None of this matters because nothing's going to change and nobody's going to do anything about it so what's the point of talking about it. Time for me to stop reading the forums and just play the game for what it is. Have fun y'all!!

@Jip Thanks for your extensive input and shedding light on the reality of things. I suppose it would be more or less a complete culture change so to speak that would be required in order to move forward with this type of thing in a meaningful way.

I don't think that changes should ultimately come in the form of a mod as I personally try to run as few mods as possible but having said changes be tested within a mod that eventually got implemented in the main game similar many mods so far.

I guess the hope would be that if someone knows how to mod and decides they want to undertake it then whenever they were at the point where they wanted to live test it over the course of several games they would just have to organize a testing night and hope that as many people who comment on such threads as the novax threads come out to support the playtesting.

As I stated before I have noticed that so many ideas seem to stall within FAF and so maybe its time we have a look at the overall structure of how things are governed? If the balance team is so hard to deal with than why are they in their place?

I know I have chimed in on other threads about how the balance team needs to be governed by pros but maybe we should rethink that whole thing. What I meant at the time is that the competitive pros who I only ever see play in tournaments or in the 2k+ custom games should be the people making balance decisions but I admit maybe I was wrong with that.

Unlike Gyle I do not consider 1.5k+ to be pro level. In my mind it starts at 1.8k-1.9k. That said there are a lot of pro level players who don't play competitively and typically play in 1.2k+ lobbies so I don't consider them pros despite their rank. Maybe its these types of players who need to be given opportunities because they have the prolevel thinking and understanding but its coupled with practicality. Maybe the balance committee needs a variety of players from the 1.2k+ level

I typically have 100+ people under me in my day job and although the managers ultimately make the decisions on the path forward I find that getting the input from all staff is what gives the best end result especially when they have opportunities to be included in managers meetings and provide their insight.

Its always hard to change culture within any organization but its required in order for longevity to thrive.

I am not trying to be the one who comes up with a solution here but I am trying to rock the boat until we have a solution (or I get myself banned) I have already proven twice that I suck at being a smurf so the thought of me getting banned makes me cringe but holy hell it seems like there is some force within FAF that is hindering creativity and evolution so what do we do about it?

Is it the general consensus that the FAF is what it should be? At the end of the day if FAF the game stays as is without another single balance/unit change than really everyone would accept that and we would play on.

But FAF as the organization exists in public for all to be a part of so what's the point of having a balance suggestion section in the forum if its essentially a useless waste of every ones time?

I am sure this info is available elsewhere but are the development team, balance team and governing body all the same people? Is that the only three groups of impact here or am I missing any and if so are they the same people as these three groups?

Is there a lesser tier group that is below the balance team that acts in a similar fashion but say reports to the balance team?

What else am I missing here? Maybe I should just shut up from now on and play and be happy that we have FAF game at all....but I have a really hard time keeping my mouth shut as I am sure everyone has noticed about me by now.

@Saver said in Another dumb idea from Dorset:

Hello everyone and hello to you too Dorset (@Dorset, I myself am, in real life, also a project and construction manager in the road construction / energy sector) I also think your idea is good and worthwhile. However, I can also agree with Blackyps that many aspects of the game are usually better off in a mod than in the normal game. Because there everyone can design their game according to their preferences. Again, the game has progressed over the years just through such ideas and improvements as it is now. I still feel quite new to this forum, but appreciate the will of many to develop this forum and the game. I can therefore only offer to support them with my limited knowledge if there are any requests (even if the answer sometimes takes a while )

Nice to meet you Saver and without getting too off topic (geez I feel like I've said that a lot today lol) I am in the mining/extraction sector but began my career in energy/oil and gas.

I can solve all kinds of complex problems everyday on these large capital projects but I haven't a clue where to start when it comes to anything to do with coding/computing aside from me building my own gaming rigs

It seems like the mod path is definitely the way to go based on the people smart enough to know this type of stuff so I guess it just comes down to how that is implemented. The first step would be developing such a mod and issuing it as the standard platform for any who would like to tweak things with the game. Then during these community gaming nights where such tests were put through their paces everyone would just download that mod and go from there?

Again I'm not the one to be deciding on the best way forward here I'm just the idea man on this one. I would love to see such a mod and I would even download it myself thinking that I would know how to change things enough to get my damn novax to shoot at each other (cuz I have such a hard on for that lol)

Or is it a case of each individual change would need its own mod. So someone would have to write a mod to allow novax to target each other and a different mod would have to be written for smds to shoot them down and so on or are we talking a mod that is essentially just a different version of the game that could have all of its factors manipulated to allow for the testing of different things?

I would love that if there was one mod that allowed the Layman such as myself to be able to just tweak things without a whole lot of knowledge of how to write mods but I'm shooting in the dark here.

I would hope we could get to the point where we narrow in on some of these changes and are able to hand over the work to the actual development team. Similar to the t2 Aeon Shield thread I would imagine the development team would just speak up when the time was right in whatever forum post was tracking such testing and changes and then it would potentially make its way into FAF Development soon after that.

This is something that might take some time to actually establish but once we're able to get kind of a standardized format I think we could test and action a lot of really good ideas from the community in a short amount of time comparing them to each other in real world gameplay scenarios and I know for myself I would be on every different gaming night or such tests for being undertaken.

If I saw lobby that was specifically to test smds shooting down novax (or any other idea ) and the whole goal of that night was just to play as many games as possible kind of organically and see what the impact was then I would be there.

I think a lot of people would end up being surprised that their great ideas were crap and others would be surprised that their crap ideas were great.

I would imagine the next day the forum post would be ripe with experiences of different players in the game and how they saw such changes in real time.

It's always easy for me to say because I'm not the one doing any of the work I'm just the one throwing out ideas hoping I get to do the even easier part of testing them in game.

Yeah I admit I don't know anything about how this is all implemented. I have no idea how the image ends up on my screen when I'm looking at my phone but I'm happy it does lol.

I guess the baseline idea here is just to have a standard one stop shop for these types of things rather than having everyone kind of doing their own version of it.

Maybe part of this is a standardized forum thread template so that the workflow follows some resemblance of a proper path. The initial forum posts are always beneficial even if they're scattered and it seems like we're all b****ing at each other trying to prove our own points because that's how you get all the good ideas to come out but at some point there needs to be some structure.

I really love how that Aeon shield upgrade thread turned out. It started the same way many threads do such as the Novax or Billy Nuke conversations but it evolved into members of the community actually actioning it and the rest of us got to see as the problem was solved (well not officially)

It made me wonder if something similar can be achieved with other conversations. At one point in the Aeon Shield conversation the balance team chimed in (correct me if I am wrong) and gave the ok to move forward so long as someone who could stepped up and did the work on the animation and here we are the workflow seems to be coming to completion.

Concept-Design-Implementation.

The issue with the Novax and Billy Conversations is its much more complicated but the bones are the same.

So my dumb idea here is that we have FAF and FAF Develop. Both of those are not the place to play around with different ideas so I am wondering if a 3rd version could be made available that would fit in below FAF develop. FAF Concept or something like that, where anyone could make changes and test them live without having to get an idea to the point where it made sense for the devs to work on it.

The idea would be where those with the skills and desire could implement certain ideas and then the community could have a night or two to test these idea before it moved along the development path.

Take the Novax conversation for example. I agree with the people in that thread that my idea of Novax being able to target each other isnt a good idea...but I would still love to try it for a round or 2 because you never know how things turn out. The on paper idea doesn't always translate as we may think as is evident in the issue in the first place. On paper the Novax is not OP but in practicality it sure is because so many hate it. I agree with what was said in that thread Novax is a fun killer.

The big issue with a lot of these types of conversations is that there are so many ideas of what should and shouldn't happen that the threads just stall due to fatigue so nothing gets solved. (pretty sure the Aeon shield thread is really old and stalled until recently)

So FAF Concept would be available to all to rework and where changes could "quickly" be implemented and then tested.

Now I am a construction manager not a coder (whom I have the utmost respect for) so I wouldn't even try to take the FAF Concept app and make my Novax kill each other but there are many capable and responsible people that would be able and willing to try their idea or some of the more popular ideas and a community game night where we were testing Novax killing each other or SMDs targeting Novax or any other of the ideas would be pretty popular I think and all of that info could be shared in the forum thread where it got to the point that the balance/development team would decide to action it.

I don't know how all of this works or if its even possible code wise but I just think there needs to be a more open testing platform and a way to tap into the skills and willingness to help that many have around here but aren't able to because they cant be a part of the official process for one reason or another.

This thread is an incredible example of how the community can work together to solve problems and make FAF better. Well done everyone involved with a special shout out to Saver for bringing it home.

@Nuggets said in Another Novax conversation:

@Dorset said in Another Novax conversation:

Or how about some of the rules we have in the community; like "no building a factory under a dropping transport" - this works amazingly well against drops - but its bannable.

Is this actually true? If it is I've suddenly lost a whole lot of faith in FAF because what kind of elementary school BS is this lol.

What are you talking about? This is kind of an exploit and can get you banned?
Imagine you are going to drop some t3 units and your enemy just builds a t1 fac under transport and they insta die

Not to get off topic here but I would just say skill issue and that's coming from a 1300. Like seriously... Why drop so close to any builders lol.

Sounds like a rule that came into effect for pro-level players in 1v1 play. I have played 5,000 games in the last 6 years and had no clue this was even possible. Never even come across it until I saw this post. I think I've come across every other situation where someone could exploit and get banned but this one is a new one and I stand by what I said earlier that it's pretty weak lol.

What's next we're not allowed to build t1pd in our base because a mazercom won't be able to telly in there lol.

I can already imagine all the arguments against it in my head (from1.8k+ players only lol) but it all comes back to me thinking it's a cheap elementary rule that shouldn't be in the game but again that's not what the thread is about so I'll stop being off topic. I'm a nobody anyways and my opinion doesn't matter and I'm okay with that

I will however finally read all the bannable offenses because heaven forbid I get banned because I was building a factory in my base for some reason at the same time someone was trying to drop

Or how about some of the rules we have in the community; like "no building a factory under a dropping transport" - this works amazingly well against drops - but its bannable.

Is this actually true? If it is I've suddenly lost a whole lot of faith in FAF because what kind of elementary school BS is this lol.

I had a match a month or so ago, 6v6 custom where I absolutely crushed my side. Mid to late game had three fat boys huge t3 Army everything I needed to basically win the game except for a single Billy Commander and a Fatboy on their team holding me at bay. I admit it was annoying..... So freaking annoying!!!. But I actually like the fact that the enemy was able to hold me off with a billy Commander. I lost a lot of units including fat boys but getting t3 engineers out of the fat boy and creeping TMD and such made for quite the back and forth. I did eventually break through and got to the enemy doorstep but it was too late the mavor was already built and we lost but it was a hell of a fight and I wouldn't have had it any other way. I might have been better off grabbing a cybran engi and making loyalists for myself because that really wouldn't have taken that long and I probably would overcome the Billy earlier but I chose not to because I liked the fight. I think the game is at its best when you have to suffer a bit.

From my low-rank brains perspective I like the changes they made to the Billy not that long ago where it's actually somewhat viable because before it was just basically a useless animation. As FTX said it still costs a lot and that's why it really isn't seen that often if you think about it but I think it's easy and fun to counter and makes for some more dynamic gameplay as it often puts the enemy ACU at risk.

I think FAF needs more meme play rather than always having to have things go perfectly as they should without any real risk or stepping outside the box.

I say keep the Billy as is and don't offer any additional units as a counter.

Not sure if there are bois with TMD upgrades which might be an idea similar to the ones that have AA attachments but that's a pretty expensive TMD when you got a t2 engineer that cost a bit of dirt.

One thing I think gets lost in all this, and I don't even know if it can be considered and addressed but nonetheless I'll mention it.

There is the scientific approach which couples in with common sense but then there's the practical reality of what actually occurs which amounts to very little scientific thought and practically no common sense.

Probably true that it is incredibly inefficient to spam novax but my goodness every time you see one novax coming it seems like there are 3+ not long after. People don't seem to care about the numbers they just know the effect it has on the match. It's often not even the Eco type player that is building them so there's always that positions weaponry that you'll have to deal with as well which is usually your t3 arty spam and or game ender.

It may be a huge reason why there are so many 1300 to 1600 rated players who just don't rank up after thousands of games (myself included) We get into these habits that seem effective to us and give us the false illusion that we're actually good. We blatantly ignore such inefficiencies as Novax spam and no doubt we are ignoring a lot of other things... (Probably not even ignoring them because we don't even know they exist to be able to ignore)

I wonder what the novax usage is in 1.8k+ matches compared to the more typical standard custom match which is a 1.2k+ situation.

If any of this is true then it's kind of a conundrum because we have a weapon that fits fine within the pro-level realm but is out of place anywhere else because of its power and the user's inability to understand or care when they should be deploying it.

What would novax spam people build if they didn't have the novax?

That seems about the same rate of success custom games have lol. I swear it's 1 re for every 3 attempts but we are all FAF crackheads who aren't overly bothered by it

I haven't been huge into ladder over the years but in the last few weeks I played a lot before I left country for work and I felt that ladder had been connecting fairly reliably.

I recommend keeping your spirits up and just sticking with it. A few times when a ladder game didn't reconnect I immediately rejoined que and seemed to get matched with the same group and had some great games.

Imo the tombstones are fun and if it's decided to keep them it doesn't bother me but I'd hate this to be overthought/overdone.

That old adage comes to mind, if it ain't broke don't fix it.

@magge OK so....after a lot of testing I think I have narrowed the issue down to 2 mods. "Rings For All" and "UI mod tools"

The random freezing while zooming in and out would almost happen many times during an average game (even if it didnt completely freeze and crash) and that effect is nowhere present when those two mods are disabled and zero crashes now or anything for many dozens of games.

For my part I have no skills to investigate this further but it does seem like there are a lot of people complaining about mid game crashing so maybe this is related.

I am able to use my favorite icon packs again with zero issue, the only bummer for me is not having Rings For All active because that is an amazing mod but build range preview has been working fine so everything is back to normal in FAF world for me.

Thanks for steering me in the right direction.

If anyone else is crashing mid game and you have either of these 2 mods enabled try disabling them and reassessing.

make sure all logs are outside onedrive. I had this same issue once and didnt change all locations so maybe thats it.

@BlackYps I managed to get into a 1v1 and a 4v4 which now shows 1 of 3 for each. I got another 3v3 and it says 2 of 10 now so seems like the glitch you fixed likely worked. Thanks for helping with this!

@BlackYps FYI, I just played my first ladder game of the new season (3v3) and it still says "The system is still learning you. 1 out of 10 games played." Not the end of the world but it is still annoying lol. I'll just keep grinding . I have gotten slightly better since I made this post so i have higher hopes that I can grind to diamond where I can show that league what a noob I am.

insert - slow clap escalating to standing ovation -

@Jip Well I have zero skills or knowhow to be able to offer any assistance but I am sure happy that we have people who know how and are willing. I looked at a simple log file trying to troubleshoot my crashing and my brain nearly exploded from whatever the hell I read on that notepad lol

@Jip really cool info.

@Salz the only thing that would satisfy me from all of this would be an actual active program developed to doing something about the Novax involving the people that would actually have to do it me not being one of them because I agree with you something dramatic needs to be changed not just cost changes.

My only point in making this article was to try and spurn that change not to get any specific result because it does seem like the majority of players have a problem with the unit as is.