Auto-balancing

(stranger) #1

Hello, devs!
Will there be teams auto-balancing in MP? There was no a-b in etqw and it killed the game along with stupid perm stats system and bad weapons balance. One team starts to lose, people quit and nobody wants to join and help them so teams play as 10x5 and so on.

(tokamak) #2

It seems to work great for TF2, but then again… I don’t feel as invested in the outcome of the match as I am in ET.

An autobalance during the ‘delay’ time between two objectives would be appropriate.

(H0RSE) #3

http://www.splashdamage.com/forums/showpost.php?p=205305&postcount=600

(Apples) #4

IMO auto balancing is not the right option, you have to let people choose if they want to balance or not, you can give them some perks for balancing tho, such as xp or whatever.

The craziest thing I’ve seen is in BC2, when switching team give you one death and -10 xp… This is to avoid ppl joining winning team on purpose, but I dont think it would be hard to implement a system where you gain xp for joining a team short on player, and when you loose xp for joining a “winning” team (by winning I mean it can be global KDR X times higher, 2 objectives done in 3 minutes, etc etc)

Peace

(Voxie) #5

Seconded.

Something in the style of “Balance the teams by holding Start/Enter to join the Resistance/Security and receive n XP” when there’s two more people on your team than the opposite – if you’re one more a bot fills the other team’s empty slot until another player joins the match to take its place.

(tokamak) #6

In TF2 nobody ever complains when they get moved to a different team. Simply because it’s done in a very elegant fashion.

An xp reward for pressing the auto-join instead of selecting a team is a good idea though.

(Voxie) #7

To elaborate: I was referring to a message that pops up when the other team is shorthanded, giving players on the more populous team the ability to switch over to the other for an XP bonus as a way to combat several people on one team disconnecting. And if no one chooses to switch teams the player who dies closest after the deadline of X seconds will automatically be switched (just like in TF2) – that way the player who wants to switch teams the most will be able to do so, instead of the player who just happened to get fragged at the wrong time.

It’s basically the same system as in TF2 (and several other MP games), with the added perk of letting those
wanting to join the other team be able to do so and get a slight reward for it before forcing a random player to switch.

(Nail) #8

when someone leaves, a bot takes over

(darthmob) #9

People tend to be stupid and ignorant. I saw the best solution in CoD servers: If a team has >= 2 players less for more than 15 seconds the player who joined last gets swapped. No whine, no waiting, no problems.

(DarkangelUK) #10

That was the general unwritten rule on the Q3 CA server I played on… join the losing team, and lowest scorer switches if teams go uneven. Even when we had even numbers, if one team was dominating, we’d shift the teams around to even it up more. Everyone adhered to it with no whine or whinge.

(BioSnark) #11

They… don’t? I guess that depends on how balanced the teams were. If the teams were lopsided due to rq then… I found nothing elegant about the autobalance in tf2, particularly if you’re playing with friends.

Also, stopwatch sure but auto-balance wouldn’t mesh well with the concept of a campaign nor having different upgrades unlocked for each side.

(Smooth) #12

In ETQW we implemented a balance system (I think in the 1.4 patch) that would pop-up a prompt asking the appropriate* player to swap teams and get +10xp for doing so. If they declined in would go to the next player in the list until teams were eventually balanced.

I don’t know if many servers enabled it, but what do people think of that solution?

*Based on XP

(Cankor) #13

I vote for carrot first then stick.
Bonus for auto join.
Bonus for switching if teams are uneven. Plus give them something shiny.
If that doesn’t work, force a swap. Last player who joined no the lowest scoring (if people are leaving because they are getting raped moving the lowest scoring guy won’t help).

(LyndonL) #14

I was thinking the same thing!

(Wolfmeister) #15

Balancing teams cant be left to the players to decide. They happily continue to play a 10vs5 game if theyre on the 10man team, sad but true.
I agree it sucks if youre about to win a 10vs10 man game when the opposing team starts to drop when they realise theyre gonna lose but being or joining the 5 man team is even worse.

TF2:s system works, no need to “invent” a new one imo.

(Apples) #16

[QUOTE=Smooth;227360]In ETQW we implemented a balance system (I think in the 1.4 patch) that would pop-up a prompt asking the appropriate* player to swap teams and get +10xp for doing so. If they declined in would go to the next player in the list until teams were eventually balanced.

I don’t know if many servers enabled it, but what do people think of that solution?

*Based on XP[/QUOTE]

Yeah that was a right solution in the paper, but in the game, almost no one switched for this, people who switched were just actual good player (most of the time) who switched to the loosing team just to have a decent game instead of a rolling.

I think the problem is in players nowadays, and with the general ambiance of almost any gaming communities, most of the player dont care for balance anymore, they just want to win, rape noob and get XP and unlocks as fast as they can so they can tell to their other 12 Years old buddies how good they are, and if they suck that much that they cant achieve that by stacking, they’ll hack to tell the same.

IMO the right solution has been and will allways be : choose the right admined servers to play on

Thats why I think an incentive way ala etqw is the right choice, but in the end autobalance shouldnt be implemented, keep some work for the server admins if you want an active and “implicated” (dunno if such word exist :D) community.

Peace

(darthmob) #17

[QUOTE=DarkangelUK;227315]That was the general unwritten rule on the Q3 CA server I played on… join the losing team, and lowest scorer switches if teams go uneven. Even when we had even numbers, if one team was dominating, we’d shift the teams around to even it up more. Everyone adhered to it with no whine or whinge.[/QUOTE]Unwritten rules only work if you have got regulars or good admins. It doesn’t work in games with matchmaking. Quake Live is a good example as it doesn’t work at all there. Next to nobody cares about teams.

[QUOTE=Smooth;227360]I don’t know if many servers enabled it, but what do people think of that solution?[/QUOTE]It didn’t really work. Either someone cares about teams and does swap on his own or not. In my experience the XP bonus didn’t change that.

(signofzeta) #18

[quote=darthmob;227392]Unwritten rules only work if you have got regulars or good admins. It doesn’t work in games with matchmaking. Quake Live is a good example as it doesn’t work at all there. Next to nobody cares about teams.

It didn’t really work. Either someone cares about teams and does swap on his own or not. In my experience the XP bonus didn’t change that.[/quote]

unless it gave someone a free upgrade or something.

(stranger) #19

[QUOTE=Smooth;227360]In ETQW we implemented a balance system (I think in the 1.4 patch) that would pop-up a prompt asking the appropriate* player to swap teams and get +10xp for doing so. If they declined in would go to the next player in the list until teams were eventually balanced.

I don’t know if many servers enabled it, but what do people think of that solution?

*Based on XP[/QUOTE]

That thing never worked. :frowning: Who cares for 10 XP when losing team gets owned&raped and your precious KDR and wins/loses would suffer?
The mandatory auto-balancing must be implemented, but as an optional feature of the server config so that admins could decide whether to enable it or not.

(DarkangelUK) #20

[QUOTE=Apples;227389]
I think the problem is in players nowadays, and with the general ambiance of almost any gaming communities, most of the player dont care for balance anymore, they just want to win, rape noob and get XP and unlocks as fast as they can so they can tell to their other 12 Years old buddies how good they are, and if they suck that much that they cant achieve that by stacking, they’ll hack to tell the same.

IMO the right solution has been and will allways be : choose the right admined servers to play on

Thats why I think an incentive way ala etqw is the right choice, but in the end autobalance shouldnt be implemented, keep some work for the server admins if you want an active and “implicated” (dunno if such word exist :D) community.

Peace[/QUOTE]

I agree with this, it’s the player mentality that needs fixing, and well that ain’t gonna change too soon.