@blackyps said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:
A short thing about behaviour in this thread: I think to really get to the truth it is important that we speak the truth. That we let go of masks made out of sarcasm or "professional appearance" and talk about how we really feel.
Allow me to be controversial then 
Attitude problems
@blackyps said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:
Looking at the general state of things, it seems that things are not the best.
Nothing has changed, I think it has been like this for years. Allow me to explain how being a game lead has been like so far.
Initially my focus was on performance. The first performance improvements were about the build drones, Another, more complicated, example is the target check interval. There's also for example the changes to how range rings render (4th point) by Kionx, and of course the table allocations fix that in overall improved the performance by 10% to 20%. There are many more changes, but these (together with the ASF fix) have been the biggest improvements.
At some point I was also interested in other aspects of the game experience. This primarily involves fixing bugs, improve the graphics and improve the ability of how a player can interact with the simulation. The most infamous bug I fixed is the Tractor Claws of the Colossus. There's also the Distribute orders and the Copy orders feature. In general all the order related pages contain new features that improve your ability to express your intentions into the simulation. I'll come back to the area commands in a bit.
What is different between the type of contributions of these two paragraphs? Nobody disagrees with improving the performance of the simulation and therefore all was good. But the moment you do something that people (individuals) disagree with it feels a post is made immediately based on their imagination to make all sorts of accusations and demands, which mimics:
@blackyps said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:
And then when we are already agitated, we can't calmly discuss these surface problems anymore and everybody starts having a bad time.
As a quick example, take this topic or this one, or for example this one where I had to write an entire f'ing post in response to bust the bullshit that people imagine happened surrounding the changes of the Tractor Claws, instead of just asking about it or looking for themselves.
These are not the only examples - I've received a lot of useless flak that is often based on the imagination. Especially frustrating when I've made a mod and/or put the feature on the FAF Develop game type for people to try out the changes, but instead of doing that they keep on spewing arguments based on their imagination.
To come back to where I started - nothing has changed. There's always been people that just spew nonsense and are not actually interested in understanding, improving or just enjoying the discovery (novelty) of a change. And they will always be there when you do something that they do not agree with. I just got lucky the first 18 months of being game lead that I was working on topic(s) that roughly everyone agrees with. But the past 18 months have not been that much fun, to the point that I'm looking for a replacement 
.
In general I think it's an attitude problem. And not everyone has this problem - don't get me wrong. There's been good feedback and lengthy discussion topics from various people and I highly appreciate that. One quick example here is the extensive post of Excelsior which I think is a healthy post. Another example is extensive discussions about the Distribute orders feature. And in fact - the majority of the players do not even post on the forums and/or Discord (as mentioned by @phong). There's a relative small number of players that are very vocal about their opinion in a toxic manner and it is a problem that we've accepted over the years. Every time someone toxic comes around to derail the discussion it is within the rules of the community but that does not make it less toxic or annoying to deal with as a contributor.
As a quick example: why was the HQ redesign never finished? Because the initial feedback was so overwhelmingly oppressive and negative that it scared away the contributors that were working on it even though a lot of players also agreed with the changes and were in favor of improving the status quo.
In general, I wish we (as a community) shared the attitude of Grubby more. Recently even Warcraft 3 has been receiving balance patches and bug fixes that contain changes that, if done equivalent, would put the forums on literal fire. The attitude of Grubby is different however - he makes an extensive video to discuss the patchnotes and then proceeds to just have fun with the changes. How refreshing is that - someone that just experiments with the changes, has fun doing so and at the same time provides healthy feedback about the changes. He even plays on the equivalent of FAF Develop occasionally - on the damn stream!
Top-rated scene problems
@exselsior said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:
A few times I've been on recently where this time last year there might be at least one or two higher rated games going, whether it be setons, mapgen, or likely both, but there was just nothing.
Fast forward to the higher rated scene (2000+ rating). I think we can all agree to the following observations:
- (0) the number of unique players each month have around 13k pre-covid, 19k during covid and is around 17k the recent months (that is impressive and before we fixed some issues with the ICE adapter, think about it!)
- (1) the current higher rated scene have been (roughly) the same people for several years now.
- (2) the players participating in tournaments have been the same people playing (and winners) for several years now.
These observations are not necessarily unhealthy. For (1) and (2) the same applies to other games where the same teams and/or people are always playing at tournaments. As a quick example, the top ten players in Warcraft 3 also barely changed these past years, and some have been there since the game was released (Happy, among others). There are also many tournaments and matchups that are great content for casts to generate exposure.
But there's a fundamental difference: in Warcraft 3 the top players are active players - they all play the game almost daily. If you look at the history of Happy then he played more than 80 matches in June. That's roughly 4 matches each day, and those are only the recorded matches! And the same applies to almost everyone in the current top 10 of the highest rated players in Warcraft 3 - they're all active and playing the game.
Meanwhile, here at FAForever one can decide to not play the game for months (or effectively years) and still manage to come up on top in tournaments. How's that even possible?
And this is where the controversial part starts .
In my humble opinion the gameplay experience that we created in FAForever has two fundamental problems:
- (1) There has been no fundamental shifts in how the game plays and/or is perceived the past decade.
- (2) The current meta is extremely volatile.
The problem with (1) is that once you learn and understand the trick that works then you can keep applying that trick. You discovered it, you use it and you win. It's as simple as that - there's no more challenge and you stop playing.
A lot of games that still receive updates they are often so large that suddenly certain tactics no longer work. As a few examples:
And the reason this is important is simple: each time such a big shift happens it levels the playing field. Through novelty you allow players to discover new tactics and new approaches to the game. And by doing so existing high rated players may actually find a fun and interesting challenge against players that they would previously utterly dominate. Every game that is still maintained does it. It keeps the game fresh and allows you to find new challenges. It's just good practice. And we're not doing it.
Then the problem with (2) is reclaim rate. This is the part where I talk about area commands that I previously mentioned I'd come back to. The reclaim rate that we currently have is absolutely absurd. The current reclaim rates are mentioned by Tagada here and whether you agree or not - let the current values sink in a bit.
The current values are 25m/s for wreckages and 50m/s for props. The average base has about 7 to 11 extractors in the average map. If all those extractors are tech 1 then they produce 14m/s to 22m/s.
How is it possible that a tech 1 engineer is able to reclaim 1x to 2x as much mass as an entire tech 1 base produces?
If we use different numbers:
- A tech 1 engineer reclaiming wrecks produces as much as roughly 12 tech 1 mass extractors (!)
- A tech 1 engineer reclaiming props produces as much as roughly 25 tech 1 mass extractors (!!)
- A tech 1 engineer reclaiming tree groups produces as much as roughly 2.5 tech 1 power generators or half a hydrocarbon (fine to me)
It's absolutely volatile, and it completely removes various aspects of the game. The idea of 'fighting over a reclaim field' effectively does not exist.
Let's take several small patches of reclaim fields of about 300 to 400 mass each. This is not unusual, especially with the rocks that are worth 38 mass. If you manage to defend your engineer and snipe the engineer of your opponent then within mere seconds you suddenly have 25 additional tech 1 mass extractors (!) over your opponent.
And when you take an engagement you better not take a bad engagement too close to an enemy engineer that manages to survive. If the engineer is nearby the fight then within seconds it can start reclaiming and your opponent suddenly has 12 additional tech 1 mass extractors (!) over you.
Compare that to the rest of the game, take this distance:
It takes roughly 55 seconds for Mantis (one of the fastest of tech 1 units) to cover this distance (right to left). If this is your response to try to contest a reclaim field (of any type, but specifically natural prop-based reclaim fields) then by the time you arrive the patch of reclaim is long gone. It's not even worth trying.
This feature is so volatile on its own that the moment you understand this and what reclaiming means that you will instantly win all of your games until you get to the point where you play against players that also understand this. After all, a single engineer that is able to reclaim roughly continuously can support between 4 to 12 tech 1 land factories depending on what you are reclaiming and what the factories are building.
There has been a lot of recent discussions about area commands, both public and in the private balance team channels. And personally I think it's been a long wish of more casual players, as an example:1 2. The reason is simple: area commands make the game more approachable. It becomes easier to convey your intentions. You feel less 'blocked' by the UI.
With thanks to the effort of various contributors of the game team we did not only manage to make area command work, we can also make them reasonably user-friendly to use and they do not destroy the performance of the game. You can now drag an area and all mass-based props (no tree (groups)) receive a reclaim command:
It makes reclaiming trivial, it allows you to queue things more easily and in general I think it's a great quality of life improvement. Similarly, area attack commands are also available in FAF Develop right now but they're not discussed as much. Other area commands could be in the making if we choose to be open to them.
There's been a lot of discussion about the reclaiming area command. About 90% of the people who actively participated in these discussions are of the top-rated players. In general the consensus of this group is:
- (1) It simplifies the game too much.
- (2) It completely breaks balance (because of the current reclaim rate).
- (3) It removes the need of 'attack move'.
And therefore almost all of the players in that group do not want the area reclaim command feature. For some quick feedback:
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(1) is nonsense - the game is complicated enough just ask the other 17k unique players. That you're so good that you need this to keep it interesting is a different problem and can be solved with a natural shift in meta instead.
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(2) is nonsense - it's not the area command that breaks the balance. It's the balance that's broken as explained previously and can be fixed with a natural shift in meta instead.
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(3) is nonsense - attack move still has benefits from factories, to reclaim energy and if you're in dire need of a quick few general reclaim orders when busy with actually playing the game: managing and macro'ing your economy and armies.
(3) is also tightly coupled with (2) - attack move introduces a small delay of a few ticks (3/10 of a second) before it attempts to reclaim the next prop. This is even different per faction (UEF and Seraphim have a longer delay) and the reason this delay matters so much is because the reclaim rate is so absurdly high that this relative small delay becomes a dominant factor in how efficient attack move is for small props (rocks worth 2, 5 or 10 mass).
Meanwhile, any casual player that I show the feature to is exciting about it . And as @phong mentioned , they're not as well represented in the forums. They're not as invested in the game to spent three hours to write a post such as this. They just want a fun gaming experience. And they're right.
Medium recap
I think BlackYps is right - there is a general negative notion towards (almost any) change from a (small) vocal group of players. This small vocal group of players do a lot of damage. Contributors are humans too, we have the best intentions and we'd like to craft a better experience for the community. Harsh comments that add (very) little to no value do a lot of harm towards the motivation of contributors. Being negative towards a change is fine, but keep it constructive. Share the details why you think that way. Do not attack the contributor(s) or their intentions. And have the decency to acknowledge that contributors may not agree with your arguments or may not weigh your arguments the same that you do. It's fine if something happens that you don't agree with - that doesn't mean we did not listen to the community.
In general I think we can use more grubby-attitude in this community where people just experiment and enjoy the novelty of changes. Have a laugh. If it does not work it can always be tweaked or reverted. Specifically relevant when features are still being developed - the distribute orders feature works so well not because it is made by an experienced developer but because throughout the process a lot of (detailed) feedback was produced about the current status quo of the feature on FAF Develop. Without that feedback the distribute orders feature would never have been as good as it is now and it was a lot of fun (on my end) to work on it too because of that. Things got scrapped, adjusted and improved and what we have now is in all honesty a unique selling point.
And last I think a lot of the problems that are perceived right now on the top-rated scene are self-inflicted. If the game remains the same you'll remain at the top. And no other player with a reasonable budget of time (and there are enough of those - look at the other 17k unique players playing 400.000 lobbies each month) can ever match your play time and experience with the current meta. They'll always look bad. You'll always look good. If you're also against change, then enjoy being there alone when life moves on, players move on, but nobody can manage to catch up to your understanding of the current meta.
