@thewheeler said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:
It is quite rare to see someone have so much arguments and opinions that are wrong. Fascinating.
You start your post by sarcasticly lashing out against me, which is exactly the problem we are talking about. Not a single agument found in your first sentence.
@katharsas said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:
The primary interest of the average high level player is to protect their skill-investement against any real or perceived threat.
The primary interest of any non-pro (the game is NOT their dayjob) player is to get enjoyment/satisfaction out of the game they play. The three main ways of getting the enjoyment are:
- Having fun and engaging social interactions (competition/coop)
- Enjoying the game (graphics, story, gameplay)
- Getting a sense of progress and accomplishment (better gear, higher rating)
Gambling
There is no such thing as protecting a "skill investment", or even a "skill investment" itself, since your skill isnt really an investable resource, unlike time or money. You cant magically lose your skill to a few in-game changes either.
Your argument about protecting X thing only applies to in-game items like skins/weapons/armor, since having them lose their value means that you ruin player's sense of progress/accomplishment, effectively burning the hours they spent on achieving the said in-game item.
Im glad you didn't continue like that.
Why does it only apply to ingame items? There are plenty of things that a FAF player might want to protect:
- The respect they earn among their buddies / the community for being a good player
- The rating
- The authority related to any game changes that they believe their rating gives them
- The self-worth that they extract from being good at the game
And of course, protecting your skill-investment is also about the time you put in not becoming a waste of time. And its not just a thing in games, it applies to pretty much any skill that anybody invested into in life.
Anyway, if you think that it is not the skill investment bias, then why do people not argue constructively / in good faith so often?
@katharsas said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:
Grubby on the other hand is a pro player (that is an entirly different player category). He earns money by keeping up with changes, which is pretty much the opposite attitude to the majortiy of top rated players on FAF.
Blackheart and most other top FAF players are not pro players. In fact there have never been any respectable number of "pro players" in FAF. A pro player gets payed to keep up with changes to the game and to re-invest time to re-learn every change that happens.
And thats the crucial difference between pro players and normal players.
Pros essentially have to treat the game as a normal office job that allows them to put food on the table. This means that they are forced to side with the game devs (their employer) on pretty much everything, including stuff unrelated to the game, or else they risk losing their job.
You can find quite a bit of news articles describing yet another pro football/basketball/rocket league player losing his contract or getting fined over something like this:
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On the other hand, we got normal players that play the game for the sake of enjoying it, and they can and will (and should) complain about anything that lessens their enjoyment.
No they should not. If they have an issue with something, they should respectfully and empathically discuss it with the contributors, which are other human beings that just want the best future for FAF. The tone is extremely important here.
I can forgive a new player somewhat for not displaying human decency and basic manners, because they might think that FAF is a company or something, but the longer a player is here, the more they should know that this community is created and kept for them by volunteers that invest way more time, care and heart into FAF than they can imagine.
Like i don't need you or anybody else to worship any contributor. Just treat them with basic human decency when you talk. That is all that is needed.
@katharsas said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:
Blackheart is probably a good example of the quintessentiel non-pro player, and his balance mod is probably on of the most conservative (conservative here meaning "if we just turn back time enough everything will be awesome") mod in the FAF vault. Or maybe its more nostalgia than conservatism, or maybe both, not sure. From a pro-player perspective (which i do not share), this would probably be seen as mostly a self-serving "i want to stay in my comfort zone" attitude.
You may call the "lets not mess with the core gameplay mechanics changing which will affect a trillion different sides of the game" argument a "comfort zone cope", but i prefer calling it a Valid Argument. You do you.
I'm not saying it is wrong to be conservative about game changes. If you are, just be honest about it and respect the opinion of others that are not your own.
This is really important because game design is an exploration process. Game design is always more like "two steps forward, one step back". Support the steps you like and critize the steps you don't but stay friendly while doing it.
@katharsas said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:
On the other hand this is mostly just human nature. The average human is not mentally healthy enough to be a pro player.
Average human is, in fact, not mentally or physically healthy enough to be anything that is above average, hence the name average. Dont know why you even put this in here.
@katharsas said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:
What is also seemingly human nature sadly is the accompanying tone. And yes it seems that often the better the player in question is, the more "deranged" their elitism gets. Like imagine thinking that only >2300 rating players (probably the top 0.1%) should be allowed to propose game design changes. Like literally no game in the world is being desgined or balanced by the 0.1% top players of that game because that is a deranged idea.
And yet thats the norm for every single other area of human life.
We would rather have the top 0,1% surgeon to operate on our heart than an average surgeon.
We would rather have the top 0,1% pilot fly our plane than an average one.
We would rather have the top 0,1% designer make our new phone than an average one.
We would rather have the top 0,1% coder write our apps than an average one.
The question is, why is it videogames where you draw the line? The best players are always the ones who see the game situation the clearest, know what units are the strongest and what are the weakest, and what change would improve the game or make it genuinly worse.
No, they are absolutely not the ones who always see what change would improve the game or make it genuinly worse.
Game design skill is not gaming skill! Those are separate skill sets! Sometimes, a person is good a both, but that is rather unlikely.
@katharsas said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:
The problem is also not just about games. The "status quo bias" exists, which is normal human bias against any changes.
Whenever any big software anywhere on the world changes almost anything, like it might be the position of a single button, people flip the fuck out. They create discussions so unrespectful and unconstructive that you would think somebody was murdered.
This is sadly, what anybody that actually is trying to improve anything is constantly fighting against, and it is of course tiring.
The change in a design of a big tech software and the change of something in faf arent exactly equal.
One is made by a whole team of experienced designers and managers after lots and lots of meetings and tests.
The other is made by a few amateurs saying "Wouldnt it be cool if we had this feature"? And trying to shoehorn their idea upon a bunch of people that dont want it.
Nobody is "shoehorning their idea upon a bunch of people that dont want it". This has not happened regarding FAF gameplay changes for at least the past 3 years, and probably not before.
What has happened, is that changes were proposed (which is a totally normal and expected thing to happen), and some people responded rudely to it (like they often do).
The people critiquing the changes arent the same either.
The haters of the design change on a random big software are usually a vocal minority, only a few people of which are actually educated on the subject of software design and can give a valid critique.
In faf, however, the said vocal minority has thousands of hours in the game, and if they are not eligible to express their opinion on the subject, i dont know who is.
No, the majority of haters on any software project change don't critique, they hate. And hating is not critiquing. Big difference.
If long time FAF players are consistently unable to express their opinion on a topic in a respectful way, then in my opinion they do more damage to this community than they bring benefits. Im not gonna ban or report them but im also not gonna shed a tear if they get lost for good.
@katharsas said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:
I can only say that i would (and have) stopped engaging entirely with people that I know are not interested in actually at least sometimes changing their own opinion or at the very least trying out changes before complaining about them. I consistently just ignore their posts in this forum, and i have no advice other than that strategy.
A bunch worthless yapping. There has been more than enough posts with actual arguments against the changes.
And if the actual respectful arguments where the only thing that was said by people, this thread would not exist and Jip would not be on the brink of stopping his contributions.
@katharsas said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:
Last but not least, let me say that this video "Dear Developers, Stop Listening to Pros" is not a good video. It does not seem to produce any actual argument as to WHY this should be the correct thing to do for devs.
i Wholehearedly agree with you on the fact that this video is Not Good. It looks like that the man that made it has only a vague understanding of the industry and why games are how they are.
@katharsas said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:
That would be the level of respect towards all the work going into these changes i would expect from high level players especially. This is often not what is happing on FAF though. What is happening on FAF often is this:
"Lol devs ruining the game once again"
"Lol devs not knowing how the game works once again"
"Im not gonna explain what i dont like because its useless anyway, <insert untrue sarcastic argument that their opinion is being oppressed/ignored anyway>"
"Why are you even here typing as though you even matter with your stupid contributive mentality lol, go away."
"you are deliberatley mutilating the game"
"this is absolutely terrible, no wonder FAF is dying"
"i haven't tried it but i already know without a doubt its gonna be absolutely aweful"
<insert dismissive "funny" comment here>
That is bitching, bickering und bashing, not arguing. People talking like this have no desire to actually discuss anything, this tone is just used to shoot down something or somebody, usually in the hope that some buddies will come along and also bitch and bash it strongly enough for it to go away. Of course there are people that don't do this. And of course there are also players that are not high level that do this.
Once again, a whole nothingburger of worthless yapping and strawmanning. There has been more than enough posts with actual arguments against the changes.
Same answer as before. Im not claiming that there were no proper arguments.
@katharsas said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:
And i don't doubt that some people have managed to warp their own sense of reality so much that they actually think they are being mistreated somehow. Sadly, self-victimization is en-vouge everywhere today, but it still an incredibly shitty attitude and it deserves to get called out whenever it is seen.
Yes, we ARE being mistreated, especially when an unnecessary naming change is being forced onto everyone even after all the backlash it got. There is no self-victimization here, only an objective observation of reality.
No you are not. The naming change is in consideration and will probably not go through as it was proposed (and it would not have taken any bitching, bickering or bashing to stop it, just friendly arguments).
FAF players that actually think they are being mistreated somehow are like kids that didn't get their second ice cream this day. Entitlement beyond my comprehension.