Balance Thread Guidelines Feedback

As you all (hopefully) know, we have instituted a new set of guidelines for the balance forum in an attempt to clean up and promote healthy discussion. This post is to allow for feedback on the guidelines so that we may improve and fine tune them.

For convenience, below is the complete set of guidelines as of time of posting:

Balance Thread Guidelines:

Some Sort of Ethos
No you do not need to be 2k in ladder and global with 1000 games while somehow managing to play every map on the vault. However, it is beneficial to explain things like what kind of games you prefer to play, the maps you tend to play, even just something about what direction you want FAF to move towards gameplay wise. This is mainly intended as a way for you to be able to identify your own bias as a poster and allow posters from other areas of experience to input their own viewpoint. For example, I'm pretty much entirely a teamgame player and first and foremost most of my ideas/criticisms are going to revolve around how they impact 2v2-4v4 games.

Identify a Problem
This should be either a problem in base FAF or FAF Beta (please identify which and please do not include sim mod issues here). For example, explain how t2 torps are somewhat overtuned in naval combat and a slight nerf would enable healthier gameplay.

Showcase the Problem
There are several methods to doing this and it isn't expected for someone to utilize all of them as certain methods are easier for certain things. I will rank them by their levels of respectability as an argument/rationale with the easiest/least respectable ones being first.
One could
A) Utilize general stat review to showcase the inefficiency of something relative to something pertinent. Generally you should utilize this as a complement to some sort of actual game scenario as a way to explain a situation. Would not recommend relying on this for your entire post.
B) Sandbox testing in which the replay is both posted and the general breakdown of what it was you were testing is explained. This can be strong or weak depending on the thing you wish to test. For example, if one wished to showcase a LAB could reliably beat tanks due to low muzzle velocity it is easy to show in sandbox. If one wants to show that full LABS are a viable unit mix against full tanks, it is not.
C) Real game data in which you are able to showcase that a unit is either over or undertuned. Of course real game data has many considerations to take into account, but that's why it's difficult yet a strong argument. An example of this situation being powerful is looking at how notha interactions worked in teamgames with a single notha being able to destroy bases due to their quick reload rate. Or how t2 transports required a speed nerf because even with proper scouting it was just immensely difficult to properly counter them with interceptors.
D) A modified real game WITH your solution. Not only does this not involve addressing the issue and giving the balance team concrete, practical ideas, but it also removes hypothetical theorizing about whether the change would result in the necessary gameplay change without harming other things. Of course, it's a small sample size but it's still the best proof regardless.

Find a Solution
Look into the unit. Look at the values it has. Find some sort of statistic change that could accomplish addressing your problem with as minimal indirect harm to other elements of FAF. Yes, minimal. There are very few things that can be done that would not involve harming some sort of game situation.

Justify the Solution
Do not just say "do x." Explain why you would need to adjust this stat. Why this stat or stats specifically? What is the intended result of the solution? Are there any possible indirect problems?

There have been no new threads since the new guidelines were posted.

The way it should be

Well 'balance sub-forum' can be just closed i guess)

Really lets you see exactly how bad the forum was before.
Force people to actually have some value in their posts and everyone is gone.

Also, don't run off to reddit to post if you can't hack it here. You look so incredibly desperate.

Seeing some dudes under the impression that you essentially need to prove a negative by utilizing replays for something like Atlantis being ass. Here are some ideas:

1. Actually use it in game yourself to prove it's bad. High rated players mess around with stuff all the time whether for fun or to see if they could abuse it somehow. You can try it too.
2. Sandbox to showcase why it's poor at the intended role.
3. Actually mod the unit values itself to showcase why it allows the unit to perform better (either in sandbox or in a test game itself).

Really does just require a couple ounces of effort.

Feedback should be easy and accessible. The more barriers to feedback you get the less feedback you will get. Low rate of feedback is bad. High rates of feedback is good. Quality of feedback will always be variable, and it is the jobs of the moderators and developers and designers to wade through the shit to find the useful feedback so they can improve the product or creation that they are making.

Someone might have a genius idea, or a really good perspective, but if the barriers are so high then they won't bother. As it stands you are basically asking people to make a mod to showcase their own balance suggestion, then get people to play said suggestion to showcase how a problem is solved. This is several hours of work, for the uninitiated and nigh impossible for the non-techizens in this community. Therefore, you have stifled almost all of the feedback that would otherwise occur. So this subforum really has no reason to exist. Makes your lives easy as moderators, but also means that there is no discussion here meaning the developers and designers have no source of information to draw from for balance changes.
Now if you say they don't read threads here anyway, then that's another nail in the coffin for even having a balance forum. If the designers / balance teams have no interest in community opinion, then feedback is irrelevant.

2. Having the requirement of a replay promotes toxicity in the forum as people will not argue about the merits or demerits of any particular suggestion, but instead how X in Y game was stupid and played bad, and how the opinion is by someone who is low rated and therefore invalid. Or its only a problem on Z map, or your a Setons or AC or DG player and therefore it doesn't matter.
   This is highly toxic behaviour that has no place in this forum, and that the moderators of said forum have, although being respectful about it, displayed. This sort of elitism is really not appropriate and it adds nothing to the discussion.

As it currently stands you might as well just delete this subforum and save the server company some money on storage space.

But then, when the moderators and staff members were the majority when it came to breaking etiquette, and shitposting, I didn't really expect much.

If you want a successful balance forum or an discussion forum its really simple, but it is also a lot to ask for a small community forum managed invariably by a clique.

Enforce etiquette. People cannot make ad hominem attacks, and people cannot insult others.

Enforce standards, people cannot shit post. There must be some content to a post. A post simply saying "dumb idea bro" followed by a meme pic, is a shitpost, and just derails the discussion.

Enforce staying on topic. Delete/remove posts that derail threads by side lining discussion or go off topic, or put said posts into their own subthread for discussion there.

Honestly if I did some of the things that I've seen from the staff I would have been banned years ago, no questions, no appeal. GONE

And this is why i don't get involved in the politics of small communities, because its a wasted effort.

I'd argue that the MML thread met B) and C) guidelines, even if reasoning was flawed. What exactly makes a sandbox test or real game data sufficient or insufficient to stay up? Will it be a rule of thumb? Will a moderator be able to close a thread that started with such analysis saying "you don't know what you're talking about, doesn't meet guidelines, thread locked"?

Honestly MML thread was balls off the wall absurd with the balance suggestions straight off the bat in the OP and the sandbox used to attempt to argue that MMLs are underpowered was also incredibly flawed as a test (it was also not part of the OP).

Main reason it was locked was because the OP was just a cherrypick of random stats and then a bunch of changes with no analysis of how it would impact the game. Just "do this and game will be better"

No showcase of a problem, no explanation of the solution, no justification for why the solution is the best path forward.

The purpose of the balance forum is ppl giving feedback to the balanceteam on changes, or convincing the balance team that thing x is broken and needs fixing/implementing y would be good for the game/etc.

If you wanna just discuss/complain about balance, do that in aeolus.

@FurudeRika said in Balance Thread Guidelines Feedback:

The purpose of the balance forum is ppl giving feedback to the balanceteam on changes, or convincing the balance team that thing x is broken and needs fixing/implementing y would be good for the game/etc.

If you wanna just discuss/complain about balance, do that in aeolus.

This is exactly the issue. The balance forum is useless if the balance team doesn't read it. Why doesn't the balance forum read it? They consider most posts to be random changes that people "feel" would improve things, followed by 20 back and forth replies calling each other idiots.

I can't say I disagree with them. This isn't to point fingers at anyone, I've been part of that cycle dozens of times in my years on thr balace forum, and this change is long overdue.

And enforcement is a learning process since it's almost always subjective. Please forgive anything I might overlook, and feel free to use the report functionality if you believe any post, by staff or not (even by me), breaks these rules.

@FtXCommando I think the MML thread was alright. The better point to be made is not that MML are weak at what they do, but that just ignoring them skipping to T3 and building MMA is just simply the better option in all cases, because MML are very niche, and are completely outperformed by T3 arty, which have a significantly better stat for mass to dmg/aoe/range ratio than MML. And the discussion progressing towards this realisation.

The strongest units are often the most versatile units.

Whether you disagree with an opinion or not, is irrelevant as to whether that post is part of a valid discussion. Unless, you want discussion that only conforms to your own narrative, and that is not something I think would be healthy for this forum not this community.

Sometimes, its the craziest the ideas, that are the genius. Obviously, before you hit that nugget of gold you'll pull up lots of duds.

The purpose of discussion is not always to garner consensus on a preproposed solution.

There are multiple stages in a discussion:

Consensus of a problem
Consensus of a need to resolve said problem
Consensus of a solution.

Discusion will take place at each stage, with varied answers/argumnets/assertions/opinions/etc. The person who provides the solution, does not need to be the person who highlights the problem and this is why discussions are so efficient in effecting organised and productive change, when in the correct environment that fosters proper discussion, as it is the coming together of minds all with varied experience ideas and opinions.

Bunch of rationalizations that ultimately come down to “if you let the thread go on long enough you will PROBABLY eventually converge to a good post” as some form of justification for allowing a daily low effort OP.

As said above, no one with an impact on balance decisions reads the forums because it was full of precisely that garbage. No one cares if the 113th post in the 300 post thread discussing whether megas should be able to be picked up by soul rippers has a decent point.

If you can’t meet the current guidelines, you didn’t put enough thought into your idea. Put the thought into it so that there is a point to reading it. That’s all there is to it.

Judging by the response to the guidelines which are now the most liked post on the forums, I did determine the top desires and problems of the forum community and responded promptly. Thanks for quoting my duties at me, though.

If your ideas are worth me bringing up to the balance team, you'd be able to EASILY fulfill my guideline requirements. So luckily none of those ideas have been destroyed by "The Great Filter".

" In QA and Customer Interfacing"

This isnt QA and customer interfacing, its improving the game for competetive gameplay, a job being done by ppl in their free time.
for easy acess you got aeolus.

@Psions please stop - having a proper objective argument about anything is only more than fair. You can use replays to show case some situations, you can use your own mods to show others. Luckily the forum is more than just the balance section and Dragun and Biass made a guide on it for this situation:

• https://forum.faforever.com/topic/739/guide-creating-a-basic-balance-mod-with-a-merge-blueprint

Any community, whether that is as small as FAF or as big as a country, will largely operate on facts. I hope you too can appreciate that. Without it everything would just hop from one extreme to another.