Best game mode to win people over for FAF?

Got some friends to buy FA during a Steam Sale. The problem is, I can't get them to actually play the game 😑

Only a couple of times they gave the game a half-baked chance.

My question is, what's in your experience the best way to get them hooked? Especially when the person in question isn't willing to spend a lot of time trying FAF.

Campaign or vs AI is pretty boring, because you miss the thrill of a human opponent. On the other hand, if I bring them online, they will get beated by a -100 for sure.

Any ideas?

Check out my maps here:

Madness 1 - 10

https://forum.faforever.com/topic/480/h-master-s-maps

the recent campaign missions like holy raid or blockade where you are relying on your mates to make it through, it helped me brining back some old players and gave me a second breath for normal FAF experience.
though it has to be said-it depends on their playstyle, if they are FPS players than it's gonna be problematic with any kind of FAF mode, but i'd go with coop since it's balanced around your progression and is forcing you into strategic decissions, makes it easier to get some sort of faf emmersion.

queuing with a newbie to show him the beauty of tmm and meeting tagada be like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLcRpdZ0Xb0&ab_channel=Tomoko

You can make playing vs AI more interesting by ratcheting up the AIx multiplier. Survival is also a fun way to get people into the game. When each player has their own lane in a survival there is less potential for one good player to dominate the match and take away their opportunity to play.

One way to get people interested in playing a particular game mode is if they a streamer/caster play that. It doesn't have to be you personally. If we get some noob streamers to cast survival games, that could help to get potential players interested in playing those.

IF they are interested in playing competitively, I would set them up with my "Stone Age" mod, which is in the vault. It limits the players to T1 tech only so they can practice fundamental RTS concepts without the extra complexity of worrying about T2 tech or T2 mexes. They don't get sidetracked upgrading mexes, they can just focus on collecting/spending resources to spam factories/units and basic things like scouting, unit movement, unit composition, ACU positioning. New players who are interested in competitive play would learn a lot more by playing with "Stone Age" than by playing the whole game, because they would get rolled by people who efficiently make T2 mexes and invest in high tech stuff that the new players don't know how to deal with.

It rewards you for getting the fundamentals right and makes it easier to measure how successful you are at the fundamentals because anyone can count who got more reclaim and who made more factories/tanks. That becomes much harder to judge when T2 tech is in the picture.

Also, even if they get rolled by -100s, if they're interested in learning competitive play, it shouldn't take that long before they can beat some of the people on ladder. Even if you're just winning 25% of the ladder matches, that feels a lot better than 0%. If they're interested in competitive play, there should be no shortage of equally-bad opponents.

Could try phantom. There is some strange appeal to playing happily with then betraying friends.

You could try playing some games with just you and your friends. Some 1v1s or team games or even a free for all. That way you can teach while playing a "real" game. Then you just make it unrated so they dont get set behind.

@relentless said in Best game mode to win people over for FAF?:

Could try phantom. There is some strange appeal to playing happily with then betraying friends.

If the skill difference is very big... Phantom is a boring start... and then you die.

Thanks for the tips guys. They like to play League of Legends, a game that never had any appeal to me at all. Maybe the difference between LoL and FaF is just too big for them to cross.

Check out my maps here:

Madness 1 - 10

https://forum.faforever.com/topic/480/h-master-s-maps

I think mobas are quite similar to rts in general, at least compared to some other genres, it's basically just an rts but you control one super unit...

Honestly a lot will depend on how he plays league. As he can either be a monkey clicking dopamine seeking yasuo main in pursuit of next amazing synapse play or big brain macro player who plays the most basic shit and just outplays you on the map or really anything in between.
But yeah, there is an actual overlap in the player base, hell just go around FAF discord and you will easily find players who play or played both of those game and enjoyed them.

Anyway what you can try to sell him is being monkey/orangutan rushing guncom player on ladder, live and die by the acu gunplay.

@archsimkat said in Best game mode to win people over for FAF?:

I think mobas are quite similar to rts in general, at least compared to some other genres, it's basically just an rts but you control one super unit...

No. Sorry but no xD

The controls scheme is VERY different. This is like saying, Diablo is similar to an RTS, because its top-down and you control a unit.

All core gameplay concepts are different as well.

Thermo map is always fun and it plays a lot like a tower defense game, killing waves. Add mods like double mass, vampire or build range etc then tinker with the difficulty and wave sizes and the fun is endless 🙂