Hello mods

@giebmasse said in Username rules updates:

The position of the moderation team is that the primary use of usernames is to tell users apart. If people are unable to do so or have to take additional steps (such as checking name history), then usernames are failing at this purpose.

I want to differentiate between two terms: identity and discernibility, both of which have been used as arguments in this thread at various points. The way I see it:

• Identity – being able to tell who a player is just by using their player name.
• Discernibility – being able to tell the difference between two or more players based on their usernames.

Could you clarify if this update to the rules is intended to lock names to make players more identifiable, or to improve discernibility between two players who might share similar names (or past names)?

Identity

The simple solution that's already been proposed is simply to make the unique player ID accessible on player cards or in chats with said player. Basic example pictured, and I'm surprised the mod team has ignored this suggestion as it fixes a lot of problems highlighted.

With this in place, you could simply have reports to require a player ID submitted as well as the username.

Outside of moderation reports, you might still need to check someone's renames to see who they really are, but I see this as outside the moderation team's jurisdiction. For a start, how do you define what each player's identity is? Farms has been TheWheelie for over a year and now TheWeakie, meanwhile pepsi is known by a name he has never used. It's not the mod team's job to make sure player X can recognise player Y, it has too many variables out of the mod team's control.

I understand that it's an issue if a mod can't identify who a report is referring to, but it's not the job of the average player to stay on a name so that I can personally recognise them in-game. I think using the player ID in reports would help solve some of this confusion.

Discernibility

This still leaves us with the problems of impersonation, using characters to create near identical names or otherwise as another player or mod.

Disclaimer: As you can probably tell by my profile, I have a biased view on this. My personal opinion is that I chose this name for a joke, the person I am impersonating doesn't have any issue with it, and I'm not using this name to cause any issues in FAF.

I do understand that mods want to curb impersonation used for nefarious reasons, so I will outline my concerns in what I hope will be an unbiased way.

Mod impersonation

Mod impersonation is obviously a big issue when it happens, and we should not allow this as a community. But to be honest, if any random player can rename to impersonate a mod, I don't even see it as a rename issue. Mods should have clearer signifiers of their role to more easily differentiate them from players.

Additionally, I could still masquerade as a mod without renaming - I could just say "hello I am a mod" and attempt to pressure players to do things.
I've also seen too many new players ping TheSetoner to ask questions, I can't imagine how many DMs it gets. A clearer indicator of mod status seems like it could be useful, whatever the final decision is on this rename rule update.

Player Impersonation

I think it would be good to know how big of a problem this actually is. Do a lot of players actually use similar characters to impersonate others with malicious intent? I can totally understand the issues with mod impersonation, but with player impersonation I would really like some stats on how widespread this is, because as far as I'm aware it's only a few meme renames that haven't offended anyone.

The existing rule of thumb is that the offended party/impersonated player has the option to report the player who renamed. Otherwise, no action will be taken. In my mind this worked fairly well, as it avoided people being banned for joke renames while allowing more malicious impersonation to be punished. The proposed solution of simply reverting a player to an acceptable name could work well in cases of reports like these.

If the mod team would like to share some more info about how much of a problem player on player impersonation actually is, that would really help understand the motivation behind these intended rules updates.

Concluding Thoughts

Understanding the motivation behind this update has been challenging, with such a wide range of differing arguments used - from curbing mod impersonation to making it easier for tournament viewers to recognise players. I didn't post any serious response until the mod team declared they'd be going ahead with the changes anyway, despite the negative backlash, so I hope they make the effort to clarify and focus their intention in a future post.

I like how an inside joke between people who mostly play together has somehow triggered the mod team to make sweeping changes to restrict user agency. These particular renames affected literally no one outside the 1800+ community, who already know who everyone is. That is, unless there's been some surge of 800s ban evading by confounding mods with monthly renames - I doubt it.

Meanwhile, the thread to discuss this bizarre change is slowly filling with slurs, as if our ability to trust moderation wasn't already low enough.

@deribus response to post #2.

@deribus said in Username rules updates:

In-game communication
Tournament player recognition
Player reputation

I believe I covered these already in my previous posts, but I'll go over each briefly here and outline why they either aren't problems, or are not fixed by this update.

1. In-game communication

I don't really see renames causing an issue here. Firstly, I've already outlined how player identity transcends renames, and people who regularly play together manage just fine despite there being 8 wheelies right now.

For players who don't regularly play with each other, they can always find a way to communicate what they need. For example, if a name is difficult to type, like "8o12s2s8j1j" (which is a totally allowed name), you can simply refer to a player by colour. You might even do this in the heat of the moment if you don't have time to type even a simpler name. Or, employ the dual gap classic and put pings on their base.

Limiting renames will not fix this issue, in my opinion.

2. Tournament player recognition

This is rather a silly point, as FtX pointed out earlier tournaments could simply force players to rename to their "tournament name" 1hr prior to start. Pretending for now this isn't possible, any player who wants to gain recognition could stick to a single name. But to be honest, the best way to gain recognition would be simply to win tourneys. If I were to win LotS every year with a different ridiculous name, I would be "that guy with the renames" and audiences might be wondering what I'll be next year.

My main contention with this argument, however, is that I simply don't think this is a problem. I remember before I even downloaded FAF watching a legendary bo15 between zock and blackheart. Blackheart starts off named as "Banana" and ends the bo15 as "Horse". He renamed mid tourney, and it was easy for me to follow, as a person who hadn't even played a faf game. I don't know of any instances where players have deliberately renamed in order to make casting or following games more difficult, so I think the problem solved by the rules update is almost non-existent.

3. Player reputation

I assume by this you mean the ability of players to track good or bad behaviour by others. Luckily, the friend/foe system as well as player notes transcends renames, so a player you foed can't sneak into your lobby by renaming.

The only arena where "reputation" is a significant factor, is the 1800+ arena where players who consistently under-perform can get blacklisted from joining lobbies. I'm sure it's a thing on gap too if someone keeps stealing mass or something. By making renames less frequent you're essentially trying to "brand" badly behaved players, so others can spot them and kick them from lobbies if needed. You're creating a system for a minority of players that affect the whole player base, when the simpler solution of just foeing players you don't want to play with already exists. You can even see the foe icon if they rename and are sat in a lobby.

Moderation angle

@deribus said in Username rules updates:

In addition, there are some benefits specifically on the moderation side of things. I wanted to stress the ones above because it seems like there has been a focus on the benefits on the other side of the moderation curtain, which was not the intent.

Ease of reporting the correct player
Reduce impersonation (of moderators or otherwise)
Reduce the frequency of inappropriate usernames
Make it harder to evade moderation action by rapid username changing

I'm surprised to hear this, as these are the only reasons given so far that I considered legitimate. As mentioned in my previous post, I think we'd all better understand the scale of this benefit with any sort of stats - even approximate will do (e.g. rename abuse makes up about 1 in 50 reports, so about N reports per year).

I don't think many of us consider the three primary reasons sufficiently justify the rename changes, but if your lives are a living hell because of renames please share.

The discord example

Frankly I'm surprised this is even mentioned. In all my years as a personal trainer on the FAF discord, not once did my discord nickname align with my FAF username - past or present. In fact I doubt most people in here even know my discord username. I like the forum system that uses people's in-game usernames to make them recognisable, but this has never been the case on discord.

So this comparison is simply flawed, as any player could have different usernames on discord and FAF, regardless of any suggested update to the rename rules.

Response to my post

I don't know what the mod client looks like, I don't know the steps of actually processing a report. I'm not suggesting to use only player ID in reports, but it would function as the unique identifying token in the case that there was a rename. It's impossible to give any more suggestions without knowing how processing a report actually looks like to you.

Do we have any stats on how often the average player renames, or how often it poses a problem in a report? I feel like I've been asking for this the whole thread, but it would help inform all the people who don't process reports on the daily.

Backlash, mod hate

I'd like to say that I never suggested that the number of upvotes/downvotes should be used to dictate policy. I understand the mods are people too, so I include the upvotes on the original post from mods as valid opinions. If most of the people in support of the change are mods, there must be some reason, right?

I think another factor that fuelled the fire was the lack of discussion - after the initial post, weeks went by without any moderator providing an opinion. As a player this really offended me, as this change was made and it looked like feedback was essentially being ignored. The first mod response then stated :

@giebmasse said in Username rules updates:

Therefore, the moderation team believes that user identification should not be compromised for the sake of having a humorous name.

Which to me reads "ok, but we're pushing this anyway." Bear in mind this is still is all from a single mod at this point. I understand FAF runs on people's free time, but it does feel difficult to halt a change once someone has decided it's going to happen. You can stick your arm into the cogs of the machine, but the wheels are just gonna keep turning - I'm currently thinking of weighing in on the area reclaim issue, but I'm not sure what good it would even do.

If rename abuse really makes your lives miserable, let us know the scale of it so we can actually understand the reasoning behind this change. The other points - tournaments, player impersonation etc, I don't think any of us players consider an issue currently.

Who cares anyway?

A common sentiment I've heard from people supporting the change is the idea that it's not really a major change, renames might be fun but all in all not much is being lost by this update. For the most part, I would agree - it's not a huge change, it doesn't even touch gameplay.

The problem most of us have is that if you shave off 1% of the fun of the game enough times, eventually you are left with a game and community you no longer want to be a part of. See Sladow and Terari both leaving - neither of them are ragequitting purely because of this change, but both have stated that there have simply been too many 1% fun reductions in the past, and they've had enough. Especially when trying to stop or even discuss changes before they are implemented can feel feel so futile, as an overwhelmingly negative response is dismissed by referring to the invisible silent majority who must be ok with it, or by ignoring posts that aren't dissertation length.

Sladow summarized it quite well:

@theweakienoob said in Username rules updates:

I also dislike the "we're gonna do change XY and THEN wait for 10 user pages of good reasoning in order to revert them" mentality.

I've made the effort to voice my concerns this time, but there will come a time and change where I'll simply log off and never look back.

To Wrap Up

I don't think the issues in player to player interactions warrant these changes at all, for reasons I've outlined. The moderator side, which you've said are actually just "additional benefits", have some merit - but we still don't have anywhere near of a complete picture of the scale of this issue to justify limiting renames in this way.

why is there still no option to downvote things

asf can't shoot drones

this was introduced many years ago so that you can't suicide a bunch of asf on drone assisted shields and instantly down them, and win an arty war for example

use regular aa/maa/inties

@Tagada said in Why would you have left FAF?:

Make a vs AI tab in Play tab (along Custom games and Matchmaking) where you will be automatched (solo) vs AI of chosen difficulty, this could use a seperate pool or just the ladder one. I know people can host their custom games etc. but this would make it very straight forward to get games on curated types of maps where you can learn the basics.

This would also be a nice way to introduce new players to some of the nice custom maps they may not have seen before, and this pool can be way less picky than any ladder pool and need changing less often

@F-Odin playing vs AI in a non-pvp setting is a large proportion of all faf games played, making it more convenient would be beneficial to those people. It's not about training the next ladder god.
And besides, playing vs ai should still be a useful learning experience if you are totally new and e.g. don't even know what tmd is or how anything works

can't wait for someone to apply who actually qualifies

1. 500r dude gets x1.5 mass
2. 500r dude continually feeds mass to 1500 teammate
3. ?????
4. profit

Also no idea why you think giving a low rated guy more resources and buildspeed would increase their effective skill, if anything it would turn them into a mass donation machine akin to cheating ai

@nine2 said in Calling for nine2 to resign as Promotions Councillor:

You might notice that some councilors are trying to save their own skin

No offense but your latest news post looks exactly like this, a half hearted attempt to retroactively appear unbiased

@thewheelienoob sounds good, I look forward to some good team-games on Forged Alliance Forever

@theweakie can't wait daddy

@jip said in Enable / Disable recalling games:

This is actually a very good reason to change game mechanics and/or user interactions

Not if you fuck over all the people who made the effort to learn!

But in general yes, there will never be a perfect solution to ending a game. You will always have the guy who ctrlks at the first sign of trouble, and the guy who hides acu in the water for another 10 mins.

@paradox_of_war terari summarised it best for me:
"now they are making reclaiming slower to make it fair to everyone (you can no longer outscale old men because of manual reclaim)"

@deribus response to post #2.

@deribus said in Username rules updates:

In-game communication
Tournament player recognition
Player reputation

I believe I covered these already in my previous posts, but I'll go over each briefly here and outline why they either aren't problems, or are not fixed by this update.

1. In-game communication

I don't really see renames causing an issue here. Firstly, I've already outlined how player identity transcends renames, and people who regularly play together manage just fine despite there being 8 wheelies right now.

For players who don't regularly play with each other, they can always find a way to communicate what they need. For example, if a name is difficult to type, like "8o12s2s8j1j" (which is a totally allowed name), you can simply refer to a player by colour. You might even do this in the heat of the moment if you don't have time to type even a simpler name. Or, employ the dual gap classic and put pings on their base.

Limiting renames will not fix this issue, in my opinion.

2. Tournament player recognition

This is rather a silly point, as FtX pointed out earlier tournaments could simply force players to rename to their "tournament name" 1hr prior to start. Pretending for now this isn't possible, any player who wants to gain recognition could stick to a single name. But to be honest, the best way to gain recognition would be simply to win tourneys. If I were to win LotS every year with a different ridiculous name, I would be "that guy with the renames" and audiences might be wondering what I'll be next year.

My main contention with this argument, however, is that I simply don't think this is a problem. I remember before I even downloaded FAF watching a legendary bo15 between zock and blackheart. Blackheart starts off named as "Banana" and ends the bo15 as "Horse". He renamed mid tourney, and it was easy for me to follow, as a person who hadn't even played a faf game. I don't know of any instances where players have deliberately renamed in order to make casting or following games more difficult, so I think the problem solved by the rules update is almost non-existent.

3. Player reputation

I assume by this you mean the ability of players to track good or bad behaviour by others. Luckily, the friend/foe system as well as player notes transcends renames, so a player you foed can't sneak into your lobby by renaming.

The only arena where "reputation" is a significant factor, is the 1800+ arena where players who consistently under-perform can get blacklisted from joining lobbies. I'm sure it's a thing on gap too if someone keeps stealing mass or something. By making renames less frequent you're essentially trying to "brand" badly behaved players, so others can spot them and kick them from lobbies if needed. You're creating a system for a minority of players that affect the whole player base, when the simpler solution of just foeing players you don't want to play with already exists. You can even see the foe icon if they rename and are sat in a lobby.

Moderation angle

@deribus said in Username rules updates:

In addition, there are some benefits specifically on the moderation side of things. I wanted to stress the ones above because it seems like there has been a focus on the benefits on the other side of the moderation curtain, which was not the intent.

Ease of reporting the correct player
Reduce impersonation (of moderators or otherwise)
Reduce the frequency of inappropriate usernames
Make it harder to evade moderation action by rapid username changing

I'm surprised to hear this, as these are the only reasons given so far that I considered legitimate. As mentioned in my previous post, I think we'd all better understand the scale of this benefit with any sort of stats - even approximate will do (e.g. rename abuse makes up about 1 in 50 reports, so about N reports per year).

I don't think many of us consider the three primary reasons sufficiently justify the rename changes, but if your lives are a living hell because of renames please share.

The discord example

Frankly I'm surprised this is even mentioned. In all my years as a personal trainer on the FAF discord, not once did my discord nickname align with my FAF username - past or present. In fact I doubt most people in here even know my discord username. I like the forum system that uses people's in-game usernames to make them recognisable, but this has never been the case on discord.

So this comparison is simply flawed, as any player could have different usernames on discord and FAF, regardless of any suggested update to the rename rules.

Response to my post

I don't know what the mod client looks like, I don't know the steps of actually processing a report. I'm not suggesting to use only player ID in reports, but it would function as the unique identifying token in the case that there was a rename. It's impossible to give any more suggestions without knowing how processing a report actually looks like to you.

Do we have any stats on how often the average player renames, or how often it poses a problem in a report? I feel like I've been asking for this the whole thread, but it would help inform all the people who don't process reports on the daily.

Backlash, mod hate

I'd like to say that I never suggested that the number of upvotes/downvotes should be used to dictate policy. I understand the mods are people too, so I include the upvotes on the original post from mods as valid opinions. If most of the people in support of the change are mods, there must be some reason, right?

I think another factor that fuelled the fire was the lack of discussion - after the initial post, weeks went by without any moderator providing an opinion. As a player this really offended me, as this change was made and it looked like feedback was essentially being ignored. The first mod response then stated :

@giebmasse said in Username rules updates:

Therefore, the moderation team believes that user identification should not be compromised for the sake of having a humorous name.

Which to me reads "ok, but we're pushing this anyway." Bear in mind this is still is all from a single mod at this point. I understand FAF runs on people's free time, but it does feel difficult to halt a change once someone has decided it's going to happen. You can stick your arm into the cogs of the machine, but the wheels are just gonna keep turning - I'm currently thinking of weighing in on the area reclaim issue, but I'm not sure what good it would even do.

If rename abuse really makes your lives miserable, let us know the scale of it so we can actually understand the reasoning behind this change. The other points - tournaments, player impersonation etc, I don't think any of us players consider an issue currently.

Who cares anyway?

A common sentiment I've heard from people supporting the change is the idea that it's not really a major change, renames might be fun but all in all not much is being lost by this update. For the most part, I would agree - it's not a huge change, it doesn't even touch gameplay.

The problem most of us have is that if you shave off 1% of the fun of the game enough times, eventually you are left with a game and community you no longer want to be a part of. See Sladow and Terari both leaving - neither of them are ragequitting purely because of this change, but both have stated that there have simply been too many 1% fun reductions in the past, and they've had enough. Especially when trying to stop or even discuss changes before they are implemented can feel feel so futile, as an overwhelmingly negative response is dismissed by referring to the invisible silent majority who must be ok with it, or by ignoring posts that aren't dissertation length.

Sladow summarized it quite well:

@theweakienoob said in Username rules updates:

I also dislike the "we're gonna do change XY and THEN wait for 10 user pages of good reasoning in order to revert them" mentality.

I've made the effort to voice my concerns this time, but there will come a time and change where I'll simply log off and never look back.

To Wrap Up

I don't think the issues in player to player interactions warrant these changes at all, for reasons I've outlined. The moderator side, which you've said are actually just "additional benefits", have some merit - but we still don't have anywhere near of a complete picture of the scale of this issue to justify limiting renames in this way.

@deribus this is a quick response to your first reply, I will save a proper treatment of your 2nd reply for its own post.

@deribus said in Username rules updates:

Take a look at BlackYps screenshot, I have absolutely no idea who any of those people are. I assume "TheWheelie" is Farms, Sladow is one of them... and that's it.

My point is this: why does it matter if you don't know who we are? It would matter only if there were some moderator action to be taken. I won't comment on this right now as you go into a bit more detail in your 2nd post.

From a player to player perspective, I don't think I've ever seen you in game, so if we weren't in this thread together the chances of me knowing who you were (or vice versa) would be close to zero. If I gave you a 4v4 replay with an average rating of 400, chances are you wouldn't know who any of those players were either. This is why I think this update would affect higher rated "known" players disproportionately, and why it's flawed to use "player identity" in a player-player context as an argument.

@deribus said in Username rules updates:

A lot of the arguments against this policy have boiled down to "I want to change my username more than every 6 months because it's funny." And then we reply "we might even agree that it's funny but it causes all these issues". "Nuh uh!"

I think this is where we need to get to, help us understand how much of a problem this is! All we have at the moment are vague mentions of impersonation, and the obvious "TheWheelie" renames which are the prime example of it being used as a joke, and not problematically. I think I can speak for a lot of us that the proposed changes were a big surprise, I am definitely not aware of rename abuse being a major issue in FAF. If it is, please let us know the scale of it, otherwise most people are just gonna assume you're killing a fun feature because of a few annoying cases.

@deribus said in Username rules updates:

To paraphrase TheWheelieNoob (because rather appropriately, I don't know who that is):

See above, why does it matter if you don't know who I am, outside of taking moderator actions? My points stand on their own, I hope.

@deribus said in Username rules updates:

Why do you need to rename so often? Imagine you had a coworker and every week they went by a different name. Do you seriously not understand how that would be problematic and bother people?

The example here would be referring to nicknames. In the same vein, no matter what I rename myself the people who know me already will call me boom, the people who don't know already me will be confused either way as to who I am.

To reiterate, if I rename it doesn't bother the people I play with regularly, because they call me boom either way - my identity in game is not affected past a second or two of confusion. This only even applies at higher ratings where it's fairly important to know who people are to judge their performance.

Your second post is more extensive so this was just a quick reply to the first one, @IndexLibrorum I will respond to you as well in due time.

asf can't shoot drones

this was introduced many years ago so that you can't suicide a bunch of asf on drone assisted shields and instantly down them, and win an arty war for example

use regular aa/maa/inties

Hello mods

@giebmasse said in Username rules updates:

The position of the moderation team is that the primary use of usernames is to tell users apart. If people are unable to do so or have to take additional steps (such as checking name history), then usernames are failing at this purpose.

I want to differentiate between two terms: identity and discernibility, both of which have been used as arguments in this thread at various points. The way I see it:

• Identity – being able to tell who a player is just by using their player name.
• Discernibility – being able to tell the difference between two or more players based on their usernames.

Could you clarify if this update to the rules is intended to lock names to make players more identifiable, or to improve discernibility between two players who might share similar names (or past names)?

Identity

The simple solution that's already been proposed is simply to make the unique player ID accessible on player cards or in chats with said player. Basic example pictured, and I'm surprised the mod team has ignored this suggestion as it fixes a lot of problems highlighted.

With this in place, you could simply have reports to require a player ID submitted as well as the username.

Outside of moderation reports, you might still need to check someone's renames to see who they really are, but I see this as outside the moderation team's jurisdiction. For a start, how do you define what each player's identity is? Farms has been TheWheelie for over a year and now TheWeakie, meanwhile pepsi is known by a name he has never used. It's not the mod team's job to make sure player X can recognise player Y, it has too many variables out of the mod team's control.

I understand that it's an issue if a mod can't identify who a report is referring to, but it's not the job of the average player to stay on a name so that I can personally recognise them in-game. I think using the player ID in reports would help solve some of this confusion.

Discernibility

This still leaves us with the problems of impersonation, using characters to create near identical names or otherwise as another player or mod.

Disclaimer: As you can probably tell by my profile, I have a biased view on this. My personal opinion is that I chose this name for a joke, the person I am impersonating doesn't have any issue with it, and I'm not using this name to cause any issues in FAF.

I do understand that mods want to curb impersonation used for nefarious reasons, so I will outline my concerns in what I hope will be an unbiased way.

Mod impersonation

Mod impersonation is obviously a big issue when it happens, and we should not allow this as a community. But to be honest, if any random player can rename to impersonate a mod, I don't even see it as a rename issue. Mods should have clearer signifiers of their role to more easily differentiate them from players.

Additionally, I could still masquerade as a mod without renaming - I could just say "hello I am a mod" and attempt to pressure players to do things.
I've also seen too many new players ping TheSetoner to ask questions, I can't imagine how many DMs it gets. A clearer indicator of mod status seems like it could be useful, whatever the final decision is on this rename rule update.

Player Impersonation

I think it would be good to know how big of a problem this actually is. Do a lot of players actually use similar characters to impersonate others with malicious intent? I can totally understand the issues with mod impersonation, but with player impersonation I would really like some stats on how widespread this is, because as far as I'm aware it's only a few meme renames that haven't offended anyone.

The existing rule of thumb is that the offended party/impersonated player has the option to report the player who renamed. Otherwise, no action will be taken. In my mind this worked fairly well, as it avoided people being banned for joke renames while allowing more malicious impersonation to be punished. The proposed solution of simply reverting a player to an acceptable name could work well in cases of reports like these.

If the mod team would like to share some more info about how much of a problem player on player impersonation actually is, that would really help understand the motivation behind these intended rules updates.

Concluding Thoughts

Understanding the motivation behind this update has been challenging, with such a wide range of differing arguments used - from curbing mod impersonation to making it easier for tournament viewers to recognise players. I didn't post any serious response until the mod team declared they'd be going ahead with the changes anyway, despite the negative backlash, so I hope they make the effort to clarify and focus their intention in a future post.

I like how an inside joke between people who mostly play together has somehow triggered the mod team to make sweeping changes to restrict user agency. These particular renames affected literally no one outside the 1800+ community, who already know who everyone is. That is, unless there's been some surge of 800s ban evading by confounding mods with monthly renames - I doubt it.

Meanwhile, the thread to discuss this bizarre change is slowly filling with slurs, as if our ability to trust moderation wasn't already low enough.

@thewheelienoob sounds good, I look forward to some good team-games on Forged Alliance Forever

why is there still no option to downvote things