@IndexLibrorum i must have been mistaken then, was sure i got blocked from unpausing a few times. That's one problem less ig.

Before making a somewhat lenghty explanation as to what i think the problem is, i'd like to make sure i'm not starting from a wrong assumption: in ladder (and even custom unless people decide to change the setting) everyone has 3 pauses, right? If not, what's the current system like?

@Jip with limited timeouts (3 for each player iirc) if someone wants to be an ass he can unpause enough times within 30-70s to make your team run out of timeouts. It really depends on the situation, short pauses are a lot better, long pauses might have the same issues as before, missclicks are worse :S

@Jip Imo 2 things:

• missclicking on it (i was expecting this)
• if a guy needs to afk for 30s+ a player may still unpause after 10s, being annoying, and wasting a minimum of 2-3 timeouts or more

@Brutus5000 said in Should I stay or should I Go?:

Although your statement is pretty clear:

What we do know is that we can rewrite the ice adapter all we want. As long as we choose Java or Kotlin we are bound to ice4j as it is the only notable library for ICE.

you are very likely the one who knows best how much time will it take to learn Go, and what we can expect until we're "Go ready" (asking you to fix the next DDoS wave while you're also learning Go feels evil). The call should be yours, as it is the time.

I will cheer for you behind the screen whatever the choice

An idea i had a few minutes ago (you can find the full discussion in the discord channel if you're interested). Basically a suggestion to potentially make engineering stations a stable part of gameplay, while also using them to overcome current engine limits (specifically pathing). I'll copy what i said in the DS:

"The purpose would be to have a lot of buildforce that can't get pathblocked for maximum building efficiency in later stages of the game

The changes:

1. Engie stations costs shouldn't differ too much from engies (cost is about 10 points of mass per point of BP), so around 200+ mass, they are currently around double the cost (350 hive, 525 kennel, for 20 BP) . (Will they completely substitute engies if we do this? Look at point 3)

2. Engie stations should be available to every faction as a "pathfinding on big numbers" solution (new units, understandable resistance from FAF as per tradition)

3. Engie stations should be more hive-like than kennel like. This means that their area of assistance should be limited to a ring, dimensions to be defined, i'm thinking something like 2-3x current lv3 hive size. This should prevent them to superseed engineers, after all you don't want all the BP in one place and unable to move (should we keep kennel mobile as UEF faction diversity/advantage?). Also remember that they can't start a project, although this issue is solved by a single engie, still worth noting.

4. Engie stations should be unable to actively reclaim alive enemy units (still able to suck allies tho, in case someone forgets a unit on your main base and you need to build fast), meaning they shouldn't be able to act like point defenses melting the oncoming t2 units raid (i've seen ilshies drained in seconds by a few hives, unhealthy af especially if stations are to become more common). We might add a function of passive reclaim, or maybe a button to tell them to reclaim everything in range. This is where hives outshine kennels imo, the instant range instead of having a drone with a small build range move and then reclaim.

5. Engie stations could get a "filter" to not get stuck on building like SMD and nuke unless you want them to (engine?)."

I didn't watch the replay cause i'm lazy, but in case the dropping point is small there's a known issue of sera transports not behaving as they should, they're broken on small patches of terrain (in 100% of the cases i believe, they're just coded that way). It's just the sera ones that do that to my knowledge, and we can't probably fix due to "should touch the engine".

Same problem as you, but sadly, no solution.

I think i got this too today, 2 players from enemy team just went quiet at the same time, we won by dc. Tho it happened only once, all the other games were fine.

I really like the decapitation format, a while ago i tried to gather enough players to have regular games and some feedback to balance the mod (some say there are unbalanced things like com ctrl+k, although that's debatable imo, but verifying it in a game could give an answer). Sadly the recruiting process didn't have much success, and except for deribus bringing it in the community game night, the thing died there.

I think the mod has a few strong points like nerfing cheese all-in strategies to snipe coms (which are harmful to both killer and victim imo, we're talking low elo, game enjoyment, eco shape and stuff like that). I don't know if it could work in a similar balance state to normal assassination or if it would require separate balance changes, nonetheless i see some potential in the mod, which could imo become more fun than the standard one we have now. Unlike ftx i would like to see a matchmaker for decapitation, but i believe we don't have enough players for that, nor people to take care of its balance separately in case it's needed. Mind that when i say decapitation i mean to take the fundamental concept of "when your com dies you don't lose your stuff", but along with that my "ideal" decap mod has some more changes that go along (e.g. imo overflow is harmful in early and low elo cause it messes with your sense of balance, and i'd remove it. Maybe more than just decapitation i'd like to realize my own version of tmm, idk).

Anyway, if decapitation could be implemented in the victory conditions to make its lobbies immune to mod filter i think they would see more success, and i would for sure like to join to play some.

I'm embarrassed to inform you that i quite often missclick on the pause button while microing units in intense fights :3 (and i've seen other people do the same), but if no other solution is better due to engine i guess that's still an improvement

@snoog
People behaving on their own is the best case possible, but rules exists as this doesn't always happen, and i believe this pause stuff to be one of those situations.
I think index has a good point here and a rule or a system to prevent this issue might be needed, because there is a problem and this

but literally just re-pause anyway

is not a solution at all.
What do you think it's gonna happen? You repause, the other guy keeps unpausing cause he doesn't care. In case the pausing player has an urgency and can't pay attention to the game for 1-2 minutes the game is ruined because a team will be put in a significant (and unfair) disadvantage. Re-pausing is gonna solve nothing.

I will add my personal experience to this: there was a time where i paused and someone instantly unpaused (from my own team). I had to do something right that instant that i could not ignore, after my third attempt at pausing, and his next unpausing, i just ctrl+k my com and went to attend to the important IRL stuff i had to take care of.

My idea on this: introducing a punishment for "unpausers" is gonna flood the moderation team with reports, and they already have a lot to deal with. Furthermore, i think that if some kind of rule has to be made, it is one that protects a player quitting in a situation similar to mine (justified ctrl+k imo).

I suggest a possible solution to unpausing: make a system where every player (or team) has a set maximum pause time (like 2 mins per player or around 5-6 per team, idk), and make the unpause work on a majority vote or when time runs out. That way, i can pause and have a few minutes to deal with IRL and come back, if a single annoying guy tries to unpause due to bad manners, he can be blocked by the more civil users in the game.

Ideally, a pause without timer would be better (imagine a custom games with friends where a guy has to be absent for more than 5 minutes but everyone agrees to wait for him, if there is no more time left on pause they would not be able to do that), but that would require people to self-regulate and again, i wouldn't count too much on them, sorry for the low expectations. Alternatively, this pause timer could be implemented only in ladder to leave custom games more "free" to manage pauses.

@IndexLibrorum what do you think?

@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!