💫 Freefall Tournament: General Discussion 💫

cow3477 · February 9, 2018, 3:56pm

I feel the slide removes a lot from what the game was previously. Without the slide, people weren’t dying a few seconds after they respawned, since nowadays most good players just slide past capture points, throwing out all their bombs and using all their abilities before they die a few seconds later. The pros manage to do it so well that they can reach health stations before they die. Without the slide there were so many more elements to the game, and heavy classes were much more balanced. There have been innumerable times where I’ve seen blasters in shuttle bay grab some bombs, float gracefully through the air with asteroid rush until they hit the shuttle and just toss the micro munitions as they’re sliding by. This idiotic pattern repeats itself over and over again making the game monotonous and nearly impossible for any decent player who isn’t using the tank.

It’s also sad to hear none of the mod’s input got actually implemented in the game. These guys are some of the best players who I know have been playing back when there were only four classes, and they know the game inside out. A lot of their suggestions are sensible and justified by actual in-game experience, which, if one hasn’t noticed, is the main problem with this game. A guest user who comes across this game in it’s current state would be completely disinterested due to the number of performance and real game issues; hence the drop in player base.

Yes, you can say it’s because of the WebGl plugin, and sure, we can wait for the next update and probably the one after that, but while that’s going on this game might not even be alive long enough to see it.

Rja12 · February 9, 2018, 4:04pm

Yup, we dedicated a lot of time discussing new ideas and topics and after all this time not even 1 thing we talked about was implemented. I feel like I wasted my time ever becoming a mod under Y8 in the first place. I’m just happy I contributed to getting a lot of hackers banned, but that’s the only thing.

You’re right as well. If I was a new user I would not be playing this game after testing it out. With webgl way too many issues came with it and the game is not in a good spot at all. People who have been playing the game since 2012 like me can no longer even bother to open the game. It’s just not worth playing anymore because of the webgl update. I don’t think FFT is a game that Y8 should have invested in. It’s way more complex then most of the games I’ve seen or played on Y8. Hence, why they still can’t update it or do anything with it after all this time.

cow3477 · February 9, 2018, 5:05pm

Room sizes were changed, and it’s making the game so much better. The least filled server I could find was US and it looked like this.

Which is a hell of a lot better than last week.

jazzydaddy888 · February 9, 2018, 5:45pm

I never understood why FRG changed the hammer (before, you actually needed some good timing to stun-lock your opponent). Everyone was asking for a nerf of some sort… and that happened.

I always thought that sliding was a nice quality-of-life feature (compared to bunny hopping), but it’s true that removing it could fix some issues.

YES.

Nothing_84 · February 10, 2018, 12:08am

Sorry there’s no future here dont waste ur time on it.
Stay away from here make ur life better
I hope everything goes well for u
Thanks for being a Responsible Mod.(The Best Mod Ever)

jazzydaddy888 · February 10, 2018, 2:37am

Have you quit as well, Nothing?

Gamer07 · February 10, 2018, 3:46am

Good to know, webgl wasnt able to accommodate more than 8 players in room, hence it caused the camera jerkyness. Btw, There’s no WebGL game on whole web that tries more than 8 players in room. (While there will not be such issue on PC build though.)

Were all rooms of EU and Asia fully filled ? Traffic on game is growing, with around 50k players per day as average, while it was highest yesterday(may be coz of the 8 players room which is better). If rooms were fully filled due to recent change and more traffic, we should consider making more rooms.

Rja12 · February 10, 2018, 5:08am

I quit this game a long long time ago. I just check the forum every now and then hoping they will be a update and I’m disappointed every time.

Are these players well rounded and actually know how to play or are these players brain dead and have no idea what they’re doing. Most people are saying that they only see guest and horrible players.

cow3477 · February 10, 2018, 5:08am

While I do agree that rja and all the other mods don’t deserve to spend their time reminiscing about FFT and what it could have been, I think it’s a stretch to say theres no future. These past few days have been relatively great (even excellent) due to the decreased room sizes which lead to a huge jump in players, and that I believe is an eye opener to what this game could be, or at least an insight into what it once was.

Out of all the mods, rja is the only one who I can recognize as having ever played with back in 2012-2013 era. I’ve had a firsthand witness as to how dedicated he’s been to this game; just look at the massive contribution to this forum. I have no problem with moving on (some things are just better left alone), but it is definitely a stretch to say there isn’t any future, even if I’m not the most qualified person to say so.
@Rja12, as well as all mods who’ve abandoned the game: By all means, do what you must, but it may be of benefit if you’re still interested in discussing in this forum to see how the game’s doing every couple of months or so, just one or two rounds with some decent players should suffice. It’s meaningful to see you guys post every while or so but i’m suggesting it may be of interest to check the progress on a rare occasion. But that’s just me.

cow3477 · February 10, 2018, 5:12am

Not all of the rooms were filled, still have a ways to go before that becomes a problem.

Rja12 · February 10, 2018, 5:15am

@cow3477 At this point the Y8 developers just have to show us that this game has a future. When they took over I defended them and was very optimistic about everything. But once webgl went live and ruined the quality of FFT that hope left. Also with FRG they never updated the game and months and even years. Right now I’m only seeing Y8 do the same. FFT will always be my baby and the only game I’ve ever been this attached too, so I hope everything goes well.

The developers are ignoring my post and I know they see them. I don’t really care if they’re annoyed by my post, but I’m just being honest and it’s my own opinion. The most annoying part about everything is that we spent so much time as mods talking about updates and changes but none of them were implemented.

Gamer07 · February 10, 2018, 5:43am

@Rja12 While we are facing technical problems to make WebGl run as smooth(which runs fine with 8 players in room only) , you are asking to implement the feedback listed on forum by you ? It doesn’t make sense to me. I doubt you even play the game to check performance before replying on forums

To be clear, WebGL should run smooth is the first step, for which we rely on browser’s updates. This is not something in our hand, i have cleared this point a lot of times to you. You will never get webplayer like performance ever in WebGL.

“We cannot force browsers to speed up the process of improving a technology, which is still new and its early stage. We cannot control technology., but we can only try to find workarounds.” Thats the simple thing, that you need to understand.

"Everytime browsers launched a new thing for improving WebGl performance, we updated our game with that right away, Webassembly was launched, and we updated our game, which increased the game performance atleast 20-30%.

__SIMD Arrays was to go live in January, which further lead to 30% performance gain, but all browsers decided to delayed its launch due to some bugs they found just days before launch.So that was a bad luck._"

Porting to WebGL was a forced decision, because webplayer was totally dead by all browsers, and Y8 being a web portal, would have needed a web game. ‘Y8 is not on Standalone platform at all.’ If there was no WebGL, there would have been no FFT, i agree again, WebGl doesnt run as smooth as webplayer, but with 8 players in room, its works & playable.

So WebGl was the ONLY technology which browsers supported at that time and all plugins (including flash, shockwave, unity webplayer) were blocked by browsers.

To overcome this, we recently thought of steam version(which wasnt a Y8’s business at all), and porting to .exe wont happen in few days, FRG did quit porting to PC despite of the greenlight because the networking engine code(uLink) which they used was only working on 32 Bit operating systems , while most of players have 64 Bit operating systems. So they quitted the PC port.

jazzydaddy888 · February 10, 2018, 7:34am

@Joll Just to be sure I understand everything. When you and your team ported FFT to WebGL, you translated “Unity code” to “WebGL code”, right? (I hope we understand each other on this.) But to port FFT to Steam, do you need to translate “WebGl code” to “Steam code”? Is there a standard code for Steam? What is harder/longer? Porting to WebGL or to Steam? What will make FFT better on Steam? Servers, code, the fact that it’s an .exe?

@Rja12 At the very moment the game is playable most of the time. It’s possible to have fun and snipe. Also, bear in mind that Id.net efforts are limited by WebGL language. If I compare with other Y8 games, Joll, Jeremie, Ankit & co did a wonderful job. If FFT is to be taken offline, it won’t be Id.net’s fault. Also, bear in mind that, normally, we shouldnt be able to play FFT at all since it was coded in Unity; Id.net bought FFT and translated it into WebGL so we could continue to play (if they didn’t do, we would be able to play it). Now, what Joll is saying, is that they can’t do anything to make it any better because of the WebGL language limitations, and not because of their lack of work/efforts. They are waiting for the code to be “refined”. I’m convinced that the devs don’t ignore your posts, and that they are not annoyed by them: they just can’t do anything about it at the moment. You have to accept that there is no perfect solutions right now, you have to accept compromises.

Rja12 · February 10, 2018, 2:52pm

This is how I know everything we spoke about as mods was a big waste of time. I never said anything about implementing what I said on the forum? You don’t remember how the mods were invited to slack and we discussed new things every single day FOR MONTHS? So many ideas and ways to update the game. We spoke about balancing the classes and introductions new ideas with Jeremie and Ankit. You don’t even remember this, because all of what we talked about probably went down the drain when Jeremie left. Y8 wasted our time for all that time for nothing.

Also, I have played the game recently, if the game was smooth enough to play on a comfortable level I would of said so. Just because it gets a little better, that doesn’t mean it’s worth playing or it’s enjoyable. You guys aren’t implementing any of the ideas on the forum of people who are even playing now and got rid of everything we built on slack so I doubt you plan on implementing anything.

Gamer07 · February 10, 2018, 3:09pm

Your reply still doesnt makes sense.
Read the first 2 lines of my last reply and you will get the answer.
Game should run smooth , should come first before balancing, and should be the focus, in addition i think webgl game is balanced already. Though it might need bug fixes here and there while upgrading webgl version.

At first, we did worked on balancing with jeremy, but not to the great extent where improving gameplay was the focus.

Also read jazzy’s reply, to confirm you understant it properly

So as we cannot control technolgy, we’ll stick to our plan, improving webgl performance working closely with unity technologies and browsers. And having a steam version, of which demo(first showable demo) should be coming this month.
Once steam version is ready, we’ll work on balancing( all mods feedback including you because performance will not be an issue on .exe so performance will not be the area of focus).

Gamer07 · February 10, 2018, 3:15pm

Gonna answer each your queries on monday, travelling now though , have a great weekend.

Rja12 · February 10, 2018, 3:17pm

I read your post already? I don’t think you understand what I’m saying. I’m asking what happened to everything we discussed as mods in slack? All the topics and balancing ideas? You probably have no clue what I’m talking about which confirmes my idea that all of that work and contribution we did during that time was deleted and a waste.

Gamer07 · February 10, 2018, 3:18pm

Already answered you , read last message again( last paragraph)
Copying here again for you :

“Once steam version is ready, we’ll work on balancing( all mods feedback including you because performance will not be an issue on .exe so performance will not be the area of focus).”

cow3477 · February 10, 2018, 4:19pm

Let’s first clarify some things here. There are performance issues caused by WebGl, which we have heard over and over again cannot be circumvented save by maybe reducing room sizes. There are severe game bugs, things like showing up an incorrect defeat, bringing players to the lobby right before they get xp/cash or being unable to enter rooms. Then there are gamer experience issues, things that ruin the actual experience of the game itself like balancing.

There’s a big issue here, and it’s that we still haven’t been given an explanation why the gamer experience issues cannot be resolved. I’m aware it’s not a massive team that’s working on this game and that the Steam version has taken priority, but that’s not a reason as to why some of these balancing issues haven’t been resolved after literally years of mod advice.

Now, the game is definitely playable, and I can vouch for those who say that sniping is definitely possible, but by no means is it balanced perfectly. I do not have any preference as to which issue the devs focus on first, game issues or performance upgrade, because each has it’s own pitfalls. As the devs focus on Steam, the player base drops and people become frustrated and leave while the clock ticks away. I’m also concerned that without fixing these balancing issues, players who encounter the Steam Version for the first time will not be satisfied with the game in time for the devs to go back and work on balancing (that issue requires a whole new discussion topic, to rehash all the ideas the mods have offered over the years). On the other hand, simply focusing on these game experience issues would shy away from real progress and would limit how many people can actually know about the game and play it. Additionally, nobody wants to play a game who’s performance is completely dependent on a browser’s ability to upgrade a plugin, that’s asking for trouble.

Buttersolace · February 11, 2018, 12:47am

I have to give ya’ll credit for reading huge walls of text.