What would be an efficient use of FAF's funds to improve FAF?

FAF has enough funding (for things that aren't tournaments) that we potentially could do things like adjusting the servers or promoting FAF to help grow the playerbase (but not even close to enough money to do things like hire a full-time dev or try to get the IP for FA). So, realistically, what do you think would be an efficient use of FAF's funds? Specific suggestions would be nice.

PS: There are some things that would have the right price, but would also require developer time to accomplish (and we have that in limited supply), and thus might be less viable than some alternatives that don't require a lot of developer time.

marketing to increase playerbase? Avoids the tricky issue of paying for some dev work when other dev work is free.

@maudlin27 said in What would be an efficient use of FAF's funds to improve FAF?:

Marketing to increase playerbase?

Yes but we still lacking the way of keeping the said players... So promoting the game is good but we also get players natruly about 1k~ a month and most of them dont stay for long.

Would be a waste of money until we find out first why we are growing so slowly.

Spend the money on retaining them then

How do you know that we have a less than average retention rate?

Do another user group study to see the onboarding issues now since the steamlink page was made more steamlined. If it's still a big problem, we're probably losing half the retention thanks to that. If nobody cares about that being a problem, then it's pointless to cite retention as a problem holding external promotion back.

in terms of paid stuff I can think of nothing better than paying for promotions.

And nothing worse than "paying someone to work on our retention" when so much other work is done for free. It's also a uselessly vague suggestion.

Does anyone have any specific suggestions?

For example, if you think we should use funding on promoting FAF to get new players, what specifically do you think we should spend it on for that? Youtubers? Writers? Podcasters? Influencers? Any specific people, channels, apps, groups, or organizations?

If you think we should spend money on improving retention, how do you think we should realistically do that?

As another idea, perhaps we should use funding to try to promote FAF specifically towards people who would be interested in contributing to a project like FAF? If that would get us some more volunteer developers, for example, that might be quite worthwhile. Does anyone have any particular ideas about a good way to try to do that, such as some key places or ways to promote FAF towards potential contirbutors specifically?

@hinthunter It's not a waste of money to get new players, as even if only some of them are retained you end up increasing the player base. I'm also not convinced that FAF has a poor retention rate relative to other games - given how old the game is, it's impressive that it seems to be growing rather than shrinking, which suggests it must have a reasonable retention rate even if there may be room for improvement. I'm also not sure what increased funding could easily do to help improve the retention rate significantly (whereas with marketing there's a clearer/more direct relationship).

In terms of what kind of marketing I've honestly no idea what would be best, other than that any marketing should be targeted at audiences who are likely to have an interest in rts games (rather than more general based marketing). One option could be finding some youtubers who have a significant following and who post videos on RTS and get them to do a video on FAF, but I've no idea how much it would cost.

With any marketing I'd also suggest doing just 1 method at a time for a period, and making sure we have stats on player numbers by date both for the period the marketing takes place, and the similar period the last year (which I think we already do), to try and get a very rough indication of if the marketing has a noticeable impact/if there's a noticeable spike in new player numbers in the short term following the promotion or event being funded.

Maybe pay for RTS focused youtubers or streamers to play/cast the game. I don't really know many, but I do follow Lowko for SC2 replays and he's always been a great caster. I wonder if he'd be interested in sponsoring FAF.

Game has fundamentals issues and its hard to have retention unless you are dedicated to improving or you play purely for fun and eventually people who play purely for fun go away.

I think a lot of people also play pvp a few times then just quit because toxicity and just generally ass maps/players on global.

I don't think most play ladder Because it's not pushed enough to the front. If anything we need to start making matchmaker more of a focus and push global into a arcade type style like SC2 does.

So paying many to promote FAF is a huge waste of money when nobody is dedicated to actually dealing with core issues that just make players not want to come back.

Everything money wise for tournaments, promotion etc could be a lot more if we had a more dedicated fan base instead of people who just play with 0 interaction. I think that stems from a toxic mentality and an inability to actually change major components of the game and not only the game but how even the client is structured and etc.

@azraeel said in What would be an efficient use of FAF's funds to improve FAF?:

Game has fundamentals issues

Elaborate

and its hard to have retention unless you are dedicated to improving or you play purely for fun and eventually people who play purely for fun go away.

goes for all games, that is normal. widely appreciated game = good retention, less appreciated game = less retention. FAF is an RTS game which are known to be unpopular

I think a lot of people also play pvp a few times then just quit because toxicity and just generally ass maps/players on global.

toxicity exists in all games, and players who do not like global are generally recommended to try tmm

don't think most play ladder Because it's not pushed enough to the front. If anything we need to start making matchmaker more of a focus and push global into a arcade type style like SC2 does.

When you click the "Play" tab in the faf client it opens up the Matchmaking tab. They are aware it exists. People don't play ladder because they don't like ladder, and people don't play TMM because they want to play their own maps

So paying many to promote FAF is a huge waste of money when nobody is dedicated to actually dealing with core issues that just make players not want to come back.

u mention core issues again without elaborating what these are?

Everything money wise for tournaments, promotion etc could be a lot more if we had a more dedicated fan base instead of people who just play with 0 interaction. I think that stems from a toxic mentality and an inability to actually change major components of the game and not only the game but how even the client is structured and etc.

lotta big words that hold no meaning. What exactly will a more dedicated fan base do to increase tournament/promotion funding? I don't know of any gaming communities that fundraise money for the developers to do stuff. Very unrealistic to expect this
"instead of people who just play with 0 interaction. I think that stems from a toxic mentality" no it just stems from the fact that people are here to play FAF not to donate money to promote FAF

and again you mention issues with the game and client without giving any examples

@azraeel said in What would be an efficient use of FAF's funds to improve FAF?:

Game has fundamentals issues and its hard to have retention unless you are dedicated to improving or you play purely for fun and eventually people who play purely for fun go away.

I think a lot of people also play pvp a few times then just quit because toxicity and just generally ass maps/players on global.

I don't think most play ladder Because it's not pushed enough to the front. If anything we need to start making matchmaker more of a focus and push global into a arcade type style like SC2 does.

So paying many to promote FAF is a huge waste of money when nobody is dedicated to actually dealing with core issues that just make players not want to come back.

Everything money wise for tournaments, promotion etc could be a lot more if we had a more dedicated fan base instead of people who just play with 0 interaction. I think that stems from a toxic mentality and an inability to actually change major components of the game and not only the game but how even the client is structured and etc.

I kind of agree on many aspects. Marketing without improving the accessibility to the game and the motivation to come back is not an efficient use of the money.

If you want more people to stay or come back you have to consider your audience. Generation Z is not so eager to get into steep learning curves and has a low frustration tolerance. So basically you need to "dumb" it down a bit for players new to the game and make a reward system where they can gain coins or rank or something to keep them motivated.

Specifically I would suggest the following:

• An optional Ladder which is unranked so people can just fool around while learning the game and try new stuff without being punished losing rating points.

• An automated "noob" friendly Dual Gap (I know, I know, but people love it) bot that creates a game noobs (definition: < 50 games and 800 Rating maybe) can join anytime and just start playing as soon as it's full (auto balance). As rules you can put 10min build up time and ban nukes, that shoud keep them entertained for hours while getting the hang of the game and learn to love it.

• How about making new "Skins" as reward for playing x amount of games or reaching a rating? Can be just a new ACU skin for the start and later maybe from other units as well. I know, this is probably the most difficult one to implement but also something that could motivate a lot of players to play more or come back to the game to earn new skins or whatever.

People don’t play ladder because there is a fundamental dissonance between what the game is marketed as and what the game is.

The reality of FAF is that it is an economy centered tactics game. The tactics don’t matter unless you can do the economy because the game is built on soft counters rather than hard counters for the most part. A guy with better macro will beat you if he just dumps mass into garbage as long as he has 2.5x the mass in it.

So that reality makes teamgames that drastically simplify the eco situation much more popular. It isn’t really fun to go into the big robot epic nuke wars and explosions RTS and be irrelevant min 8 during end of t1 phase because you don’t know the efficiency of map control in scaling compared to any other method.

As long as the big marketing aspect of FAF is big boom robots and epic explosions, the game will inevitably be attracting people to the game modes that let you attain either.

@thomy100 said in What would be an efficient use of FAF's funds to improve FAF?:

How about making new "Skins" as reward for playing x amount of games or reaching a rating? Can be just a new ACU skin for the start and later maybe from other units as well. I know, this is probably the most difficult one to implement but also something that could motivate a lot of players to play more or come back to the game to earn new skins or whatever.

i want ACU emotes. we already had the fortnite dance and orange justice dance animations, would be hilarious if u could do that shit ingame

@ftxcommando Sup Com 2 was exactly trying this no? Easier economy and more big robots. It didn't work out so well.

Marketing doesn't have the aspiration of being "realistic" so people dont get disappointed. The goal of Marketing ist to get people interested and try it out. Watching the sup com trailer (the best RTS Trailer of all times imo) again it does a decent job showing that the game is about base building and (very) large battles with some cool units and even nukes. If you ask me it already attracts the people who are less into Starcraft 2 and more into big scale Macro heavy RTS games.

I think considering that there are not many new RTS games around this game just needs a bit more visibility, easier accessibility for new players and a "modern" reward system and it would do well gaining more players.

@waffelznoob said in What would be an efficient use of FAF's funds to improve FAF?:

@azraeel said in What would be an efficient use of FAF's funds to improve FAF?:

I don't know of any gaming communities that fundraise money for the developers to do stuff. Very unrealistic to expect this

Arma 3, Squad, Sanctuary, Operation Harsh Doorstop, War of the Worlds,
Not even getting to modders which is what FAF is.

Arma 3's RHS Team, CUP Team, OPTRE Team, Warhammer Team, Webknight
Squad's Star Wars Mod, Middle Eastern Escalation
Operation Harsh Doorstop is an entire game funded by the community for the devs and is free.
War of the Worlds is completely funded through Patreon and is made by 1 dev
DCS World aircraft mods funded by the community
Mount & Blade Bannerlord Mods - Old World, Eagle Rising
Total Warhammer 3 - SFO Grimhammer, Radious, Mixu's Unlocker, etc
Ready or Not's release was funded by the community via early access
Arma Reforger - RHS Team
Stellaris - Gigastructures, Real Space, NSC
Insurgency Sandstorm - ISMC
HOI4 - (Literally every big mod)
Barotrauma

I can go on and on about mods and even games being funded so i think its you with the unrealistic expectation lol

@waffelznoob said in What would be an efficient use of FAF's funds to improve FAF?:

@azraeel said in What would be an efficient use of FAF's funds to improve FAF?:

Game has fundamentals issues

Elaborate

Sure, now please understand this is my personal opinion, but I don't think I'm the only one that feels this way. You can look at purposed Balance Changes for one.
But I also think that the way we handle stuff as a community is toxic. It's not that the game should be without toxicity. It's unrealistic. It's just the way we introduce players into the game that really has to improve if we want better retention. I did go on a bit of a rave in that last sentence which I did delete.
We need to put more effort in actually teaching players the game via tutorials & more community engagement. The biggest thing is how must players don't know anything about how the actual community leadership works. I think there's certainly an amount that just don't care but theres also an amount that just don't know how to get involved. Specifically tournament sponsoring.
I think Jip showed the best method of getting people involved with development. I think we can learn and apply that to methods of getting more TDs to do tournament and maybe even getting Promotions into the ability to just fundraise money for Tournaments so it's actually worth it to get into the scene of FAF. We can even double this down with paying Casters if we want so that we cast highly competitive games in highly paid tournament (highly paid for faf that is).

I do see potential if we get more balance issues fixed and THESE ARE ALL MY OPINION!

• T3 Air Nerf,
• Navy being more interactive and fun to play (ask a lot of players and they will say they hate it. I will even make a forums post about it.)
• Economy Scaling should be nerfed.
• Allow the late game to be more volatile and the early game to be less volatile.
• Make all units viable in some sort of way even if its not directly combat related
• diversify factions (this probably needs a thread too)
• Nerf Reclaim Gains (so late reclaim gains isnt an autowin)
• Rebalance SACUs to be more diverse and interesting
• Buff T1 Air Slightly (Mostly ints and bombers)
• Nerf/Reduce Intel Ranges on Static Intel Buildings
• Nerf Commander Gun Upgrades
• etc (ill make a thread about this too in the future my overrall balance changes i would make)

Just a flyby early in the morning but making a survey thingy system when someone goes to uninstall the client would already be a leg up to understand for what reason they maybe be leaving, assuming they are leaving or that retention rate is not as great.

This whole "we must first work on retention before we work on promotion" idea is a fallacy in my opinion. Yes, if you double retention then you double the player base, but if you double player influx you double the player base as well. For this we don't even need to know if our retention is good or bad. Why do you think we have so many russian players? Because of russian casters. Russian players face the very same retention issues, but there are noticeably more than you would expect, because there is more russian promotion.
If you want to work on retention you should focus on everything that keeps people from playing the game at all, less on things like making them better players. That is less relevant to be able to enjoy the game.
Things that come to mind are:
Account creation and steam linking
Setting up AI games
Setting up campaign games without getting crushed by the hard settings
Setting up sandbox games