@ftxcommando said in I cri everytim:

The most popular map on FAF is sentons, 10% of all FAF games ever were sentons. Yet this is an anomaly and not sure how much can actually be learned about player preferences from it. I think sentons is so popular because it was “the supcom map” used in trailers, which combined with how ancient it is just kept old players playing it. Trying to just make a new sentons map won’t be popular because it lacks all the background surrounding sentons that made it popular and so people will just ignore it. Can’t even get people to use a version of sentons that removes the asymmetry between both sides because that’s apparently considered heretical.

Senton

Senton faf version

These are 80x40 as 400x200 doesn't translate too well downscaled to 40x20, I asked ftx to use 80x40 instead who asked blackyps/biass who said ok. 400x200 and 40x20 versions are present too.

Sizes comparison (Diamond-1)

400x200

80x40

40x20 (hopefully obsolete in favor of 80x40 but mb useful to have near ava in chat)

All icons in 80x40

Bronze

Silver

Gold

Diamond

Master

Grandmaster (supreme commander is a yikes name)

And the "acu mask" version that kind of turns the icon into an acu face if you have imagination, or you could say its not a face and just a ladder symbol in the middle as well

My personal icon (non-negotiable)

This post is a summary of the current status of FAF Beta. It maybe will be updated at key turning points with new PRs being merged to reflect the state of beta at any point in time.

The purpose is to have a more easily accessible information channel on changes in progress than Github's atrocious interface. Later hopefully there will be some permanent link to the thread from a certain hub or a certain chat topic.

Changelog

Zthuee

• BuildTime 180 -> 270

Zthuees are more efficient BP per unit strength compared to other T1 arties which allows for powerful arty spam with a rather small investment in factories. For now their BP has been rebalanced, but other arty reworks in conjunction to keep the faction diversity fresh are under consideration.

UEF T1 Bomber

• Damage 4 -> 4.5
• InitialDamage 47.5 -> 42.5
• MuzzleSalvoDelay 0.3 -> 0.2

Scorcher’s drop pattern allows it to sometimes kill engies even if enemy manages to partially dodge. These changes convert some of the bomb’s initial damage to DoT as well as make the drop pattern tighter resulting in a smaller spread of the bombs and not allowing the last two of them to home in on the engie that had already started to dodge.

Titan and Loyalist

• BuildCostEnergy 5400 -> 5250
• BuildTime 2400 -> 2160

This is a small buff to the Titan and the Loyalist bringing their E and BT costs more in line with other T3 units which should make massing them a bit easier, potentially prolonging the T3 light bot stage before bricks and percies come out.

Kennel Drones

• Now have higher selection priority than buildings

QoL change.

UEF T3 Sonar

• Add Jamming
• Energy Maintenance cost 500 -> 550

With Cybran and Seraphim sonars having special quirks UEF and Aeon sonars have been left underwhelming. This deals with the UEF sonar, aeon is still under consideration.

T1 Land Scouts

• Reduce the aggro range while on assist/attack move

This will help the scouts to not aggro on enemy units and civilians from far away when they are given an attack move or an assist order.

T4 Arties

• Ranges normalized to 4000 (Mavor range)

This makes all T4 arties viable for the entire 3 people who play 81x81 maps.

Notha

• HP 1175 -> 1000

Make shooting nothas down easier as they could be extremely difficult to deal with if you lose air control.

T1 Land Scouts

• BT 80 -> 60
• Mole E cost 80 -> 60
• Spirit E cost 40 ->60

Make scouts slightly more appealing to create early game.

Soul Ripper

• Add Stealth at -600 maintenance E cost

After the numerous veterancy changes as well as experimental BT changes soul ripper has lost most of its strength, this will allow it to rotate around the map easier and be more effective at harassing and/or sneak sniping.

Paragon

• Add a 100,000 E storage

This will prevent the bug where despite not draining more E than paragon provides you still go into stall and drop shields.

LABs

• Slightly increase the hitbox

Allow for more reliable hitting of unmicroed labs moving at an angle.

Cybran Destroyer

• TurretYawRange 135 -> 140

Make it slightly less punishing to have to retreat your navy.

UEF Destroyer

• TurretYawRange 140 -> 160
• TurretYawSpeed 90-> 100
• Torpedo firing cycle adjusted to combat torp defense better

Improve handling and micro potential, slightly improve effectiveness vs subs.

Aeon Destroyer

• TurretYawRange 160 -> 150
• TurretYawSpeed 100-> 90

Slightly reduce the micro potential to soften the snowball effect that can occur with aeon destroyers.

Sera Destroyer

• Torpedo firing cycle adjusted to combat torp defense better

Cybran Strat Bomber

• DamageRadius 7 -> 6.5
• EnergyMaintenanceCost 65 -> 150

UEF Strat Bomber

• Damage 3000 -> 3100
• DamageRadius 6 -> 5.5

Sera Strat Bomber

• Damage 3250 -> 3000
• DamageRadius 5 -> 6

Aeon Strat Bomber

• Damage 3450 -> 3000
• DamageRadius 4 -> 5.25
• Added a 3s stun of units up to T3, included.

All strat bombers

• Double the amount of mass killed required to vet

Reduce the snowball effect from early strat bomber rushes killing mexes continuously and regaining any hp lost, making it very difficult to kill if you don't have air control.

Aeon T1 bomber

• Better match the splash radius to the damage radius

Atlantis

• Fix the AA behaving inconsistent with the stats, adjust the stats to preserve the current balance

Cybran ACU Stealth Upgrade

• E cost 5000 -> 14000
• Mass cost 350 ->600
• Buildtime 500 -> 800
• Provides 2500 extra HP

Gives cybran acu better chances in midgame against ACUs that can have both T2 and gun at the same time.

Selen

• E maintenance cost 0 -> 1 (while cloaked)
• StealthWaitTime 1 -> 3
• Vision and radar range are now multiplied by 0.6 when entering cloak mode

Drastically reduce the abusiveness of cloaked selens both in the early game with the reduced radar as well as the mid game with energy maintenance cost.

Sera ACU regen field

• Now provides regen to the ACU itself, 10 hp/s for the first upgrade and 20 hp/s for the second
• Now uses different regen floor values for units depending on their tier:

*Basic tier

RegenFloorT1 = 3
RegenFloorT2 = 8
RegenFloorT3 = 15
RegenFloorT4 = 25
RegenFloorSCU = 15

*Advanced tier

RegenFloorT1 = 15
RegenFloorT2 = 30
RegenFloorT3 = 60
RegenFloorT4 = 120
RegenFloorSCU = 80

This boosts the upgrade's attractiveness over T2 and also fixes some inconsistencies where some units were getting more regen from the 1st upgrade tier than the 2nd.

Beetle

• HP 350 -> 400
• ExplosionRadius 6 -> 6.5
• MaxAcceleration 5 -> 7
• TurnRate 160 -> 200
• Reduce detonation trigger distance when manually attacking a unit

Slightly increase maneuverability to compensate for pathfinding, slightly increase the explosion radius and buff hp to 400 for slightly more survivability, notably allowing it to survive an obsidian shot. Make the beetle come close before detonating if it is manually ordered to attack a unit, before it would detonate at max range and miss a lot of potential damage, now it either detonates up close or gets killed before that and detonates closer than before anyway. Added an extra range ring to indicate the detonation trigger radius.

Known issue: Beetle won't detonate when right clicked on Fatboy and potentially some other very large units due to trigger radius being smaller than the half-size of the unit, have to use manual trigger or wait for it to die instead.

Loyalist

• Add 1.5s stun to the slow-firing weapon affecting units up to T2, excluding navy and structures

Allows to better deal with T2 which is the main threat during early T3 stage

Jester

• Fix the bug where it would not do damage to moving units
• Replace splash damage with soft projectile homing

Now jester should be able to hit all or at least most targets consistently.

T1 PDs

• Adjust the hitboxes and bones of the PDs to make the wall-pd template behave the same way for each faction

It's been a bit over half a year since me and ftx created https://www.twitch.tv/faflive, an official FAF streaming hub focused on covering tournaments and running various events. I've had the idea for it for a while from the old official faf twitch run by Zep which had been greatly successful but was lost with Zep's departure from FAF.
I thought now would be a good time to review the progress and state my mind on the plans and goals of the channel.

Progress recap:

The channel currently sits at 843 followers and with Spring Invitational coverage bringing in almost as many followers as LoTS on top of what we already had there is a trend of healthy rapid growth which I expect to continue until the active FAF userbase depletes itself after which there could be different options to try and expand the channel further.

The accumulated stream revenue is closing in on 200$ which I suggested is used on showmatches as it is a fun format and provides longer viewing experience for the funds available, it's also just a format strangely underused on FAF. The participants to be voted in by viewers or/and done via some sort of wheel of fortune or a hybrid system aimed at fairness.

Plans:

Currently channel is Twitch Affiliate and I'd like to have it promoted to Partner as that will reduce the Twitch money cut and give additional cool extra features, the only requirement missing is amount of days streamed. I don't want to clutter the channel with things like random ladder streams to not bring the engagement down, and right now we have an off-season for tourneys so we need to create some content to stream.

These are the requirements for Partnership

With this in mind if you are a top player interested in playing something that will be casted to fill the stream time please post below, if there is any interest I'd like to use the momentum we got from streaming Spring Invitational and complete the quota. The format I'm not sure about yet, but could be anything. Currently we don't yet have the payout set up yet while we are figuring out the best person to manage the funds based on country, taxes, free time and trust but for now can make some unique avatar prize. It won't be a conventional showmatch anyway as we need to fill 8 days of streams, unless we have at least 3-4 players willing to help which would be enough.

We currently have 2 emote slots which I plan to fill with some fantastic creations of mine once the motivation to forge them comes. The overlay can also be reworked, the current one I made as practice and while it serves the purpose it could definitely be improved.

Goals:

Last LoTS peaked at 276 viewers, would be nice if we can reach 350 for next one, 400 would be a huge success in my mind.

Also to increase the overall stream production and casting quality to generate more revenue and use that to host more events and potentially kickstart a self-sufficient ecosystem of competitive scene growth. This is probably the entire idea of the channel, as FAF has been growing for a long time and recently more than ever but the proportion of good players compared to casuals has not been impressive what so ever and while certainly in part it's due to the age of the game I attribute a large part of it to lack of care from the big casting figures.

Thinking back on how I became a top player, it was largely because I discovered FAF through TA4Life's youtube channel on which he was casting competitive 1v1 almost exclusively, and watching some of those plays is what fueled my entire motivation to play and try to get casted with some of my own cool plays. With TA's departure there was a long time period where there was absolutely no coverage of anything competitive scene related except for players streaming their POV until JaggedAppliance took up the torch. That is to say in my opinion discrepancy between FAF's growth and its lack of promising new talent is due to lack of public outreach. Newshub is only read by the active community and even that only in part, if you are just a casual searching FA on Youtube or Twitch and click on the first/biggest thing that pops up you will likely be met with some kind of Dual Gap or, if lucky, blessed by a teamgame or senton neither of which really gives any indication that the community doesn't just consist entirely of nostalgia driven dudes hopping in for a round of big robot shoot big robot twice a year but actually has matchmaking, tournaments and all the cool active community stuff.

We definitely owe people like LegendOfTheStars, Swkoll, Morax, Stups and other major donators for keeping a lot of the interest alive but I don't want FAF to just keep relying on luck with generous patrons. I hope to one day reach the point where the viewership generates enough motivation for the players and in turn players and casters generate motivation for the viewers to become the players, to the point that we don't have tournament off-seasons in FAF. Probably too ambitious but going well so far.

Another point is about FA viewability improvements, namely it looks "slow" from viewers perspective and 1v1 looks too "spammy". I think both can be vastly improved.

For the first one I think the way people cast FA is fundamentally wrong, I already voiced my opinion on this to ftx and Swkoll, not to go into detail but in short I think casting primarily zoomed in is the right way, it however has some technical limitations that need to be solved for it to be properly tried out. It also needs a lot more effort and skill on caster's part to properly capture everything but the end result is worth it in my opinion.

As for the second point, that is not a problem of 1v1 but a problem of maps and game design both of which can be adjusted. Mappers and mapgen can definitely be guided towards less snowbally maps and as far as game design I have long-term plans to make a unit interaction redesign mod after some of the balance stuff is out of the way.

That's it, again if you are interested in helping with fulfilling the quota post below.

Here's badlands, in general a map where a lot of approaches are viable from hardcore t1 all in to eco turtle and t3 rush, a lot of people like the map because it allows for big variety of play and doesn't punish early game mistakes as much, be it bo related or not.

From a quick count I see it has 28 safe mexes, 4 greyzone mexes and 4 highly contested mexes per player. It's a very heavy tip in favor of safe expansions. Now it doesn't mean they are always easy to get and will never be raided but you generally won't ever lose them outright but will only get delayed. This plus a moderate reclaim amount and the majority of games on badlands reach t2 and t3 stage which is more than a lot of 10x10 maps can offer, and it's by no means a turtle tech map.

Here's palms, another classic loved by most people

As you can see again overwhelming majority of mexes are clearly defined expansions that are closer to one of the players by a good margin. However due to how open the map is it is very easy to sneak units by and raid so none of the safe expansions are truly safe, this just generally leads to more aggression compared to badlands but overall I'd say the style of the game is shaped by how hectic the early game is and again it could become anything from t1 spamfest to an ecowar into t4.

Here's hollow, an extreme example of the opposite style.

I see 7 safe mexes, 4 greyzone mexes and 5.5 contested mexes per player. A staggering difference from the previous maps. Majority of games on hollow are hardcore t1 spam where a small BO whored efficiency advantage or a small mistake in raid defense are what often decides the game and the snowball is usually very hard to stop. This is just due to map control being absolutely crucial as a huge portion of map's eco is highly contested. From what I've seen from the games I played in the tourney maps generally lean towards this style. Personally I hate these kinds of maps but it definitely should not be abolished either, I'd rather see both styles and anything in between and further on the extremes, ideally weighted towards more tame solutions in general.

Think you are taking this way too seriously, I see no reason to have yet another layer of FAF bureaucracy added to FAFLive just to greenlight shoutouts, if it's good content and there is a reason to mention it then go ahead, same train of thought for cursing, obviously casters should go in with the mindset to behave and not say anything too risky but if the caster chemistry works well when they are being themselves and not substituting fuck with heck then I think most people would find that kind of cast more enjoyable to watch, overall there are plenty of other more pressing issues with the channel currently.

Some impressions of the mapgen after playing the tourney:

First of all, a huge improvement over the last iteration I played in a tourney like half a year ago where the maps were far from being a consideration for competitive setting. While it will never reach the quality of handcrafted maps I would love to see it being used more and get continuous improvements. I hate playing the same map in 1v1 even twice a day so this immediately brings down any pain levels from playing significantly. It also removes any BO whoring aspect from the game which is the absolute worst part of FA in general in my opinion and probably a big reason I don't play the game apart from tourneys anymore. Would be nice to see it used as a standard form of competitive play in tournaments in the future (next lots?), some things to improve on for now thought:

• Mex spread is a bit too spam-oriented most of the time, this is an issue with hand-made maps as well. Have less singular mexes scattered around the map, less reclaim in the highly contested zones, clearly defined bigger expansions and reclaim fields that belong to the players by being closer to their spawn location and farther from the opponent. Doesn't mean all map generation should be like that, it's just a fix to the trend I'm seeing, ideally would be nice to have the generator produce both "styles" of maps be it with more randomness or selecting a "style" and generating accordingly.
• Variety in starting economy and reclaim overall could be improved a lot. It's nice that there are no hydro starts, 3 or 4 mex but I'd like to see anything from 1 to 6+ mexes, double-triple hydro, more reclaim variety with trees and their types as well as having some potential reclaim very close to the starting location for more opportunities.
• Slope clarity. I've had at least 2 maps out of 6 games I played in the tournament where I completely misread the slopes as being impassable which changed my approach to the game, this is a technical issue and probably the highest priority from this list.
• Map preview ugliness. Don't know what's up with that but it feels to me like the preview is sometimes generating an overly-ugly representation of the map and I don't think I've seen this with any hand-made maps, rather there is the opposite being true. On multiple occasions I looked at the preview and thought the map looked like total ass but then it looked fine in game.
• Decals. This is more a long-term thing and the least important one, hand-made maps will always win in aesthetics but would would be nice to have a little more detail in the maps with at least some basic decals that don't favor any direction in particular and so can be placed randomly with more benefit than harm.

And ofc would be cool to have the "undiscovered" mode at some point for that authentic AoE feel and to complete the picture.

Legality aside there are clear morality concerns. A LOT of miscellaneous personal information is public on the internet if you try hard enough to search for it, but collecting and publishing it on public forums is not really ok. Argument that "it's already public" only stands up if you delve into technicalities. And if we had some certain moderator still active giving them this kind of idea would likely result into a mass mega ban or a big drama fest.

@blackyps said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:

The question why the high rated scene is dwindling while the rest of the community is growing is indeed very interesting and warrants its own thread. I wanted to start that soon, but if someone wants to go ahead and open it, feel free to do so. I will then comment my thoughts there

https://forums.faforever.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=15548
I don't even have to write anything

The difference now I guess is that ladder isn't dying but dead and tournaments are almost dead, but I can't comment much on this since i now have been inactive for years.

I double the moderation request, and not just for moses or the balance discussions, but some other you know who individuals too, this shitposting is the reason noone on the balance team takes any forum talk seriously and barely anyone even reads it. Quite mindboggling how this forum managed to top the old one in the sheer idiocy just after being released.

@blackyps said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:

The question why the high rated scene is dwindling while the rest of the community is growing is indeed very interesting and warrants its own thread. I wanted to start that soon, but if someone wants to go ahead and open it, feel free to do so. I will then comment my thoughts there

https://forums.faforever.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=15548
I don't even have to write anything

The difference now I guess is that ladder isn't dying but dead and tournaments are almost dead, but I can't comment much on this since i now have been inactive for years.

Legality aside there are clear morality concerns. A LOT of miscellaneous personal information is public on the internet if you try hard enough to search for it, but collecting and publishing it on public forums is not really ok. Argument that "it's already public" only stands up if you delve into technicalities. And if we had some certain moderator still active giving them this kind of idea would likely result into a mass mega ban or a big drama fest.

Think you are taking this way too seriously, I see no reason to have yet another layer of FAF bureaucracy added to FAFLive just to greenlight shoutouts, if it's good content and there is a reason to mention it then go ahead, same train of thought for cursing, obviously casters should go in with the mindset to behave and not say anything too risky but if the caster chemistry works well when they are being themselves and not substituting fuck with heck then I think most people would find that kind of cast more enjoyable to watch, overall there are plenty of other more pressing issues with the channel currently.

@ftxcommando said in I cri everytim:

The most popular map on FAF is sentons, 10% of all FAF games ever were sentons. Yet this is an anomaly and not sure how much can actually be learned about player preferences from it. I think sentons is so popular because it was “the supcom map” used in trailers, which combined with how ancient it is just kept old players playing it. Trying to just make a new sentons map won’t be popular because it lacks all the background surrounding sentons that made it popular and so people will just ignore it. Can’t even get people to use a version of sentons that removes the asymmetry between both sides because that’s apparently considered heretical.

Senton

Senton faf version

Golden clan tags.

in assuming i fixed my game

@morax said in New Player Councilor Discussion + Removal Announcements:

Optimism is GREAT. I do not have an issue with that, but how about we see real data and metrics to say "yes, i have sponsors coming, or yes there will be this or that."

219 average viewers is nice. how about previous years? Are we certain the trend is really up ? I don't think we can tell because FAF live has not been around that long.

This is real data and real metrics. I don't think there are any sponsors coming yet and not me nor anyone can tell if there will be, but I know there will be attempts at getting them. What I do know is that 220 > 0 so I don't know why I see people who haven't gotten 220 viewers gathered on a FAF event bicker about the trend of growth not being super clear. Me and FtX have gone and created the thing while noone else ever had any initiative and gotten LoTS from 0 real coverage up to appropriate coverage that is well deserved for the generous donations put out. I don't see why now suddenly as the election is coming up it is apparently a hot topic of concern when in my eyes it's an impressive achievement that doesn't even fall within PC realm of responsibilities.

Last year's LoTS finals.

I don't see what your issue even is here, him trying to reach out and capitalize on FAF finally having a consistent coverage medium? Him being optimistic on viewership numbers? Wouldn't even call that optimistic, we weren't that far off of this metric last year already.

Proxy resubmitting old moon's application, I think it still stands as the strongest out there and I cannot see it losing despite fierce competition.