Dear Community,

even though I don't have the time playing anymore, I read the forums from time to time. Reading the balance discussion, I found sentiments like this (I picked two posts, feel free to see more in the thread):

@zeldafanboy said in Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread:

Almost everything in this patch is moving toward homogenization. Most of the navy and torp bomber stuff is good, but increasing vision range, lowering the variance of structure HP (although its good SAMs are getting nerfed they were crazy tanky for no reason), making the Cybran com tanky, reducing hoverbombing yet again, removing GC omni, lowering laser DPS... eh.

@blodir said in Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread:

I mean I honestly agree with the sentiment. It isn't just the uniqueness of the factions, but nerfing things that have strong powerspikes dulls the game as a whole. Some changes in beta (like decreasing the hp of mex/storage, mass cost of strats, and so on) hopefully counteract this effect by making the game a bit sharper. Hopefully in future balance patches we get to look more at creating greater factional differences where it really creates interesting gameplay (unlike mex hp differences) and perhaps new powerspikes.

To be honest, I think powerspikes are a rather poor way of introducing unique gameplay. If your only answer to "how do I make units interesting?" is "make them op", you probably have a problem in design.

Thinking about this, I got some ideas. They are mostly brainstormed and my play experience is limited so I dunno how feasible they are. Please just take them as injection of creativity from the outside, I have no idea how to actually put numbers to it.

How about nerfing scouting? It seems relatively cheap and easy to get a good, accurate impression of the battlefield. Maybe there could be more room in the existing systems to create distinct play styles for factions using the cloak, stealth, jamming and speed. While one faction needs to rely on just being faster (e.g. Titans), another might be slower but stealthy. A third faction might have fewer tricks but better scouting.
If you rework radar, visual and omni, maybe you can find more active gameplay for cloak, stealth, jamming and speed.

The second Idea is somewhat interlocked with the first. Maybe we can make hidden firebases a little more viable? ACU drops and firebases in unusual places certainly make for sharp and exciting gameplay. I'm not sure how to achieve that, a nerf to scouting would probably help. Maybe a wider divide in speed for raiding units and main frontline units? Maybe even some changes to the roles of static defense buildings, but that rabbit hole is way too deep for me.

Take this for what it is. A brainstorm of someone who is not actively playing. I have no idea how to put numbers to this, I just had some ideas and wanted to share them. Maybe something useful will come of it.

Regards,
Chief

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

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

Eastern orthodox mindsets in charge is bad

You define people by the major religion in their area?

Nope, I'm explicitly not defining people. I am trying to describe a mindset that is prevalent in certain cultural circles. Problematic mindsets are of course not exclusive to those circles, but currently on very prominent display.

I left because I got annoyed with the quirky controls of the game. Attack move and tree groups. Things like area commands being blocked by the council really bummed me out. Things that make the macro control of the game more modern where blocked because they constituted "dumming down" the game. On the other hand, interesting controls on units, like overcharging, got the automation treatment.

But to be fair, I might have left anyway because I don't like to allocate as much time to gaming as I used to anymore.

Asking for FAF to take a clearer stance on the russian invasion of Ukraine is unfair tbh, for various reasons. But I do believe that having people with eastern orthodox mindsets in charge is bad for the community (because they make for poor leaders in general). A very strong example of people with this mindset was Biass - always dragging arguments to a personal level, never able to keep an argument constructive. Always having some bizarrely distorted view of personal pride and what constitutes as a personal attack.
What this community needs more is people who think and argue like Bodir. Always detailed and constructive in his analysis. At least from what I could see on the forums.

Well, there was a great solution in existence already years ago: Area Attack and Area Reclaim commands. Those are quite natural commands that many other rts come with by default. There was a mod that allowed for those commands, so they where already implemented.

Manual reclaim was still technically better, but you could easily tell engies to reclaim large scattered fields. Sadly, there is considerable resistance from the people in charge regarding improvements to the way the game plays. For some reason clicking rocks was deemed more fun and skill then clicking units (there was little opposition to auto overcharge).

Overall the resistance against improvements in this area probably hurt player retention, the opening post sums up the reasons quite well. Maybe that has a lot to do with perceptions, but that is sometimes all that matters.

Dear Community,

even though I don't have the time playing anymore, I read the forums from time to time. Reading the balance discussion, I found sentiments like this (I picked two posts, feel free to see more in the thread):

@zeldafanboy said in Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread:

Almost everything in this patch is moving toward homogenization. Most of the navy and torp bomber stuff is good, but increasing vision range, lowering the variance of structure HP (although its good SAMs are getting nerfed they were crazy tanky for no reason), making the Cybran com tanky, reducing hoverbombing yet again, removing GC omni, lowering laser DPS... eh.

@blodir said in Pending Balance Changes Feedback Thread:

I mean I honestly agree with the sentiment. It isn't just the uniqueness of the factions, but nerfing things that have strong powerspikes dulls the game as a whole. Some changes in beta (like decreasing the hp of mex/storage, mass cost of strats, and so on) hopefully counteract this effect by making the game a bit sharper. Hopefully in future balance patches we get to look more at creating greater factional differences where it really creates interesting gameplay (unlike mex hp differences) and perhaps new powerspikes.

To be honest, I think powerspikes are a rather poor way of introducing unique gameplay. If your only answer to "how do I make units interesting?" is "make them op", you probably have a problem in design.

Thinking about this, I got some ideas. They are mostly brainstormed and my play experience is limited so I dunno how feasible they are. Please just take them as injection of creativity from the outside, I have no idea how to actually put numbers to it.

How about nerfing scouting? It seems relatively cheap and easy to get a good, accurate impression of the battlefield. Maybe there could be more room in the existing systems to create distinct play styles for factions using the cloak, stealth, jamming and speed. While one faction needs to rely on just being faster (e.g. Titans), another might be slower but stealthy. A third faction might have fewer tricks but better scouting.
If you rework radar, visual and omni, maybe you can find more active gameplay for cloak, stealth, jamming and speed.

The second Idea is somewhat interlocked with the first. Maybe we can make hidden firebases a little more viable? ACU drops and firebases in unusual places certainly make for sharp and exciting gameplay. I'm not sure how to achieve that, a nerf to scouting would probably help. Maybe a wider divide in speed for raiding units and main frontline units? Maybe even some changes to the roles of static defense buildings, but that rabbit hole is way too deep for me.

Take this for what it is. A brainstorm of someone who is not actively playing. I have no idea how to put numbers to this, I just had some ideas and wanted to share them. Maybe something useful will come of it.

Regards,
Chief