If a dev leaves because they can’t get their toy in that serves no discernible function they’ll just keep adding toys and the problem will continue going on. Area reclaim is something that makes 0 sense in terms of how the game works in terms of low rated players. The problem has never been that they cannot keep up with reclaim. It is pretty much purely focused on the tradeoffs that begin to be perceptible at the higher levels of the game. The higher levels do not appreciate the dynamics between the 3-4 methods of reclaim being simplified down. The argumentation goes back to some casual level player, where again, attack move functions completely fine already. But they still want it. Because it looks sick in the ui and just as with BO now they don’t lose to “apm” and can be all “strategic” otherwise known as still being fully zoomed in on their base with half idle factories.
It does not help the causal player, it’s just cool and new. If we want to add cool and new, add a new slop unit every 2 weeks already. Move us fully out of FAF and into FAF BlackOps Nomads: Unleashed, Revenge of the ACU Prelease 3.4
There is a feedback process. Some ideas are bad. Area reclaim has been explained like every year as a bad idea in FAF. I don’t know why it’s suddenly up in consideration yet again with the same arguments that have always been shot down and the same counterarguments that are still not addressed. I do not consider being a developer some free card to implement any bad idea. People are acting like the whole issue with area reclaim was that nobody could imagine implementing it in the simulation rather than it being considered bad on principle from the start.
In fact, 2 of the features you cited as keystones for FAF recently were specifically brought to form because of input from high rated players to make it work as well as possible. Neroxis map gen existed forever generating terrible maps, Sheikah worked with mappers and high rated players to iron out what actually makes a map enjoyable so that the map gen would actually be competitively viable and now it functions as an alternative to premade maps for the community. Prior, it saw next to no usage.
Matchmaker from the beginning was a completely collaborative process on how to make things function fairly but also fun. For example, if we wanted to be totally tryhard, we would have no party system. I had people complain to me about that idea during the planning stages. Most people understood that it was a tradeoff worth having, though.