Only YOU can prevent teamstacking!

[IMP!-6]

No further arguments here.

[Larry]

(slow clap that starts slow but then grows to a loud thunderous applause)

genius

There's a word for it but I can't remember it

[Oni]

I'm glad someone was able to better articulate the various reason scramble wouldn't be healthy for our servers.

[PaSTE]

I think that this team-stacking discussion is missing a few points, and I would like to express those now to possibly shed more light onto the problem.

(Long post warning)

First, counting on the good will of skilled players is not a stable solution to the problem. If any skilled player on the server values winning over making other people happy, he will not volunteer to join the losing team. Altruism is a nice goal for which to aim, don't get me wrong--if a skilled player is willing to sacrifice utility in order to increase the total enjoyment of all other players on a server, that person should be commended. However, this is exactly what causes the tragedy of the commons: if the total enjoyment produced by one skilled player switching to another team is divided among all players on the server, then the enjoyment that player derives from slightly more balanced teams must be greater than the enjoyment he receives from being on the winning team, earning more points, building better statistics, earning more achievements, and the like. Not to be insulting to anyone, but I am willing to bet that the skilled players who would consistently do this are a very rare breed, even among the members of this community.

Second, relying on the good will of skilled players to make a stacked-team situation more bearable does not engender good feelings from those of us who are not very good at all. It gives all of the power to change an unbalanced situation to those who benefit the most from those situations, and gives absolutely no power to those who are hurt the most.

Third, I believe the real source of the team stacking problem comes from a combination of the team-switching mechanic, the game-joining mechanic, and peak server hours. A skilled player on a stacked team will switch to the other team under two circumstances: (1) he is the first to be killed and spawn when the opposing team is down two players; or (1) he is willing to change to balance the game, and there is an open slot on the other team.

Because this is a good player on a stacked team, situation (1) will rarely happen--in fact, it will be the bad players on the stacked team who are most likely at any given time to be killed by the rolled team, and therefore what is most likely to happen is that the stacked team bleeds off its worst players to the rolled team, disrupting the balance even further in favor of the stacked team.

Situation (2) can only happen when there is an open spot on the rolled team, and if the skilled player is actively attempting to switch teams. When a team is being rolled, the players on that team are much more likely to rage-quit, opening up slots for either situation (1) or (2) to take effect. However, during peak server hours, it is very likely that a player will be in the queue to join the server. In order for situation (2) to occur during peak hours, the player willing to switch must do so after someone on the rolled team quits, but before the next person in the queue enters the game and is forced to join the rolled team, making this voluntary reassignment even more difficult.

Now for stats...

I looked up my win/loss record on gameMe. This year, I have played 849 games, wining 344 of them. I am really, really bad at TF2, but I always choose a random team when I join a server or when a new round begins, so in a world where teams are balanced, I would expect to win about 50% of the games I play. This is clearly not the case. In fact, if it were strictly a coin-flip, there would be only a 1:50,000,000 chance that I would win 344 out of 849 games. Something is going on here.

Then I looked at the number of times I joined each side: 413 RED, 440 BLU. This does not match my win distribution, so it can't readily explain my suckiness. But clearly the random button is favoring BLU. Why?

My thoughts: BLU is offense on asymmetric maps. I would expect the offense to be the team that rage-quits when they are stuck in spawn and not making any progress, opening up a spot on the server for someone to join BLU and be rolled by the stacked teams.

Anyway, I hope you read this far and now know how I think about the situation. I believe vote-scramble should be enabled, because I believe in giving power to those who are affected most by unfair situations, and not relying on altruism, which leads inevitably to the tragedy of the commons.

[Bronze Fox]

Then I looked at the number of times I joined each side: 413 RED, 440 BLU. This does not match my win distribution, so it can't readily explain my suckiness. But clearly the random button is favoring BLU. Why?

If you pick auto when the teams are even you will always join Blu if it's an attack/defend map.

[YoullNeverWalkAlone]

Part of the reason you are on Blue more is that if the 2 teams are even in numbers, the random selection puts you to Blue.

I have a 46% win percentage. If I was bad, you would think I wouldn't help my team, but should be balanced out by someone who is bad on the other team and thus be 50%. Clearly I must be so bad that I hurt my teams chances to win.

You make some good points about skilled players switching teams. What the rolling team can do that doesn't require being dead first or an open space on the other side, is to play a less favored class. last night Bishop and Damnit were on a roll against my team. Next thing I know, I'm being killed by Bishop playing as a Heavy and then a Demo. This is a guy who almost only plays medic. I've noticed raindrop do the same thing. Random huntsman sniper or gunslinger engi from him.

Since one of the things that tends to cause a roll to take place is poor class selection from one side, the really good team can try to pick a bad class balance. It is amazing how a team that was getting rolled can pick up a couple round wins in a row and all of a sudden fell much better about their chances.

In the end, stackers gonna stack.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that men of goodwill do nothing"

[BlueInGreen]

YNWA, I was on the other team during that round. I switched to sniper from soldier. I guess I could have switched to spy and been completely worthless (2000 hours of TF2... 1.5 hours as spy).

[flyingdutchman]

Paste, that was some of the smoothest logic that I have read in quite some time. Though I have very little opinion one way or the other about how the "problem at hand" can be solved, I enjoyed such a well written perspective.

[The Spanish Inquisition]

Much can be said for the modded respawn timer on ville servers. Instead of group respawn, it trickles out players at a steady rate. So when trying to counter a rolling team, going up against their push one at a time is near futility.

[Bakuryu]

The alternative is to just go to a different server, which I do a lot. As much fun as it is to change sides or try to carry a team, I get incredibly frustrated when there are multiple spies, scouts, and snipers on a team, especially on PL and CP maps. I like to have fun when I play, and to me, winning and competition are fun (and trying to kill people with the Fan o War). I'd say when I do change sides, the breakdown of the other team's scenario is as follows: 30% left d/t raging, 50% poor class composition (>2 total snipers, spies, and scouts), and 20% poor cohesion. Now, I have nothing against snipers, spies, or scouts - if they are played well, they are a viable and strong force - but more often than not, the people playing those classes are at the bottom of the scoreboard contributing about as much as butter to a diet.

[{a unit}]

Personally, I like playing against a stacked team. Poses a challenge and makes a victory even more sweet.

[black_and_blue]

If any skilled player on the server values winning over making other people happy, he will not volunteer to join the losing team. Altruism is a nice goal for which to aim, don't get me wrong--if a skilled player is willing to sacrifice utility in order to increase the total enjoyment of all other players on a server, that person should be commended. However, this is exactly what causes the tragedy of the commons: if the total enjoyment produced by one skilled player switching to another team is divided among all players on the server, then the enjoyment that player derives from slightly more balanced teams must be greater than the enjoyment he receives from being on the winning team, earning more points, building better statistics, earning more achievements, and the like. Not to be insulting to anyone, but I am willing to bet that the skilled players who would consistently do this are a very rare breed, even among the members of this community.

I'm not really convinced that it is a situation of tragedy of the commons. In the tragedy of the commons, those who take an altruistic stance are penalized. In this case, the two commodities are individual enjoyment and total enjoyment. If this were true tragedy of the commons, the player who changed teams would have to be sacrificing individual enjoyment to increase total enjoyment.

Don't get me wrong. I freely admit that winning is more fun than losing. However, tightly-contested games are definitely more fun than a steamroll. If I were to rate individual enjoyment for various scenarios on a scale of 1-10, 1 being hating it and 10 being loving it, I'd rate them as follows:

Getting steamrolled: 1/10
Steamrolling the other team: 4/10
Losing a very tightly contested match: 7/10
Winning a very tightly contested match: 9/10
Causing a team that was getting steamrolled to win a tightly contested match: 10/10

Based on this, if a player is successful at turning a steamroll into a tightly contested match, not only does total enjoyment go up, but that player's individual enjoyment goes up as well.

That said, I also freely admit that changing teams often doesn't work, and then results in getting steamrolled yourself. And then it just plain sucks.

Which, I suppose, makes switching teams more like the lottery than the tragedy of the commons.

[Bishop1342]

I agree with you to an extent Black_and_Blue. I think that it is more fun to win or lose a tightly contested game. I think though that the tragedy of the commons can come from someone making a choice for easy but minimal happiness over long term or more fulfilling (if not a little harder to get) happiness. A key example would be the city of Trenton New Jersey. Recently they have had to cut 1/3 of their Police force, as was reported in a recent episode of "This American Life", those cuts are the result of an unwillingness on city residents to be taxed further. This leads to greater unhappiness. The amount of money they would have to pay for an adequate police force is trivial. The obvious solution is to pay for the police. Yet each person doesn't want to be the only one paying the cost. Greater happiness can be achieved easily in this situation, but to achieve this happiness we need an outside agent or a critical mass of change.

The same is true of the stacked teams situation. It is unlikely that a team being rolled will become a team that can hold a close game with the addition of one of the good players from the winning side. Even worse than that, it is hard to get players on the losing side to take the very small but significant hit to happiness they get from leaving their team and feeling like traitors. This leads to a very small but sufficient barrier to change. Once we hit the tipping point for that change i.e. a few willing parties on either side, we can effect change. But getting to that point is problematic. I would suggest, with hopes that it is even possible to implement, a system where you could vote scramble, but it would require a say 2/3 majority to pass.

I would hope that such a system would allow for anonymous consent, which is a great agent of change. If it is not possible, I will still be willing to change teams; though, I will admit, it takes a little bit out of me, every time I switch off of a perfectly good roll, only to deal with a team that is losing but unwilling to change tactics.

Bishop

P.S. I really like your post Paste, it was well written and well conceived.

[MateoTheBold!]

Occasionally in the more egregious cases of unbalanced teams, I will ask in chat:

"teams might be a little unbalanced. would anyone feel like coming over to even things out when the next spot opens?"

You don't have to single out any unskilled or low point players to move to the other team and it seems like you can usually get a few volunteers to do it if you phrase it like that. If not, it at least gets people thinking about issues of balance. Its pretty rare that teams are actually stacked (in my mind that implies intent); if you phrase the question to not include the word stacked, people respond more positively.

I think the trick is to not be asking constantly, though. A lot of people would grow tired of constantly being asked to switch. Besides, sometimes imbalances correct themselves after a little while and sometimes its better to simply wait for a map change if it isn't too long.

On a side note, there's been some real gems post-wise in here. Very interesting to read. Props you guys!