The End of FAF

[TheWreck]

Introduction
Supreme Commander is a game like no other. It has survived bankruptcy, cyber attacks, server shutdowns, and countless other issues but through it all FAF has managed to survive for over a decade. Before I go any further I want to thank everyone that has contributed to FAF and kept it alive all these years. However, for the first time in over 11 years of play I believe there is a very strong possibility that this game will no longer exist in the near future.

Is FAF really in decline?
It is no secret that FAF has lost a lot of players this year. The distributed denial of service attacks last fall undoubtedly contributed to many people leaving. New competition is also responsible for many people leaving. Similar real time strategy games such as Beyond All Reason have been a destination of many former FAF players because of the lack of performance issues. However, I do not believe these two things can actually kill FAF because in the last ten years there have been many intervals of time where we have gained and lost large numbers of players and I believe that we can recover from them. These two issues though are largely out of our control and while they are hurting the game they are not actually killing it in my opinion.

Why has the game survived previous setbacks?
The reason FAF has survived for so many years is because there are dozens of players who have played the game for over a decade and have played the game thousands if not tens of thousands of times. It may be easy to conclude that I am only talking but the 2k+ community but this is in fact not the case. Every level of play has players who have thousands of games over many years. In addition to simply playing the games these players also keep the game alive by doing the following: They are active on social media platforms such as Twitch and YouTube and help bring in new players. They actively train and post guides for new players so that they can learn the game. They play in tournaments which the whole community can watch and enjoy which can also help to bring in new players. Even though these players may quit for several months because of server issues or to play a different game I find that many come back after sometime because like me they love this game and know that there is nothing else quite like it. This however, brings me to why I believe that this game may imminently die.

Why is FAF dying?
In order for FAF to truly die the community which I outlined above has to start to disintegrate. The reason I believe FAF is dying is because many players that are a part of this community are quitting or are extremely unhappy with the way the game is being run. These players combined have contributed tens of thousands of games. In addition to playing the game these players have played in dozens of tournaments, trained dozens of players, and have written many helpful guides to help new players but now they are quitting and not planning on returning.

Why are community members quitting?
The reason the community is quitting is almost solely because of selfish moderation. To clarify selfish moderation are moderators who became moderators not to represent the community but because they had an issue with something the community was doing and they wanted to put a stop to it. This is does not mean every moderator is selfish but I feel it necessary to call out moderators who became moderators because "their reports weren't doing anything" or because they wanted a certain policy enforced harder. These moderators often lack seniority and understanding of the game but most importantly they do not represent the high level community because they have never played with them. Selfish moderation has caused multiple wildly unpopular agendas to be pushed on the community. In this post I will focus on the following unpopular policies: Banning players for base control k, banning and censoring players who use words that individual moderators do not like, and lastly the username rule change updates. All of these policies are widely disliked by the community but they are enforced anyway.
Base control K
Base control k is when a player decides to kill their base rather than their ACU. This is most common at the high level but can happen in lower level games. Players mainly base control k to stop someone from playing on when the game is clearly lost and everyone wants to play the next game but someone is refusing to recall. Given that generally there is only one active high level game going on at a time this is an effective way to save time but more importantly if the base ctrl k was unreasonable i e the game was not over then they will get kicked from the next game and not be able to play. If all else fails an individual player can always refuse to play with another although this is rare outside of setons and has almost never had anything to do with base control k. The most dreadfully obvious and intellectually lacking counter argument to base ctrl k is "why should one person take away someone else ability to play?". However, this fact ignores the other 6, 8, or 10 players in the game that would likewise like to start a new game. Additionally they can still waste time and play on anyway it will just be for a decreased amount of time which is the idea. In my personal opinion high level players have a good enough understanding of the game to have the autonomy to decide that the game is over. If someone wants to continue to play on after the base control k they can still do so. Regardless if you disagree with me the problem with this moderation policy is that the vast majority of the high level community is perfectly fine with base control k. Additionally the vast majority of the high level community has done a base control k before and banning every single one for the sake of consistency would destroy the game. Even the ban of a single active high level community member is near universally condemned because there are so few high level games. In the high level community almost no one reports for base ctrl k or flaming because in general these things do no bother us. The reason this policy is greatly harming the game is not because I believe that base control k should be legal but because the high level community believes it should be legal and they are completely ignored by the moderation team which has greatly angered players and has caused several to quit.

Censorship
Another policy that has been enacted by the moderation team that is destroying the game is banning players for the use of words such R.tarded or N.zi and other mildly offensive words. Although some of the more offensive and extreme words are not words that I personally say I do not want to have a smaller pool of people that I can play with because they said something I disagree with. While these words can certainly considered offensive it takes 3 clicks to get rid of them in game, in Aeolus, or in the discord, if you do not like seeing them. Once again I will call on the communities ability to address problems on their own. If I do not want to play with someone who says these things or I have problems with someone saying these things I can refuse to play with them or mute them. Again I will state that you can disagree with my stance on this issue but this is what the community believes and once again their grievances regarding the enforcement of this policy have been completely ignored.
The username rule change update
The single most egregious and selfish policy on this list is the recent decision to change the rules regarding username changes. To those unfamiliar with the matter the moderation decided to change the time jump between name changes from 1 month to a full year upending a rule that no one has had a problem with for the last ten years. This post was downvoted an astounding 44 times with only 6 non moderators in support of this idea. The discussion below included dozens of players grievances and suggestions but still the moderation team pressed onwards while completely ignoring them and they kept almost all the changes and were only willing to reduce the name change time to 6 months. Even still the moderation team insists that they represent the community when in reality nothing can be farther from the truth. This decision was the final straw for many esteemed members of the community who may never return because of this selfishness.

What can be done to restore the communities trust in the moderation?
Now we have reached my main reason for writing this. I did not write this article to argue endlessly the points I have presented up to this point. The community has spoken on each of these issues multiple times. I have written this thread because it is the moderation teams duty to restore the communities trust in the moderation team and ensure that the are actively representing the community rather than angering and ignoring them in favor of their own policies. To that end I propose the following changes:
An Immediate reversion of moderation policies that are extremely unpopular.
This isn't really negotiable.
Higher standards for the acceptance of moderators.
I propose that Moderators have at least 1500 games at least 5 years of experience and for new moderators to have had at least 100 games in the past year before they are accepted. A possible minimum rating could also be discussed.
I also call for some form of immunities for high level members of the community as well as senior players that are not as high rated but have thousands of games.
Exceptions of this can be for major in game exploits or for other extreme misbehavior.
Lastly I call for the ability to hold some kind of referendum to fire unpopular moderators.
The premise that a moderator can do whatever they want with no accountability must change. If a moderator enacts or bans extremely popular players they should not have immunity from being removed. While we can debate what form this can take there has to be some kind of check on a moderators power.
Final Thoughts
An honorary mention that I did not include in this post is that a number of community members have also expressed frustration regarding the development and balance team in relation to things such as tele Billy and area reclaim but I will leave that for another post.

[SainseRow]

People don’t leave the game because they got banned for stupid nickname. You’ve started with a real reason (connection issues, competition) and proceeded with proposing easy (relatively to rewriting p2p connection) moderation policy adjustment which has little to do with the problem.

[TheVVheelboy]

@sainserow
Well, watch me do it.

[Nuggets]

@TheWreck
just posting this here, what I said on discord.
I think talking about some kind of immunitie is completly ridiculous. MAYBE some kind of small exceptions or the like, but even that i kind of dislike (even if i were the one to have this). You are asking to have faith in moderation, but also have moderation be unequal to players. I strongly believe this is not the correct way.
The word or intent "selfish" in regards to moderation is kinda true in lots of situations, but a bit too strong of a word, i think.

Other than that I agree that there is a lack of trush in moderation. The main issue is that it is impossible (at least it feels that way to me) to refute any kind of change. I hate to bring it up, but the rename "shenanigan" is the perfect example of community feedback vs moderation stance. What results in that, is that people can't be bothered to formulate a complete and extensive feedback, as it seemingly does nothing. Thankfully FTX and Boom are still "resilient enough" to try to talk some sense into moderation.

All in all, i agree that what must be done is a reverse of quite a few descisions and discuss future actions and moderation rather than the rules.

[Nuggets]

@sainserow said in The End of FAF:

People don’t leave the game because they got banned for stupid nickname. You’ve started with a real reason (connection issues, competition) and proceeded with proposing easy (relatively to rewriting p2p connection) moderation policy adjustment which has little to do with the problem.

True, but also wrong. Nobody is leaving faf because of the rename-thing. People are leaving, because that was the last straw of a bunch of actions/changes.

[Dorset]

I've been playing this game since 2018 and have logged nearly 4,000 games. A good 2,000 of those are Astro.... Yeah I know I'm pathetic but I like the arcade aspect of it okay.

I played a thousand games of Astro before I ever tried map gen and that's where my bread and butter is now. I've gotten to know the community really well despite not being a discord person. Just playing with different multiplayer map gen games you get exposed to all the different clans and all the high-ranked players and despite a lot of toxicity there is 100x more positivity.

I have been very impressed with how many pro level players, yourself included The Wreck that will play in 1200+ games with professionalism and respect.

One thing that has always shocked me is the makeup of moderation/leadership group. I would fully expect people like yourself and the many other pro level players who have been active over the last 5 years to be a key part in the leadership group of FAF. I don't understand why that isn't the case. I'm sure everyone has different levels of time and effort they can commit to such things but over the past year or so I've started to realize that it's more political than that and it has always had me worry.

As I've said before this game has essentially changed my life. It is the only game I play. It is part of my culture and my way of life. I don't ever want to play a different game. But I'm very worried about the future of FAF.

It seems to me like some moderators don't have the best interest of FAF at heart because they don't understand the game and the community at the level required to have such a role.

I have always wondered what the peak version of FAF is and if we could ever get back there. There are so many updates and changes balance or otherwise I'm just not sure is worth it. I like the changes from a couple years ago that made energy be more important and prevented nukes from being rushed so quickly and slowed the game down a bit because I personally like a more slow and strategic game.

But lately it seems there are so many changes and moderation efforts that seem to go counter to the spirit of the community and the game.

I completely agree with you that there needs to be a standard set for who is in control of this and who makes the decisions all across the board. The pro level players clearly care about this game based on the number of games they play. I'm sure they would play more but as I've noticed it's harder for a 2k player to find a game than it is for a 1200.

I think that the moderators, The balance team, board of directors, every key group that governs this community in this game should be led by the people who play it most not necessarily the people who have certain skill sets. Those people should be under the direction of the people who play it most.

There are a lot of toxic people that play this game a lot so obviously it's not then. But like I said before there are so many pro-level players who log in everyday and play this game and are legitimately good people and treat others well and understand the essence of what this community is because they are immersed in it.

I am not a pro-level player and I went through my stage of being a toxic piece of shit for the first few years of playing but over the past few years I have really chilled out and that's probably because I got a job that has me traveling to the remote places of the world so much where I can't get a good internet signal and now when I get home I appreciate the game so much more.

I feel I understand the game and the community pretty well and if I had more time to commit I would be a great fit on some level. My point is that I'm a great example of the type of person in this community and have played nearly 4,000 games and would be an excellent person to be a moderator if only I had the time.

Take any of my replays from my first few years of playing and you would say the hell with this guy but that doesn't represent who I am now and I'm sure this is the case for many people.

There's probably people that are currently banned that if given another chance they would be excellent community members.

I think there needs to be a complete rethink of how we operate because it's up to us to keep this going. The moderator s that are currently in place need to take a big step back and if you really care then you will support the efforts of the community to keep this thing alive.

Taking this name change rule as an example it is so clear that the community does not want it and your best thing you could have done is revert it and move forward because that's what the community wants but instead you spend however many days or weeks now justifying and defending the decision..... It's low level tyranny...

Give the people what they want... In most cases that is the best way forward for a small gaming.

I'm not familiar with the exact structure of how this is all governed and moderated but again I say there needs to be a serious retrofit of all systems. I've seen so many posts for the balance team makes changes and they are so unpopular but the changes are just defended over and over again rather than reverting them based on the will of the people.

Somehow someway we got to get to a point where the most mature and dedicated players are the ones who make key decisions. I manage hundreds of people in my role at work and the best way to get them to do the job.... The best way for the company I represent to succeed... is to give them what they want.... And all they want when they are at work is to be given the resources they need and the support they need to succeed and they will. Very rarely will I make decisions that go against what the group wants because they care about these projects just as much as I do as their manager. Everyone that works for me is constantly telling me this is the best place they've ever worked and they never want to leave and I take a lot of pride in that because we're not doing things my way we're doing things our way. My senior corporate managers didn't understand it at first but the results speak for themselves. The way of the company has to be the way of the people. I'm lucky enough to have managers that recognize this and they step back and let us do our thing.

If the governing body of FAF needs to have the keys to the kingdom because of legal reasons and irreplaceable skill sets such as coding and all that stuff then so be it but the best thing they can do is take a backseat and let the people who love and care for this and play this the most shape this and build this.

Okay I've said enough. I'm not even going to proofread it.

[TheWreck]

@Nuggets sladow proposed the idea of having immunities with exceptions for higher rated players.

[Exselsior]

Hot take: Not only should well-known members not receive extra immunity, but they should arguably be held to higher standards. Their toxicity has a greater impact than that of a random player with a low rating. Known players might receive more leniency in appeals since everyone has bad days and they’re known quantities, that's not the same as immunity.

That said, I agree that recent changes are contributing to the disinterest among higher rated players on FAF. The removal of rating changes + the hiding of TrueSkill, and the changes to the renaming rules were factors in Sladow and Terrari leaving. However, as Nuggets said, these issues were just the final straw; it could have been anything that led to them quitting.

I tried to contribute to the rename thread as someone unaffected by the change, since most people not affected won't care either way. I dislike how communication around that change has been handled. I was, imo, reasonable in it but mods also completely ignored. Only a dev responded to anything I said with a clarification on the technical side. Which is good, but otherwise mods just let that thread go wild without responding, then when responding ignored everything repeatedly.

Anyway, don't want to drag that thread in here more than it already is. Maybe I'll have more to say later but mostly wanted to comment on immunity + frustration from higher rated players on recent changes.

[IndexLibrorum]

A long post, I'll try not to get too wordy. (Edit: I failed)

FAF in decline: your core argument

Thing's don't grow forever, and gaming communities have a tendency to stagnate and decrease over time. FAF has not been different, but is special in that we continue to have a large core of active players. I agree with you that we need to do our best to keep that going. I disagree with most of your suggestions on how that should be done.

Your core argument, that the rest of the post is based on, is your belief that competition and connection issues are not the largest cause of players leaving, but that many people are not happy with how the game is being run. You specifically mention moderation as a problem.

I think you are in an environment where you hear a lot of grumbling of likeminded players that has given you that impression. I think that impression is wrong. A significant majority of games in FAF are PvE games: skirmishes against AI or Co-ops. Almost none of these players are affected by moderators, because these games do not spawn tickets. Similarly, the vast majority of the playerbase (PvE and PvP alike) isn't active in the discord or the forums, and never hear from a moderator. If those people leave, it is because of them losing interest, finding another game, or having issues with FAF.

I will try and get the relevant statistics for you.

Selfish moderation

I'd start with saying that reviewing tickets for games that a mod has themselves not played in is inherently non-selfish, given it requiring quite a bit of volunteered time. However, I will understand your point as specifically about particular moderator policies, and having issues with particular individual moderators.

This is does not mean every moderator is selfish but I feel it necessary to call out moderators who became moderators because "their reports weren't doing anything" or because they wanted a certain policy enforced harder

If you want to call out specific moderators, then be specific and call them out. I've recently mentioned in my post here that "I signed up to the modteam about half a year ago to help clear the massive backlog of reports we had, because I was annoyed by how my reports seemingly had no effect.". I'm assuming this is what you are referring to.

I'm struggling to see how "I want to join the moderator team to help clear the backlog" is in any way selfish. Are you misunderstanding what I mean when I said "my reports had no effect"? I do not mean that my reports didn't have the effect that I wanted, it means that the reports were never addressed. I had one or two reports in the system that hadn't been looked at in more than half a year. I joined the moderator team to solve that issue. And we have, the backlog is now clear. Most tickets are now seen by a mod within 24 hours. None of this is selfish.

These moderators often lack seniority and understanding of the game but most importantly they do not represent the high level community because they have never played with them.

Some info about how the modteam works.

• We do not consider seniority relevant: all the mods generally have an equal voice, with the exception of Teamlead/Headmod Giebmasse.
• None of the mods specifically represent a particular part of the community.
• Changes in rules, or discussions on how rules are applied, are internally discussed without regard for seniority or community status and require consensus within the team. For some changes this is easy because most mods agree. With others this requires several weeks of discussion. In the end, no moderator policy is enacted by any single mod.
• If a player receives a ban, they can appeal it by email to [email protected]. Appeals are received and handled by Giebmasse, and where necessary internally discussed with the whole modteam. The moderator who initially handled the ban does not have a stronger voice in this discussion than any other member of the team.
• If a mod is not sure about a decision, they check with the team for a second opinion. This happens frequently.

Because of these points, it is very very difficult for any given mod to take action on anything without the rest of the team approving it. For the 2100 tickets that I've cleared in the past 6 months, I can think of maybe 3-5 situations in which an action was overturned. This also means that:

banning and censoring players who use words that individual moderators do not like

is simply not how things works.

Unpopular policies

Three policies in particular are called out:

• Base Ctrl-K
• Censorship (Or as the mods call it: moderating verbal abuse and basic civility)
• Username changes

Base Ctrl-K

General background info:

The position of the moderator team is that killing your whole base is griefing. If you believe the game is over, you may vote for a recall. If your team disagrees and you really do not want to continue a game because you're tilted or believe the game is lost, you can leave the game. This is with the understanding that this is infrequent: players that leave in the middle of a game consistently might be considered griefing as well, although this is mostly applied for people that leave very early. We prefer people leaving over the verbal abuse and toxicity we sometimes get reports for when tilted players stay, though.

The reason why we have this rule (and this rule is, as far as I know, ancient), is that destroying your whole base forces your team to lose. When you start a game, you agree to play a game. This means that you play it until one team has won. If you cannot convince your team that the game is lost, by starting a recall vote, then your team clearly signals that you are wrong and/or they want to continue to play. It is not your right to decide for the rest of the team that they need to stop playing.

This is most common at the high level but can happen in lower level games.

This is incorrect. Base Ctrl-K happens at all levels of play.

Players mainly base control k to stop someone from playing on when the game is clearly lost and everyone wants to play the next game but someone is refusing to recall.

See above. The recall system works on a vote system, and only in small teams is it possible to have 'one' (1) player that can block the recall. If you think this system needs to be changed to that it's easier to recall, write a forum post about it; it doesn't have to be a thesis. You'll likely have my support.

Regardless if you disagree with me the problem with this moderation policy is that the vast majority of the high level community is perfectly fine with base control k. ... In the high level community almost no one reports for base ctrl k or flaming because in general these things do no bother us.

And if you play games exclusively with people who are in favour of others Base Ctrl-K'ing, you won't hear a peep from the moderators. We do not go through games from high rated players to look for offenses: we only act when we have received a report. Similarly, we generally discard reports by players who have not taken part in the game themselves. We have in the past had players that were looking for offenses of specific players by going through their replays, and we do not accept that behaviour. However, when you play with people who do not agree with you base Ctrl-K'ing when you decide you're done playing, then you will have to take their opinions into account. Which means following the official FAF rules.

high level community believes it should be legal and they are completely ignored by the moderation team which has greatly angered players and has caused several to quit.

Rules can be changed if there's enough support for them. I do not remember seeing a forumpost about wanting to change this rule, but I may be wrong.

Censorship (basic expectations of civility)

We have, since forever, community rules. These rules include rules on speech. I do not believe that a basic level of civility is beyond what we may expect from our community. These rules are widely supported: from the top of my head I estimate that about a quarter to a third of reports we receive are for verbal abuse. People say some genuinely vile stuff when angry, and people rightfully expect that the moderators take action on it.

These rules are also enforced in our discord. Arguments, disagreements, and being angry with other players are all a part of having a large community, and do not need moderator action. However, we expect players to be civil to each other. We take action against bullying of new players, against slurs, against racism, against homophobic language, against death threats and wishing death upon players or their family. These examples happen often and frequently: we get tickets several times a week. Exactly what language is acceptable and what isn't remains an ongoing topic of debate. There are no clear lines here, because every person has their own idea on what counts as verbal abuse. Similarly, the opinions in the moderator team vary widely. We have found a balance that we believe is fair.

As with all things private, we do not care about private conversations. We do not look for offense wherever we can find it: we only moderate games that are reported to us, and moderate the public community channels. These channels include Aeolus and the official FAF discord. What you say and do outside of these channels is not our concern. The public channels, however, are a place for ALL players, which means we maintain a certain standard; within them you are expected to follow the community rules.

These rules are not new, and are not particular to FAF. Every single large gaming community has these or similar rules.

The username rule update

The discussion regarding these changes is ongoing. See the relevant thread for our arguments and viewpoints. We are still taking in feedback and continue to discuss the matter internally.

None of the feedback was ignored, several changes have been made.

Response to suggestions on changes to the mod team

Higher standards for the acceptance of moderators.
I propose that Moderators have at least 1500 games at least 5 years of experience and for new moderators to have had at least 100 games in the past year before they are accepted. A possible minimum rating could also be discussed.

New moderators are added to the team very rarely. Their admission is voted on, and their background is vetted for previous bans and offenses. I do not believe stricter guidelines are necessary, but don't have a strong opinion on this. 5 years experience seems excessive however, especially given the median account 'age' likely being much lower than that.

I also call for some form of immunities for high level members of the community as well as senior players that are not as high rated but have thousands of games.

I do not believe that we will ever implement changes that favour one group of players over the other, for the simple reason that seniority does not give you a pass to be a dick. If you wish to be immune to the general FAF rules, you may host your private games with people that are similarly not in favour of specific rules.

When you play with the larger community, you will be expected to follow the rules of the larger community.

Lastly I call for the ability to hold some kind of referendum to fire unpopular moderators.
The premise that a moderator can do whatever they want with no accountability must change.

Your premise is wrong: there is no situation in which a moderator can do whatever they want. As explained, no single moderator acts alone. Neither does a moderator have immunity: the team lead is at any point in time able to remove a moderator from the team. Possibly (I am unsure of this) the board is as well.

Firing based on popularity is also not likely to ever become a thing, for obvious reasons: people mostly interact with moderators when they get a ban. People who get a ban are most often unhappy with the ban. This means moderators get unpopular.

Moderation, and moderation policies, are not about popularity, they are about being necessary and/or right. I believe this is one of the reasons why the discussion about the rename policies has been so ineffective: one side is arguing the change is not popular, while the other side is arguing that the change is necessary. They are two different conversations.

---

I'll see about finding the data on new players, active games, number of mod tickets, and bans handed out over time. I think it'll be useful.

[TheWreck]

I suspected this was going to be a problem but I will state it again the point of this post is not to argue about the grievances that I have presented. The point of this post was to put together most of the grievances that myself and other players have felt that has caused them to quit. It is impossible to restore the trust of the high level community with the moderation team if they refuse to even acknowledge the sentiments of the players. I also do not care if moderators are held accountable by other moderators. They need to be held accountable by the players that they are supposed to represent which I have already stated me and many others do not believe is the case. You have also shown in your own words why I believe that some moderators are completely selfish is because they are arbitrarly decided what is right and what is wrong for the community. You are also just completely gaslighting by pretending that you listened to the players under the username rules change. Regardless of any action that may take place from this post it is a undeniable fact that me and several other players are angry about the grievances I have presented and many more are on the brink of quitting.

[IndexLibrorum]

The point of this post was to put together most of the grievances that myself and other players have felt that has caused them to quit. It is impossible to restore the trust of the high level community with the moderation team if they refuse to even acknowledge the sentiments of the players.

I've heard your sentiment, and I am not saying your feelings aren't real, but have tried to explain why I think it's misplaced. However,

You have also shown in your own words why I believe that some moderators are completely selfish is because they are arbitrarly decided what is right and what is wrong for the community. You are also just completely gaslighting by pretending that you listened to the players under the username rules change.

if you insist on refusing to listen to explanations and argue against the weakest possible version of the arguments, as well as accuse us of lying and gaslighting, there's not much more I can say, I think.

I'll leave it at this.

[TheWreck]

The best you can come up with is maybe your feelings are real

[Terarii]

@thewreck said in The End of FAF:

Is FAF really in decline?
It is no secret that FAF has lost a lot of players this year. The distributed denial of service attacks last fall undoubtedly contributed to many people leaving. New competition is also responsible for many people leaving. Similar real time strategy games such as Beyond All Reason have been a destination of many former FAF players because of the lack of performance issues. However, I do not believe these two things can actually kill FAF because in the last ten years there have been many intervals of time where we have gained and lost large numbers of players and I believe that we can recover from them. These two issues though are largely out of our control and while they are hurting the game they are not actually killing it in my opinion.

Contary to a unpopular belief, FAF is not really in decline compared to the pre-pandemic amount of players. A few players quitting does NOT mean that the game is dying, only that the players are no longer interested in the said game.

It is a miracle that a 16-and-a-half year old game supported by a dozen of volunteers could captivate attention of tens of thousands of people for thousands of hours, and that there are players that are still loyal to this game after a decade of playing it every week or at least every month.

As for me, the three biggest deciding factor for quitting the game is still boredom (i have played it more than 4000 times at this point), lack of high-level players to play against (2400+) on most of the days of the week and an insane timezone difference (GMT+10)

@thewreck said in The End of FAF:

Why has the game survived previous setbacks?
The reason FAF has survived for so many years is because there are dozens of players who have played the game for over a decade and have played the game thousands if not tens of thousands of times. It may be easy to conclude that I am only talking but the 2k+ community but this is in fact not the case. Every level of play has players who have thousands of games over many years. In addition to simply playing the games these players also keep the game alive by doing the following: They are active on social media platforms such as Twitch and YouTube and help bring in new players. They actively train and post guides for new players so that they can learn the game. They play in tournaments which the whole community can watch and enjoy which can also help to bring in new players. Even though these players may quit for several months because of server issues or to play a different game I find that many come back after sometime because like me they love this game and know that there is nothing else quite like it. This however, brings me to why I believe that this game may imminently die.

Not really. FAF survived mostly thanks to:

• The dev/balance/moderation team, constantly fixing and polishing the game sometimes unsuccessfully
• Two large casters (Gyle/Yuri the Professional) exposing the game to a huge audience
• A handful of streamers keeping the players interested in the game by allowing people to play with them

The rest of the players are pretty much doing nothing, just enjoying the game.

@thewreck said in The End of FAF:

Why is FAF dying?
In order for FAF to truly die the community which I outlined above has to start to disintegrate. The reason I believe FAF is dying is because many players that are a part of this community are quitting or are extremely unhappy with the way the game is being run. These players combined have contributed tens of thousands of games. In addition to playing the game these players have played in dozens of tournaments, trained dozens of players, and have written many helpful guides to help new players but now they are quitting and not planning on returning.

It isnt. The only problem is the lack of really high level players, since the old ones are kinda too old to play vidya games now, and the new ~2000 rated players are Not That Good.

@thewreck said in The End of FAF:

Why are community members quitting?
The reason the community is quitting is almost solely because of selfish moderation.

Not the case for me, and you are actually the only person i know that stopped playing out of spite for getting banned.

@thewreck said in The End of FAF:

banning and censoring players who use words that individual moderators do not like

Censorship
Another policy that has been enacted by the moderation team that is destroying the game is banning players for the use of words such R.tarded or N.zi and other mildly offensive words. Although some of the more offensive and extreme words are not words that I personally say I do not want to have a smaller pool of people that I can play with because they said something I disagree with. While these words can certainly considered offensive it takes 3 clicks to get rid of them in game, in Aeolus, or in the discord, if you do not like seeing them. Once again I will call on the communities ability to address problems on their own. If I do not want to play with someone who says these things or I have problems with someone saying these things I can refuse to play with them or mute them. Again I will state that you can disagree with my stance on this issue but this is what the community believes and once again their grievances regarding the enforcement of this policy have been completely ignored.

Contrary to what you might think, FAF is actually a game that is made to be enjoyed for people of all nationalities, ages, genders, skin colors, sexual orientations and neurodivergency. You can never know who is the person behind the monitor, and you dont get to assume that everyone's mental capacity for taking insults and slurs is like yours. Some people i know can legit start crying because you said something mean on the internet.

A game community must be inclusive and tolerable, at least on public resources like discord/aeolus/forum/games with randoms.

@thewreck said in The End of FAF:

The most dreadfully obvious and intellectually lacking counter argument to base ctrl k is "why should one person take away someone else ability to play?". However, this fact ignores the other 6, 8, or 10 players in the game that would likewise like to start a new game. Additionally they can still waste time and play on anyway it will just be for a decreased amount of time which is the idea.

That is because there are rules that exist for everyone's best interest, and you have agreed with them upon registering your account. You join the game to play it, not to ctrlk when you decide that its over, and since you dont want to play anymore, nobody gets to continue playing. It is NOT up to you to decide. If you want to give up, suggest a recall, and then, if team disagrees with it, just give them your base.

Other 6,8 or 10 players that died are observers, and as observers they dont get to decide to end the game because they feel like ending it. Actual manchild behavior.

@thewreck said in The End of FAF:

In my personal opinion high level players have a good enough understanding of the game to have the autonomy to decide that the game is over.

You dont get to decide that the game is over in a team game. You can quit playing it, but you dont get to choose if its over or not, like a little baby that starts losing in monopoly and decides to make up imaginary rules to instantly gain 10000$ and win it.

@thewreck said in The End of FAF:

Even the ban of a single active high level community member is near universally condemned because there are so few high level games. In the high level community almost no one reports for base ctrl k or flaming because in general these things do no bother us.

And thats a good thing about faf moderation. They dont go through every single game looking for base ctrlks or other offences, but only respond to reports made by players that were in the reported game instead. This means that you and your group of friends can do whatever you want in a game and not a single person would get banned even for most bizarre things.
The game actually doesnt even have a chat filter in 2024, which became pretty much a prerequisite for multiplayer games a few years ago. Think about it.

@thewreck said in The End of FAF:

The reason this policy is greatly harming the game is not because I believe that base control k should be legal but because the high level community believes it should be legal and they are completely ignored by the moderation team which has greatly angered players and has caused several to quit.

Again, the said group of players are free to do whatever they want within their community of friends, but they dont get to decide for other players when to end the game.

@thewreck said in The End of FAF:

The username rule change update
The single most egregious and selfish policy on this list is the recent decision to change the rules regarding username changes. To those unfamiliar with the matter the moderation decided to change the time jump between name changes from 1 month to a full year upending a rule that no one has had a problem with for the last ten years. This post was downvoted an astounding 44 times with only 6 non moderators in support of this idea. The discussion below included dozens of players grievances and suggestions but still the moderation team pressed onwards while completely ignoring them and they kept almost all the changes and were only willing to reduce the name change time to 6 months. Even still the moderation team insists that they represent the community when in reality nothing can be farther from the truth. This decision was the final straw for many esteemed members of the community who may never return because of this selfishness.

I actually agree with this one, but its pure delusion, not selfishness

@thewreck said in The End of FAF:

What can be done to restore the communities trust in the moderation?
Now we have reached my main reason for writing this. I did not write this article to argue endlessly the points I have presented up to this point. The community has spoken on each of these issues multiple times. I have written this thread because it is the moderation

You should speak for yourself, not the community as a whole. For example, i myself havent lost trust in the moderators, they still do their job rather well for free, just being wrong with some of their suggestions from time to time.

@thewreck said in The End of FAF:

I propose that Moderators have at least 1500 games at least 5 years of experience and for new moderators to have had at least 100 games in the past year before they are accepted. A possible minimum rating could also be discussed.

This is just flat wrong, let people volunteer if they want to. Also even i dont have 5 years of experience, and 1500 games can easily be ~1000 hours that are spent on the game, and not everyone has the time to play the game like some of us do.

@thewreck said in The End of FAF:

I also call for some form of immunities for high level members of the community as well as senior players that are not as high rated but have thousands of games.
Exceptions of this can be for major in game exploits or for other extreme misbehavior.
If a moderator enacts or bans extremely popular players they should not have immunity from being removed.

A high level/nolifer player is not worth more than an average level player with normal amount of games played just because he is better at the game and plays it more.
A contributor like sladow/jip/farm/whoever might get some privileges, but not ban evasion.

[TheWreck]

I wasn't referring to myself I was referring to at least 3 other community members that have contributed far more than me that have quit the game in recent days I personally have not decided whether I will quit but I know several others are on the brink. I consulted with multiple high ranking community members before posting this as well so these are not just my grievances and proposed solutions.

[FtXCommando]

Some minor points from me here:
FWIW I quit handling FAF tournaments because of the moderation team issuing a blanket ban on base ctrl+k (specifically my utterly insane rowan base ctrl+k ban) prior to recall being implemented. This was a solution to a problem at high level games back then and moderation team just didn't really care and told us to just deal with it until a dev found a solution because they do not want to have to handle a gray area. I got like a week(?) ban for it too which was even more ridiculous.

I do think a ban on base ctrl+k is fine now, and I even got a ban for it lately. It was a day ban which was a reasonable penalty in my eyes and I had no problem with it. Really I just don't personally trust moderators to handle anything in high level games in general and it's very easy to figure out who actually made a report in lobbies so that person just ends up getting banned from future games for however long feels justified. High level people can police dumb gameplay themselves, really. I remember one time Bully did some completely stupid com bomb in my base when we still had a chance to win and I made a whole stink about it. I'm of course not gonna report him because I can't trust moderation to handle proportionate responses to the offenses at hand.

Which, by the way, the solution to the rowan base ctrl+k ban was just for him to basically be denied into high level games on weekends for several weeks.

How are the rules for civility working out anyway? I'm curious about what the stats on activity in the Discord look like this month compared to 12 months ago.

It's frankly a gigantic problem that moderation "takes into account ban history" because plenty of people that would have been decent high level mods got thrown into the trash. The two that come to my mind are Sladow and Mephi. Funny enough basically every moderator I thought was decent has some history of "moderatable behavior" because on FAF that just requires functioning like a person trying to have a good time. Gieb had about 5 morbillion smurfs. Resistance is a perpetual toxic depression machine. Arch has base ctrl+k'd before.

Some of the mods just seem like dudes completely alien to any actual community culture and it shows in the way moderation has been in the last year. And I unironically think the whole "ban review" thing is a big component of that. You can't actually take part in anything fun to attain the position of moderator so you get a bunch of dudes that barely actually interact with this common, regular, high level in particular (we have all been here for years), community.

It's a bunch of straws that have been breaking my back for a long time because it feels like moderators are just antagonizing people that have been fine for years at this point. The base ctrl+k was a solution, it is no longer needed. It's great that recall exists and it's fine that base ctrl+k is now banned. But that period where it was banned and recall did not exist was basically a middle finger to high level players and one of the major reasons I stopped trusting moderators with any reports.

After that like the dozen or so regular posters in politics in the Discord were basically getting reamed every day for saying something is retarded. My final straw here was when I got like a 2-3 day mute for saying faf has nazi mods and then got to read Index say that nazi is a slur???????? It became such a joke that we just moved off the FAF Discord and now just organize to play games other than FAF with other ppl that are tired of a variety of FAF shit.

The rename thing is another eye roll that fits the same schema.

It doesn't really impact my desire to play FAF much since it's just moderation, but it makes me give way less of a shit in engaging with the FAF community. Whether I want to play FAF is mostly centered around whether the 30ish people I want to play FAF with are playing.

[Jip]

Thank you @TheWheeler for pointing out the data. I've asked @Sheikah to run some additional queries just the other day and the same applies to 2023 and 2024 - we have about 17K unique players playing on average each month, which is a lot higher than pre-covid which was about 12k - 13k unique players.

The same applies to the number of lobbies:

• 2018: 870.873
• 2019: 853.742
• 2020: 1.362.511
• 2021: 1.306.360
• 2022: 1.572.139
• 2023: 1.452.615

All numbers only take into account players playing on the FAF game type.

Note that in general the gaming industry received a massive and unnatural boost because of covid. It's a miracle that even with the DDOS and other technical issues that we're still at the numbers that we're at right now. Especially when you compare it to similar games such as Planetary Annihiliation and the Titans expansion, or for example Supreme Commander 2.

And thank you @IndexLibrorum for taking the time to write an extensive response.

Based on the data @TheWreck I'd like to ask you to correct your original post. It creates a sentiment that is simply not true, specifically referring to the chapters Is FAF really in decline? and Why is FAF dying?. I also don't think you can speak for the community - nobody can. The rest of your post is subjective, I don't agree with it but we all have our opinions .

@thewheeler said in The End of FAF:

A high level/nolifer player is not worth more than an average level player with normal amount of games played just because he is better at the game and plays it more.
A contributor like sladow/jip/farm/whoever might get some privileges, but not ban evasion.

I appreciate the gesture, but in my opinion nobody should have privileges of any kind. It just doesn't work that way.

[FtXCommando]

@jip said in The End of FAF:

Based on the data @TheWreck I'd like to ask you to correct your original post. It creates a sentiment that is simply not true, specifically referring to the chapters Is FAF really in decline? and Why is FAF dying?. I also don't think you can speak for the community - nobody can.

Hello Jip. Could you inform the moderators to do the same in the rename thread? I'd hate for you to look extremely partisan in the matter. Thanks in advance.

[waffelzNoob]

@ftxcommando xDDDD do you mean the game where my acu exploded in ur base when u were preparing a comdrop?

It's funny because with your perspective a mod might actually ban me for it. In reality, while demotivated, i tried to drop my acu in ur base so that u could help me go t3 and i would comdrop with you. Im guessing a few asf shot me down, i wasnt really looking

If it wasnt that game then i'd like to know which it was

[Crusader_Nova]

This is a point that wasn't explicitly mentioned in the OP, but I felt it was related to the sentiment that the community isn't being represented. It's about balance, and while this isn't the dedicated balance thread, I still believe it has relevance as it's the topic of balance, not an individual suggestion.

I have never really contributed to balance or forum discussions until now for a simple reason. Every single time I look at the channels in question, I see nothing but ideas being shot down and those suggesting them being called variations of stupid. This went for suggestions I felt were good and bad - the treatment remained the same; just another "ur dumb", "stay mad", "skill issue", or "lmao". Sure, there will be examples touted where suggestions made in these places are given thought or even implemented, but without putting on the nerd glasses I'd guess they are the exception, not the rule.

I am not an expert in video game design, but I am a member of this community. I can say with certainty that as it stands, this crucial line of communication between player and developer is dysfunctional in the extreme. Maybe developers should only listen to the highest level players, maybe the "average" player should get more say. I don't know - but I do know that me and many other players feel nothing but frustration, and then anger when they voice their opinions and get their metaphorical nose broken.

[Dorset]

As I said I don't do anything with discord but I'm wondering does the forum directly tie to discord in a way that people who don't come to the forum but only go to discord can read these threads?

It seems to me like a lot of people that play this game..... Blindly guessing the vast majority.... Don't use the forum at all but if all of this was made public on the discord then maybe we would have a better sense of where the community really stands on issues.

I was thinking about it last night as I was falling asleep and my guess is that the majority of the community has no idea these discussions are going on and don't care about them whatsoever because they get to log in and play. Maybe they wouldn't even care if they did know they were going on but maybe they would care about certain issues that affected them directly such as balance adjustments and the like.

1.3 to 1.5 million lobbies It's pretty awesome now that I see those numbers... Considering that's just the main FAF app is even more impressive.

I'm never going to stop playing this game that's for sure.