[QUOTE=matsy;528709]An extension to auto-balance I would like to see is removing away from keyboard players to spectator.
Equally annoying as it looks fine at 7vs7 but you’ve got two players sat in spawn doing nothing…[/QUOTE]
You are probably mistaking afk for people who haven’t begun to play yet.
Some particularly bad stacks recently. Not sure how the auto-balance can even pick these sorts of combinations.
Proves that level ain’t everything
Probably the worst I’ve encountered yet
Had a funny game yesterday.
Joined mid-game trainyard, as attack; still 5min left on the first obj. Our team was 7v8, probably due to that ghost player bug. In any case, defenders were overall better; and while having a few good pushes, we were definitely not getting close to blowing up the track controls any time soon.
Around 3:00 left, 2 players from our team left, making it 5v8.
This instantly resulted in major spawncamp from the defenders, making even more people (rage)quit. At peak moment of around 2:00, there were only 2 attacker’s left on our team, completely locked in our spawn.
a) naturally no defenders switched to balance the teams
b) our spawntime dropped to sth like 3 seconds, which was pretty funny as I could still get a frag here or there, before getting instantly mowed down from multiple angles, with Auras plonking stations down in our spawn
c) few more people joined in the last minute, bewildered as to what the hell is going on
d) ive managed to squeeze the $-penalty information from the defence: they got -11 points for not switching at all; during a progressively more and more unbalanced game (which wasn’t balanced in the first place, but you could at least fight back)
Don’t think many of the 5 players that ragequitted will remember this match fondly:confused:
Stacking is A BIG deal on pubs. Reasons why it happens were discussed extensively already, so don’t feel like repeating myself much : )
Imo, for this game not to die a quick death due to:
Team-balancing has to be way more forceful!
Either:
[QUOTE=Violator;528721]Some particularly bad stacks recently. Not sure how the auto-balance can even pick these sorts of combinations.
Proves that level ain’t everything
Probably the worst I’ve encountered yet
[/QUOTE]
Looks nervously at the list.
Is relieved that he is not on any of the lists…
This is like public listing of exam results 
Just kidding, though
I asked for the reasons why my opponents weren’t swapping in my last hopelessly outnumbered game. In that case, I was told they they needed 2 more wins to complete their daily mission. So, perhaps that particular daily mission needs looking at (and/or the various suggestions to make balancing more forceful). I do think it’s worse at the moment due to the ghost player bug of course.
Nah, everybody wants to win, no matter the daily. The dailies shouldn’t require any tweakings.
Balancing teams really needs fixing : (
You’ll never get balancing on casual games right if the skill-based shuffle happens at lobby stage.
Imo CASUAL should really go the way of:
You can say all you want about ‘people wanting to choose which merc to play for attack/defence’ and ‘pick mercs according to your teammates choices’ but:
a) nobody cares about what other people pick, and even if you do, you still can’t tell which of the 3 available a particular player is gonna pick
b) it would also let you skip the godawful 'wait another 15 seconds to play the game after map loaded already, and you can hear other people having fun
There is a basic reason why players do not change team : it is not explain anywhere you can do it, nor how. You need to actually look for it to do it. This is not intuitive. Yesterday I had to explain a LvL 28 player it was possible. He sweared it was not possible and was shameful and thankful when I showed him how to… (Escape - Change Team)
Same for voting (F5), it is not written anywhere and does not appear in the key settings.
So this does not help.
Second in pub servers only, a proposal should be asked by the server to every player in the outnumbering team to swap. Even without incentive (at first), I am quite sure some decent fair players would consider it. If not, these players could at least not pretend to not know that they play with an advantage. That may avoid the usual automatic ‘gg’ at the end of bad games.
The current penalty for outnumbering teams or unbalanced teams is ridiculous -17 Credits ? Seriously ? Why would an uncaring player swap to avoid this 17 Credits ? This penalty should be way higher.
An financial incentive or better imo, a badge ‘Fair Player’ that rewards XP + a visual display at the end of the game would be cool.
A system of Karma would also help but that would require an achievement system that the game lacks yet. I particularly like the Karma system in Savage 2 from S2 Games : possibility to award or remove karma to a player as well as short comment at the end of each game. Exemple :http://www.savage2.com/en/karmahistory.php?aid=147994. If I remember well, you even gain 1 karma point for every 5 you give, to encourage players to give. Fair player rewards could be logged and be accounted for Karma points and give achievements.
I particularly like the Karma system in Savage 2 from S2 Games :
Off topic:
I have so liked this game, too bad there have never been a big community.
Not giving up on this easily! 
Another reason to forego switching loadouts in lobbies (and thus the extra 15 second wait, and the general feel of being trapped in a sea of lobby menus) is how little time you have to look at them and choose what you want.
Sure; 15 seconds will be enough for someone who played the game enough to know which loadout they are looking for, what are the icons for each weapons etc. etc.
new players will feel like they never have enough time to pick the loadout they want, they cant look into the details of each card and compare abilities/weapons etc.
[B]
Present lobby-loadout system is a middle ground that caters to nobody.
Are you in the right thread, lobby timings and UX flow has little to do with poor auto-balance.
[QUOTE=Erkin31;529043]Off topic:
I have so liked this game, too bad there have never been a big community.[/QUOTE]
To me this is the best online game I ever played 
Yes it does.
Auto-balance is poor because shuffle happens at a bad time (at the beginning of lobby). People quit, more people join;and whatever balance happened is screwed up.
The second problem of teams unbalancing during the game is largely a consequence of the first, as typically people ragequit when their team is getting smashed.
I see what you’re saying and don’t necessarily disagree, not opposed to giving people time to leave/join before doing the balance, although if you were going to leave why would you wait until the lobby to leave rather than leaving at the end-game screen?
The reason I believe people wait until the lobby to leave is because they are not leaving because they’re done playing, but rather are leaving because the auto-balance has created stacked teams again, so moving the point at which the auto-balance happens is only going to move the point at which people decide to leave the server.
Which is why I’m saying the auto-balance is poor because it’s logic is poor (it creates stacked teams) and not because the time it happens at is poor.
Few reasons:
The reason I believe people wait until the lobby to leave is because they are not leaving because they’re done playing, but rather are leaving because the auto-balance has created stacked teams again, so moving the point at which the auto-balance happens is only going to move the point at which people decide to leave the server.
I don’t think people are this adept at evaluating individual skill levels. Ive clocked probably 400+ hours in DB, and im pretty good at remembering ‘the good players’ and the ‘nice players’ but more often than not, i recognize only a few names on the server. Esp. since the alienware bonanza. Also, levels themselves are not displayed in the lobby, so you don’t know if this no-name is a lvl2 who barely played, or someone who at least knows the maps/objectives. Not to mention all the smurfing heroes.
Which is why I’m saying the auto-balance is poor because it’s logic is poor (it creates stacked teams) and not because the time it happens at is poor.
I think its both. Auto-balance logic is often poor, cause it is based on your recent games; and your recent game’s performance is more to do with whether you were on the stacked team or not, rather than your individual skill level.
But at least as big a problem is when it happens. Even the perfect auto-balance system will never get it right, if it only works with 40-60% of the data (40-60% of the players that will eventually end up playing this specific map). Not to mention the people that it DID include in the balance, but who left the server. Esp. with how widely ranged the skill levels can be.
CS can encounter the same problem on pubs. One ‘pro’ player can destroy more than half of the enemy team’s average players. But CS pubs don’t have teamplay at all, or at least it is not build in to the fabric of the game itself.
In DB One more good player in your team will open up the newbies in that team to create some teamplay scenarios. Considering how fast-paced the game is, newbies often don’t realize what they are supposed to do (revive/throw ammo) before they are dead.
While MatchMaking can resolve this somewhat by making sure that Comp games at least are pretty well balanced (I have more faith in the present auto-balancing system as during the matchmaking stress-tests, the matchmaking itself was pretty good on the 3rd and 4th days, once it gathered some stats on players)
