Why would you have left FAF?
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@maudlin27 said in Why would you have left FAF?:
@nflanders Re focusing on the majority, more than half of FAF games are against AI. FAF provides numerous AI, including both an improved default AI and various different custom AI (https://wiki.faforever.com/en/Development/AI/Custom-AIs).
So if measuring by the type of games played a lot of time is already spent on the majority.FAF is also welcoming to people who want to volunteer to develop features so if someone wants to fix one of the various issues noted for the game, or create their own mod that implements their particular vision, they can. FAF is also supportive of such efforts with significant increases in documentation, tutorials, and the availability of support from various other FAF volunteers to help with questions/issues.
As for why developers are volunteering their time to develop certain features such as the matchmaker, that'll be a matter for the person in question and I wouldn't want to speak to them (although I'm very grateful that they have implemented such features and many others). Since we're talking about volunteers though ultimately it will be down to the volunteer what to focus on - trying to force volunteers to look at something they dont want to is counterproductive and will just lead to fewer improvements to FAF.
I am curious how many of those AI games are just "I needed somewhere to set up templates or change settings" since that's (as far as I know?) the only way to do so.
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@redx You don't need an AI in the game to do that. I guess if you wanted to estimate you could try a random sample of replays to approximate the amount of 'setting up template' games that feature an AI vs those that dont. You also have people who play FAF offline (which wont be caught by the stats), who I'd have thought most likely to be playing against AI.
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@nflanders said in Why would you have left FAF?:
@ftxcommando Do you offer to play matchmaking? Does anyone play in matchmaking? If you count, only 10% play matchmaking. FAF spends a lot of time developing a matchmaking system but very few people play it.
Why are you doing it? Shouldn't we focus on the majority?A lot of time was spent to improve matchmaking beyond 1vs1 hoping that it would shift more players into it and avoid having managing manual lobbies, waiting times etc. Maybe it didn't work out that well, but that doesn't mean the time spent there was only for "the pros".
Also there are many different teams working on different things. One group works on coop, another on maps, another on matchmaking, another on map gen.
You just can't tell all these people to just concentrate on a different things. They are experts in that area and their motivation relies on doing what makes fun there. -
@brutus5000 said in [Why would you have left FAF?]
You just can't tell all these people to just concentrate on a different things. They are experts in that area and their motivation relies on doing what makes fun there.
Does FAF have no common goal? By goal, I mean a metric that can be measured, such as the number of players. Or do you not have a common goal and are you just free artists where everyone does what they want?
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The overarching goal is the open and continued development of the game. There is no single metric to be measured that stands above all
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@blackyps said in Why would you have left FAF?:
The overarching goal is the open and continued development of the game. There is no single metric to be measured that stands above all
The topic has the title "Why would you have left FAF?". Then why is this topic needed? Can't keep audience. Well, people are leaving FAF, but that doesn’t matter, the main thing is to continue development. I think the topic can be closed.)
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If people state certain pain points we can address them to the associated team and ask for prioritization.
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Dude what is your problem that you are so cynical?
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I don't think he understands you can't force volunteers to do things they don't want nor care about.
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this is all going into my shareholder report, personally
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@nflanders said in Why would you have left FAF?:
Does FAF have no common goal? By goal, I mean a metric that can be measured, such as the number of players. Or do you not have a common goal and are you just free artists where everyone does what they want?
Correct, FAF has no single metric or collection of metrics that the leadership has agreed on as being the central point of having a FAF project at all.
There are many contributors with many different agendas, some of whom barely interact with each other. The "balance" scene is very different than the "AI development" scene, which overlaps somewhat with the "survival maps" scene, and then there's different kinds of mapmakers, etc.
Everyone is not just a "free artist." There is a leadership structure. People have more freedom the farther they get from the structure. The leadership is most protective of game balance and "vanilla" gameplay. People have more freedom to do whatever they want if they're not trying to mess with the vanilla game.
It's wrong to suggest that there are no goals in common. Even if not everyone thinks 1v1 balance is important, the devs who do work on 1v1 balance do think it is important. Even if not everyone thinks AstroGap matters, there are contributors who care about this and make new AstroGap maps.
We don't need to appoint a "CEO of FAF" to pick out 5 KPIs so he can tell us that 75% of the contributors are doing nothing useful because their contributions don't assist FAF in meeting his favorite KPIs
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@snoog said in Why would you have left FAF?:
I don't think he understands you can't force volunteers to do things they don't want nor care about.
Congratulations. After two years of discussions and 500 messages, we finally figured out
Why 90% of new FAF players will be gone after 2 years.
Because the volunteers and management do (in addition to technical support, thank you for that) what they like, but this is not interesting to most players.
As @ftxcommando correctly noted, the main arrival of players comes from casts where people love to watch the spectacle and play astro with a beer in their hand, and they are the majority. -
Is the suggestion to form the game around playing Astro Crater with one hand?
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@sylph_ I don’t see any pleasure for myself in this. the balance is still made for combat nerds.
that they would snipe me or something else. build a mavor in 30 minutes or a strategic bobbander in 9 minutes. and I can’t do anything. Why do I need all this?
I want to sit down with beer and whiskey and build a lot of tanks and have a big battle.
but no one plays it. and there is no choice on the main page.
so I'd rather spend my time and money on a good steak and wine. -
@blackyps the game hasn't changed in any way.
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@nflanders said in Why would you have left FAF?:
Congratulations. After two years of discussions and 500 messages, we finally figured out
Why 90% of new FAF players will be gone after 2 years.
Because the volunteers and management do (in addition to technical support, thank you for that) what they like, but this is not interesting to most players.
As @ftxcommando correctly noted, the main arrival of players comes from casts where people love to watch the spectacle and play astro with a beer in their hand, and they are the majority.This is a simple reality of a volunteer project like this. There is no solution other than funding magically appearing and being able to hire an actual workforce. As such there is really no reason for any of this discussion to be had.
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Imagine how much more FAF would suck if all these people stuck around forever. If you could get rid of 100% of new players then everyone would be happy all the time and you wouldn't even need to do much tech support.
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@broker said in Why would you have left FAF?:
@blackyps the game hasn't changed in any way.
At this point you are oversimplifying so much that you are making a fool of yourself.
Relaxed playing with a beer in your hand is just not what is easily possible in RTS. It's ok to want that, and I think that is precisely the reason why RTS will never be a genre for the masses, but FAF is about delivering a good RTS experience, so it will always be stressful to play well.
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@thomashiatt not necessary. I understand that labor costs are important. so my suggestions are to minimize them.
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