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

Would you pay me $100 from FAF funds to stick with FAF? Why not? If not, why would you try to spend $100/head to get new people to play FAF? That's basically what it would cost.

Even if 10% of a streamer's audience decided to try the game, how many of them would stay more than 2 weeks?

If FAF is going to spend donations to recruit new players, what does that tell the people who donated? "Thanks for the money, we will use it to replace you."

Money should be spent on retention of high-level players (through cash prizes for winning tournaments) and in recognition of creating new content (e.g. pay $100/map to the makers of the top 10 new maps each year).

Another option - invest in passive index linked share funds with the aim that the approximate long term average income yield from such investments could be used to fund server costs in the event future donations weren’t able to cover future costs (i.e. deferring the ‘problem’ of what to do with the spare/excess funds in the event donations continue to significantly outpace such costs).

Paid tutorials and how to's, we are severely lacking

Small bonuses for the dev team, $10 is better than nothing.

More tournaments. We need a very good spread so all players can play not just the super good ones.

I dint read the whole thread before I wrote this so apologies if its been covered already.

I think funds should be used to fund any infrastructure improvements that are deemed to be currently inadequate or that could be considerably improved, as an example the servers themselves (not sure if FAF owns them but if it does then perhaps a nice upgrade or if we rent a hosted server then improving our service provider or moving it to a better location ect)

I'm just a dumb carpenter so I don't know the ins and outs off all this stuff but you see the point. I am in the early stages of making a tutorial and would never want to be paid for something like that...I think when a game like this is kept going by volunteers then more people have to be willing to volunteer to make it better without the expectation of getting money. The best FPS game in the history of the world was BF 2142 and it was kept alive for a while but it soon died (after bf3 released) because so few in the community were willing to donate their time to play/promote/develop it... We are lucky that FAF is still so strong and better than ever (despite what the haters say when they cant find a lobby) and the best way to keep it alive is for the people who love this game to help out where and when they can and to have as good of an infrastructure platform as we possibly can. If the development team is aware of a glaring need that would be solved with financial investments than that should be the focus imo.

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

I think funds should be used to fund any infrastructure improvements that are deemed to be currently inadequate or that could be considerably improved, as an example the servers themselves (not sure if FAF owns them but if it does then perhaps a nice upgrade or if we rent a hosted server then improving our service provider or moving it to a better location ect)

The Servce we have and are looking to upgrade too we have more than enough funds in the bank to cover it for a whole year.

I'm just a dumb carpenter so I don't know the ins and outs off all this stuff but you see the point. I am in the early stages of making a tutorial and would never want to be paid for something like that...I think when a game like this is kept going by volunteers then more people have to be willing to volunteer to make it better without the expectation of getting money. The best FPS game in the history of the world was BF 2142 and it was kept alive for a while but it soon died (after bf3 released) because so few in the community were willing to donate their time to play/promote/develop it... We are lucky that FAF is still so strong and better than ever (despite what the haters say when they cant find a lobby) and the best way to keep it alive is for the people who love this game to help out where and when they can and to have as good of an infrastructure platform as we possibly can.

If the development team is aware of a glaring need that would be solved with financial investments than that should be the focus imo.

Money wont be spent on dev time how can you give X dev money when Y dev did Z for free

@rowey Like I said dude Im a dumb carpenter...in my mind the "dev team" is anyone who does anything official with FAF. I dont know how all this works and what each specific team is called and who does what...I kinda said that in my OP...dont overthink it. My point is just that I think the money should be spent on physical things and not time doing things people in a volunteer community should do anyway such as tutorials or advertising.

All popular faf streamers stream team games. It is much more spectacular and more fun. And do you know what's not fun in faf? game network code. I don't know if we can do something about it. I hope. A new player simply will not stay if he sees several games that ended in disconnects.

My opinion:
1-Stability
2-Integrade faf in to steam somehow (most likely not possible, but that is the biggest on)
3-more easy modding
4-more Single / Coop Campaign with different difficulties (most rts players dont want want to play vs player / dont have the time to learn the game)
5-Noob game matchmaking
6-Automatch making with no visible ranking (like tft/lol normal mode. it is equal to ranked, but you will not find any score)
7-Pay some streamers how are into strategie in general to try the game. If 0-4 it good the will then create there one content from now on.
8-more visible custom game modes ->phantom/survival matchmaking or tab with

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

My opinion:
1-Stability
2-Integrade faf in to steam somehow (most likely not possible, but that is the biggest on)
3-more easy modding
4-more Single / Coop Campaign with different difficulties (most rts players dont want want to play vs player / dont have the time to learn the game)
5-Noob game matchmaking
6-Automatch making with no visible ranking (like tft/lol normal mode. it is equal to ranked, but you will not find any score)
7-Pay some streamers how are into strategie in general to try the game. If 0-4 it good the will then create there one content from now on.
8-more visible custom game modes ->phantom/survival matchmaking or tab with

1- Stability of FAF has only recently been a more pressing issues lately up until then the stability of the game has been rock solid.

2- We cant integrate faf into steam as we technically just a mod for the game with a client for it.

3 - How would you want modding easier ? we can only use Lua and the blueprints as they what the game offers us.

4 - Campaigns can take long time to make and design. i recommend joining the campaign discord and offing help their.

5 - Noob Game matchmaker not sure how this wouldn't be abused ?

6 - the plan was to have the rating in matchmaker hidden with your league rank but nobody has got around to doing this yet

7 - we don't have that kind of of disposable budge to be paying this streamer over this one and then i just resolves in drama for why X got sponcerd over Y and then the game is more complex than just one streams worth.

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

but not even close to enough money to do things like try to get the IP for FA

What is the cost of copyright for SC:FA? (I mean the rights to publish SC:FA that Nordic Games owns)

@nflanders nobody knows due to nobody could get a response. More that we could afford.

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

@nflanders nobody knows due to nobody could get a response. More that we could afford.

I read old topics, they wrote that Nordic is the only company that responded. Nordics wrote that the source code is lost. Did they ask about buying rights?

Square enix bought the IP. It's impossible to geht a response from them and buying the IP would be pretty useless to us anyway.

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

Square enix bought the IP. It's impossible to geht a response from them and buying the IP would be pretty useless to us anyway.

Correct me if I'm not mistaken. Square Enix have the right to create, for example, SupCom 3.
The rights to SC:FA belong to Nordic Games. Why get a response from Square Enix? I'm not a legal expert, but Nordic Games has everything the FAF community needs.
And you need to negotiate only with Nordic Games. Am I wrong?

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

[...] and buying the IP would be pretty useless to us anyway.

I wouldn't agree to that. Imagine we could distribute SC:FA for free. Steam linking/ GoG linking still puts off a lot of new players.

Nevertheless. People always say the IP is here or there. Can someone give an actual proof or is it all hearsay?

Afaik, Nordic owns the publishing rights for SC1. Squeenix owns the publishing rights for SC2 as well as the overall IP.

We can see Squeenix still owns the trademark here, with the latest update on it being on 2021.

Either way, I can't imagine any company letting go of an IP for anywhere near cheap enough for a bunch of people on the internet to afford. I'm talking several million if not 10s of millions regardless of if a game is in active development.

Fact is, FAF existing just increases the IP's worth even more so we're making it harder to buy just by being here.

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

I'm talking several million if not 10s of millions regardless of if a game is in active development.

Isn't that too much for SC:FA?

Nordic Games acquires THQ's Darksiders, Red Faction and more in $4.9M bid

Nordic Games will acquire over 150 individual games along with SC:FA for $5 million.

@snagglefox is right, FAF has added value to Supcom.

Would it be worth it for FAF to contact Nordic Games\Squeenix to see what it would cost or to get more information such as do they still have the source code?

@thecore

Would it be worth it for FAF to contact Nordic Games\Squeenix to see what it would cost or to get more information such as do they still have the source code?

I think attempts have been made and the reallty is that they don't care much for a hand full 2000~ player base, and yet they not going to relinquish the IP to us cuz because of us IP is getting value that we will never be able to buy out.
Source code is at most likelyhood lost since they are not even attempting to make a remake that is pretty cheap to do all things considered.

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

Would it be worth it for FAF to contact Nordic Games\Squeenix to see what it would cost or to get more information such as do they still have the source code?

Nobody stops you from trying. If against all odds they give you a positive response feel free to contact an association board member for further negotiations.