Why does everything suck so much right now?
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I've kind of said all this before, and it is essentially an anti-FAF post. But I am curious about what motivates talented people like @Jip to add features to mainline FAF rather than creating a fork, mod, or their own game.
In my opinion, if you are a good programmer and smart game designer (or think that you are) you should work on your own game instead of contributing features to this community of people who don't want your features. It sounds like a very mean thing to say, but I really don't know why people want to contribute to FAF. I have decent programming skills, have watched/read a massive quantity of game design things on the internet, know a lot about FAF, and am even one of the highest-rated players on FAF. Outside of some very brief moments of delusion, I never considered contributing to FAF to be a reasonable thing to do.
Even if all your ideas are truly amazing and make the game way better, it will still be a dead 20-year-old game. You will get no merit or money or anything for your effort. Everyone will be mean to you on the forum no matter what, and you end up in miserable forum threads like this one. The only benefit I see with contributing to FAF is that you have a pre-existing captive audience, so it is to some degree impossible to fail and you can feel like a smart and successful person and get fans and whatever. The downside is that this preexisting audience is old people playing an old game, so you can't treat it like your own early-access indie title. If you do the bare minimum to keep the project alive it will probably go fine, but even if executed perfectly, getting feedback and implementing new things will have large amounts of friction.
There are finally some reasonable competitors coming along to fill FAF's niche place in the market. Either work on one of them or start your own. Or make something totally different. You will probably still be subjected to the same toxicity as here, but at least you will have your own thing, make money from it, and leave your mark on the world. When I'm not too lazy and depressed to work on stuff, I work on my own little game project. If I ever release a game, I fully expect to encounter toxic assholes like myself, but since it's my own game I can just do whatever I want and tell them to fuck off.
In my twisted view of the world, the toxicity of FAF is somewhat beneficial because driving talented people away to make new things is better than having them contribute to this dead-end project. I thought the people working on [redacted] were pretty cringe and annoying, but since they went off to try their own thing I have a lot of respect for them and look forward to seeing what they accomplish.
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There is one thing that should be made crystal clear:
FAF, as a game, does not suck.
The numbers for monthly games and users don't lie- people love playing the game, the network issues are trending back to stability. The maintainers and contributors to the game have done an excellent job in ensuring this game lives on.
Where FAF sucks, then, is elsewhere. Community, expectations, and the experiences of the people who have given the most to the game. It sucks for the dedicated players, the ones who have given the most of their time to the game over the years. It sucks for contributors on every level, from news crew, to game team, to map makers, to modders. Why?
In my opinion, it's because there's a gross disconnect between the expectations of where FAF is and should be going. I believe there was a period of stagnancy after massive changes, such as the engy mod integration, where the meta ideas of FAF stabilised. Jip is not incorrect when he says the first year of work he did mostly aligned with what people expected of FAF and where it should go. But other, bigger changes see much more resistance because the massive majority of pro and casual players got used to the meta developed by the relatively stagnant periods of development.
In my mind, it's a good opportunity for everyone invested to step back and thoroughly evaluate not only their expectations for FAF but what others expect too. FAF cannot stay completely static but it may also be too late for drastic changes. Contributors want space to try new things that may result in great experiences, but they take time and require patience from the people most sensitive to changes like this.
For myself, the answer I found was that making maps is not terribly rewarding as people have developed favourites from the past years, and so I have decided to only contribute when I feel the desire to express myself creatively, rather than chase being on the matchmaker pool every month.
I think a reassessment on where things should go on a personal and game design level is a healthy thing that everyone should be doing right now.
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No, it was not as transparent as can be.
We had a giant community choice poll advertised where people could upvote and downvote ideas they submit and we had TMM as one of the three most desired additions to FAF.
Once long term developers could devote time to the project, a plan was formulated on how the whole mechanic would work which was then publicly posted and a news letter was made.
Said policy got feedback where concerns were addressed and critiques were accommodated.
People would ask for updates, people would post about what the roadblocks are or if work has paused because of real life concerns.
TMM launched and the biggest overall concern I recall with said new feature was the map pool made for the beta month.
This does not include the variety of github and zulip conversations but these were about mechanical implementation.
That to me is as transparent as possible.
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@thomashiatt said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:
I've kind of said all this before, and it is essentially an anti-FAF post. But I am curious about what motivates talented people like @Jip to add features to mainline FAF rather than creating a fork, mod, or their own game.
I think it's a great question, but I do not have the spare energy to answer it right now. Perhaps I'll write a blog post about it if more people are interested in what motivates me.
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@thomashiatt do you even play this game anymore or do you just come here to try and tear it down? Your post is completely pointless and serves no purpose.
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Not really related to FAF, but there's countless pieces of software you could probably ask "Why would you bother contributing to this?" about. But if we didn't have those contributions from those devoted developers, the open source world would be quite a bit worse off for it. So many projects rely on developers that just pour their heart into projects for reasons that would confuse most people.
That said, this thread as totally devolved. I don't think it's fair to accuse Jip or other contributors of trying to force changes when they've simply followed the established process. If you have a problem with the process, that's a different story that I think could be more civilly addressed, but attacking contributors who have kept this game running makes no sense to me.
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In my experience, outside of the tightest core friend groups, it's pretty much inevitable that in any given social group (whether it's in school, at work, in hobby clubs, etc.) there will be people you dislike and disagree with, and there will be people that dislike and disagree with you. It's just the nature of people being different and having different opinions. In real life, however, there is more of a filter as people at least feel the need to be polite to one another that stops conversations from going this toxic. In internet communities, there is no such filter. There is serious evidence that tech platforms fuel increasing political polarization and I think this is just a microcosm of what's going on more broadly.
This problem is compounded as on FAF you have people from literally every corner of the globe, from different countries with completely different cultures, with different social norms and different ways of communicating. Look at how easy it is for people from more similar cultural backgrounds to commit social faux pas: call a woman a cunt in the UK and it's not a big deal; call a woman a cunt in the US and they just might murder you. And this is just between two majority English speaking countries. I do think that some amount of the perceived aggression that people experience in discussions here may genuinely just be due to cultural communication differences, and as people take offence and strike back that's how conversations turn into arguments.
These are not problems endemic to FAF, as some people seem to think: Rowey mentioned moving to the BAR community and contributing there as there instead. If you take a gander at the BAR subreddit, literally half of all the posts are about how toxic the community is and, from what I've heard from players who have tried BAR, it seems even worse. This does feel like the rule, not the exception, among internet communities, especially competitive gaming ones, in general.
I think it's this communication problem, plus a big fundamental disconnect, that really made the entire area reclaim discourse so taxing on the devs and so aggravating for the players.
From what I read of the conversations, the game team simply wanted players to test this new feature they thought was cool and would make the game feel better to play (without perhaps understanding the full history of the discussion that had already existed about this feature in the past decade or the gameplay implications of said feature), and decide whether or not to add it later after feedback.
At the end of the day what ended up happening was that tons of people gave negative feedback about area reclaim, some tested it, found it was as bad as expected, and the game team decided not to add it.
Everything happened as it should.
It was just that the conversations that led to this outcome were so abusive and nasty. We could've had more civilized discussions without the personal attacks and ad hominems and arrived at this outcome all the same. Just discuss the feature. There's no need to attack the person.
My man AUTO said this to me earlier today. I'm sure that in real life he's a nice guy, that he doesn't interact with people like this, and that he wouldn't be like this had we chatted in person, but because it's a discord chat that will scroll by in minutes, he feels there's no holds barred on what he can say.
I don't have the solution to this problem. People just need to understand that at the end of the day it's just another human being behind a computer. And they don't, or at least they don't act like it. I completely understand if @Jip decide to take his talents elsewhere and I respect the decision after the vitriol he received for investing his time into trying to improve the game.
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One thing is very clear after several weeks of watching various posts spiral the way this one has.
There is clearly a cliquey and very immature group of players who seem to only care about tearing down FAF because they don't get their way.... I'm not going to leave FAF cuz I love the game... But I am going to leave coming to the forum. I think everyone involved needs to take a big step back and look in the mirror and grow the hell up!
If you really have such a problem about how things are run sign off and don't sign back in again ever. It's that simple.
FTX ... I've been reading the forums for a long time and you consistently bring a negative immature and unproductive tone to everything you say and do. You should seriously quit this game and never log back in again. When you do casts you seem like a legit dude but when you start to type in the forum you turn into an immature child and you should be ashamed of yourself. You don't take any accountability for things you say or do and you act like it's okay to be such a pathetic child. You're a smart person that's for sure but you're not smart enough to be able to portray your thoughts and ideas without being a complete negative piece of crap. Grow the hell up kid.
Yeah I know I just committed a bannable offense. I'll accept my punishment.
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This is the one of the worst threads I have ever seen. Lock it or even better delete the whole thing. And in the future probably no threads with the very productive title of "why does everything suck so much?".
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On top of that let me just say one more thing...
Jip is clearly a mature person who understands what it takes to lead. The immature people that have no concept of leadership and project management and workflows that come here and try and tear him down. Everyone else knows who you are but you don't know who you are because you are so delusional that you think you're right.
Jip can't be expected to be perfect but in my time in faf and reading the forums pretty much everyday without responding it is clear that we need him and people like him involved. Do not need people like FTX or Thomas and that little clinky group of immature people who just come here to tear down and destroy because they haven't mentally passed puberty yet.
I think the moderators need to start banning people and cleaning out some of the trash. Put it all under the blanket of incivility.... You'll be doing the community a favor, doing development team a favor.... And 99% of FAF won't even know about it. The people who come to the forums or discord channels that do know about it will suddenly realize their lives are more peaceful cuz they don't have these whiny children around anymore.
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Ftx has been the most reasonable out of everyone for the past several months.
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@thewreck only you and fellow members of his little group would think such a thing.... You're always there to chime in with your smart alec remarks after he says some toxic bullshit and then you all act like it's not toxic.... Research the term incivility.... That's all you guys bring here and it's pathetic.
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So why the hell are my comments being labeled as unproductive and you and everyone that's in favor of this can say whatever they want
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Research the 20 players that quit because of the stubbornness and harassment we have received for speaking out. Also maudlin more cursing you going to get rid of it????
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@thewreck why don't you and FTX and the rest of your group quit as well.... Join the 20 others will you! My guess is FAF will flourish without you all.
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Yeah that’s all I’ve done for FAF. For a guy spending years reading my posts you sure don’t know much about me. I can’t take you seriously when you say all I do is tear things down. Even in my current level of practical inactivity I still try to tinker with balance ideas because I find it fun.
Call me an asshole as you like, but denying me my contributions to FAF is pure ideology.
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We have been and sure maybe it will but why bother risking it. The simplest solution is to stop deliberately inflamming players who disagree with you.
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alright mods lock the thread
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Story time! And yes, I do tie this back to the thread.
To the surprise of no one, I'm a huge nerd and also the kind of nerd who has been into building computers since I was a kid. Around the lovely age of 13 I built my first rig that was capable of playing games, but to back up a little, my family wasn't well off. I knew I wanted to do this for a long time, so for almost 2 years leading up to that I did whatever odd jobs I could do as a kid to save money. Mowing lawns, dog sitting, whatever, until I could afford the parts myself. My dad then took me to GameStop, and the first thing I saw was the Forged Alliance gold pack that had very recently come out. It had a giant robot on the cover and was a strategy game. Sounded perfect. It was the only game I could afford, and the only game I played for a while on PC. This was late 2007.
I have quite literally been playing FA for longer than some people here have been alive.
I'm not the only person here who has played this game a long, long time. Of course people like me are somewhat resistant to change. Change needs to be damn well justified, because I love the game exactly how it is, perceived warts and all. Some things are no brainers. Performance updates have been amazing, they have no downsides and really do help keep the game alive. Seriously, thank you @jip for all the work there. Overall balance changes have been solid, the balance we have now might just be the best balance the game has ever had.
Other things like advanced target priorities, spread move, spread build, etc are great additions because they do nothing but add to the base game in a positive way. They add strategic depth, which is perfect for a game like FAF.
I'm not going into more depth here since this has been covered to death, but area reclaim doesn't add to strategic depth, it takes away. It makes all forms of reclaim other than factory attack move redundant and pointless most of the time. Good players no longer have to think "hey is it worth spending my apm on manual reclaim right now or is attack move good enough". With area reclaim, the answer is almost always area reclaim or factory attack move. It also does nothing for lower rated players, because for them the answer to that question already virtually always is it's not worth it and they should attack move.
Much like the rename debacle, I do not think communication here has been well handled. On both sides. Valid criticisms of area reclaim have gone essentially ignored.
All that said, out of the things I mentioned in my original post area reclaim was at the bottom of what I cared about. If anything the associated nerf to rock reclaim speed is worse than area reclaim in my mind, but I could be wrong there as I have so far done little more than watch the replay from Tagada. I have, at least, done that though.
Back to my first paragraph. I want FAF to stay successful. I also want FA Forever to embody the Forever part. This means changes that actually impact how the game is played need to clear a very high bar before they're implement. In some cases that bar is trivial to clear. In other cases not so much.
The idea that people should move on from FAF because it's a 20 year old dead game and there's no merit there is a depressing clown take that spits in the face of tons of great open source projects, not just FAF. Even if I don't agree with everything devs/mods/whoever does, I'm glad they try to help the game and put their free time in. Call me naive or whatever the hell you want, but I do think most here have the best intentions for the game regardless of if I agree with their vision.
Communication is hard, and I think we've had some of the worst communication breakdowns I've seen in the past few months on FAF. Hopefully I've added a bit of explanation for the views of people who might be more conservative with applying changes.
Oh, one last thing. Exactly zero people who are current high level players will have any issues still being top players unless the entire game is fundamentally reworked, and even then many of them would become top players quickly if they put the time in. Top players aren't top players due to some magic tricks or meta abuse, they're top players because they have great fundamentals. The idea that top players are against this because they'd have to relearn something and might lose their rating is comically wrong and misplaced.
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No your just toxic!
