I cri everytim

@pryanichek said in I cri everytim:

after the first 5-10 defeats in the ladder without a single chance, beginners simply have no desire to play it further

It would be nice if the ladder algorithm didn't assume "there's a big chance this new player might be 1100 rated" and instead always looked for very weak opponents for the first 3 games.

It's a lot less burdensome to ask an 1100 to play against 3 weak opponents when they first join the ladder than it is to ask a 200 to play against 900, 1000, 1100-rated people.

Like we're worried if the next Blodir comes to FAF and gets on the ladder and the first 5 matches are too easy, he might quit. But we're not worried about discouraging hundreds and hundreds of new people who are starting at the bottom. And we're not worried about wasting the time of 1k-rated players by feeding them noobs for no reason.

Telling new players that their first 5 ladder matches are likely to be terrible so just grit your teeth and suffer through it is a meme at this point.

I play dual gap when I feel like a relaxing match where I don't feel like everything explodes the moment I make 1 mistake.

@arma473 Let’s please stop blaming the algorithm. It already tries to put new players against new players, and if that fails then it gives them a random opponent because getting any game is better than waiting indefinitely for a better opponent to come by, since this will at least give an opportunity to gain some data. The simple fact is that not enough players play ladder. Most are either 1800+ or in the ~800 rating range. Anyone with that rating will have no trouble crushing a new player. Even someone who has played enough ladder to get a rating of like 400 will probably crush a new player. There simply are not enough players on ladder to get balanced games for new players.

@askaholic said in I cri everytim:

@arma473 Let’s please stop blaming the algorithm. It already tries to put new players against new players, and if that fails then it gives them a random opponent because getting any game is better than waiting indefinitely for a better opponent to come by, since this will at least give an opportunity to gain some data. The simple fact is that not enough players play ladder. Most are either 1800+ or in the ~800 rating range. Anyone with that rating will have no trouble crushing a new player. Even someone who has played enough ladder to get a rating of like 400 will probably crush a new player. There simply are not enough players on ladder to get balanced games for new players.

Beyond that it's just a totally outdated narrative. When you go and ask people at peak times how their first ladder games went (yes, even entirely new dudes to Supcom itself) you find a pretty nice spread of people that, by their 3rd game, have at least won or came very close to winning a game in their mind.

Just about all the dudes that carry the "sick and tired of matchmaker" attitude come from timezones where there are like 2 or 3 dudes searching at any point in time, which carries the negatives you mentioned here.

Also, you market Supcom (and FAF) as a big boom robot smash game and then dudes get shocked when all the new people want to play big boom robot smash games, especially when some of the more prolific casters in the community feed into it. Not that I blame them, they're taking the most enjoyable part of FAF at first glance and feeding into it.

Want people to not play big boom robot smash game? Then focus on explaining why that isn't as fun as other aspects of the game or make those other aspects more enticing, team matchmaker is just step 1 in doing that where you give people the comfy nature of a social team environment, but there are a variety of additional steps to take if you want to overcome this.

@valki said in I cri everytim:

@auricocorico said in I cri everytim:

Join the ladder army tatsu, forget about custom games, they are wrong

I think this is a good point, TMM will draw competitive players away from custom where dualgap remains. It is probably not as bad ass it seems.

Though I want to repeat an ironic but good suggestion by FtXCommando to make a Dualgap matchmaker. Back then I only saw the advantages of catering to the needs of a large group, but added to that now:

• Opportunity to at some point have a separate DualGap ranking
• Custom game lobby consists of more original games and is thus more inviting

After 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 and 4v4 I believe there are 2 slots free right?

Half of the dudes that play dual gap are ready to begin an ethnic cleansing campaign against anyone with a CPU getting less than 3.2 GHz, you will never make a dual gap matchmaker appealing (nor any 6v6 matchmaker really) when you have 12 random assortments of potential lag points that can drag the game down.

Gap popularity is because that's what people like. Chilling and doing sim city for 45 minutes of game time, aka 1.5 hours at an average -3 sim speed. Not everyone wants to play much more challenging and stressful games. They could easily migrate to the common teamgame maps like canis, wonder, hilly, etc. if they wanted a non turtle team map, but it's not what they want. This is also shown by the lack of popularity for FAF itself: it's simply too hard and complicated to be preferable for many people. They would rather play fortnite or league of legends or SC2, etc. instead. FAF has major issues for people like the lag and pathfinding (it's almost 15 years old...), but the issue of network externalities is also massive (the more people that play the game, the more games of your preference you can find and the more you enjoy the game. E.g. I doubt you'd care so much about how many gap games there are as long as there are plenty of games that you want to play available!). But the network externalities issue isn't really solvable...it would require massive, rapid growth in the popularity of the game so that the growth can snowball, which just doesn't seem at all realistic given the market demand. The game is almost 1.5 decades old, and has fairly inferior graphics (albeit not horrible) to anything made in the last decade, and as we all know, a poor game engine leading to the performance issues.

Edit: So is there a solution? Unfortunately, none that I would put any money on. In this case I'm pretty sure pessimism is realism. Maybe you can convince all your friends to start playing, but if they are anything like mine they will try it and then quit for the aforementioned reasons. It's just not going to be many people's favorite game, and if they like it, it won't be too surprising for them to prefer dual gap anyway.

SC2 is one of the most stressful games out there with 100x FAF’s playerbase and an extremely large percentage focused around the 1v1 mode. To the point that teamgames are basically intentionally gimped because allowing the mixing of faction tech destroys any level of balance there.

The only area of SC2 not 1v1 that got any real official attention was coop, which just accidentally managed to be successful.

I don’t see it having much to do with FAF requiring a mega brain because you don’t need a mega brain to beat bad players, you can perfectly play ladder or dual gap casually with a beer in one hand.

This comes down to player expectation, cultural traditions, and player onboarding on FAF

@ftxcommando said in I cri everytim:

SC2 is one of the most stressful games out there with 100x FAF’s playerbase and an extremely large percentage focused around the 1v1 mode.

I wouldn't say SC2 is much more stressful than FAF, just much faster paced. Yeah, sure it's more stressful if you're trying to win tournaments for actual money, but that's just because of the money, which is because of the game's popularity, not that it's inherently stressful.

I don’t see it having much to do with FAF requiring a mega brain because you don’t need a mega brain to beat bad players, you can perfectly play ladder or dual gap casually with a beer in one hand.

Yeah, it's universally true of every game ever that it doesn't require a mega brain to beat bad players. Obviously, you just need to be better than your opponent. Good to know you ladder "perfectly" with just one hand. I'm sure that's not trolling at all!

This comes down to player expectation, cultural traditions, and player onboarding on FAF

It comes down to the tiny player base, and RTS style games not being very popular, particularly right now, and even if they were, there are a lot of things about other games that people prefer to FAF. Hell, even IF we assume SC2 is more stressful, you don't have to queue for an hour for a game, or deal with horrible simspeed and pathfinding. I don't think we can claim that FAF is less stressful and easier than SC2 and expect to convert many of those players.
I can't find the quote but long ago I read somewhere that TLO (SC2 pro gamer) said that forged alliance was more complicated and/or harder for most people to grasp than SC2, at least implying that it at least has a significantly steeper learning curve, but I cannot find that right now.

EDIT: QUOTE FOUND:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jenoX_FpmNc
"When casting [FA] it's hard, because it's such a complex game compared to SC2...any idiot can understand SC2."

How is it trolling to say you can find a dude to beat casually on ladder or in dual gap? You can get to 1500 ladder purely making point defense to beat players, people have done it before on smurf accounts. Neither game mode requires “more skill” because the skill level to beat a player is inherently built on the player you are facing. If ladder has 50x more players than dual gap, it’s easier for the casual player to find a dude to play a casual, relaxed game against in that environment. This can be seen in SC2 where the casual environment extends into the 1v1 ladder. This should not be confused with the “skill ceiling” of a game mode, but 0 skill is 0 skill anywhere you quantify it.

I also don’t understand how you extrapolated any of that from that quote. Casting FA is hard because you need to explain a ton of boring macro mechanics, casting SC2 is easy because ooooh look at the marine split micro. Nothing at all about learning curve, how much brainpower the game takes, or any other weird superiority reason you’re imagining.

SC2 absolutely is more stressful because the game can instantly be lost in mere moments. In FAF, if you played better for 80% of the game you’re winning the game. AOE2 is more stressful for a similar reason, just on a lesser scale than SC2.

@ftxcommando said in I cri everytim:

How is it trolling to say you can find a dude to beat casually on ladder or in dual gap?

As usual, you obviously, deliberately misrepresent what others say and engage in pure trolling.

What I actually said: "Good to know you ladder "perfectly" with just one hand. I'm sure that's not trolling at all!"

You deserve to be banned from the forums for such BLATANT, INTENTIONAL LYING.

The rest of your response is more of the same, so nothing else you said deserves any response. This always has been and always will be how you communicate, so I won't waste any more time with you.

I find FAF to be a lot less stressful - if you lose one engagement then you haven't immediately lost completely because of the ACU / how easy it is to make defenses or counter produce due to distance.

I think FTX hits it spot on indicating that the expectations of the game are off, as a lot of trailers are about explosions and experimentals - while the game is about creating land / air / naval presence, expanding, understanding when (not) to take a fight, etc. In my typical game I don't even see an experimental walking by.

Gap popularity is because that's what people like. Chilling and doing sim city for 45 minutes of game time, aka 1.5 hours at an average -3 sim speed.

This is actively being worked on and everyone (with the right background) is welcome to join in on the crusade.

@tatsu
Thats going on in every online game.
People playing same maps over and over.

Dual gap became what it is due to an audience of people constantly refining something to continue to fit their needs. Willpower, iteration, and time investment.

Meanwhile, people trying to make “good” teamgame maps can’t be fucked to put a modicum of effort into making their maps good. If they even try to make a map at all. If you patrol the vaults you’ll see the result. 5 minute garbage.

And yet, when it’s time to complain on the forums and make cringe statements like:

You deserve to be banned from the forums for such BLATANT, INTENTIONAL LYING.

You all seem pretty motivated, don’t you?

Perhaps if spite wasn’t FAF’s main fuel you would have fixed this problem already. Lord knows you discuss it every second month.

If you want gap to go, make something better.

I fully support this proposal! - "If you want gap to go, make something better."

@biass said in I cri everytim:

Dual gap became what it is due to an audience of people constantly refining something to continue to fit their needs. Willpower, iteration, and time investment.

Meanwhile, people trying to make “good” teamgame maps can’t be fucked to put a modicum of effort into making their maps good. If they even try to make a map at all. If you patrol the vaults you’ll see the result. 5 minute garbage.

And yet, when it’s time to complain on the forums and make cringe statements like:

You deserve to be banned from the forums for such BLATANT, INTENTIONAL LYING.

You all seem pretty motivated, don’t you?

Perhaps if spite wasn’t FAF’s main fuel you would have fixed this problem already. Lord knows you discuss it every second month.

If you want gap to go, make something better.

This is an absolutely brilliant observation.

So basically we should look for the most popular competitive map at 500-1300 and refine that one?

Though that HAS been happening with map generator, constant refinement for a competitive experience.

The most popular map on FAF is sentons, 10% of all FAF games ever were sentons. Yet this is an anomaly and not sure how much can actually be learned about player preferences from it. I think sentons is so popular because it was “the supcom map” used in trailers, which combined with how ancient it is just kept old players playing it. Trying to just make a new sentons map won’t be popular because it lacks all the background surrounding sentons that made it popular and so people will just ignore it. Can’t even get people to use a version of sentons that removes the asymmetry between both sides because that’s apparently considered heretical.

@ftxcommando said in I cri everytim:

The most popular map on FAF is sentons, 10% of all FAF games ever were sentons. Yet this is an anomaly and not sure how much can actually be learned about player preferences from it. I think sentons is so popular because it was “the supcom map” used in trailers, which combined with how ancient it is just kept old players playing it. Trying to just make a new sentons map won’t be popular because it lacks all the background surrounding sentons that made it popular and so people will just ignore it. Can’t even get people to use a version of sentons that removes the asymmetry between both sides because that’s apparently considered heretical.

Senton

Senton faf version

adaptive millenium seems to become more popular as of late btw.