What would it take for Nomads to be FAF's 5th Faction?
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I would like to clear out some of the missinformation about "gatekeeping" people from contributing to nomads. That was never the case, people are welcome to help out with the mod and they are given pointers if they are unsure how to do stuff.
You can see all closed PRs here https://github.com/FAForever/nomads/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed
and you will have hard time finding PRs that got rejected.But as with the main fa game repo that Jip is managing, Nomads also have certain quality requirements for the things that get added. That applies for code, models, effects.
So people are getting feedback on their work and pointers on what to improve and how.
I hope this help to clear some things out
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So gonna make a fuller response now about SCTA and Ranking/integrating:
- Most of the SCTA Models simply arenāt the āproperā quality needed. And most donāt have LODs more than 1. Now I set many to phase out, but that different issue.
- Fundamentally TA Factions at there core are not balanceable vs Supcom. You can make them āfairā but not balanced. There is 1001 reasons for this, between the different scaling of Eco, lacking certain ātechsā, and having abilities that are simply not replicable but Supcom Factions.
- Fixing 2 would fundamentally change the mod at its core premise. Which is about enabling a way to play Supcom vs TA in a somewhat reasonable fashion AND allowing folks to see where Supcom franchise had spawn from. Why is there only 1 āEngineerā type? Because juggling 3-5 different types are infuriating (for example).
Which basically covers it, but I wanted to be clear on that.
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No point in balancing Nomads until models are finished and some units cut or replaced or reworked. Before that happens, all you can do is make things look less worse. Original team wanted to implement some really weird things in mod and some of them exist to these days.
One thing is certain: mod needs thoughtful approach of "balance team" and "model team" to make things happen. The amount of work to make models of required quality is absurd. And FAF balance team wouldnt handle this job given how slowly they fix things in original game and how ugly they do their job. Quick example: loyalist missile redirection was fixed in EQ in 2016, now the question is the fix in the main game?
In any case there is one major issue with mod: its intellectual property. It doesn't belong to FAF, it doesn't belong to Exotic's team, nor 2-3 teams before. It belongs to Brute51 and he set some restrictions on how we could change the mod. We certainly crossed the border a little and it cost us a shitstorm a couple times. I personally would scrap 1/4 of what people call "faction identity", but i was not allowed to do so. Orbital bombardment that was mentioned here is one of those things. However one thing is random russian noname doing small things and other is legal entity from Europe changing everything completely.
My conclusion is FAF does not have resources to implement mod.
This project was cool, but right now its barely living corpse or better say cadaver. When i first saw Sanctuary trailer I noticed familiar style, concepts and assets there. Why do you think EDA was the first faction you saw on screen? Fair to say Nomads will be finished. In other game...
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@siwaonadaphnewen I did not know that this was the reality of things, that is terrible.
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how exactly is something created in someone elses IP (supreme commander, owned by gpg, square enix now) claimed by some random third party person as their IP? afaik everything here including FAF itself only exists because the real owners allow it to, they could come any time and say "delete FAF or lawsuit" especially if someone starts claiming a mod is their IP
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Just like every other map and mod creator has the copyright to their work.
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@mach they could come any time and say "delete FAF or lawsuit"
GPG induced people to buy SC:FA by promising that FAF would be a substitute/successor to GPGnet. When GPG turned off GPGnet, it told people they should go ahead and still buy copies of the game, if they didn't already own it, because they would be able to play online through FAF
GPG made money because of this promise
FAF people relied on this promise in purchasing the game (if they didn't already own it before GPGnet went off) and in contributing to FAF (whether by making maps, mods, administering the community, balance patches, or just by showing up to play which contributes to other people being able to play multiplayer matches)
promise + justifiable reliance = estoppel
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FAF really doesnt need another Faction. The game is perfect as it is.
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@mach See Blizzard Entertainment, Inc v Valve Corporation for how this works.
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a deranged balance team
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NOMADS needs an identity of it's own - completely unrelated to the other factions. As it currently stands, it's borrowing from all the other factions because it's incomplete. It's always been that way, and despite the desire, no one has picked up the reins to do the mountain of new creative work required, let alone have the concept of what that would be - to bring it anywhere close to a reality.
At best, NOMADS is best left to small side story in some campaign mission.
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Nomads is the biggest waste of time, it's a massive time sink with 0 reward.
The simple answer that nobody wants to say is No it will not get integrated. There's simply no benefit for FAF to integrate even if it would be at the bottom of the totem pole.
I understand players want it but they can't have everything.
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