This happens literally almost every game you play, lol. You will honestly have to play over 10+ matches to get 1 decent or good one, and you will be lucky to get one good match all night. It's all boring team stack all night the majority of the time. There are a few times server admins are on and we do a pick teams/captain thing which usually leads to some fun games.
And that skill level meter they added to the server browser is completely useless and misleading. Sound familiar to something else on the server browser? Oh, you already mentioned it, the rookie tag! Then we have another lovely feature, voting random teams. Great idea, poor implementation. Why? Because everyone stacks the team they want before the vote passes, and even when that doesn't happen, the random option stacks the teams half the time, lol!
Not sure I agree with this. Stomps happen, but in my experience, the better players tend to be quite vocal on voice chat, and they aren't too fond of stacked games either. Stacked games typically end quickly, with little enjoyment to be had by either side, because the losing side often concedes so the teams can be shuffled.
I've never seen a good player voice concern over stacked teams in over 600hrs of play, lol. It's always the opposing team that's getting rolled complaining about it. And stacked teams rarely end quickly. They love running around just killing everyone and padding their kdr and never push to finish the game in my experience.
Whenever I'm commander and my team is stacked I always tell them to push the enemy and just end it quickly to start a new proper round and they rarely listen. They want to be med pack spammed, they want their upgrades and jetpacks, and if they don't start getting them they'll eject you, lol!
edit: just played a few rounds and this just literally happened 4 games in a row on luckyfkers, same people stacking round after round rolling the other team. People complained, and the stackers trolled them. lol gotta love this game.
dePARAJoin Date: 2011-04-29Member: 96321Members, Squad Five Blue
edited October 2013
After killing the 1st dropped harvester in one game today the aliencom was calling: "stacked teams again".
If one marine is enough to have an stacked team, well, we all should play chess.
No system on earth can balance ground skulks walking in one by one, ground lerks, walking fades and coms never dropping any meds or ammo.
It feels like 80% of the players have no clue what they have todo as alien.
Two half competent marines playing together via TS seem to be enough for these alien-players to call stacked teams.
This transform into the same hysteria like the "Oh god, cheater everywhere"
And a ground-skulk is a ground-skulk on a matchmaking-server also, so dont expect to much from a system like that.
Stacking has and will be a feature of NS for as long as the the underlying system of team formation remains unchanged:
1. Tab showing which player joined which team
2. Players have choice which team to join
There could well be a lot of creativity introduced to make team formation different: A nominated captain for each team who then take turns drafting players for example.
As long as I get to pick what team I can join and I can see who joined which team I am going to join the winning team. I'm sorry this is basic human nature. Asking people to do otherwise and saying they're "unethical" when they don't betrays a lack of understanding of the word. Even though I sometimes try to join the losing team, I am not going to complain about skill stacking.
People joined a server to play, they have obligations to be civil and not do trolly things, sure, but that obligation does not extend to which side they must join.
In short, it's their freedom to play which side they want, especially if they want to play with friends, or if they prefer having perceived competent teammates (even if those are the ONLY competent teammates).
To change this, the system has to be changed. Either introduce some other form of team formation like I suggested above, or tell UWE to roll out that organised play system quicker.
had the same conversation with several old school ns1 players the other night, good to see this thread. I came up with a solution, this is strictly for pub and it's up to the server admins whether to implement this feature server side or not:
Put in a buff/debuff system similar to what we always had in co maps. If your KDR is too high, you deal less damage and receive more damage based on how high your KDR is, and vice versa for players with lower KDR.
Eg, if a guy has 38/6, he's obviously dominating, so the server side would adjust the debuff to 6:1 and he would deal 1/6 the damage and receive 6x as much. If he was doing the opposite 6/36, server side would adjust the buff so he deals 6x the damage and receives 1/6 as much. The ratio is entirely up to the server admin to adjust. Players with buff/debuff would have either a +6 or -6 icon next to his/her name to indicate skill level.
After killing the 1st dropped harvester in one game today the aliencom was calling: "stacked teams again".
If one marine is enough to have an stacked team, well, we all should play chess.
True, the term "stacking" gets overused a lot. I always cringe when I hear RR complaints that "people are stacking marines/aliens again" only because more people want to enter that team, regardless of actual skill stacking (which the OP is talking about).
had the same conversation with several old school ns1 players the other night, good to see this thread. I came up with a solution, this is strictly for pub and it's up to the server admins whether to implement this feature server side or not:
Put in a buff/debuff system similar to what we always had in co maps. If your KDR is too high, you deal less damage and receive more damage based on how high your KDR is, and vice versa for players with lower KDR.
Eg, if a guy has 38/6, he's obviously dominating, so the server side would adjust the debuff to 6:1 and he would deal 1/6 the damage and receive 6x as much. If he was doing the opposite 6/36, server side would adjust the buff so he deals 6x the damage and receives 1/6 as much. The ratio is entirely up to the server admin to adjust. Players with buff/debuff would have either a +6 or -6 icon next to his/her name to indicate skill level.
So people would have to hold back playing well to stay at a proper damage ratio? Come on, that's ridiculous.
Put in a buff/debuff system similar to what we always had in co maps. If your KDR is too high, you deal less damage and receive more damage based on how high your KDR is, and vice versa for players with lower KDR.
This has been suggested before, and I think it's a good idea. But the debuff should be applied to damage output only, not to damage received. Being insta-killed by stray shots/bites/etc would make the game very un-fun for most players, even when they are skilled.
Also, I think the debuff strength should be waaaaay lower than the 1:6 you suggested... for example, lowering damage output by something like 30-50% should have a huge impact already. Obviously, the proper numbers need to come from testing, and they should scale with the skill metric (KDR, ELO, ...) instead of being an on/off thing.
What I think is really crucial is that each debuff is shown prominently on the score board. The player suffers an in-game disadvantage to make the team balance better, so he should get some social benefit (display of skill, bragging rights) in return.
Instating buffs/debuffs based on KDR is just asking for people to abuse the **** out of the system by suiciding, and it's like punishing people for playing well. That's a horrible idea, especially because certain alien lifeforms will naturally have higher KDRs because of how they operate. Gonna be super fun as a fade getting one-shotted by pistols or something goofy like that while only being able to wave their claws around like feather dusters.
dePARAJoin Date: 2011-04-29Member: 96321Members, Squad Five Blue
edited October 2013
Early mines would be useless for marines with an buff/debuff system. If someone want to go onos, just jump in every mine you see to get an bad kd/r in the early game.
You have negative stats for sure but you are helping the team alot with cleaning the mines.
@ midgame become uberonos dont kill marines and go for structures only. Thats it.
Instating buffs/debuffs based on KDR is just asking for people to abuse the **** out of the system by suiciding
Yeah, I didn't mention that in my first reply: There shouldn't be any buff for "bad" players, for this exact reason. Only debuff the players that really stand out, and do it gently.
[...] and it's like punishing people for playing well.
If the debuff is not too strong, you will still be doing well... just not mega-stomping, which sucks when there's a human player on the other end.
That's a horrible idea, especially because certain alien lifeforms will naturally have higher KDRs because of how they operate.
That's a weakness of the plain KDR metric, not the debuff system in general. If you want to stick with KDR, the game could keep track of how the kills were made, and take that into account. A rifle kill would have a higher impact than a mine kill, a Skulk kill more than a Fade kill, Sentry/Whip kills as a commander should not count at all etc.
Gonna be super fun as a fade getting one-shotted by pistols or something goofy like that while only being able to wave their claws around like feather dusters.
Yep, like I wrote above: damage received should not be affected at all. I don't see a problem with gently (!) nerfing the damage output of a 30+ kills Fade in a pub server, though.
Uh, oh, on my servers there is always the option to vote for ELO/Skill based teams if people don't want 'stacked' teams.
There are other servers with this option too, so I don't see a problem if you choose such as server. In the worst case, you can always setup your own if none is available in your region.
First, people prefer to play with people they know ("friends"), usually because you get along better and it is more fun.
Thirly, it's also more fun to play with a team that KNOWS what it does, not an other team that plays solo mode and also has no understanding of the game in general - and usually even worse, refuse to listen as well.
There are so many countless examples that makes it annoying, and it makes it frustrating to play with such a team; consequently, you'd rather play with people that have some sense (and though you might call them skilled, they don't have to be extraordinaly good in terms of "K/D"). It really starts with the most simplest of things like nobody welding each other - I've played on teams with 8 marines where tops 2 had a welder and I actually ask the coms fora MAC in base reguarily, because it's often (sadly) the only place where I can replenish my armor.
Other examples include just ... rookie-style behaviour, like the complete inability to priorize - people biting RTs next to a PG for example.
It's not much fun to play with a team that has no clue what they do for skilled people and you'd rather stick to people who KNOW what they do; NS2 is a game that really shines when everyone works together, and you're not getting that if you're joining the "bad" team.
As for rookie servers, I think it is not good behaviour for good people to join there. Though it depends, if you read that truely to what it says, i.e. rookie friendly, it would just mean the server is friendly for new players. Not that no good players are allowed, unless the server actually explicitly states that is for below-avarage, new players.
Ah, I remember you. The guy who complains about fades being tanky and when I presented an argument up he completely pussied out and said "well you have an amazing 65 hrs therefore ur argument is invalid."
After checking your steam profile, it was private, so even if I wanted to dick swing with you it wouldn't have gone anywhere.
Everyone stacks, and even with votes the game doesn't do a very good job distributing players evenly. I've seen players jump and switch teams even after a random vote or a KDR based team vote.
It might be more fun to play with friends, but the best thing with friends is that you can challenge them in video games which is something I tend to do. It's complete fun and I have a huge blast challenging my own buddies in other games. I understand that people play with their friends, and 'pros' play with other guys of similar skill, but the problem is that they are too afraid to play against each other or (ffs) at least lead teams.
1. Pros have a problem with playing in a bad team? Hahahaha, welcome to my world buddy, because here your complaints should get in line. Behind the rest of us that have to deal with your shit.
2. Lead: Tell the players you've been in the competitive league or just tell 'em you know what you're doing. They'll listen, because we need commanders and in bad teams there is no sense of leadership.
3. Playing against noobs presents no challenge.
4. Stacking kills the fun and also kills the reason why we actually play the game.
I've commanded and won enough games when no one else wants to. Even the so called 'pros' who pussy out on being a commander, and well eventually turn on you because they think they can backseat command. In my experience, stacked teams are never fun and even though I can play through them... This discussion isn't essentially about me (or you) but rather about the new players and rookies who buy the game and come into MP.
When they see stacked teams and no autobalance, voting is broken btw, they find no fun in it and leave.
had the same conversation with several old school ns1 players the other night, good to see this thread. I came up with a solution, this is strictly for pub and it's up to the server admins whether to implement this feature server side or not:
Put in a buff/debuff system similar to what we always had in co maps. If your KDR is too high, you deal less damage and receive more damage based on how high your KDR is, and vice versa for players with lower KDR.
Eg, if a guy has 38/6, he's obviously dominating, so the server side would adjust the debuff to 6:1 and he would deal 1/6 the damage and receive 6x as much. If he was doing the opposite 6/36, server side would adjust the buff so he deals 6x the damage and receives 1/6 as much. The ratio is entirely up to the server admin to adjust. Players with buff/debuff would have either a +6 or -6 icon next to his/her name to indicate skill level.
Why even bother playing/learning a game if you get rewarded for being bad and punished for being good? Where's the fun in that?
@Bicsum I can totally agree and relate to this. It's just emo as f*** trying to play aliens, particularly skulks vs good marines on pub servers due to lack of pack play and drifter support. Aliens lack coordination in general when it's most critical.
I often go to marines if I don't want to have to deal with it. I can get a 10K/D on a typical server vs average-good aliens as marine but as skulk, I can just about manage positive K/D vs average-good marines.
Just seems that if you lack a good few lerks early game, aliens just get rolled.
OT: Aren't UWE working on a matchmaking tool? Sabot I think it's called. Hopefully it's out before the world championships, that would really help with player retention.
Wow, it's like every counter argument has something to do with attacking the person and calling his criticisms as 'threats' nonsensical arguments that have nothing to do with the subject of the matter (which is stacked teams killing the game's community). Not once have I encountered in your argument a compromise or any good defense for stacked teams. It seems to be more of "they like beating noobs don't judge them". Shaking my fucking head right now...
Wanting to balance teams in NS2 ISN'T something SICK and twisted to want and I can't believe I have read something like this from your post here. I am just appalled that 'pros' like you would think like this (and that there are others who agree). You know what? I've had enough then.
I posted on these forums because I FUCKING CARED, but apparently the pro players here have more authority than the reasonable people who want to make the game a fun and awesome experience. Your posts are evidence of that and it is clear that nothing is going to change, judging from your attitude.
It's like talking to a community of sadists who refuse to listen to any sort of criticism of the game.
OK. I'm done here, have your long-lived fun then. No reason in talking here and like someone posted above "anyone with a brain has left NS2" and I guess they were right. Have fun with your competitive community (oh wait) and dwindling player rate.
Easily the biggest load of shit I've ever read for what amounted to "Comp players like to win so they join each others teams but they're not team stacking", surprised it came from you tbh.
There was an admin plug in called Shine that had KDR random, off memory it took the top 6 players in terms of Kills:Deaths ratio and split them, funnily enough it never really took off or was used because people couldn't stack with it on. NS2 has been around for a long enough time that team stacking has become the norm, people don't want to change it they've just come to accept it and get used to binding J1 and J2 so they can join the team with the best players.
@ColtEasily the biggest load of shit I've ever read for what amounted to "Comp players like to win so they join each others teams but they're not team stacking", surprised it came from you tbh.
I never stated it "Wasn't stacking". I explained *why* the stacking problem exists; as a symptom of mentalities and similarities that exist between both comp and non-comp players; playing with friends.
I actually spend most of my time in pubs counter-stacking and anti-stacking even people on my own team will attest to that.
What I said was that coming from the perspective of personal attacks on the "PRO PLAYERS WHAT JERKS" is childish and serves no purpose, and that ultimately, the server administrators and operators are the ones with the onus on them to "Fix" this perceived 'problem'.
I'm surprised you didn't actually read what I posted before simply dismissing it and haranguing me.
the pub community will continue to die from stacking, unless UWE do something about it, which i highly doubt they will, it took them months just to get 1st person spectate
Even if matchmaking gets implemented, people will still stack. There isn't any solution unless you want to try and fix the human race in general. lol
The only way to mitigate it is through proper admining... like someone posted already.
You couldn't be more wrong. Even NS1 had a numerical balance mod based on K:D... It's pretty sad that almost a decade later this doesn't exist for its successor.
It doesn't exist because people are in perma denial about KDR being a valid stat for balancing teams, even though they admit that KDR is the stat people care about the most when it comes to balance. So we're stuck, waiting for that perfect and omni-potent balance tool that will never see the light of day.
KDR wouldn't be a good stat to use for the purpose of matchmaking. If you put a pro player in with a bunch of noobs, they would easily wipe the floor with them, gaining a very high KDR. If you put that same player into a match with other pro players, their KDR will drop dramatically because of the increase in quality of the opponents.
And also, there are good players that have terrible KDRs for a variety of reasons, such as a tendency towards support play (playing as Gorge for example) and others like myself, that get a lot of kills and assists, but die a hell of a lot as well. I prefer to play as Aliens most of the time, and I prefer to play as Skulk, so that tends to lower my KDR a great deal. On the other hand some other player playing a Fade pretty well can get lots of easy kills but will die only a few times.
Wasn't talking about a matchmaking tool, just a team random balance tool.
Ah right, in that case yeah, it would probably work nicely
SpoogeThunderbolt missile in your cheeriosJoin Date: 2002-01-25Member: 67Members
Oh the irony: the same team stacking pub stompers who complain that they are forced to play in rookie servers due to a lack of player population are one of the core reasons that new players don't stick around.
You want more competition in this game? You want more populated servers? You want more competent commanders? Then YOU will need to actively participate in expanding this community. "L2P" is the opposite of this.
Keep up the mocking and derision of new/casual pub players and you'll only have yourselves to blame.
Actively fostering an environment that belittles new players is completely counterproductive.
@OPMac10.357
There was an admin plug in called Shine that had KDR random, off memory it took the top 6 players in terms of Kills:Deaths ratio and split them, funnily enough it never really took off or was used because people couldn't stack with it on. NS2 has been around for a long enough time that team stacking has become the norm, people don't want to change it they've just come to accept it and get used to binding J1 and J2 so they can join the team with the best players.
I'm not sure why something like this isn't used to this day. It's not 100% perfect, but its way better than voting random/force random and trying to get lucky
@Colt
Easily the biggest load of shit I've ever read for what amounted to "Comp players like to win so they join each others teams but they're not team stacking", surprised it came from you tbh.
Just ignore him. He's hung up on 1 thing, and its in no way to improve the game.
I still think the best 2 systems are playing on community servers & waiting till a good ranking system is implemented.
This may be the best thing you can do right now, but something can and should be implemented sooner than later. I'm uncertain of when and what this is exactly. When was the last time they mentioned this and did they state any specifics?
Put in a buff/debuff system similar to what we always had in co maps. If your KDR is too high, you deal less damage...
Not trying to put you down, but if I personally entered a server like that I would probably leave. I'm not a great player but I'd hate to have my damage watered down because I'm doing above average. Thanks for your input though.
Oh the irony: the same team stacking pub stompers who complain that they are forced to play in rookie servers due to a lack of player population are one of the core reasons that new players don't stick around.
You want more competition in this game? You want more populated servers? You want more competent commanders? Then YOU will need to actively participate in expanding this community. "L2P" is the opposite of this.
Keep up the mocking and derision of new/casual pub players and you'll only have yourselves to blame.
Actively fostering an environment that belittles new players is completely counterproductive.
Agreed, its pretty frustrating. Belittling everyone below your skill level is beyond me.
Why even bother playing/learning a game if you get rewarded for being bad and punished for being good? Where's the fun in that?
because it's for pub, not for competitive
Doesn't matter if it's for pub or comp, people play MP games (or any sort of sport/game for that matter) because of the challenge and urge to compete with others, even in casual play. That's where the fun is at, improving your play and climbing the ranks, it can be so rewarding. Now, while I can understand the frustration of having to play with some of the big boys and thus being out of your league, just imagine the frustration of being punished when you're actually starting to do well after all that time you invested.
I still think the best 2 systems are playing on community servers & waiting till a good ranking system is implemented.
This may be the best thing you can do right now, but something can and should be implemented sooner than later. I'm uncertain of when and what this is exactly. When was the last time they mentioned this and did they state any specifics?
Let me try to summon our good pall @Ironhorse and see if he can shed light on this.
mhuahaha :P
One of the first major problems with NS2 on launch was the learning curve. The lack of an interactive tutorial system contributed to that in a big way, and we hope that the new tutorial systems introduced in Reinforced went a long way to easing new players in.
A second major problem remains: How to get into an organised game. The wonderful folks over at ENSL.org have long provided the only reliably way to get into an organised game of NS2 via their ‘gather’ system. Earlier this year, we hinted at work on a system called ‘Sabot‘ that was intended to provide in-game organised play options.
That system is now being developed by Andi, and the newest full-time member of the UWE team – Lukas. It is broadly composed of two elements: Hive, a player persistency system that was quietly released along with Reinforced and is still being pieced together, and a ‘gather’ system that will allow players to seamlessly create and join organised games without leaving the game.
The entire system will have benefits beyond just organised play and player stat tracking – It is also serving as the bedrock for a more reliable and scaleable in-game rewards system – The most obvious manifestation of which is the badge system.
It should benifit both high skilled comp players as well as the average pubber in regards to creating balanced match-ups. The player ranking system is already live, although still a work in progress.
Comments
And that skill level meter they added to the server browser is completely useless and misleading. Sound familiar to something else on the server browser? Oh, you already mentioned it, the rookie tag! Then we have another lovely feature, voting random teams. Great idea, poor implementation. Why? Because everyone stacks the team they want before the vote passes, and even when that doesn't happen, the random option stacks the teams half the time, lol!
I've never seen a good player voice concern over stacked teams in over 600hrs of play, lol. It's always the opposing team that's getting rolled complaining about it. And stacked teams rarely end quickly. They love running around just killing everyone and padding their kdr and never push to finish the game in my experience.
Whenever I'm commander and my team is stacked I always tell them to push the enemy and just end it quickly to start a new proper round and they rarely listen. They want to be med pack spammed, they want their upgrades and jetpacks, and if they don't start getting them they'll eject you, lol!
edit: just played a few rounds and this just literally happened 4 games in a row on luckyfkers, same people stacking round after round rolling the other team. People complained, and the stackers trolled them. lol gotta love this game.
If one marine is enough to have an stacked team, well, we all should play chess.
No system on earth can balance ground skulks walking in one by one, ground lerks, walking fades and coms never dropping any meds or ammo.
It feels like 80% of the players have no clue what they have todo as alien.
Two half competent marines playing together via TS seem to be enough for these alien-players to call stacked teams.
This transform into the same hysteria like the "Oh god, cheater everywhere"
And a ground-skulk is a ground-skulk on a matchmaking-server also, so dont expect to much from a system like that.
1. Tab showing which player joined which team
2. Players have choice which team to join
There could well be a lot of creativity introduced to make team formation different: A nominated captain for each team who then take turns drafting players for example.
As long as I get to pick what team I can join and I can see who joined which team I am going to join the winning team. I'm sorry this is basic human nature. Asking people to do otherwise and saying they're "unethical" when they don't betrays a lack of understanding of the word. Even though I sometimes try to join the losing team, I am not going to complain about skill stacking.
People joined a server to play, they have obligations to be civil and not do trolly things, sure, but that obligation does not extend to which side they must join.
In short, it's their freedom to play which side they want, especially if they want to play with friends, or if they prefer having perceived competent teammates (even if those are the ONLY competent teammates).
To change this, the system has to be changed. Either introduce some other form of team formation like I suggested above, or tell UWE to roll out that organised play system quicker.
Put in a buff/debuff system similar to what we always had in co maps. If your KDR is too high, you deal less damage and receive more damage based on how high your KDR is, and vice versa for players with lower KDR.
Eg, if a guy has 38/6, he's obviously dominating, so the server side would adjust the debuff to 6:1 and he would deal 1/6 the damage and receive 6x as much. If he was doing the opposite 6/36, server side would adjust the buff so he deals 6x the damage and receives 1/6 as much. The ratio is entirely up to the server admin to adjust. Players with buff/debuff would have either a +6 or -6 icon next to his/her name to indicate skill level.
I smell cheaters everywhere.
So people would have to hold back playing well to stay at a proper damage ratio? Come on, that's ridiculous.
if you want to nerf yourself to a 6/36 KDR to get that buff then, go for it.
This has been suggested before, and I think it's a good idea. But the debuff should be applied to damage output only, not to damage received. Being insta-killed by stray shots/bites/etc would make the game very un-fun for most players, even when they are skilled.
Also, I think the debuff strength should be waaaaay lower than the 1:6 you suggested... for example, lowering damage output by something like 30-50% should have a huge impact already. Obviously, the proper numbers need to come from testing, and they should scale with the skill metric (KDR, ELO, ...) instead of being an on/off thing.
What I think is really crucial is that each debuff is shown prominently on the score board. The player suffers an in-game disadvantage to make the team balance better, so he should get some social benefit (display of skill, bragging rights) in return.
You have negative stats for sure but you are helping the team alot with cleaning the mines.
@ midgame become uberonos dont kill marines and go for structures only. Thats it.
If the debuff is not too strong, you will still be doing well... just not mega-stomping, which sucks when there's a human player on the other end.
That's a weakness of the plain KDR metric, not the debuff system in general. If you want to stick with KDR, the game could keep track of how the kills were made, and take that into account. A rifle kill would have a higher impact than a mine kill, a Skulk kill more than a Fade kill, Sentry/Whip kills as a commander should not count at all etc.
Yep, like I wrote above: damage received should not be affected at all. I don't see a problem with gently (!) nerfing the damage output of a 30+ kills Fade in a pub server, though.
Ah, I remember you. The guy who complains about fades being tanky and when I presented an argument up he completely pussied out and said "well you have an amazing 65 hrs therefore ur argument is invalid."
After checking your steam profile, it was private, so even if I wanted to dick swing with you it wouldn't have gone anywhere.
Everyone stacks, and even with votes the game doesn't do a very good job distributing players evenly. I've seen players jump and switch teams even after a random vote or a KDR based team vote.
It might be more fun to play with friends, but the best thing with friends is that you can challenge them in video games
1. Pros have a problem with playing in a bad team? Hahahaha, welcome to my world buddy, because here your complaints should get in line. Behind the rest of us that have to deal with your shit.
2. Lead: Tell the players you've been in the competitive league or just tell 'em you know what you're doing. They'll listen, because we need commanders and in bad teams there is no sense of leadership.
3. Playing against noobs presents no challenge.
4. Stacking kills the fun and also kills the reason why we actually play the game.
I've commanded and won enough games when no one else wants to. Even the so called 'pros' who pussy out on being a commander, and well eventually turn on you because they think they can backseat command. In my experience, stacked teams are never fun and even though I can play through them... This discussion isn't essentially about me (or you) but rather about the new players and rookies who buy the game and come into MP.
When they see stacked teams and no autobalance, voting is broken btw, they find no fun in it and leave.
Why even bother playing/learning a game if you get rewarded for being bad and punished for being good? Where's the fun in that?
I often go to marines if I don't want to have to deal with it. I can get a 10K/D on a typical server vs average-good aliens as marine but as skulk, I can just about manage positive K/D vs average-good marines.
Just seems that if you lack a good few lerks early game, aliens just get rolled.
OT: Aren't UWE working on a matchmaking tool? Sabot I think it's called. Hopefully it's out before the world championships, that would really help with player retention.
Wow, it's like every counter argument has something to do with attacking the person and calling his criticisms as 'threats' nonsensical arguments that have nothing to do with the subject of the matter (which is stacked teams killing the game's community). Not once have I encountered in your argument a compromise or any good defense for stacked teams. It seems to be more of "they like beating noobs don't judge them". Shaking my fucking head right now...
Wanting to balance teams in NS2 ISN'T something SICK and twisted to want and I can't believe I have read something like this from your post here. I am just appalled that 'pros' like you would think like this (and that there are others who agree). You know what? I've had enough then.
I posted on these forums because I FUCKING CARED, but apparently the pro players here have more authority than the reasonable people who want to make the game a fun and awesome experience. Your posts are evidence of that and it is clear that nothing is going to change, judging from your attitude.
It's like talking to a community of sadists who refuse to listen to any sort of criticism of the game.
OK. I'm done here, have your long-lived fun then. No reason in talking here and like someone posted above "anyone with a brain has left NS2" and I guess they were right. Have fun with your competitive community (oh wait) and dwindling player rate.
Easily the biggest load of shit I've ever read for what amounted to "Comp players like to win so they join each others teams but they're not team stacking", surprised it came from you tbh.
@OPMac10.357
There was an admin plug in called Shine that had KDR random, off memory it took the top 6 players in terms of Kills:Deaths ratio and split them, funnily enough it never really took off or was used because people couldn't stack with it on. NS2 has been around for a long enough time that team stacking has become the norm, people don't want to change it they've just come to accept it and get used to binding J1 and J2 so they can join the team with the best players.
@Amb
Crappy UT plugins or mutators won't help here.
I never stated it "Wasn't stacking". I explained *why* the stacking problem exists; as a symptom of mentalities and similarities that exist between both comp and non-comp players; playing with friends.
I actually spend most of my time in pubs counter-stacking and anti-stacking even people on my own team will attest to that.
What I said was that coming from the perspective of personal attacks on the "PRO PLAYERS WHAT JERKS" is childish and serves no purpose, and that ultimately, the server administrators and operators are the ones with the onus on them to "Fix" this perceived 'problem'.
I'm surprised you didn't actually read what I posted before simply dismissing it and haranguing me.
-Colt
if ppl want to abuse the system by suiciding, more powers to them, they are taking themselves out of the game and raping their own spawn queue
because it's for pub, not for competitive
the pub community will continue to die from stacking, unless UWE do something about it, which i highly doubt they will, it took them months just to get 1st person spectate
Ah right, in that case yeah, it would probably work nicely
You want more competition in this game? You want more populated servers? You want more competent commanders? Then YOU will need to actively participate in expanding this community. "L2P" is the opposite of this.
Keep up the mocking and derision of new/casual pub players and you'll only have yourselves to blame.
Actively fostering an environment that belittles new players is completely counterproductive.
I went ahead and edited the original post so that it is more specific since your so butthurt over nothing as I've stated. You're welcome. I'm not sure why something like this isn't used to this day. It's not 100% perfect, but its way better than voting random/force random and trying to get lucky Just ignore him. He's hung up on 1 thing, and its in no way to improve the game. This may be the best thing you can do right now, but something can and should be implemented sooner than later. I'm uncertain of when and what this is exactly. When was the last time they mentioned this and did they state any specifics? Not trying to put you down, but if I personally entered a server like that I would probably leave. I'm not a great player but I'd hate to have my damage watered down because I'm doing above average. Thanks for your input though. Agreed, its pretty frustrating. Belittling everyone below your skill level is beyond me.
Doesn't matter if it's for pub or comp, people play MP games (or any sort of sport/game for that matter) because of the challenge and urge to compete with others, even in casual play. That's where the fun is at, improving your play and climbing the ranks, it can be so rewarding. Now, while I can understand the frustration of having to play with some of the big boys and thus being out of your league, just imagine the frustration of being punished when you're actually starting to do well after all that time you invested.
Let me try to summon our good pall @Ironhorse and see if he can shed light on this.
mhuahaha :P
from http://unknownworlds.com/ns2/state-of-development-september-2013/
It should benifit both high skilled comp players as well as the average pubber in regards to creating balanced match-ups. The player ranking system is already live, although still a work in progress.