come on! level has very little to do with how a person is playing.
You can have a person at lvl 15 who will get owned by an ET veteran at lvl 5.
Sure; the first few levels (1-6) probably mean the player doesnt know the game very well. Further up you go the less the level matters - Anything past 8-10 is up to the player’s individual skill.
My worry is if the game isn’t even taking level into account then what is it doing? The fact remains most games end up one sided currently. The game is great when it doesn’t. Also check the k/d’s in those examples above.
It’s not doing anything of course. How could it? There is no queue, people are put into teams as soon as they join the server. For any balancing to happen, there would either have to be a queue (not going to happen) or a shuffle at some point. It does shuffle when a new map starts, but that doesn’t take balancing into account yet I believe. Even if it would it wouldn’t matter, since so many players leave between the rounds.
The designers will have to come up with something smart here. The shuffle vote clearly was a failure, since the number of times I have seen it succeed so far is exactly zero. Making it easier to pass or at least easier to notice would be one thing you could do, but frankly I’m not sure if shuffle votes will be enough. If players would be really keen on these, then they would try harder to make it work I think.
[QUOTE=Zenity;526592]It’s not doing anything of course. How could it? There is no queue, people are put into teams as soon as they join the server. For any balancing to happen, there would either have to be a queue (not going to happen) or a shuffle at some point. It does shuffle when a new map starts, but that doesn’t take balancing into account yet I believe. Even if it would it wouldn’t matter, since so many players leave between the rounds.
The designers will have to come up with something smart here. The shuffle vote clearly was a failure, since the number of times I have seen it succeed so far is exactly zero. Making it easier to pass or at least easier to notice would be one thing you could do, but frankly I’m not sure if shuffle votes will be enough. If players would be really keen on these, then they would try harder to make it work I think.[/QUOTE]
Actually, I missed the whole shuffle vote thing…need to figure out how to do that.
Here’s an idea… once a player hits a certain level, such as level 4… they get a one-time pop up when they load up the game again, letting them know about the shuffle vote feature.
(Don’t have it pop up the very first time they play the game, because you want to limit the amount of information they need to intake at once.)
I’ve talked about it earlier in this thread.
The sort-by-skill happens at the beginning of lobby, after which people join&quit, and rotate amongst the teams. Add to that highly polarized skill levels in the game, and you get an explosive mix of stacked games. Esp. in Dirty Bomb where one dedicated - and good - medic can save the entire team. Moreover, skill differences accumulate very quickly as better team tends to have flanks opened up on their opponents, leading to even more #getrekt. e.g. trainyard 1st obj is very vulnerable to stacked teams, and offense can get completely locked down.
Hopefully, lobby would only be active after map loading, and map vote right after the end of the map previous. But you still have the HUGE problem of more people joining the game. If an 8v8 server starts the map with 5v5 (which is very typical), the next 6 people that join will determine the outcome of the game. one good player for one team vs. one poor player => stacked teams.
Advantages of lobby-after-map
a) more streamlined approach to lobby (no need for two lobbies before&after map like right now)
b) people that quit the game after the previous map will quit before the next game considers them in the shuffle by skill
c) if the map is already loaded people can play around in warmup, while others change their loadouts, etc.
d) shuffle by skill can happen after everyone to be playing is present.
I’d also reconsider the approach on having people adjust their loadouts to their teammates. I think close skill levels of both teams are much more important to satisfactory game experience than how many medics/slayers/fopses/engies you have in your team. (Team collective skill > team’s balanced composition )
a) very few people pick their mercs based on what their teammates have
b) even if you do want to adjust, you still don’t have any knowledge or control over which mercs from the 3 the particular player will play. You might see 5 people including Proxy/Bush in their rooster, so you don’t pick engineer, only to find out that none of those players will switch to an engy
c) close aim-skills between the two teams = good game.
The problem for many people to get their head around is the so called ‘teamplay’ or lack of it in pubs. The truth is that how much teamplay there is in game has very little to do with people’s desire for it, but rather their ability to do so = skill.
Whenever a team gets stomped, players from that team will complain about no teamplay in their team. What really happens is actually very simple:
a) people shoot
b) weaker players die
c) dead players can’t give ammo/health/support
d) -> no teamplay
Sure, you can have a medic that will dedicate itself to keeping everyone at 100%, reviving as they go. But if you happen to come about a medic like that, chances are they are also really good/decent with aim. Since large part of aiming in this game has to do with gamesense, teamplay goes together with the player’s individual performance.
Rather than expect people to learn how to setup crossfires, and cover each other as they advance, its better to expect everyone to be just as clueless, and it just so happens that better aimers will win you the game.
[QUOTE=Zenity;526592]It’s not doing anything of course. How could it? There is no queue, people are put into teams as soon as they join the server. For any balancing to happen, there would either have to be a queue (not going to happen) or a shuffle at some point. It does shuffle when a new map starts, but that doesn’t take balancing into account yet I believe. Even if it would it wouldn’t matter, since so many players leave between the rounds.
The designers will have to come up with something smart here. The shuffle vote clearly was a failure, since the number of times I have seen it succeed so far is exactly zero. Making it easier to pass or at least easier to notice would be one thing you could do, but frankly I’m not sure if shuffle votes will be enough. If players would be really keen on these, then they would try harder to make it work I think.[/QUOTE]
Consider this group of players who are joining a pub objective mode server one at a time (there is currently no queuing system but that isn’t really relevant to this issue). Note that for comp none of this is relevant of course as the teams are deliberately ‘stacked’ ;).
Uberplayer - Level 10 joins (for arguments sake let’s stick to ‘level’ as an over time skill rating for the player to avoid the ‘level isn’t the be all and end all’ arguments. In reality it would be honed via gathering stats on the matches the given player has played over time via the ECHO system).
Noob - level 1 joins - he is placed in the other team as its empty.
Another level 10 joins - currently she’s placed in a random team. Instead place her in Noob’s team as his team currently has the lowest total skill rating.
More players join, dynamically shuffle the teams as they do to maintain a balance of overall skill rating.
Remove the ‘JOIN’ buttons at this stage (per server setting so that scrims etc. can still work) to prevent stack swapping (though to be honest this doesn’t happen much at least in the lobby from my experience - most of the time you can’t swap as the JOIN buttons are greyed out). This may be strange for players who may be swapping around while the countdown ticks away but if the sides are regarded as temporary stacks rather than concrete sides at this point it would make more sense.
After the match starts is a bit more tricky. The current shuffle vote system doesn’t work (and it never did in ET:QW either as too many people needed to vote and not enough did). I also find I can’t vote as the F1/F2 keys don’t work.
[QUOTE=Szakalot;526606]I’ve talked about it earlier in this thread.
The problem for many people to get their head around is the so called ‘teamplay’ or lack of it in pubs. The truth is that how much teamplay there is in game has very little to do with people’s desire for it, but rather their ability to do so = skill.
Whenever a team gets stomped, players from that team will complain about no teamplay in their team. What really happens is actually very simple:
a) people shoot
b) weaker players die
c) dead players can’t give ammo/health/support
d) -> no teamplay
Sure, you can have a medic that will dedicate itself to keeping everyone at 100%, reviving as they go. But if you happen to come about a medic like that, chances are they are also really good/decent with aim. Since large part of aiming in this game has to do with gamesense, teamplay goes together with the player’s individual performance.
Rather than expect people to learn how to setup crossfires, and cover each other as they advance, its better to expect everyone to be just as clueless, and it just so happens that better aimers will win you the game.[/QUOTE]
+1. This is the main reason for the stacking currently but it tends to go hand-in-hand with player level I’ve found - the more people play the more they realise they need to stick together etc. etc. Of course this is a lot harder to measure but should be possible with enough heuristics. I made a post about this a while back regarding measuring a player’s rating in conjunction with their performance with other players as a metric for calculating team balance. e.g. 'Player A and Player B when they play together win 80% of the time, Player C and Player D together only win 20% of the time, put A and C on team 1 and B and D on team 2.
You will get the odd ex ET pro player popping in at level 1 but their ranking will become more accurate over time (they also probably won’t stay at level 1 for very long ;)).
there is also an e):
e) The losing team won’t stick together but run off solo and get killed. It’s very frustrating when the team I’m on does that :(.
[QUOTE=Violator;526636]
e) The losing team won’t stick together but run off solo and get killed. It’s very frustrating when the team I’m on does that :(.[/QUOTE]
I think this is all about map desing.
Imagine a big house where defenders camp in, and attackers want to capture this house.
It’s obvious that you can’t capture that house alone, so you stick with your team.
If there is no house defenders run around, counterpush, spawnkill etc. and that leads to the deathmatch feeling and running around alone.
I don’t see houses in the current maps, but houses are needed to encourage teamplay on both sides 
[QUOTE=Humbugsen;526639]I think this is all about map desing.
Imagine a big house where defenders camp in, and attackers want to capture this house.
It’s obvious that you can’t capture that house alone, so you stick with your team.
If there is no house defenders run around, counterpush, spawnkill etc. and that leads to the deathmatch feeling and running around alone.
I don’t see houses in the current maps, but houses are needed to encourage teamplay on both sides :D[/QUOTE]
The varying speeds of the different mercs (which is a good thing otherwise) also makes it harder to stick together (Proxy and Fragger for instance who are both front-line mercs but have a vast movement speed difference).
true, I think HP and speed should be brought closer together overall. It’s not balanced.
what do you mean its not balanced? someone’s speed/hp is OP?
I like the variety of speeds and HPs, I think it adds to the different feel for each merc.
[QUOTE=Szakalot;526646]what do you mean its not balanced? someone’s speed/hp is OP?
I like the variety of speeds and HPs, I think it adds to the different feel for each merc.[/QUOTE]
I think it’s not balanced because it depends on the weapon you use.
If i take the blishlok as sawbonez, fragger is easier to kill than proxi, because it has low fire rate but high damage
if i take the default weapon it’s the other way.
At least for my “aimskilllevel”, it just depends on so many factors, thats why i think its unbalanced
??
Balanced =/ the same.
Balanced means that pros&cons for one thing are comparable to pros&cons for another thing.
If both guns are viable (SMG9 & Blishlok) but perform differently against specific opponents (light vs heavy), well that is by definition well balanced weapon system.
People are running a lot of light merc? get AoE and high RoF weapons.
Lots of heavy-duty guys? Pick frontloaded guns: Dreiss AR and snipers.
[QUOTE=Szakalot;526653]??
Balanced =/ the same.
Balanced means that pros&cons for one thing are comparable to pros&cons for another thing.
If both guns are viable (SMG9 & Blishlok) but perform differently against specific opponents (light vs heavy), well that is by definition well balanced weapon system.
People are running a lot of light merc? get AoE and high RoF weapons.
Lots of heavy-duty guys? Pick frontloaded guns: Dreiss AR and snipers.[/QUOTE]
they can switch their merc anytime, but i can’t switch weapons.
i can switch merc too yes and that will help until the enemy adapts again.
it just doesn’t make sense to balance a shooter like this if you ask me
There seems to have been a increase in old ET players of the past few weeks. Either they just got keys or they are coming back to give it a try. Literally people that I have had on Stream for 10 years are coming around and its great.
Pubs however are a little crazy. One map shuffle put all 5 of us on the same team. To keep people from /quitting on the other team I called pistols only for us and it actually worked. We ending up completing the map on attackers and then nearly full held first stage.
It was interesting to hear feed back on the pistols for once and also how boring it got for some people… Even though there was some skill involved with using a pistol against a dude that is trying and still beating him you felt bad after awhile. PLUS, the fact that we still used abilities was what really gave us an advantage. I had my turret with a pistol and still felt crazy effective.
Stacking: I feel it should be done after the Map is selected and right before it loads. I know this is a lot of coding but it is the best way.
LIST: (Or Small Boxes)
List with our Icons
List could be interactive to check player stats
List could bring up the mercs last 5 matches
List could add the person as a friend
List could take you to that person profile with out leaving that pub list.
Players can also select their 3 mercs with out anyone else knowing and once the map is voted on and its about ready to load BOOM! Teams are arranged by skill!
I still only use the server browser so if you rename some servers Beginner or Advanced that would be great. As stated before I would like advanced to have collision and FF on!
One of the issues of the team sorting is due to when it sorts and not how. When a map is over, and everyone stays on and nobody manually switches team the sorting is pretty OK. However, that is a rarity. What happens is the sorting happens at the start of a new map but people then drop. New people are added but they seem to be added based on slots needed to be filled (2 or 3 could drop from one team…usually the losing one). All the new players will go to the new side that is short players regardless of skill level.
What needs to happen, and this would help avoid pub stomping by players stacking with each other, is the sort needs to happen right before the map starts or even as the map starts while in the warm-up phase. It will suck if you want to play on the same team as your friend/friends on voice coms but it will make for a better overall pub experience for everyone involved.
I’m still all for 5v5 unranked and 5v5 ranked and no more pubs personally. 5v5 unranked allows you to queue with friends but the system does the sorting for teams to keep people from getting pub stomped. 5v5 ranked lets you for a 5man (or fewer) team and stay on the same team. The game will be better balanced and a more consistent experience in my opinion.
[QUOTE=Humbugsen;526654]they can switch their merc anytime, but i can’t switch weapons.
i can switch merc too yes and that will help until the enemy adapts again.
it just doesn’t make sense to balance a shooter like this if you ask me[/QUOTE]
its a class based shooter, not sure how else do you want to balance it.
My favorite thing is people who are trying to populate a server and are also stacking and spawn camping. Pure gold.