New Player Councilor Discussion + Removal Announcements

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.

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.

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.

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.

@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

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.

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.

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

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.

Yeah, most other games don't even have rating for custom games, at best you get a casual queue (not ranked) with a hidden rating.

@shape-of-bennis said

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

By swapping the 'i' and the 'y' in "gaijyp" and directly harassing someone in the community like this is really not cool. It's not productive and it's completely uncalled for.

It's called unintented laff like most of this thread

Just a word for the PC election, FTX from my pov you are divising the player database. I see you like a mini trump, but working more. Does your work compensate for the lack of tact and the feeling that you are not governing for all the players? Maybe for some but not for me.
Penguin morax and others, you want to beat trump and his incredible groupies? You guys need to ally and make a common application!

For the rating part, that made me want to participate here,
Would it be possible without a lot of devlopement / work, to create few categories / labels.
"eco maps" "casual teamgame map" "naval map" "spam map" "uncategorize map" "generated map" or whatever.
Then review the 200 most popular map, sort them in those categories, erase the rest of the maps, and force people do get the map approve and classify by the map team before being uploaded.
Then outpout multiple global rating based on map categories.

All I’m really interested in saying on this is that several assumptions about the breadth and success of matchmaker had been built into talking about the notion of doing anything with global rating. I’ve had this conversation dozens of times in the past and people can go look them up as they like.

Namely, the idea was to convert custom games into the casual party game/mod area of FAF.

Now current plan will likely involve global becoming some conglomerate rating monstrosity that takes into account matchmaker ratings while still having global games impact themselves.

@th3-11 said in New Player Councilor Discussion + Removal Announcements:

For the rating part, that made me want to participate here,
Would it be possible without a lot of devlopement / work, to create few categories / labels.
"eco maps" "casual teamgame map" "naval map" "spam map" "uncategorize map" "generated map" or whatever.
Then review the 200 most popular map, sort them in those categories, erase the rest of the maps, and force people do get the map approve and classify by the map team before being uploaded.
Then outpout multiple global rating based on map categories.

This would never happen as the current Creative Councillor is explicitly against any sort of opt-in map vault. It would be an absurdly terrible new player experience since you’re creating however many dozens of new ratings where people can be 0/0s, and the system itself is going to be even more unintuitive for anyone that wasn’t involved in developing it.

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

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.

Nearly every single multiplayer game in existence has some sort of progression shown for players, it’s game design 101 we’re talking about here. Removing global rating leaves FAF with exactly nothing showing progression for anyone who doesn’t want to do TMM or ladder which is 90% of the player base. We’re having a hard time keeping 2v2 TMM going, adding a 3v3 and 4v4 version of it won’t make it any better.

Also come on, they literally undid that decision to hide global rating in SC2 and you’re trying to use that to help your argument?

That's why global rating would be replaced with more matchmaker queues or the new division system. It's just stupid and irresponsible to act like it was ever going to be deleted and replaced with nothing.

@Mize @Exselsior and everyone, in reply to Penguin's post about me wanting to get rid of global rating:

To make things clear, I do not really like the global rating system and think it has a lot less representation of skill than others at hand. A year ago and before, I did not know if TMM would actually exist and give a way for people to play competitively in scenarios where it was more than 1v1. We have 2v2 now, 3v3 soon, hopefully 4v4. To me, this is wonderful as it gives a way to compare team ratings when faced with being placed on a random map from a pool rather selecting one. We all know at this point that global rating can reach 2k+ by simply playing one map over and over, so there is no reason to argue its efficacy.

@Emperor_Penguin , thank you for writing your post on my stance as it now gives myself and others a reason to remember to read through our applications and - if you can actually do it well - the entire thread. I stated the following in my application:

Sure, that is more in regards to resets, not abolishment, but after seeing the disdain generated from resetting a rating that has only existed for 6 months, I would never dream of eliminating one that has existed for 8+ years.

The reason I supported any kind of removal is because the devs (specifically @BlackYps ) pointed out that a league / division system is being worked out. The trueskill rating system is not very easy to understand for many people, so this will help eliminate confusion and hopefully be accepted going forward.

Source: https://forum.faforever.com/topic/311/graphic-artist-wanted

And he also posted somewhere in this nearly 300+ response thread, but hell if I can find it easily again haha. Maybe BlackYps can just confirm that after I post this again.

So, no, I do not in current believe removing Global Rating is a good idea. I personally do not like it, but is enjoyed by many and would mean a crippling blow to my stance on supporting the player base.

I hope this clarifies things for everyone concerned and those who brought this post to my attention this morning.

@FtXCommando wrote:

Ethos:

Your ethos can be broken up to three central facets. First you point to your time as M&M Councillor as well as the time you have invested into the variety of these duties. I have no qualms with what you have said related to these details. However, none of it is relevant as this is the Player Councillor election and not the Creative Councillor election. All this facet of your ethos is good for is evidence that you have consistency on FAF and will not just peace out as soon as you meet the slightest level of pushback.

One of the main, top responsibilities of the Player Council is to make map pools, ensure they are good and in working order.

My experience in map making and working as M&M not only shows that I have thorough knowledge of how to work in the dev environment zulip, and process/request changes, but it also shows I know how to debug, fix, evaluate maps far better than yourself.

I could fix maps and edit the map pool, recognize version errors far better than yourself who has to outsource that to others. This would leave me more time to pay attention to other areas of need.

In defense of Gruntti not getting his map in the pool, you or arch had trouble figuring out which version of the map to use because he made a good 50+. Neither of you reached out to him to inform him why this is an issue, so I took the the message board to fight for his disappointment: https://forum.faforever.com/topic/1488/complaint-about-tmm-and-ladder-pool-rating-brackets/26

@Dragun101 in regards to your question about "what does it take to say 'No'"?

For you specifically, I was new at M&M modification usage allowance and wanted to set up some protocol, get to know you and others working on the mod. A good portion of people simply just take something and don't credit people, which I believe is a bad practice.

In general, though, it is a mix of experience/feeling and rationale. I could not tell you case by case why I said no without digging through all the archives, some of which are deleted and gone forever.

I hope this answers your question well enough.