Anti-Stack-Function
countbasie
Join Date: 2008-12-27 Member: 65884Members
Join Date: 2008-12-27 Member: 65884Members
<div class="IPBDescription">needed.</div>Hello,
today there were 3 out of 5 games totally ruined by team stack. We all know this phenomenon from NS1 I think.
I don't like forced Random Teams, because I like to play with friends in one team. What about that:
Force everyone random 30 secs after the regular round start, IF several players try to get in the same team, either by waiting in the 'join'-spot or by j1. Shouldn't a check like that be possible?
Or any other ideas? Stacking really ruins games, it there should be a possibility to prevent it.
EDIT: This is not about balance, it is about players who try to get in a full team for literally 10 minutes, while a stupid 5 vs 3 game is running.
today there were 3 out of 5 games totally ruined by team stack. We all know this phenomenon from NS1 I think.
I don't like forced Random Teams, because I like to play with friends in one team. What about that:
Force everyone random 30 secs after the regular round start, IF several players try to get in the same team, either by waiting in the 'join'-spot or by j1. Shouldn't a check like that be possible?
Or any other ideas? Stacking really ruins games, it there should be a possibility to prevent it.
EDIT: This is not about balance, it is about players who try to get in a full team for literally 10 minutes, while a stupid 5 vs 3 game is running.
Comments
I say at leas do random teams every other round by default. This way you get the best of both worlds.
I typically voterandom on every pub I join.
I typically voterandom on every pub I join.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
1. Not every server has this.
2. When people want to stack, they usually don't vote random.
You can't force people to play races / teams they don't want to play by default.
2. When people want to stack, they usually don't vote random.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
1. Then join a server that has it or ask the host to put the mod on his server.
2. Then leave the server or ask an admin to force random anyway.
I'm not sure what kind of solution you're expecting. If the players in the game don't want to force random, then you shouldn't be able to override their consent unless you own the server or admin for it.
It was rampant in NS1 as well.
Voterandom is at best a stopgap solution, and sometimes voterandom does wonky things, like put an entire team together anyway, and/or make lopsided teams (10v6 on a 16 player server.)
The only "solution" is to encourage the better players to even up the teams themselves, either by encouraging some intra-team competition, or join a community whose regulars try to keep the teams even on their own.
I think my every other round is random by default solution is ok.
Look at the bright side - playing against a player (or team) who is better than you will make you improve.
Unfortunately that's based on the assumption that everyone is trying to get better at the game. The thing is that, like myself, lots of NS1 vets are now working adults and may be "casuals", and this group of people currently form a significant portion of the buyers of this game since they're NS1 fans with the money. These guys don't play for more than a couple hours a day except for weekends and may not even participate in discussions in this forum.
Even if these players don't get mad at the stacking, I'm sure everyone else does. NS2 may be fun, but it isn't when you're losing every single round in a server just because joining a random team always gets you into the unstacked team.
Stacking is one of the main reasons I've quit all FPS games that involve two human teams other than NS1/2. I'm not trying to improve my skills because I only play for fun, and I can easily accept losses, but not when the stacking is obvious.
I typically voterandom on every pub I join.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
In my experience voterandom stacks the teams on many occasions. It's definitely not an ideal solution.
I do hope that uwe or maybe ns2stats.org implement a ranking system that can balance the teams based on skill because I think it will become more of a problem post 1.0. NS2 is similar to L4D in that you get punished for your team mates mistakes. This makes people want to play with their friends and encourages them to all go on the one team rather than playing against each other.
yet that is clearly not the case, ive seen time and time again that skilled players will often stack the same team. Just the other day there were 2 really good marine players who had really high K/d ratios (something like 38-3 and 33-7) they pretty much kept aliens in the spawn que all game. These players then both joined aliens the next game ... then marines the game after that. By that stage ... everyone started to leave the server.
Then ive often seen people with clan tags try to stack teams. About a week ago i saw 5 people from 1 clan all on 1 team ....
The voterandom server mod just isnt good enough, wouldnt it be better to have an autobalance system that takes stats from NS2stats and for players that dont have stats then it will place then on a random team ??? Would it be possible to make a server mod like this ???
1) It forces people to play teams they don't want to play for some reason. This can lead to players quitting or just fooling around. I often feel like doing "just one more" marine/alien round and will change server or quit when I get forced to the wrong one.
2) AFKs are forced into teams and spend the early game idling. NS2 rounds can often last 30-60min, and it is not unreasonable to have a short break between rounds.
3) Voterandom keeps stacking the teams all by itself. The only situation it really could help is when there are really many people trying to purposefully stack on one side. As long as it's a matter of 2-3 high skilled players on the server, voterandom has pretty high chance of stacking the teams itself.
4) Players have a harder time and less inclination to make the teams more even after a voterandom has mucked it up.
Then again, all of this is anecdotal and in no way conclusive... Anyone want to do a proper survey on this ;) ?
This would be less of an issue if 1. you didn't start with as much pres or 2. you didn't lose pres, or at least lose less than 100%, from going to the ready room.
Stacking isn't a huge issue so far but it was in NS1 and I can see that it will rear it's ugle head again more often once the game is released.
<b>1) It forces people to play teams they don't want to play for some reason. </b>
Others in this post have had some interesting solutions to this such as going by ranking. I still think team stacking could be problematic enough to have to force this on players.
NS is very team oriented and stacking affects this game more so than most other games that I have played.
<b>2) AFKs are forced into teams and spend the early game idling.</b>
A fix for this problem could be to put anyone who is idle into the ready room or kick them after the 1st 30 seconds of the round. Another is to prolong the time between rounds and hang out in the ready room for an extra minute.
<b>
3) Voterandom keeps stacking the teams all by itself.</b>
It is better than nothing. Also it could be based off of skill or rank.
<b>
4) Players have a harder time and less inclination to make the teams more even after a voterandom has mucked it up.</b>
This happened about 30 minutes ago. One team had 2 - 4 more players than the other one after a voterandom.
I'm sure they could fix it.
...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
All your responses were in the veil of "it could be done better", which is basically what I was also saying: The current implementations I have encountered so far have all, in my opinion, created more problems than they've solved issues. If the voterandom starts using some form of statistics in the team selection, then the result could be significantly better. At least on the balance side.
You'd still be forcing players into teams they don't want to play right then and you'd still force friends who want to play together into separate teams... So, in order not to annoy the hell out of some of the players, you'd have to have some kind of tool set to handle players current marine/alien-preference AND some kind of squad-mechanic for (playing with friends). This has been done in some other games, I'm sure, but the alien/marine asymmetry and separate, fanbase-hosted servers do create complications to this.
Right now my best guess at making a decently working team balancer would be something like this:
-Track player stats (although how well stats apply to NS2 is somewhat contested by the community). Doesnt need to be a central server, but a central stats solution would in my opinion have several advantages.
-Allow players to select team preference (via GUI, preferably, or via console)
-Allow players to 'squad up' to keep playing on the same team (via GUI, preferably, harder to do in console)
-Keep track of which teams the players with no preference have been put in lately, and keep mixing that up, so that they get to play both.
EDIT: And should this "balanced" teammaking be incorporated into the main NS2 game modes (like the pick up game is), then special care should be taken to only direct players to working servers. I feel like I keep repeating this issue a lot, but there are a lot of inferior EU servers right now. Not good enough hardware -> not good enough NS2 experience.
* When the voterandom mod is activated via a vote
> Everyone is taken to the ready room
> Everyone joins the team that they want to play (example : 6 players on aliens, 12 players on marines)
> If somebody hasnt joined either team in the given time then they are autokicked
> Voterandom mod will then calculate each players 'skill' for aliens and for marines via stats aquired by NS2Stats (NS2Stats could do this and produce a number for each team that the mod can use)
> Voterandom mod will then attempt to move players from the team with higher player count based on the players perceived skill
for example : 6 players on alien whos alien score from nsstats add up to 12000
12 players on marines whos marine score from ns2stats add up to 30000
voterandom mod will then try to raise the alien score, by moving marine players over to the alien side, so that its almost equal to the marine sides score. There may be marine only players who will have a really low alien score but a high marine score, these players most likely wont be moved due to their extremely low alien score. Instead players who have the highest alien score will be moved over to balance things out.
> with both teams having roughly the same skill score, the game will then count down and start
This would move the least amount of players around meaning most players will play on the team they want. And players moved will most likely be skilled players and will be moving to the team they are better at anyway.
well ,thats just a rough idea
The voterandom seems okay, but on 20 player servers, it requires a lot of time to get people explained how to do the vote, and if it requires half the players on the server it will seldom happen. As mentioned it can still stack the teams, and afk's will still fill some spots, and the worst part, maybe all potential commanders was put on the same side.
It would be nice with a guy between rounds, and maybe when joining servers, where a player could select if he could be commander, and maybe how experienced he feels he is. based on that teams could be formed with potential commanders on both sides. And maybe add a readycheck, so between rounds, players indicate when they are ready to be added to a team, so you can go afk for a short time. It would require some GUI to be built, and a probably take some work, maybe a mod could do this?
I've been in 3 games in a row that everyone F4'ed after 5 minutes due to the team imbalance in numbers not being automatically equalized, resulting in a res lockdown for the undermanned team..
this is a bigger issue that can be fixed with an auto-balance feature like CS. It's not like you have valuable information that the opposite team wont find out about in a couple minutes anyway,
-Allow players to 'squad up' to keep playing on the same team (via GUI, preferably, harder to do in console)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Everyone seems to be worried about this, but imo you just play on a different server if you want to play with your friends (one that doesn't auto-balance). Most of the time people just play with their clan mates etc. because they want people they can rely on. It's just frustrating to play on pubs with noob coms etc. but that is the very problem, that's why you always get people stacking. I don't think any theoretical balance mod should allow players to squad up. What if the two best players at ns2 squad up on a server full of noobs? Does the server let them be on the same team? Or does it just ignore their request to squad up to prevent stacking the teams?
I typically voterandom on every pub I join.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well random is ok but it can cause even more unbalanced Teams.
Why do I only hear stacked Teams on marine side?? Never heard it when Aliens won, and sometimes 2 out of 12 Marines are good an still I hear the "Stacked Teams!!".
We need the ranking system from SEK2000 back! Blackhawk where are you?!?!
In a perfect world we would have a load of populated servers to choose from. In EU most of the servers suck performance-wise and the rest are either empty or have currently a naive randomizer on them. So yes, I would actually choose to play on a non-voterandom server, if that choice didn't come with some negative results.
And sure, you can always cop out with a "just play on a different server", but if in fact people want to see more balanced teams and if in fact a mod or an in-game functionality can be made to give us better teams without significant drawbacks, then surely that is so much better? Team balances would be better on more servers and most people would be happier about their NS2 experience.
You point to an extreme case where 2 extremely skilled guys want to team up. I could see this being resolved by attempting to load their team with noobs and put the medium-to-high -skilled players on the other team... Of course it is possible to run into situations where squads would be split up, but these could be largely avoided, I think.
But anyway, I'm not claiming to have the perfect recipe for this. A lot of planning out and work to be done until we have a proper anti-stack mod/feature, so I'm just trying to come up with some of the problems and some of the solutions....