Username rules updates

I do this by utilizing the renowned friends list feature

I think that there are technical, social as well as UI/UX aspects to this problem that go way beyond just "what moderation would like to have".

1. Technical

As @BlackYps said, when names are referenced in a tool in any way, the ID for that name should be lookup up and used internally as soon as possible (so if there is a UI form with a name input in the client, the client should resolve the ID right after the user inputs it).

2. Social (recognition)

Members of a social community (which FAF is) want to be able to recognize other members (even after coming back after leaving the community for some months). This is really a basic social need in any community for mainly two reasons:

2.1. Social self-policing

Every well-working social community has some form of fluid social contract between each other. Moderators/bans can and should never police all behaviour that is taking place inside a community.
Instead, the community itself enforces certain standards of behaviour. This happens automatically and is important. It is a major part of the "culture" of any community, and it requires people to be able to remember social misbehaviour of its members, which requires recognizing other player on FAF.

2.2 Social hierarchy

In every community, there is some sort of social hierarchy. In FAF there are two major hierarchies, skill and contribution. Generally, community members want to be able to respect other people inside this hierarchy. This is how legends are born inside a community and also requires recognizing other players.

For example, if a random player joins my 1200 rated games and absolutely destroys me, i will probably not react positively (i got smurfed?!). However if that random player is instead Blackheart, my reaction will be totally different because a legend player just joined my game.

3. Social (self-expression)

However, it is also true that self-expression is a good thing! Popular communities often provide a whole range of customization to how you appear to other people (not just name but usually also additional bits and pieces). Im not going to go into detail here because plenty of people have expressed how important this is to them.

4. UI/UX

The goal should then be to make both possible through UI/UX. And it is important to realize that a player ID is not sufficient to address the recognizability problem. Humans are not good at memorizing a random number per player.

One solution was already mentioned: Fixed player handle and changable player name. In addition

• the player handle must be shown in conjunction to the player name
• OR it must be trivially easy to look up the player handle for a given playername (for example by showing the handle when hovering with the mouse over a player name)

Another solution is to move the self-expression from the name to some other self-editable part of self-presentation (many games have "titles" or "status text" that is shown under the names of players).

silly billy

@ftxcommando said in Username rules updates:

I do this by utilizing the renowned friends list feature

Your name changes in the friendslist too, so that still doesnt help much

@firv said in Username rules updates:

@ftxcommando said in Username rules updates:

I do this by utilizing the renowned friends list feature

Your name changes in the friendslist too, so that still doesnt help much

Pretty easy to glance at friends list, see a name you don't recognize, then right click and figure out who it is. Takes a whole 10s tops and you rarely have to do that unless you have half of faf in your friends list.

Is any actual revision going to happen about the rename interval or are we in the FAF stage where if things get ignored they’re no longer considered a problem

Why so passive aggressive? Just ask for an update

Because we had a mod say a few weeks ago here that it was a communication mistake to just issue this change on the same day they announced it and now we’re back to having to ask mods about anything actually going on instead of that introspection resulting in a proactive change in keeping people aware of what is happening.

@jip said in Username rules updates:

Why so passive aggressive? Just ask for an update

We're still discussing the matter internally and will get back with an update when that's concluded. It's a difficult issue and we're taking our time with it to give it the attention it deserves.

Sorry, more soon!

In the nicest way.

A difficult issue is the issue of banking and sanctions discussed with the tournament team and that long area of discussion.

This is the ability to update your username....

As an infrequent player who can only get a few games in a month, rarely checks the forums or discord, I think I'm with the majority of players (by count if not by playtime).
My opinion: I do not care about this rule one way or another.

However most of you should be banned for rudeness. Fucking hell. It's just changing your name.

Edit:
To add few other thoughts:
More people watch FAF than play - it is confusing when people change their names from what they are generally known as.
A lot of youtube comments on casts are people explaining the name changes of high rated players who are regularly casted; "TheWeakie is farms" etc. Perhaps that actually helps channel engagement but still.
I agree how much this should be allowed to constrict the people who actually play is debatable.
Perhaps some tooling to help casters manage the names of people in replays would help this issue. Something to view name history or a mod that will allow you to override display names based on the user id. I don't know how technically feasible that is @Jip

I like the "Nickname @Username" idea, it would be a good compromise.

If high rated players cared about that name recognition (in Gyle casts because that’s the implicit example being cited here) they just wouldn’t change their name.

If viewers cared that much about knowing the scene or the players involved, they wouldn’t be watching a guy that still thinks players that quit 6 years ago are around. It’s just evidently not a big concern judging by how little people care to move to casters vastly more actively involved with FAF. The theoretical argument about production quality doesn’t even stand because casters have moved on from FAF for the lack of that audience movement and instantly started getting 50k+ views on videos in other environments.

Not that I have a problem with the solution there, but the reasoning centered on viewers doesn’t make any sense to me given the signaling they’ve done through the years.