But this is the situation:
Team A (8 Players) vs Team B (2 players + 6 bots)
A player from Team B start a vote to shuffle.
That’s why I think that most of the votes will fail if it depends on a fair percentage. The server should autobalance itself in some way.
[QUOTE=Ix LP xI;368619]Totally disagree. It think you are confusing BF3 with MW1.4
Multiplayer-only game, but no one is playing. SUCCESS!
Anyways, you shouldn’t have to be in a party of 8 to get an even match. If the game was popular, it wouldn’t be a problem, look at BFBC2 a few months ago when people were still playing it. Having a game not full was very rare. Look at Halo. I don’t have to be in a party of 4 to be in a 4v4 game (or 8 if playing big teams, etc.). Look at COD. You don’t have to be in a party the size of a full team to get an even match.
Brink suffers greatly from the lack of players. Add the ease of switching sides and people who don’t want to play offense on top of it and you have the perfect mix to get unbalanced teams.[/QUOTE]
Please don’t bring up Halo. Halo is headed to its fourth of fifth iteration if you count ODST, Halo Wars, and the soon to be Halo 4 Trilogy. And are even redoing Halo 1. Milk it. Not apples to apples comparison to a new IP. Sorry. Also, I’ve played many, many matches in halo with my son and my whole team quits before the match even starts in a big team match and its just him and I against the entire other team. Don’t be ridiculous. Autobalance. Not fair if you don’t want it and want to play with friends. Vote is just a way to try and influence the other team to autobalance, but if they don’t want to. Too bad for you. 
It’s not because they are a few games into the IP that it doesn’t count. It’s not because SD releases Brink 3 that it will be suddenly popular. In fact, I don’t see this IP going anywhere further, but that’s just me I guess.
Still, the fact is that the team unbalancing is caused mainly by the lack of players. A balancing system could help (by vote or automatic balancing), but people will still be unhappy about it. There is no definite solution to this problem, other than to bring in more players, which is won’t happen unless the game is F2P. Even then, it will be only on PC.
[QUOTE=Ix LP xI;368714]It’s not because they are a few games into the IP that it doesn’t count. It’s not because SD releases Brink 3 that it will be suddenly popular. In fact, I don’t see this IP going anywhere further, but that’s just me I guess.
Still, the fact is that the team unbalancing is caused mainly by the lack of players. A balancing system could help (by vote or automatic balancing), but people will still be unhappy about it. There is no definite solution to this problem, other than to bring in more players, which is won’t happen unless the game is F2P. Even then, it will be only on PC.[/QUOTE]
Games are not played in a vacuum. Even if the player base for Brink was the same as Halo (its not) but for the sake of argument lets say it is, then you are still not gonna have matchmaking that fills out a room in a team based game 100% of the time. There’s gonna be some imbalanced matches as people quit out. Remember, Brink is drop in and out play, unlike Halo which you can’t drop into a match in progress. Keep in mind: Halo imposes a penalty for quitting during a match for a reason! If you kill a certain player in Halo more than 2 times in a row early in a match, they often will quit out trying to maintain their K/D.
There are very few objectives in Halo beyond CTF or TDM. Matches can end very quickly or are set time lengths.
And like I said already, imbalance happens in Halo all the time. It’s just overlooked because in Halo, COD, those type of games, getting kills is the primary goal for the most part. Also they have a larger player base from multiple iterations over time and multiple systems, and in the case of COD, multiple platforms. You can camp in a corner and get your 10-20 kills and die a few times and be happy with the result regardless of who wins. Because of the team focus of Brink, the bots are a good solution to act as place holders.
Autobalance has a downside. If you are part of a party of friends and don’t want to switch sides. It is what it is.
The auto balance is on by default on PC in all the game modes except competition I believe.
The problem is that the game engine dosn’t seem to be differentiating Clients from Bots, so a 8 client team vs a 2 client team + 6 Bots tricks the game into thinking teams are even. When it in fact should never consider bots when doing team balance calculations.
Dear SD, 8 v 3 is incredibly frustrating and is making me and others play the game less and less. That is all.
It happens to us and within 5-10 minutes or so, it fills up. Then, if we win, half the people drop out, and it starts all over. Better playing against bots while were waiting for people to join than hang out in a lobby for 5-10 mins.
SD needs to figure out 2 main things to improve this issue and make the masses happy, IMO:
Party lobbies, so when joining a game, all the members get in without any hassle. We have a work around that is good, but of course, then we have to play a game vs bots for a lil bit till people join.
Better bot AI balancing that is constantly changing during the game depending on the situation. So the team with 3 humans, if they are getting owned, will have help from the 5 SUPER HARD bots that pretty much come close to cheating. Then, as the 8 players are getting their butts kicked, maybe a few people will switch over to even it up and level out the bot AI.
AFK auto-kicking could be an viable option to one problem I’ve noticed: Players going AFK causing frustration for their team. AFK can cause a spawn trap on CC.
Solutions instead of Autobalancing:
Party Lobby, like SinDonor said is the solution.
Better bots=more complaining.
Either way, no perfect solution, but I’d rather have bots vs having no bots and totally imbalanced matches or long matchmaking times.
[QUOTE=wolfnemesis75;369004]AFK auto-kicking could be an viable option to one problem I’ve noticed: Players going AFK causing frustration for their team. AFK can cause a spawn trap on CC.
Solutions instead of Autobalancing:
Party Lobby, like SinDonor said is the solution.
Better bots=more complaining.
Either way, no perfect solution, but I’d rather have bots vs having no bots and totally imbalanced matches or long matchmaking times.[/QUOTE]
I didn’t want better bots all the time, just when the team of 3 humans and 5 bots is getting crushed by the team of 8 humans. If Brink could understand when this was occurring and level the playing field consistently by ramping bot AI up and down when necessary, I think most people would be happy.
As it stands now, when it is 8 of us vs 3 of them on a pub standard match, we CRUSH THEM LIKE BUGS!!! It would be a bit tougher to do that if there were 5 HARD AI bots shooting at us.
I think that what people would like are:
Autobalance as an option on server (people can state whether their server is running on auto/vote/disabled this like they do with FF)
Autobalance vote (where the server option is not set to automatic) which can be requested by any player, any time when a player leaves/joins/ or map starts. Only one player can request the balance and only one vote takes place until the next player leaves/joins. Majority vote wins.
AFK Auto kicking setting, any AFK for longer then 5 minutes, gets a kick. Or just allow vote kicking by default.
Ensure servers never allow one team to have more then +2 players over the other team.
Everyone agree?
^ all except number 4. You can’t punish people for having friends.
I was playing last night, in CC - joined a game immediately became security and notice it was me and a bunch of bots against a full team of Resistance human players, It was interesting to say the least i was able to get the gate open and get the bot moved passed the gate and that was all, i got frustrated how dumb the Ai can be at times but oh well that’s old news, my take on it is if you’re not on a FIRETEAM and then yeah a autobalance feature should be place for those not part of a fireteam to keep teams even during rounds…
[QUOTE=SinDonor;368874]It happens to us and within 5-10 minutes or so, it fills up. Then, if we win, half the people drop out, and it starts all over. Better playing against bots while were waiting for people to join than hang out in a lobby for 5-10 mins.
[/QUOTE]
I understand when people get their ass handed to them and the quit, that happens and its never gonna change.
My problem is when there is a 2v2 going on and the game slowly fills up but its always on the Resistance side first.
Last night I was playing Sec Tower, 2v2. I was on Resistance and after the hack objective I noticed the game had become 6v2 for the Resistance. I switched over to the sec side, and after a heated battle for the infirmary door, Resistance got the objective. During the cut scene I had noticed that it had become 8v2 for the Resistance. In this instance there was no one in a fire team. It could have easily been 5v5 but it stayed 8v2, and eventually 8v3 for the entire match.
This is when I want auto balance!
Yes! We need auto-balance, what kronus just said happens all the time now. I’m competitive but I’m all for even and fair games, so I’ll always switch if I’m in a stacked team but most people don’t do that. It sucks to own to easily and it sucks to get owned that easily too. A vote would definitely solve the problem, but a stronger AI in unbalanced teams would help too.
this is truth. it’s quite sad to see how many people will stay on the overpowered team for an easy win. whenever i see i’m on an overpowered side whether in skill or number, i’ll try to join the other because close games are so much more worth playing than steamrolls. i love those head to head matches where you really don’t know what the outcome will be till the last few moments of the round. can i get an AMEN?
edit: ALSO, the team-switching lock at the beginning of the round, i can see being useful IF someone tries to join the side with more human players. HOWEVER, i’ve tried on several occasions to switch to the team that needs help at the beginning of a match, and it is so annoying to see the “must wait before switching” message. this is just bad design. if someone wants to switch to the side with less people, then it should let them, no questions asked. you can’t just put that “no switching” limitation over both because it doesn’t make sense. i stress this necessary change because the first push at the start of a map can set the pace/standing for the entire round.
Someone mentioned auto-balance the ones not in a fireteam is a great idea. People in fireteam obviously don’t want to get split up. People who are not in a fireteam obviously don’t mind a balanced and fair game, right?
Is it possible for SD to code this into the game?