Balance Thread Guidelines Feedback

I am quite happy do ditch the replay required rule. Most of the stuff worth discussing is far too complex for showing it in one replay. We are not asking, is the pillar too weak against the ishie in a mass for mass confrontation. We are asking: Is the t2 stage too short, are ras bois op, is the repay time of the t3 mex too short and if so how would we fix it. The problem is that be best data we have is just the intuition of experienced players that have a long discussion which hopefully leads to a consensus.

So how do we put a barrier into place that prevents the balance forums becoming a gameplay and training channel people. One suggestion would be requirering 1500+ global rating in order to start a thread, as a minimum requirenment for game experience/knowledge. Wich I would consider problematic in the way that we already have quite a rating hirachy. People respect each other too much because of their rating. If you were a lower player and really discovered a worthwile issue it wouldn't completely shut you out of the balance discussion. You would have to convince someone 1500+ to make your point for you. That would offload a lot of the garbage filtering to the playerbase.

Another option would be that a new balance thread is locked until approval by moderation, or the balance team. Also I think balance discussions should be moderated very hard. So the information density of the discussion is high enough to be worthwile reading. If you just want to rant about balance do it on discord.

Also another thing, perhaps Balance team should be allowed to moderate the posts in the Balance forum?

@harzer99 said in Balance Thread Guidelines Feedback:

One suggestion would be requirering 1500+ global rating in order to start a thread,

I think people can happily put together a well structured case without needing to be the top 100 or so of the community.

This would make me a few wins off being able to post a thread here, which would be hilarious but also very, very stupid...

@harzer99 said in Balance Thread Guidelines Feedback:

Another option would be that a new balance thread is locked until approval by moderation, or the balance team.

Discussion and being flamed for 2 pages in a good scenario, allows peoples ideas to be improved on over time.

Ultimately, you would want said improvement to happen BEFORE the balance team evaluates it, not after - Making this a bad idea too.

@Tagada said in Balance Thread Guidelines Feedback:

Also another thing, perhaps Balance team should be allowed to moderate the posts in the Balance forum?

I 100% agree with this

@Tagada said in Balance Thread Guidelines Feedback:

Don't put the emphasis on solving the problem as this shouldn't be the primary reason for a balance post. They of course can propose a solution but it shouldn't be the main focus of a post. Most people can't suggest the best way to solve balance problems and thus shouldn't really do it, after all it's mostly the job of the balance team.
What players should focus on is finding and describing a problem they notice in a game in a well structured way with clear arguments showing and describing said problem or imbalance.

Thanks for the feedback! I'll make changes accordingly.

@biass said in Balance Thread Guidelines Feedback:

The current "ruleset" is not a "ruleset".
It's a benchmark to raise the standard of posting else you are liable (keyword) to be removed. People complaining that you removed every post in the forum that didn't contain a replay is not the fault of the benchmark, but a failure of you as a moderator. You should have considered the quality of the post/evidence and locked/removed based on that. If people wanted all posts without a replay file gone, we could have made a bot script.

That's what I mean with exceptions being made. A benchmark saying "posts need a replay" is a failure of a benchmark when there have been plenty of good posts not following it. As such I am attempting to adjust accordingly. This feedback should help with moderation as well. Knowing the community's expectations for moderation is the first step toward improvement.

@Tagada said in Balance Thread Guidelines Feedback:

Also another thing, perhaps Balance team should be allowed to moderate the posts in the Balance forum?

Wait, can you not? Balance team should have had moderation power in Balance forum for months now.

Only petric has mod rights.

Ruleset 3.1

1. Describe the problem and where it occurs (game/map type, rating bracket, etc.). Optionally provide one or two viable methods of resolving the problem.
2. Provide evidence if and when it is requested. Burden of evidence is on you as the one pointing out the balance issue
3. Do not create new threads on the same topic unless there has been a balance update affecting it since
4. Be objective and consider all game elements. Balance requests because of a single map or map type will be immediately locked
5. Stay on topic, if you have a different balance idea make a new thread. You may link to the original thread if you believe it to be relevant

@FtXCommando said in Balance Thread Guidelines Feedback:

Only petric has mod rights.

Oh right, I misremembered. I'll bring up the idea of extending it to the rest of the balance team

Yeah, would be nice since Petric isn't reading the forum daily.

@harzer99 said in Balance Thread Guidelines Feedback:

I am quite happy do ditch the replay required rule. Most of the stuff worth discussing is far too complex for showing it in one replay. We are not asking, is the pillar too weak against the ishie in a mass for mass confrontation. We are asking: Is the t2 stage too short, are ras bois op, is the repay time of the t3 mex too short and if so how would we fix it. The problem is that be best data we have is just the intuition of experienced players that have a long discussion which hopefully leads to a consensus.

So how do we put a barrier into place that prevents the balance forums becoming a gameplay and training channel people. One suggestion would be requirering 1500+ global rating in order to start a thread, as a minimum requirenment for game experience/knowledge. Wich I would consider problematic in the way that we already have quite a rating hirachy. People respect each other too much because of their rating. If you were a lower player and really discovered a worthwile issue it wouldn't completely shut you out of the balance discussion. You would have to convince someone 1500+ to make your point for you. That would offload a lot of the garbage filtering to the playerbase.

Consistent with my long post earlier, I agree with dispensing of the replay requirement. For the vast majority of balance discussions, replays of both game situations and unit testing will be extremely persuasive evidence which we should highly recommend players to submit whenever possible, it just shouldn't be an outright requirement.

However I would be totally happy with a minimum 1500 rating requirement to start any thread for balance issues. (This should not at all be the case for suggestions, just the balance forum). I don't think we overvalue rating, but there is a serious dunning-kruger effect among noobs that ruins the balance forum. I think it is almost never going to happen where a low rated player will end up giving any actually useful suggestions. Instead, the balance team and other people get tired of their garbage, stupid suggestions which simply demonstrate a serious lack of understanding of the game. It is tiring to respond to them, which surely means there is less time and energy left for the balance team to consider real issues.

@CorvathraNoob said in Balance Thread Guidelines Feedback:

However I would be totally happy with a minimum 1500 rating requirement to start any thread for balance issues. (This should not at all be the case for suggestions, just the balance forum).

I cannot and will not support a rating requirement to post in the balance forum.

First and foremost, it's unenforceable. It can take multiple minutes just to check one user's rating. I frankly cannot be bothered to do that, nor would I expect any other moderator to. Plus it's never that simple. Are they 1500 global but 1k ladder? Are they on a losing streak and lost 200 rating since posting? Are they 1800 rated but not played a single game in the past year?

Second, being under a certain rating doesn't prevent you from recognizing issues, just potentially from developing a good fix for them. As Tagada has said, fixes are what the balance team is for. There's no reason to filter for 1500+ when everything has to go through the balance team anyway.

Lastly, balance isn't for the tip top of gameplay only. If a unit is incredibly overpowered until 1500 where players have the APM/coordination to counter it, it's still a problem. Take hoverbombing for example. Imagine if instead of removing it bomber balance was adjusted to compensate because everyone above 1500 knew how to hoverbomb anyway. Bombers would probably be unusable in lower ranks.

Don’t really get why mod team would need to enforce anything other than forum bans based on balance forums. Should be up to balance team to make the guidelines they want and to close/purge things that don’t follow it.

@Deribus

1. It would be extremely easy to enforce. You make it a requirement for someone to be at least 1500 (let's say >1450, so rounded up to 1500 in a game lobby) at the time they are posting to begin a thread and have played at least one game in the last 6 months. They must state whether they are talking about balance as it relates to teamgames or ladder (though of course there is lots of overlap), and that their rating is at least 1500 in THAT category. So as long as they meet it in one category it is fine. (someone who is 2k on gap and 900 at ladder probably won't be talking about how ladder is balanced anyway.)

Rest assured, YOU do not need to spend any of your time looking this up. We all know how heated balance discussions get. It is guaranteed that as soon as anyone disagrees with the post, THEY will perform that investigation for you and look up that person's rating so that they can crush their stupid NOOB argument and offer YOU said proof so that you can delete the post.

2. As I said, there is basically zero chance anyone under 1500 understands the game well enough to see true balance problems that multiple people over 1500 for some reason cannot see for themselves and/or don't bother posting about, so we just end up cluttering the forum with a bunch of garbage.

3. That point is about how noob-friendly some game mechanics or strategies are, which is different from balance. I can agree it might make the game better to remove the hoverbomb mechanic because it makes the game easier to grasp for a wider audience, but it's not directly a balance issue, i.e. whether a game mechanic or unit stat is overpowered or underpowered. FA itself has a very steep learning curve, but the difficulty of mastering certain aspects of it are not "balance." That's why I explicitly said we should not apply this to suggestions, only balance.

I'll take you up on that fight, I bet I'd be willing to understand how this game functions better than half of the 1.5k+ Globals and why thing work the way they do. I am not a good player, far from it. But I have spend time (extensive time even) balancing SCTA Mod, which to shameless self promote can watch vs SCTA Showmatch Streams. Rock v Yeed is properly best illustration of the Mod in action and its balance. And while there are balance issues, the mod itself is quite well balanced against Supreme Commander Factions (admittedly I am lucky in that I inherited how TA was balanced and I am just adjusting stats).

But same token, I get why certain interactions are the way they are, be on a conceptual level. But more relevantly, I know this game code, I am still learning a lot of it perhaps. And on my training wheels, but with the kind of attitude, it boils down, "Why should I help?"

I admit I am lazy, I meant to look into T2 Arty bug and some other ones ages ago but got busy with things. The number of high rated players I've talked too simply did not know certain mechanics work in that way astounds me. Now I get it my opinion vs someone like Tagada is basically meaningless. But if you told me "Your invalid", I am not gonna bother posting let alone be willing to help to try and fix something. Especially bugs or help in balance patches.

I think we should end the discussion for now. Can you direct me to a person I would need to talk to so the whole balance team can get moderator powers on within Balance Sub Forum and then we can work out the guidelines although I think I've said everything I wanted to in that regard and the changes to the current one will be quite small as they are decent. As for Rating limit I am not interested in implementing that since there are already few posts of people rated <1.5k and the ones that exist usually don't meet the guidelines requirements and will be closed by me once I get ze powers. If a player spends enough time to make a well argumented post and explains clearly what he thinks is an issue then I have no problem with him being lower rated. Tbh I would say that a rating cut off could easily be 1.8k or even 2k since below these thresh holds most players don't understand the game well enough to really spot imbalances (most balance issues are pretty small now and often rest on top of whole faction power budgets and balance through their whole tech tries) either but w/e.

You need to talk to Brutus (maybe gieb not 100% sure) to adjust forum permissions.

<<. Take hoverbombing for example. Imagine if instead of removing it bomber balance was adjusted to compensate because everyone above 1500 knew how to hoverbomb anyway. Bombers would probably be unusable in lower ranks. >>

@CorvathraNoob
Yeah, talking about this and sorry for this small off-topic but I thought hover bombing was removed like a year ago or so. I just watched a Gyle cast from January where Blodir was able to make it and my jaw fell to the ground.

It's just suppossed to be harder to make?

@dragun101
"Now I get it my opinion vs someone like Tagada is basically meaningless. But if you told me "Your invalid", (SIC) I am not gonna bother posting let alone be willing to help to try and fix something. Especially bugs or help in balance patches."
Dragun, I'm not saying that you're invalid or only players with a high rating can contribute to the game, but we can distinguish between helping with balance, and coding. I appreciate all useful contributions people make to FAF.
Unfortunately, most people don't know what they don't know, yet apparently many received enough participation trophies during their childhood to make them think they know a whole lot more than they do. I hardly ever play ladder, so I know my own opinion on balance for ladder at ~1300 rating is completely worthless, so I have never offered any suggestions for ladder because I'm not an overconfident, arrogant prick.
@Tagada
I would say that balance decisions should ultimately be decided by 2k+ players, and so I would also be perfectly fine with voting myself out of having any opinion at all on the subject. My only concern is that limiting it to 2k plus might narrow it too much. At this moment I see 11 2k+ ladder players, and 29 for global, slightly more if you round up, but also not counting overlap for players 2k+ on both. My thinking is that some of the differences at the top are likely due to build orders, apm, etc. so players a bit under rating may understand the mechanics and balance well enough to still provide useful ideas regarding balance. I don't know where would be best to make a cutoff though. It seemed to me that at 1500 you'll at least weed out most of the complete garbage posts, but maybe 1800 is optimal. In any case, I would much rather prohibit those ignorant garbage posts than be able to offer my own opinion on balance.