I think it's pretty common to tell new or less skilled players that they are stupid and should uninstall the game rather than help them improve. True teamwork is very hard to find around here. I have played with certain people game after game and winning like crazy and playing solid but when I make one mistake and now we lose one game then all a sudden those same mates who were great during wins are telling me I am an idiot and hating on me because we lose one. Watch any replay and read the chat and more often than not it is people yelling at each other telling each other horrible things....people don't know how to lose as a team....this is the greatest team game ever and most people can't understand that. People don't understand that we are lucky to have such a community and such support....there is no love here....everybody hates everyone.

Forgive me if this is the wrong place to post this but I would like to donate to the prize pool so that the prizes are as follows

1st - $200
2nd - $100
3rd - $50

If this is acceptable please let me know how to make this happen. To be clear I am offering to fund the entire prize pool of $350. If the current funding is already in place then I will fund the balance. I don't use discord when I am away for work (near the Arctic circle) so I only use the forum app so please contact me here.

I've been playing this game since 2018 and have logged nearly 4,000 games. A good 2,000 of those are Astro.... Yeah I know I'm pathetic but I like the arcade aspect of it okay.

I played a thousand games of Astro before I ever tried map gen and that's where my bread and butter is now. I've gotten to know the community really well despite not being a discord person. Just playing with different multiplayer map gen games you get exposed to all the different clans and all the high-ranked players and despite a lot of toxicity there is 100x more positivity.

I have been very impressed with how many pro level players, yourself included The Wreck that will play in 1200+ games with professionalism and respect.

One thing that has always shocked me is the makeup of moderation/leadership group. I would fully expect people like yourself and the many other pro level players who have been active over the last 5 years to be a key part in the leadership group of FAF. I don't understand why that isn't the case. I'm sure everyone has different levels of time and effort they can commit to such things but over the past year or so I've started to realize that it's more political than that and it has always had me worry.

As I've said before this game has essentially changed my life. It is the only game I play. It is part of my culture and my way of life. I don't ever want to play a different game. But I'm very worried about the future of FAF.

It seems to me like some moderators don't have the best interest of FAF at heart because they don't understand the game and the community at the level required to have such a role.

I have always wondered what the peak version of FAF is and if we could ever get back there. There are so many updates and changes balance or otherwise I'm just not sure is worth it. I like the changes from a couple years ago that made energy be more important and prevented nukes from being rushed so quickly and slowed the game down a bit because I personally like a more slow and strategic game.

But lately it seems there are so many changes and moderation efforts that seem to go counter to the spirit of the community and the game.

I completely agree with you that there needs to be a standard set for who is in control of this and who makes the decisions all across the board. The pro level players clearly care about this game based on the number of games they play. I'm sure they would play more but as I've noticed it's harder for a 2k player to find a game than it is for a 1200.

I think that the moderators, The balance team, board of directors, every key group that governs this community in this game should be led by the people who play it most not necessarily the people who have certain skill sets. Those people should be under the direction of the people who play it most.

There are a lot of toxic people that play this game a lot so obviously it's not then. But like I said before there are so many pro-level players who log in everyday and play this game and are legitimately good people and treat others well and understand the essence of what this community is because they are immersed in it.

I am not a pro-level player and I went through my stage of being a toxic piece of shit for the first few years of playing but over the past few years I have really chilled out and that's probably because I got a job that has me traveling to the remote places of the world so much where I can't get a good internet signal and now when I get home I appreciate the game so much more.

I feel I understand the game and the community pretty well and if I had more time to commit I would be a great fit on some level. My point is that I'm a great example of the type of person in this community and have played nearly 4,000 games and would be an excellent person to be a moderator if only I had the time.

Take any of my replays from my first few years of playing and you would say the hell with this guy but that doesn't represent who I am now and I'm sure this is the case for many people.

There's probably people that are currently banned that if given another chance they would be excellent community members.

I think there needs to be a complete rethink of how we operate because it's up to us to keep this going. The moderator s that are currently in place need to take a big step back and if you really care then you will support the efforts of the community to keep this thing alive.

Taking this name change rule as an example it is so clear that the community does not want it and your best thing you could have done is revert it and move forward because that's what the community wants but instead you spend however many days or weeks now justifying and defending the decision..... It's low level tyranny...

Give the people what they want... In most cases that is the best way forward for a small gaming.

I'm not familiar with the exact structure of how this is all governed and moderated but again I say there needs to be a serious retrofit of all systems. I've seen so many posts for the balance team makes changes and they are so unpopular but the changes are just defended over and over again rather than reverting them based on the will of the people.

Somehow someway we got to get to a point where the most mature and dedicated players are the ones who make key decisions. I manage hundreds of people in my role at work and the best way to get them to do the job.... The best way for the company I represent to succeed... is to give them what they want.... And all they want when they are at work is to be given the resources they need and the support they need to succeed and they will. Very rarely will I make decisions that go against what the group wants because they care about these projects just as much as I do as their manager. Everyone that works for me is constantly telling me this is the best place they've ever worked and they never want to leave and I take a lot of pride in that because we're not doing things my way we're doing things our way. My senior corporate managers didn't understand it at first but the results speak for themselves. The way of the company has to be the way of the people. I'm lucky enough to have managers that recognize this and they step back and let us do our thing.

If the governing body of FAF needs to have the keys to the kingdom because of legal reasons and irreplaceable skill sets such as coding and all that stuff then so be it but the best thing they can do is take a backseat and let the people who love and care for this and play this the most shape this and build this.

Okay I've said enough. I'm not even going to proofread it.

If you are in a game where anyone builds 8 novax uncontested then you should be very happy when that game ends no matter what team you are on.

@zhanghm18 within the organization I work for we have something in our employee code of conduct called incivility. I'm sure everyone knows what that is but essentially it allows the company to dismiss an individual for disrupting the workforce and bringing down morale. They don't have to actually specifically attack character or be abusive or harassing. Essentially if they are inciting others to have a negative view of the company or are being disruptive in similar fashion then we are allowed to dismiss them for incivility.

I've never been a moderator in any type of online forum but I think a similar clause in the code of conduct should be considered.

In my opinion if certain people only seem to want to be part of this community to tear it down in some way then we don't need them. This would tie back into the topic at hand and would be one less way why certain things suck right now.

With all due respect Aya, Sera wasn't being rude or arrogant he was being straightforward. He's right. Ranking is what matters. You can't say that because you have 12,000 games you can play every faction as good as a 2K rated player. They understand things and are capable of doing things that we can't at level 1400. Rating is what matters. I have 5,000 games which is like twice as much as many of the 2ks I play with but I am a fraction of the player they are.

Reading the deep insights that FTX (and others) outlined in this post basically answered all of your points, you're just not wanting to accept them.

@ganima said in The End of FAF:

This thread is very confusing for me. It's very hard for me to tell who is telling the truth.

Its not really about truth or lies its about differences of opinions in which case everybody is telling the truth.

It is clear that there are so many passionate people who are a part of this community and I trust that such debates will make the community stronger and that people who may have chosen to leave will return and help build it further.

@indexlibrorum said in $350 BigBrain 1x1 Tournament:

@dorset Really cool Dorset! Very kind.

Thank you....but Skrat is putting much more into this than me.

I started my FAF career as a -700 after a half dozen games. It was pretty scary but didn't take long to turn it around. I would argue that people who quit FAF after losing their first half dozen or so games didn't really have their heart in it and were going to quit whether their rank said -700 or 300 after such a stretch.

@brutus5000 said in What is going on with FAF?:

Please guys. If you want to donate for the cause of FAF that is fine. But don't donate and expect and problems to be resolved in return. This is not something we can guarantee.

Absolutely understood. I suppose the better term I should have used is support rather than donate... Support can come in many forms, financial, skill set, or even just positive attitude. All I can do is bring a positive attitude and support the developers by not whining and complaining about the state of FAF every time I log on and I am more than happy to donate financially to a game that I care so much about and spend so much time playing.

It's clear from this thread there is no easy fix so I'm not going to expect the few hundred dollars that I donate a year to instantly change that but it might go towards ensuring our tournaments at FAFLive continue to have great turnouts due to respectable prize pools and that the lights stay on so to speak.

As great as my skill set is in my own life and career it is completely useless for what is required here at FAF but it brings me joy to be able to support financially.

In limited use I have noticed client 2025.2.0-alpha-1 seems to keep chat connected.

@atomic8733 said in How to mod unknown unit icon?:

@Dorset hi Dorset, Yes, both my menu and lobby is enabled, and all other custom icon works but the unknown icon. I also tired the "Scale Strategic Icon" in the option but it scale all icons including the medium sized which make it too large. Does your unknow icon change when using custom icon?

I am no expert but what I have is the "Redux Strategic Icons Large" mod along with the "Redux ACU Icons"

I have these activated and my in game interface settings are all on except for scaling I have that off. One of the options is something like "on with tech marker" and the rest are all on.

I hope that helps.

Make sure the mod is enabled in the mods menu and in the game lobby window under the mods tab. Also there are settings in the options that changes the size of the strategic icons so play around with those as well

I experience this as much as you say and it even has adverse affects of not being about to ping a player in a lobby who hasn't x because their chat is disconnected. I also experience disconnects from FAF while the client is open or when I am in a long lobby sim every hour give or take. It causes me to have to refaf mid lobby for no reason. Never get disconnects that effect me once a game is started though which is nice.

@maudlin27 said in 1v1 Ladder:

My concern with combining the ratings in that way is that it's not possible to distinguish between someone who plays 1v1 winter duel only (and becomes very good on that map but is terrible in 1v1 ladder) vs someone who plays 1v1s on a variety of maps.

Having said that, I'm not sure if it'd be that big of an issue anyway - it'd make someone's 1v1 rating a bit less valuable on the face of it (due to the potential for excelling on a single map that doesnt translate well to others), but if they queue 1v1s when overrating they'd fairly quickly lower it, and it'd mean their global rating (which is primarily relevant for teamgames for balancing) wouldnt be impacted as much by how well they do on such 1v1 maps. Meanwhile for people who play 1v1s in custom (that aren't just on a single map) it'd be much easier to assess if a matchup is likely to be relatively competitive (since 1v1 ability can be massively different to global ratings).

But if these people are not playing 1v1 ladder anyways than doesnt the fact that they play 1v1 (custom tab ladder) means its a win for the 1v1 brand? As it stands right now there are many players that only play one map and inflate their custom rank.

I wont mention names but not long ago I played dual gap for some reason. Because I had a 33 min mavor and not a 31 minute mavor the entire team began the campaign of insults and straight up toxicity of what a noob I am.

So I challenged them to come join some mapgen custom games at the 1.4k+ level....one of the 1900 ranks did and he literally had ZERO clue how to play FAF.

If some 1v1 ladder ranking become inflated it just means they get crushed hard when they play "real" ladder players.

Im a noob and so my point of view is I like this little ......whats the word....quirk. Imo it still costs apm to be able to take advantage of this so its a skill thing when it comes down to it. How many times I will be watching a scout, have to return to my acu/army to micro and then guess the timing of the crashed scout to switch back real quick in order to catch a glimpse. I do like the ideas and conversations about realism so the idea of slowing the wrecked scout down (and speeding naval wrecks up?) is intriguing but to me its one of the many nice little quirks about this game that have kinda become meta at this point if that makes sense.

@Nuggets said in 1v1 Ladder:

Not quite the right topic ...but, I dont remember who i've told this, but i think 1v1 games hosted in global should automatically count towards 1v1 rating instead of global. I can guarantee way more people will play 1v1 (custom 1v1 in this case) and it will solve way more problems than it creates

I can report with 100% certainty I would play 1v1 in the custom tab religiously if your suggestion was implemented and I would venture to bet that I would have no problem finding games. I just simply am not willing to risk my global rating for this.

Just since it was brought up in this thread I am one of the people who never uses discord. I haven't been on a voice chat type app since TeamSpeak 2 was a thing back in the day so I feel it's good that such things are brought to the forum because it's the only way a guy like me will learn about it.

That said I do wish there was the way that I as a 700 or 800 ranked ladder player could just right now play against 1200 or 1300 plus players. I know it may sound strange but I play a lot better on the map pools of the higher ratings than I do on these damn noob maps.

Another problem I'm running into now that I'm trying to take 1v1 seriously is I'm rated 700 and I just can't seem to find games. What typically happens is whenever I do get a game it's against someone that I'm able to absolutely crush and then we match again the next game and they either quit or play one more and then I won't match again with anyone for a while.

I have played 5,000 games of faf before I played any ladder any 1v1 ladder. (Well I played like 40 when I was super noob and I've played 10-20ish in the 4 years since) And at this point I would rather be matched up against people that crush me as I'm sure a 1200 or 1300 ranked ladder player would but I feel I would get a lot more out of it and be able to skill up quicker than this time loop I'm currently in with lower rated players. If I knew I was logging in and matching against players that I could be competitive against even if they ended up crushing me every time I would be far more excited to join ladder than the thought of waiting forever for a match just to play a noob and absolutely crush them. There's nothing from the replay for me. Nothing I can gain from playing a match like this but being matched up against higher rated players.... The same players I'm lane opponents against custom games, I personally would be far more engaged and would have a lot to gain from replays and collaboration and such and so I would be playing ladder a lot more than I am now.

My thought in all this is about potentially a way to match players in different brackets based on the total games they've played globally. If someone is a super noob then yes keep them down but if someone is a 1300 to 1500 ranked global player with several thousand games maybe they get bumped up to the next level. And maybe bump some higher rated players down a level. Across all brackets this might provide more opportunity to get some game time. I think there'd be a lot of players like me who would suddenly want to try ladder so would be nice if my opponents could be 1,000 rank at least right now.

I'm sure there's something like this built into the Matchmaker but it just seems to sit there on searching for hours on my end.

Did you try a full reinstall? That's a good first step. Do a full windows reinstall while you're at it for max nerd points.

Are you just referring to being able to close spots and launch? Try that if that's what you are talking about.