Posting Restriction for Balance Discussion

@sladow-noob While looking for explanation of the vision change, all I was able to find was 'it's a bugfix, not a balance change', despite it obviously making a difference to balance. I did ask about quite a bit, and it quickly became apparent that it hadn't been discussed anywhere public on discord or the forums. I'll try to keep a more vigilant eye on farm's stream, although without a 'search function', it sounds like a pretty bad place to have to go to understand how high-rated players felt about the change. (I do think I watched a relevant twitch video at the time, looking forward to the explanation, and getting none; but I might have dreamed it!)

Regarding rating and discussion, I've personally enjoyed exploring 'what if' scenarios in general discussion areas, but as I said I don't make official 'balance suggestions', and when I comment on those threads I only try to re-iterate what I've heard to players say, or reference actual unit stats for objective discussion (such as me mentioning that an ED1 shield costs <5% the cost of a T3 power for cybran). Still, I might well have been grossly mistaken about the 'pro'/balance team opinion on that, and maybe cybran will be getting hitpoint buffs to ensure that their reduced hp buildings never actually result in cybran structures dying to less shots.

What I've found about rating as I've been playing and chatting more, though, is that many of the players who I've been listening to quite avidly don't even play certain game types, and it takes time to learn which voices are relevant to the game types we personally play. This 'required rating' metric for discussing balance would have to ensure that a player was versed in all areas of the game, I imagine; so that they know all the implications of their suggestions? Or is that not the suggestion, and as long as someone is good at something, their opinion is valued?

It all sounds a bit elitist to me tbh. I think there's already too much elitism in this community, where a newcomer can't get a game precisely because they're a newcomer!
I think the best solution is to let people discuss what they want on discord or the forums, and ensure that the balance team aren't clueless wackos like us peasants!

@sylph_ Farms usually announces the balancetalk-streams in the announcement-channel on the FAF Discord and it should be on the news as well afaik. so that's definitely something to watch out for. Besides that I do remember explaining the vision change like two or three times, however I cannot tell you whether it was in public, in DMs, ingame or in the FAF-client since I'm active everywhere. There is also an explanation here though? Even tbf that wasn't the first thing which came into my mind but I was pretty biased since I've talked a lot about it in the past.
https://patchnotes.faforever.com/balance/3761.html#vision
If you don't get an explanation in the stream, feel free to ask in the chat - that's the whole purpose of it.

What I did forget to mention in a previous post: There sadly are so many clowns/trolls already which ppl don't take serious anymore nor listen to, compared to actual useful posts they clearly dominate. So it's really easy to get put into that "troll"-drawer.
Not exactly sure what you mean with the "which voices are relevant to the game types"-part. Imho as long as the player is good at something, I try to understand their thought process more. E.g. it doesn't matter whether you play ladder, gap, astro or 4v4 TMM, if I read smth like "I just kill sniperbots with two bombers all the time" it's simply an opinion I don't value as high cuz it completely ignores the existence of shields and AA. There are patterns however, e.g. <1200 tend to waste a lot of mass, or gappers tend to snipe a lot and turtle, or ladderplayers tend to avoid mex upgrades etc., so it's not really a question I can answer in a simple reply like this.

I was actually thinking about something the other day though, it kinda fits your last paragraph. Since I've joined the balance team for the simple reason I play low rated games and get their opinion, I was thinking about being the "go to"-station when asking for a (serious!) balance-take. E.g. the TML-one which I'll mention in a meeting. But since I know that I'm not the most non-toxic person on FAF, it's not as easy to tell whether it'd help or how I should even announce that effectively; The core thought of "balance team are elitists and 2000+ ladderplayers are the only relevant people" is simply way too deep in some minds out there. (e.g. Evildrew's post)

Since the messages are getting a bit long atm, if more ppl want it, I can create either a discord-message which I'd link or a forum-post about my opinion what situation the balance takes from lower rated people have and how large their impact is

@sladow-noob said in Posting Restriction for Balance Discussion:

Not exactly sure what you mean with the "which voices are relevant to the game types"-part. Imho as long as the player is good at something, I try to understand their thought process more

When people are talking about when to upgrade MEXes, or how to fight against PD creep and the like, the fact that they're playing 4v4 or 1v1 is absolutely massive. That's all I was getting at - that it took me a while to start to understand which 'expert opinions' actually applied to the games I was playing.
For example, your comment: "There are patterns however, e.g. <1200 tend to waste a lot of mass, " really doesn't apply to 1v1 games! I play against 1v1 ladder 700's and 800's that never waste a single point of mass, like the 700 and 800 teamgame/global players seem to. It's very much the norm to waste zero mass at 700+ 1v1 rating.

The fact that Snowy picked a single metric to make a few people look really bad, when many other, less-exploitable metrics would cast far less of a shadow over those involved, is only an aside...
The bigger issue is telling people of any skill that their contributions are not welcome -it's a great way to kill a community, not improve it!

"the simple reason I play low rated games and get their opinion" - You mean you make custom games to play them? Or you make smurf accounts? I imagine it's the former, for training? You'll have to play some with me sometime, I could use some advice about where to move my commander to resist raiding!
That being said, I think lower-rated players do a far better job of communicating the experience and potential changes that might make lower-rated play more fun, than pro players can, whether the pros are destroying low-rated players in custom games or not!

"The core thought of "balance team are elitists and 2000+ ladderplayers are the only relevant people" is simply way too deep in some minds out there"
, FWIW I don't think that in any way! I'm very glad the balance team are top-rated players. I've been a top-player in other games, and totally appreciate how much better they understand the ebb and flow of any game! I do think that contributions can be valuable at all skill levels. I also believe that balance discussions could benefit from being publicly viewable, but this might just be because the first major 'issue' I saw from a patch, which I had lots of questions about (vision change) didn't really yield any discussion when I was searching.

I'll get onboard with hanging up my balance-discussion cleats (my rating is 400 git.at.me) if the message given to low-rated players when they try to contribute is "snowy801 decided your rating was too low for you to have an original, nuanced, and relevant opinion".

Seriously: It's a bad idea. There's like four people who are consistently clogging up the balance discussion channel with bad takes. Warn/ban those people and moderate the channel if you want it to improve.

@sylph_ Ngl the ~700s I train in 1v1 ladder still do a quite bad job at their economy / floating / wasting mass, that's the main reason they're 700 ranked. So far my experience;

Thing is, that I can understand snowy. He's decently high rated so he doesn't suffer the other problem I'm about to mention, but he's still looking for indepth analysis and the difference between e.g. a 600 and him is just massive so he understands the dynamics better and don't want to simply look at the stats. E.g. Freeman does a lot with sandbox and stats, which is nice and all, but I personally don't really care if blazes are stronger than yenzenes cuz t3 shields exist in the game. Which he doesn't do in sandbox cuz he's talking about just t2. And the same is probably with snowy and the other topics. The other thing is that if you want to learn as a new player, having lower rated players give advice isn't always a good idea. I personally learnt other games as well and had the bad luck of a low ranked explaining stuff to me which I applied, so yeah. You can guess why I didn't become good. But that's not rlly my main point since it's not the training channel (besides that your responses so far were decent so don't misunderstand this please).

I do play low rated games with my main account, I don't smurf anymore since I got perma banned for it years ago lol. I use some games to train someone in there by following what they're doing but most of the time I'm just playing, seeing what people rant about.
Funnily enough I asked a while ago if I could see the balance channel to simply.. well.. see it. And since I can see it now (due to joining) I can tell you that it makes literally zero difference. A few random numbers and that's about it, most of it happens in VC anyway and since everyone has a decent understanding of the game we don't go into detail (since we know what each other mean) aka. lower rated people prob won't even understand most of it without having 10 different questions. So I can see your thought and I shared it, but I can tell you it wouldn't matter. That's why Farms does the balance-talk streams now to explain it so everyone can understand it and ask.

@clyf said in Posting Restriction for Balance Discussion:

I'll get onboard with hanging up my balance-discussion cleats (my rating is 400 git.at.me) if the message given to low-rated players when they try to contribute is "snowy801 decided your rating was too low for you to have an original, nuanced, and relevant opinion".

Seriously: It's a bad idea. There's like four people who are consistently clogging up the balance discussion channel with bad takes. Warn/ban those people and moderate the channel if you want it to improve.

Pretty much this, cuz let's be honest. Lower rated people can provide insightful opinions too. Just look at all the ComradeStryker posts. So yeah, remove/warn the offenders and call it a day.

@sladow-noob I appreciate the reply.

If you take any of my comments to another area, though, it should either be:

1. Side-point, but seems important: The fact that global rating currently doesn't seem to change when ladder matches are played.
   (I really don't have many games played, nor a massive rating! I just think the metric used here is a bad one, especially given the lack of ladder games played by other contributors.) or:
2. I believe that this quote has things the wrong way around:
   "Anyone should be able to create a balance suggestion or discussion post, provided they pass whatever minimal criteria already established........ From there, only people above a certain threshold (whatever may be established idk) can actually comment on the discussion post."
   I think the problem is people with no real confidence being able to start balance topics. (I don't start them, since I don't believe my understanding is good enough to do so... If I have thoughts, I chat with good players about them!)
   Even low-rated players are generally able to help re-iterate the reasons that XXX is the way it is, imo.
   I don't find myself disagreeing with pro players very often in those balance suggestions. The problem really does seem to be allowing the same low-rated players to start as many balance suggestions as they possibly want.

All that being said, I think locking posting restrictions for low-rated players absolutely might be too strong a 'fix'. Maybe restricting balance suggestions per player /month might be a better idea, to encourage people to chat in general areas before putting out an 'official' balance suggestion.

(Again, thanks for your patience and contributions)

edit: I think @snowy801 found the wrong 'sylph' when checking ingame accounts (mine has an underscore - "sylph_"). Not that it matter much, since the global ratings are close between the 2, and I think they're a bad indicator when used alone this way.

Regarding your comment about 700-rating 1v1 players floating mass - I just don't see it! My 1v1 games against such players usually (I'd guess 3/4 games) have both players on zero mass floated all game.
Still, my point about different game types can be demonstrated elsewhere - such as your comment about blazes not being better than yenzynes since 'T3 shields are a thing'. From the 1v1 games I play (and also those I watch, such as the recent 'pro' invitational that turbo won) T3 is quite, quite rare, and Yenzyne having no T2 shield support is a huge factor that weakens them; on TOP of the fact that blazes (range, firerate, speed) are better than yenzynes even without the t2 shields that aeon can back them up with! Of course, balance doesn't exist in a vacuum, if that was your point, but some game types really don't allow T3 to balance T2 discrepancies like that.)
Point is, balance discussion are dependant on the gametype being played, and slapping a global rating on people to silence them seems counter-productive.

discord balance area opened to allow people to casually post outside of forum restrictions, now we need to bring forum restrictions to discord balance area to stop the same low effort shitposts gg

I mean, we just need mods to work on it:

@endranii said in Posting Restriction for Balance Discussion:

I mean, we just need mods to work on it:

Pretty sure having bad takes on balance is not what this rule is meant to be about...

I don't think the name and shame in OP is very nice.

For me personally the biggest hindrance in reading balance posts is the argumentation. This applies across the board to all ratings really. If there was a nice summary of everyones point of view I would likely read them, however in reality the threads tend to be branching arguments which rarely add any real substance and often appear more socially motivated than motivated by any enthusiasm to contribute to balance. Discord "forums" are particularly bad for this reason. I'd like to see just some nice bullet points or lists of pro/cons and such.

@redx said in Posting Restriction for Balance Discussion:

Pretty sure having bad takes on balance is not what this rule is meant to be about...

Does something like this look like a balance take that is only hindered by the low rating of the poster?

I agree that there should be moderation to prevent the balance threads to become a complete clown fiesta

@redx

A good majority of the "front page" of balance suggestions is low/no effort posts by people who've explicitly said they have nothing better to do. It's low hanging fruit. Even just trimming the bad topics would help immensely. Adding "downvotes"/hiding downvoted posts would as well (not sure how that would be implemented technically).

@Blodir

For me personally the biggest hindrance in reading balance posts is the argumentation.

I think the only solution here is to be the change you wish to see in the world. Contribute thoughtfully, stay on topic, ask other people to do the same/be respectful, and summarize the framing/points of agreement/disagreement whenever appropriate.

@clyf It still won't solve the problem you see every day in general and also in a lot of discussions, where people come in and ask a question underneath the message that answers that question.

People don't read, they just post without ever looking at any messages send. But that is not limited to low rated players or even to newer lesser known players, this happens all the time causing a lot of discussions to go in circles.
But that is just a reality you have to accept and you can at most be prepared for it, by having the fitting answers at hand / knowing where you already answered what question.
(basically people feel like blodir, not wanting to read the 500+ messages, but still post some random stuff without making any effort of checking if their argument already has been brought up)
I'm not saying people need to read all 500+ messages to be allowed to post their idea, but they should at least use the search function once and post their idea in a careful manner. (like saying they didn't read the history and ask if X has already been talked about compared to "are you all retarded, just do X")

I really don't think the problem is a player's rating. I think the problem, if anything, is that:

• The opinions of TOP-rated players, particularly those on the balance team, need to be (seperately?) publicly viewable.

That way, people who want to talk about 'what if's', or earnestly ask questions that can be answered, get to do so in the public balance discussion areas on discord or the forums, and get a fun, lively, and perhaps even useful discussion going.

While people like snowy801, that only want to hear the opinions of 'pro' players and/or those on the balance team, could read the discussions leading up to potential patch changes if they were made public
(perhaps a 'summary' could be prepared - I imagine lots of people would be happy to make such a report, if given access to those discussions.)

Still, this is only my feeling... I am holding back on commenting from any more balance discussions to satisfy snowy and similar members, because I'm not here to upset people. x

[edit - This originally quoted BlackYps, and sounded confrontational when it wasn't supposed to be. I removed the quote. ]

What? Maybe this is a misunderstanding. My point is that the balance discussion is useless not because low rated people participate, but because shitposters degrade it. The shitposters should be dealt with, there is no need for a general rating requirement

@sladow-noob said in Posting Restriction for Balance Discussion:

@Deribus Do you have an answer to it by any chance? Afaik I remember talking with you about that impact

Yes I did talk to the Balance Team about their thoughts on the current state of the Discord Balance Forum. My concerns are not so much a rating or games played requirement but people who by their own admission have no idea what they're talking about. Such as this conversation:

There's a ton of "suggestions" at the moment which can be summed up as "Wouldn't it be funny if the game were massively changed in this way? I have 0 coding ability and don't want to learn, so instead I'm going to shitpost in the unlikely event someone else puts the effort in that is so obviously lacking from my post."

Balance Team feedback was essentially to leave the Discord Forum for shitposts and the more serious suggestions can get put in the Balance Forum here. As such I haven't any efforts to clean up or enforce more stringent requirements like we have in the actual Balance Forum.

@deribus Was more referring to the thingi how ladder / TMM rating influences your global rating xDD

But that's also interesting to know; I do agree but it's a bit weird to have it split but ignore one half of the balance suggestions. But ig if it's clear (dunno if it was announced somewhere) it's okay to treat it as smth not really relevant.

Ah yeah we had that discussion a loooong time ago. In any case I don't think it's relevant here