I find the attitude of moral superiority some people have on FAF is pretty toxic in itself. There is no objectively right or wrong way to communicate and act. FtX and Biass seem to get more done than most people, so maybe their way of acting is actually superior. Playing god and saying these people's way of acting is wrong because you said so seems worse to me than the people who act "toxic" sometimes.

As far as player retention goes you seem to ignore that FAF player retention numbers are good compared to other games. Every game will lose most of its new players, that isn't a good excuse to not try and find new players. What percentage of player retention do you aim to achieve before beginning external promotions? Assuming people mainly leave due to toxicity also seems like a big leap. You made a thread on the forums, which only active community members read, and a few of them said they would have quit due to toxicity. They didn't quit due to toxicity though, because they are still here and participating in the community. Seems like survivor bias to me.

The game is kinda uninteresting since 99% of the time you just follow the same linear path through 3 the tech levels. Maybe you decide if you want to get T2 air or T2 land first on some maps. You decide which tech levels you are going to be aggressive vs defensive on, and if neither player messes up too bad you go to the next one. The balance seems to be flattening the power curve so that every faction competes pretty evenly on every tech level, land units get more normalized (blazes and obsidians have been buffed, rhinos buffed, pillars nerfed, selen was made into a lab, aurora made more tank like, jesters useless, zthuee nerfed), strengths are nerfed and weaknesses buffed. It makes the game more "balanced", but also more boring. It is especially boring when there's over a year from one patch to the next. The changes brought with patches are almost never things that you change your gameplay around, the patches are instead designed to make your existing gameplay "more balanced."

At the time many of these changes seemed good, and I was in favor of many of them, but I'd rather go back to having steeper power curves and each faction having some unique overpowered stuff, even if it's sometimes frustrating it's also more fun. Could also just be that I played the game too much and look too favorably at the past. I never have to be feel fear of xerxes amassing a hidden jester snipe, and I never get to feel the risk and adrenaline rush of using a pre-OC nerf ACU to take out a dozen percies on the frontlines, or the power of your first Harb coming out prior to the T3 nerfs.

The linearity of the game is pretty much baked into the design, so is not really a balance issue, but since SACUs are not really viable at the moment they are free to be radically changed in ways that could make the game less linear. Everything I have seen regarding SACU changes indicates they will be placed linearly between T3 and T4 though.

I don't know if it's a good idea, but engineers could get a 'hunker' ability so that they could survive a single bomb or last a little longer against a lab. That way if they are being defended they will likely survive, but if undefended they will still die. Removes the RNG of dodging while still requiring attention and defending, without modifying bombers or labs.

The competitive scene seems pretty dead judging by the lack of interest in the Summer Invitational. I think they should have just gone ahead with whatever players wanted to play though rather than gatekeeping them just because some old AFK pros didn't want to show up to crush them. If you prevent the up and comers from playing they'll never be able to replenish the ones who left.

Your idea is far worse than I could have ever imagined. I commend you for your creativity.

The unit cap in ladder games should be increased. On maps like Seton's Clutch the mexes and storages alone take up 1/4 of the 1000 unit cap. Most of the time the 'Unit Cap Reached' window does not even pop-up and it takes some time to realize that none of your factories are producing anything because you are at the unit cap. In team games the unit cap can go much higher, and you also get your dead teammates unit cap added on when they die.

I like mapgen and hardffa a lot in ladder. I have more fun on even the worst mapgen maps than I do on most of the authored maps in the pool.

Allowing people to choose their opponents in a ranked matchmaker doesn't really sound that great to me. Invites all kinds of rating manipulation, ghosting, and other degenerate behaviors.

I've never really seen it as a FAF-specific problem. It is just another aspect of the very aggressive, divided, tribal culture that is accelerated and encouraged by the internet and social media. Similar to how at this point, Star Wars "fans" are people who go on the internet to create and watch videos hating on the latest Star Wars content that comes out and the people who make it.

Everyone wants to feel like they are smart and better than other people, and it is quick and easy to get that feeling by talking shit about what other people are doing. Joining a tribe that says how stupid and/or malicious others are and implying that they could do it better. Nothing is perfect, so people can always find flaws to point out to justify their toxic behavior. I think many people, particularly the type who spend a lot of time online, don't have very enjoyable or meaningful lives and that makes them more likely to engage in online bullying and tribalism.

I have been quite guilty of this behavior on FAF. I admit that I am an arrogant asshole and probably caused some harm to FAF by being mean to people. I do often feel bad after I write mean posts on the forums, which is why I pretty much checked out of the community entirely and tried to focus on my own projects.

The following paragraphs are intended to be some armchair psychological evaluation of myself and why I do not respect FAF and am mean on the forums. I do not claim this logic is objectively true in any way, or that it necessarily applies to any of the other people who write mean stuff on the forums. Being mean on the forum is less than useless and makes my life, and others' lives, objectively worse.

I have never had a very healthy relationship with FAF. It was just an addiction and coping mechanism for my own miserable and pointless existence. Even when I played every day for years, I never had much respect for the project, and still don't. It's just a video game that offers little more than a way to burn time. On top of that, nobody here even created the game. I never really cared, and still don't care, if FAF dies.

A big difference between FAF and the other games mentioned in the thread is that those games were actually made by the people who are changing them. It is their creation and they have the right to do whatever they want with it. There is reason to believe that the changes they make will be good because they come from the same people who made the game you chose to play in the first place. On FAF every change comes from some random amateur who appointed themselves the authority to change whatever they want without earning the right to do so. So I think it is reasonable for FAF changes to be met with more contention than normal games.

In response to criticism, these people will usually point out how they are unpaid volunteers keeping the game alive so we can all play it. It comes across as an attempt to gain some moral superiority as if perpetuating some useless videogame someone else made two decades ago is some kind of charitable cause that benefits humanity. Just because I waste my time playing this game, rather than some other game, doesn't mean I owe you anything. When making a contribution, you take on the responsibility for whatever happens as a result of that contribution. It doesn't matter if you were paid for it or not. This attempt to gain superiority and avoid responsibility only encourages further hostilities. I think it would be better to either say nothing or admit some responsibility which would then generate sympathy and make further aggression more difficult.

These points are even more true for moderators since they don't even have to have some coding skills or anything to contribute. They just get power handed down to them from the beginning of time that grants them the right to judge players and make up random new rules. I haven't personally had many conflicts with moderators though.

I can't comment on anything that's happened in the last two years since I haven't been participating in the community. I left as a result of my self-induced suffering, not because of any FAF issues or changes that were made.

I have noticed that there are almost zero casts of 1v1 games on YouTube anymore, outside of major tournaments, which are also quite rare now. It seemed to me that the focus of the community shifted away from 1v1 once mapgen and TMM became things. I also disagree with the ever-increasing shift for 1v1 games to be played on larger and more complicated maps. These factors mean I will never return to FAF since I play almost exclusively high-rated 1v1 games. Though my return is unlikely regardless. So those of you who dislike my toxicity can celebrate, and the few people who keep trying to get me to play 1v1 can be sad.

The way it should be

They try to make you feel like you accomplished something, and release feel good chemicals in your brain. That way you will become addicted to FAF.

Is it possible to just have a target priority window that works with UI scaling without changing and breaking the entire UI of the game?

I don't think playing the game is inherently satisfying. When I play competitive games, I do so because it is satisfying to learn new things, improve at the game, and defeat increasingly stronger opponents. Once the learning and improvement have plateaued the game is no longer fun. There is generally nothing useful to be learned by extending the game time unnecessarily, so the optimal thing to do is win the game and go on to the next stronger opponent where you can actually improve and learn something. If the opponent is strong there will be no way to win in 15 minutes because they do not make game losing mistakes in the first 15 minutes. With stronger and more balanced opponents the game will naturally last longer.

It is a quantity vs quality debate, which gamers seem to be particularly confused about. Gamers typically want to spend money to receive a product which will occupy the largest amount of their time. Alternatively, you can spend time in order to receive concentrated quality experiences. If you value your time then you would prefer to watch many good, unique, short films as opposed to 4 hours of bloated fan service. What do you value more between time, money, and quality of experience? Do you just want something to keep you occupied until you die or do you want to have a variety of quality experiences? I tend to feel bad about myself when I think I've "wasted" a large amount of my life, but I actually think that all approaches are fine and it doesn't really matter in the end.

@insidiousnoob said in Matchmaking Seasonal Prizes:

Long-Term Activity Grind: Unlike a tournament, where players are highly active for just a week, this system encourages sustained engagement and long-term participation throughout the entire season.

The benefit of tournaments is that they are likely to bring inactive players back, for a brief period of time. If the tournament is enticing enough they will practice a bit beforehand, play the tourney, and maybe play a little after before returning to inactivity. Another benefit of tournaments is that people like to watch and cast the games, which results in good content to support the community and potentially attract new players.

A ladder event is probably not enticing enough to bring inactive players back. It will just make the existing ladder players play more games. People also don't seem that interested in watching or casting random ladder games, since many of them will be low quality, so you don't get the content you would from a tourney.

It would seem that even the $600 Summer Invitational was not enticing enough to bring back inactive players though, so if FAF has extra funds they might as well be used for ladder events if there are no better ideas.

I don't really know if encouraging people to grind ladder is all that beneficial. Other games want you to grind because they want lots of daily active users to impress shareholders and sell cosmetic items to. People should play FAF for fun because they are intrinsically motivated to do so, not because someone manipulated them with a division system and possibility to win $50 after months of grinding. However, there does need to be a minimum amount of activity in the matchmakers so that people who want to play games can find them reasonably quickly. I would personally feel like an unethical psycho if I spent $600 to make people grind ladder though.

The competitive scene seems pretty dead judging by the lack of interest in the Summer Invitational. I think they should have just gone ahead with whatever players wanted to play though rather than gatekeeping them just because some old AFK pros didn't want to show up to crush them. If you prevent the up and comers from playing they'll never be able to replenish the ones who left.

FAF players love it when simulated missiles and simulated shells randomly collide with simulated air planes, probably costing you the simulated game.

FAF players hate it when you suggest normal simulated weapons should collide with the simulated units in reasonable and predictable ways.

I like TML being an early game ender on small maps where you get it first and TML the HQ.

Being able to assist any building project with any unit of build power is a fundamental part of the game. You can't just disregard it for one structure arbitrarily. Well, you can, but it just becomes arbitrary bullshit that will confuse people and make them think the game is poorly designed.

You could reduce the health of TML so it would be more effective to kill it with t1 bombers. Proactively scouting the TML and sniping it should be cost effective, since it requires attention and air, but right now you would need 8 t1 bombers which costs too much mass.

You could let Cybran Support SCUs rebuild the wrecks of dead units.