Luckily a huge amount of mapgen samples will be provided today. We gonna see first hand what the mapgen is capable of and what kind of games it provides - If it can reliably create reasonable maps.
That said, I dont think the quality assasment of current hand made ladder maps can be directly transfered to mapgen maps. The will likely never reach the aesthetic level of hand made maps - especially if you look at the astounding progress in the last maps made by Jip, Svenni, biass and other map creators.
The huge advantage of mapgen maps is, well, they are generated and no one has seen the map before. In short, its their novelty. And novelty is a quality of its own. Mapgen trains a player to adapt, to asses what a map has to offer, to think what might be good and what not so much. Hand made maps with established meta simply cannot provide that feature.
My point is, even if mapgen maps lack in comparision to hand made maps in some regards (which they do), they bring some new quality into the game which current ladder maps simply cannot provide.
Therefore I would love to see mapgen maps in ladder to some extend.

Maybe ask in "technical help" on FAF discord
https://discord.gg/T6BY22RJ

@khabume
Imo most of your observations you pointed out fall back to the maps hosted and played. Unfortunatly those are mostly Astro/Gap/Thermo in the lower to mid ranked area. Those maps are known to promote turtly playstyle and often feel like an eco-simulator without much interaction and use of all the units in all tech stages you got. The map layout simply just calls for it to be this way. On top of it, having such a distinct focus on eco and an overall clear meta seems to provoke quite some toxicity at time if someone didnt yet understand how those maps play out or just screws up. Overall, its pretty unfun if you like interaction und you may think, this is how FA is meant to be played. Lucky you, its not. There are alternatives but there should be more.

There are some players in the community trying to help to overcome that issue by hosting "all welcome" games on decent maps. E.g phong already deserves a medal for that as he is hosting 4v4 all welcome games on mapgenerator maps on a rather regular basis. Those are very welcoming to new and unexperienced players, usually have spread out spawns and no dedicated air slot. Games are rather dynamic and highlight the importance of map control.
I feel, FAF could benefit alot of such kinda moderated lobbys (mapgen or not is not the point) to present an alternative to the majority of teamgames hosted on the same 3 turtle maps in the lower rating area. (Dont get me wrong. If you like DG, well you like it - nothing terribly wrong with that.)
It seems to me, players in this range are often simply to intimidated to go 1v1 ladder or want to play in a team. Team Matchmaker could/will somehow solve that issue, although players need to overcome their fear to be thrown into the fighting pit and any many new players may be reluctant to do so after getting crushed horribly a couple of times.

It seems to me, it may be very beneficial to have some dedicated and welcoming FAF guys hosting newbie-friendly all welcome games (FAF kindergarden-bootcamp games if you like) on a regular basis on half decent maps. Just to have a low barrier/threshold alternative available opposed to the majority of "crap" lobbies. This could be a good and low effort way for new players to highlight all the different ways how the game can be played.

So, how to achieve that? Is it feasable to introduce "official" FAF lobbies for newbies hosted by well known community members?

you need to put a game title in

It is included, you need to enable it ingame though.
Menu -> Options -> Interface -> Draggable Build Queue

deactivate the "dummy drone" on the top right of the unit list in a game lobby. It was introduced to easily unrank a game.

@SteelTalon Try playing some mapgen teamgames. Hosts are usually quite open to less experienced players. Futhermore, mapgens games (due to their novelty) usually dont have fixed roles/lanes for players and are often quite dynamic to play. Both should be an advantage for ladder players.

Hi. I have no idea about linux but your game log shows:
"warning: Can't open lua file "Z:\home%USER%.faforever\bin..\Installed.Prefs"
warning: unable to load Installed.Prefs; using empty initial prefs"

so it seems you dont have a game.prefs file
Did you start the game once from steam?
If not, do so to create a game.prefs file (which safes your personal settings like resolution, hotkeys, templates and os on) and then try again on FAF

@valki
i too find large icons on normal resolution beeing way too big. The normal/small size is in that regard considerably better imo. One thing i want to add is that you dont have to use all icons. Just use the icons which seem useful too you and delete the rest. E.g i deleted nearly all T1 unit icons and most T1 building icons except radar. With this setup I feel the assesment of T1 army sizes is not obscured but you also see mixed in T2/T3 units much better.

To do that, you can open the icon file with a file-archiver program like win rar or 7-zip and delete the icons you dont wanna use. You can also open the icons within using e.g. irfanview with a plugin to see whats what.

Check out Ui party. Beside outher things, it has an option which shows you an overview of the tech level of your mexes

I didnt find the fix myself. Just was around when the shadder issue popped up with the latest game patch.

@Lanviper the problem has nothing to do with the client but is a faulty shader update triggered by nomads. To fix it you need to host a game on the FAF development game type. So, create a game and pick FAF development from the bottom of the list in the game type column on the very left side. (the client will download some stuff). After that you should be able to play like before.

@gmork update your FAF client and it should work

@GloomyTalgat try to roll back to version 2021.12.0 in the meantime. it seems it fixes the issue till the devs can sort it out.
https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/releases/tag/v2021.12.0

@Kamidzu_Ohaio it seems to be a client issue. roll back your client to version 2021.12.0 in the meantime
https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/releases/tag/v2021.12.0

@spl The java client actually does already have that feature. You need to enable it though.

No idea what's the bug but I remember sorian AI causing trouble and being underwhelming overall. There are much better AIs available at Faf like RNGAI, dillidalli, AI-uveso or M27. If you like playing AI, give them a try.

Check out Ui party. Beside outher things, it has an option which shows you an overview of the tech level of your mexes

That issue is fixed in the next client version
here is the alpha release
https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/releases/tag/v2021.12.0-alpha-3

@pe6yx did you play a game once in steam to create a profile?
Also make sure your antivirus is not blocking FAF