So, the apparent "unfair" matches.

(Faraleth) #1

UPDATE 1: OK, so people seem to be grazing over the fact that I SAID, several times throughout, there is NO way to balance pubs completely, they are unbalanced and unfair by design. My suggestion is simply to help curve it. Sorry to see you all disagree. :s

Well, this has certainly been quite a hot topic recently, that being matches that feel very much 1-sided. The most common complaint with these, is the inevitable spawn-camping. This certainly seems to be quite a big issue currently being investigated, but I wanted to create this topic to discuss more than just that.

I had an idea on how to improve match balancing (as the “team shuffle” vote/feature barely ever goes through, for obvious reasons), and that is:

Start each match with a pre-game lobby, like there is now, but with NO TEAMS on it. Everyone is simply “in the lobby”. Then, when the match loads, everyone is shuffled into the 2 teams accordingly in a balanced way.

Of course, there are some down-sides to this idea already:

  • In pubs if people join late, it still won’t be “balanced”, as some level 1’s could join one team, while some level 15+'s join another.
  • You don’t get to pick if you want to play attacker or defender.
  • If the teams are off-set by one (ie. 7 players on one team, 6 players on the other), a key player could switch teams and cause a large unbalance.

However, arguably these same issues are there in some form, in the current pre-game lobby system too. This idea is simply curve the level of “pub stomping” as opposed to stopping it completely. Because, lets be realistic, there is NO possible system in the world that can solve pub-stomping 100%, outside of pre-build teams with penalty drop outs and… wait. That’s competitive.

And that pretty much proves my point. Pub games are “unfair” by design. The drop-in-drop-out casual game mode is simply flawed, and there’s nothing we can do to solve it… but, we can definitely help to curve the rate of seeing these matches.

Perhaps some of the issues can be solved with things like:

  • When someone joins, they are placed onto the most “disadvantaged team” (albeit quite similar to how it works now).
  • You get a pre-game vote for “attacker”, “defender” or “either”, and this is taken into account when sorting teams.
  • Do not allow team-switching unless there is a 2-or-more off-set (ie. 6v4, 7v5, 8v6, etc.).

So, what does everyone think? Honestly, I think asking for something like this would be FAR more helpful to the dev team, than the constant complaint threads I see… I’m just saying! c:

tl:dr
[spoiler]Read the bit in bold. Basically, there is NO complete fix for pub-stomping and spawn camping, but perhaps a system like this will solve it.[/spoiler]

(Jostabeere) #2

You can’t measure skill. Therefor there won’t be a system that can balance perfectly or very well. Ever.
Level =/= Skill.

(MTLMortis) #3

You can quite easily formulate a skill algorithm based on level+all the other scores (combat/support/game/k:d/win:loss ratio…etc) to arrive at a skill percentage. It’s really not that difficult.

(cornJester) #4

[quote=“laudatoryLunch;63069”]You can’t measure skill. Therefor there won’t be a system that can balance perfectly or very well. Ever.
Level =/= Skill.[/quote]

Exactly level is a measure of experience, not skill. Those two often go hand in hand but not always. Besides I don’t like this in the lobby idea, I want to be able to play on the same team as my friends as much as possible. If I have no idea who is going where I cannot try to join that team before others fill the match up. If we aren’t gonna get parties for pubs this is the only way I can play with them.

(Feley) #5

[quote=“laudatoryLunch;63069”]You can’t measure skill. Therefor there won’t be a system that can balance perfectly or very well. Ever.
Level =/= Skill.[/quote]

That may be true, but me on level 1 and me on level 12 is total difference…
If I even played against myself on level 5 I would have stomped myself by 20/1 K/D… Therefore, levels play a big difference in knowing a game, and skilled player who don’t know game, would be lost in game, and useless.
For min. level 10 - skills are more important (but not everyone is level 10)

(_retired_) #6

Well, anything could work better than current system.
On public it’s basically stomp or get stomped, even affair now and then. Sometimes just the sheer chaos of number of players might make it look like the match is more even than it really is.
I have no idea why some people support such things as spawn camping next to the spawn zone that strongly discourages the newbies of the opposition team and also gives bad example to those that are on the camping side.
I guess some people are douchebags by habit and want to swing their little toyguns since they don’t have anything more real going for them in life.

The time wasted when you get just stomped let alone those when you just run through opponents are ridiculous. Then add a cheater/hacker then and there which give advantage to the other team and it can drive people nuts.

Then again I enjoy the chaos and mayhem of 6vs6 - 8vs8 matches when they happen to be more fair towards both parties.

Also if you play “team” of your friends it’s more likely you will win againts random opponents.

(Faraleth) #7

@laudatoryLunch Yes, you are certainly correct. This was also something I said in my post ^.^ As I said, simply a suggestion to think about.

@cornJester I certainly see your point with the idea of playing with your friends! I didn’t discuss it in my post, as I felt it relevant for another argument, but I see I was wrong :3 Personally, I struggle getting on the same team as my friend half the time anyway and I REALLY want a party system for pubs XD

(melancholyMural) #8

There’s also the concern of people wanting to play with each other in noncompetitive matches.

Of course, if you take this into account it makes it even harder since how would you balance teams if two skilled players want to play with each other?

I’m not adding any solutions here (actually another issue), but it’s another concern that has been projected many times within the community.

(Jostabeere) #9

[quote=“Feley;63081”]
That may be true, but me on level 1 and me on level 12 is total difference…
If I even played against myself on level 5 I would have stomped myself by 20/1 K/D… Therefore, levels play a big difference in knowing a game, and skilled player who don’t know game, would be lost in game, and useless.
For min. level 10 - skills are more important (but not everyone is level 10)[/quote]
You get now a level 1 account and a level 50 account. Will you play different?
A level 1 Quake uberpro would stomp some level 50 DB good player.
Sure, level IS experience, but a level only won’t make you play better/worse. And the thread is about balancing based on levels, not balancing based on experience. Experience is also one non-measureable factor imo.

(Feley) #10

[quote=“laudatoryLunch;63090”][quote=“Feley;63081”]
That may be true, but me on level 1 and me on level 12 is total difference…
If I even played against myself on level 5 I would have stomped myself by 20/1 K/D… Therefore, levels play a big difference in knowing a game, and skilled player who don’t know game, would be lost in game, and useless.
For min. level 10 - skills are more important (but not everyone is level 10)[/quote]
You get now a level 1 account and a level 50 account. Will you play different?
A level 1 Quake uberpro would stomp some level 50 DB good player.
Sure, level IS experience, but a level only won’t make you play better/worse. And the thread is about balancing based on levels, not balancing based on experience. Experience is also one non-measureable factor imo.[/quote]

I know what are you saying, and I partialy agree… But let’s be honest, in pub games higher level players are almost always on top of table, not just because they have higher level and experience, but because their skill have improved since early days… Also, even if that level 1 Quake uberpro joined game, he certanly wouldn’t beat level 50 (and even if he does, he would probably play TDM and not Objective). So, even if what I am saying isn’t true at all, I still don’t get why higher level players are almost always first on stats in-game.

(MarsRover) #11

You are right that in specific cases this is true. But we’re talking about the majority. There are many factors that determine overall usefulness of a player, but lets just boil them down to two:

  1. “general” FPS skill
  2. knowledge of DB - maps, weapons, mercs, etc.

Take a team A of random lvl 2 players against a team B of random lvl 12 players. Statistically, on average, teams should be equal at 1), but team B will be much better at 2). On which team would you bet?

And even that equality at 1) may not be true, because if someone sticks around to reach lvl 12 (~100h of play?) then probably he/she is at least somewhat interested in FPS, in contrast to a random person that downloaded DB because it is F2P.

My opinion is that any kind of autobalacing system should treat differently players with lvl 5 or lower (precise number is subject to change - maybe 3, maybe 7?). Statistically, on average, they will perform worse than a more experienced player.

(Dirmagnos) #12

Dont like idea in general. I usually select mercs based on what side im on.

(DMaster2) #13

Want to help against spawn camping? Put a little invincible area near spawn, where the opposite team cannot go into and you are invulnerable inside of it. That way people will think twice before trying to spawncamp.

(Feley) #14

I don’t like idea like that because opponent (who isn’t a spawn camper but is there) lose his tactical adventage of manenuvering in those places while in fight with someone. Also you couldn’t punnish AFKs yourself (I love to check if there are some AFKs to kill :stuck_out_tongue: )
Maybe that protection which you get at spawn should be longer or shouldn’t be canceled by fire… Don’t know really but yeah it would be great to have something done about that.

(Aazhyd) #15

My ideas for balancing pubs:

  • Central game server puts you in a game, you can only choose which type of game, map and what region (EU / US / AU etc). So you can’t choose your server anymore (except for private servers, see further).
  • Server decides which side you are on, you CAN’T switch.
  • Periodically, game checks on balance. When unbalanced (say 4v6 or something like that), server will autobalance, meaning a player will be swapped to the other team.
  • Private servers should be implemented. Host can decide what gamemodes / maps etc will be played. Host can also ban players from that server. Players can connect to the game through a separate list (apart from regular matchmaking).

Point 1 to 3 will mean games are almost always full and balanced in player numbers. So no more horrible 3v6 games, or people farming in servers with 2 players.

(Melinder) #16

You would think by now that people would be used to skewed games. nearly every multiplayer game in existence has a high probability of inbalance within teams.

Party systems should be implemented, maybe cap each party to 2-4 players.

In terms of the inbalance leading to spawn killing, perhaps adding an “alternate spawn” mechanic where if the enemies are in the original spawn, a random spawn is chosen that is closer to the objective, leaving the spawn campers at a disadvantage

(Ghosthree3) #17

[quote=“CamBrah;63260”]You would think by now that people would be used to skewed games. nearly every multiplayer game in existence has a high probability of inbalance within teams.

Party systems should be implemented, maybe cap each party to 2-4 players.e[/quote]
Yeah that’ll fix team imbalance.

(PogS) #18

Really, guys the solution is quite simple. Do not allow browsing in casual pub servers.

  • Have the casual pub servers only for lone players and working only with automated server choosing and automated server and team choice based on ELO etc…

  • disable the swap team functionality

That would prevent :

  • staking
  • team siding
  • players always swapping to defense in objective mode to farm XP (did i say Vassili players ?)

And if you want to play in team, then use the competitive mode where balance should be better achieved.

I know it would restrict the game experience and I first would be saden to not being able to side with my clan mates in pubs but that would be for the sake of all, so I am prepared to accept it for this reason.
Of course this only can be achieved with a good algorithm and a good anti cheat system.

(elegantRoyalty) #19

[quote=“Aazhyd;63248”]My ideas for balancing pubs:

  • Central game server puts you in a game, you can only choose which type of game, map and what region (EU / US / AU etc). So you can’t choose your server anymore (except for private servers, see further).
  • Server decides which side you are on, you CAN’T switch.
  • Periodically, game checks on balance. When unbalanced (say 4v6 or something like that), server will autobalance, meaning a player will be swapped to the other team.
  • Private servers should be implemented. Host can decide what gamemodes / maps etc will be played. Host can also ban players from that server. Players can connect to the game through a separate list (apart from regular matchmaking).

Point 1 to 3 will mean games are almost always full and balanced in player numbers. So no more horrible 3v6 games, or people farming in servers with 2 players.

[/quote]

Particularly the part about not being able to switch. as bad as cheating is ive seen far more games ruined in the post match shuffle where the second and third top scorers move after the shuffle to be on the same side as the top scorer.

(Badger_Commander) #20

I don’t like idea like that because opponent (who isn’t a spawn camper but is there) lose his tactical adventage of manenuvering in those places while in fight with someone. Also you couldn’t punnish AFKs yourself (I love to check if there are some AFKs to kill :stuck_out_tongue: )
Maybe that protection which you get at spawn should be longer or shouldn’t be canceled by fire… Don’t know really but yeah it would be great to have something done about that.

[/quote]

There’s no reason other than spawn camping to be in the other team’s spawn so luckily that situation should never exist.