New Player Councilor Discussion + Removal Announcements

Anachronism_

Alright, @Swkoll, here are some additional specifics: in addition to my previous pledges, I pledge that if I am elected PC, there will be at least two 'Map Gen' tournaments within my first 2 months as PC, and at least one of those tournaments will be an 'Average Joes' tourney and at least one will be open to pros.

waffelzNoob

Why can't you do that right now tho? With good tournament settings ftx would surely approve of it

Dragun101

Penguin here the problem:
You have dodged every critique thrown at you
Ignored contradictary evidence you claim polls all mighty listen to the mighty polls-
If I listened to mighty polls fundamental basis of how scta is balanced would be torn asunder. Now I do as many here now canvas opanion, messaged folks I respect, and talk to people of every elo.

But when half of the feedback I got when mod was new “TA NEEDS ADJACENY AND SHIELDS KTHYXSBYE” and if were to poll a FAF beyond reasonable doubt I can say those two things be true.

If polls told you something blatently not just dumb but harmful, as a PC would you ignore the results?

You said Ftx delaying MapGen incorperation ladder had no impact on his quality. But that is percisely the point. Its quality wasn’t ladder worthy.

The power of no isn’t the power “of stfu I will never let this be a thing”

“Its go back to the drawing board. Its not good enough. Come back later.”

To note this:
You famouslt uploaded eighty billion versions of the same map with the most minor of edits. As a person you are willing to say “this most minor change is an important enough change it requires me to upload this change to faf and waste faf storwge with x versions - 1 of a map that will never be downloaded or played again?

Pot calling Kettle Black I admit. As I 100% could have better versioning for SCTA. But its partly why I have forced myself to updates once a week. And why I have tried to slow down or not do emergency updates unless something is exceptionally borked.

As PC while less obviously than Creative you are still a Steward of Perception of Quality. And more. You are the man who gets thrown dung all day. Your job is to be the person everyone beats up on. The face.

But that means responding and correcting criticism. Notice Ftx (And Morax here as well to some extent, but more Shit has been thrown on Ftx than Morax) when approached with criticism have been upfront and honest about their mistakes or percieved mistakes.

You pulled “Not my fault!” You have not taken responsibility, you have not accepted critique. And when toughing gets going, and Thomas/Feathers/Adju etc gets a punching. Will the Penguin get a toughening?

I have reasons to doubt

Anachronism_

@noundedelkwoob said in New Player Councilor Discussion + Removal Announcements:

Why can't you do that right now tho? With good tournament settings ftx would surely approve of it

@noundedelkwoob
I am not currently the PC, and I have been choosing to work on other things for FAF that are also hopefully good for the community. For example, since there seemed to be decent interest in creating a casual matchmaker option but a relative shortage of fast-paced casual FAF mini-games, I have recently coded/created a new and fast-paced casual FAF mini-game (you can download it from the vault as the map 'Pit of Doom' btw - it is still open to more changes based on feedback btw). I am currently working on another new FAF mini-game that could be even better. This is in addition to this very time-consuming election...

Dragun101

@emperor_penguin said in New Player Councilor Discussion + Removal Announcements:

@noundedelkwoob said in New Player Councilor Discussion + Removal Announcements:

Why can't you do that right now tho? With good tournament settings ftx would surely approve of it

@noundedelkwoob
I am not currently the PC, and I have been choosing to work on other things for FAF that are also hopefully good for the community. For example, since there seemed to be decent interest in creating a casual matchmaker option but a relative shortage of fast-paced casual FAF mini-games, I have recently coded/created a new and fast-paced casual FAF mini-game (you can download it from the vault as the map 'Pit of Doom' btw - it is still open to more changes based on feedback btw). I am currently working on another new FAF mini-game that could be even better. This is in addition to this very time-consuming election...

Define time consuming you seem to be avoiding the hard questions here

Anachronism_

@dragun101
Dragun, I think you misunderstand me, and you and I have VERY different perceptions regarding FTX owning up to his mistakes... Anyway, I am not claiming that FAF should become slave to all poll results. I am claiming that I believe that the desires of the majority of FAF players should be given more value/weight/focus than FTX gives them. That includes polling more than FTX does and giving more weight to poll results than FTX gives. That doesn't mean automatically caving to the majority opinion on every issue. There is a good middle-ground, and I intend to achieve it. I want what's good for FAF, and that involves caring more about the majority opinion than FTX does while still analyzing things sensibly and listening to reason. So, for example, if Jagged or Skwoll had an opinion on something for LotS, I would give it substantially more weight than the opinion of randomdude324. I would still care about both, but I would actively weight opinions sensibly, where things like relevant knowledge and experience matter a lot.

Anachronism_

@dragun101 said in New Player Councilor Discussion + Removal Announcements:

Define time consuming you seem to be avoiding the hard questions here

I haven't been logging my FAF-related hours on a time clock, man. I've certainly spent more than 40 hours on FAF-related stuff this past week, for perspective.

Dragun101

I put in until work started this week. Easily 60 hours a week on working on faf related context (albeit alot of that is me starring at scta code for 8-10 hours and pm’ing relavent parties). Also polls don’t show random dudebro opanion as different from Swkoll. They should be annoymous. Or you get weird confirmation bias.

For something like you are advocating rhere isn’t much of a real middle ground.

Anachronism_

@Dragun101 There is a large middle-ground involving giving different weights to the opinions of different members of the community in different contexts on different issues. My stance is covered pretty well in my initial application post. I want to give more weight to the desires/concerns of 'regular' FAF players than FTX gives them, but I would still heavily weight opinions based on important things like relevant knowledge and experience.

Anachronism_

Alright, @Tagada, you asked for a lot of information, so here's a long post that discusses things and provides several examples of things I've done:

But, I'll start off by explaining something first; knowing what makes maps good (including understanding the impacts of various things on gameplay/variance/aesthetics/etc) has a lot of relevance to mapping, improving map gen, and map pool creation/selection. So, there were certainly times when I gathered data (such as via talking to people or creating publicly available polls - that I admittedly should have logged better) to learn more about community preferences for mapping that taught me valuable insights/understandings that helped me to improve map gen and would also help me to be a better PC. I have learned a lot about FTX's system, and I have certainly improved my understanding of what makes some maps more desirable than others over time, and I've also passed on some of what I've learned to others along the way.

If you look over my maps, my mapping quality has certainly improved over time as I've learned more about what makes for good gameplay/etc. In fact, here's a recent mapping tourney which I created a new map for (I also made lots of new custom props (including lots of colorful Autumn trees!) that will be included in a new FAF update for all mappers to use in FAF), and my map received the highest total rating for gameplay/variance (not aesthetics) in the tourney. So, I have certainly improved my understanding of gameplay/variance/mapping a lot over time.

Anyway, while I have learned a lot about FTX's system for evaluating maps, and I see its value for certain niches, I have observed that FTX's system caters to a particular type of FAF experience, which is not what everyone wants. A decent portion of people do want it, and so, I think the types of map pools that appeal to that group (of satisfied current ladder/TMM players/etc) should continue to exist for those people. However, I also consider maps from other players' perspectives that are conflicting with FTX's. There are some good reasons why global is so much more popular than ladder/TMM, and a large part of it is that ladder/TMM doesn't satisfy many of those perspectives, even when they're desired by the large majority of FAF players... So, I would like to make TMM better by offering additional options that are more suited to satisfying people with different types of preferences. That involves having different perspectives/criteria for evaluating maps for some new optional map pools that I plan to add.

Most of my data gathering has been from asking a lot of people questions and talking to people. If it was worthwhile, I could spend several hours/days gathering a vast collection of evidence of countless conversations I've had with hundreds if not thousands of people in Discord, FAF lobbies, FAF games, etc where I was asking people questions about what they want in a map, or what they want changed, or what they disliked, or what they thought about the gameplay on it, etc. That seems really excessive. So, if you really want some massive quantity of evidence, you are welcome to go and watch all my replays where I hosted my maps (and got feedback and often made changes accordingly) as well as a number of my mapgen games where I asked people questions as well. If you read all of the chat in all of my replays/lobbies, I believe you'd literally see thousands of examples of me asking people for feedback regarding things like what they like about a given map, what they would think should be changed, if they have any suggestions, etc. I have done some polls as well, but that's honestly a small minority of the feedback I've gathered, and most of them are buried in old conversations. Here's a couple random polls anyway:
Mapping Features
2v2 TMM Sharing

Here are some examples of suggestion threads that I have started based on trying to address problems that I've found via feedback I've gotten:
Create a casual noob-friendly matchmaker queue (to increase player retention)
Create A New Matchmaker Councillor Position
Unofficial tournaments should be allowed on the forums
In case it's not obvious by now, most of the FAF community (and consequently most of the people I talk to) are not really active on the forums. That communication divide is something I want to address with changes that encourage and lessen barriers to participation.

Here is some of my activism from this very election from before I decided to run for PC.

Here are some examples of work I've done on map gen:
https://i.imgur.com/nx3sj6R.png
https://i.imgur.com/U7qZQyR.png
https://i.imgur.com/qmiymt5.png
https://i.imgur.com/BMwo9pD.png
https://i.imgur.com/VQjhcVT.png

Now, I have responded with a ton of information to a large variety of questions. If the same people (who have been questioning/criticizing/nitpicking me while basically ignoring/disregarding FTX's issues/flaws) want to keep bombarding me with questions/criticisms while continuing to basically ignore FTX's issues/flaws, then I will draw the line somewhere, as I have already provided way more information than I should reasonably need to in this 280+ post-long forum thread that is nearly the longest thread on these forums already despite only being 11 days old.

Mize

Hello all-Mizer here

I am sure most people on FAF know who I am. I am so old my player ID is 517. I have played since the old Supreme Commander GPG days. What is that 2007.

Anyway I have heard and seen a couple of things that concern me. And I would like FTX, Morax and Penguin give me their perspective on this.

I have seen posts FTX talking about getting rid of the Global Player Rating. Why is this? FTX says in another post that If I want to see improvement in my rating that I have to play matchmaker. This just doesn't add up. He even calls out Setons, Asto and Gap players like there is something wrong with playing that map.

I play Setons, Setons and Setons.
You should be able to play any map and have the opportunity to become the number #1 rated player. I mean if I want to be a 3k rated player that only plays ISIS so be it. Everyone knows and can check a players replays. I am not interested in playing ladder or matchmaker. IMHO what ever map players want to learn and play go for it. For me it's Setons.

I think most players want to know who is the best. It's kind of a challenge to best that person right?

I will review your reply's and base my vote on what I see. And I hope players votes actually count.

Thank you
Mizer

Anachronism_

Hello @Mize,

I'm glad you brought this up. I actually should've made a much larger point about this throughout this election. Unless FTX/Morax have changed their stances on removing/hiding Global Rating and neglected to mention it (edit: Morax apparently has changed his stance);

FTX planned to remove or hide Global Rating. I don't.

We had several very long discussions/arguments about removing/hiding Global Rating last year, as I was actively campaigning against its removal, and I will share some quotes from our public chats:

All 12 player Dual Gap games would be unrated without Global Rating.*

When I discussed the matter with Morax previously, he supported the plan to remove/hide Global Rating, but since I made this post, he contacted me and said he has changed his stance.

My stance is that TMM rating(s) and Global Rating should coexist, and Global Rating should NOT be hidden or removed.

Some relevant info:

Most multiplayer FAF players play the same few map(s) over and over for all or almost all of their games for long periods of time.
TMM rating (with FTX's TMM plan) would not represent many of those players' skills as accurately as global rating does in the games they actually play most/all of the time.
Further, removing global rating removes the option to play select maps and map types and slot types competitively.
By removing it, he will be making FAF less fun and less enjoyable to them and will cause countless people to quit FAF entirely.

To put it another way; I want to play competitive FAF games besides what will be on TMM; so do thousands to tens of thousands of others.
TMM doesn't work for balancing things that are more global-specific and won't be on the TMM.
Map-specific rating, slot-specific rating, rating for 5v5/6v6/7v7/8v8, etc (and more) are all things that are covered somewhat (with flaws) by global, but would not be covered by FTX's TMM rating.
So, if TMM seems like a good fit for you, that's great.
However, it's not a good fit for many game types that are massively more popular/more frequently played.
So, global rating should not be hidden or removed.

*PS: The current plan for TMM (regardless of who is elected PC) involves TMM only having up to 8 players (4v4 or less) due to technical reasons regarding network connection issues. So, all games with more than 8 players (including 5v5, 6v6, 7v7, and 8v8) would not be on TMM and would be unrated without Global Rating.

biass

Emperor, you asked me why I, and many others choose to question you more than Morax or FtX in this thread and it’s entirely simple, it’s because the contributor base already knows what FtX (and Morax to a lesser extent) is going to do if they get elected. As far as I’m concerned they probably didn’t need to post an application at all and the majority of said contributor base already knew who they were voting for day one.

You however are still a relatively unknown variable. While I myself might know who you are, the majority of us here do not. That’s why we need to ask you questions. Why would we vote for someone who we don’t know about, and who hasn’t properly communicated to us their intentions?

I’m aware it might come off a bit one sided, but ultimately these questions allow you to embellish yourself and “sell” your changes to the audience.

Of course, quoting me out of context from an unrelated post I made in 2018 isn’t a very good look. Especially when I’m one of the people who you would need to work with on a regular basis.

Exselsior

Hi yeah it’s fucking stupid to hide global rating. I’ve stayed mostly quiet on this thread because it’s pure idiotic cancer, but if Mizer is here calling out bullshit I guess I will too. Getting rid of global rating is completely and utterly asinine, full stop. I don’t know what breed of ignorant elitism leads to people thinking it’s a good idea, but for the sake of FAF I’d like none of that in our community leadership.

What do you even think getting rid of that will accomplish? Congratulations you made any sort of manual balance in global games impossible unless you know every single player in the lobby! Wow! Amazing! Congrats, you took away a nice psychological trick to get people to play more games because seeing rating go up is fun. That’ll really help player retention! I’m sorry that you’re compensating for the fact some (in your mind) gaptard is higher rated than you globally, cry me a river.

Okay thanks I’ll get off my soapbox now. Have a nice day.

epic-bennis

Removing global rating is just pure insanity. As Excelsior said: rating is a main driver why people play. It's like an entire ladder system and competitive logic condensed in a single number. It's the reason why people care about the outcome of a game. It's like the money at stake in poker. It's like the oxygen in every breath we take.
Excelsior mentioned a few completely logical and vital elements to rating as well: how to balance lobbies? Will optimal balance still work as intended?

There have been numerous suggestions how to fix some the flaws in global rating:

Have a map specific rating, have a win rate per map stat displayed, have a number of times a map is played stat etc etc etc.

When I brainstorm right now I can even imagine something like a "view player info" tab in the lobby that when you right click on a players name opens a little stat window with circle charts of most played maps (percent of astro, Seton's, gap) and or a list of the top 10 maps with specific win percentages to better make it able to understand a players skill, or for example a map specific global rating. I'm sure this can be computed with the data of astro, gap and Seton's and a number for all the other maps.

If I was pc I would tinker with that, I love that because I'm good at it. I've worked with quantitative analysis and have some data base coding skills.

However what ftx proposes is insane and will hurt faf, so please act like smart people and don't do it. Thanks.

Resistance

@shape-of-bennis you can't because 600 versions of gap exists and another 2151251512 of astro crater does exist as well so this would be broken,not to mention that creating a similar map with the same name would just completely break the system and in order to fix that you need to change the entire system

epic-bennis

No you can just write a function that adds up the statistics of every map with the words astro and crater into a single number. Likewise with dual and gap. It not going to be perfect, but it's going to be good enough.

Like it's just additional info for a nice overview about a player. It's not going to change much. It's better to have that than not to having it. Arma can probably do it in a weekend.

Jip

And then they name it G@p ?

edit: Let alone that there are maps that have gap in their name, but are nothing like the dual gap everybody plays. As Rezy mentions - the current system is just not made for this to be reliable.

epic-bennis

Not a problem, g@p can be included as well. Even if they call it gaijyp or shayit

Valki

Why is everyone going nuts on the hidden global rating? For most of its existence Starcraft 2 has hidden it.

Sure, they show it now, but hiding it can only be considered sensible if they did it.