Some quality forum drama here for a change.

For a bit of context I’m someone who has never changed their name. I’m also someone who thought things like the barcode names were annoying. Additionally, I do think it’s a bit of extra work to figure out who’s who when there are renames, especially since I don’t play much these days. It’s a bit confusing whenever I show up for a day or two or whatever.

BUT. This rule change is not the answer. Even if I thought the barcode names for example were annoying I don’t see why that should be banned behavior. Let people have their fun even if my grumpy ass doesn’t like it at the time. It sounds like we’re trying to solve a technical deficiency (not having a backend static UUID) by implementing rule changes that are unpopular for the people it actually impacts.

I’d guess most people don’t rename, or at least rename very often. Those people also aren’t going to be the people on the forums advocating in favor of this change, because they don’t care. If people want to have fun and rename who cares? I’ve seen hardly any convincing arguments against it, sans things that are technical problems that should be solved technically and not by limiting freedom to the subset of people using the feature, especially when that subset involves very active community members.

Having a static backend UUID that’s the true reference + being able to report in Aeolus by right clicking their name in chat solve the majority of the problems here. I’m sure the former is a huge amount of work and will probably not happen, but it’s still a better idea than essentially removing name changes.

Seems like it slows down high level play and does little to nothing for lower rated play. I think this is similar to what Paradox is saying, but imo area reclaim solves a problem that doesn't necessarily exist. What I mean by that is no low rated player is losing games because they didn't click enough rocks. There are a million other mistakes they're making that are far more important than clicking rocks. The difference between attack move and manually clicking rocks is meaningless until maybe 1600+ and that's being very generous, realistically it's a higher rating than that.

Even watching the replay was kind of sad, felt so much slower than normal ditch progress which sucks because that's fun to both watch and play.

Yes, it makes it less volatile early game and makes losing engineers less punishing, but I feel that that's the only real benefit and even then it's only a benefit at high level play.

I vote we fix by deleting it from the game

@morax said in "What will you do if you lose the election" and 5 Questions for FTX:

5. Have you ever donated your own money to a FAF event? Why or why not?

No comment on the rest but why do we care if a college student is donating money to FAF? Hell why would we care if anyone, college student or not, is donating money to FAF when they clearly put time into it? For all we know he’s broke as hell, and if you know he’s not it’s still kind of a strange question if he’s putting a lot of time in anyway imo.

I think both sides of the bo argument are missing a crucial point for lower level players: Cognitive load.

If you're a 1k ladder player who has played some random map 100 times up vs another ladder player who's also 1k but hasn't played as much ladder and has never played that map before, who do you think is a bit more likely to win that?

The dude who has played it 100 times probably doesn't have a BO, at least not one past the first couple factories, and even if he does it's not going to be that refined (again, 1k rating). But, here is where he has advantages:

1. Takes zero thought for him to know where to send acu.
2. Knows how powerful air is on the map, if transports make sense, best expansions to go for, etc
3. Has a better rough idea of how much power to make and how many factories the mass can support
4. Knows what the passable terrain is without looking
5. In general doesn't have to spend time looking at the map, reclaim, etc
6. And probably a lot of other small things I'm too lazy to come up with now.

All of these things matter far less the higher you go because better players figure that stuff out faster and more accurately.

tl;dr: imo it's not bo, it's general map familiarity. I think experienced players are underestimating how much that matters at lower levels.

Edit: I mean obviously people responding like Thomas and Grimplex don't need BOs for maps, any shit they come up with on the fly is going to be better than what any 1200 is going to come up with after playing a map dozens of times. FAF at the 1800+ level is not the same game as FAF for the rest of people.

I don’t have much stake in the game when it comes to server updates during FAF peak hours since I’m rarely able to play during peak hours as it is, but I’d rather the people like you who are volunteering their time to keep this ship afloat be able to do what they need to do when it’s more convenient for them if possible. It’s not like you’re paid for this, and personally I’d rather you guys not feel burned out by feeling forced to give up personal time just for FAF’s convenience.

Appreciate the work and the update on what happened here!

Almost never able to get a game and when I do the odds are too high that it’s a 5x5 map or 10x10 that plays like a 5x5.

Need mapgen ladder week more often.

Story time! And yes, I do tie this back to the thread.

To the surprise of no one, I'm a huge nerd and also the kind of nerd who has been into building computers since I was a kid. Around the lovely age of 13 I built my first rig that was capable of playing games, but to back up a little, my family wasn't well off. I knew I wanted to do this for a long time, so for almost 2 years leading up to that I did whatever odd jobs I could do as a kid to save money. Mowing lawns, dog sitting, whatever, until I could afford the parts myself. My dad then took me to GameStop, and the first thing I saw was the Forged Alliance gold pack that had very recently come out. It had a giant robot on the cover and was a strategy game. Sounded perfect. It was the only game I could afford, and the only game I played for a while on PC. This was late 2007.

I have quite literally been playing FA for longer than some people here have been alive.

I'm not the only person here who has played this game a long, long time. Of course people like me are somewhat resistant to change. Change needs to be damn well justified, because I love the game exactly how it is, perceived warts and all. Some things are no brainers. Performance updates have been amazing, they have no downsides and really do help keep the game alive. Seriously, thank you @jip for all the work there. Overall balance changes have been solid, the balance we have now might just be the best balance the game has ever had.

Other things like advanced target priorities, spread move, spread build, etc are great additions because they do nothing but add to the base game in a positive way. They add strategic depth, which is perfect for a game like FAF.

I'm not going into more depth here since this has been covered to death, but area reclaim doesn't add to strategic depth, it takes away. It makes all forms of reclaim other than factory attack move redundant and pointless most of the time. Good players no longer have to think "hey is it worth spending my apm on manual reclaim right now or is attack move good enough". With area reclaim, the answer is almost always area reclaim or factory attack move. It also does nothing for lower rated players, because for them the answer to that question already virtually always is it's not worth it and they should attack move.

Much like the rename debacle, I do not think communication here has been well handled. On both sides. Valid criticisms of area reclaim have gone essentially ignored.

All that said, out of the things I mentioned in my original post area reclaim was at the bottom of what I cared about. If anything the associated nerf to rock reclaim speed is worse than area reclaim in my mind, but I could be wrong there as I have so far done little more than watch the replay from Tagada. I have, at least, done that though.

Back to my first paragraph. I want FAF to stay successful. I also want FA Forever to embody the Forever part. This means changes that actually impact how the game is played need to clear a very high bar before they're implement. In some cases that bar is trivial to clear. In other cases not so much.

The idea that people should move on from FAF because it's a 20 year old dead game and there's no merit there is a depressing clown take that spits in the face of tons of great open source projects, not just FAF. Even if I don't agree with everything devs/mods/whoever does, I'm glad they try to help the game and put their free time in. Call me naive or whatever the hell you want, but I do think most here have the best intentions for the game regardless of if I agree with their vision.

Communication is hard, and I think we've had some of the worst communication breakdowns I've seen in the past few months on FAF. Hopefully I've added a bit of explanation for the views of people who might be more conservative with applying changes.

Oh, one last thing. Exactly zero people who are current high level players will have any issues still being top players unless the entire game is fundamentally reworked, and even then many of them would become top players quickly if they put the time in. Top players aren't top players due to some magic tricks or meta abuse, they're top players because they have great fundamentals. The idea that top players are against this because they'd have to relearn something and might lose their rating is comically wrong and misplaced.

I have never once had an issue with ping due to where someone lived, only due to them having a bad connection. It's honestly good there are no flags right now so there's less discrimination based on supposed latency issues due to location which more or less isn't actually a thing since anything less than 500ms is fine. The exceptions should be person by person, not country by country.

It got to the point where FAF was barely playable for me due to the DDoS attacks. I was getting busier with life and had less time and energy for games, and then the occasions I had time for FAF I'd try and fail to have a game that would last longer than a few minutes. It got to the point where I just wouldn't bother and I'd play some other game if I had time to play anything. I knew that I would come back when I had more free time and connections were more stable. From what I could tell devs were actively working on fixes, so I was mostly waiting for those fixes + life to calm down.

Fast forward to now, and both of those things seem to have happened; I can now play full games without issue and I have a bit more free time. It does feel like there are just fewer higher rated games though. A few times I've been on recently where this time last year there might be at least one or two higher rated games going, whether it be setons, mapgen, or likely both, but there was just nothing.

Nuggets is right, the connection issues were a huge problem. I don't think the recent things that have come up would be quite as big of a deal if it weren't for the piece of shit who was (is?) DDoSing FAF. Or, perhaps they would be, but we wouldn't get people quitting over them. I think the rename rule changes would piss some people off regardless of how happy they were with FAF previously, but it wouldn't on its own push people to the verge of quitting.

More thoughts on recent changes/proposed changes.

Rename changes

If the mods just came out and said, "hey no impersonating people, we can't have a bunch of high rated players be TheWheelieNoob for reasons x, y, and z" then while people would be unhappy and I'm not sure I'd agree, it wouldn't be as bad. However, they didn't. They both said no similar names and made a significant change to renaming in general where you can only rename once a year. Furthermore, the first post was pretty light on the details to justify the change, and they then took entirely too long to start addressing the real feedback they were getting. Sure, lots of people were just being angry without posting anything of substance but there were good counter points that the mod team should have been prepared to address. They then, in my mind, proceeded to use arguments mostly against impersonating people as justifications for changing renames from one month to one year.

This change doesn't even impact me and I still don't like how it's being handled, so it's far worse for the people it actually impacts.

League System

I don't think anyone has a problem with the league system. I legitimately like it. I think most people either like it or are indifferent. Where the issue comes in is having the league system replace the trueskill rating rather than living along side the existing rating system. I think it brings a lot of potential value that's harder to do without it, such as seasonal rewards, potentially nicer leaderboards, and another avenue of progression. All of which are accomplished without hiding trueskill and trueskill rating changes.

I find the arguments for hiding mmr and mmr changes to be weaker than what you lose by hiding them, especially for higher rated players, but I am also getting tired and have other things to cover. If you'd like I'll elaborate there later.

The one other thing I'll say here is that I also see this as a move towards getting rid of global rating. I know, I know, that's a slippery slope fallacy, but basically all of the arguments for hiding rating are using global games as the example and not ladder games so I'm not sure I'm being unreasonable with that concern. I feel very, very strongly about not getting rid of global rating and I could see that actually killing FAF.

Reclaim changes/area reclaim

I thought people had been against this for years, and for good reasons. Why is this suddenly a thing that might actually go into FAF?? The scarier thing is that people are now seemingly so jaded that there's barely any actual discussion there. I said this on that thread, but it was legitimately sad watching The Ditch replay that was given as an example for the corresponding reclaim nerf. We are seemingly going from reclaim being so fast that the best can't use it entirely (overflow from Setons mid years ago as the example), to now which is a nice balance where skilled players actually can manage reclaim, to this where you're stalling with 3 or 4 reclaiming engineers minute 3 on the ditch. That's a joke, and not a funny one.

Small recap

The theme with all of these changes is they disproportionately impact higher rated and more active members at a time when said higher rated and more active members are already becoming less active and less engaged largely due to the connection issues.

If I could wave my hand and make one thing magically change it would be to give supcom fa a new and modern game engine with all the potential benefits that entails.

If that answer is violating the spirit of the question, then my second answer would be to either delete the Novax from the game or make it a t3 intel only unit with the corresponding cost changes and then replace it with a “proper” t4 air unit or hell even a new direct fire experimental though an air unit makes more sense. Satellites with weapons are unbalanceable or at least fundamentally “unfun” (for me) in faf and I’ll die on that hill.

Edit: also the Billy nuke isn’t that bad. Perhaps you can make an argument for tweaking it but it does make for some fun interactions

Pretty sure the answer is no, iirc the arm architecture causes desyncs due to how it handles floating point math regardless of emulation software. You might be able to play single player if you can get it running though.

Hopefully I’m wrong here and this is outdated info, actually would be kinda nice if I could play on my MacBook when traveling.

I can’t tell if this is satire or not? Enjoyable read regardless, upvoted!

You have yet to actually justify why aeon shields need to be bigger. They’re in contention for the best t3 shield in the game, they really don’t need to be changed. If you don’t see them being used to defend arty in your games it’s because you’re playing with people who don’t know what they’re doing, especially if they’re choosing cybran over aeon.

Only shields that need updates/buffs are the Cybran ED4 and ED5. Aeon is fine. You’re never defending something as expensive as a t3 arty with a single shield anyway.

Ground fire BS and pray they’re not paying attention and dodging with the subs. Or have dominate air control and make torps. If neither are options, good luck! They badly need a nerf.

Dude is commenting on a forum for an rts game from 2007 and calling other people nerds. Nice

If you want a simpler economy, play Supcom 2. There’s a reason we’re here and not playing that game. Getting rid of mass storages is game breaking. If you want games like this on FAF then that’s a sim mod and not a change to the core game.

Actually quite like the idea of summits having a Gatling gun for close quarters support. Not sure balance would work for that to be added into core FAF but it’s a fun idea and feels right for them to have it.

I agree with @BlackYps here. I think there's a fine line to walk, and the wording, while probably too vague, is fair for a reasonable outcome I'd want:

Discussing moderation decisions in public is discouraged

I don't think mods walk that fine line and instead go the far direction and act like it's completely disallowed vs discouraged. I fully agree that people who get banned for saying hateful/stupid crap in cut and dry cases should not be allowed to run their mouths about how it's unfair publicly. We already disallow that and I see that kind of rhetoric get shutdown as is. I'm good with that, and I think everyone else here is also good with that.

The problem is when presumably well-meaning people get shut down when talking about valid hypotheticals, especially when it's actually a hypothetical that's not associated with a report. I don't see why we can't have this while also having the former, they're not mutually exclusive and I don't think allowing valid hypotheticals is going to noticeably increase the occurrence of the former scenario. The benefit of allowing these hypotheticals is clear: we can more clearly define and outline community rules and guidelines.

I get why people in the community are frustrated about this when the rule clearly uses the word "discouraged" and then mods come around and say:

While we welcome suggestions to the FAF rules or feedback on the moderation system in general, we will not allow the discussion of specific reports or moderation cases.

Which has no basis in the rules with how they're currently worded. Discourage in no way, shape, or form means that you categorically cannot do something. I would be discouraged from rushing a t2 mex in a 1v1 on a 5x5 map. I am not allowed to nuke my teammate's base because they took a mex that I thought should be mine. Those fundamentally do not mean the same thing. The wording needs to be updated if mods wish to actually claim this is a rule, but I would only be for an update that allows for hypotheticals and perhaps good faith discussions of actual reports, though that last part could be difficult to implement.