Title: A Time For Change: FAF Community Balance Team

[ThomasHiatt]

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.

[Zeldafanboy]

@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.

[BlackYps]

I wonder when we will need a balance update for chess to keep it fresh and innovative.

[ThomasHiatt]

A fighting game, and a game entirely oriented around remembering lines, practicing with computer engines, and drawing more than half the time.

[Zeldafanboy]

You lost me

[TheWeakie]

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

and a game entirely oriented around remembering lines

a good bo in faf is infinitely more important than a good opening in chess

[FtXCommando]

Somebody wanna explain the logistics of how this shit would even work as a vague proposal?

Dude 1 gets elected as mr streamer arguing why game enders are op and washers are weak rn
Dude 2 gets elected because he is also mr streamer but plays a lot of 1v1 and wants to keep the game the same
Dude 3 gets elected because he schizoposts regularly about adding armor types to things
Dude 4 gets elected because he vaguely wants more variety in things to do and gives off good vibes

Do these 4 get elected at the same time?
Do these 4 get elected in rotation terms so half go in and half stay?
Who leads these 4?
Who decides the vision of these 4?
Who gets to prioritize what change matters?
What happens when 2 of these guys block everything the others want to do because "it's not following my vision" and now the only solution to the drama in a democratic vote is to unleash a slew of balance chamber PMs explaining who is the asshole?

Nobody thought about any of this of course, but we all enjoy good vibe posts where we can project our good idea winning because it's obviously the good idea.

I guess we're just going to release a random patch of half implemented ideas when half the guys here realize work requires work and get lazy and don't finish their work but they still want to play with their fun stuff before their term is up too.

[BlissfulNoob]

@matches How is it that a guy that joins our discord and that we are nice to and play with randomly leaves and then shits on one of us. Drew would crush you on literally any map noob.

[FtXCommando]

Drew crushes a noob -> his opinion matters more

Drew gets crushed by any dude on the balance team while they're in a heroin induced fit of euphoria -> they're still evil communists with no thought in their ideas

[Evildrew]

@All - Guys, most of you are drawing conclusions where you lack knowing the facts to make them. You assume too much and know too little. Instead of interjecting yourselves in the conversation with insults aimed at me, just go to the back row and take a nice warm cup of stfu. I will not address all comments, I will limit my replies to those of value out of the current 67 in order of merit and to the others that need addressing. Thanks to all others who posted something relevant to the topic that I do not address directly.

@Mach You made the most intelligent posts by far. You get the point about the black box, the backroom deals. You appear to appreciate that the best balance comes from increasing gameplay optionality based on having imbalances whereby advantages over the entire spectrum of choices neutralize each other. The balance teams over the years have often missed the greater picture of the balance between economy and military, offense vs defense but I suppose I'm not telling you anything that you don't already know.
Your worry about unserious candidates succeeding is understandable but I do not think that the process would have to allow unserious bids that do not address FAF as a game in its entirety to be put up for the final vote. I know some are trying to pull this into the ridiculous, but it can be done in a professional and serious manner. The goal is to advance the game, not accelerate its demise.
I doubt that more than 5 people in this community have even tried to put together models to establish relationships between different aspects of the game when thinking about the balance, let alone put together a balance mod to test their assumptions but I think it is as good a time as ever to up the quality of the game.

@arma473 BHEdit was a carbon copy of the pre-august 2016 balance mod also known as 3650 with maybe a handful of small changes to stats. Superior Setons Balance Mod, also a carbon copy, had more prospects to improve gameplay in my opinion but didn't go for very long I think.
EvilDrewBalance as you call it existed starting End 2016 out as pre august 2016 balance, developing into pre august 2016 balance EDI, bringing many improvements to the game myself and then by adding in other improvements from other mods such as EQ later morphed into FA RTS. I just don't have the will or time to keep updating it every time a patch comes out and breaks all kinds of stuff. You can see several of my own improvements in almost the same iteration in today's game. Some were implemented in a failed form due to lack of proper understanding by those responsible at the time, however if you did the research you would know that many of my improvements and changes were adopted years later from when I pioneered them without credit given. Could I prove in a court of law that they were plagiarized, UI don't know, but why would I really care to even try that. Anyone looking at it objectively would notice a pattern leaning to such a conclusion when seeing it happen 5, 10, 15 times. Some of the best fixes though due to their level of complexity I assume and other unit relevancy enhancements to increase optionality did not spill over. I presume because no one cared, very sad for all of FAF in my opinion.
Sheeo told me years ago I could not have my balance mod ranked when I asked after EQ got ranked which limited my balance mod's potential reach, people often don't want to play unranked constantly. They want the reflection of their progression. So the mod path has always been impractical.

@Wheelie Why I wrote this... Well I could have just watched you and your group continue to fail the community and just looked away and ignored all the comments that I read from people having meltdowns wishing the bleeding would stop, but the truth is; I had to do it because somebody had to do something and looking to my left and to my right there was no one who was going to say what needed to be said.
You say it maybe would be more useful to start a proper discussion. Well I was open to give it a shot and bring many of my improvements to the game on Github but I got these types of replies like the one SpikeyNoob referenced. What would anyone conclude who gives a flawless mathematical demonstration and receives an answer decrying the methodology which is logical and sound as "criminal" and blasting out conceptually and factually false statements about T3 Pgens and T3 Mass Fabs vs RAS SACUs. Who would compare a RAS SACU to Mass Fabs and Pgens and not just the RAS upgrade without the SACU cost when specifically adding that the SACU has all these other benefits. It is called double counting. I can't help people who get the equation wrong and then refuse to listen to someone whose analytical skills are superior. He may decry that he is the balance in a Faucian fit because he carries the title - fine - but that does not make any claims relating to the balance of the game true and this is where a major problem lies.
"First of all, calculating the income of T3 mexes without mass storages is just criminal. A similar is true for mass fabs without their adjacency to T3 pgen. If you calculate the efficiency of a 2 T3 mass fab + 2 T3 Pgen grid you will see that they are more efficient than RAS SACUs. On the other hand, RAS SACUs have BP, are less volatile, can move, don't take space, can fight etc. " https://github.com/FAForever/fa/issues/4365
This is not the only incidence of double counting/double buffing/double nerfing we have seen over the years where only 1 targeted change should have been done, even the last patch has some of the same problems. So is that really me being unwilling to have a proper discussion?
You see Wheelie you are in the wrong about this, portray yourself as the victim and accuse me of being the person you are seeing in the mirror. We all do this from time to time so I wont hold it against you.
The question I ask myself is: Should I waste my time trying to collaborate with people like that? No, I will not avail my time or material to a group of people who from my point of view lack the wisdom to recognize its value. Tools can do a lot of good if used correctly but can be very harmful in the wrong hands, especially in the hands of people who do not grasp the underlying concepts.

@Femboy Yeah, WTF have I ever done to contribute... I guess nothing since some links on the old forums broke and for the people on this forum the rest has disappeared in the archives for no one to ever see again, but wait! Look, some of it still works, https://forums.faforever.com/index.php and look you can still download the Pre August 2016 Balance mod EDI in the vault and see the date of the last version 38 and contrast it to http://patchnotes.faforever.com/.
Who came up with the idea to reduce T3 air speeds and slow down Sam missile projectiles and implemented it fully functional in his mod?
Who came up with the idea to change the target bones on units when lazer weapons would lead in particular fast moving units missing them and implement a fully functioning solution achieving 99% accuracy? (Something Jip started working on I think last year because developers on Slack back in the day didn't like my solution for whatever reason and thought leaving it as broken was a better course of action) / (Even in the last patch the Rhino was changed to having projectiles because it misses, something that could have been fixed and left as lazer weapon many years ago)
Who came up with the correct assessment of how to fix the imbalance between T2 subs and T3 sera subs by changing the intel settings when the facts said the T3 sera sub was just as good based on HP DPS and cost but yet kept losing?
Who came up with the idea to increase torpedo damage on Wagners, Bricks and Othums when they were immaterial aspects of the game?
Who posted on the forums that T1 transports should have a dummy weapon to use Ghettos properly?
Who came up with the idea to reduce the number of TML missiles per launcher?
Who had the idea to put a minimum range on TMDs to stop them spinning as they get hit?
Who discovered that Salems while on land would be missed by some units firing at a bone outside their hitbox?
Who identified that the crash damage on T2 transports was less than on T1 transports?
Oh and one more I can think of off the top of my head . Who came up with the idea to reduce the sonar on torp bombers first as part of a more extensive navy intel rework to increase the viability of subs? A change that was implemented only on the torpedo bomber after being seen first in the Pre August 2016 Balance Mod but missing the point so basically achieving nothing since T3 sonar covers the entire pond on many 20x20 navy maps.
Will you go check any of these facts or doesn't it fit the narrative you have embraced?
So when you ask what have I done to contribute to this game just ask yourself who conceived of and was first to implement those things in the game that materially improved it? Yeah, you're looking at him. Did I ever complain or protest those changes being implemented? No. So get off your high horse, pack your bags and get out of my face.

@IndexLibrorum The difference between several suggestions and the entirety of a set of changes getting implemented can be the difference between the overall idea behind the changes working or not working. If I did an extensive navy rework f.ex. and they then said 'yeah, we like half the changes let's do this but not that', the chances of many of the core concepts underpinning those changes would not be observed in game and it would not achieve its goal of enhancing gameplay to the intended extent. I have tried to read through all of ComradeStryker’s posts which I have seen before but to me those are mostly small proposed changes that do little to affect the game overall. Anyone can get small changes approved when they are obviously needed. That is not what is being discussed here.

@FTX You are the one who demanded that sparkies get to build radar even though they have an onboard radar and who for whatever reason cannot think about putting 1 T2 engineer on a transport with 5 sparkies to make factories+radar. You think because you get preferential treatment that you need to defend the status quo. That might work for you but doesn't work for the other 98% of the community. Had I or anyone else been in control than the ones who you play with all the time, your proposal would have been instantly dismissed.
Regarding how this would work in my opinion:
Candidates suggest how to reshape the game according to their vision and specify what they would change in a detailed changelog and explain why they think it would improve the game.
I am not even against a jury of reputable and impartial persons (i.e. not you) to disqualify candidates who make proposals that are clearly not serious. Someone who just says they will reshape the game to Astro with no details would just be excluded. It is all about laying out a feasible plan and delivering on it. I don't know why you come up with the most extreme possibilities and present them as the norm. I think people with good ideas and good intentions would put together something serious.

@SpikeyNoob Your reasoning is logical but false. Yes I felt insulted by said person but no, this post has nothing to do with that. My active contribution to the game is only available under certain circumstances which were not present from a certain point onwards, so I withdrew my content out of self-respect. That's it.

[Azraaa]

@Zeldafanboy

How does any of your comments actually make sense. I am going to defend the Top Tier Players of FAF.
Let's be honest here, if the guys who are the BEST at the game are saying the game is stale and boring isn't that a bad sign? I mean sure FAF has tons of players come and go through but like not nearly enough to fund/sponsor a continuing evolve of meta and pro players appearing then retiring. Sure, we have that one guy who makes it to the big leagues.

I've started to agree with the majority of this thread more and more.
The Simple Demand is actual change to the game. That makes you come into the game and have to really think differently for each faction maybe in tiers or just entire layers of the game. Whether that be through adding new abilities, units, roles, etc so be it.
I don't think you will ruin FAF by adding ANY OF THESE ideas into the game. Balancing is always risky imo, I think that some big game changing balance would revive FAF in terms of getting higher levels players who are burned out, don't want to play because the balance is basically never changing & they don't want to play a thousand different maps.
I am fine with that. I think at the pro level there should be a finite amount of maps you play in a tourney.

I support Pro Level Players deciding the Balance for FAF because at the end of the day if the majority decided we'd be balancing around Setons & Dual Gap. That's why i fundamentally disagree with Evildrew's public elections of Balance Team. No that's never the way we should go and I know some of you know my stance has changed hugely as I used to be on that same page but Now i'm completely against and I think Pro Players should own the balance team and should gather to decide the balance patches.

I think It should be in favor of keeping competitive play interesting while also providing & using Supreme Commander's WIDE AND VAST Array of Stats, Abilities, Roles, Layers, Enhancements, ETC! To Make the game so diverse that every faction can have multiple different playstyles on water maps, land maps, etc is just so critical but I don't think I have an opinion in that topic. I'm simply not good enough at the game to decide that.

I simply believe that if you guys want change, as pros, you all get together and decide it but try not to change it so much that just blows lower level players minds.

[Azraaa]

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

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.

I appreciate the response thanks for the insight!

[Tagada]

I am at a loss for words here honestly. I would really like to see your " flawless mathematical demonstration" but unfortunately, you've decided to remove and render all of your issues on GitHub useless since the balance team disagreed with some of your ideas. And yes, calculating the efficiency of a T3 mex without considering the mass storage is "criminal" and I stand by it, I don't think there is more to add here.
Over the years there has been a lot of talk about mathematical models that would model the game and its balance and be able to answer questions about units' power and their relative strength to other units. However, it seems like every time important aspect is omitted which is the sheer complexity of the game and all of the relations between different stats of units which often have very complicated and highly unintuitive or situationally dependent relations. That's why a single formula for a unit's strength doesn't and probably never will exist.
The other possibility is simply collecting lots and lots of data and creating some models based on that. The issue with this approach is that surprise surprise, we don't have that data, and AFAIK collecting it would introduce a lot of potential issues and isn't trivial to do either.

Just for clarification, I am not denying your contributions, you have suggested good changes before and found bugs, some of the most recent one like the crash damage of 2 Transports and Notha has been fixed with the most recent patch. However, it just seems like whenever someone disagrees with your POW on a particular balance issue you simply walk away from the discussions and blame it on their ignorance since obviously, their arguments are inferior compared to yours which are backed by flawless mathematical demonstration that couldn't possibly have any flaws in its reasoning.

[Tagada]

As far as RAS SCUs are concerned it is true that theoretically, the RAS upgrade is more efficient than the mass fab grid. However, this ignores the fact that

• You can't get the upgrade without paying for the SCU itself
• If you are interested in the purely economical aspect of such a unit the extra value you get from the HP, DPS, and BP may not be worth the extra cost

Here are some of the stats:

2 T3 Pgen + 2 T3 Mass Fab grid
Mass Income	32
Energy Income	3126
Mass Cost	14480
Energy Cost	355200
Mass Cost / Mass Income	452.5
Energy Cost / Mass Income	113.6276392

RAS SCU Upgrade
Mass Income	10
Energy Income	1000
Mass Cost	4500
Energy Cost	90000
Mass Cost / Mass Income	450
Energy Cost / Mass Income	90

RAS SCU
Mass Income	11
Energy Income	1020
Mass Cost	6450
Energy Cost	117100
Mass Cost / Mass Income	586.3636364
Energy Cost / Mass Income	114.8039216

RAS SCU adjusted for BP
Mass Income	11
Energy Income	1020
Mass Cost	5867.6
Energy Cost	114188
Mass Cost / Mass Income	533.4181818
Energy Cost / Mass Income	111.9490196

The BP adjustment simply subtracted the cost of T1 engineers with the same amount of BP as the SCU (56). This is to more closely simulate the cost of the SCU since we can assume that its BP would be used in most cases contrary to its defensive capabilities.

As you can see for pure economical scaling the Mass Fab grid is more efficient however the RAS SCUs have other advantages such as more hp, having DPS, being able to move, being a lot more compact, being less volatile, etc. etc. Simply speaking it's a trade-off. That doesn't mean that we, as the Balance Team, believe they are in the correct spot right now. On the contrary, there even is a PR that adjusts the SCU. It's currently in the development and testing phase and it will be merged in the next patch.

That doesn't change the fact that calculating these numbers without taking into account adjacency is bogus and far from flawless mathematical demonstration, and the proposed changes stemming from those flawed calculations were absolutely not acceptable.

[TheCodemander]

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

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" ...

Which is why I prefaced the my argument that even scenarios where bad balance decisions are made, its still at the very least keeping things fresh/new. Ie. changes for the sake of change is bad, but even then its not like such an approach is entirely bad. Yeah its not ideal, but crucially its not boring.

[maudlin27]

Going back maybe 1 year or more some of the complaints mentioned in this thread idve agreed with more:

• balance discussions being a black box where points discussed in the forums seemed to be ignored while units no-one mentioned as being an issue were changed without warning, with no visibility of the reasoning
• changes seemed focused in what was best for top level play in 1v1 games, with the impact in other popular parts of FAF and at lower ranks ignored

However Ive seen a notable improvement in both these areas - potential balance changes were highlighted in advance for discussion this time with the reasoning for then explained to some extent; planned changes that needed more time but were recognised as being required (eg GC nerf) were also noted.
Some changes were also clearly with a non-1v1 mindset (eg considering the power level of units and strategies in team game scenarios)

I still think things could be improved further (eg while I dont know how prevalent the view is in the balance team, Ive seen many people be automatically dismissive of the impact of a change on a dual gap game-however as one of the most commonly played games on FAF I think it should be considered as part of any balance decision). It’s also not always clear the extent to which feedback will be taken into account (but eg Tagada has often posted responses / explanations on points so this has improved from what I recall when I first came to FAF).

However I dont think balance by vote or user popularity is the way to go. Someone new to the game is going to have far less of an idea of what changes would be good/bad than someone with lots of games played at the highest skill levels, and if balance decisions become popularity contests it could result in very harmful changes and unintended consequences.

It sounds like FAF’s playerbase has been growing so I’d also caution against extreme balance changes for the sake of it/to try and mix things up, since they risk losing more players than they might gain.

Meanwhile if balance team members were voted for I expect it would lead FAF to being balanced around a handful of popular maps which would be worse long term for variety.

[FtXCommando]

It’s REALLY funny you want to do some democratic system and then say

“should I collaborate with these guys that don’t share my opinions? no”

What are you gonna do when some of them get elected, genius?

I enjoy your vague proposal getting even more vague solutions to problems. Now a jury exists? Who chooses the jury that decides the candidates? How do you decide when they are abusing authority? Can you be a jury member and a balance member? If not, doesn’t that mean the jury needs access to balance team talks to know what can be a good idea? Doesn’t that mean these guys are now unelected dictators you were just now schizoposting about?

“your sparky change would be instantly dismissed”

uh no cuz I would win a seat on the team with my natural charisma and then put it into patches not caring what a bunch of dudes that dunno what they’re talking about are saying. Nothing in my mandate said I had to work with guys that play essentially nothing but maps I don’t consider decent FAF environments.

I'm essentially never going to agree with dudes that are centered on dual gap/your map/astro/whatever in custom games because my point of reference is the matchmakers and I discount gameplay concerns that can be addressed by people simply adjusting the maps that were only originally created as a baby-proof variant of FAF meta 4-5-6 years ago. If the frame of reference is different, it makes massive amounts of discussion pointless because that is what decides your analysis of problematic units or game states. The nuke cost feedback is already an example of this. You can't compromise there, there are people that STILL think nukes are OP with the current change. You can only get somebody to see what you consider as the frame of reference and why it led to these changes.

[Mach]

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

its still at the very least keeping things fresh/new. Ie. changes for the sake of change is bad

I fail to see the difference between changing something to keep things fresh and change for sake of change, if you are changing something to keep things fresh, that is a change for the sake of change as far as I can tell

and I am not saying every change is bad, but all of them must have proper reason to improve existing gameplay, not just to do something "new", the change must not be to keep things fresh but solely to balance the game

[FtXCommando]

And to address this insane shit about "people I play with" do you know why I play with them? Because they're people that play near my skill level in the games I enjoy: matchmaker and just random high level custom games. The reason the balance team tends to be people that are friends are because it's a small community. Balance team members:

1. Have to have a similar framework to talk about changes coherently, t2 navy being good on astro is simply not a discussion that can happen.

• What does that mean? They're often playing together.

2. Have to have a decent basis of understanding of the game to gauge the impact of adjustments on said agreed upon framework.

• What does that mean? Either they have fairly large knowledge of the codebase to the extent they have played around with values theoretically or they have practical game experience which in turn correlates with higher rating.

So you're left with a bunch of people that play a similar type of games that are also all generally good at those games. Is it strange that dudes that invest their freetime into playing the same game in the same niche of that game would become friends? Especially if they then work to improve that game together through the years? Why is this some random conspiracy to you?

This reminds me of the conspiracy about how I was some evil dude that rigged tournies for his friends or only cared about the maps/ideas his friends made. Maybe it's because the people that I regularly need to associate with for things related to improving my area of FAF also end up becoming closer friends with me. I don't really get why this is so weird to understand. Do people not become friends with people at their workplace that they probably would have never spent a second thought thinking about in other environments?

[IndexLibrorum]

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

The difference between several suggestions and the entirety of a set of changes getting implemented can be the difference between the overall idea behind the changes working or not working. If I did an extensive navy rework f.ex. and they then said 'yeah, we like half the changes let's do this but not that', the chances of many of the core concepts underpinning those changes would not be observed in game and it would not achieve its goal of enhancing gameplay to the intended extent.

To translate and summarize, your position seems to be essentially: "Unless all my suggestions are accepted, it is not worth making any suggestions. Also, this means the balance team is the greatest evil that has spawned since the fall of the Third Reich."

I have tried to read through all of ComradeStryker’s posts which I have seen before but to me those are mostly small proposed changes that do little to affect the game overall.

I guess this just reinforces the point above huh? "No changes are worth proposing until the whole system is adapted as you think is needed." We'll just ignore the fact that perhaps the existing playerbase does not like to see the game's balance do a 180, further ignore that gradual changes over time is the main method of game balancing across the industry, and just conclude by dismissing the 7 chapters of suggestions provided by Stryker.

Anyone can get small changes approved when they are obviously needed. That is not what is being discussed here.

Yes, and that's the problem.

I would be happily participating in a discussion about required changes, if you were to care to name specifics and propose solutions. But you've not been doing that, ostensibly because doing that takes actual work and is difficult. You'd rather dismiss this option entirely, even though you've seen that that is a proven and productive method of getting your proposed changes into the game.

Alternatively, I would have been very supportive of a proposal to open up the balance team's discussions and thought processes to the public. Others have mentioned that a lot of thought and planning has gone into these changes, and I for one would enjoy reading the details.

Yet, instead you've thrown a temper tantrum.
I suggest you put some thought into what exactly it is that you want to achieve, and what the best way would to to achieve that. Trying to incite a revolution against imagined tyrannical oppressors and accordingly getting publicly ridiculed might not be the best course of action.