disable team-change midgame?

(morguen87) #21

[QUOTE=thesuzukimethod;367778]The other post was simply that the bots help fill in the gaps when human players aren’t there, bail, etc. if not for bot placeholders, when players drop out (rage quit, kids are crying, have to take a ****, mommy grounded them) w/o the bots to keep up the slack, the objective oriented gameplay would absolutely fall apart. Unlike most FPS games, where the main point is to kill either everyone else, or 1/2 of everyone else…where dropping out has little effect)

It seems we mostly agree re: the bots…i wish we didnt need them…but people drop out for all sorts of reasons, and Brink could be COD popular, and you’d have a hard time just dropping people into matches as soon as another human dropped out. The bots are (or should be, and i think were intended to be) a placeholder to keep things relatively even on the objectives as humans came and went. Obviously the player base is not as big as could be hoped for, b/c then the issue would be a lot less visible.

edited to add: yeah, you should finish matches you start, to not leave your team high and dry…but if you’re playing pub/casual, who takes it this seriously all the time. some people wanna just play for a bit, and that sometimes means they have to bail mid match. i’d rather they take care of their kid/life/whatever than make sure to tough out the game just to not be a bad teammate. bots give them this option, b/c they know someone will cover for them[/QUOTE]

The reason I don’t see the need for bots is because spreading 16 players and 48 bots across 4 servers make little sense when the players could potentially all be on 1 server together and there’d zero bots. The matchmaking on consoles is all sorts of messed up because of bots.

(wolfnemesis75) #22

Remember there are many times in Brink that you are unsure of when a match will end. It could be 11pm and you are playing Security Tower and you failed to stop the Resistance at the Safe. Now there’s two more objectives, and potentially a lot more time, and may have to call it a night mid-match. Bots are great because they allow for the match to continue in a more meaningful way than forcing a team to play shorthanded or hope for the miracle entry of another human. Even then, the human is jumping in to the fray and a bot may be better anyway, lol. :slight_smile:

(wolfnemesis75) #23

I still think its an idea to Call for a Team Balance vote. Make it a vote. So if there is 8v2 then one of the 2 can call for a vote and influence a potential Team Balance. Each player can call for a vote once per match. Something like that. :slight_smile:

(thesuzukimethod) #24

Again, we still agree. when the group of folks i play with organize matches and keep inviting our friends list, we rarely have less than 6v6, and often people start up 2nd or 3rd matches b/c this one is full, etc.

The problem you’re highlighting is the way that SD determined the filters to keep you out of matches (probably ping, more likely, network path distance, possibly some combo)…so a match may be raging, but if the host doesnt meet SD’s standards for connex, you get to start your own empty match…“join friend” and chat/lobbies both help with this, but are workarounds, i think we all realize this.

tl dr - wolf reiterates my point about bots being good placeholders when people drop in and out. for whatever reason. in this way, i think having the bots is a good thing. no check that. i think having the bots is a necessary evil.

to your larger point- i dont think SD intended bots to occupy such a central role in the gameplay (or many of the AI tweaks might have been prioritized in the first place) - were there a much larger population of players, say even a 1/4 of what you see with COD or FIFA 11, you would hardly notice the bots, b/c there would always be soooo many people playing, that you would always find matches that satisfy SD’s server ping/network-distance/quality reqs, without needing to organize your own matches with friends

(SinDonor) #25

Team balance wouldn’t work without Brink silencing XBL party chat (like CoD Search and Destroy does) so friends don’t call out locations of their teammates to their party on the other team. Also, if they force splitting up parties, the party might just say “F this” and quit.

I think that idea would work on a “solo” server that doesn’t allow parties. Brink currently does track XBL parties somewhat since when my party joins a game I am in, they get auto-placed into my Fireteam. But, I don’t believe they’ll be able to implement this option until they include a lobby system like CoD, Halo, BFBC2, etc.

(SinDonor) #26

I’ll be here all week. Try the prime rib and don’t forget to tip your server.

Dude, you’re a negative nancy nay-sayer. You keep crying about things that SD should NEVER change. If they remove bots, then they’re regressing just to appease a few whiners who want it like the good old days when bot AI was too basic to play well. The Brink bot AI is some of the better AI I’ve seen, especially when compared to other MP bot AI like in BlOps, Perfect Dark Zero, UT, etc.

I love how you simply decide to ignore my valid points about why 2vs8 humans only in Brink won’t work. The game would be over in a matter of minutes before the match would even fill up.

You’re a waste of my time which means SD shouldn’t ever gonna give you a second of theirs. Have fun playing TF2.

(morguen87) #27

You’re honesty using the 2v8 as a point in your argument. You’re honestly saying bots are a necessity because otherwise games would be 2v8. Look at games without bots, how often is it 2v8? Even when it’s possible due to no team balance that might happen 10% of the time.

Instead of campaigning for bots to solve team balance why don’t we just have a team balance feature? 5v5 humans would be better than 8 humans v 2 humans and 6 bots. Bots don’t fit into a multiplayer game, period. They cannot replicate human behavior and people play online to play against humans. I’d go as far to say having to play against bots online has been more detrimental than anything because it alienates people from the game who want to play online.

(wolfnemesis75) #28

^ You have to have bots in a team based game or matches would mostly be 8v2. Once players drop out during a match, even a few minutes it takes for more players to join would ruin the experience. Bots are very necessary evil. Went through this 5 years ago in Gears 1 & 2. Less fun. If you want no bots, play a private match with 15 friends or competitive. :slight_smile:

(AmishWarMachine) #29

I kinda lean morguen’s direction on this, in that:

Forcing team balance within +1 and allowing a single bot to occupy the -1 slot doesn’t seem, to me, that unreasonable nor difficult a proposition.

(Tom12121112) #30

pardon my blatant trolling but i think that morguen guy is a CoD player and should maybe try competitive matchmaking.

(SinDonor) #31

[QUOTE=AmishWarMachine;367831]I kinda lean morguen’s direction on this, in that:

Forcing team balance within +1 and allowing a single bot to occupy the -1 slot doesn’t seem, to me, that unreasonable nor difficult a proposition.[/QUOTE]

Forcing team balance SUCKS if you want to play with your friends and not against them. If they’re gonna implement an auto-balance feature, then make it its own game mode that people have to manually join.

We’re gonna see lots more quitting if parties are getting split up mid-game in Pub Standard:

  1. A match is 8vs2, the team of 8 is made of a party of 6 and 2 randoms.
  2. Game send 3 players over to even teams 5vs5.
  3. Party of 6 loses 1-3 of their friends to the other team.
  4. Party of 6 quits to find another match where they can play on the same team.
  5. Match is now down to a total of 4 players…

Fail.

(SinDonor) #32

“Retard” is no longer an acceptable term in today’s society. Please use “CoD player” instead.

(AmishWarMachine) #33

[QUOTE=SinDonor;367836]Forcing team balance SUCKS if you want to play with your friends and not against them. If they’re gonna implement an auto-balance feature, then make it its own game mode that people have to manually join.

We’re gonna see lots more quitting if parties are getting split up mid-game in Pub Standard:

  1. A match is 8vs2, the team of 8 is made of a party of 6 and 2 randoms.
  2. Game send 3 players over to even teams 5vs5.
  3. Party of 6 loses 1-3 of their friends to the other team.
  4. Party of 6 quits to find another match where they can play on the same team.
  5. Match is now down to a total of 4 players…

Fail.[/QUOTE]
I (honestly) do see this side of it as well, which is very much why I said that I kinda lean morguen’s direction on the issue.

However, I haven’t met many people that find an 8-2 steamrolling very fun… on either side of the ledger.

I would rather even the teams, and play against my friends, than monkey-stomp the other team into the dirt playing on the loaded side with them.

I dunno, it really makes no really nevermind to me… I’ll play the game regardless. Even on the ass-whooped side of a game, I have a blast.

(wolfnemesis75) #34

^ Only way you can implement what you are suggesting and it work would either be by casting a vote or in-conjunction with forced team size mechanism. Make it so that there is a set limit to number of players, say 6 total, then each time a player joins one side, a bot is added to the opposite side, then making it 4v4. So bots are only added to even out a team. There are huge flaws in doing this for Brink, that’s why I suggested the vote cast feature for Team Balance similar to how the vote works to Join Fireteam.

(SinDonor) #35

[QUOTE=AmishWarMachine;367842]I (honestly) do see this side of it as well, which is very much why I said that I kinda lean morguen’s direction on the issue.

However, I haven’t met many people that find an 8-2 steamrolling very fun… on either side of the ledger.

I would rather even the teams, and play against my friends, than monkey-stomp the other team into the dirt playing on the loaded side with them.

I dunno, it really makes no really nevermind to me… I’ll play the game regardless. Even on the ass-whooped side of a game, I have a blast.[/QUOTE]

I am for auto-balance as long as it isn’t set ON by default for every game mode type. Just make an auto-balance game mode.

The bigger issue is that it takes too long for Brink to populate its online running matches. When I play an entire match 8 vs 0-4, I gotta ask SD, why didn’t human players populate into our game within 1-2 minutes of the game being unbalanced. Almost every other game (on XBL) can usually drop new players into an unbalanced match very frequently, but in Brink it just seems to take too long sometimes.

On the flip side, sometime we start the match 8-0 and by the end it fills up and surprises many of us. “Oh crap, we were playing vs humans?! Weird…”

(wolfnemesis75) #36

[QUOTE=SinDonor;367848]I am for auto-balance as long as it isn’t set ON by default for every game mode type. Just make an auto-balance game mode.

The bigger issue is that it takes too long for Brink to populate its online running matches. When I play an entire match 8 vs 0-4, I gotta ask SD, why didn’t human players populate into our game within 1-2 minutes of the game being unbalanced. Almost every other game (on XBL) can usually drop new players into an unbalanced match very frequently, but in Brink it just seems to take too long sometimes.

On the flip side, sometime we start the match 8-0 and by the end it fills up and surprises many of us. “Oh crap, we were playing vs humans?! Weird…”[/QUOTE]

You mean like the mighty Halo? You can’t join a match in progress in Halo. Can you join a match already in progress in COD? :slight_smile:

(SinDonor) #37

I forgot about Halo not doing that, but there are SOOOOO many games going on in the Haloverse, who cares? You’ll always find a game ready to go.

CoD you can join games midway.

BFBC2 you can as well.

Homefront you can too (but half your party gets left behind).