Team Stack Mitigation
Alkix
Join Date: 2013-07-10 Member: 186046Members
Join Date: 2013-07-10 Member: 186046Members
I know this has been discussed a lot, but I'd like to offer my suggestion on this topic.
Team stacking occurs for a lot of reasons, but as is true with solving most issues, knowledge is power. In order to allow players to solve team stacking issues, they need to be informed that team stacking is occurring, and they need to have the tools to fix the issue. Let's take a look at some knowledge and tools that can help this happen.
Knowledge of Player Skill:
*Points (We have this most of the time)
*KDR (We have this most of the time)
*Rookie Status (We have this)
*Hours Played (Can we have this easily?)
*Self assessed skill (We don't have this)
We don't have a progression system beyond rookie status and hours played. I think that's fine to address team stacking, mainly because hours played and useful points/kdr is all we need. However, before we continue, we should make the following modifications.
Points - Adjust this to include assists, and award the comm points equal to (points award)/number of players every time a player gets points (The end result is the comms points will be the average of the team's points if the team stays the same through the entire game).
Points and KDR - I don't know how hard this would be, but this needs to be preserved when changing maps, but it's not the end of the world if it isn't.
Hours Played - We need to see this in the game on the score board.
Self Assessed Skill - We should use this in place of rookie status. Players should be able to select from a list of terms that describes how good they are. Rookie would be the default. We don't have to tie this in at all to make it automatic, we just need to let people say what they are. Smurfs? sure, but there's always hours played to back it up and let people take a reality check.
Okay great! We have some additional information about players, but what do we do with the information? We need to make things easier for people to take action to fix the problem. I have three models for this:
Model 1 - Full Team Voluntary Trades.
Before the game is started, teams need a menu like the score board that will show them the stats above, with an addition of an autocalculated suggestion of weather one team is predicted to outclass the other team. The critical component here is that players can select a member of the other team and initiate swap. The player would be prompted and can choose to accept or decline the swap. This can go on until the game starts. Make it easy, if the autocalc can detect something obvious, give the big red warning, if the numbers are reasonably close, give the big green okay.
Model 2- Commander Player Swaps.
When the game would normally start because both commanders are in, instead move to the previously mentioned stats window, with swap controls for the commanders. Comms can swap players. Again, you can show the auto calc bold green and bold red suggestion of stacked or not, but ultimately, it's up to the commanders who gets on what team and who gets traded for who.
Model 3 - Team captain Vote and Captain Picks
Players can't join teams. Instead, they nominate themselves as wanting to be a captain. Self nominated captains are displayed in the stats window and everyone gets to pick 2. Two highest become captains and get to draft the teams using the stats window. Once the draft is done, players are automatically assigned, comms jump in and the game starts.
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Okay community members, time to comment! I know it's a decent amount of work, but is it worthwhile? I personally believe that with just information and empowerment, people will balance their own teams effectively.
Team stacking occurs for a lot of reasons, but as is true with solving most issues, knowledge is power. In order to allow players to solve team stacking issues, they need to be informed that team stacking is occurring, and they need to have the tools to fix the issue. Let's take a look at some knowledge and tools that can help this happen.
Knowledge of Player Skill:
*Points (We have this most of the time)
*KDR (We have this most of the time)
*Rookie Status (We have this)
*Hours Played (Can we have this easily?)
*Self assessed skill (We don't have this)
We don't have a progression system beyond rookie status and hours played. I think that's fine to address team stacking, mainly because hours played and useful points/kdr is all we need. However, before we continue, we should make the following modifications.
Points - Adjust this to include assists, and award the comm points equal to (points award)/number of players every time a player gets points (The end result is the comms points will be the average of the team's points if the team stays the same through the entire game).
Points and KDR - I don't know how hard this would be, but this needs to be preserved when changing maps, but it's not the end of the world if it isn't.
Hours Played - We need to see this in the game on the score board.
Self Assessed Skill - We should use this in place of rookie status. Players should be able to select from a list of terms that describes how good they are. Rookie would be the default. We don't have to tie this in at all to make it automatic, we just need to let people say what they are. Smurfs? sure, but there's always hours played to back it up and let people take a reality check.
Okay great! We have some additional information about players, but what do we do with the information? We need to make things easier for people to take action to fix the problem. I have three models for this:
Model 1 - Full Team Voluntary Trades.
Before the game is started, teams need a menu like the score board that will show them the stats above, with an addition of an autocalculated suggestion of weather one team is predicted to outclass the other team. The critical component here is that players can select a member of the other team and initiate swap. The player would be prompted and can choose to accept or decline the swap. This can go on until the game starts. Make it easy, if the autocalc can detect something obvious, give the big red warning, if the numbers are reasonably close, give the big green okay.
Model 2- Commander Player Swaps.
When the game would normally start because both commanders are in, instead move to the previously mentioned stats window, with swap controls for the commanders. Comms can swap players. Again, you can show the auto calc bold green and bold red suggestion of stacked or not, but ultimately, it's up to the commanders who gets on what team and who gets traded for who.
Model 3 - Team captain Vote and Captain Picks
Players can't join teams. Instead, they nominate themselves as wanting to be a captain. Self nominated captains are displayed in the stats window and everyone gets to pick 2. Two highest become captains and get to draft the teams using the stats window. Once the draft is done, players are automatically assigned, comms jump in and the game starts.
----
Okay community members, time to comment! I know it's a decent amount of work, but is it worthwhile? I personally believe that with just information and empowerment, people will balance their own teams effectively.
Comments
As a server operator however I think it may be better (for people who just want to move things along and play) if the game had an option in the server config to activate or not activate team balance before the match begins.
If active the game looks at everyone who just played last round on the server and sorts them up evenly on the teams per kill/death/point ratio (however it would be best to calculate). Anyone who is new to the round (not having played the round that just ended) just gets placed solely by the numbers needed to make teams even player count-wise.
Once placed on a team you are locked to it for that round... Even if you leave server and re-join during the same match (for anyone trying to circumvent the system). Unless teams become uneven and you can't spawn but you can jump to other team to balance team numbers like the game already allows you to do.
Thanks for the response, SeeVee.
To address the above, I think server operators could leave Model 1 on by default, and then people could vote to activate the other models if needed. After all, Model 1 only enables individual players to swap teams more easily, which doesn't sound like much, but I think would go a long way to encouraging team balancing, especially with the new indicators i described.