Well, it's easier to say you're right by shutting the other up than having a debate and risk being wrong

Ideally things should work differently but this is what we have right now. I can't completely blame the moderators, there's not enough staff to deal with all the users that would contest a punshiment. Still in an ideal situation with enough time it's unacceptable to be denied an appeal in which you can defend yourself and contest a decision you don't think right (also as a side note if decisions seemed more "objectively right" rather than being ambiguous i believe less people would complain to mods team )

Also about what weakie said

@TheWeakie said in Open Review of FAF Moderation:

The rule about not being able to discuss specific reports is the dumbest rule in the history of faf

As NOC- wrote at the start, there is no rule that prohibits being able to discuss specific reports, the rule states:

"Discussing moderation decisions in public is discouraged. Channels exist for appealing processes and raising concerns about moderation."

From my understanding this means that:

1. Discussing moderation decisions in public is discouraged (not forbidden).
2. Channels do indeed exist for appealing processes and raising concerns (but they're not to be intended as the only legal way of doing so by the way this is written, giving the freedom to use whatever method people deem appropriate).

From this i can only derive that banning public discussions is a completely arbitrary decision taken by the moderators, that is NOT backed by any of the current rules and should therefore NOT lead to people being unable to do so or being punished for doing so.

From what i've actually seen happen on the discord tho, the moderators word is absolute and even above the same rules they are to uphold, like in this case. If it wasn't like this, people would be allowed to talk freely since there is no violation of any rule whatsoever, instead their messages and post get locked or removed, signaling that there is clearly no freedom of speech in those matters. Again, not because of rules but because of arbitrary decisions.

Guess whoever is responsible for letting moderation work like this either doesn't know/care, or is satisfied with how it is right now

Can't say the same about non-moderators tho...

I shared my experience as an example to talk about how moderation currently works, but after reading your answers i feel the need to clarify some things about the whole thing.

@Jip said in Open Review of FAF Moderation:

Based on what you wrote it sounds like you feel the moderators did not interpret the game state correct and that the game state is the context that is miss interpret on whatever you were moderated for.

yes, this is correct, i indeed felt that way, and further unofficial comments on the matter made me more convinced of this. The interpretation was incoherent (due to a rule applied differently depending on the situation) and exaggerated to justify the decision taken (imo).

@Jip said in Open Review of FAF Moderation:

But I feel like you assume that an appeal is processed by the same people, even though they are not.

the moderator that answered to my appeal said something about he and 3 other moderators having watched the replay, i assumed he was part of the initial team who took the decision because the way it was worded pointed towards that. However from your and magge's response i'm now thinking that the process is different from what i thought, although having no public explanation of how things are done one can only try to go by logic and assumptions.

@Jip said in Open Review of FAF Moderation:

This is of course not true. These type of discussions are quite exhausting. Let alone if you have to clarify the view of the moderator team in all detail every single time. And even when you do receive that information you may still not agree

What i cannot agree with is this thought. Generally if something is bad or there is a better way of doing it in game, a personal trainer is able to explain and i (having an average brain) am able to understand. I don't see why the same wouldn't apply to the situation there. I was accused of tipping the scales, it should be possible to be able to explain how i would have done that, i may or may not agree with it, but the superficial explanation given at the time seemed to go against any logic. That is why i proposed to pull in some high rated player with good game knowledge, he is more likely to make the correct call and also has no pressure to prove the decision previously taken was right, a competent third party.

@Jip said in Open Review of FAF Moderation:

It may still not make sense to you . Moderation is naturally subjective.

I will agree on moderation being subjective if the decision revolves around personal and moral values. This didn't seem the case as the in-game situation was the core of the issue instead of some kind of behaviour.

@Jip said in Open Review of FAF Moderation:

What I would suggest you do next time is to just let it be. Be banned (or whatever you got) for the duration. And perhaps read up about the rules so that you're less likely to break them in the future. Remember: nobody needs to break the rules. It's always a choice.

Sorry jip, again, while i understand where you guys are coming from, accepting a wrong punishment being imposed upon you just doesn't sit well with my personal values, if i think it's wrong i'll argue about it. It was nothing serious in term of duration, still i didn't argue about it because i wanted the punishment to be lifted, in fact when the whole discussion started my restriction was almost over anyway. It's the principle. Additionally, while there is a work in progres regarding rules, the currently written ones were not able to warrant a violation. I know moderators have the final say, but what's the point of written rules if you read them and understand something else completely? Might have an "Hall of good manners" instead of "Rules". Sorry for the excessive fiscality, but that's how i see it.

On to magge response

@magge said in Open Review of FAF Moderation:

The moderator, who processed the original penalty, has no vote-right for the appeal-decision. The decision contains the vote of several moderators, who independently look at the case and share their result. This is always explained in the appeal-ticket.

As said to Jip, the moderator who was in charge of my ticket said he was one of the 4 moderators who looked at the replay and the way it was worded made it seem like the initial report was handled by these 4 moderators who made the decision. Now i don't know about the appeal procedure works in detail since this information is either not public or hard to find, but i recognize i may have misunderstood.

@magge said in Open Review of FAF Moderation:

The appeal itself is your chance to lay out your argumentation and explain the situation. If you provided it all, then your chance is complete when the moderator team reaches a decision.

That's understandable, and by the way it works it should be over at that point. However, excuse my stubborness here, while i understand that contesting this decision would be the same as saying a lot of moderators were wrong, it just made no sense from a logical standpoint. The in-game dynamics imo should not have brought to that. Zooming out of the single case a little, we're saying there's a low chance for the moderators to all be wrong, but that can still happen. Once again, i agree with you that the issue here is time, so AS OF NOW, not much can really be done to change that. That is why i'm criticizing the process, because in the case that we as FAF community have enough resources, we should be aware that this is not the best method out there, and can improve it.

@magge said in Open Review of FAF Moderation:

On a personal note, I believe I remember seeing your Discord chat in the #general-chat at the time, where you tried to convince other users about your case and how unfairly you were treated. As far as I remember, you faced significant pushback from other users, before the chat died down.

The main "setbacks" to my point were made by a guy similarly rated to me who was in all honesty saying whatever and making no sense. Here i need to get a little more "detaily" about the situation. It was established that i had impacted negatively an even game, so much that my "negative impact" was the cause for the loss, according to what was given as a reason in the appeal. Since i considered the possibility of being wrong, i separately asked for a replay review, and a personal trainer answered. I asked him "being me in this situation, what would you do to win the game"? He told me that the game was lost at least 4 minutes before, that at that point he would have probably quit in my place, and that my best bet for salvaging it was noticing my teammate needed help 10 minutes prior.

That doesn't seem much of a setback to my original claims, aside from whatr andom 800-1500 guys could say in general chat. The personal trainer was high rated in the same game mode the replay was about, his raiting being around 1950 and therefore i assume his advice to be somewhat reliable. Now, as someone pointed out, even some of the moderators are around that level of rating, while others are far from it. With this said we can take a look at 2 possible scenarios:

1. The moderators who judged the situation to be even could have a worse game knowledge than the personal trainer (could be lower rated and worse at the game), in this case the decision would be proven questionable
2. The moderators who judged the situation to be even could have the same game knowledge as the personal trainer, and the game altough of level 900~ was not easy to analyze.

In any case, some (understandable) doubts could begin to sprout.

@magge said in Open Review of FAF Moderation:

The first standard greeting-message from us in the appeal ticket explains, that it can take from 1 to 3 days to come up with a result. Everyone who appeals, get the same message and a fair chance to reflect their POV. Nothing was rushed, and you got proper reasons at the end.

You're right, this was due to my poor understanding of the entire moderation procedure, appeal included, i likely misinterpreted some steps.

@magge said in Open Review of FAF Moderation:

Because (usually not truthfully) posts about moderation-actions have no benefit to the community, except that those banned persons are unloading their hard emotions.

I understand getting banned can be an awful experience and very frustrating, but dumping such emotions into the community will not to lead to any meaningful resolution. It just consumes energy for any reader without providing meaningful value for either side.

that is another valid counterpoint to things going public. Maybe if users were more well-behaved things could work differently.

Please note that although i may sound harsh in some instances (i know from experience that i sometimes get through as offensive even tho it wasn't my intention), i have no grudges towards the mods. I do however think that my criticism, however harsh it may seem, is there for a good reasons, and is to be directed at the process which, for a lack of time, denies the opportunity to object in a satisfactory way when uses deem it necessary, potentially leaving some of them with the feeling of having been unjustly punished.

Thank you for pointing out the inaccuracies and for taking your time to answer.

@Vindex

The first thing i ask myself is, what are these additional stats going to do? I believe that more stats might contribute towards tracking each player's own progress (making them feel more satisfied when they see improvements) rather than serving purposes like gauging a player's skill (at least with a non-ill intent in mind). With that said, i see these additions as something that could bring some QoL, but also come with risks. just look at how winrate is treated on LoL, people flaming others with <50% wr, or acting like they're superior with their high 58% winrate or so, even when that 58% is out of 60 or so games, and hence, irrelevant statistically.

The point is, it's up to the community to make good use of these new stats, if we trust the people to not go toxic about it, then sure, why not? Maybe some information about games that have these systems already in place and the effects they have on the community might be evalued first.

Onto the suggestions

1. About winrate: as previously said, some people might look at the single number without the game count in mind, getting the "wrong" information out of this stat. Also, and i talk from personal experience, in an environment where your WR becomes almost what defines your skill/value as a player, seeing it go down might lead to frustration and poison the environment itself (or lead people to treat you like garbage. This is a risky stat imo, the player base might either make good or bad use of it.

2. This is nice to track your personal progress, but i would add it to the player's profile rather than the leaderbords page

3. The position change is graphically easy to implement, some arrows and maybe a number saying how many positions a player shifted, with a set timer for each refresh. I don't see as many drawbacks for this as i do with winrate, although i have to say maybe this might only be meaningful above a certain level (like master+, where positions don't shift as easily as in gold).

4. This is imo unnecessary and doesn't fit well in the leaderboard You know what? I changed my mind, the graphic showing "last game played X days ago" is actually pretty neat. Additionally, how about improving information about the player's previous games regardless of leaderboard? An idea i just had:

• Match history feature, showing a record of the players last X games (X totally arbitrary), with the essential info and directly accessible from their profile (this could be an additional feature, or maybe a starting point for a complete rework of the replay section, maybe just a "compact mode" option for replay section itself).
  The info would be just some of the ones in the replay section, like players involved, map preview, outcome, game lenght (played not real time), gamemode (custom, ladder, mods). The goal would be to have more and smaller windows so you can skim through them quickly, seeing how the past games went in terms of win/loss, or finding easily the game you wanted to rewatch (i'm not too comfortable with the replay sections, windows are too big and you really need to scroll a lot, plus not having mapgen in the preview sucks but i know we can't do anything about that for now so rip).

Additional suggestion: rework score.
I don't like the score system, first, because in the leaderboard itself i can't find an explanation for it, and second, because even after i think i figured out what it does (i think it tracks your progress in each division, promoting you after it reaches 10+ or demoting on 0-) i can't bring myself to pay too much attention to it. I find myself barely checking the division (paying more attention to my rating), but even when i do score is just the extra of an extra, the only times i recall thinking about score were the times i was trying to figure out why this number was randomly going up or down.

I will try to answer to your first 2 questions, take with a pinch of salt what i'll say (i wasn't there at the time).

1. As far as i know GPG net was to play multiplayer, i never saw it, so i don't know too much about it, it was a matchmaker and supported a lobby chat function, i believe replays, and possibly other features. About vanilla or FA idk, but i expect such a platform to be there from the start rather than come out with a "dlc". It closed because the company stopped mantaining it years later, i think this was before the company failed.

2. https://forum.faforever.com/topic/8422/what-s-the-history-of-faf/13?_=1733931289441
   introduction by Ze_pilot, he says that gpg was not "alive" but simply "still up". Turns out he was right about imminent end of gpgnet which happened around a year later.

For more info, https://forum.faforever.com/topic/8422/what-s-the-history-of-faf/3?_=1733931289441
2 links given to me by sheikah, you can find a lot more there, the Lun Xun's one has year by year recaps (on different pages)

ZE_Pilot yt channel is still active after all these years lol, that was unexpected. Old client seems pretty cool for 2011, i thought it would be uglier. At the time i remember using Xfire (for games like cod4), faf seems way more ahead of the time compared to that, wp to the initial faf team.

While i dislike the option, before saying "FAF is not in financial need" i'd make a list of what should get fixed and the costs
Just by memory i recall a few operations possibly requiring more than the current total budget. More money can never hurt the project imo, still, not like this.

Sorry @GrabADrink but i'd never wanna see FAF in the micro transactions state many modern games adopted, even if just for lobbies. If the goal is to keep the project alive you won't do it by having people get mad and leave.

@Nuggets What's that capslock nuggets? I thought you were relaxed...

@Brutus5000 You're the software god, and as such, an exception. Active people in most teams have a more than decent rating (and usually everyone whose opiniong is taken into consideration).

Also, answer me on disc

(The morpheus quote killed me )

Also, gap surely dumbs the game down (i also rather play 3v3 instead of 1v1 so my attention can be less distributed and i find it more enjoyable), but it dumbs it down to a degree that you don't get to see most of the actual game. I'm bad at apm and multitasking, but having virtually 0 time between techs, entirely skipping from t1 to experimental, removes all sorts of interactions. And that's not even the problem, you can only play (maybe) a single map out of the huge pool.

Again, gap in itself is not the problem, if that's what people enjoy, the best to them, but it could be the only option they have at the start, and they just stick to it because they can't properly get introduced to the game (as i tell in my "diary" XD). My issue is with that being a possibility

Bit of a text wall.

TL DR: the experience of a very bad player and how it relates to gap.

Also a bit of disclaimer: i think gap being so played is a real issue. With that said, considering that no association member has ever seriously addressed this the same way that i do, i have to conclude that either:

1. current association members may as well have no idea about it, due to being unable to relate, as most of them are seasoned players, or players who usually have displayed some kind of quick grow from the start (potentially due to coming from other RTS games and already being skilled in some way), skipping the "trash noob" phase (to my knowledge no one with a relevant role in FAF is that bad at the game, minimum rating i know about is 1400~)

or

2. or the problem is non-existent and i was just very, very, very unlucky in my first FAF period

On to the main story.

Gap being overrated is something i agree with but also comprehend.

Let me tell you my story. I started with FAF 5 years ago. It was probably my first rts multiplayer experience. I've played rts games in the past like some titles from the total war saga, but those are a different type of rts, and half of the gameplay is turn-based. Probably the closest (and coolest) supcom-like thing i've played in my life is metal knight: Mission terminate resistance (1998).

All of this to say that supcom wasn't only my first "true" rts, but also the first multiplayer one. I was totally new to the genre, and had a really hard time at the start, mostly due to me joining ladder games and being trashed (it was SO frustrating, i didn't have any idea on what to do). My ladder experience was very brief, i quickly gave up on it (all losses ofc, like 15-20 in a row at least, possibly more). I tried looking for some tutorials but there was nothing i could seem to do to even get close to victory. I think at the start my global rating was set by default to 800, opponents were a little too tough for me.

I resorted to custom games, most of which were the most popular maps (Gap, Seton's, Ultimate you shall not pass XD). When i joined other maps i was always losing almost automatically, and even on gap if i got one of the eco spots our team would be pretty crippled. Losing more and more games, my rating started realizing i was not an 800, and slowly brought me to my much deserve -400/-500. That, paired with my high cpu rating (slow potato), warranted a kick from almost every non gap lobby, and after a 50 or so games i was so dejected that i abandoned the game. While i recognize that i may be one of the worst starting rts players, i think that some people could somehow relate to my experience. But it doesn't end here.

I came back around one year later, determined to retry, here i started a long series of gap games (the only available map). At the time if i recall correctly i had aronud 70 games, i would be a staple gap player until 400, but not before becoming depressed again around 200 something and quitting again, feeling no purpose in that repetitive and still too difficult for me gameplay (on gap, i either got nuked before i could make an experimental, or t3 arty before i could nuke, or they just had smd, and telemazered before i could t3 arty, it was truly horrible ahahahah).

It follows another year and a half of inactivity, then one day i see the game in my steam library and think "i can't really accept being so disgusting at a videogame, i want to improve". Another 200 gap games and we're at 400 now, not all gap, still some ultimate you shall not pass here and there. I retried ladder at some point with the same exact results as the first times. This is where (i don't remember how exactly) i met my saviour: Cheeseberry. The guy was so kind and spent a lot of time explaining me the basics of the game, and gradually more advanced stuff. There were weeks where he would spend like 5 out of 7 evenings with me on discord, live coaching and reviewing replays.

I had 6 fun months, and although thanks to Berry i got much better at the game (my rating went from -300 to 400 or 500) my skill... well, still trash XD, but less disgusting than before, way less disgusting. What Berry gave tho was knowledge, i started understanding a lot more about the game, even tho i couldn't keep up in game, i could spot mistakes from higher rated players. Guess i'm a slow learner after all. But then, after succesfully getting out of the gap trap, throwing myself into ladder i have to confront the harsh truth once again: i suck badly despite so much time in reviews, tutorials, coaching and playing. Get dejected > quit. Rinse and repeat. I truly felt sorry for Berry after all the effort he put on me, but it was too depressing. This was around 2023 i believe.

In the end i came back once again on march this year, idk why, maybe to challenge myself once again. A friend of mine watching my streams on discord started having some interested in the game and ended up buying it, we played together until july. This time something clicked, and improved a lot compared to the past, getting somewhat close to the average player. I still make stupid mistakes, but can learn and improve with more effectiveness. Currently i'm taking advice from another very good guy (i ended up not pestering Berry anymore because his life was busy at the time and i was too time consuming XD), and my fav mode is 3v3 mapgen. This is yet the most fun period i had on FAF, grinded around 770 games in the last few months, almost double of what i did in the previous 4 years, and i can't say for sure that i won't hit a wall again, get depressed and disappear, but i feel like for now i can finally enjoy the game.

But, i do acknowledge that this might as well not be the case if i wasn't so lucky. I mean, sure my first impact with the game was disastrous (and second, and third), but i might also have quit this game forever if not for berry legit pulling me out of the gap hell. The negative rating kind of forced me to get into that environment, which gives you nothing to use outside of gap, so you either stick to it, or feel so utterly useless on other maps. What could have happened if i didn't meet Berry? I'd probably quit for good, maybe occasionally coming back for a challenge, but i can't imagine enjoying the game in that type of situation.

Gap is truly a hell hole that keeps pulling in new victims due to the harsh environment, low rated people being unwelcome in normal lobbies, and the popularity of the map itself. I think this is possibly a self-sustaining issue, and very harmful to new players. I truly am lucky, would've missed out on such a good game if not for a stroke of luck

Wow i had forgotten the old client's ui, good memories unlocked

In the last few months i kept wondering about how FAF came to be the way it is now, i have pieces of the story, some names from old posts and discord chats. It's like having pieces of information while trying to reconstruct the puzzled lore of a soul-like game .
Figured that the best way would be to ask you guys.

I know that after supcom came out, it was fairly popular, then the expansion forged alliance came, then gpg flopped with supcom 2 and stopped supporting the games (maybe this was around when the company failed? Watched an interview with chris taylor and read a few articles about it).

I've seen that in the old days supcom had some nice competitive scene, maybe not too big (none had at the time i think), but it looked similar to what CoD lans, with the old headphones and pcs in a dark room XD.

What i'm missing is:
When did FAF start? After the company failed? Before? Did it continue to support the game or it resurrected it from the grave?
Why/How did it start? Was it initially kind of like a group of friends who wanted to do something or the purpose was to keep the game alive as a community?
Who created it? Who are the initial members? Where are they now?
How did you guys manage to do this from scratch?

Bonus point: what are the future projects?

I hear people talking about how the community is struggling here and there, what's the "official" state of things and how is it going to be in the future?

It's your time to shine guys!

@maudlin27 said in Open Review of FAF Moderation:

In addition to this though, I spent more than an hour discussing this case via PMs with Crofis explaining the reason for mod action being taken (doing a rough word count, looks like c.3k words between the two of us).

So it's very frustrating for me to see comments such as that a detailed explanation was denied, that a request for more details wasn't granted, and that the mods took quick and rushed decisions, refusing to give proper reasons for them.

It's true that we spent like half an hour discussing the situation in better detail maud, and as i've already said i really appreciated you tooking the effort to talk to me, but i interpreted that as a personal initiative from you rather than an official action from the moderators team. Officially my request was denied, so in that aspect i can't say things differently from what i did. I will still personally thank you for trying to be more understanding and reaching out to me, but my thanks go to Maudlin27 and no one else in regard to the matter. I'm sorry if i upset you little cutie patootie.

Also, as i already said about the "rushed decision" and the whole appeal critique, the way things were worded + not having a real understanding of how the whole machine operates led to me misunderstanding how the procedure is structured, you can scratch it as it was inaccurate (information about that was hard to find, at least for me), sorry about that.