With the latest client release (2023.3.0) we added the ability to watch a replay while you are waiting in queue. You can also watch a replay while you are in the lobby of a custom game. Replay watching while in lobby was possible before but you had to explicitly enable that. This is no longer needed. We moved the game data for replays to a different directory, so you shouldn't have any issues with differing game versions.

This release features visual improvements. We added support for terrain types, which means units driving on the ground will now create smoke and treadmarks that are appropriate to the terrain. Before these effects were completely missing.
Additionally the biomes were improved. It's most notable on the water that had very default settings before, but the general lighting and usage of decals got tuned on some maps as well.
A final important change is that the environment maps that the biomes use have been changed. This doesn't affect unit too much with the current shaders, but with the upcoming PBR shaders it will ensure that the units feel like the belong into the environment, because the reflections on units will have a fitting color, especially the metal parts.
Here are some comparison screenshots of the changed biomes, before and after.

Hello everyone,

we almost completed all required steps to finally have queues that are bigger than 2v2. The main roadblock was having an algorithm that can handle the premade teams of various sizes, that queue up, while still producing good matches. I wrote that algorithm over the last months and we tested it successfully in June. Recently we finally merged the code into the develop branch after making sure the code quality and test coverage was up to standards.
We are now testing new code that will handle the rating initalization for the new tmm rating. Once that has been merged we can make a server release to deploy the new code. Once that is in effect, the new matchmaking code will also be used for 2v2 matching. It is possible that there will be a short delay until we have added the new queues in the database. Once that is done, the new matchmaker queues will appear in the client. A client update is not required.

I will write a separate post about how the new matchmaker code works in the near future.

Of course we will also inform you when the update is in effect, but I guess you will notice that pretty soon if you regularly play matchmaker games.

What will be coming?

We will be releasing the following:

1. 4v4 No Share - also know as Share Until Death
2. 4v4 Fullshare

A combination of the ladder and development teams reviewed the content available for release of the two matchmakers, along with the player councilor discussing feedback from the players. In the end we determined that the two matchmakers for 4v4 would be best to accommodate the desires of the playerbase.

Differences between the two new queues

Per feedback from conversation with players, it was determined that there is a large desire for a matchmaker similar to typical custom games where players can find a more relaxed game experience. So the queues will work like this:

• Share Until Death is enabled - keeping ACU snipes as a viable option to end the game.
• more 10x10 and less 20x20 maps - keep the ratio of 20x20 lower for more relaxed play
• Unique Rating

For the Fullshare Matchmaker:

• Fullshare is enabled - keeps games playable after losing a player
• more 20x20 and less 10x10 maps - more spread out games, similar to a Seton's experience
• Unique Rating

Both queues will use your global rating and add some more deviation on top to initialize the new matchmaker ratings. After that your wins or losses in global won't affect them, just like the other queues. With this we want to avoid that pro players will get matched randomly with lower players like it happened with the initial 2v2 release. The deviation increase will still allow you to reach a new rating quickly if you are under- or overrated in global. It will also make your displayed rating approximately 400 points lower until your deviation has settled again.

Why is there no 3v3 matchmaker being released?

Quite simply, we wanted to bring a matchmaker that would be most appealing to a wider audience. In addition, the following issues exist:

• There are very, very little 3v3 maps in the map vault
• 3v3 is the rarest form of gameplay
• We want to test the 4v4 matchmaker to make adjustments, if necessary, before adding another queue

What needs to happen before release?

We need all people to use a client version that can handle different per-queue game options, most importantly different share conditions. The newest client version (v2021.10.0) has that capability. With an old client you would still see the queues, but the game would refuse to start. Because of this we will need to set the minimum required client version to that version, so everybody will be forced to update. This means it is especially important that this new version doesn't have any big issues and we will only increase the required client version when we are positive that this is the case. So check it out here: https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/releases

The other thing that needs to happen is deploying the new server update. We can't really give an estimate when that will happen, because Brutus is very busy at the moment.

Note that the deployment of the new queues is more like a configuration change and separate from the server update and client release. As explained above we can't give an exact date yet, but I estimate some time in the next few weeks is realistic. We will keep you updated when we have a release date.

Kindness will save this world, dont you think so?
PS: Rezy, die of cancer

Amazing

You might have read it already in the game patch notes, but in case you haven’t I’m putting it out here. Jip stepped down as the leader of the game team and the game team elected me to take his place. I’d like to use the opportunity to thank Jip for all the contributions that he did in this position. They are literally too many to name them all. So thank you Jip!

This change in positions will certainly change how the game team operates because Jip was very knowledgeable of the game and could do a lot of changes himself. While I have made contributions to the game myself, they have mainly been to the shaders, which is not entangled at all with the lua code of the game. I will (must) therefore focus on other aspects of the team lead role.
I will stick more to the administrative aspects and one of the first things I plan to do is to review how the game team operates and how that can go on as smoothly as possible despite this change in leadership. The game team is very active at the moment and that means it’s challenging to keep track of everything. On top of that it needs to work in close contact with the balance team, which is a lot less active. This has lead to frictions in the past and I will try to find a way of working together that suits both teams.

I’ll present more detailed plans or status updates at a later date, when I got more comfortable with my new role. You can still expect that development will continue in the meantime as we have a lot of regular members that can continue to work and are not affected by this administrative change.

Hello everyone,

after over one and a half years of developement the first season of the new league system is now live. Every matchmaking queue has it's separate division ranking. By playing the matchmaker you will get placed in a suitable division after your placement games. You can then see your division in the appropriate leaderboard tab and the matchmaking tab next to your name. You will earn or lose points by winning or losing and will thus move up or down to the next division. To see the new leaderboards you need at least client version 2021.12.0.
We will gather your feedback after the first season. Of course you can already post your thoughts in this thread.

Altough I am the guy that kept this particular project moving, it would have not been possible to achieve without a lot of work of other contributors, namely:
UmbraSolis,
Sheikah,
Askaholic,
Brutus5000,
kubko,
and many others that helped me. Thank you so much for all your support that made it possible for me, starting with only little coding knowldege, to implement such a big project!

The server update today brought an adjustment to the matchmaking algorithm for the team queues.
The main goal was to enable people near the edges of the rating distribution to be matched with higher priority. This hopefully solves the problem that the very top and bottom players find it very hard or even impossible to find matches. At the same time we tried to further improve the quality of the resulting games with some other tweaks.
This means that the average difference between total ratings of the two teams in 4v4 should be about half of what we had previously. The rating differences between individual players should also be about half for most games. Very high level and low level games will probably not see much difference here. We should also be able to see more high level games.
This is all made possible with an average wait time increase of just 2-3 minutes.

We also lowered the matching timer to 90 seconds to make it less disheartening if you did not get matched in a round.

Speaking of matches, with the new algorithm it is expected that the number of waiting players will regularly exceed the number of theoretically required people for a game, sometimes by a lot. It is not a bug if nobody or just a few people get matched in such a situation! The algorithm requires a pool of people to be able to pick good matches. If the games possible with the current people are not good enough, the algorithm will wait for more people to show up, and if that doesn't happen it will reduce the quality threshold by a bit for those that are already waiting.
When there are many people in the queue that means that there will be low wait times, so don't be discouraged even if you don't get matched immediately.

Please leave feedback below. I am especially interested if the situation improved for high rated players.

The game team has voted to not release the area reclaim feature. There was a lot of effort to come up with a solution to make this feature viable, but in the end playtesting showed that what we hoped the feature would do, is just not achievable. It will not come with the patch next week and it is not planned to be included in future patches either. There are fundamental problems that would require serious changes of the reclaim mechanic as a whole that would need to be done first to make this feature viable.

One aspect why many people were looking forward to this feature was that they believed it would reduce the incentive to spend your time issuing reclaim orders. Unfortunately the feature is so strong that it actually increases the incentive to spend time issuing reclaim orders (just this time the area version). There is no feasible technical way to simply make area reclaim less strong.

More detailed explanation of the reasoning for this decision will follow. I thought it was important to make the announcement quickly instead of compiling all the arguments first.

Hello everyone,

Today I will present to you an icon mod I made. I recently got a WQHD monitor and on that resolution the default strategic icons are just too small for my eyes. So I wanted to upscale the icons a bit and at the same time try to improve the readability even further.

The most noticable change are the tech markers. For example I found it too difficult to spot if there are T2 tanks mixed into a T1 army. So as a first step I got rid of a marker for T1 alltogether as it is redundant. The next problem I had was to distinguish T2 and T3, as it is not so easy to see at a glance if there are two or three markers under a unit. Especially when icons overlap and look like a T3 marker. So I changed the T3 marker to a bar. The noticable amount of white color in a blob of units makes it easy to immediatly recognize that these are T3.
I kept the symbols pretty vanilla for the most part, but I tried to increase the "boldness" of the symbols where possible. Originally I did this because a one pixel thick line is not so easy to spot on 1440p, but then I noticed that a different visual boldness makes the icons easier to differentiate without having to process the exact shape. Our brain is better at recognizing colors than shapes. The colors are already taken by the teamcolors, so the amount of black in the icon is the next best thing we have. Note that there is no real hirarchy in what units are bolder. This is mainly because the small pixel size restricts how the symbols can be made without looking weird. I did try to make arty and missile units bolder as I saw it fitting that these are more visible.
And that is basically all I did. I'm personally not a fan of emphasizing individual buildings like SML or TML, so I tried to keep the general feel close to the vanilla icons. If you want more of a revamp of the icons, then there are other icon mods that focus more on that.

The mod will be available in the mod tab of the client as Reworked Strategic Icons once I managed to upload it.
EDIT: It is now uploaded.
I'm very interested in your feedback on this mod!

Here is a breakdown of all included icons

I'm pretty sure that brutus doesn't know better than anyone else here how to edit forum themes. So everyone is welcome to make contributions

Far on the horizon maybe. I added the issues to the issue tracker here: https://github.com/FAForever/FAForeverMapEditor/issues

Are you using this version? https://github.com/FAForever/FAForeverMapEditor/releases/latest

What had more support in that discussion was to revive the concept of the old league months where playing a lot of games was rewarded. That was received well by the players at the time and improved the matchmaker activity.

I agree with your post in general, but manual reclaim in FAF is a completely optional mechanic in 99% of game situations. The fact that attack move exists to already provide an area reclaim tool means that manual reclaim is not a mechanic that makes games harder for new players or is APM for the sake of APM.

You might have read it already in the game patch notes, but in case you haven’t I’m putting it out here. Jip stepped down as the leader of the game team and the game team elected me to take his place. I’d like to use the opportunity to thank Jip for all the contributions that he did in this position. They are literally too many to name them all. So thank you Jip!

This change in positions will certainly change how the game team operates because Jip was very knowledgeable of the game and could do a lot of changes himself. While I have made contributions to the game myself, they have mainly been to the shaders, which is not entangled at all with the lua code of the game. I will (must) therefore focus on other aspects of the team lead role.
I will stick more to the administrative aspects and one of the first things I plan to do is to review how the game team operates and how that can go on as smoothly as possible despite this change in leadership. The game team is very active at the moment and that means it’s challenging to keep track of everything. On top of that it needs to work in close contact with the balance team, which is a lot less active. This has lead to frictions in the past and I will try to find a way of working together that suits both teams.

I’ll present more detailed plans or status updates at a later date, when I got more comfortable with my new role. You can still expect that development will continue in the meantime as we have a lot of regular members that can continue to work and are not affected by this administrative change.

The prop generators get picked at random if set to random, but they have weights attached to them which influences the pick chance. Sheikah recently reduced the chance to get the boulderfield and large battle prop generators to reduce the chance to get a map with lots of reclaim.

Before, the sliders affected which map styles could be chosen, so that might be the reason why people perceive that the probability to get certain styles of maps has changed.
Now the two remaining sliders act as input of the chosen generator. We should probably disable them unless you choose a specific prop or resource generator. It doesn't make sense to specify random prop generator and low reclaim amount at the same time. Some prop generators will produce a lot of reclaim even with a low reclaim density as input.
As you said, it's very unpredictable when the slider decides which generators can be chosen because it's not transparent to the user which slider setting disables certain generators. So switching back to this doesn't seem like a good option.

Someone is working on a multiselect option to make this kind of opt-out behaviour possible.

On top of what Brutus said, how do you expect this to become a serious discussion when you are telling us outright that you don't want to learn modding best practices?

@evildrew said in FAF(default) mode alternative:

I know there are some documents to read through but reading those just takes too long

Could you link some replays with unexpected amounts of reclaim?

Dude, chill. It's literally been four hours since somebody said they will investigate