve their time here are based on entirely fictional demographics, upon each users's personal experience and observation.
For example, it's easy to argue that points such as:
Actively giving more (useful) feedback to map authors when they submit a map for ladder/TMM and it doesn’t make the cut
Is not a point made towards improving the experience for new players, but is something that would improve the time here for Emperor_Penguin specifically. Because of course:
- The number of "new" players interested in matchmaking are a minority.
- The number of "new" players who are interested in matchmaking and creating maps for it, are an incredibly small minority all-together (sub 10 people at maximum)
- The number of "new" players who are interested in matchmaking, avoid my current resources made towards helping new creators, submitting to ladder and then getting rejected is almost non existent (sub 3)
It would be good to ask "how do we find, and improve the time for, all these different player demographics?" and then vote for whoever puts forward the best idea.
It shouldn't be about asking: Can you do "X"? X might not be a good solution.
After all, there are plenty of different groups who play everything from phantom to nomads to coop only, and ladder is only but a small group of players. (calling eachother elitist is a moot point if you're only going to focus on ladder boys)
Right now you have three of the same strategy. Which is pretty terrible.
"We're going to improve the matchmaker!"
To which we ask them, how so? and they reply:
"By asking ppl how to fix it!"
Polling people is not an interesting point to make in an election. You don't need to be a PC to make one. You need to choose someone who has the strength and the strategy to represent your needs, and who can deliver them with FAF's constraints (asking for dev or manpower options is entirely moot) or else you'll just end up with nothing.
I personally would have liked to have seen something related to clans. I didn't see anything here of course.
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I think you already have your answer Valki, Morax offered in his application to interview people about what they want for ladder/map pool.
I think it's a nice idea to actively search for the "complex desires" of ladder players in order to refine your vision of what the player wants. Now unfortunatly, it's very easy to do this for a little group (like the 1800+ who are less then 20-30), but i don't think you can have a general opinion of the almost 900 players under 1000 with this method. It would be very time consuming and i'm pretty sure you'll have so many diverse opinions that you won't conclude easily. Hence the idea of polling. -
@auricocorico I guess I could take that as my answer then, but would still appreciate a direct answer. I'm just growing concerned not only about TMM but also some aspects of the management of it.
When TMM was released me and a friend moved in from Starcraft 2 2v2 (I already played FAF 1v1). If the apparent* popularity drops further our game night might move on from FAF TMM.
The fact that everyone** we talk to ingame/postgame dislikes the same things, and I get called a retard for bringing one of those supported concerns up on Discord... I fear that this might be the cause of TMM's apparent* popularity drop.
*Judging based on our matchmaking experience on Saturday evenings
**"Everyone" so far is about 10 people 600-1100 rated over a number of weeks -
I see a lot of "FtX ignores the lower rated players" but not a lot of specifics, so here are some thoughts and some questions I have so we can maybe see how much merit this statement has.
One aspect I saw mentioned, is that there are almost no tournaments for lower rated players. I think that is a fair observation and we could really use more of these. Morax also recently pointed this out in a separate thread. Luckily Suzuji seems to be very motivated to organize some. And because you don't need to be PC to be a tournament director, I'm looking forward to seeing some tournaments from him regardless how this election goes.
It seems like Emperor_Penguin and the players he knows are very unhappy with the maps in the ladder pool. Can you elaborate why the pool "doesn’t prioritize regular player preference, fun, playerbase growth, and new player retention anywhere near as much as it should"?
Also what exactly do low rated players desire, when talking about mapsize is apparently not it? What are these same things that they all dislike as Valki said? And how do you determine that what you and the people you talked to is representative to the playerbase as a whole? I am about 1k rated myself and I generally like the pool. I think the rating brackets for the pool are a good solution to give lower rated players maps that are easier to play.Polling lower rated people is really difficult because their community interaction is really low. Many don't even read the news. Only a server message to all boosted the poll result numbers significantly and I don't want to have everyone bothered by popups every month.
I'd also like to hear some examples of the "toxic/derogatory attitude/rhetoric", because the dictator FtX meme gets hinted at a lot, but so far nobody bothered to explain what egregious things he has apparently done. To me it seems that some people are disgruntled because he denied their proposed changes/maps/ideas. In my experience, everytime this happened was because the ideas or maps were not well thought out (i.e. had negative implications that the proposer didn't think of, or didn't even adress the root problem but merely a symptom), were of low quality or simply not feasible (hello low dev resources).
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@suzuji said in Player Councilor Election 2021:
As a prominent figure in the FAF community he must avoid gossip or harm the reputation or well-being of other users; in turn, lack of desire to adhere to a good character may bring FAF into disrepute.
Surely you having 10 recorded bans on your name wont have a negative impact on this at all
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@blackyps said in Player Councilor Election 2021:
Also what exactly do low rated players desire, when talking about mapsize is apparently not it? What are these same things that they all dislike as Valki said? And how do you determine that what you and the people you talked to is representative to the playerbase as a whole? I am about 1k rated myself and I generally like the pool. I think the rating brackets for the pool are a good solution to give lower rated players maps that are easier to play.
Recently:
- People rather having Share Until Death than Full Share
- Spawns on Phenom Spartiate v2 are wrong (or chose poorly)
There was something a while back but it no longer matters and I cannot remember.
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@valki said in Player Councilor Election 2021:
Recently:
- People rather having Share Until Death than Full Share
- Spawns on Phenom Spartiate v2 are wrong (or chose poorly)
There was something a while back but it no longer matters and I cannot remember.
I don't think you are supposed to promote less competitive experience, that is also just worse gameplay wise just cuz' few folks are unable to see their own shortcomings. Full share is simply better experience in 2v2 no matter what you might be thinking.
All that share until death does is increase the snowball to one that cannot be stopped which is not something that should be encouraged in game design, loss of half APM is already big enough of a setback for the team that's losing.As for other part I don't see how that directly relates to anything of importance here? It's either just normal human error or just different vision of the ladder team?
Not sure why you would bring that up here in PC election.If anything I feel like these problems you brought up are miniscule and don't matter, which just shows how little there is to complain?
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valki said in Player Councilor Election 2021:
People rather having Share Until Death than Full Share
I don't understand here, it was only you who said they rather have this? And maybe penguin. Should the PC change the system because two people asked for it? Even though two plus people said they would rather have fullshare in the same chat?
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@biass said in Player Councilor Election 2021:
valki said in Player Councilor Election 2021:
People rather having Share Until Death than Full Share
I don't understand here, it was only you who said they rather have this? And maybe penguin. Should the PC change the system because two people asked for it? Even though two plus people said they would rather have fullshare in the same chat?
I wanted to provide feedback and all I got was shouted at and be dismissed. This made my point a greater one, that legitimate feedback is handled badly.
@randomwheelchair said in Player Councilor Election 2021:
@valki said in Player Councilor Election 2021:
Recently:
- People rather having Share Until Death than Full Share
- Spawns on Phenom Spartiate v2 are wrong (or chose poorly)
There was something a while back but it no longer matters and I cannot remember.
[...]
All that share until death does is increase the snowball to one that cannot be stopped which is not something that should be encouraged in game design, loss of half APM is already big enough of a setback for the team that's losing.
[...]Snowball is not bad by definition, games are supposed to end, especially games where you play with a friend. I didn't discuss the reasons at length with others, but our subjective reasons, feel free to judge and discuss among yourselves... I cannot know if I am right, and I am done being shouted at.
- Often, at my level, it feels like "kill 1 ACU = lose game".
- I think because you have 4 noobs, 1 noob dies, giving another noob eco he would never develop. This allows him to build stuff noobs never encounter and cannot deal with.
- Especially obvious when you have a team with a high and low player, bad player dies, good player steamrolls.
- With your friend down, the game is no longer 2v2. You wanted to play 2v2, possibly with a friend. The sooner it ends, the faster you get into a new 2v2 game.
- Alternative: give us something to do after death
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Nobody is shouting here. People pointed out the drawbacks of share until death and mentioned that some people like full share. So it is unknown what a majority prefers.
What about this is bad handling of feedback? -
Discord yesterday after I mentioned it.
I think we could do with a subforum and Discord channel just for one sided feedback. Negative responses not allowed, even constructive criticism discouraged. We need a safe place for people to express their concerns even if they are stupid and wrong. FAF leadership can then hopefully receive more feedback and discuss that in other subforums and channels.
People who want to defend a point could be invited to start a topic elsewhere.
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Ah, now I know what you mean. But that was FemtoZetta, i.e. a random dude that insulted you.
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Following important anouuncements, please move discussions to this thread:
https://forum.faforever.com/topic/1633/new-player-councilor-discussion-removal-announcementsThis thread will be locked, but the timeline in the OP will be updated to fit the current one.
Apologies for the inconvenience.
