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 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.

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.

Glad I help someone win games. I guide others to a treasure I can’t posses.

No shit. But its a cool thing to look at the relative hierarchy for tournament matches.

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.

Good morning, evening, whatever. I'm writing this from a 1v1, 2v2 perspective. Setoners, calm your tits.

Cybran frigates are wayyyyyyy too strong.

For example: They can beat a UEF frigate 1v1 with a good amount of HP left over, while costing less mass and having far better AA for killing torp bombers.

Best AA of any frigate.

Cheapest Frigate.

Higest dps Frigate.

Cybran frigates eat other frigates for brunch, then will relax on the beach sipping a mimosa as they fuck up your naval factory engis or exposed mass extractors. This is not cool, and very imba.

Quick and dirty testing replay for those who do not know: https://replay.faforever.com/14205092 If anyone wants to get together with me and do 'real' testing, I'm all ears.

Please nerf.

Closing thoughts, to avoid a few tangents I can see this argument branching off into:

Yes, I think Cybran is really weak. No I don't think they should have an over tuned frigate to counteract this. That is bad game design IMO to have a faction strong on some maps and weak on others, even more so when you are laddering into a blind map. Please fix Cybran weaknesses in other ways. Like give them HP on their structures for fucks sake.

Yes, Cybran does not have hover. Unfortunately, frigate balance is closely related to hover balance, of which this post will be trying to address frigate balance on its own. Hover balance is another terrible issue. IMO, hover should be used to raid and stuff, not be an alternative for navy. If this were the case, frigates could do their own thing instead of being overtuned to counter hover.

Yes, UEF has the best T3 navy. No, I don't think that is a fair tradeoff on maps like Roanoke, PoR, Oracle, where you get A-moved by 500 frigates by minute 12, and your t2 naval factory doesn't live long enough to see the light of day, let alone tech up to t3. I think it is fine to have that balance when their T2 navy is utter dogshit to get up and running, but T1 balance should not be so lopsided when it has such a large impact on the early game development.

So help me if any of you say UEF jamming is OP and that's why its balanced. Maybe if it didn't cost an extra 18 or so mass per frigate in energy cost to run the damn thing. I don't think its a far tradeoff even if it was free.

Discuss:

Small speed buff would be quite interesting. Faster rushes across map, easier to close distance with percies/OC, and you could use it a bit more sneaky with the stealth by mixing up its positioning. Have it be something that lurks on the map like a shark, make it scared for you to move out.

Just dreaming up ideas, don't mind me.

I can get onboard with the mid-tier stealth gen. HP and Regen will keep ACU a little safer on the frontline and the stealth can be nice to help keep flak/hoplites/rhinos safe for some nice kiting. Would also be cool for stealth firebases to spring up if T2 is onboard for silly memes. Would make PD crawl better with their shit PD, and make it easier for fast firebases/hidden TML nonsense in niche scenarios. But mostly its a nice complement to gun. Cybran needs some love ATM and that should help shore up some problems.

I can not get onboard with the gun EMP. That is looking like Chrono all over again. Its a very large AOE zone to have 50% reduced DPS of enemy units. 1 emp lasting 1 second every two seconds from range behind stealth seems horrible to play into. I think the idea is neat, but it would need some serious adjustment. I also think it would be very hard to properly balance without being way OP or completely useless. I would offer counter balance suggestion but I can't think of anything good atm for that without testing.

What, you dont want a group with BH tagada and espi?

Jesus fuck, cash money here. Next year Swkoll's invitationals will rival LOTS

Better then playing 14-21 games over 1-2 days, that's for sure.

Who needs TDs anyway, just let us loose on the world and we will report the results

Signing up

ALSO THIS IS AMATEUR HOUR THERE ARE TWO DIFFERENT MAP POOLS AND IM DRUNK AND ITS TOO MUCH TO PREP WITH 12 HOURS TO GO!?!?!?!??!!

(Post needs to be longer so that's the reason for this)

Can I get bumped to 14:00 UTC, with a second choice of 13:00 UTC? I have some obligations in the afternoon I want to be able to get to.

Unsigning up. I have shit I need to take care of in the morning

Tex and Swkoll signing up as the "Legendary Ladder Lads"

4200 MMR global

Just realized the tournament was next week, not tomorrow. I will be getting drunk on a river rafting trip at that time.