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.