Hey, everyone,

Parting Words as M&M Councilor:

First and foremost I just want to say that is has been really interesting to work on the community (FAF) project for the past 18 months. It taught me a lot about how open source projects function in that I never really knew the structure and organization of people who make this possible.

My original goal for taking up M&M was to do one thing: raise the bar. The previous M&M councilors were motivated and kind people; however, they never made as much of an impact on the community (in my opinion) due to not knowing who made it function. There is a very unknown scene with the development side of FAF in the slack/zulip realm where most of the real work takes place.

I do not want to flood everyone with examples of the rather tedious work, but for example, here is a "issue request" in GitHub that took 6+ months to address:

https://github.com/FAForever/faf-moderator-client/issues/106

When moderating content in the client, it previously took a click of every version of some map or modification, so if you had a modification with 200+ versions it would take quite a bit of time to go through - pain in the butt!

This is not to say that the developers are slow, bad people, but more a warning to those who speak ill of them and those like myself who run the community. You hear it all the time, loathe it, want more - like anyone does, but we are unpaid, few, and there are many who we serve.

I did what I could without relying on the developers as much as possible, as per our council discussions, we all felt that a feature like "Team Matchmaker" took precedence over anything else, so I put it on the back-burner to enhance M&M, spare adding resources and creating the M&M discord, teaching individuals how things work.

It has become quite a cumbersome task, as at the old age of 35, I have other thing in real life that are detracting from my availability. This is unfair to the community, unfair to others who want to lead the position, and unfair to how I have reacted to some feedback; it's not that I do not have good responses to criticism, but lack the time to write in a proper manner, and it makes me react poorly, often angrily.

Since this unfortunate consequence has come about, I have decided, that since time is not plentiful, to let someone else give it a go!

Thoughts on Biass

Biass is a tough one for me to discuss. I would say most of the community knows we have fought and argued more then what seems healthy, and it stems from a long history of interactions.

For me, he was the first person I talked to that was able to give me a start in actually contributing to mapping in FAF. It was between he, Cookienoob, and speed2 who got things going. It would be a lie if I said it was all pleasant, but they did help and kept doing it. I think part of the problem was that so many people don't really want to go "all the way" with what the tools and offerings give, so it was a natural reaction.

The continuing arguments between each other is not something uncommon among artists, musicians, etc that create "art." This comes off as likely frustrating to hear from other people, but it's usually just a medium in which progress happens. No one ever built great things without arguing: all countries and populations argued relentlessly on how to govern themselves (and still do) so thinking it's such a bad thing is kind of immature / naive.

For that reason, I would happily like to note that I support biass full and 100% as the next M&M councilor.

He might seem really aggressive and tough to deal with, but I like that: you need to have a certain standard and draw the line somewhere. You can't just let anyone and everyone walk over you, and once you develop enough, I am certain you will appreciate him as I do today, even with all the friction we have encountered.

Future Work with FAF

Now, on to what will be next for myself. I want this game to last as long as possible as it's been something I have enjoyed since 2007, and as a former Total Annihilation player, it's incredible to see the Chris Taylor legacy live on.

As I mentioned above, the community is most desperate for one thing: developers.

So, to keep true to that, I am going to take up apprenticeship with Brutus, Axel, GeoSearch, Sheikah, etc etc to learn some coding and apply it to what the community needs. I am not certain how long this will take, but anything will help.

It is my hope that I can bring TMM, the "author vault" biass wants, and many other fixes to the community in time.

Of course, I will certainly create some maps as it's my biggest passion, but it will likely take a seat back.

For those seeking some great help with that, talk to MadMax and Jip, who are creating a pool guide of everything to know for that!

It was a pleasure working with everyone in M&M and looking forward to future endeavors.

Be well, everyone.

• Morax

Whelp, it's been a wild year and a half since I took over as M&M:

In the past days I learned a lot, got to know people working on projects that will bring some interesting fun to the community, and have given thought on how to handle better presenting that.

First and foremost, I want to thank everyone who have helped me over this time and given me a chance to show what I can do as M&M councilor. It went pretty well: helping hands, a big boost in tutorials and wealth of knowledge, a death threat - pretty exciting stuff.

Plans for the mapping vault are going to be as follows:

WE ARE MOVING TO A WHITELIST VAULT SYSTEM

What this means:

People can still upload to the vault, but there will be no "showroom" when users go to the vault section in the client.

One can still find their map by searching

One can still host their map and others can download it

Why is this happening?

To answer that question, let me explain what the "Most Recent" vault showroom for maps is meant to do: it is a place where mappers can get their content seen and distributed by users of the client service - that's it!

What we found is the following: maps, aside from ladder / remakes of popular ones like canis river, are seeing an average of 10 or less overall plays over the course of a year. That is pretty staggering at how poorly the vault is "helping" people distribute their content.

So why a "whitelist" vault?

After years of talking to community members about "why do you download and play a certain map," it was in general because someone hosted it and they saw it in the game tab; the map was actually quite good and was showcased in the news or by a caster/streamer; and etc

When asked "why not play maps in the vault" the resounding reasoning was "because it's full of (insert random word that means 'garbage')

To me, that reinforces that the vault content is frowned upon and it becomes laborious to have to search through page after page, until something remotely "good" shows up.

The whitelist vault is going to be a system where people demonstrate they can create content that meets the minimum rules of the community; it will not be nearly as strict as the "M&M Top Picks" list, so don't be fearful you cannot get access.

How to be given access to the vault?

Good question, and there will be an application process made. I am thinking a sample of 3 maps uploaded to the vault with replays that the M&M team can review to see it meets the rules.

After that, the author will be given unlimited access, so long as they keep abiding to the rules of the vault.

Final Words

I understand this in general not going to be liked, but I myself am tired of being a "vault policeman," and the community is definitely more engaged in expressing quality annoyances of maps and modifications.

My real passion is to lead by example by making tutorial videos, guides, maps and mods myself along with other M&M folks. It doesn't make sense to me for the council position to feel more like a moderator then a content creator.

If anyone has any strong feelings about this, please state so, and present some damn good evidence if you think what I stated here is not the case.

I do not even know where to begin. I was really hoping this worked well, but it ended up being GREAT.

A big thanks to everyone for adding this wonderful features, hope I can help out in some way and say "thanks" : D

Part 1 Video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wXK0aYnz70

Part 2 Video:

Soon (tm)

I will transfer over the rest soon (tm), but for now here is my latest release, Adaptive Crateria.


15x15 playable area with 20x20 bounds, 6v6 (might make it 8v8). It features a unique concept of actual expansions in a large, team game map that requires holding front territory more then ever.

Plentiful reclaim exists throughout the map to get going, plenty of tactical plateaus, mountain areas.

This thread needs to be locked considering it's not really relevant anymore and just a grounds for senseless arguing...

Yes, you cannot simply take someone else's work without getting their permission. Please inquire about that, and if you cannot find the original author (which is likely the case for BlackOps), then you need to talk to the Maps and Mods council.

Morax signing in

I had 10 choices of themes before and now only 2. Why did the rest get removed?

Popular does not equal good, Moses. Sorry.

Way to delete FTX posts when it is his job as player councilor to engage with the "players" and give/receive feedback.

100% need to know that info. After awhile you learn the "peak times" anyways.

And Blodir nailed it: do not hide info from the players.

Same as it was 7 years ago:

You join a game with 0-rated you get booted, ask "Why?", told to join "all welcome" games.

You play "all welcome" games to find beautiful -8 gameplay full of hysterical, messed up people who just shit on you for not knowing how to "play the game" on extremely strategic maps like dual gap and astro crater.

TMM was pushed hard by every councilor across the board (including myself) so there is a variety of games and at least some introduction to content beyond the aforementioned trash experience.

I do not even know where to begin. I was really hoping this worked well, but it ended up being GREAT.

A big thanks to everyone for adding this wonderful features, hope I can help out in some way and say "thanks" : D

I will sign up just for fun? Such a low list haha

I agree with everything Moses said as Sup Comm 3 was awful.

I truly hope the 4th installment, shows the genius of Chris Taylor working alongside icedreamer, Moses, rocketrooster, and brs_destructor.

All will be answered and the only map will be gap of rohai.

Morax signing in

In the words of Mando,

"This is the way."

This is really stellar work writing up the updates as additions in this manner.

Very nice work and much appreciated to all of you.