Auto Balance is Required

Ironman · January 2020

So I wanted to reply to Moby's thread about kicking top player that might skew a game- I think i know where he is coming from.

The way to really address this is with auto-balance - yes we all hate it but - it is required to some degree. An intelligent way
of implementing this needs to be made. The only way to have a balanced game is with captains , and that does not exist.
Shuffle is a joke. Period.

Additional thought - Fast spawn upgrade for either side, or a handicap mode that gives a team more hp, or a handicap that makes alien evolution cheaper or marine weapons cheaper. IDK , but its hard to find a fair game most of the time. Only ppl that have a high score are stackers, cause thats the only way to consistently win in a team based game with a small pool of players.

And - frankly Im pretty close to quitting the game after 2000 hours. Due to late team stacking, because people care about ELO points more than an even game. Or early game stacking due to a bad shuffle - because a T7 Skews the board with T5 and T6 on the other side.

This game really requires some intelligent auto-balance, that's why this game is about to die and hasn't grown AT ALL.
Dont even get me started on hit-reg. Dying around corners. or bites that dont connect, especially aliens side grazing is non-existent. I'm digressing.

Honestly Dude(s) i Played a long game and we were struggling to win and so close only for a spectator to snide us publicly and join late opposite team to unbalance the game further causing us to lose unfairly. /quit. Honestly Lock the game from late joiners or do some auto balance. Game needs fixing.

Also cant believe gorge tunnels are gone, so marines just camp your lane and block your cyst so u got 2rts. Game sucks now.

Ripper2fg · January 2020

IMO the shuffle is pretty fine but i noticed the same problems with a T7. If a single T7 has to be shuffled its like you said, he will end up with mostly lower Tier-players and many T5, T6 will get on the over side which is IMO the way better team. The worst part happens when the T7 is quitting either to raging or just leaving without a reason so the rest of the team is pretty screwed.

Its hard to balanced this issue. What do you mean by an auto balance? If i would assume that iam on Marine and the game runs good so far (good plays, harrass etc.) that i would hate it to get shuffled to Alien side and maybe recieve a lose.

NS2 is a game that really suffers from good plays and can be frustrating in public games. But on the other side there is always a way for an easy comeback. As Alien i won so many games with a simple Gorge-Bile-Power-Rush in the end (with rookie marine com) and as Marine you can do so much with a sneaky PG.

jrgn · January 2020

the server called GS Fairplay is trying a new mod for evening games like suggested. Probably has to be tweaked but interesting. But this is a constant in pub games. Big servers work better than less populated servers. Smaller servers with a large variation in skill becomes hunting grounds for elo chasers. Hide elo and badges and problem solved. If you just play for elo you will leave the original intent of the game.

But different shuffle settings also affect standards. Servers should have a standard for balancing games. Maybe for NS3?

Ripper2fg · February 2020

Next steps (into the wrong) direction are made:
Now you can see a live-popup of your current elo (and everybody else) and how much you need to rank up.

IMO does this effect even more people that only care about elo.

I see it so often that players argue about there stats in the end. Its clear that a player which does not build and has a bad aim will be a negative aspect on the game. But a player who is just hunting for kills and a good KD-Ratio is not doing either a good teamplay.

A hiding of badges would be the best. But i guess this will never happen.

Valican · February 2020

On the Wiki, it says that KDA doesn't affect ELO outcomes, only winning or losing the game does. Is that still true? If so, ranks should probably only be shown at the end of a game and not in warm ups/during the game.

Daggial · February 2020

I haven't played this game in a long time a decided to take a look at the forums for curiosity... and guess what, the first thread i see is someone complaining about team stacking.
Stacking has been a big problem in this game since the early eras of NS1.
If I need to point out one major problem i remember in the past 16+ years about this game, that's team stacking.

Experienced players are all going marines, because it's easier to play aggro to stomp noobs and it's the standard to do that.
Noobs are going aliens because it's cool and they want to try something new... and the game ends in 5 minutes.
I've seen hundreds of games in NS1/NS2 where people are just waiting in lobby outside the marines door rather than playing the game itself, because they don't want to play aliens and they know how it is.

Last times i played years ago i remember seeing servers implementing an auto balancing system, but that was abusable for example by leaving the team once u get auto assigned and joining the other.
I hope those auto balance systems have been improved but in any case not all servers are implementing it and if you are that kind of player hunting for elo you can just go play elsewhere.

Remember NS2 is one of the latest games released without a matchmaking system and where u manually pick the servers u want to play in.
A skill based matchmaking system would be the best solution for this problem, but the reality is the player base is too small to do that properly.

Auto Balance is Required

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