Community Question: Restoring Team Balance

(Humate) #61

[QUOTE=BioSnark;406225]

…[/QUOTE]

When players make a big deal over switching, usually its with the intent of demonstrating how “generous” they are.
Granted, players that deliberately ease up on the competition may have the agenda of trying to avoid server kills, or shuffles that potentially could remove them from their favourite faction… however in my experience thats not usually the case. What is usually the case are pubheroes, being well… a hero… Is there anything wrong with that? Not really; the “generosity” is still welcomed regardless of intent if you’re a player that’s trying to avoid the pub stomp. But at the same time, I wouldn’t exactly call it being a good samaritan either. Good samaritans where I come from, dont even want a thank you. :infiltrator:

Its definitely not something that can be relied upon, no. Especially when the game is in its infancy, and players still care about their w/l etc… I still think the go to solution, is offering the bad team the option to concede the game with a shuffle.

(edxot) #62

how it would it be implemented ?

a - teams need rebalance when one team is losing bad ? like losing 1st obj in 2 min, or being unable to get it for 10 min ?

or

b - teams need rebalance when one team has 2 players less ?

from this you can see that 4 diferent situations are possible:

1 - teams have equal number of players and result is uncertain.
2 - one team has less players but result is uncertain
3 - one team has less players and is losing
4 - one team has less players and is winning

each one of them should result in diferent action by the game.

i would suggest the following actions:
1 - do nothing
2 - change player with less score
3 - change player with most score
4 - swap player with most score from winning team with 3 lowest score players from losing team

PS: in order to change the minumum amount of people (save deployables). also, the 2/10 min was given as an example and it should be adapted to the map.

(BioSnark) #63

Sorry if I was unclear. I’m saying people get a “thank you” injection from their brain, regardless of anything external. People may switch to a loosing team even if it is greeted with vocal dislike from their former team but they are still receiving a ‘high’ so, even there, it is not truly help without the expectation of reward.

(Humate) #64

No I was unclear biosnark… I mean they actually do it despite benefiting from the thank you injection. :slight_smile:
Its always about helping the person(s) than it is receiving something internally or externally.
The intention to benefit personally doesnt exist :slight_smile:

Just to be clear theres nothing wrong with ppl that expect a thank you, just explaining what a true samaritan is.

/offtopic

(tokamak) #65

It’s true altruist OR good samaritan.

//youtu.be/rywVlfTtlMY

(Nail) #66

The 3 servers I used to play on, e-t.com and chicken bucket (a little on Goat’s Bar and Grill) all shuffled when asked, you just need a solid community and decent admins

(tokamak) #67

True but that’s out of the reach of developers. All those unmanaged or poorly managed servers are so frustrating and such a waste of time that it makes a self-regulating game really desirable.

(.Chris.) #68

I would say just give players and server admins the tools to regulate the game as they see fit. Forcing an automated system across all servers seems a bad idea, by all means create something that can automatically balance the game that can be left on by those wishing not to constantly monitor their server’s but give more dedicated admins and communities the chance to do things their way.

Not really given much thought about how that automatic system would work though.

(tokamak) #69

Well it goes without saying that admins and players should have as much tools to do as they see fit.

Still. That xp-boost balance thing. That’s a really flexible incentive to maintain balance in a way that people can’t. If players can actually benefit from stepping up and making sure the game remains fair then everything else seems to become superfluous. Mind you, there’s no forcing here, it’s just a carrot dangling there on the side of the underdog.

That means there won’t be any top-down admin tyranny or mob-rule through voting. People are completely free to decide so themselves. It also works like an auction, more philanthropic inclined players will change sooner than profit-driven ones.

All of this can still happen even with voting and admin tools in place, but the necessity is driven back to the point of being redundant.

(Senethro) #70

Toka, sometimes only the game should be the game. Making players choose teams shouldn’t be the game.

(tokamak) #71

The same goes for votes and such. Then it´s the majority or the admin imposing the will on other players. That’s why (dynamic) incentives are so great, it’s completely voluntarily.

(Apples) #72

Admins, admins everywhere!

(edxot) #73

[QUOTE=tokamak;406324]Well it goes without saying that admins and players should have as much tools to do as they see fit.

Still. That xp-boost balance thing. That’s a really flexible incentive to maintain balance in a way that people can’t. If players can actually benefit from stepping up and making sure the game remains fair then everything else seems to become superfluous. Mind you, there’s no forcing here, it’s just a carrot dangling there on the side of the underdog.

That means there won’t be any top-down admin tyranny or mob-rule through voting. People are completely free to decide so themselves. It also works like an auction, more philanthropic inclined players will change sooner than profit-driven ones.

All of this can still happen even with voting and admin tools in place, but the necessity is driven back to the point of being redundant.[/QUOTE]

i can see anansi whores voting you for president

(.FROST.) #74

Best would be if there would be two specific values; the first one is the most obvious one and the easiest one to get; the players on each team shouldn’t differ more than one player.

But the more important one would be a more complex value. That would be a value incorporating the average team buffing habits and k/d- and hit ratio of a player. And since it would be a combined value it would favor every playing style. You could be a team buffing maniac, a one man army or Wilhelm Tell himself to keep that combined value up. Basically it’s the XP you’d get in Brink(or like an overall statistic value from the former stats page), but with the difference that it would be a much smaller number -like for example 35,32 average XP, or something like that- that would stuck with you “forever” and would get refined the more you play. It would be a number that wouldn’t change much and would probably be instantly quite high, if you are an eperienced player, but if you are a total noob that value would be quite low at the start, but would rise fast over time, till it won’t change very much beyond the decimal area.
Long story short: 7 Players would allways result in 3 vs 4 and to even the teams, the team with only 3 players would get players with a higher “average XP” number. For example

Player and aXP(average XP)

1=22,56 aXP
2=45,80 aXP
3=33,11 aXP
4=41,01 aXP
5=23,90 aXP
6=37,00 aXP
7=50,03 aXP

Combined aXP=253,41

The matchmaking would therefore result in something like that. 3 vs 4;
Team one is “worth” 128,04aXP and Team two 125,37aXP

Team1
Players:
4
6
7
Combined Team aXP: 128,04

Team2
Players:
1
2
3
5
Combined Team aXP: 125,37

Maybe it would make even more sense to give the team that is one guy short players with an average XP wich would result in a 10, or 20 percent higher Team aXP than the aXP of the other team, since 4 average players can also destroy 3 good players, even if the combined aXP of the two teams are even; since teams are more than the sum of their parts.

(Ashog) #75

Nothing else will work in game except of switching one player to the other team. BUT. I think the game should track the playtime of all connected players and switch the one who has been the least time connected. Not based on XP. Rather time.

(tokamak) #76

Thanks for at least acknowledging the difference between a quantitative and qualitative imbalance. Quantitative is indeed easy to solve. Qualitative isn’t.

But the more important one would be a more complex value. That would be a value incorporating the average team buffing habits and k/d- and hit ratio of a player.

Yeah or just the xp total of the entire team.

Karma whoring is not a systemic problem.

(DarkangelUK) #77

Differences don’t need acknowledgement unless you’re looking for a literacy pat on the head so you can take comfort in the fact that you used to 2 different words in the same sentence. The part you’re failing to grasp is that they’re tied together… the measures used to absolve quantitative issues breed adverse qualitative behaviours that far outweigh any problems you believe you’re fixing. Stop thinking of them as 2 separate problems and deal with them as an overall issue and we may get somewhere.

(BioSnark) #78

I’m rather tired and illiterate right now such that I may not correctly read the last four posts. Qualitative and quantitative imbalances may sometimes be tied but that is not necessarily the case.

However, are you saying that the latter should be an opportunity to balance the former? In other words, expanding on what frost is discussing about prematch automated skill balancing, player attrition could be an opportunity for an automated system to balance teams, skill wise, by calculating averages and moving an appropriately skilled player to the undermanned team. If so, that’s also a reasonable idea.

Coming from a background in Unreal Tournament and with the mods thereof that did what Frost is describing at the start of each match, and to some result, I don’t know that a consistent, complete reshuffle is altogether desirable if the game we’re discussing has asymmetrical team mechanics. In addition, dramatic automated solutions are the subject of some resentment if they don’t lead to a picture perfect balance. That’s why I think player initiation of dramatic mechanics is important. Ultimately, the player base should have to take some ownership of that responsibility.

That is the beauty of small, restricted or even dying communities that lack anonymity. The player base has to take ownership to survive and individuals can expect others to share ownership. Likely, my years of experience with smallish communities is why I think humate’s opinion of individual initiative is incorrectly harsh.

(DarkangelUK) #79

I guess this all depends on team size, but I’ve seen far too often that skill based shuffles work for a very short period and that’s it, unless you have very little player attrition. In Quake Live, if there are an uneven number of players, it will stack a few of the upper skilled players on the side with the lowest team count and use the additional player on the other team to make the overall skill level even, which is perfectly fine for that player count at that moment in time. As soon as someone else joins the server and obviously joins the team that’s a man down, instantly the teams are imbalanced again. So yes I agree, it requires the player base to take responsibility in making adjustments on the fly when the teams shift balance

(tokamak) #80

Oh I very much agree that quantitative balance is merely a symptom of the qualitative imbalance. It’s also one of the easiest ones to fix (don’t allow switching to the larger team, autobalance, rewards yadda yadda).

That’s two big reasons why quantitative balance is far less interesting to discuss than qualitative imbalance.

And I agree that skill based shuffles are inadequate.