I often see people in matches complaining when multiple people drop from their team, thus leaving their team outnumbered.
How about an a automatic bonus to all your damage for those on the outnumbered team. Say +%3 per merc you are down? It sure would make a fun match with 1 vs. 8 ha.
If +3% dmg doesn’t sound right what does, less say +1%, or is it not enough and +5% per merc down?
How about a exp and currency bonus instead? I would rather see something that would encourage the other team to switch team to balance things out instead of just a damage boost, the damage boost seem quite unfair in a way.
Absolutely terrible idea though. Seriously give this some thought, you completely unbalance 1v1s and if there are medics on the player down team they’re not going to be worn down by extra opponents. Hell if this was put in the game I would want to be a player down.
+1% , +3%, +5%… lol.
Bonus should be at least 10% per missing person. So if team is down 2 players compared to opponents, they get 20% dmg bonus(which is not that much really, considering how much just 1 player can be worth for a team, and i dont mean only damage-vise).
Even +5% bonus per missing player yelds like 1-2 points of damage on most guns, eg pretty much nothing. Gaining like 10 bonus dmg points per long burst while being down 2-3 players on team is laughable in terms of balancing. Sure, snipers benefit from it the most, but seriously, how often do sniper actually win a game… on underpowered team ?
And creds/exp compensation bonus wont work, since generally players tend to wander, one minute its 3 vs 6, and the next its 5 vs 4. How to hell do you calculate endgame bonuses this way ?
Aside of forced shuffle, immediate bonuses, either to health or damage(or something similar), seem to be the best way to go.
damage or health should not be changed it would ruin the balance.
You could adapt the spawn timer maybe. meaning less players spawn faster giving them what would week like a more even game. This should not affect competitive games though. But to give a good player 10% more, they’ll easily solo a team of idiots like most publics.
Spawn timer adjustments could work although unless the timer on the ui is adjusted people that use it would mis-time waves.
“Terrible idea” is a bit much, but I see your point.
It would have to be small enough of a bonus so not as to incentivize running a merc or 3 short. But big enough to keep the smaller team from being steam rolled.
This should kill the balance, so the team with 2-3 more players see it and think: “Damn, we can’t kill them anymore, we need to balance the teams” 1 changes teams, everythings fine again.
There is allready a credit penalty system in place, for imbalanced and non full games.
A % damage buff is a bad Idea. On weak guns this would have a very weak effect until it reaches high numbers. While strong weapons would go out of hand pretty quickly. a 3% damage increase means the Felix would bodyshot Aura and Sparks, as an example. While at the same time a SMG would see no improvement since the actual damage increase would be lost in roundings.
Would be very inconsistent.
Autobalancing (for casual) and strong leaver punishment (for competive) are better ways Imo to deal with the problematic (aswell as improving servers to minimize random disconnects).
Actually this simply does not work no matter how small a bonus is.
if player A and player B get in a fight and they are both using the same merc and are of exact same skill level. The player with #% more damage should win a fight far more frequently.
Yet, if the number is very small you end up with the situation that the extra damage makes 0 difference due to the number of bullets to kill remaining the same.
Here is one example of where this idea falls really broken…
1% more damage to Phantom means he would kill all 110hp Mercs with 1 sword hit.
12% more to a nader means her nades would 2 shot a rhino and 1 shot a vasseli
3% more to a sniper with Fel-ix would mean he could 1 shot body shot any 80hp Merc
10% more on Sparks means she could 1 shot a fragger in the head
The biggest problem more than overall team balance is this really only negativly effects the lighter Mercs (Aura, Kira, Sparks, Vas) So please think very carefully when ever you suggest any changes to damage.
[left]Yea as said here, damage increase doesn’t seem like any kind of an option for team balance issue. Encouraging balance through player’s own decisions, oh yes!
How much is this penalty however? It’s quite subtle, mysterious thing now how it works; to base fee through how long game takes in minutes, or some actual penalty percentage to everyone’s credits involved? I’m a horrible non-existent statistic abuser but would say not even 1/3rd of the current playerbase realizes this penalty. Balance issue also should be emphasized lot more server side, for example with an announcement.
Even when this penalty is already present, I don’t see it would mean there could not be straightforward reward. Pleasantness of having concrete credit bonus for physically switching to losing + player lacking team tickles with the feeling of making difference yourself and getting some kind of acknowledgement of it, no matter how small. Boosts ego in a good way from acting fair if you get a tiny medal saying “Good Guy Greg” 
I’ve never been fan of these bouncer- type of balancers going “Oi, git there!”. Often seen in TF2 autobalanced player quit instantly, which while does help with inbalance, is it really a way to go with this? They have their purpose, if no one is sportsmanny enough something has to be done about the situation. It also does occasionally separate premade pubstomp parties, but they find their way around it anyway. Autobalance should definitely be implemented, but I’d like to see first encouraging for player originating decision for balancing.
My talk here is simply about pubs, no viable opinion for competitive MM since haven’t tried it.[/left]
we are talking pubs right?
Just have servers auto shuffle all players if after a certain time (1 min?) has elapsed and the game has been player number imbalanced. ie. 5v7
Have a visual text warning flash up that the server is on the 1 min countdown to a rebalanced shuffle.
If someone changes teams before the countdown is finished: Give a small bonus in xp or credits or both in the form of an award / ribbon, at match end, to a merc who swaps to balance out the game before that time is up. Doing so cancels the auto player shuffle. Call it the “fair play” award or something
This is legitimately the worst idea I’ve heard in a long time. How about there just be a team scramble system. If you’re missing one team-mate then too bad, they should wait for lobbies to be atleast half full before starting.
im pretty sure no one is talking about one down as “unbalanced” in pubs mate.
when its more than one down ie. 4v6 or 5v7 is what most people are talking about
The matchmaking system is bad, so fix that and don’t give people crutches that don’t solve the problem.
facepalm
this is not a “match making” issue!
This is purely about unbalanced teams in terms of player numbers on each team not being as balanced as possible ie. within +/- 1 player
Please no. With damage increases it would mean vasilli’s would one-shot bodyshot you.
All you have to do is increase the respawn time for the team with 8 players, and lower the respawn time with the team with 1 player.
Tweak the values to make it fair, obviously. But that 1 player should be able to at least push out of spawn and keep the fighting out of the spawn.
Right now, the game only lowers the respawn time of the team with 1 player. How does that make any sense to that player? That’s just cannon fodder for the team with 8 players. He can spend 30-50 seconds trying to kill everyone in his spawn, but they just respawn back quicker than he can kill them.
This is already in the game. If the teams are off significantly then there is a credit penalty applied. Same if there isn’t enough players on the server as well. This is to keep people from farming.
[quote=“triteTongs;48533”]All you have to do is increase the respawn time for the team with 8 players, and lower the respawn time with the team with 1 player.
[/quote]
Superb solution.
So that team that is alredy at disadvantage and, in most cases, get owned(often to the point of being locked on their spawn) could spawn faster and get owned more rapidly, allowing players in stronger team to farm kills even faster.
Spawn, die, spawn, die, spawn, die…
Will surely fix all the problems with uneven teams and give huge motivational boost for players on weaker team to play instead of quitting.
/sarcasm off