Remove "Auto-Team Balance" until you find a system that works and doesn't suck

Omega_K2

So has anyone see the the current implemenation of auto-team balance work well enough to verify it's existance in the first place?

I guess not, because this is how it ends up most of the time:

Teams get uneven in numbers:
A) Team X has already lost and people are going to RR, resulting in the other people on the winning team to wait an enternity to respawn. Obviously people who have played on the other team don't want to switch, cause they've been stuck with their team the entire round and changing isn't going to do ANYTHING to the outcome
This is sometime midgame, teams are fairly even, people leave for whatever reason, resultings in situations like 6v8. Now people on Team 8 will still not switch because they choose the team they want to play with in the first place, and things will even out when people join and on a semi-full server this usually doesn't take long,
B.1) You can argue that it evens it for the time when people are joining, but as for random leaves, both teams might be affected so that disadvantage for 1-2 minutes evens out eventually

Team are uneven in skill:
A) This system doesn't help at all, because it's based on quantity rather then quality.



In the end it boils down to this:
A) People won't change anyway, and only pisses them off when having them wait for several minutes to spawn (assuming your team is decent and doesn't die for while!)
It doesn't really affect the balance

Plus, if teams are really uneven, game will autococede (which is a good thing!) or people can do a Random RR vote, that forces the people into the uneven team.

Crouchasaurs

Agreed, restricting the spawn of the winning team just stretches out the inevitable. May as well get it over with and let the larger team finish them off faster.

Emoo

Omega_K2 wrote: »

So has anyone see the the current implemenation of auto-team balance work well enough to verify it's existance in the first place?

I guess not, because this is how it ends up most of the time:

Teams get uneven in numbers:
A) Team X has already lost and people are going to RR, resulting in the other people on the winning team to wait an enternity to respawn. Obviously people who have played on the other team don't want to switch, cause they've been stuck with their team the entire round and changing isn't going to do ANYTHING to the outcome
This is sometime midgame, teams are fairly even, people leave for whatever reason, resultings in situations like 6v8. Now people on Team 8 will still not switch because they choose the team they want to play with in the first place, and things will even out when people join and on a semi-full server this usually doesn't take long,
B.1) You can argue that it evens it for the time when people are joining, but as for random leaves, both teams might be affected so that disadvantage for 1-2 minutes evens out eventually

Team are uneven in skill:
A) This system doesn't help at all, because it's based on quantity rather then quality.



In the end it boils down to this:
A) People won't change anyway, and only pisses them off when having them wait for several minutes to spawn (assuming your team is decent and doesn't die for while!)
It doesn't really affect the balance

Plus, if teams are really uneven, game will autococede (which is a good thing!) or people can do a Random RR vote, that forces the people into the uneven team.

A should be solved by concede. If a team is slowly leaving because they've lost they're using the wrong button, tell them to concede (or if your teams grown up about it just be like "lol ok guys we've won lets just concede so we can start a new game").

B is really helped by the current system, 2 extra players on a team can make a big difference especially in smaller games (5v7 is a pretty big advantage to the 7, less noticeable with 10v12). At that point people either need to accept that to keep the game fair they'll have to wait longer to spawn, or they switch sides. The statement that "People won't change anyway" just isn't 100% true, some people never switch sure (I guess your one of them), others will switch and it doesn't piss them off (it's kinda fun switching sides and trying to rally the other team because you know how tough your old team were finding it).