Am I right in thinking most people felt that the reward for swapping wasn’t enough, as that 10xp would quickly be countered by the face you joined the losing team?
Besides simply giving a larger (perhaps dynamic) amount of XP, what other incentives do you think would be worth swapping to the losing team?
I personally always liked playing the underdog in public games as it felt much more satisfying when you did win.
OOO OOOOh ooooh, how about, by mail, give the players an equivalent of 10 Zimbabwean dollars every time they switch teams for balance!!???
[QUOTE=DarkangelUK;227395]I agree with this[/QUOTE] Idd you do, I’m awesome afterall…
What game modes does Brink have?
I only know the “campaign”, being the same whether you play offline or online. Does it have team deathmatch or CTF?
If not, we don’t need an auto-balance. If you start as a refugee, you won’t switch to security just for 10+ XP…
the game is purely class-based, team objective gameplay, and why would you only switch sides if it was TDM or CTF? people wouldn’t switch sides for xp? or to win? or just to piss the other team off?
Maybe because SD wants it to feel like singleplayer? At least that’s why they can’t force people to switch sides as I said previously.
I suspect it’s more that the 10 XP really doesn’t do anything for the people who are grinding out their bling. Something like a ‘get +20% exp for the next five minutes’ kinda thing would probably have been more enticing.
+1 win to your win/loss stat. I feel dirty for saying it, but it’s probably the only thing that would really work.
[QUOTE=Smooth;227439]Am I right in thinking most people felt that the reward for swapping wasn’t enough, as that 10xp would quickly be countered by the face you joined the losing team?
Besides simply giving a larger (perhaps dynamic) amount of XP, what other incentives do you think would be worth swapping to the losing team?
I personally always liked playing the underdog in public games as it felt much more satisfying when you did win.[/QUOTE]
Its either countered by joining a bad team, or its countered by leaving the team their mates are on. Some players are just joint at the hip when it comes to gaming.
As for suggestions - you might want to give a random prize for changing so it works basically like it would with playing a slot machine. Players will switch just to see what they will get, but occasionally the ‘system’ has to give up something decent for switching so that it always maintains that curiosity.
massive cough
edit: oh and you might want to display in global text what they have won - 'Smooth has just won a Leather Black Trench Coat’ etc etc so that it not only becomes a mini game for the player switching, other players who didnt get a chance to switch get pissed off they didnt 
[QUOTE=Smooth;227439]Am I right in thinking most people felt that the reward for swapping wasn’t enough, as that 10xp would quickly be countered by the face you joined the losing team?
Besides simply giving a larger (perhaps dynamic) amount of XP, what other incentives do you think would be worth swapping to the losing team?
I personally always liked playing the underdog in public games as it felt much more satisfying when you did win.[/QUOTE]
I would switch when that thing popped up about half the time, but it really wasn’t for the XP, I just wanted to try and keep it even. Was rarley in a game where I made a difference though (not a terribly good player).
The other thing is sometimes you are so absorbed in the game you don’t realize it’s become unbalanced (although usually it became obvious pretty quickly), so the pop-up at least alerted you of the imbalance…
But no, the 10XP wasn’t much of an incentive. I wasn’t kidding before when I said give them something shiny. It seems the masses like pins, emblems and whatnot.
edit: just saw Milfandcookies post, I like the random award idea a lot. you should use it and give him a signed game or something.
I dont’ think you should get an item everytime you switch. That seems ridiculous, then people would keep switching just for new items.
[QUOTE=Smooth;227439]Am I right in thinking most people felt that the reward for swapping wasn’t enough, as that 10xp would quickly be countered by the face you joined the losing team?
Besides simply giving a larger (perhaps dynamic) amount of XP, what other incentives do you think would be worth swapping to the losing team?
I personally always liked playing the underdog in public games as it felt much more satisfying when you did win.[/QUOTE]
Yea if its one maybe two, not when its so unbalanced that you have zero chance of winning.
Maybe something like that message in TF2 when theres a draw?
Congrats!, youre both losers!
Congrats! Now try and win a game with balanced teams!
Followed by some short statistics like this,
Congrats! Now try and win a game with balanced teams!
The losing team called for teambalance # times during the game.
The winning team had a more than 2 players advantage for 32minutes out of #.
Usually players “get away” with winning a 10-5 game because at the end the game announce them as winners anyway and with the chat off at that time (usually) theres noone telling them what a bunch of unfair bastards they really are. 
depending on how unbalanced the teams are, maybe reward the team with more players with less overall xp and the lower team with more?
Just make the bot that’s covering the losing teams empty spot totally uberpwn until it’s more even then dial it down. The whole swapping someone over won’t work with friends by the fact that the teams then shift and go their separate ways at the end of the match.
For me I wouldnt mind swapping teams if I hadn’t played for long… like in etqw I was always likely to take the xp bonus and swap if it was early in a campaign because later on I was more attached to that faction or something like that.
As for an incentive to swap more xp would be good, perhaps have some sort of achievement that you need to swap teams maybe 50 times (when offered the xp bonus) to gain. And people really love achievements/trophies
Because those objectives wouldn’t be part of the story, am I wrong? So if you switch to the other team won’t it change your story?
I really don’t get it 
I mean there’s a story in Brink, so switching sides will change something, no?
But I agree with rewarding more the team that has less players.
Please no items or such, it would attract “items addict”. Players have to switch beacause they want/like to play and don’t mind to swap to a losing team, they don’t do this to win something. Maybe random prizes as MILFandCookies suggested it, just to reward the switch.
[QUOTE=Rumble;227481]Because those objectives wouldn’t be part of the story, am I wrong? So if you switch to the other team won’t it change your story?
I really don’t get it I mean there’s a story in Brink, so switching sides will change something, no?[/QUOTE]You are right and wrong. It wouldn’t make much sense to swap teams in campaign or coop mode because you are basically playing for the story. It hasn’t always been like that, though. The coherent story is something new with Brink. In ET / ETQW every map had its own small story but there was no connection between the maps. You will still be able to play the maps in any order you want in Brink and that’s where swapping makes sense. I mean if you play Search & Destroy in Call of Duty (that’s objective based gameplay in simple) does it really matter if you attack or defend, play as German or Russian? In custom campaigns in ET / ETQW / Brink it doesn’t matter which side wins as the map rotation is fixed. Balanced teams obviously add a lot to the enjoyment, though.
Just leave it to be honest, I don’t think it’s a problem you can really fix without subliminal messages in each map intro to make people play fair, no amount of xp rewards or extra perks are going to effectively solve the issue, you are always going to get idiots and stacking going on, just give the community tools to remove them kind of players from their servers with as little hassle as possible.
Also as touched up on by others, wouldn’t auto swapping players around or swapping in general break the whole, if you lose a map you must replay it till you do win to move onto the next map when playing the story mode?
Imagine you were on the winning side for the majority of a map and the other side simply weren’t trying and goofing around or there were mainly bots so there wasn’t really a balance issue as such and the game decides ‘let shuffle as one team isn’t getting far’ then you get moved to that losing side and then proceed to lose for whatever reason and as a result have to replay the map again, I be pretty cheesed off.
For the non story mode though it shouldn’t be a problem but what happens to your body type when you swap, would you get a chance to change body type when moving sides or be forced to keep the body type you had previously? Some may prefer one body type for one side and another for the other side and as such if you can’t change that may prevent people from swapping sides on their own accord.
Thanks for the clarification
That means almost every players would agree to swap only after they’ve finished the story once, with custom campaign where defending or attacking doesn’t matter as you said.
[QUOTE=Smooth;227439]Besides simply giving a larger (perhaps dynamic) amount of XP, what other incentives do you think would be worth swapping to the losing team?
I personally always liked playing the underdog in public games as it felt much more satisfying when you did win.[/QUOTE]
See, those two things can actually compromise rather than boost each other. I like playing the underdog as well, but whatever virtue it has is taken away by offering a reward for doing so. It negates the prestige of it.
I’d rather see a forced autobalance. Simply switch the last guy that joined the match (or even switched team) to the team that needs a player. This way you have less chance that you pull a player away from something he invested a lot of effort in.
Obviously in the story mode such an option cannot exist.