Why does everything suck so much right now?
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@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:
b8135198-8f5c-44f3-a5fe-771a71b30252-image.pngOn 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.
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@thewheeler said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:
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.Sure, I don't mind if the balance team is comprised mostly of top players. That can't be their only qualification, though, right? At the very least, they should be able to communicate without provoking undue friction with their peers, and work together with other teams, and not be afk for years.
Since there are not thousands of potential coders available to faf, we can't pick. We have a few, and they picked us.
Whereas players potentially balancing the game? There are quite a lot of players. How about top 10% skill wise (they could still consult with champions whenever they needed to), but they are the best at working with these devs without causing them to burn out - that includes explaining what proposals are unfeasible efficiently and gracefully, after making an honest attempt at making them feasible.
Given the circumstances - the extreme disparity in the scarcity of potential candidates for the two roles, that would be my preference.
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I do find it funny that I just had to read like half a dozen points specifically pointing me out as a problematic attitude. Coincidentally all from the people that disagree with my principles on general FAF direction. Coincidentally said people also elected to ignore and discount said problematic attitudes that were in line with their principles.
This does not surprise me. If there is one thing that I actually have noticed in my years of FAF contribution where I had to argue against top players, contributors of all types, and casual players across a variety of circumstances is that nobody that agreed with me at the specific moment takes issue with the way I operate so long as it’s pushing their direction. I do not have the patience nor the inclination for the general FAF passive aggression that attempts to toe the lines of civility by implicitly accusing me or others of things. Say what you want to say, because I don’t intend to continue the passive aggressive dance.
I’ve worked with plenty of contributors through the years that didn’t go into the passive aggression, that did engage honestly, and I had no problems with coordinating with them and fighting for the things that would make FAF better. I met plenty that didn’t do one or both of these just the same.
I don’t intend to apologize for anything written here. Or really the more honest statement is that I don’t intend to apologize without genuine reciprocity. I’ll just utilize the same line Jip used when referring to his attack on Tagada’s ability to be a contributor and tell people to read and get a conclusion for themselves. Inevitability, as always, people will see the harm of their opponent and not the harm of their supporters.
For the record, the “shoot the dev” line is a common turn of phrase and was used for the context of stopping people from creating a false combative dichotomy. I genuinely have zero clue how this specific line got picked for the pointless drama when it’s dramatic because it’s supposed to show how silly the conversation had gotten from being any actual productive discourse on the roll between “traditionalists” and “progressives” in the game design process of a community.
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All this talk about "skill preservation" that I don't really get. There have been tons of balance changes over the years that all the current good players adapted to, often with little resistance (most resistance towards the balance team is generally even coming from lower rated players who don't understand why the changes were made).
Now there's one change (area reclaim) that a select group of high rated players don't agree with, and you attribute it to unwillingness to change... -
@reckless_charger I'm thinking more along the lines of the context of a multi-billion dollar company and how they view things. As a senior manager I will often have to implement policies that corporate comes up with. I may believe they are the absolute worst decisions possible and at times it completely destroys my joy of working there because I put my heart and soul into that position and now I've got to go the 100 plus people that work under me and tell them that this ridiculous way forward is how we're doing things now. It's my job not to seed any incivility no different than it is the workers job not to seed incivility as we carry forward.
In the context of video game management.... Especially one as small as FAF I agree with you that talking about disagreeing with something to the core of your being seems excessive but it really seems like certain people feel that way about certain things and they're not able to express it in a civil manner. I find it sad that certain players decide to leave over such things but at least they leave rather than hang around and seed incivility and discontent.
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@ftxcommando I apologize for implying you were an endless-essay pretend-pro busy-body. That was very Passive Aggressive of me.
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I love that whenever someone shows frustration at the way these discussions have gone they aren't being "productive". Meanwhile I see plenty of times they are just outright insulted and no one calls them out on it.
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If this is partly related to my post:
At the end of the day, respectful communication is the prerequisite for resolving different opinions into a shared compromise. I expect you to be one of those to knows this even better than most. And you certainly can be respectfull when you want to. It was not my goal to single your comment out becaue it come from you. Id just happened to be an obvious example. We can add other disrespectful phrases from other parties too to my post if you want!
And I don't really give a shit about the progressiveness of FAF. Im playing Coop. I could not care less about any small changes that happen in FAF, other than new campaigns being developed.
But if you want to pitch it as "“traditionalists” vs “progressives”: One of those groups consistently behaves MUCH less decent than the other.
Jips behaviour for example is NOT AT ALL comparable (in terms of aggressiveness) with some of the behaviour he is facing.
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Can we not bring politics into this
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@phong said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:
@jip It's fine, I rattled his cage, I'm no better. What's actually funny is I was asking @FtXCommando how exactly loud, dissatisfied pros might have improved my faf experience without me realizing and he hits me with "we could have been real tryhards and prevented you from playing TMM alongside your friends, but relented". Insert tyrant extolling his benevolence to his subjects meme.
My dude, you're not even an actual pro, you're a 1900. "We"? Pffff
No wonder the lobby server dev quit after TMM was up and running. Imagine working to help players more conveniently find games and having to deal with some endless-essay pretend-pro busy-body actively trying to sabotage your main goal, because, you see, the trueskill data (a mere means to an end) would otherwise be a bit noisier than it already is. Then, to top it off, they go and take partial credit for the work, calling themselves Collaborator, since starting, then losing futile arguments about dumb shit technically counts as labor, right? Also, they get indignant should their effort not be valued over yours, the actual dev.
Regardless other contributions I have you to thak for, this one's not helping change my mind about whose activity benefits me more. The boastful claim this was actually within your power and we were spared such an outcome only by your willingness to compromise would be worrying if I actually took it seriously. I'd I'd rather hope someone reasonable will always be here, willing and able to step in whenever your lot fails to be brought to your senses, which is why I'm speaking up before you drive them away.
Nothing here was something I said. This is you doing exactly what Jip is in the current process of moaning about for sympathy points but nobody cares because:
- “he’s on our side”
- Gosh we don’t wanna lose Jip so we gotta allow this incoherency with our supposed “good discourse” principle
It’s pathetic. If you want a list of my contributions you can go read my election post in the last PC reelection thread, I ain’t retyping allat.
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Yea it's a lie that the devs and mods have not deliberately antagonized players while this debate has gone on these past few weeks. We have a right to be frustrated by it.
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@ftxcommando said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:
Nothing here was something I said.
This you?
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@katharsas said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:
If this is partly related to my post:
At the end of the day, respectful communication is the prerequisite for resolving different opinions into a shared compromise. I expect you to be one of those to knows this even better than most. And you certainly can be respectfull when you want to. It was not my goal to single your comment out becaue it come from you. Id just happened to be an obvious example. We can add other disrespectful phrases from other parties too to my post if you want!
And I don't really give a shit about the progressiveness of FAF. Im playing Coop. I could not care less about any small changes that happen in FAF, other than new campaigns being developed.
But if you want to pitch it as "“traditionalists” vs “progressives”: One of those groups consistently behaves MUCH less decent than the other.
Jips behaviour for example is NOT AT ALL comparable (in terms of aggressiveness) with some of the behaviour he is facing.
Nah not you. You haven’t been either of the two and I’ve worked fine with you in the past. I do disagree with some of your arguments, going back to the ancient area reclaim threads where you argued that if people have a problem with area reclaim then you might as well as have things like a unit cap on how many things you can select because it also makes the game more difficult to play. I disagreed with this then because FAF already had an ease of use reclaim method in the form of attack move. Alongside the other reclaim methods which created a strategic choice at high levels without being essential at low levels even with low level gameplay revolving around learning how to macro.
Communication is a two way street and Jip is kind. Kinder than me, that’s for sure. But, Jip has a real problem when it comes to other stuff. One example is the disparity of evidence between supporters and opponents. He does not really care when people support something without trying it out. They can be shown it and like it and they are now people he is fighting for. This is likewise seen with the whole “silent majority” shtick, they’re silent because they don’t support anything so why are they on anyone’s “table” here? Meanwhile we might watch Farm toy around with reclaim, watch a replay, talk to the people that used it, and we’re essentially irrelevant datapoints. I don’t mind if the condition for support is as strenuous as it is, but it needs to be applied fairly. These sort of incoherencies are what make me bristle.
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@Katharsas I agree with 95% of what you're writing. Thank you for taking the time and effort to write it. It helps a lot with my sanity
.@ftxcommando said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:
I do find it funny that I just had to read like half a dozen point (...)
Another perfect example of a rude, unnecessary harmful and empty message with nothing but your opinion to work with. At the same time you indirectly attack the current contributors by stating we do not engage honestly. You derail the conversation by introducing vague statements with no references that I'm not going to put in the effort to debunk.
@ftxcommando said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:
I’ll just utilize the same line Jip used when referring to his attack on Tagada’s ability to be a contributor and tell people to read and get a conclusion for themselves. Inevitability, as always, people will see the harm of their opponent and not the harm of their supporters.
I'll help you with that, here's a link to the cherry-picked conversation discord conversation. Have a read for those that are interested, again make sure to read everything that was posted the 9th of June.
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Popcorn time
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Dunno what to tell you Jip. Area reclaim is like one of the most historical arguments on FAF. People have been against it on the aspect of principle, beyond even mechanics, since all the way back in 2014. The step of collecting some consensus on the principles was totally skipped over and development went into mechanics and now there is an attempt to work backwards and somehow fit the mechanics into principles that state it as fundamentally anathema. A lot of headache would have been resolved if you could have convinced people on how area reclaim creates some new strategic opening on FAF but instead all the people that have always not liked it now heard of an implementation and how it’s in faf develop and how there is now a game dev team vote to implement it.
Working backwards to accommodate principles was just not going to work on this specific problem.
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Why on earth is that rude and unproductive when he has been insulted all these times for being critical.
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We are hesitant to police these threads:
So that fact I raise a query about moderation and say a swear word means its deleteable?
If this post is removed please let it be known that likely Maudlin is censoring topics that could reflect negatively.
If your worried about swearing Maudlin go police a 500 rated dual gap game.
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The above is literally my prime example for why "Faf sucks right now"
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Those points combined meant your post was deleted, (although I checked with another mod first to check they agreed it clearly crossed the line). While some points (swearing) should be self-explanatory, I didn’t think it worth going into detail here on other points such as the falsehoods you were spreading about moderation actions since it would both derail the thread and because as a general rule specific reports that have been moderated aren’t intended to be discussed publicly.
If you find yourself playing games containing toxic language then please feel free to raise a report in the client.
