Title: A Time For Change: FAF Community Balance Team

I believe this calls for a community poll.

I don't see the argument with PDs. If you don't have some units with you, beetles won't save you either. Assuming the enemy is preparing for a T2 push, would you rather have:

• 8 beetles and a deceiver which will stall the push for 30 seconds and maybe kill half their mass cost if the opponent is not an idiot, or
• 4 PDs and a shield which will deal 400 DPS for however long you can stall the push with your ACU and units and give you a chance to actually stop the push?

As for raiding, I suppose people prefer raiding with units that can defend themselves and keep raiding if there's no response, even if they take a few more seconds to kill a mex. Versatility matters. Nobody builds beetles preemptively for that reason.

I'd choose the beetles against 20 pillars, 6 parashields, and an ACU tbh

Best combo is like 1-2 PD so the enemy gets confident and walks in and you bomb half or more of the pillars.

I kinda agree with thomas on the point that the game is pretty linear/predictable and there's not a lot of variation that you can do strategy wise. Nowhere near the lvl of other rts games that is anyway. I do not however think that making factions tech stages and/or units more balanced towards each other is something that negatively impacts that. I'm not saying here that all units should become similar to eachother. I'm saying each unit should have their own unique strength that's good in atleast 1 scenario.

If we would go back to old balance then there would be tons of units that would literally never be made and could simply be removed from the game. Aeon t2 stage was so bad you would always rush t3 land. I'm not saying the old t3 land rush power spike for aeon was a bad thing, but the lack of t2 certainly was.

In an ideal world we would have both together, and it is kinda true to some aspect that some of the strongest units were made weaker to be more balanced. Maybe too much, idk, it's hard to tell, but i still do think that some of them were more than justified considering their dominance.

I'm not sure what your (thomas) idea is for an sacu change that would make is less linear to fit in the tech paths that exist in the game. It kinda feels like an empty shout that everyone agrees with. Let's make these units special and unique so they're great to play with! Sure, how?

Personally my ideal future vision of the game is that it gets unit upgrades, armor types and weapon types all balanced to make the game a lot more complex and interesting. I wouldn't even mind adding new units. You can make snipers have special penetration dmg against heavy armored units like percies while making them tickle titans, you can add an expensive upgrade to give spearheads a homing ability, etc. The problem however with this together with other suggestions that were proposed in this topic is if people even want this and from the general understanding i have the answer tends to be no. It's to leave the base game as it is aside from some minor balance changes. This aside from the fact that making such things will cost a tremendous amount of time and manpower which faf in general doesn't have a lot of.

One remark to the OP: I honestly don't know why you even wrote this. Balance team members, both past and current, tend to be evolved in tons of different areas in the community. They make youtube content, cast for FAFlive on twitch (that was co created by a balance team member), make maps, are in the matchmaker team, are faf moderators, host tourneys (some donate their own money), you can continue. Most are in the faf association as well.

Now why do you think these people tend to be on the balance team. Do you think this is because they care about faf and want to help it in some way? Nah no way right. They're just evil dictators that want to change the balance in their favor to win some more games.

At the end of the day everyone spends their free time to try and help improve the game. Now you can disagree with the changes made, but instead of screaming like this maybe it would be more usefull to start a proper discussion where you use proper arguments instead of going full conspiracy theory.

@thewheelie said in Title: A Time For Change: FAF Community Balance Team:

I'm not sure what your (thomas) idea is for an sacu change that would make is less linear to fit in the tech paths that exist in the game. It kinda feels like an empty shout that everyone agrees with. Let's make these units special and unique so they're great to play with! Sure, how?

I can't say exactly since I haven't fully thought it out or done the work, of course, but I imagine there is a possible balance where you decide between making a T2 Quantum gateway or a T3 land HQ. SCU would obviously have to be cheaper, but could have some kind of support upgrades for your t2 army. Regen fields, bubble shields, chrono, etc. They can also have other combat upgrades so they can scale well into the T3 stage. With the factions having different power levels on T2 and T3 land, and different SACU options, it could potentially add an interesting decision and a lot of interesting gameplay. Putting SACU between T2 and T3 seems infinitely more interesting and adds more levers to balance with than keeping them in their post-T3 stage role or stupid RAS SACU spam.

It is a difficult path to go down that would require tons of work and testing, so I do not expect it to ever actually happen. That's just my SCU dream.

So easy to complain and talk about getting rid of current contributors and putting new people but what the fuck have you guys done to contribute??? Or do you just complain until someone does what you want?

An election? Do you guys know who gets elected? Politicians that don’t do jack. I prefer quality of play over popularity choosing how to balance the game.

I want to first thank all the members of dev and balance teams, you occupy a position where when you are doing things right, no one knows you are doing anything at all.

Conversely, any fuck up is an instant shit show hellstorm of nerd rage.

I have criticisms, and agree with many of Drew's points, but I wanted to point out that I think its easy to take criticisms as an attack or dismissal of the obvious work required. I don't have much rating but many games, and having played OTA as a kid, this game and community means quite a bit to me.

In short i don't think the criticism is with the goals or changes directly, but the second order effects the changes have.
Where perhaps the goals could have been achieved in ways less obvious but also less disruptive to existing meta. Thus requiring less energy to adapt on the part of players of maps considered highly popular but unsophisticated.

Just add shit tons of new units and this game will stop being linear Everyone just squeezed out every possible unit with every possible way

Another election thread would be great.
Wouldn't mind a balance 'todo' list though, or maybe there's already one somewhere idk.

@evildrew Your post is rife with generalities, but lack specifics. You spew accusations, but refuse to support them. For shame.

Have you seen @ComradeStryker 's posts? The lad wrote an essay's worth of suggestions so large, it had to be cut into several chapters and included a table of contents. He went into detail explaining the problems as he saw them, and offered specific solutions. And you know what happened? Several of these suggestions have since been adopted.

If you have a problem with the current balance, that is the post you should emulate.

You say the recent changes have ruined map designs. Which maps are these? You seem to have been unable to find any room in your post to name specifics. A quick look at the last 200 games you played shows you near-exclusively play two maps: a survival map, and a map that looks like what Settons would have been if Settons was a 10x10. You complain about a lack of strategic diversity and staleness, yet have you considered that perhaps your refusal to play more than two different type of games might be the cause of that? Is it not more fair to admit that you have a very specific preference for a very limited type of game, and that you don't like the balance changes that have been made? That would have been a post worth making, I would think.

Instead I get this barely coherent tirade describing a group of very motivated players, who are donating their effort and free time to improve a 15-year old game, as a "cancerous oligarchy". You call them "self-centred", inferior candidates, and imply they equal corrupt politicians and dictators. Do you hear yourself speak?

@thewheelie

To be honest, I agree with you but I also think that FAF is a bit nervous about doing any big balance changes. They, We, You (Maybe) want to preserve the the old Game. That is what FAF promises when new players come in. I however think that the Balance is already significantly different from the Base Game. I, also, think people want even bigger balance patches but I guess the question is what are they looking for?

I mean obviously as a nerdy LOUD Team Member. I have zero right to invest my own personal suggestions since they are influenced heavily from there. I think that I like some of your theory crafting though.

I think it comes down to what keeps the game "Fresh", "Healthy", and "Innovative"
For specifically Professional Players. I think everyone else should just have to cope, because realistically if you truly love the game you'll play it no matter the balance.

I really don't voice my opinion but it's sad to see Professionals not play as much on the top level because It's just not interesting enough. You are already so good and there's not many strategies you can make that would increase the competitive level for you guys. I think that's something Balance Team could be focused on introducing, new strategies on the higher end of levels. I do not know how you could do that but there's so many stats on every Unit I'm sure you could increase the skillgap of Units easily.

I watch a lot of Starcraft 2 today, and I have to admit that somehow they keep the game more fresh and interesting then we do at FAF. I wonder how they do that, I mean they just got their first balance patch in 2 years?
Professional Players were still coming up with new ways to play, they have less maps... less units.. and just overrall the game is smaller then Supreme Commander.
Just leaves me wondering maybe someone could explain.

Starcraft has millions of players all pushing a meta that evolves even without balance adjustments. FAF sees such things sporadically because it’s simply 100x or less the playerbase. Take walking mid on sentons, that came from zero actual balance decisions but simply an adjustment of map meta.

If FAF was pushing itself as hard as Starcraft, you would actually have the constant babyraging about maps meta make sense because everything would have timings down as hard as sentons with gameplay kinks like the midwalk being found.

As much as I miss Jagged balance, "bad" balance patches that cause people to change how they play the game, causes the game to play differently. Yeah being on the receiving end of new bullshit sucks when a change breaks something or causes new broken behaviours to emerge, but all of this can also be seen as keeping things fresh.

God forbid the game keeps you interested in it by keeping things fresh and new. Yeah finding new ideas that work with new balance isn't always fun, especially when its the enemy team doing the innovating but at the same time, a sandbox that never changes would very quickly become boring.

If you want FAF balance to never change and be exactly how you want it for gap, why not make your own balance patch sim mod with your balance and go play that on your map with whoever you want to play with?

ITT: Drew had a bad day and decided to vent, then got murked by the entire active player base for it.

Good content tbh.

It's called Forged Alliance Forever, not Forged Alliance Remixed or whatever. The job of the balance team is to make sure that each faction and the capabilities available to each aren't overpowered or underpowered in real games on most maps. The game isn't stale because the balance patches are too conservative (they aren't) or infrequent. The game isn't stale-- you are playing stale maps.

@zeldafanboy said in Title: A Time For Change: FAF Community Balance Team:

It's called Forged Alliance Forever, not Forged Alliance Remixed or whatever. The job of the balance team is to make sure that each faction and the capabilities available to each aren't overpowered or underpowered in real games on most maps. The game isn't stale because the balance patches are too conservative (they aren't) or infrequent. The game isn't stale-- you are playing stale maps.

I think the game is pretty stale and I play all the maps!

@blodir

Do you play Black Ops or BrewLan or Phantom or Survival or Battle Royale mod? Or maybe wait for Sanctuary to come out in a few months. Give those a try before irreversibly taking away the game that I'm not sick of. The very highest level players who have played trillions of games are not representative. Balance team is supposed to keep the game balanced, that's it.

@thecodemander said in Title: A Time For Change: FAF Community Balance Team:

As much as I miss Jagged balance, "bad" balance patches that cause people to change how they play the game, causes the game to play differently. Yeah being on the receiving end of new bullshit sucks when a change breaks something or causes new broken behaviours to emerge, but all of this can also be seen as keeping things fresh.

God forbid the game keeps you interested in it by keeping things fresh and new. Yeah finding new ideas that work with new balance isn't always fun, especially when its the enemy team doing the innovating but at the same time, a sandbox that never changes would very quickly become boring.

I thought the ultimate point of balance is to increase number of viable strategies and options while maintaining the existing gameplay, not "keeping things fresh and new" by doing random things to "mix it up", the end goal of balance is the state of game where it doesn't need to change, and any change would instead worsen the game and reduce number of viable options/strategies in it

If nothing changes then the only viable strategy is to create more refined build orders, timings, and general game plans for the maps. There are an infinite number of maps, so yes, you can technically do that forever. I don't think it is as fun as experimenting with occasionally changing units that allow you to do new things. I don't really like learning new maps or refining things, but I do enjoy thinking about what I could do on maps I already know with different balance changes.

The game is not its balance, and the balance is not the game. There's an infinite number of different unit stat combinations that are fun. The game doesn't magically become irreversibly trash when you make one of the planes fly slower and one of the tanks have a different role. If you claim to like the game then it shouldn't matter to you what combination of units are good and bad, that's not the game. The game is the core concepts like having a combat viable ACU, tech levels, experimental units, flux economy, mex upgrades, projectile physics. It's a strategy game where you take the tools available to you and concoct a strategy to beat your opponent.

@thomashiatt

It’s not about any single one unit. Imagine if you completely changed how someone’s main played in a fighting game, not because they were broken, but just cuz, then told them “you like Street Fighter so you should like this”. It’s nonsensical.