Why is FAF losing it's competitive players? Also, map pool?

[epic-bennis]

A year ago this time faf was quite frankly far more deep and competitive for the mid to high end competitive players. I was being kicked for other players; me, bennis, the professor, arguably a top 3 active setons player(I have improved). If certain high skilled 1v1 players(jagged, nexus, adjux, thisguy, etc) did not switch over this past year to team games, then there would be zero high end setons games played.

If I had to estimate, the skill cap I would attribute to high level players has shrunk about 75 percent over the last the year. Heaven, ftxcommando, zock, petric, 90 percent of setons players, they are all quitting for what I assume is bordeom with the game. Heaven(the other big streamer for faf) doesn't stream or play faf anymore either so most people will now be watching brnk stream, further devolving the skill base of faf.

This is a vicious cycle where the more high level players leave, the more it continues to feed on itself.

And a new problem with ladder that we still have not learned. Putting maps in the map pool that 90 percent of the people in ladder dislike will make people stop playing ladder(the last competitive thing in faf that is slowly dying). People play ladder for fun, these 'competitive' maps can be in tournies. I can't blame ftx though, you have to actually play ladder to realize how unfun those maps are. Please remove them and I will start my 1v1 journey again.

[FtXCommando]

Don’t recall ever saying that I got bored with FAF. If I was bored with FAF I wouldn’ve resigned from PC because I’d have no desire to push for what I think FAF needs as I’d be totally apathetic.

Your post can be split and put in two old threads:
Map Pool Comments for the map pool issues (even though you said nothing about what maps are not fun, what makes a fun map, how to distinguish a fun from an unfun map, why ladder doesn’t need competitive maps, etc)

Why the competitive scene is dying for the rest.

Why make a thread on this and not provide any potential solutions?

Why people throw around statements like “90% of people dislike this map” when we LITERALLY have data on what maps people hate and love. Likewise, we’re starting to factor in those opinions so that it influences the likelihood of a map popping up in ladder. So I guess that issue is being solved?

[Viba]

Here, 17 pages of the same a year back, enjoy!
/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=15548

Maybe we don't have to repeat everything once more?

[epic-bennis]

Not really the same, that thread is more about 1v1 activity. Now to add unto it we have a declining high skill pool of players for team games. 1v1 is generally an anti-social activity, having team games and the pinnacle of faf(setons) lose the top players is far more concerning.

Setons started dying around the time contributors killed the setons tourney by banning players/changing dates. I think people were disheartened by the tourney getting cancelled because they wanted to see the clash of the feather and gala teams. It probably would have probably been the greatest setons battle in faf history. I know hal left faf for this specific reason at least, so that is one person.

I also think brnk is really killing the community in terms of skill as he gains more popularity. It is like feeding a child high carb soda over lean proteins.

In terms of 1v1, I would actually like you to re add fractal water maps so people are forced to play in seton team games.

[FtXCommando]

Team games and sentons tend to be spoken about separately. The pool of competitive team game players is about the usual 3 dudes willing to play high rated 2v2s it always was.

Sentons dunno. Not really a major focus for me.

A good way, at least to me, to judge how stagnate the top level of FAF is would be looking at the LotS players that qualify and seeing how much it differs each year. Then find out if the old qualifiers failed to qualify because they don’t like FAF and didn’t bother playing or if they got beat because new, good players are around.

As far as I can tell, we got around 4 dudes this year that recently became “noticed” players on FAF that qualified. That sounds pretty good, at least to me.

Other than that, I can only hope I can shill for no veto/no repeat code to devs to reenergize ladder somewhat.

[Mountain]

Tbh it feels like more team games are being played for me, just what I noticed personally. Might just be my timezone in particular

[epic-bennis]

Tbh it feels like more team games are being played for me, just what I noticed personally. Might just be my timezone in particular

no

[epic-bennis]

I'm intrigued. Should I leave this up as it is? It's pretty good it could be almost me. Thanks for great entertainment though.

[Apofenas]

Pretty sure there are more high level team games being played. More "high level" Crater/Gap team games to be specific.

[Morax]

Ratings have inflated and given the appearance of more "high level" games, but that's just because there's not many good players to slap around the clowns.

The number means nothing more than ever and team game play is now 100% who gets dealt a better hand (random players, that is).