@Uncle_HunnyNubs

If you ever had to introduce new people to Supcom or FAF you would know exactly why. Me and a few friends have been trying to get our other group of friends into supreme commander. We play with each other almost 3 times a week (about 4-8 people) but only two of us (me and another guy) has played FAF multiplayer.
This is exactly why I came on and off on the game. I'm lucky SupCom is one of my childhood game due to the cool campaign and atmosphere, but it sucks to learn how to play.

Meanwhile, I easily managed to start top gold in SC2 and climbed somewhat naturally by playing and refining my gameplay. Because it was EASY to get into the game and ladder was a natural continuation of the war started with the campaign. The campaign helps you learn about the units and their role.

With regards to FAF, I've taken several year+ breaks from the game. I first played FAF around 2013-2014 and basically farmed up to 1k rating on gap. I pretty much hated the map, hated the people, and kept blaming noob teammates for why I was losing. So I quit and left FAF for like a year. I came back, played a couple more games, then quit again for a year. Then I came back around 2016, played with Farm, shitposted with him, made a clan, and suddenly I'm now a council member.

In the same vein, the only reason I'm slightly retaining while managing to have a sliver more fun every time I try is because I get better at the game in those crazy team game maps or small team play games. How ? I discovered tutorials finally (in game tutorial were low value, based on memorization), thanks to Heaven RTS.

Heaven RTS especially has an entire channel dedicated to FAF tutorial and even if it is somewhat outdated for stuff, he still has many newbie tips for ecoing, learning BO, explaining everything, explaining units, explaining FACTIONS, explaining gameplay... so now instead of not knowing what to do, I at least have a fundamental structure to rely on.

Recently a more up to date eco/newbie guide was made which is VERY useful, but it doesn't cover enough ground because SupCom is a massive game. More stuff like this needs to be made to help players that seek it instead of repeating the same information over and over. Trainers are the active part of the community trying to help people, but what about the passive knowledge base part of the community ? If it's written nowhere it may as well be a personal art that nobody shares its skills only acquired through experiences and people don't want to suffer dozens of gap or astrocrater games to understand anything at all.

Otherwise, I would have left if I didn't discover that. Because it's so frustrating to find resources about the theory of SupCom. All of them are somewhat outdated, you have to know where to find stuff such as stalking YouTube channels for relevant videos and Wikipedia on the beginner section has a detailed guide for cybran and abridged version for other faction.

Even SupCom2 has a better guide on gamereplay, unfortunately I think it's shafted or unsearchable anymore as the game doesn't appear.

Gaming :
Now the gameplay part. You read those guides and then you want to practice it and try to imitate what you see in guides/cast/execute your strategy.
Well it's difficult because most of the people plays shitty maps and you're tired of Gap and Astro crater. It doesn't incentivize you to have what you imagine as good gameplay, you don't learn much from them besides eco turtle, but they're the fastest way to play. Hopefully with the matchmaking it gets better.
So then you have to host a lobby and wait for people and it can take forever. That can be off putting. Though I have no solution for this problem unfortunately.

Now I’m merely a low rated 1100 player in team game compared to before and still sucks at economy, but I have a bit more fun because sometimes I can make stuff happen. And this is only my opinion, but the conclusion should be : needs more theory and ease of access to it. aka guides and tutorials.

@phong For what it's worth I'm learning some stuff by reading the arguments provided.

On cobalt valley, the enemy AI ACU ran off alone without its army near a side choke point instead of the main battle. It makes army but isn't that powerful with low map control.

A made à standard land build order and went mid to encounter no resistance.

That was one beat down I haven't seen in a while...
I always find it hilarious when people accuse others of cheating because they lost. It's like, they can't imagine that they're being outplayed ?? In a competitive, player vs player game ?

@archsimkat It would be great if T1 subs retained a role similar to T1 Frigate but underwater.

T1 subs as cheap raiding units would also be pretty cool, and T2 subs are the defensive/offensive counter because they have more anti torpedo, but that spamming T1 subs is more worth it damage wise than T2 subs, similar to frigates spam being better than getting a single T2 destroyer.

@phong For what it's worth I'm learning some stuff by reading the arguments provided.

@ftxcommando Currently, how does UEF handle other's navy ? What's UEF's gameplan, like on Seraphim Glaciers ? Does it just not have anything else than spam frigate and tech to T3 if Valiants/Cooper/Bulwarks are so bad in T2 ?

@spikeynoob If you're interested, you can copy paste the table into R with datapasta. It's shockingly easy and then save it to a text file or something.

I tried doing some fancy MDS but nothing interesting came out lol.

faftmm2v2.csv

@moses_the_red I ran the test and bricks absolutely dumpstered the monkeylord

Similarly 10 percivals destroyed the monkeylord leaving 5 of them dead.

@archsimkat It would be great if T1 subs retained a role similar to T1 Frigate but underwater.

T1 subs as cheap raiding units would also be pretty cool, and T2 subs are the defensive/offensive counter because they have more anti torpedo, but that spamming T1 subs is more worth it damage wise than T2 subs, similar to frigates spam being better than getting a single T2 destroyer.

Imo T3 Navy starts to be useful when you actually win navy, and costs an absurd amount of mass. So much that I'd rather win at T2 straight, until I get swarmed with T3 air bullshit.

That was one beat down I haven't seen in a while...
I always find it hilarious when people accuse others of cheating because they lost. It's like, they can't imagine that they're being outplayed ?? In a competitive, player vs player game ?

On cobalt valley, the enemy AI ACU ran off alone without its army near a side choke point instead of the main battle. It makes army but isn't that powerful with low map control.

A made à standard land build order and went mid to encounter no resistance.

@maudlin27 I don't know, playing through the campaign in Wings of Liberty Starcraft 2 got me gold I in Starcraft 2 which isn't bad by any means (not bronze level). I just had some working macro and a basic build order strategy, which is already more than what I'm doing in FAF.

@arma473 said in Why would you have left FAF?:

@mylaur said in Why would you have left FAF?:

@hurtmuch If people were trying to learn how to play this niche game then wouldn't people help each other more? But no its completely the opposite, a gatekeeping community. Plus everything is hard to learn and there's a very low amount of guides (it gets better but still).

It seems like we have more trainers than students. Or at least, we have more training capacity than there is demand for training (because obviously a trainer can teach more than 1 person at a time).

If you're willing to accept training from people under 1500 rating, there's essentially an unlimited amount of 1-on-1 training available to basically everyone. I know I have no backlog in terms of replays people have asked me to review. Literally you can ask me to review a replay and I can go into voice with you and talk about what I'm seeing, or I can just watch it, take notes, and send you 5-10 sentences of my analysis of what you could do better. It takes people like 3 minutes to submit a request AND read my feedback once I send it, and I do that for free, and I only get about 0-1 people per month asking me to review a few of their replays.

I don't think we're even talking about higher-rated people (like 1200+ at ladder or 1400+ at global) but my impression is that those people can always find some instruction from higher-rated players whenever they want it. (And of course people at any rating can pay Jagged for lessons)

A lot of what people perceive as "gatekeeping" is unwanted advice, which is basically unwanted training.

Training really does work as a good way to grow in skill. But the community over-estimates how much people actually want to participate in training.

This is a good point. I've submitted one replay or two and gotten advice from it. The issue is that it's an active way of learning. Most players want to play the game passively and improve at least on the basics. But basics aren't taught in game, only out of the game and you have to spent effort to do it so. I had to got out of my way to find those guides.

The gatekeeping is due to in game players flaming you, calling beginners noobs, which yes, they are beginners... The game is just not beginner friendly and many others have pointed it out so in so many ways.

In other strategy games the campaign serves as a good cushion for getting your basics off. We all know the campaign is cool but doesn't look like a standard game at all which is fine.
The idea of individual challenge maps centered around a theme sounds like a brilliant idea and should severs to fill that niche and custom campaigns have already being done plenty, so it's entirely feasible.
Tutorials are different because they're watch and copy, and there's so few of them, it doesn't make you interact with the game in a simulated manner (and it's mostly about build orders). As some have pointed out, besides the early game, there's a lack of tutorials for the mid game and late game. The transitions between phases are also important too, and some team game tutorials would be great (2v2, 4v4...).

New players are mostly solo players that want to enjoy the game passively, challenges would be a good way to play the game while improving while having fun.

I realize that after such a long time, finally the written guides are given mention on the front page. Still putting them in the tutorials tab would also make it easier to access them.