Title: A Time For Change: FAF Community Balance Team
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@arma473 Balance and map design are intertwined. A mapper can think about how a map will potentially play when designing it, factoring in things like how different units' weapon ranges will or won't reach certain mexes from certain locations, how small water bodies might give hover units advantages, how a mountain in a certain place might protect an area from T2 navy fire, etc. A mapper can also factor in player preferences and many other things. However, that doesn't mean there aren't maps that promote aggressiveness. More 'aggressive' maps tend to be more likely to snowball in one team's favor (where once one team gets an advantage, they just keep increasing their advantage and the other team is rather unlikely to be able to make a successful comeback). The matchmaker team, for example, generally tries to avoid including maps that are too prone to snowballing. Combine that with general player preferences and the concept that maps like Dual Gap and Astro are so popular compared to more aggressive maps, and it seems like mappers who want their maps to be used more are inventivized to not make them too aggressive in nature. Despite that, there are actually many maps that are more aggression-prone, but it seems like they tend to be played less on average. So, I don't think this situation necessarily stems from a lack of maps. That might be a contributing factor, but so might the game balance, not to mention player preferences.
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@arma473 said in Title: A Time For Change: FAF Community Balance Team:
Assuming that the top people at FAF agreed with EvilDrew that the problem is that the passive-defensive style of gameplay is too common, the best way to address that is by changing the map pool, not by tweaking unit statistics.
If there aren't enough good aggression-promoting maps, then we need more.
The reason we don't have more is the lack of easy-to-use mapmaking tools. Making maps for FAF is ridiculously hard.
This isn't a reason to be angry at the balance team.
Make a map that is "aggressive" without balance changes:
- earlygame is even more volatile and games end in 5 mins
- games snowball really hard
- games still slow down in t3 stage because of the massive difference in how t3 and t1 works
Map design is not sufficient.
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@thecodemander said in Title: A Time For Change: FAF Community Balance Team:
@mach Bruh my point was that *even if * someone made a bad balance change, its not bad in the sense that it kills the game in the same way that nothing changing and things being boring might.
Balance being so subjective, there will likely always be someone to argue for it even if they are alone.
My point was that arguing against balance changes being made is what is bad. At that point, if you cant no longer make changes, just archive the game and everyone leave it to die.
changing nothing wouldn't kill the game because the game isn't boring, people still play steam fa on balance from a decade ago, if your game needs constant changes to remain at baseline of fun, then there is something fundamentally wrong with it
balance is not subjective, it is simply number of viable options and getting every unit equally used in the game instead of 1 unit dominating (ex. asf) or having unevenly distributed usage per units, balancing in itself however is not simple, removing existing gameplay through balance changes will obviously annoy anyone who enjoyed it as will changes that remove something while adding nothing
I already said changes in themselves aren't bad, bad changes are bad, and changes for sake of change (aka to "keep things fresh") are bad which is what I'm arguing against, not against all balance changes
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Don't want to get involved in this discussion, but for what it's worth I believe @Tagada is doing a good job.
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With all Nomads has going for it after more than a decade of development, including extensive co-op campaign missions, it's time to embrace Nomads as FAF's official 5th faction. Let's give this soon to be elected balance team something to dig their teeth into, under the guidance of the existing members, presuming they don't all get elected based on the outstanding work they've collectively done up until this point in FAF's glorious history.
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@cunnismeta People can’t agree on balance with the 4 current factions and you want to add the very imbalanced nomads to it?
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Integrating Nomads is not only off topic - it is also never going to happen. They are a featured mod that is ranked. It is the best they'll ever get.
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Pretty bold of mirddes to post on his alt
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I’ll support Nomads getting integrated in “reg” FAF/Matchmaker does when SCTA Does (read never)
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As many of us may be aware, most of the FAF userbase plays singleplayer matches with bots. Ultimately as long as the balance isn't "broken" that vast majority of solo faffers doesn't actually care about this thread, or it's outcomes. An amazing job has already been done, and every bit of polish that continues to be added is celebrated by all.
Some people dare to dream big, other people are too critical to allow others this same luxury.
Live long and prosper, and may the Force be with you, always.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
I vote for more voting.
I abstain. -
@cunnismeta Your question is off topic. Make a new topic for your question
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@jip ok, fair point and well made.
My hat goes off to all you do, I have enormous respect for all of your contributions. -
T thinker referenced this topic 8 days ago