People always tend to prefer things they know, when they have a choice. This is why the mapgen can do what handmade maps cannot.

If a person goes into the map vault, they see a bunch of maps they have never seen alongside ones that they already now, and their brain is automatically going to dismiss the maps they dont't know because anything thats new is frightening on a primitive human level.

The mapgen solves this problem by frontloading that choice:

• Do you want to play an unknown map or not?

And then forcing you to stay with that choice by preventing your brain from categorizing it as just another map and therefore reverting your decision to try something new. So the way in which the mapgen creates an advantage is not necessarily by just creating unknown maps, but psychologycally.

Of course the mapgen should eventually still reach higher level of quality. But its important to realize how important the UI is here.

Lets assume that there is a way for the client to automatically select a handmade map that

• Follows some easy to use filters (size, amount of water, etc.) similar to map generator
• Guarantuess to select a map that is generally not very actively played by the community and of certain minimum quality
• Introduces some sort of UI-barrier to backpedalling from the decision to play something new

Then maybe handmade maps could in some way fullfill the same function that the mapgen does. However, we dont have that kind of UI for handmade maps, and as long as it is that way, people will resort to the mapgen to play unknown maps instead of simply selecting a not much played handmade map.

The mapgen also crates some sort of unspoken contract: The map is guarantueed to be new to everybody (in reality thats not true because you can regenerate a seed, but this is still the expectation that people have). This is of course very hard to replicate with handmade maps.

PS:
Could participants in this thread please stop assuming that everybody else argues in bad faith or against their interests? Turning this thread into a mapgen vs handmade war will not create many usefull insights on this topic. Too late probably.

Stop claiming that "icon confusion" was intended by the devs.

• You have no idea if that is true.
• The whole point of the stratetgic icons was that it was supposed to allow players to play at the strategic level instead of zooming in. So the icon confusion actually goes against stated goals of this game's design.

Ok now i want to look at the far future.
Arguably there is still a lot of time until map generator maps reach a level of quality where somebody like FTX will replace 100% of the 1v1 queue with random maps. But still.

Lets make some likely assuptions:

• The quality of the map generator maps will improve, to a point where most people (except handmade map makers) will not notice the difference in asthetic quality.
• More and more people will like the notion of a guarantuee that makes BO-whoring impossible, and we make it so this is actually enforcable (we mark mapgen maps that where created from known seeds vs newly generated as such). What doesnt matter is if BO-whoring is actually a problem, what matters is if people perceive it as a problem and want that guarantuee in ladder.

If we make these assumptions, it should be quite easy to see, that after a long period of transition, the endgame is AOE2, in other words, the death of handmade maps in competitive play. You might disagree with those assumptions, but please think about wether you actually disagree with them OR if you just dont want to follow through to the conclusion, maybe because this conclusion is subjectively horrifying.

Now, in that scenario, a lot of people will just not care and go with it, some people will be sad, and handmade maps will fight a war for dominance, that they will slowly and agonizinly loose as more and more players desire the things that mapgen can provide. This thread is a good indicator for how that will look like imo.

Now, there is another hidden asumption here:

• Handmade maps mostly stay as they are know

But we could change this if we want. We already have adaptive maps. What if handmade maps could provide the same guarantuess that generated maps could in terms of BO-whoring?

• Predefined mex groups that sometimes appear and sometimes not.
• Mexes that slightly move position
• Several possible positions for hydros to appear, sometimes they dont appear at all.
• Same for big wrecks

Im not saying we need to do this. But if the first too assumptions hold, i think that handmade maps need to evolve in the long term. And i think they can, and anyway discussing how that would look like would be much more productive than descussing how far along the trajectory mapgen maps are right now.

In in additon to that, we can think about maybe a better way to present handmade maps or allow players to select them, but that is mo harder to achieve.

This guy still has not understood what it means to not have the source code. I doubt he has ever written code in a compiled programming language ever.

@Spy_Emanciator
Im sorry to say that there is probably no random hero dev hiding in the woods that is just waiting to be encouraged by your non-sensical expectations and will spring into action once you say "its so easy" 100 times in a row.

@ThomasHiatt said in Legacy client not working:

• Java client has cost FAF a very large amount of developer time for an inferior and unneeded product. Dev power is supposedly scarce around here and this is an egregious waste. The python client could have simply been refactored and improved. Even after several years of work the Java client is not really any better.

"Inferior": subjective
"unneeded": no
"not really any better" : repeating urself
"could have simply been refactored": so simple that nobody showed up for like 2 years after repeated calls for more python devs in the forums;

If was repeated about a 100 times already, but the python client was so abandoned that it actively blocked improvements to the entire rest of the FAF infrustructure.

Your nice idea about making websites today for vault tabs is only easily possible today because the Java API exists, which was basically blocked from being improved upon by the python client.

Java client reduced backend maintenance cost (which is more important than all of the points in your list), made map gen improvements easier or even happen at all, makes TMM UI happen and will probably in the future wipe your ass for you while you sit on the toilet complaining about it without noticing.

It makes no sense (both in terms of gameplay and lore) that you can zoom in and clearly see that its a Mantis (aka bigger threat than lab), and then just zoom out and somehow the information lost now?

The other factions would have to gimp their own tactical overview on purpose to remove information they already have, why.

the Cybran how thing is messing with your intel

Thats not true. Cybrans thing is stealth., not "messing with yout Intel". UEF have false radar signatures on frigates. So you could argue that actually a mechanic like this would be more fitting on a UEF unit than a cybran unit.

But even then, you don't need to treat it as a threat. You just have to zoom in. Thats my whole point. A simple mechanical action like using your scrollwheel completely invalidates any use of this as a strategy, so its stupid to give this any strategic value.

If this was ever actually intended, then when the unit would move out of radar-only-vision into true vision, the icon would change. But this is not the case, so it is 99% not intended.

TMM tests are being scheduled in the FAF Discord, anybody can help out by joining the tests when they happen.

Funny because FAF has stopped caring about which PC you use for over a year now.

There is no "new security", you could say there is less than before. The only thing that you need is valid Steam link that is linked to exactly one account. Then you can use that account anywhere.

Btw why should anybody try to help you if you didnt even take the time to properly describe the problem your are having.

@valki said in Invitation to comment and speculate on the Energy resource in this game:

The same transition dynamic could be accomplished if the UEF interceptor simply cost 2000 energy, and the tank 0 energy. You still need just as many additional power plants to build interceptors then.

So why does the tank cost energy at all?

Mass is the more straightforward resource, while energy is the more complex resource since it requires conversion of mass into energy and generators can be sniped.

They probably didn't want to rob tank spamming players of the joy and the risks of handling the more complex resource.

it also gives generator adjacency on T1 facs a reason to exists, adding to the base building choices you have as a player.

Yeah thats a known issue i think. All statstitics in the game end screen are wrong.

@valki said in Invitation to comment and speculate on the Energy resource in this game:

The same transition dynamic could be accomplished if the UEF interceptor simply cost 2000 energy, and the tank 0 energy. You still need just as many additional power plants to build interceptors then.

So why does the tank cost energy at all?

Mass is the more straightforward resource, while energy is the more complex resource since it requires conversion of mass into energy and generators can be sniped.

They probably didn't want to rob tank spamming players of the joy and the risks of handling the more complex resource.

it also gives generator adjacency on T1 facs a reason to exists, adding to the base building choices you have as a player.

That tool just changes a flag inside the exe, we could patch our exe for all players if it works.

On a 64 bit OS, each 32 bit application can use the full memory space (usually 2 GB, or 4GB if it supports LARGEADDRESSAWARE), so you don't need to close all apps, just have enough RAM.

Btw, is the current exe used by FAF LARGEADDRESSAWARE? If not, changing that may increase the time until the game runs out of memory, it it simply runs out of memory.

Edit:
Somebody could try it if not: https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/large-address-aware.112556/
Btw, this flag cannot be used always, needs to be tested.

@rowey said in FAF Campaigns:

So im currrley not quite sure how to best aproch displaying the leaderboard right now as im removeing the mission selected from the main page so will need a way to select the mission from the Leaderboard Ui

Thats exactly what i meant in my last post's edit. You need a new type of leaderboard dropdown entry like "coop", and then you need another dropdown where people select the mission:

@Rowey

Just move the Leaderbords to the leaderbords tab. We should imo stay consistent with our own tabs, even if that means you have to make an additional click ere and there. And having 2 additional nested layers of tabs below the top is imo a bit ugly.

When somebody decides to do a proper concept how to reintegrate the leaderbords in a per mission way, we can always move them back.

Edit: And by the way the leaderbords are per missions so you need a mission selector dropdown somewhere above the leaderbord.

Its a nice idea in theory to have coop leaderbords but in practice they are broken 99% of the time in one way or another, and if you just move them somewhere out of the UI space until sombody takes the time to properly re-integrate them i would be fine with that. Could put them behind a button or leaderbord tab or somewhere else for now.

@rowey said in FAF Campaigns:

How would You chaneg the Current UI for Coop ? what would be a better UI for what is currely thier ? Ive just recently set up the Java client so i could have a messaround with could be somthing i could look in to.

Basically take all parts of the Coop UI, put them in a mixer, and what comes out will be a better use of screen space then what we have now : )

Biggest problems:

• The game list is missing all the options from the custom games list (show hide password/modded games)
• The game list is way too small, i should take up most of the width of the client like the custom games list, so you can actually see the columns properly.
• Its completely opposite of how custom games work: For custom games, you first click "Create Game" button and THEN you selec the map. In the coop tab, you FIRST select the mission and THEN you host, which is very confusing.
• Hosting a coop game should happen inside a dialog just like creating custom game instead of taking up half of the coop tabs space for missions selection and lobby name.
• The mission selection list is horrible because missions are not properly grouped, good luck playing the Seraphim campaign in the order of the story, hint: its not the same order as in the list.
• When you try to host/join a coop mission for the first time, the client will download a ton of videos for ALL coop missions instead of just the one you try to get into. This can take hours and if anybody made it that far, this is the point where they will probably never try again.

Github Issues:
https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/issues/1266
https://github.com/FAForever/downlords-faf-client/issues/1337

Ok i think the formula makes sense, except checking top_player. If there are a top player and a noob in the same team it will probably already create bad uniformity right?

However, for finding good parameters, i would have to code that formula up and try it with varying numbers, cannot really tell anything from your example calculations. So yeah i don't think you will get much use out of the forum for that^^

Okay, what does deviation = stats.pstdev(ratings) do?