A couple things I also want to clear up about meta stagnation and high level players being a cornerstone of that problem.

FAF is not similar to many RTS because the strategic variety is heavily centered around map variation. The general meta of gameplay provides you with a toolbox which in turn must be correctly applied to the blueprint of the map/faction/player you are facing. People drastically underestimate how complicated you can make the game with “relatively inert” general meta. Back in the good old days Blackheart and Petric would spend a week sandboxing with one another to just get 5-7 maps worked out at a level they are comfortable with. They would do this and come up with a totally different build on maps people had been playing for a year or two on ladder. Farm and I could spend up to like 20-30 minutes talking about a map during teamgame tournaments. If you want strategic variety play maps and setups that encourage it. And no, 5v5 map gen slop is not gameplay variety just because it’s on a “new” map generation. It’s comfy and chill in its own way though which isn’t a problem.

Beyond that, I’d like to say things aren’t as simple as the high rated players that want to keep things the same vs the devs that want to shake up the game. I am probably one of the biggest advocates for bigger adjustments to the game yet I’m also one of the biggest opponents to many of the recent changes Jip was talking about and also one of the named toxic troll mumbo jumbo goons. Which I just find funny considering what I’ve done for FAF (had to divide my old role into 4-5 new ones after all).

But changes I advocate for have been blocked for what I saw as no coherent reason ie telebilly after the bug fix for it. This was by the proponent of “meta shakeups” here. I proposed the addition of Cybran absolver. I wanted jamming given to UEF t3 air while still advocating for adjustments to UEF spy plane to make jamming more viable since we can’t add it to ASF. I also tried to give ideas on what counter-intel Aeon and Sera could utilize. Same with trying to make mongoose/hoplite more viable by enabling them to shoot from transports. I want to remove false choices from the game, that’s what I work from. UEF teleport was a false choice, as in the current Aeon one. Mongoose was mostly a false choice. ACU drone is a false choice. Sometimes things are a false choice because they are too strong and sometimes it’s because things are too weak.

And don’t get me wrong, there is some asinine pushback from balance team sometimes. The fact it took like a month or two to argue about whether sparky being able to build radar and facs would “break the game” was nuts. But my margin for what would break the game is much wider than some of the conservative dudes on balance team but it’s definitely way tighter than Jip’s.

@maudlin27 said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:

Case in point (of how people can be the biggest obstacle) - the Blinky Lights saga, which came before the DDOS/Connection issues, and shows how even a seemingly innoculous change to a feature that the majority of people didn't know existed can still generate resistance to change:

I remember that being worse than what it looks like now to me. I thought I remembered more people being toxic trolls about it, but skimming back through the blinking lights thread it didn't seem too bad. The worst part in it was @Jip having to repeat the same thing multiple times because people couldn't be bothered to read. Yeah it's a bit silly the people arguing to keep something in the game that they didn't even know was there in the first place, but it's not entirely unreasonable to learn about something only when it's about to be removed but then think it's pretty cool and want to keep it. Even then, unless I missed something on my quick skim I don't see anyone feeling too strongly about it.

Segue that into a response to some of the other posts, since I think it's a great example of a point I want to make.

@jip said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:

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
...
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.

I read, or at least skimmed through every example given here and also was around for all of them as they happened. I don't really remember many people making a big deal about the GC tractor claw fix, it's a random player and Thomas making any sort of fuss about it, and the lower rated player gets meme'd on a bit + was reasonable other than the edgy comment about testing. Thomas is Thomas, and even then he had less of an issue with the change vs how the change happened if I'm reading that correctly. Outside of those people you're largely supported in those threads, both explicitly through comments made and upvotes.

The more controversial one is the HQ changes. This one is interesting and I think a bit unfortunate how it played out for all involved. From what I remember from following that when it happened + my brief skim through now this is my take away:

1. Game devs wanted to improve the shaders on the factories, this part was very well communicated and everyone was onboard
2. While working on implementing these upgrades devs realized that it wasn't going to work how they wanted, and ended up more significantly changing the the model than they thought they'd need
3. These larger than expected changes went live without really being communicated

I am more involved than most and I knew that there was being work done on the PBR shaders to improve how the factories and was supportive of that. Despite me being quite active in the community, I still had zero idea that the factories had changed as much as they had. If I'm missing this, especially in March 2023 when I was extremely active, then most people are missing this.

Frankly, most people in that thread were quite reasonable all things considered. Looking at the dates, the specific posts talking about the factory model changes came after Ninrai's post where they were already live. It just seems like there was a communication lapse at an important juncture here where otherwise things were very well communicated.

Other than the HQ changes, these have a theme where there isn't a large number of higher rated players against them, and that's a key difference between these examples and what's happening recently. It's also why I tied everything together in my first post here around things being particularly bad for higher rated players now. At no time in the past do I remember changes being so universally disliked by more experienced players while still being pushed through and these examples only serve to reinforce that impression.

I'll make a post responding to the rest later.

This is another thing that I feel the need to touch on if 5 or 10 players spend a considerable amount of time writing a rebuttal of a proposed change and the change is done anyway what does that say? How many of these rebuttals are required for something to be implemented or reversed? Is there a number sufficient to get a change done? On subjects such as area reclaim and the username rules change there have been tons of well written responses about why these changes are not good but they are still being implemented. People don't have endless time to write lengthy forum posts.

@exselsior said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:

I read, or at least skimmed through every example given here and also was around for all of them as they happened. I don't really remember many people making a big deal about the GC tractor claw fix, it's a random player and Thomas making any sort of fuss about it, and the lower rated player gets meme'd on a bit + was reasonable other than the edgy comment about testing. Thomas is Thomas, and even then he had less of an issue with the change vs how the change happened if I'm reading that correctly. Outside of those people you're largely supported in those threads, both explicitly through comments made and upvotes.

Just to chime in real quick between your posts. Not everything happens over the forums. There's also various separate topics about the matter that I could not find anymore. In general, people express their discontent through Discord, Aeolus and even lobby titles. I'm not joking:

It was fun the first time, but every time I see that lobby in the custom game list I just close client and go do something else, wondering why I am even here.

The HQ example was a quick example, not aimed about the second chapter of my post. The example shows what happens when you attack contributors and their intentions directly. It's counter productive to what everyone is hopefully trying to achieve - the forever part in FAForever.

People will show discontent about anything. I'm not even sure that dude is being serious. Regardless the hq was a very simple change but things like area reclaim completely change the way the game works and that is not hyperbole.

@jip said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:

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!

Also, just because I am a fiend for my boy I want to emphasize that this is quite literally a description of Farmsletje. He makes videos explaining the changes, he takes input from players and responds to counterpoints. He plays with new stuff to see if it works or not on FAF Develop. You already have this guy. The changes being pushed now are just so out of scope that even our community Grubby can’t stamp out the fires well enough to get people on board. Nor is he really on board with it but I don’t want to speak for him about it really.

And yes, he is extremely open minded about adjustments to the game considering he is the one (sometimes) actually entertaining my schizo balance rambles.

Wait, was it intentional that HQs lose progress when given to another player???

@ctrl-k said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:

Wait, was it intentional that HQs lose progress when given to another player???

Aren’t they talking about the hq and support fac redesign? Far as I know that’s a bug.

I don't know, that's why I am asking.

I've never really seen it as a FAF-specific problem. It is just another aspect of the very aggressive, divided, tribal culture that is accelerated and encouraged by the internet and social media. Similar to how at this point, Star Wars "fans" are people who go on the internet to create and watch videos hating on the latest Star Wars content that comes out and the people who make it.

Everyone wants to feel like they are smart and better than other people, and it is quick and easy to get that feeling by talking shit about what other people are doing. Joining a tribe that says how stupid and/or malicious others are and implying that they could do it better. Nothing is perfect, so people can always find flaws to point out to justify their toxic behavior. I think many people, particularly the type who spend a lot of time online, don't have very enjoyable or meaningful lives and that makes them more likely to engage in online bullying and tribalism.

I have been quite guilty of this behavior on FAF. I admit that I am an arrogant asshole and probably caused some harm to FAF by being mean to people. I do often feel bad after I write mean posts on the forums, which is why I pretty much checked out of the community entirely and tried to focus on my own projects.

The following paragraphs are intended to be some armchair psychological evaluation of myself and why I do not respect FAF and am mean on the forums. I do not claim this logic is objectively true in any way, or that it necessarily applies to any of the other people who write mean stuff on the forums. Being mean on the forum is less than useless and makes my life, and others' lives, objectively worse.

I have never had a very healthy relationship with FAF. It was just an addiction and coping mechanism for my own miserable and pointless existence. Even when I played every day for years, I never had much respect for the project, and still don't. It's just a video game that offers little more than a way to burn time. On top of that, nobody here even created the game. I never really cared, and still don't care, if FAF dies.

A big difference between FAF and the other games mentioned in the thread is that those games were actually made by the people who are changing them. It is their creation and they have the right to do whatever they want with it. There is reason to believe that the changes they make will be good because they come from the same people who made the game you chose to play in the first place. On FAF every change comes from some random amateur who appointed themselves the authority to change whatever they want without earning the right to do so. So I think it is reasonable for FAF changes to be met with more contention than normal games.

In response to criticism, these people will usually point out how they are unpaid volunteers keeping the game alive so we can all play it. It comes across as an attempt to gain some moral superiority as if perpetuating some useless videogame someone else made two decades ago is some kind of charitable cause that benefits humanity. Just because I waste my time playing this game, rather than some other game, doesn't mean I owe you anything. When making a contribution, you take on the responsibility for whatever happens as a result of that contribution. It doesn't matter if you were paid for it or not. This attempt to gain superiority and avoid responsibility only encourages further hostilities. I think it would be better to either say nothing or admit some responsibility which would then generate sympathy and make further aggression more difficult.

These points are even more true for moderators since they don't even have to have some coding skills or anything to contribute. They just get power handed down to them from the beginning of time that grants them the right to judge players and make up random new rules. I haven't personally had many conflicts with moderators though.

I can't comment on anything that's happened in the last two years since I haven't been participating in the community. I left as a result of my self-induced suffering, not because of any FAF issues or changes that were made.

I have noticed that there are almost zero casts of 1v1 games on YouTube anymore, outside of major tournaments, which are also quite rare now. It seemed to me that the focus of the community shifted away from 1v1 once mapgen and TMM became things. I also disagree with the ever-increasing shift for 1v1 games to be played on larger and more complicated maps. These factors mean I will never return to FAF since I play almost exclusively high-rated 1v1 games. Though my return is unlikely regardless. So those of you who dislike my toxicity can celebrate, and the few people who keep trying to get me to play 1v1 can be sad.

@Jip
I looked at the threads on the individual changes - in almost all the cases the design changes were out criticized or it was pointed out how the changes look ok but still make it harder to distinguish compared to the old models.
Iirc the changes were introduced without a big discussion on the forum or elsewhere. Then the team received a lot of backlash. Subsequently forum threads were opened with said feedback and ever since development stopped? Felt short-sided to me.
I got used to the new models - by zooming out more often, which makes any model irrelevant kinda, which I think is a bad direction to take. I still think the visual changes are making it harder to distinguish HQs and non-HQs.

I wonder: would you do it all over again the same way or would you choose a different approach (if so, how?). Is the HQ re-development concluded at this point?

@jip said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:

@thevvheelie said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:

@jip i get it with the harsh comments part, the communication and getting more points across in a nicer way could be a lot better. but do you not think that sometimes the reaction is genuinely warranted with the way that some mods and contributors respond with.

Please be specific and link the posts that you are referring to.

You:

• Insult us as people incapable of contributive effort (including me and our community variant of Grubby, nice one btw)
• Exist in this "have your cake and eat it" attitude where FAF is both growing while stagnant but also it being stagnant is bad because it won't let FAF grow
• Decided you represent the general will
• Implicitly accuse Tagada of failing to uphold his contributor guidelines

I proceed to accuse you of the same, this ended up being considered off topic. Currently three weeks into my temporary mute, too.

@thomashiatt said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:

I have noticed that there are almost zero casts of 1v1 games on YouTube anymore, outside of major tournaments, which are also quite rare now. It seemed to me that the focus of the community shifted away from 1v1 once mapgen and TMM became things. I also disagree with the ever-increasing shift for 1v1 games to be played on larger and more complicated maps. These factors mean I will never return to FAF since I play almost exclusively high-rated 1v1 games. Though my return is unlikely regardless. So those of you who dislike my toxicity can celebrate, and the few people who keep trying to get me to play 1v1 can be sad.

I agree, big & complex map bad. You can barely expect the top 0.01% of the community to even perform well on a 10km map. I hope to see you accept banani's BO21 challenge on small maps only tommy

@FtXCommando @Jip @Tagada After reading these posts It seems to me that there are two groups of people

Group 1. People who like Supcom the way it is, and thats what makes it great.

Group 2. People who want to improve supcom so that it can be as good as it can be.

these two groups are abviously polar opposites and will never see eye to eye.

The solution?

Just as a player can choose between FAF, FAF Beta & FAF Develop maybe another option could be FAF classic where all the changes that have been highlighted as controversial can be reversed and therefor preserved for everyone and regular FAF that seeks to improve the experiance.

@lowki It doesn't require separate game type. Area reclaim was perfectly fine positioned as a SIM mod for a while. Returning it as a properly working SIM mod would be a good (diversity & choice) solution and won't create any controversy about breaking SupCom whatsoever. And btw it would be a good way to test how the silent majority of 17000 unique players really badly wants this feature to make games more fun.

The problem is that the goal being formulated as "shaking the meta". The more backfire change proposal gets, the more it proves itself as a good shaker. Hence the whole polar opposites thing.

I dont really mind the meta shakeups as a concept, i think it can be done right. I also think they should come from a place of tension, where the game feels the most stale/shit to play, and not from a random "wouldnt it be cool if this feature existed?". For example, i wouldnt mind even some big sim level changes to t3 arties and gameenders to make them fun and not lame to play with and against, or maybe some changes to early transport rushes so they are less volatile, maybe even some changes to make spamming full t1 into omega agression on many ladder maps less viable. Area reclaim just seems to come out of nowhere, and i really fail to see how it fixes anything.
Also i think the jips post regarding the area reclaim reads as an analysis of some random 1k rated dude, no offense. Like i just really dont see the reclaim as being the most fundamental mechanic that somehow makes you a gamer god compared to the folk who dont appreciate it. Its just another part of macro, and not even the most fundamental. Like just having a economy that isnt collapsing all the time, knowing what your game plan on the map is and using your units smartly is the basis of the game ultimately, not clicking rocks to proceed to overflow all your reclaim. I really want to get into specifics, but currently im on my phone so its omega inconvenient.

@ftxcommando said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:

@jip said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:

@thevvheelie said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:

@jip i get it with the harsh comments part, the communication and getting more points across in a nicer way could be a lot better. but do you not think that sometimes the reaction is genuinely warranted with the way that some mods and contributors respond with.

Please be specific and link the posts that you are referring to.

You:

• Insult us as people incapable of contributive effort (including me and our community variant of Grubby, nice one btw)
• Exist in this "have your cake and eat it" attitude where FAF is both growing while stagnant but also it being stagnant is bad because it won't let FAF grow
• Decided you represent the general will
• Implicitly accuse Tagada of failing to uphold his contributor guidelines

I proceed to accuse you of the same, this ended up being considered off topic. Currently three weeks into my temporary mute, too.

@TheVVheelie this is why it is relevant to add a link to your posts.

You can find the conversation on Discord.

I can highly recommend people to read the entire conversation that happened during the 9th of June. Then remember that the balance team is, to quote their own team member Turin, infamously inactive. Meanwhile almost half what the game team does touches balance related topics these days. You can imagine this to be frustrating after 2 years when your contributions are ignored for weeks. I'll let the posts talk for themselves.

I don't think I did anything wrong here, but do be your own judge.

@Exselsior
@jip said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:

Not everything happens over the forums.

See for example this message on Discord.

Just another example of random, useless harassment that has no real context. It adds nothing, it is within the rules but it's definitely harmful.

@ninrai said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:

I wonder: would you do it all over again the same way or would you choose a different approach (if so, how?). Is the HQ re-development concluded at this point?

The only mistake I made was not mentioning these changes as highlights in the forum topic. I did not expect people to blow up about it and scare away the contributors working because of it.

@ftxcommando said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:

Currently three weeks into my temporary mute, too.

Yes, the quality of conversation got so much better that it is a keeper if you ask me !

@jip said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:

Yes, the quality of conversation got so much better that it is a keeper if you ask me !

Sarcastic use of heart emojis and implicitly insulting other community members is the opposite of what I want to see in this thread!
It's obvious that you don't like him and that is fine, but please find a better way to deal with that.
Muting someone from discord channels when you are not a moderator and there isn't a rule breach is also pretty dicey in my opinion.

Thank you all for your input, it sounds like an empty phrase, but I did read it with great interest and Thomas, I really respect you for being so honest in your post!

I can't comment on everything in detail, but I did read everything. Below you can find a part of my notes that I took that are half-finished reflections on some things that were mentioned here.

Top players that basically only play in tournaments still manage to stay at the top. Does this mean we need to change the meta?
It's a bit absurd that people manage to stay at the top with hardly any practice. People complain about rust all the time and doing anything on a high level requires you to regularly do it or you will get worse over time.
One problem is that medium-good players don't have anyone to practice against, because the top players are so afk.
In this way the problems in the top-rated scene are indeed self-inflicted, because they could partially fix it by being more open to playing with new people. But raising your own competition is irrational if you want to stay at the top with little effort.

We could maybe solve some of the problems with low activity by experimenting with tournament formats that require playing the game more, but we have almost zero tournament directors.
I suspect directing tournaments is unfun and takes a lot of time.

Do we need to shake up the meta to encourage more high level activity?
It's true that many games use regular changes as a way to drive engagement.
Chess is a popular game and doesn't have any balance patches. Chess is even a solved game in the sense that we can have computers play it better than humans ever could. Still, many people start playing chess.
My personal take is that many games that changing regularly is not necessary. It can be used to cover up mediocre games, because then you can paint over the fact that the core gameplay loop is not very engaging or that there are serious disbalances in the game with the rush of discovering something new and that many op things are not found out yet.
Still, we do have the problem that many people say there is no reason to play the game.

@thevvheelie said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:

one of the biggest problems is that players should be but aren't getting rewarded as much for making better plays whether thats micro or macro

Can you elaborate what you mean by that? Doesn't the person with the better plays win? I don't really see a way to reward good play inside of the game other than winning the game.

Changes/new features get introduced and it doesn't seem like it matters what kind of feedback people give -> people feel powerless.
We're stuck in a vicious circle where the powers that be say that they are open to feedback, but the feedback is of too low quality. The people at the bottom don't think it's worth it to put in a lot of effort, because they have seen no change even from feedback that they see as good enough to should have passed.
The powers that be spend less effort explaining changes, because they feel how much they get shit on is not a sensible metric to inform their policy, so they go on doing whatever they personally think is in the best interest of the community.

When people argue against something and then the original plan gets executed anyway it feels to them like it was all for nothing. How can we encourage them to still voice their opinion next time? Sometimes the feedback changes the long term plans or leads to changes in subtle ways that don't get communicated explicitly. For example I originally was in favor of scrapping global rating entirely. Having read various arguments against that, my opinion is now much more nouanced about this topic. These arguments didn't actively reverse any changes that have been made, but they prevented me from working on things that would have been a bad idea. So it definitely had a positive impact, it was just completely invisible (So thank you people, whose names I unfortunately forgot in the meantime because some of these discussions are years old). I'm not sure how we could improve this.

A general problem with explaining reasoning is that it takes an ungodly amount of time. This is true for both the developer and player side. I wonder if it is actually more time-efficient to take the time to compile relevant arguments once instead of repeatedly arguing with arguments that are only half-formulated each time. Still, doing this takes a lot of time and can't always be done in advance. Nobody expected that changing the HQs would be such a hot topic, so it just got mentioned in a changelog as a minor feature. Somebody was actually complaining that the feature was "hidden" in the wall of text of the rest of the changelog. It's obviously a bit ridiculous to demand that each feature has to be prominently displayed at the top for the people that stop reading after the first paragraph because that is literally impossible to do for each feature. So for every change you have to guess how important it is, to decide how much effort you put into promotion and explanation. You inevitably get it wrong sometimes and then people say with the power of hindsight that feature X should have oBVioSlY been promoted better and sometimes it's really hard to discern if you indeed made a mistake there or if it's just an entitled ass speaking to you.

In general we can't know what the average player wants, we can only do educated guesses. It seems the most sensible way to decide changes is to collect arguments for and against it and then weight the arguments.
Having multiple people complain about something does have utility because it makes it less likely that the person complaining is some sort of outlier and is just claiming that everyone else feels the same. But it doesn't make sense to define some sort of threshold as in "if 10 people complain it gets scrapped".

So I'm just a retired old man who is as much removed from FAF as the average FAF player is from normalcy. Though, being this absurdely old (and obviously exceedingly wise as well) I want to give my extremely valuable input:

1. It is impressive as hell that the same discussion that was held in 2013 and 2015 and 2019 and basically every year still is ongoing. A very motivated dev (what specific name this dev has has always changed throughout the years) comes up with amazing new ideas for the game/balance/whatever, and gets pushback on some of those ideas, from whoever the remaining top players are at the time.
   Usually, as a result, some ideas get stopped in their tracks, some get implemented. Then at least one or so of the top players get depressed, or more depressed than they already are, and eventually the little drops of accrued depression lead to them leaving the game (usually permanently, or in steps of decreasing activity, inversely correlated to their depression).
   Hence we have the same development year after year: The top playerbase gets thinner and weaker (not just physically). Yet the argument keeps getting made "the game has to change with my amazing ideas, it will finally get new top players, more activity, etc). How the actual banana is that STILL the argument, after more than an entire decade of this cycle repeating over and over? This is so insane it made me write a forum post.

2. Now you might ask, oh, smart and sarcastic BC_Balkheart, what to do?? Well, the game does NOT have to change much at all, as none of those old tasty legendary games have to. (Supcom, Aoe2, Chess as my personal fetish games)
   Tons of changes make comebacks for old players more difficult than they need to be (e.g. me), and are irrelevant for the grand total playerbase, which is weak enough to not even realize what was changed. Changes that are greatly appreciated are things like better sim speed (FAF has done quite a bit with this, its really good), balance fixes that pertain to the egregious issues (absurdely OP unit XY). Things that are also greatly appreciated are tasty tourneys with cool casting and fun settings. It would feed the nostalgia, which is one of the absolute main "selling" points of FAF, cause face it, this game is old as fuck and has very obvious weaknesses that won't disappear. What it has is amazing mechanics that are appealing to a small group of nerds + a great nostalgia factor for old people like myself (and there are more old people, not just me, although that might just be the dementia speaking).

On a final note, how deranged does a person have to be to think they know whats good for the game, if they dont remotely understand it (sub 2500 rating or whatever is equivalent to 2013 rating of 2000), and dont have appreciable experience in high lvl play in other RTS or games. Although I think this attitude of thinking they understand the game is mostly why those people suck too. Rant over.

Good luck boyas (postivity quota; fulfilled)