Fix balance, Give players XP

SkyPirate

Stacking is probably the number one biggest problem in the game right now, their are many ways to fixing this. Without limiting player freedom! the best way to do it would be to rank players and implement rules which will not allow experienced players to stack a team. I know unknonworlds don't have a lot of money, but if their is a cost free way of keeping track of player xp then forget about female marines or whatever else you guys are doing work on the core problem of this game. I love this game and always will.

SamusDroid

A bit late for this, even if it should be implemented. I doubt that would fix the problem anyways.

SkyPirate

so what the games fundamentally flawed and we can't do anything about it? It might not fix the problem 100% but will definitely help a lot, and ranking players is a good way to hook people to the game.

CCTEE

Player stacking isnt exactly a problem which is limited to NS2. Best way to fix it: sense of community and a feeling of responsibility to make the game fun for all.
The servers i play on seem to do this quite well.

shriike

What if I want to play with my friends, and we're all very high levels?

Nthao

The best way to deal with this kind of stuff is to gradually introduce small elements, for EX: instead of straight up exp points/lvls maybe Just have icons for playtime or something.

SkyPirate

shriike like if you had 5 friends all with 100 xp each vs 5 others with 10 xp each. All your friends will not be able to play on same team, you would own the other team no fun. find a bigger server.
CCTEE Not every experiences your ideal gaming experience. This isn't a game changing thing, this is just to prevent stacking owning for a more balanced game. the ONLY negative to this is have the Hard drives to store player information.

SkyPirate

oh and since its a small player base and hard drives wont be an issue either if instead of, experience like ranking, Degree ranking would work fine too, 10 degrees of rank, 1 degree for every 10 hours of game play for example.

dragonmith

I want to join aliens (I mean, who doesn't?) but I can't, because I'm too high level. Fair enough.
I go to join marines (because why wouldn't you?) but I can't, because marines has too many players.

This might be one SLIGHT problem. The only solution I can think of would be removing equal players on teams...

SkyPirate

you mean teams are like 5 (100xp) vs. 7 (80xp) and say you have 30 xp you would join aliens who now have 130xp. more likely to win, you playing is more important then game balance. this system is only here to guide players into a balanced team.

dragonmith

@SkyPirate, that means its going to (potentially) hit at max 50% of people.

dragonmith

Still, I guess it might be something to trial, and not really that bad of an idea...

CraftyBadger

I like the Idea and would work. but might not mesh well in practice. if you can't choose your side or play with a friend it just makes it more awkward. you are always going to get players that then dominate the lower xp players still. I can see this working well for randomise ready room games.

If you can have a server full of people similar exp level its allot more fun and solves the stacking issue. check out my thread let us know what you think Here no response to it yet!

MaxAmus

Not the worst idea i have heard, but also has alot of flaws, NS2stats would prob be the best way to work this, but that would mean all servers would have to install this, would not be that hard to add a score based xp to it and instead of having random ready room servers by vote can enable xp based teams etc etc making everyone happy

Hamlet

Pretty simple: Just take last round's score into account before game may start.
Because if there is a canyon-sized gap between Team A with 1200 points total while Team B only has 600 points, you found the recipe for grade A snorefests.

Of course, you gotta integrate newcomers, just assign them an average score until they have played for a full round and got their own score.
To counter the clever bastards who exploit this simple system by reconnecting (i.e. trying to erase their previous skyscraper scores), make sure to store previous points per steam ID for ~24h hours.

Oh, and comms need scores, too.
The current score system doesn't really "appreciate" their efforts. Even if you are a top of the line commander, you barely get 10 points by the end of the round.
To fix this, assign the winning comm a score of 150% average.
The other comm gets 50% average so that good commanding ability is recognized by the score system.
The criterium for being considered comm is being in the hive/chair for at least 75% of the round to counter exploits by super pro players who might hop in last minute.

Done

Frozen

Hamlet wrote: »

Pretty simple: Just take last round's score into account before game may start.
Because if there is a canyon-sized gap between Team A with 1200 points total while Team B only has 600 points, you found the recipe for grade A snorefests.

Of course, you gotta integrate newcomers, just assign them an average score until they have played for a full round and got their own score.
To counter the clever bastards who exploit this simple system by reconnecting (i.e. trying to erase their previous skyscraper scores), make sure to store previous points per steam ID for ~24h hours.

Oh, and comms need scores, too.
The current score system doesn't really "appreciate" their efforts. Even if you are a top of the line commander, you barely get 10 points by the end of the round.
To fix this, assign the winning comm a score of 150% average.
The other comm gets 50% average so that good commanding ability is recognized by the score system.
The criterium for being considered comm is being in the hive/chair for at least 75% of the round to counter exploits by super pro players who might hop in last minute.

Done

No "super pro player" is going to get in the chair at the end just for the comm score lol

CraftyBadger

I like the idea but its hard to ask people to do this. If they want to play a particular side or with a friend it might get a bit cumbersome. Could be useful for randomize ready room!

I've had a similar idea with a bit more simple solution and will create more intense games. If the server they are on is of similar skill level across the server there is no need to balance players. check it out and let us know what you think Here

Zxaber

Hamlet wrote: »

Oh, and comms need scores, too.
The current score system doesn't really "appreciate" their efforts. Even if you are a top of the line commander, you barely get 10 points by the end of the round.
To fix this, assign the winning comm a score of 150% average.
The other comm gets 50% average so that good commanding ability is recognized by the score system.
The criterium for being considered comm is being in the hive/chair for at least 75% of the round to counter exploits by super pro players who might hop in last minute.

Players that are good as Comm aren't necessarily good as foot soldiers. The reverse can also be true; I fancy myself a good subordinate but not the greatest commander. Instead, players that are decided to be the commanders of the previous round should, for the purpose of auto-balancing, just inherit their score from the previous round. If they had been a Comm for two games in a row, the inherited score would have originated from the round three rounds ago. Which would be fine; they'd be getting balanced relative to their last performance as a standard player, and standard players are usually the ones that unbalance a game anyway. A good Comm knows to drop medpacks, and an excellent one knows to research Nanoshield and what situations would require jetpacks over exosuits first. But a excellent marine is the one that goes 50:1 with a shotgun.

The Comm's score wouldn't be shown in this case on the scoreboard. It would be a number held behind the scenes. Their shown score would still be ~10, or could be the 150%/50% average if that's really desired.

Pandademic

Balancing based on previous rounds sounds nice, but it doesn't have much impact on games. A bunch of players join a server, and get randomed because it's their first round, but all the talent fell the same way. The game drags because the stompers just want frags so the server depopulates. The survivors get balanced, but half the server is randoms again. Rinse and repeat.

Maybe long term server based stats would work. But that's on the modders and the mods to develope, not UWE. The game isn't big enough for UWE to attempt quality matchmaking, you need huge populations and huge resources for that.