The End of FAF

Terarii

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.

MostLostNoob

@dorset said in The End of FAF:

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?

No, the FAF Forums do not have a bridge to the FAF Discord, but the forum threads either have similar discussions on Discord &/or are linked in post on Discord.

BlackYps

When the high level scene is declining looking at people quitting is only half the picture. People will inevitably stop playing the game at some point. The other half is: How many new players are emerging? Top players quitting is not a problem if enough new top players are coming in. I frequently see "there are no other high level players to play against, so it dries up" but when the game was new, nobody was good at all. How did these people manage to push the level of play to heights that nobody had played on before? Why is it not working now?
Answering these questions might lead us to productive insights. Right now I would guess a lack of promotion is the issue, but that is just a quick guess.

Ganima

@jip I was going to make a post, but since we are already here, can I please get some stats for 1v1 ladder specifically?

Terarii

@blackyps said in The End of FAF:

I frequently see "there are no other high level players to play against, so it dries up" but when the game was new, nobody was good at all. How did these people manage to push the level of play to heights that nobody had played on before? Why is it not working now?

Honestly, it feels like your skill at games is decided by your genetics.
Some people get to 2k+ level or its equivalent in other games in less than a few years, some players get hardstuck in elo hell at <1500 for literally tens of thousands of games, like they just perform a script, without ever changing it or improving.
~~we should introduce gaming skill-based eugenics~~

HOSCHMOSCH

@thewreck u nailed it

Jip

@ganima said in The End of FAF:

@jip I was going to make a post, but since we are already here, can I please get some stats for 1v1 ladder specifically?

I don't have those numbers for you at the moment, I'll see what we can do. But that's no promise !

Strydxr

Honestly, FAF isn't even that beyond saving, it's just that there's no idealist way to progress and therefore splinters are beginning to form.

What I want to know is, what even if the vision for FAF? The reason I ask this is because every older FAF player I speak to keeps saying FAF isn't what it used to be, client used to be more optimised and there was actually a pro scene. What changes caused this? Can an agreement be made to try and bring some of these older players back and rebuild one of the fundamentals of what makes an RTS great?

Also with the new RTS games out there, I feel like they'll lose their appeal over time, stuff like BAR, PA and Sanctuary will all thrive for a while and slowly lose the feeling of being new to people. This might cause a few people to come back to the old reliable RTS they once thrived on, just a thought.

All in all, I don't really have a massive stance in each direction, I feel a lot of newer policies could've been handled better, and maybe better communication between moderation game dev team etc and the general populace of faf and the remnants of the pro scene, overall it just seems like no one really knows what the fuck is going on and therefore leaves a lot of frustration over smaller things instead of how to make the game enjoyable again.

I suspect some new insights in the next 2-4 months will give us a bigger picture for us all to work with, as it is a community effort after all.

JaggedAppliance

@blackyps It's very difficult to replace great players, just look at the top of any esport that doesn't have millions of players. You have to hang on to your players.

Jip

@strydxr said in The End of FAF:

All in all, I don't really have a massive stance in each direction, I feel a lot of newer policies could've been handled better, and maybe better communication between moderation game dev team etc and the general populace of faf and the remnants of the pro scene, overall it just seems like no one really knows what the fuck is going on and therefore leaves a lot of frustration over smaller things instead of how to make the game enjoyable again.

You want the communication to be better, but can you try and define what better means practically here?

Evildrew

Lets be real here, the reason people are distracted with renaming limits and other trivial nonsense is they have nothing else to do. They are frustrated that they cant get enough games especially at the higher level (so it is claimed).Therefore they are looking for somewhere to vent that dissatisfaction.

I think the moderation team made a fair argument as to why name changes should be less frequent. If you need something to attack to vent your anger at you should look elsewhere.

The root cause though is that FAForever is unable to attract and retain the more capable players that are out there looking for something to play and excel in and the reason they are choosing other games over SC:FA on FAF is that the FAF mod is such crap in terms of gameplay that they rather play checkers. No one is going to devote their time and effort to become good in a game if they think it is very monotone and boring.

FAF has maintained this stupid policy of letting the balance team leadership decide the direction of the game but not letting the community that FAF is supposedly serving have any input on electing who gets to decide where the game goes from here.
The current Balance Team Leader barely plays (to me it looks like he only plays tournaments) and has not stepped down. His adequacy for the position in my eyes has always been very doubtful and yet the worst part is that in his stead it appears this Wheelie guy seems to be calling the shots and the garbage just keeps coming. Those of us who have eyes to see can tell that these people have nothing of any value to offer in designing the game, they only make it worse. I have conceded that they are very good players due to their fast click speed and willingness to grind but that is not relevant to the task at hand. We just need to look at 2 illustrative examples I remember very clearly.

The disruptor: Tagada claimed it is amazing and super strong. Never seen one being built and used, especially not in the 100+ replays of his I checked back then. In his arrogance he struck down my proposal because he knows best and did not need to prove his point, because he decried it to be so.
The mercy: Wheelie claimed you can deny your opponent advancing, he was told by many people how stupid it was to keep insisting on this when thousands of games later no one can point to any game where it was being used in that way.
Both of these points make it crystal that they do belittle you when they are wrong and more importantly it highlights the low quality of their thought process and capacity to reason are.

Another point to be made here is that no one is calling for the return of previous balance councilors, they were just as bad as the current one.

In conclusion, the best thing for FAF at this stage would be that it collapses since I do not see the people who are responsible for running the quality of the game into the ground ever conceding that they were wrong to think they knew how the game should be played. FAF would be much better off without these people and could start rebuilding from the mess they have made once it is restructured.

@Jip Those stats do not tell the full picture, please provide answers/data for the following to show a clearer picture.
*Are lobbies actually games that are launched or just lobbies that were opened regardless of launching or not?
*How do you account for games that were short and needed rehosting because someone crashed as games of their own.
*How many minutes was the average lobby/game? This may be a better gage for actual activity when multiplied by the number of games.
*Are all the 1 player "testing" games developers like yourself create in the replay vault counted as games in this statistic?
*What is the ratio of how many accounts were created since the Steam link requirement relative to the current daily unique users?

Nuggets

@evildrew said in The End of FAF:

Lets be real here, the reason people are distracted with renaming limits and other trivial nonsense is they have nothing else to do. They are frustrated that they cant get enough games especially at the higher level (so it is claimed).Therefore they are looking for somewhere to vent that dissatisfaction.

Who needs to read more than that to know he has no clue what he is talking about.
I honestly can't be bothered to write full reply because i have no doubt that you will not understand anything about the current situation.

I think the moderation team made a fair argument as to why name changes should be less frequent. If you need something to attack to vent your anger at you should look elsewhere.

Can you please elaborate what the fair argument is? Making the life easier of moderation and (even if in some world you claim this to be trivial) reducing the freedom of players (which was not harmful) is not an argument on any level.

Jip

@evildrew said in The End of FAF:

@Jip Those stats do not tell the full picture, please provide answers/data for the following to show a clearer picture.
*Are lobbies actually games that are launched or just lobbies that were opened regardless of launching or not?

Lobbies that opened, I don't think there was a requirement for game duration or whether it launched.

*How do you account for games that were short and needed rehosting because someone crashed as games of their own.

This current data does not do that, but I posted it to show the trend and not necessarily the absolute counts. Note that in 2022 we had no infra

*How many minutes was the average lobby/game? This may be a better gage for actual activity when multiplied by the number of games.

I don't have those numbers.

*Are all the 1 player "testing" games developers like yourself create in the replay vault counted as games in this statistic?

They probably are, yes - but given we're talking about more than a million lobbies* they are not really relevant in my opinion. Let alone that I don't test via FAF, but locally and is therefore not in the database.

*What is the ratio of how many accounts were created since the Steam link requirement relative to the current daily unique users?

I don't have those numbers.

I also do not see why the steam link requirement is relevant to the discussion.