Community Question: Restoring Team Balance

(.FROST.) #81

Actually that’s something I’ve shown in my XP example at the bottom of my post. Nevertheless, thanks for the nice reply.

And of course you can’t keep a match entirely even, since new players are joining and leaving on the fly, but you can keep the match in some reasonable boundaries. For example; it definitely doesn’t make much sense when guys like “die Pappe”, “Nozzi” and some of the other usual suspects are all in one team in order to totally destroy their opponents. And they wouldn’t switch teams until the last player has left the match in a rage quit. Crap like that couldn’t happen, at least not longer than one match. In Brink, two very skilled players on one side are allready enough to ruin a entire match, three can totally destroy their opponents, especially when they are playing as defense.

Though the freedom to choose sides/teams, and in this regard your friends or clan-members, is also very important; a real dilemma I’d say.

(tokamak) #82

Oh right I mistook that. But yeah if you’re comparing both teams then the difference of the total and the average is the same. The advantage of comparing xp though is that it also values the player. A player who leaves with a high xp score tends to hurt the team more than a deserter with low xp.

(SockDog) #83

So if the fairest means of ensuring a fair team is a small community, where there is less anonymity and more social/peer pressure to do the right thing rather than the selfish thing. Then wouldn’t the logical conclusion then be to try methods to create this kind of environment with a larger user base?

Of course the concept of a persistent identity with socially driving ranking has been **** on faster and higher than suggesting you go sacrifice your first born. I still think this is very close to the answer to lots of gaming ills but we’ll leave where it always descends to, “people will abuse it” (like they don’t every other bloody system that exists).

So how about some nice stats instead. If the game detects a stack, it warns the overpowered team they’ll get flagged with a stacked win. This wouldn’t show up as a win but instead in a section of it’s own. Want to avoid this? Then move teams or accept a larger team shuffle until the game deems things more even.

(light_sh4v0r) #84

That would need some careful timing implemented though, you know many people on the losing team are likely to quit before the game ends.

(.FROST.) #85

True, but you must also consider the fact, that players know, that there won’t be a change after the match ends, since they know, that there is no balancing system implemented that would even everything after one round of getting raped. Most people can take losing one or two matches, but getting constantly bashed for three, four or more matches will most likely cause them to rage quit. But if there would be such a balancing system more people would stay for payback in the next round. But again, the freedom of choosing teams/factions is also a very important “feature” that I wouldn’t like to miss.

It’s basically like having to choose between communism and capitalism. The one stands for “perfect” balance and fairness, whereas the other stands for the ultimate freedom of choice. People waged wars over wich one of the two is the best system and they haven’t really come to an overall solution so far*; I doubt we’ll get to a solution, that will please everyone in this forum.

*though in real-life it seems that there is a strong tendency that people favor the freedom of choice.

(BioSnark) #86

Well, yeah. I neglected to mention this in my last post extolling the virtues of small scales. If the team sizes are small, much more responsibility is placed on each individual and, more importantly, each individual has much more significance in altering the team balance, for good or, as you note, otherwise. As such, with a larger player count, dramatic solutions, like full reshuffles or automated skill balancing mechanics, become more a necessary than a convenient option.

That reminds me of how much of a pain small teams with significant skill differences are to balance. That’s my main problem with small team scale which would be, otherwise, in my view, a more entertaining experience.

Although I can’t be bothered to defend it in this community, I agree with your repeated suggestion.

There could be fairly simple solutions such as using data from x minutes before the match’s conclusion.

(SockDog) #87

Maybe you track the stats of those matches too. DNF Losing/Winning Matches. Again this would allow you to taint other desirable stats such as W/L, a leaderboard could include the DNF stat next to the actual W/L helping to highlight people who are gaming the stats.

Of course this all relies on people giving a fudge about stats to begin with. :slight_smile:

(Patriotqube) #88

Keep teams even by not allowing more than +1 on one of the teams.

If some leaves from a team so its more than +1 then automove the person that last joined to the other team, and keep doing that til its +1 or equal again.

and allow voting for shuffle

Btw dont come up with a game that has some global stats built in :frowning: make it like W:ET so we aint depending on you guys keeping a site up for stats, like you did in ETQW and BRINK, both are not there anymore.

(TheSgtBilko) #89

We really need to get admining of servers back in the hands of server admins rather than being forced automatic stuff a’la BF3/CODBLOPS

So if not already mentioned, e.g.:

  • Option for admin to move individual players when/if needed (including moving “afk” players to spectators).
  • Option for admin to manually force a team balance after round end.
  • Being able to enable/disable any automatic options.

Thank you!

(BR1GAND) #90

[QUOTE=BioSnark;406141]Since Dormamu’s brought up campaign unlocks, the unlock system has always provided stats modifiers that solidify player and team wide advantages, as well as discouraging playstyle adaptability. Rather than again arguing that the system should be scrapped, I’ll suggest that if one team has twice as much experience as another, players on the latter team earn experience points (unlock points, don’t care about epeen score) twice as fast.

It may not be as effective but moving around a lot of players during a match is detrimental to deployable and vehicle play, class balance, cohesion and holds of strategic locations.[/QUOTE]

I too like this idea, and agree with most if not all of tokamak’s arguments in this thread following this post. It’s seamless and doesn’t stop the flow of the campaign/map.

One question though… would the XP buff continue once the XP difference was < “twice as much”? I mean as soon as just one of the winning teams players switched it would instantly cancel the effect and end the incentive to switch. I would be against leaving it in place for the remainder of the map or campaign if the teams were no longer so lopsided.

Darkangel, XP and unlocks are not the imbalance in this problem, team stacking and bad sportsmanship are. XP is just a way in game mechanics of quantifying it. And remember BioSnark only suggested it would only come into effect when the XP balance was at twice what the losing team had. That’s hardly a big game-play changer. Callvote reshuffles, automatic reshuffles, admin reshuffles and having everyone quit the server in the middle of a map are big game-play changers. Omfg get some perspective.

(DarkangelUK) #91

Yes they are, they contribute.

(tokamak) #92

Just a point of clarification: For the sake of this discussion it’s worth to keep in mind that being for and against using xp and being for and against further attempts at balancing are two different dialogues entirely.

You oppose these ideas because you don’t like the role xp plays. Therefore you also argue against attempts at making it work better. You don’t want it to work better, you want it gone, in your view this mechanic is just polishing a turd. Now that’s a respectable viewpoint but it your reasoning is coming from an entirely different viewpoint than from someone who is in favour of an xp-system and who would oppose the levelling of the xp difference for different reasons.

(DarkangelUK) #93

You may be missing the point for arguing against change it seems.

I’m very open to being convinced of a system that will work, I’ve just never seen one suggested yet and I know why that is… I’m just waiting for everyone else to catch up.

(BR1GAND) #94

I hope SD never abandons the XP system. As a former Q3 player I was attracted to RTCW by its class/obj gameplay. W:ET added so much, and imo made it a better game. The XP system was the main difference, and at that time very original and unique in a FPS. If you didn’t care for it you could always play on servers w/competitive settings. No XP, no unlocks, and very restrictive weapon/vehicle settings is a great way to play SD games, I just enjoy playing with those things activated better. To suggest that the main pub game should play more like RTCW, or more like W:ET and ETQWs competition settings, seams very close minded. To the point XP is a very practical way of measuring team balance, and effecting it.

(tokamak) #95

[QUOTE=DarkangelUK;408885]You may be missing the point for arguing against change it seems.

I’m very open to being convinced of a system that will work, I’ve just never seen one suggested yet and I know why that is… I’m just waiting for everyone else to catch up.[/QUOTE]

I’m completely getting your point and I’m respecting it. If I wasn’t then I would just be writing you off as merely being reactionary. The position that xp-system is inherently flawed IS defensible and arguable, after all, there’s many tactical shooters that manage themselves perfectly without it. However, I think being against a system as a whole and arguing on that basis should be a separate discussion from arguing against a specific part of it.

In other words, you can be in favour or hold whatever view on levelling both teams based on-xp as a means to make the use of xp more legitimate WHILE being principally opposed to using xp at all. You could still hold an opinion that xp-levelling between two teams may or may not improve the system and then still hold the opinion that this improvement is not sufficient to justify the system as a whole.

However trying to push the agenda within a discussion of a minor aspect which in turn is based on the premise that the rest of the xp-system is sound, that’s just confusing categories.

(DarkangelUK) #96

I apologise if I’m not understanding you here, are you saying that since I’m against XP as I think it causes imbalance, then I shouldn’t comment on the suggestions to fix it? As I said, I’m open to a working scenario but I haven’t seen one, so generally my comments are towards why suggestion X won’t work because I believe I see a flaw in that suggestion… I’m not simply writing off every suggestion simply because I don’t like XP.

(tokamak) #97

Do you think an xp system is better or worse off with an xp-levelling mechanic?

(nh0j) #98

If it’s a competitive match like CS:GO’s classic competitive matchmaking. Replace the missing player with a bot and open the game for a player to fill that space. Maybe put the game into warm up for 90 seconds or so so team imbalance doesn’t let one team get one up on the other. One problem I see with this from my perspective anyway is that I wouldn’t want to be entered into a game and placed onto a team that was being completely over run. Make certain requirements such as the length the game/round has already been running and rounds remaining, once more than half way through give the team the option to surrender or make do with a bot replacement.