My solution to DB's "Shuffle" issue.

(PeterComputer) #1

So, I think we all know by now that DB has a serious balance issue. Today, after thinking for a bit, I think I may have come up with a way of fixing it.

During a match that is clearly unbalanced, I always try to shuffle but most of the times it doesn’t get voted and the times it does goes through, it generally makes it even worse. Of course most of the people who refuse to shuffle don’t do it simply because they are new to the game and don’t understand that DB has a serious balance. Some though, don’t do it because “it won’t change anything”.
I ran into someone the other day who told me exactly that and it got me thinking. How does the shuffle work? How could we improve it? That’s when I got the idea.

So, imagine a 6 V 6 match with one of the teams having 1 Lvl 70, 3 Lvl 30+ and 2 Lvl 5-15 and the other one having 5 Lvl 5-15 and 1 Lvl 100. Let’s face it, the second team is probably going to lose. Now imagine that a shuffle vote goes through and the teams are scrambled.

Here’s how I would make the game balanced: starting with the defender team, they get the highest level player, then the attackers get the 2nd highest level player, the defenders get the 3rd highest lvl player and so on.

This way, the defenders always have an advatage over the attackers (as they should have!) and the teams are mostly balanced out.

This system is not perfect of course and I’d love if you could point out the flaws and suggest stuff to improve it. I’m sorry I couldn’t explain it better but I’m in a bit of a rush right now and I just wanted to write this before I forgot.

EDIT: Yeah so, I now realize that what I wrote was not that smart and that level does not quantify how skilled you are at the game. Technically, you should get more skilled as you play more but there are cheap ways of leveling up and some people simply take more time to develop their skills thus nullifying the argument that Level=Skill.

I’ll think twice before posting. Sorry to waste your time!

(blonk) #2

[quote=“seashellInspiration;33654”]So, I think we all know by now that DB has a serious balance issue. Today, after thinking for a bit, I think I may have come up with a way of fixing it.

During a match that is clearly unbalanced, I always try to shuffle but most of the times it doesn’t get voted and the times it does goes through, it generally makes it even worse. Of course most of the people who refuse to shuffle don’t do it simply because they are new to the game and don’t understand that DB has a serious balance. Some though, don’t do it because “it won’t change anything”.
I ran into someone the other day who told me exactly that and it got me thinking. How does the shuffle work? How could we improve it? That’s when I got the idea.

So, imagine a 6 V 6 match with one of the teams having 1 Lvl 70, 3 Lvl 30+ and 2 Lvl 5-15 and the other one having 5 Lvl 5-15 and 1 Lvl 100. Let’s face it, the second team is probably going to lose. Now imagine that a shuffle vote goes through and the teams are scrambled.

Here’s how I would make the game balanced: starting with the defender team, they get the highest level player, then the attackers get the 2nd highest level player, the defenders get the 3rd highest lvl player and so on.

This way, the defenders always have an advatage over the attackers (as they should have!) and the teams are mostly balanced out.

This system is not perfect of course and I’d love if you could point out the flaws and suggest stuff to improve it. I’m sorry I couldn’t explain it better but I’m in a bit of a rush right now and I just wanted to write this before I forgot.[/quote]

This has the potential to spiral into a debate that we’ve seen turn into a car crash a hundred times on this forum, but I’ll try sum it up as straightforward as I can:

Levels do not quantify skill, they more reflect experience so any system that tries to balance based on levels alone will not evenly distribute skill between the teams. It may be that distributing the levels opposite to the way you describe may encourage more objective completion as you would hope (often with disappointing results) that experienced players would know to complete objectives, but it all falls back on the same premise. At this point though the comfort factor it might give new players may stop negativity, but it won’t balance games on its own.

(nokiII) #3

The solution is to play ranked.

(AlphaUT) #4

@hypnotoad but rank is dead and down. With just gold rank, it can takes you more than 15 mins to find a match. Tried different time and different regions. (NA or EU

(K1X455) #5

Your solution for balance based on levels can be improved.

Guess who won this match

(nokiII) #6

I should’ve rather written “The solution is to abolish servers and make everything ranked based”.

The current system is unbalanceable and nothing will change that.

(blonk) #7

[quote=“K1X455;214794”]Your solution for balance based on levels can be improved.

Guess who won this match

http://i.imgur.com/6mZKbWx.jpg[/quote]

Only one player on defenders with <100 ping

Truly this must be hell

edit: i cant reed

(Nail) #8

rather than shuffle vote, switch teams, be proactive

(LifeupOmega) #9

This.

That’s on SD for not giving any incentive to play it for the average player. Double credits and a trinket at the very end aren’t a good incentive, unique loadout skins and cosmetics are. Ranked died because its easier for the average player to just jump in a pub and never think about their actions, instead of using the ranked system (which funnily enough would lead to better balance) and having to learn to some degree to rank up and get better rewards.

(SnakekillerX) #10

You can’t always switch teams (if they are both full).
Yes, you can switch to spectator and then have someone switch so you can take their spot. But this often takes a lot of time to communicate as not everyone understands how that works.

I’d love if there were on option such as “request to switch team”.
This would prompt the enemy team with a message “would you like to swap teams with player X?”

If someone votes yes, then it swaps those two players.

(Nail) #11

that would be acceptable, not sure what coding would be involved tho

(ASD) #12

forget all the level shit… this only tell you who are the farmers
but this game collect so much data and they dont use it to make even teams!
they shoud take care for whos is playing most time wich merk, with wich k/d and if he plays obj. or not etc. also they know how a good team is build it does not make sens to have 6 snipers in one team… and noone who repair or heal
for the “request to switch” feature… you will always have this “good” players wich all sit in the wining team and showing us how sports man do NOT act… they want to farm and shoot you all down at the spawn

(doxjq) #13

The assumption here being levels = skill and in return shuffling players by level = balance.

C’mon man. You know as well as me that wont work. I know level 15 players who consistently go 45/15 and focus on the objective all game while I also know many people over level 50 who struggle to get 5-10 kills in a game and do no healing or objective work.

tl;dr shuffling players by level won’t do a thing.

(SnakekillerX) #14

[quote=“ASD;214825”]forget all the level @$!#… this only tell you who are the farmers
but this game collect so much data and they dont use it to make even teams!
they shoud take care for whos is playing most time wich merk, with wich k/d and if he plays obj. or not etc. also they know how a good team is build it does not make sens to have 6 snipers in one team… and noone who repair or heal
for the “request to switch” feature… you will always have this “good” players wich all sit in the wining team and showing us how sports man do NOT act… they want to farm and shoot you all down at the spawn
[/quote]

I’m a fairly high level (100+), and I don’t do the things you’ve mentioned. Not everyone follows what you’ve written and often I find myself switching teams to attempt to balance.

Being a dick is not associated with your level. Also, if 6 people on one team play as snipers and lose, this has nothing to do with the game’s team balancing, it has to do with people being too stupid to switch to a different merc.

(GatoCommodore) #15

i hope people start realizing that we should not depends on level for luck and mood to play.
sometimes people do warm ups matches first then they can get back up to speed.

while level is currently the only scale of experience in the game, i know personally some of my tutor and my apprentices who abuse medic healing EXP on midnight in empty server in asia and sometimes australia to level up fast so they wont be judged as a noob when they are playing with me and my friends.
(you know it backfires when people shouting stacking teams)

soo… there are not really straight way to generalize the player based on skills.

(Press E) #16

Imo if anything, the attacking team should always have an advantage. If the defenders are favoured, you run into dead gameplay and sometimes spawncamps on the attackers.
If you favour the attackers, at least things progress quickly and you’re less likely to spend several minutes in the same spot.

(kopyright) #17

Maybe, but on the other hand we should try out something new instead of not doing anything at all with the current state of match balancing.

(doxjq) #18

Maybe, but on the other hand we should try out something new instead of not doing anything at all with the current state of match balancing.[/quote]

It’s all irrelevant though if CMM ever does come out, because shuffling will not be a thing when it does come out, and people can queue up in pre-made OP stacked teams any way.

(kopyright) #19

I won’t hold my breath until then, though. :wink:

(K1X455) #20

[quote=“blonk;214799”]
Truly this must be hell[/quote]

I should commit sin for this type of undue punishment. I just can’t remember how many hundreds of games I’ve done doing this. I have to admit, it didn’t always go badly though. There were occasions where it was really a close fight and even if I was on the losing team, I’m fine with it for as long as the team did their roles.

The lvl8, 14, and 23 disconnected after with about 3~4 minutes remaining in the map.

I’m all for the idea that 500c must be wagered by players who start the map and they forfeit it if they don’t finish the match. They get it back afterwards as a sort of anti-RQ incentive; but then, with thinning number of casual players in DB… I guess that’ll piss off most of the population. On the contrary though, weeding out the bad players will ensure better quality ones progress.