FAF has a problem with how modded games are treated - the combination of having mods hidden (unless the user specifically requests they are shown) and automatically unrating the game introduces significant almost insurmountable barriers to anyone introducing a mod to try out new features beyond their friend group*.
While I can see some arguments for this approach, I think the damage done outweighs this, and my suggestion is that modded games are rated by default, and that all custom games are shown (with information on of they are modded or not included). Ideally this would be with no option to hide modded games, although I'd also be ok with the current checkbox for modded games being something you check each client session to hide modded games.
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In terms of changing the UI approach to encourage the showing of modded games, the reason is that FAF doesn't have a huge number of games or players, and the current 'hide by default/1-time checkbox to always hide' option essentially by default splits the community. While some people may feel strongly about playing modded games, for many people it might not be a significant preference, yet just by defaulting to not showing mods it means they won't even consider modded games. There will also be cases where people think they don't want to play a modded game, but if for example given the option of astro/gap/setons, or a mapgen that uses a single sim mod 'reduced prop reclaim rate' (to take the current 'contentious potential game/balance change as an illustration) they might decide that actually they would prefer to play that game. People's choice of whether to join a modded game or not isn't impacted (since the client would still show what mods are active), and they could also filter by mods (to group all unmodded games together). I'd also be happy with a 'mod blacklist' type approach similar to how I presume the current map blacklist option works, although I presume this would require significantly more dev time.
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In terms of the argument for rating modded games, this is on the understanding trueskill/rating is to try and estimate the rating at which you win approximately half your games. Hence, if 100% of the games you play feature 1 particular mod, your rating would be far more reflective of your skill on the games you play if such games were modded. The benefits are similar to being able to see the rating of people that play only setons, or only astro, or only dual gap - sure a 1500 gapper might not play as well on a mapgen as a 1500 mapgen player, but if most of the games they play will be on gap then their rating is serving the purpose of showing how good they typically are.
The main downsides I can see with these proposals:
- Allowing modded games to be hidden - removing the option/making it harder to use makes things more awkward for people who either never want to play modded games, or who would always toggle whenever they might contemplate it (however if this was just a 'once per session' toggle it would be a minor inconvenience).
- Allowing sim mods to affect rating could allow people to 'farm' rating using an unbalanced mod (that they understand but few others do) - while I agree this is possible, there are rules against rating manipulation that could limit the most extreme cases, while we already see something akin to this with people achieving very high (well over 2k) ratings playing astro and dual gap exclusively.
Combined, my expectation from these changes is they would lead to less community fragmentation, encourage modder contributions, make it less likely people who want to play with particular mods leave FAF altogether, and will also allow for more flexibility with potential changes (e.g. it would be more feasible to take the approach of 'lets try it out with a mod', and/or for a solution to a change people dont like being 'heres a mod you can use that reverses the change'). Neither feel credible options at the moment unless you have a large friend group willing to try the same mod.
*I should note i'm assuming that mods are still by default hidden unless the user requests they are shown based on how I recall things being for me initially, and other posts by people I've seen (on discord and reddit) indicating this is the case for them as well. Even if this has been changed, I still think moving to a 'apply filter to hide mods each client session' instead of remembering the configuration the last time the client was loaded up would be preferable since someone might have checked the option to hide mods a long time ago and forgotten about the option.