Well first of all let me get this straight : This thread stems up from a scission in the council (saying that won't surprise anyone I guess). One group is made of sheeo-nine, while the other group is made up of biass-ftx. The discussion between those 2 party have been so bad, that they can't get in agreement about completely irrelevant topic, like the use of a word in an official thread (thousands of word of debate over such petty thing).

I won't be talking about the different subject that are opposing that 2 groups, like conflict of interest (sanctuary), news management, accusation of being afk, etc... and I will only focus on the topic of this thread that is toxicity, and especially in the council.

If you are lazy to read the following, it can be sum up at : it's not black and white, and you can't accuse specific persons (imo).

Before hand I will only talk about toxicity and contribution, not toxicity in the game. Other people have well separated those 2 different issues, and we can't say that toxicity in council lead to lower retention (or at least by a direct link).

first of all, you can find dirt on everyone. I'll expose private conversation here, not to condemn the person, but to showcase the issue.

Tbh this example was especially problematic to me, not because it can be said toxic, but because it meant, at that time that we couldn't collaborate to improve faf.
Note that I brought that up for the election of nine in the council (to warn other councillors when taking our decision), while i was validating that candidature (and at the same time setting my feeling aside).
What i want to say, is that you can find dirt on everyone. You can find dirt on me too, we all have our bad mood, we interpret badly what other people meant, etc...

Here another example showcasing that issue even from a councillor at the time. It's not straight forward toxicity like insults, but the result was a moderator stopping contributing because of it.



So that was when we discovered that we were able to manipulate the lobby for malicious intent. I've the full log (and can provide it), but i'm only posting relevant parts of it to showcase the issue.
The issue is a big ego and poor communication skill, leading to someone talking other people down.
The message i want to convey here is that people define toxicity as insult in general, but it can be way broader than that. Especially people doing passive aggressive. It's very hard to work with such people (more on that later).

Now note that I've been working with Icedreamer for a long period of time, despite knowing his behaviour. I didn't stop contributing because some people have been toxic. In the case of Icedreamer, he was also very competent for its job, thus why we can't just remove someone because he is "toxic".
I think people that contribute to a community like this one, need to grow a thick skin. Some people will quit the boat for little, and you can't save everyone. For example, thinking of the balance team, we can tell one another that our ideas are dumb, or that we are stupid etc.. But that doesn't stop us from moving forward altogether to improve the balance and keep confronting our ideas. Some people weren't able to handle that, even if in the end the light mood in the team prevent it from being a toxic place (imo).

I also wanted to point out that some people in that thread played as if they were only victim of toxicity. But as I said already it's not black and white. And I find it way easier to contribute to this project with a ftx or a biass having a direct communication and possibly calling names on me, than with a Exotic-Retard always doing passive-aggressive with me.

So yeah TLDR :
It's all black and white, we can find dirt on everyone, and miscommunication in the council is due to the conflict of 2 groups.
Also you should grow a thick skin if you want to contribute in a community in general.

@FtXCommando said in Atlantis:

yes, that is what i asked

a game play should be straight forward to understand. There shouldn't be tactics abusing a dubious logic to be part of the meta.
For a new comer, a bs with little torpedo capability shouldn't be able to counter submarine.

on top of this, the way you have to do it seems counter intuitive :

• you can't just click the sub, you have to ground fire it
• you need to ground fire next to the sub then drag the order on the sub
• if you don't want to waste a round of shots, you need to ground fire outside of the range, and then drag the order on top of the sub

FAF isn't doing politic. We use the official flag of the country. It doesn't mean we endorse what a country is doing to his population. If the official flag, would change, then faf will align.

Dyk : aeon torpedo bomber depth charges gives water vision. You can use that to spot stealth ACU under water by groundfiring.

@shape-of-bennis said in New Player Councilor Discussion + Removal Announcements:

Ftx stop smoking truck tires. You type way to much and say way to little. Global rating is a system that works. You are creating a problem that doesn't exist, I would say most people are happy with global rating. And the alternatives you offer sound half baked and are even more speculative than your characterisation of the problem. Can we maybe focus on getting one queue to work (tmm) instead of trying to implement 2 more queues? Clearly there is a problem with the queue system.

Resetting tmm rating hasn't exactly helped much has it.

I usually don't reply on this thread, but i need to speak up when seeing this.
I also usually ignore what benis write, but i think it's important to reply for the people reading this.

As ftx said trueskill hasn't been designed at all like it is being used now.
It is a tool to evaluate someone skill without bias. And applying that tool with custom game lead to big bias and a barely useful rating at the end.
What are the bias ?

• ability to select your opponents : especially in our small community it is very easy to stack game even if the rating doesn't say it is.
• ability to select map : This is a major bias, especially when people keep playing the same map, and reach abnormal rating in comparison to their skill.
• select your position on the maps, etc

If we want to improve the game, it's going to be necessary to remove (or at least hide) this rating.
This will also help the community on several fronts :

• it allow new player to start playing more easily, without getting kicked (help at player retention)
• It will also help at reducing toxicity in game, especially in custom game where rating aren't at stake anymore. This lead to having custom game being used for what it main intend is : playing chill game modded or not (keeping global rating hidden with auto balance tool will make this game balanced-ish), while competitivness is handled by tmm.

Also to answer to mize about "elitist selecting map that will be rated" or whatever that was. As i explained this is required by default to get a useful rating. That's how it works in other games like sc2.

i've learnt to read only the relevant post, i guess you should try ignoring these guys.

Thanks again for what you have done and especially for handling that role which have quite a lot of responsibilities and relies on making decision on topic that are often controversial.

well maybe he prefer to lose on 20x20 than on 5x5 (a bit like player that skip the tutorial, because they want to play with all the toys, even if they can't really handle them). But as Tagada said, i'm not sure that's how other rating of his range are feeling. There were some result of poll about that i think.

because they behave the same otherwise. but if you want to ground fire, you just need to give an attack order on the ground, and you don't need to change the attack mode before that

kudos to mr PC for bringing that up to my attention.
Didn't read the whole thread, here is my pov :
1st : about making it a default template : i'm not sure how that would work knowing that people want to customize the order of their template, and some other might want to not have it. Of course people can remove the template afterward, but it might be more confusing than anything.
2nd : about "turning making a pd" into "making a pd + walls" : There are situation where you want to build pd only (eg : T2/T3 com drop, or tele defence, urgent defence set up with high bp)
3rd : about right clicking the pd to build wall, like mexx with storage : not super friendly apm wise, remove ability to repair with right click.

So 1st option would be the best one, i'm not completely convinced. Although if someone make a PR on it, there is high chances it get in.

plot twist : https://github.com/FAForever/fa/pull/3155

are we back to the old meme "developers playground" ? Been too long since I heard it.

btw you are always allowed to take a look at how thing are being discussed in the PR, like the one we are actually talking about : https://github.com/FAForever/fa/pull/3292

I think it showcase well, that we aren't blindly adding option and feature "just for the sake of it". The same discussion happen in a lot of other PR, to decide whether or not it will be included.

"if we're adding this why not add advanced target priorities to core FAF?" It was ruled out by the previous game councillor, not to make the game to hard to understand for new players. But if you think it should be in, you are fully welcome to make a PR, and we will discuss if it's worth it of being integrated

it's called a signature

@TheWheelie said in Atlantis:

Even though it is unintuitive it doesnt mean that it is broken and/or a bad mechanic

yes it means that it is a bad mechanic game design wise.
It works (read : game is balanced ish), but it isn't healthy; and a balance avoiding this mechanism is preferable.

Alright can we get the ability to hide comment for spreading "fake news". Some fact checking or something, or we remove right to post in here.
Kind of sick of reading random noobs posting bullshit like "Cybran stealth is one of the strongest upgrades in the game. It improves your regen, gives a HP boost, and gives you stealth (AT THE FRIGGIN T1 STAGE). For a very economical cost."

very bad unit by design, insanely low hp and high damage. That's the cocktail for a triggering unit, if you add on top of it maa retardation. Would need a rework, but everything i heard of for a rework ends up a bit dull, nothing very exciting.

cheese option aren't lacking. The issue of mercy in comparison to other cheese is that it is "press key to win".
It's just the philosophy of cheese pushed to the max. 0 skill involved, just cross finger. Honnestly a different design would be way more useful to the gameplay.

those changes sneaked in by mistake and weren't tested. I will do a hotfix to revert that. Thanks for the report.

@archsimkat said in Fire beetle balance suggestion:

Also, btw, beetles don’t target enemy beetles. Beetles also cannot do damage to enemy beetles. Pls fix.

beetles can target enemy beetles, for the other issue it is already fixed and will be pushed in the next game patch.

we are going to push a fix for rating. Hopefully this one will actually work.