…also javi calling out blodir for skill issue is peak faf forum entertainment.

For months I have anguished over the decision on what color I want to paint my living room... But no more. Thanks to this glorious forum post I have now decided that 'positively pewter' is the color for me. If it weren't for this great sharing of ideas I would still be going to my local hardware store to spend $5 on paint samples.

My issue is the following:

In this thread alone, we have one group of people, such as Blodir, Tex, Box, Tagada, Bennis, and Archsimkat(Head of 1v1 map pool I believe?). These are people who have either played map gen tourney, hosted a large number of mapgen games, are top 1v1 players, or are active on ladder, and these people are ALL in support of map gen and a possible limited inclusion in matchmaker. The people who are the most active in the micro community this change would effect seem to be overwhelmingly in favor of this change. This is not counting Morax, Resistance, Tatsu, and several other individuals who have voiced support for map gen.

This is primarily opposed by people who have not played ladder, played in the tourney, or played on map gen more then 1 or 2 games. These people then get defensive/aggressive when this fact is brought up, and the conversation gets railroaded into inaction. FTX claims that BO-whoring isn't a factor in ladder, (which he hasn't played in over 3 years), when myself, petric (in his map gen tournament forum post), and even biass, all acknowledge BO-whoring as a factor on authored maps. You also have unreasonable standards being set to prevent testing map gen in ladder by saying that "either it’s good enough to replace everything or it isn’t good enough to be in ladder.", or superficial flaws with map gen being blown up to a bigger effect then they rightfully should be (map doesn't look pretty).

And to bring up the point of a depressive tone, most of the negativity in this forum seems to be coming from those very same people. Comments like "Please do not try and be "superior" about it because you "play" ladder maps." "make better posts", or an entire post sarcastically breaking down the word 'assume', are far more antagonistic then myself pointing out that the word 'aesthetic' means something entirely different then what biass was using it for.

And @morax, that feels a little unfair to bring up a separate conversation we had yesterday, out of context, to this post. I was not even aware I was even on the discord channel for ladder team until you told me I was removed from it, how is that my fault? Also, if someone has been voted/appointed to a position of power/authority in this community, such as council of setons, player councilor, or in charge of map pool, I would expect them to not lose their cool when it comes to discussions that are directly under their responsibility as a community appointed member. I agree that these people get an unwarranted amount of hate, but that does not mean that every counter argument or criticism to their argument is an attack on their person.

TLDR: We like map gen. it would be fun to try and implement it into ladder for a month or so to see player reception to it. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work, but from where I am sitting right now, it seems like people want to give it a shot. And I have yet to hear a good argument against including it. If it is too difficult to code, or there are other problems that take priority, that is fine by me. But I dislike the argument that other people who don't ladder/play map gen know better then the people who do.

I blame you directly for this Morax. As the new Player councilor, it is your responsibility to ensure everything works to make the player (me) happy.

I like this series a lot. The self reflection is key to improvement IMO. You seem to be catching some of your mistakes and are working on fixing them which is awesome. Wishing you luck as you continue.

If I may offer some unsolicited advice:

I am not sure if this is a misinterpretation due to language use, but something I noticed is a few of your writeups you will say something like "I lost 'x' because my opponent did 'y', or 'I sent too many engis to location 'x' instead of doing 'y' with them. Where the implication is that 'x' was really bad and not to do it again. This is not always so black and white. The first 3-5 minutes of the game can be really dicey in terms of opening builds on certain maps, and fog of war is a thing even in the later stages. You can't always act on perfect intel and calculated risks are a thing from your opening build to what you do at min 15.

I really don't think you are doing this because your writeups seem like you are giving your gameplay some good thought, but I just wanted to make sure that you are not jumping to conclusions with cause and effect If you made a decision that is good 80% of the time, I want to make sure you are not discounting it because it failed on that 20%, without trying to understand some more context behind things that go wrong at face value. Remember, a good choice will not always yield a good outcome.

The one main piece of advice I want to give you specific from me is for you to ask yourself when you play the following:

What am I doing?
Why am I doing it?
What is my win condition?

I don't have good APM, I have decent micro, I have passable macro, and my late game is garbage. But I know how to find my win condition and exploit it. I highly recommend you try and remember when you analyze (and play) your games to look at the big picture, and not get lost in the weeds with micro/silly mistakes. Find your win condition and commit to it. But try not to get blinded to what is around you as you do so. Its very general advice, but IMO its the most important thing you can do in this game to win. Don't just play on autopilot. Play for a goal, and make it the right one.

You're just jealous you don't get a card.

I thought mapgen week was fun, but would not want to see it done for a period longer then a week. The last day or two was a little tedious. That being said, would be excited to see it kick off the first 5 days of any month.

My two cents on the whole build whoring issue: What most people below 2k ladder think build whoring is, is just the other player having decent macro and a basic opener. That will not change regardless of if you play mapgen or not. I only know builds for a small handful of maps. Palms, badlands, and loki come to mind. The rest i just improvise on the spot.

A good build should make sure that you plan to build only as much power as you need, more mex/reclaim on map means more power, so plan ahead. Engis should expand quickly, and you should have an early tank or two screen for your expanding engis. Thats all there is to it. If you are wasting power (or god forbid, mass) in the first 5 minutes, thats not the result of a bad build, but of poor macro. That will be the same on mapgen or any custom map. Its a skill that needs to be developed.

Buildwhoring would be the tagada/nexus level creations. The secret badlands build, or any other build that requires you to have planned out engi reclaim/pathing to the absolute second, giving you a clear goal of a faster transport, bomber, or getting 2 factories ahead of your opponent by minute 5 due to cutting pgens or skipping mass extractors. It would be map specific, and have 0 power overflow with mass/energy storage at ~10% for the first 5 minutes.

If its something that can be done on any map, its not build whoring, its good macro. If its something that you can plan in the first 15 seconds by pulling up the reclaim field on the map and sending an engi to the nearest rock/wreck, its just good macro. If it truly was a build order whore, the player would be up in the land of 2k.

I say all of this not to antagonize or beat anyone down, but to help people try to understand how to better improve on their end. 90% of the people i train (or used to when i had more time), their biggest issues were their macro decisions. Not micro/gameplan choices. People up to 1600-1700 still spam t1 pgens in a line with 2-3 engis for the first 10 minutes, leaving their power management decided by the gods, regardless of the map. Once you have a decent understanding of the macro in this game, then you can start to learn how to really play it. Its really hard to outsmart people when they have 2-3x the stuff that you do. Its much easier to win when you have more tanks.

At least organize the old colors. The rainbow scheme for organization is niiiiice

Some points I would like to add to the post:

1. If we can rebalance the entirety of the T3 land stage, I don't see how it would be a problem to look at t3 mex's cost. Arguing that its too big a change and needs years of testing seems pointless considering the scope of balance changes we have done over the years. IIRC T2 land HQ is like 50% more cost then 2012, T3 land HQ is also significantly more expensive, T3 land units are much weaker (except for the campy sniperbots!), T4's have been changed as well with greater buildtime cost. T3 mex has stayed the same. Perhaps its possible that by systematically nerfing land across the board for years, this is making mex is stronger in relation?? Anyone?? Also, Mex adjacency on factories has been buffed since then as well. Another reason to eco.

2. Level of gameplay has improved significantly. Generally speaking, we can eco smarter and harder, and take advantage of mistakes more. Everyone has dozens of engis roaming the map for reclaim. The most effective use of reclaim after a battle is to dump it right into mex upgrades, then scale production/eco appropriately. Pushing into a base is hard because engis can spam walled PD instantly, then reclaim the carnage for more eco. I had a game the other day where I had to pull back 15 loyalists and 30 medusa from raiding a bunch of t2/t3 mex because there were enough engis there to spam T1 PD forcing away loyalists. That sickens me. 2500 Hp on a t3 unit designed to raid can not raid because of instantly spammed PD.

3. The ratio of cost per benefit of the t2 mex upgrade -> storages -> T3 mex is nearly the same, the only difference is how much you need to invest before payout. On a lot of wide open 1v1/2v2 maps its often a smarter move to force a t3 mex in your base then to keep upgrading t1 mex to t2 if it is outside of your base where it can be raided. I do not think that this should be the case that a wrapped t2 -> t3 mex is nearly as cost efficient as t1 -> t2 or t2 -> storages.

My opinion to the main argument brought up by Bennis is that reclaim values should be scaled down, and t3 mex cost increased. Both by a small margin, say, reclaim down 15-20% and t3 mex up by 10-15%. Start from there. See what happens.

edit - I also like everything tagada said above. Very good points.

second edit - Upon giving this some more thought, since FAF released, we have made significant changes to the following: T3 Land, T3 Air, T4's, RAS, T2 Land, Adjacency, Overcharge, Vet, SCU's, and are trying to make changes to SCU-RAS. There is really nothing else left to change at the T3 stage besides T3 mex. I think this is all the more reason that T3 mex should be reviewed due to how much the game has changed, and what the game might need currently to bring it to a better state.

I think that is a flawed argument ftx, you can't compare the playtime of every faf map in existence vs map gen which has not seen wide popularity until recently. You should be comparing the average relative quality/enjoyment of playing map gen vs playing a 'standard' map. Playtime=/= fun. Look at dual gap

The point of map gen isn't to have a 'perfect' map, its to have a NEW map, and that is the point I think you are missing. Its really really fun to play something that you and your opponent are completely unfamiliar with, and actually try and figure shit out on the fly. Its not like clicking ladder and finding yourself on daroza's and knowing the first 6 minutes of gameplay require a hard wired build, with at least 10-15 minutes going by before any meaningful player interaction outside of the initial drop to secure expo. At that point it doesn't even feel like playing.

I have played more map gen then ladder this last month, although admittedly it is partly due to the 'look, new!' effect of it. That being said, I would absolutely love for it to be incorporated into ladder. I have had more then 80% of my matches on map gen end up being very enjoyable, which is more then I can say for ladder. And I personally do not see the over-emphasis on map 'aesthetics' to be such a high metric for map quality. But I guess seeing as how you don't actually play ladder maps, you need to evaluate them somehow...

My only complaints with map gen are the following: Terrain isn't always obvious (quick camera angle viewing fixes it) and that after a while (20+ games), some of the maps can seem to be fairly similar. That being said, even for some of the 'similar' maps, I could make the same complaints for a few of the maps I have seen in ladder pool. There is only so much variation you can have imo.

I would really like to see 10-20% of ladder games be map gen for a month, gauge reception then. Its really nice to have something new to play on, rather then the same old same old, and the no build order whoring aspect is amazing.

Vanilla fatty was a monster. It packed those big boy summit cannons. Shell damage and speed was massive. Dps was way higher even with like, 1/4th the ROF. I miss vanilla fatty. It would still suffer from the same problems but it was way cooler.

…also javi calling out blodir for skill issue is peak faf forum entertainment.

Me personally I think bombers are a tad strong, but in a good place overall.

My major grip with them is their inconsistency with dropping and the semi-skill semi-rng ground fire&engi dodge mechanic we currently have. Micro is important, but for the same reason I hate a lab outmicroing a tank to kill an engi afterwards, I hate having an engi perma dodge a bomber for 30 seconds until an inti arrives. Having to guess groundfire locations is stupid and unpredictable. IMO the early game should not be prone to as much randomness as it currently has with unit interactions.

I would love for some consistent interaction with how bombers do damage. Can further balance afterwards.

Thing is IMO, its much less of an issue when 2 factions dont even have engi stations. Falls under faction balance more then ‘faction A’s main tank is weaker’ when everyone has tanks

Written on mobile in a hurry:

My opinion on the matter, in broad strokes, without majorly debating specific units is as follows:

Better to make smaller, but more thought out changes, then just throwing out a bunch of changes to see what sticks. Just because a unit is a little weak or could be improved in a small way doesn’t mean it should. (Also doesn't mean it shouldnt). It just is. And while I hate to use the clichè ‘if it aint broke, dont fix it’ I think it applies here. We want to avoid a bunch of changes without having a solid argument presented as to why it is a problem or why it is needed. Unfortunately due to the vastly differing levels of skill between players, its hard to sift through ideas that are poorly constructed, wishful thinking, unneeded, viable, or somehow blended between all. We can better evaluate game balance when we are tinkering with less variables. That, and there used to be a lot of really really bad balance ideas thrown out there without any due diligence or research conducted by the poster. The specific posting guidelines are meant to have higher quality suggestions shine through. Lets balance team focus its effort better.

80% of balance team focus is on the things that feel oppressive and painful to play against. Usually the best use of our limited time. While we would love to be able to make UEF engi drone a fair and viable upgrade, its so far back on the list that it won’t see the light of day for ages. Kennels are a unit that would be really hard to balance properly as its a niche unit that by design is supposed to be a cost ineffective use of mass, but designed to be made to fix a problem. That problem is a players poor eco scaling. If a player scaled their production properly, the unit is not really needed. Make them too good, and they become a crutch for all players. This IMO takes a backseat to issues like ‘are titans too strong’, or ‘how can we balance snipers so they are not a kiting murderball of death’, or ‘is it balanced that 5 t2 arty under a few sheilds will hard-counter a fatboy?’

Just my two cents on the matter written quickly before leaving from work.

Between the BO1s changed to BO3s, and the delayed start of 1 hour, I am not sure if I can finish tournament anymore. Will see how speedy the tournament progresses but I might need to leave near the end. Hopefully Nexus kills me before then.

Also, Nexus is not 2490 for 1v1 MMR, he is only 2267

Signing up - 2408 as of 22:12:07 EST

Also, tournament rules never had a sigh up closure date.

Love these missions. Only major feedback I have would be to remove the construction of novax. I know its a ‘choose your own way to play’ kind of thing but it would be nice to compete on leaderboards in ways besides novax rushing behind turtled bases.

@noc_n_o_c_noc said in 2022 Summer Invitational Group Stage:

Well my group could definitely be worse

It got worse xD