Auto Team Balance...

(PixelTwitch) #1

Ok, so I was just having a look though the Nexon forums and someone pointed out a really cool system for team balance in pub games… Here it is…

HAWKEN has a great system where it notifies all players on the stacked team that the teams are unbalanced and everyone can opt-in to switch. The players who opt-in will then be checked to see which one will complement the enemy team best and promptly switch them over and reward them some credits/XP or whatever at round end for being a good sport. Admittedly, HAWKEN has a pretty sophisticated matchmaking system with no option to switch sides in a pub game so this reward system isn’t easily abusable, but I think it’s a lot better to give players choice and encourage healthy behaviour than snatch control away to discourage bad behaviour. In Dirty Bomb, at present, there’s no restrictions on switching so if anything players are encouraged to stack by the extra rewards from winning.

Obviously he did also point out a couple of flaws with the system but I still see something like this working in public… Such as the same system with a 1.2x multiplier on XP & Coins and Stats not being counted for that round… That way I can join a team that is certainly going to lose and still stats whore at the same time.

Just saw it, thought it was interesting and so posted it here :slight_smile:

(noname-) #2

Sounds pretty cool, I definitely think the team balancing needs to be addressed.

CoD (I think BO2 and Ghosts) had a pretty decent system of automatically shuffling teams based on skill level before each game. Used to work out fairly well, and players wouldn’t be allowed to choose or change teams. It also had to take into account friends playing together in a lobby.

(AssortedStuff) #3

Before we get into team balance we have to define what ‘balance’ is.
PixelTwitch has pointed out in another one of his threads, something along the lines of, the map/match should be in favour of the attacking team. Because if there is no progression there is no tension, therefore interest is lost.
So ‘balance’ in objective (stopwatch?) focused maps (the way I see it) should be either:

  • a matter of making the attacking team complete the objectives very close to the time limit.
  • or the attacking team failing by a short margin to complete the objectives by the end of the time limit.

I haven’t played Hawken but that description above sounds really interesting and something that I would really like to see in Dirty Bomb.

On the subject of team switching; sometimes I switch teams to try and balance the matches and the other day I was thinking it is waaaaaaay too easy to switch sides. And some people abuse it.
If that option is to be left in the game shouldn’t at least make the players wait? As at the moment it’s instantaneous.

I’ve also got other suggestions but these are a bit ‘polemic’ and therefore only any good for public servers; and should be left out of competitive matches. If the game was progressing either too fast or not progressing at all there are some points that could be adjusted automatically by the game, during the match, to make it more ‘balanced’:

  • spawn waiting times (shorter for the losing team, longer for the winning team)
  • the time that takes to conquer objectives (if one team is progressing too fast it could take longer to repair,defuse, etc - and vice-versa)

The rate of fire and movement speed also crossed my mind but that’s downright controversial and should be disregarded. (…I’m just leaving it here because the devil on my shoulder told me to :slight_smile: )