In short, decapitation means you get to keep your stuff after your commander dies, but if all commanders on your team die, it's game over. Decapitation is currently an unrated mod.

I think it should be rated, or even better, just integrated into the game as an alternate victory condition - that would mean games using it don't show up as modded, and since the option to show modded games is off by default, the games would have higher visibility. As long , of course, as there are no glaring balance issues (discuss), and as long as that's not too much work for the Game development team.

Why should it be rated? It's a better option than fullshare for casual team games with wide rating distributions, and it's a better option overall than Annihilation or Supremacy, because the cleanup required with those is tedious and meaningless. Right now, in fullshare, people have to actively avoid killing an 800 if they've got a 1600 on their team ready to take over their economy. It might, although this remains to be seen, also encourage new players to be a bit more adventurous with their commanders, which is, in my opinion, a good thing, since making best use of their com is something they learn pretty slowly, with experimentation being very expensive (you die).

As far as I can tell, the benefits outweigh potential problems with this game mode, one of which might be com bombing by high rated players. I believe this is so rarely encountered that people haven't figured out how to mitigate it at the t1 stage, when t2 transports aren't available yet. It's also not something I think is that easy to abuse in order to farm rating. A decision to make it rated could also be reversed at any time, should com bombing or anything else prove to be a big enough problem.

I'm looking for ways to make life easier for new players, in the hope that this will prolong this game's life in the long run.

@Deribus said in the Q&A Thread that noobs are often confronted with the following problems:

• Getting kicked from custom lobbies
• Long queue times in matchmaking, and very imbalanced matches for the first 10 or so
• Few similarly ranked players willing to play anything but dual gap and astro
• Very steep learning curve

The #gameplay-and-training discord channel is focused on helping with that last bullet point, and I commend everyone there for their effort and success, but upon talking to the members, I got the feeling that the other issues are not really part of their mandate (which, upon reflection, is reasonable)

So could a similar community effort help make those critical first few games more straightforward to get, and also a pleasant experience? How did #gameplay-and-training get started? How were the trainers recruited and how are trainees finding their way there? How do big clans like ANZ or CpC organize so well to fill lobbies so fast? Does anyone have any thoughts on what such a community might do to help? Are you interested in taking part?

I'm thinking a good starting point would be finding people willing to host around the clock, build enough reputation to fill lobbies reasonably fast, and compete with the endless gap/astro lobbies for noob attention, with a focus on making a good first impression, but I'm kind of lost when it comes to the organizational part.

Percies? Bricks? What are those? I thought you were only supposed to make titans and loyalists

After having hosted countless all welcome games on randomly generated maps I can attest to the fact full share makes the games more fun to play, for both sides. Without it, games end at around 10 minutes, after the first player death, with no chance of recovery for their teammates, after some 2v1 or unfortunate first engagement. This drastic, game-ending outcome often comes as a result of rock-paper-scissors dynamics in the build orders (much more prevalent on random maps), not some grand masterminded strategy that could potentially be scouted and countered in time.

I am, however, dumbfounded by the amount of people that join only to immediately throw a tantrum because they see full share on, then begin to educate me on its shortcomings. Very few games have ended in victory for the team down a player, so the oft repeated argument that full share makes snipes meaningless just doesn't ring true to me. Being down a com and placing more burden on another player does not make the game easier for the losing team, and, at least around my level, it takes time for the the unified economy to compensate for these disadvantages.

I really hope more people give it a chance, and, as funk said, learn to adapt their decision making to this change in rules. Snipe economy, and press the attack once you get a kill instead of zoning out and going sim city.

Everyone responding to players expressing their reasons for leaving with "you're wrong" should just shut up. Your arguments will not convince someone to keep playing once they decided to leave and you're only discouraging others from speaking out. Doesn't matter if you're right, you're just shitting up a rare, useful feedback thread for no reason.

The ddos is a pain in the ass but I'm still having loads of fun with this game. I'm really excited to try out the new mapgen, and I started playing tmm a bit more and I think it's great.

People that are generally happy with faf or don't agree that things "suck so much" are generally not going to seek those conversations out to share their thoughts, so you disproportionately have to deal with negativity in such interactions although this doesn't necessarily reflect the general attitude.

I'm sure you already know this though, and still, it's hard not to let it affect you. What helped me in this situation, at work, was getting my managers to do most of this emotional labor so i could focus on technical stuff, although I realize it's not a pleasant task to dump on someone, but some people actually enjoy arguing on forums. I have no idea if this is an option for you, but I hope it is since I wouldn't want to lose such a contributor to petty bullshit.

If it isn't, I would personally be happier if you and people that feel the same kept doing what you do without having or trying to explain yourselves, even as some people will start bitching that nobody's communicating with them to the extent they feel entitled to.

I generate random map. Looks like it might be good, but the preview, it's the size of a stamp. A tiny stamp because I made 12.5km and it's got a big black border. There's this black gradient over the bottom that ensures the very interesting map name spanning 2 lines is readable so I squint harder than Clint Eastwood. No use, can't see shit. My old man vision can't even pick out the spawns if the map is of the darker kind. So I click create game. I zoom into the map using the NEW BIG LENS BUTTON and notice something I don't like. Close lobby. Go back to host dialog.

I realize this host dialog was never designed to nitpick generated maps, count mexes per spawn, see the difference between cliff and ramp and all that stuff. We didn't have mapgen back when it was made. But maybe it's possible to add the NEW BIG LENS BUTTON in the game creation dialog thus fixing it?

Generally I think a turtle style feels way more comfortable for new players, and this is reinforced by a bias towards safer maps like gap or astro when it comes to the games they play.

For them to become ladder players, if they ever do, they have to go through a phase where they unlearn some bad turtle habits, and try out and succeed at being aggressive. They tend to do this by playing more open maps in custom lobbies, the lower the skill and confidence, the more players.

There's already a big cost in attention needed to use the ACU offensively, as compared to just making some obscene firebase with a t2 com, a very, very common noob trap. And attention, specifically, is a beginner's most scarce resource. They often forget radar, tmd, scouting in general, they may idle their first high tech engies for minutes if they get distracted, or attack then look away from the fight, because doing these things right is not yet second nature to them. They spend more time doing any one thing and often get tunnel-vision on some random task because they have to think about it and it's not just busywork as it is to a veteran. This makes multi-taksing harder.

I'm worried about the nerfs you suggested because they make the climb from astro noob to ladder player steeper. I'm sure, FTX, you're very familiar with all the things I described, with all your mentoring experience on discord, and with that in mind, maybe I shouldn't be worried, but I'm still hoping you can think of another way of solving the problem.

I think the recent speed boost to t2 is a welcome change, and in general, I think I'd prefer some solution (which i don't claim to have) that emphasizes decision-making. The same way an air player rushing t3 air might conclude he has a window of opportunity and a need to do damage with a very early strat if he sees his counterpart making t2 bombers, and the same way a less skilled air player like myself decides to pay a mass tax and always shield their t2 pgens, even as i know some better players skip this sometimes, by scouting better and being able to determine if they're far enough behind that a shield is needed.

There's another point to be made regarding player experience.

Since without full share, you are usually punished with an agonizing and inevitable defeat when your teammate dies, sometimes through no fault of your own, player deaths are often followed by toxic interactions between teammates, "moron" tags peppered around the map and stuff like that. Full share helps a lot with this problem.

It also seems to me that people more often stay in the game instead of leaving immediately when full share is on, maybe partly because they want to see their stuff put to use. For one thing, this means defeat feels less bitter since fewer rage quit. But it also increases the chance that dead high rated players instruct lower rated players on their team, and that dead low rated players stick around to learn from their teammates. These are the only times casual players get to see high level play and actually pay attention to it, since very few of them spectate games or watch replays, and actually incentivizes high rated players to teach, since they can salvage their rating if they guide their teammates to victory.

These are not minor concerns. This community is plagued by the unreasonable popularity of maps like astro craters or thermo or gap. If a lobby features some other map, it's almost always rating limited. New players end up joining the only lobbies that will have them, the aforementioned shit map trifecta. Some never leave this comfort zone even after gaining a white rating.

TMM is one of the few developments in years that has a chance to change this, and, if I'm not mistaken, it's whole purpose is specifically remedying this situation. We should not overlook player experience when deciding how to structure team play. Even if it turns out full share is not the best option, TMM should arguably use it at launch to be more noob friendly.

@askaholic said in Introducing Mapgen Week on Ladder:

Let’s rename it to "Neroxis and Sheikah Map Generator". And while we’re at it let’s rename the faf client to "Downlords and Axels and Brutus’ and Sheikahs and All those other guys FAF Client"

Praise Neroxis when mapgen is good, blame Sheikah when something is wrong with it. This is the way

@Firv, with other late-game upgrades, you get maybe a few minutes of value before the armies become too big to face, whereas billy you can potentially keep using to good effect almost indefinitely right now, sitting cozy under shields behind percy walls, lobbing rockets across the map. The risk hardly increases as the game progresses, like it does for other com upgrades, since there's not much incentive to get anywhere close to threats in order to use it. In addition, because armies tend to get bigger and less wieldy, the care you have to put into your aim actually goes down as time goes on. Plus, you can pair it with t3 which is a defensive upgrade. The change I suggested wouldn't mean you absolutely must bring the com into knife distance either.

Also, it doesn't impact tele billy at all, because in that scenario you're shooting at helpless and static targets. If you're hunting armies, teleporting is actually worse than airlifting because you can't adjust your destination as the move orders shift around plus your fire rate is shit.

My biggest complaint about the billy is it's insane range. It is too safe compared to other end-game upgrades, and less fun than it could be as a consequence. I propose making the projectile around 20% slower, thus a bit less useful against armies unless the player takes on a bit of risk by closing in. I wish effective use of it encouraged transport play more.

The counters to it should remain unit spread or mixing build power into the army rather than mobile shields in my opinion, because they require more attention.

I regularly used google translate in this way before the copy functionality was removed because it was way, way more convenient than using my phone to clumsily film the screen. The camera loses focus, the translated words jump and glitch constantly, the translation quality is low, it's super janky. Unfortunately that is now the only option, but it was always like this for lobby chats so eh.

Interesting, I didn't know all this about how the probabilities work. So if I understand this right, by ticking the "use custom style" checkbox, I've also switched from hand-tuned to flat probabilities that each generator option gets picked when set to random? In that case what I said earlier about default behavior is not true, as my assumptions were incorrect, and it seems this problem is already addressed for casual hosts.

I like the switch to separate generators and away from sliders in general. I always felt like the impact of the sliders was very unpredictable before, whereas now the overall shapes of the map are more controllable.

That being said, the default, minimal fiddle, all random behavior does tent to make boulderified maps way more often now, and more often than the UI would suggest, which is worse.

I don't know specifically if the prop generator now gets picked completely randomly if set to random, with the reclaim slider later acting as a parameter to the one that got picked, or if the slider affects the probability distribution function over generators, but maybe the latter is worth considering. Although I'm not familiar enough with the other prop generators and if they can easily fit into such a scheme, it seems to me the most intuitive behavior should be for this specific one to only start showing up if the reclaim slider is set quite high.

If such a fix is not quite quick enough, another very interesting suggestion by @snoog was to make the drop-down menus of the map generator multi-select. This would allow users to opt out of specific prop generators or biomes while still enjoying most of the diversity on menu. It's a (hopefully) small change to the UI that improves things a lot for the users since most people have negative preferences - they don't want a specific biome for instance, they just want to avoid the white one.

@ftxcommando said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:

Nothing here was something I said.

This you?

Matchmaker from the beginning was a completely collaborative process on how to make things function fairly but also fun. For example, if we wanted to be totally tryhard, we would have no party system. I had people complain to me about that idea during the planning stages.

@ftxcommando I apologize for implying you were an endless-essay pretend-pro busy-body. That was very Passive Aggressive of me.

@thewheeler said in Why does everything suck so much right now?:

We would rather have the top 0,1% surgeon to operate on our heart than an average surgeon.
We would rather have the top 0,1% pilot fly our plane than an average one.
We would rather have the top 0,1% designer make our new phone than an average one.
We would rather have the top 0,1% coder write our apps than an average one.

Sure, I don't mind if the balance team is comprised mostly of top players. That can't be their only qualification, though, right? At the very least, they should be able to communicate without provoking undue friction with their peers, and work together with other teams, and not be afk for years.

Since there are not thousands of potential coders available to faf, we can't pick. We have a few, and they picked us.

Whereas players potentially balancing the game? There are quite a lot of players. How about top 10% skill wise (they could still consult with champions whenever they needed to), but they are the best at working with these devs without causing them to burn out - that includes explaining what proposals are unfeasible efficiently and gracefully, after making an honest attempt at making them feasible.

Given the circumstances - the extreme disparity in the scarcity of potential candidates for the two roles, that would be my preference.

@jip It's fine, I rattled his cage, I'm no better. What's actually funny is I was asking @FtXCommando how exactly a thousand new pros might improve his or my faf experience more than the features I like and he hits me with "we could have been real tryhards and prevented you from playing TMM alongside your friends, but relented". Insert tyrant extolling his benevolence to his subjects meme.

My dude, you're not even an actual pro, you're a 1900. "We"? Pffff

No wonder the lobby server dev quit after TMM was up and running. Imagine working to help players more conveniently find games and having to deal with some endless-essay pretend-pro busy-body actively trying to sabotage your main goal, because, you see, the trueskill data (a mere means to an end) would otherwise be a bit noisier than it already is. Then, to top it off, they go and take partial credit for the work, calling themselves Collaborator, since starting, then losing futile arguments about dumb shit technically counts as labor, right? Also, they get indignant should their effort not be valued over yours, the actual dev.

Regardless other contributions I have you to thak for, this one's not helping change my mind about whose activity benefits me more. The boastful claim this was actually within your power and we were spared such an outcome only by your willingness to compromise would be worrying if I actually took it seriously. I'd I'd rather hope someone reasonable will always be here, willing and able to step in whenever your lot fails to be brought to your senses, which is why I'm speaking up before you drive them away.

@ftxcommando I made no grand claims regarding my contributions, nor do I feel entitled to have a say in how this or that change is implemented.

I'd rather stay and offer reassurance that things are not as gloomy as the OP and complainers makes it sound.

If you did write code for faf, I guess you're a dev and what I said applies to you as well: just do your thing and ignore the haters. If instead you mean writing forum guidelines you then ignore, well, anybody can do that. Just because it happened to be you doesn't mean it couldn't have got done without you.