TV1 and team balancing

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BisonJerk
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TV1 and team balancing

Post by BisonJerk » Wed Aug 03, 2011 11:51 am

I've played a few times on TV1 recently and found that the teams lose balance very easily there. I repeatedly saw sessions where one team's players had double the points of the opposing team players. In these sessions the lower points team often had multiple players quit, compounding the issue by making the team weaker and forcing new player to join that team.

I know that this issue is not unique to TV1, all of the servers here have intermittent team balance problems, but the 32 player nature of TV1 seems to be enlarging the issue.

I've read through a few of the threads that discuss team balancing on the servers, and have to say I'm a little bit disappointed in the responses. I feel like there is a little bit of complacency toward the issue here, and want to ask why a !vote system hasn't been implemented to initiate team restructuring. I've played on a number of other servers (and can provide server addresses) where a !votescramble was reasonably effective. I think that TV1, and all of the other TV servers, could benefit from an addition like this.

I personally feel that team imbalance pops up way too much. Over the last year I've been on both sides of it. I tough it out when I'm on the losing side, and I switch when I'm on the winning side. I've asked people to switch teams when there is imbalance, usually to no avail. It can be very frustrating to play through 2 maps in a row on an underpowered team, and has almost driven me to switch servers. I've put a lot of time into theville this year, and this issue is slowly, slowly causing me to want to leave.
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Re: TV1 and team balancing

Post by TheCarpe » Wed Aug 03, 2011 12:05 pm

The problem with scrambles is that they reset the map timer. When a team is being beaten down on a map, a scramble (which may or may not resolve the issue) results in another 30-40 minutes of a map most of the server is likely ready to move on from. Scrambles have a track record of killing servers more than evening them out.

It's not that we're complacent to the issue, it's just hard to police. There's no magic bullet for stacking. If it gets bad, call in an admin to restructure, though the issue tends to resolve itself on map changes. If there is a group of players who always play together that is exacerbating the issue, let us know in a complaint ticket or PM so we can keep an eye on them and/or dispense punishment if necessary. At the end of the day, 95% of the time, one team is going to play better and perform better than the other team. It's just the nature of the game.
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Re: TV1 and team balancing

Post by MasterChef » Wed Aug 03, 2011 12:10 pm

The problem in my mind anyway for votescramble, in addition to what Carpe said, is that people will end up abusing it. I've been in too many games where people cry stacked teams, when really, they just lost.
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Re: TV1 and team balancing

Post by Boss Llama » Wed Aug 03, 2011 12:13 pm

As Carpe said, scrambles are double-edged swords, and usually cause people to quit as well (without guaranteeing results).

As for the vote system, it is sadly prone to abuse. I see people attempt to trigger a !votescramble on a regular occasion at blatently absurd points. A single loss, one well fought point, even simply being delayed for 5 minutes while attacking regularly result in people crying "stack" and trying to trigger a vote scramble. Worst example of this recently was a member of the team opposite mine trying to trigger a scramble after being beaten on the final point of Dustbowl 3, despite his team winning the previous 2 offenses and holding us the previous 2 defenses. His argument was that we were clearly stacked because they didn't win.

Times I'm called in to the server for scrambles or stacks are usually more a matter of one team not working together rather than one team being stacked. If Side A is running 3 snipers, 2 spies, and no medics against a balanced Side B, that doesn't call for a scramble - that just calls for sanity. I know stacked or uneven teams do happen sometimes, and I'm perfectly willing to take action then, but 9 times out of 10 the issue isn't one that should be solved with scramble.
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Re: TV1 and team balancing

Post by BisonJerk » Wed Aug 03, 2011 12:57 pm

Ok, what Carpe said about map timers does mean that implementing scrambles on the rotation servers would be problematic.

Let me ask about the other side of this problem then. As I said earlier, playing on TV1 I often see people dropping from the server that are on the "underpowered" team. This usually means that the underpowered team then receives all of the new joins to the server, as players are forced to join that team due to roster sizes.

I think that once this happens we enter a slippery psychological slope with players. I know I for one groan when I join a team with multiple 0 point players when the opposing team's lowest point player is 10+.

Is there something you can recommend we do that would even the teams out so that the new players aren't forced into the underpowered team, and thus just quit themselves?

Example: Underpowered team has 12 players, Opposing team has 16. All new players are forced to join underpowered team.


edit: mistyped something
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Re: TV1 and team balancing

Post by TTHREAZ » Wed Aug 03, 2011 1:29 pm

Not really. Unfortunately, you'll see the "I'll join spectator and wait out the auto-balance so I can rejoin the winning team" strategy a lot. Unless an admin is there and notices a pattern of this behavior, there isn't much you can do unless you PM one of us and explain the situation.

Trust me, it irks us when we see people doing this and we're apt to do something about it.

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Re: TV1 and team balancing

Post by TheCarpe » Wed Aug 03, 2011 1:48 pm

Absolutely. Someone who gets autobalanced, switches to spec and either waits for someone to join or worse, lets someone else get autobalanced in their place, so they can return to their team is probably in my top three admin pet-peeves, and I will usually not hesitate to kick someone for this behavior.
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Re: TV1 and team balancing

Post by THE Flying chihuahua » Wed Aug 03, 2011 1:55 pm

TheCarpe wrote:Absolutely. Someone who gets autobalanced, switches to spec and either waits for someone to join or worse, lets someone else get autobalanced in their place, so they can return to their team is probably in my top three admin pet-peeves, and I will usually not hesitate to kick someone for this behavior.
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Re: TV1 and team balancing

Post by Dirty Dan » Wed Aug 03, 2011 1:59 pm

Yeah there's been a lot of discussion of this in the past. I will say I agree that I'd prefer a lower player count for both gameplay and performance issues, but that too has been debated for a long time.

I'll repeat what I've said about team balancing though.

1. Like Chef said, teams just lose, it doesn't mean there's a balancing problem necessarily.

2. It's simply hard to field competitive teams in a pub setting, if you're on a struggling team the best thing you can do is talk and coordinate. An average skilled team that coordinates their pushes & medics can crush a team of skilled "fraggers" who are just off on their own killing.

There's too many variables involved for admins to regularly get involved and alter teams, though if there's deliberate stacking that's another issue.
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Re: TV1 and team balancing

Post by TheCarpe » Wed Aug 03, 2011 2:05 pm

THE Flying chihuahua wrote:
TheCarpe wrote:Absolutely. Someone who gets autobalanced, switches to spec and either waits for someone to join or worse, lets someone else get autobalanced in their place, so they can return to their team is probably in my top three admin pet-peeves, and I will usually not hesitate to kick someone for this behavior.
I'll be a man and admit I've done this before.
Don't.

Autobalance is there for a reason.
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Re: TV1 and team balancing

Post by Fano » Wed Aug 03, 2011 2:14 pm

The fast respawns on theville also highly favor the defensive team, so if you're playing on a payload map or a map like dustbowl or gravelpit then red will have a clear advantage, sometimes the teams aren't actually that unbalanced in terms of skill, people are just respawning too fast on the defense for the offensive team to take advantage of key picks and make a push, you'll notice this quite often if the game grinds to a halt when either team gets stuck trying to push the same point when it's their turn on offense. You see it quite often on gravelpit B or the second point of Badwater.

There isn't much one can do to counterbalance this besides removing the plugin but people have already responded harshly when I made that suggestion so I won't do it again.
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Re: TV1 and team balancing

Post by Dirty Dan » Wed Aug 03, 2011 2:19 pm

[TOAD] Fano wrote:There isn't much one can do to counterbalance this besides removing the plugin but people have already responded harshly when I made that suggestion so I won't do it again.
More coordinated pushes and teamwork as I suggested.
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Re: TV1 and team balancing

Post by Fano » Wed Aug 03, 2011 2:25 pm

Dirty Dan wrote:
[TOAD] Fano wrote:There isn't much one can do to counterbalance this besides removing the plugin but people have already responded harshly when I made that suggestion so I won't do it again.
More coordinated pushes and teamwork as I suggested.
I meant to counterbalance the disadvantage introduced by faster respawns to the offensive team on A/D maps, of course more coordinated teamwork will win any game, that's much easier said than done however.
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Re: TV1 and team balancing

Post by Eggers » Wed Aug 03, 2011 3:06 pm

If people wanted to play more for fun rather than winning this probably wouldn't be as much as an issue. I would assume on TV1, the other rotation servers and the Dustbowl server there can be a lot of new people or people that join randomly. I believe that it should be taken upon some of the more regular people on the servers to balance the teams out. I see this regularly especially on the 24/7 Dustbowl server. The better players really have a much bigger impact on imbalance in a game, so if you join a server and are put on the underpowered team help lead them to victory :D. I've never liked votescrambles and always preferred trying to believe in the goodness in people :)
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Re: TV1 and team balancing

Post by Bakuryu » Wed Aug 03, 2011 3:17 pm

Nobody joins a game and says, "Boy I hope we get rolled!" Winning is fun, so is losing when it's actually a battle and not a slaughter.
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