New Player Councilor Discussion + Removal Announcements

Hello everyone.

It is with regret that I announce after much discussion, FAF Leadership has unanimously decided to remove both Francias and Suzuji's applications to apply for Player Councilor.

FAF Councilor elections - like the grand majority of democratic processes - Do have eligibility requirements. It is expected that applicants do have a mostly clean moderation history. Users who are permanently banned, or have been banned repeatedly for serious offences, do not meet these requirements.

It is indeed our mistake to have not posted any requirements in the original thread, and I will apologise on behalf of the council for that. I will push for both the Council and the FAF Association to outline these requirements so that this situation does not happen again in the future.

I also apologise about the desicion to review the canidates AFTER the discussion period. The review should be done beforehand as to not needlessly waste anyone's time or sow confusion.

For the sake of transparency, and to avoid any Conflicts of Interest, I need to make it known that:

• FtXCommando was not able to see any discussion regarding this decision.
• FtXCommando was not able to partake in any discussion regarding this decision.
• FtXCommando was not allowed to vote in any matter regarding this decision.

I would also ask that discussion around the removal not be included in this thread. If you need further information. I would suggest going over to zulip - or asking Giebmasse or myself.

Following this decision, we've decided to prolong the discussion period for an extra week to accommodate further debate.

The new timeline is as follows:

30th of May: Signups close.
6th of June: Voting Period begins.

If you're wanting to apply, you can still do so until the 30th.
Make sure to post your application here.
Any applications posted outside of this thread are not to be considered as legitimate.

You also need to commit yourself to a councilors pledge.
If you're not able to think of one; one has been created for you. Make sure it's in-line with the councilor responsibilities from the FAF wiki. They're also posted here:
https://forum.faforever.com/topic/1589/player-councilor-election-2021

You can find an outline of the current duties of the position here:
https://forum.faforever.com/topic/1571/an-election-will-soon-take-place-for-the-player-councilor-role-apply-here/2

You can find the current applications with these links:

FtXCommando:
https://forum.faforever.com/topic/1589/player-councilor-election-2021/2

Morax:
https://forum.faforever.com/topic/1589/player-councilor-election-2021/4

Emperor_Penguin
https://forum.faforever.com/topic/1633/new-player-councilor-discussion-removal-announcements/27

They may also choose to repost their application, or modify it to place here if they wish.

Use this thread to discuss the applications.
Feel free to repost questions from the old thread if they have not been answered.

And of course; good luck.
biass.

Well, if such a topic has come up, maybe you should just close it and leave ftx at the helm? What is the point of voting if I am more than sure that ftx is already winning.

I think this is just a delay in an already pointless vote.

@espinosaurio What about Morax? I agree ftx will probably win and i think he has my vote but shouldn't we at least let Morax run?

none told anything about Morax,he is still a candidate and you can still vote for him as well.

@rezy-noob Yea it seems espi was just saying we should not have an election. Which seemed unfair to legitimate candidates like Morax.

I’d rather not repost the stuff from old thread because if I post my app then Morax is obligated to post his, then I need to repost my response as are people that responded to his app etc

Since old thread is cleaned, it serves no function to make this a duplicate atm.

Also I guess to just get a quick recap of the discussion that was going on before the thread locked:

1. Full Share v Share Until Death

Yeah I don’t need to do a general poll on this. This is a game design question where I gather experienced player input to make the best decision for FAF. It is almost universally agreed at top level that full share is the superior option for something like 2v2 in terms of gameplay. I don’t really think I need to go in depth on this as it was covered in several discussions about TMM on the forums, Discord, and developer channels. But if I need to explain it once again then let me know.

Beyond that full share means that something like a disconnect doesn’t automatically lose the game, a clear concern when you are randomly matching people.

There is also this notion that when you die the game is over for you. That’s not true at all. You die, you are now free from general macro management and can instead look at the whole map and get a solid idea of the best moves. If you are dead you should be giving clear and concise instructions to someone on the best general things to do/work towards over the next 5 minutes so that you can win the game.

Count air factories, look at where enemy is planning on pushing, look for upgrading factories, count enemy mexes, see what comparative advantages you have that can be pushed.

Attention SHOULD be transitioned from 2 people managing their half of the game and trying to quickly gauge the best moves to 1 person trying his best to handle the apm aspect and another trying to do the thinking for the other guy.

If you sit there and space out, then you just gave up on playing the teamgame halfway through and really left your teammate out to dry.

2. Phenom

When it comes to 2v2 asymmetry is highly preferable, this is once again about gameplay. Asymmetry requires players to think as a team and look at the whole game situation rather than mirroring what their opponent is doing as though they are playing 2 1v1s. Phenom is intentionally played with these slots because it results in this dynamic and is preferable to a guaranteed 50/50 horizontal map split that defaults to eco sim for every game.

I include some symmetrical 2v2 maps, but they are intended to be introductory maps (badlands or isis).

So, well, considering all that is happening are we the players gonna get some kind of information on what is happening or are we gonna be left blind and deaf while council keeps on doing council stuff behind our backs?
Even though that PC is supposed to be a voice of the players chosen by the players?

Cuz' as happy as I'm with the removal of Feather from running for the position I would still like to hear better more through explanations on what is going on behind our backs. Even more as the rumors and bits that are reaching the public opinion are not making us hopeful, if anything they just undermine the position of council and make contributors reluctant to even consider helping faf make better place as we did.

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

Cuz' as happy as I'm with the removal of Feather from running for the position I would still like to hear better more through explanations on what is going on behind our backs.

I found biass' post quite explanatory about the process, it even contained an apology on behalf of the council for not being preemptive and transparent enough.

We deliberated in the council and this can take a while because of time zone differences and the simple fact that we can't all be around constantly to respond to everything momentarily. Even if there's an election.

I agree we can improve on this and I'm sorry about the lack of communication. Some of us on the council thought — and this is not the first time we've made this mistake — that certain things are to be taken for granted. For instance that a person who has been permanently banned from the community cannot be elected to represent the community.

The matter on whether a person who simply has a "shady" history is a grey area to me though and I would like to hear what you think could be done to improve in this area. Should we disallow any prior moderation history or allow anyone who simply isn't permanently banned?

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

Even more as the rumors and bits that are reaching the public opinion are not making us hopeful, if anything they just undermine the position of council and make contributors reluctant to even consider helping faf make better place as we did.

I agree and I do not hope that you or anyone else base your intentions on helping out the community at large on rumours.

@Auricocorico from the other post you wrote:

I'm afraid the idea N°4 of Morax (interviewing the player to have their opinion) will >not be very practical for balancing the map pool, but hey it's just nice to have a PC who talks with the player base ...
On that account, francias and suzuji application feel very troll to me : i've been around for a year, and i've rarely seen any of them engaging discussions with the players .. can someone be Player Councillor if he has no interest in talking with other players ??

I think this is a bit my bad for wording it poorly:

No more numerical-based polling: the community size and motivation to play ladder is really small, for instance, and could likely be personally interviewed, with feedback posted to a thread. This does not need to be complicated and short of dysfunctional maps, it should be easy to discuss matters. I suspect it will have some rules and discussion points much like the “before you post in the balance team” except perhaps a little less strict…

I want to stress that I said likely be personally interviewed meaning that it is possible, but not the only solution. Of course open message board discussions, written polls and other methods are fair game and welcome in my book. I just don't like trying to assign a number to something like "aesthetics" as it is quite difficult. I want to focus on things like "can most be people read the map and see where units can travel without impedance; are resources and reclaim clearly visible; are sea shores understood; ramps are well displayed," and score based on that kind of discussion.

Here is a sample of the map rating the "ladder team" uses:

As you can see, there is much more to the numerical rating that you see them use to discuss on the message boards. That kind of information is quite helpful in understanding the methodology of the team and how they think.

There was some thread Bennis started (probably got deleted) where you asked about why things are "behind closed doors." My platform as PC is to combat that and make map ratings more transparent so that people who make maps or ladder players can figure out the real situation.

I worry that with the TMM rating reset first, and this election screw-up now, you are taking 2 steps back for every step forward.

@ftxcommando (and @Morax) I'll say I am not qualified to debate high level gameplay. I am qualified to discuss priorities.

It seems to come down that you (FAF council) know for a fact it is better in terms of gameplay to do X. People at the bottom want to do what is most fun now and are probably not concerned with the long term.

Every single 2v2 custom game I played, as host or joiner, was Share Until Death. No hard feelings ever. By imposing Full Share players are robbed from seeing half the opponents stuff explode as a reward for killing an ACU. It is really anticlimactic which was my first and main point on Discord.

I think the PC and FAF council should give the people what they want. I don't know what that is, it might be Share Until Death, might not, it might be 2 parallel 1v1's, it might not. Optimizing for people experience might lead to more games played by more people, in result in more experienced people than the current approach.

And how many of these custom 2v2s are share until death because:
A) It is the default share condition
B) "That's just how you play teamgames"
C) Gyle said full share was bad

Why do I ask high rated players? Because I can trust that they have an informed opinion across both share conditions and generally understand the gameplay results from changing said share condition. A 600 does not.

My job is providing a consistent and intuitive experience. It does not benefit FAF to have a matchmaker for full share, a matchmaker for share until death, a matchmaker for no water maps maps, and a matchmaker for 20x20s. Now we add 3v3 matchmaker queues. Now 4v4. Now we add some fun casual ones. Suddenly there are 30 matchmakers all fighting for 12 or so concurrent players.

If I gave people what they want, I would have removed the ladder queue for a Seton's queue and the 2v2 queue for a Dual Gap queue. Once again, if you want to operate off of simple referendum then abolish the position and just set this stuff up as a FAF poll. Part of the job of PC is deciding what subset of people best define FAF's interests depending on the qualitative aspects of a question. If I am doing that poorly, then you need to find another guy.

The majority holding an opinion is not immediate justification for it to be the right opinion. It is an element of credence to an opinion. Ironic to say when I'm pushing to be elected by a majority, I think.

hello, if still possible (probably not, but cba to read) i want to be a candidate for PC, time for big auto to become the leader B)

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

If I gave people what they want, I would have removed the ladder queue for a Seton's queue and the 2v2 queue for a Dual Gap queue. Once again, if you want to operate off of simple referendum then abolish the position and just set this stuff up as a FAF poll.

These are actually really good ideas.
The part about a Setons queue and a Dual Gap queue at least. Joining that is so tedious compared to just laddering.

If people, notably greys, can click their way into automatch setons and gap games who knows how full those queues will be? While in it, some might also be tempted to multi-queue into other queues as well.

This could massively boost FAF popularity and the number of high ranked competitive players as a portion of total player base.

Part of the job of PC is deciding what subset of people best define FAF's interests depending on the qualitative aspects of a question. If I am doing that poorly, then you need to find another guy.

While I genuinely appreciate your efforts for FAF, and your contributions to competitive development... I think you have not chosen the right subgroup of people to focus on.

Dual gap queue isn’t happening off of the sheer facts of connection instability and it only taking 1 bad cpu to ruin everything.

@ftxcommando Let the problems come to you.

1. Dual gap queue
2. Monitor situation
3. Implement solutions if needed, like poor CPU players into front slots.

the poor CPU players on front slot won't solve the problem,as well as there're going to be too many resources invested into making a queue for a designed map,isn't it a bit of a waste?

Why are we talking about queues and fullshare on this thread?

We literally made TMM for the COUNTLESS people making COUNTLESS posts complaining they want to play regular maps but cannot find a game because dual gap infested the entire global game section. There is NO reason they or any other single map category should need/get a queue.