122 replies to this topic

[Lucier]

[HWK]HUGHES, on November 29 2013 - 06:14 PM, said:

Xacius, on November 28 2013 - 12:39 AM, said:

After much testing in public TDM lobbies, I've come to the following conclusion: A large part of the problem with the team switch is that it only seems to happen when one team has less players than the other team.  In a normal match, where both sides are full for the entire game (a 6v6 with no leavers, for instance), the game will not switch players around.  If matches are unbalanced, they stay unbalanced.

I'm not completely following what you're saying. If a game is 6v6 the entire match then why would team balance be triggered_ It wouldn't stay unbalanced, it would remain balanced since in your scenario nobody left. I think I'm missing something from your example... :/

I think what he's talking about is this:

Autobalance assigns players to teams in a way that it thinks is balanced.
One team completely steamrolls the other.
All players stay until the map rotates.
Autobalance makes the teams almost the same as before, leading to another steamroll.

EDIT: Maybe he's suggesting that, in the event of gross imbalance, teams be shuffled around even if both teams are full.

Edited by Lucier, November 29 2013 - 07:05 PM.

[Luminescent]

To expand on Xacius' post, once the game has started and a player leaves (or if the game wasn't full to begin with and players steadily join during the match) autobalance won't kick in (unless there is a discrepancy of 2 or more players between the teams). When a new player joins to fill the gap, chances are they are significantly less/more skilled then the player that left. These player substitutions are quite common (sometimes happening numerous times throughout a match) and seem to be one of the most significant reasons for a match becoming unbalanced.

Admittedly though, I don't see autobalancing occurring every time someone new joins being a good fix but perhaps a proactive monitoring system could be enacted to help deal with these situations. For example a system that monitors the kills each team makes and if it notices that there is a serious discrepancy (e.g. after a player left/joined, team x has made 12 kills and team y 2 kills) it triggers an autobalance. This way players don't need to wait until multiple people on one team rage quit in order for balancing to occur.

Now most players dislike being forcibly switched teams (hence why the F12 option was implemented) but if being forced to switch wasn't such a negative thing (switching to the losing team after all your hard work and being handed a loss for your W/L ratio) then shuffling players mid match may not be despised so much. For example if a player is switched through autobalance then the win/loss won't be counted towards their statistics. Instead there can be a new stat which lists the number of games a player has performed an "honour switch" (you could even have rewards for having a high amount of honour switches for example).

In summary autobalance only occurs at the start of matches or once several players have rage quit from one team. A proactive system could be implemented to help balance teams should it detect things are unbalanced and add incentives for those that perform the "honour switch".

[fingerknitter]

You know what would be REALLY awesome...if you guys could stop HF missile locks (and that of siege ships, turrets etc) lock on to cloaked predators...that would be great....