Do you think FAF gameplay would break down at high skill?

[AdmiralZeech]

Let's pretend I was an eccentric evil multibillionaire, Iron Chef style. (or M.Bison style, if you prefer.)

I've decided to hold my own FAF tournament.
Prize pool: $5 billion. Date: 3 years from now. Prizeless qualifying tournaments held every 6 months until then.
Qualified entrants get a stipend for living expenses, so they can focus their entire attention on training.


Presumably this would attract the highest level of RTS talent, the kind you might see in top Starcraft, for example.


But do you think FAF gameplay & balance would break down at such skill levels? Would gameplay devolve into whoever can abuse a singular strategy first, or some other horrible outcome like a all-out micro battle of engine exploits?


Since I'm far from a skilled or recent player, I have no idea, but it's an interesting question to me. Perhaps people who are currently quite skilled at the game have some insight into "what lies beyond the event horizon."

[ZLO_RD]

i am not exactly sure but i think all known exploits are banned or used by everyone and no longer considered as exploits.

I think high level players would highly benefit from some highlevel UI mods.

micro potential? no idea tbh... there is alot of micro that could be done to improve efficiency, for example you can dodge shots with gunships, avoid splash by spreadin out air units

[keyser]

For this price, it wouldn't be a pro starcraft player winning, but a very skilled programmer.
With the lack of ui mod restriction we have, it's likely that it would end up in a human assisted gameplay. Something similar to softly vs uveso ai tournament.

[zeroAPM]

Something similar to softly vs uveso ai tournament.

This sounds interesting, link?

[keyser]

viewtopic.php?f=26&t=16088&p=164795#p164795

[Exotic_Retard]

assuming that the tourney is in controlled conditions like they do in the other super expensive tourneys, that means there would be restrictions on the ui mods allowed. probably.

if so then the dude who would win would be some guy who memorised a perfect BO for every map in the tourney, and who has 999 apm, can tell what every enemy unit is from the radar blips, and is using every single allowed feature, bug and abuse to his advantage.

currently top players in faf arent really very top, they make fuckups, some have low apm, some can still be top players despite not using hotbuild and so on. in a truly competitive environment if you arent using every advantage you can, you wont be able to survive. the part where top players today can do whatever and still be top, means that we arent very developed in that area.

while im not entirely sure what will turn out to be op or what sort of abuses will be discovered in that time, its fairly safe to say the gameplay will be different. the loyalist rush thing was an invention based not on balance changes but on no one ever trying it before, and suddenly it became a popular thing. same thing with tml acu rushing on canis or whatever. faf meta development is slow enough for no one to discover some abuse for years. this would speed up when everyone is desperately trying to find some op thing, and pretty much every hole in balance will be abused to give something unrecognizable. (compare todays gameplay with some 2007 stuff where you built t1 all day and rushed it into PDs, or when the world n1 player at the time won without a base cos his enemy couldnt find sacus, or when hoverbombing was invented)
probably. who cares anyway xD

[Blackheart]

Would still not be enough incentive to play non-bhedit!!

[moonbearonmeth]

For $5bn there would be a peculiar string of dead FAF pros

[Franck83]

But do you think FAF gameplay & balance would break down at such skill levels? Would gameplay devolve into whoever can abuse a singular strategy first, or some other horrible outcome like a all-out micro battle of engine exploits?
"

All is a matter of budget, work and time to fix all possible balance issues and ui exploits.

But since tournaments at this price level would be recorded, even issues would exist, all is trackable. Simply common rules and ui limits must be set.

[ChaosRefractor]

I hear people complaining about GPG balance all the time, but imho that was way superior to the replay spam we call games today.
It's not about skill, it's about the ongoing faction-partial balance trend promoting antigame.
Also, since faf balance noways is pretty much resumed to ladder being 1 bad faction that nobody uses, 1 good faction that some people use, 1 better faction that a lot of poeple choose and 1 far-away-the-best faction that almost half of the playerbase choose, your question is easy to answer.
Choose the bad faction, and start playing around.
ALL games will be the same.
Paper-scissors-shotgun balance + op spam + ecowhoring-techrushing killed any skill gameplay a long ago.
Most likely outcome is chat flaming and a scout war.