Hive 2.0 (Shuffle 2.0?) Choosing your team
MoFo1
United States Join Date: 2014-07-25 Member: 197612Members
United States Join Date: 2014-07-25 Member: 197612Members
So I've been wondering with this new hive2.0 that we're supposed to be getting...
Will there be any way to choose what team you'd prefer to have shuffle place you on?
If not what are the chances of having something like this added. I think it would be extremely helpful as most people seem to prefer one side over the other. Sometimes so much so that they refuse to play the side they hate, which leads to one team being down 1-3 players in the first minute.
Or at the very least having the "switch" feature from the TacticalGamer server put into vanilla so people can type switch to trade places with someone on the other team...
Currently it really seems like shuffle goes out of it's way to place me on the Marine team... It doesn't matter the circumstances. I can even join a server with equal teams (lets say 8v8) and it will force me to Marine literally every single time, even when the average Alien hive skill is 500+ less than the Marine average!
Clearly I'm not alone either as yesterday there was another player in the server who hated playing Marine so much they flat out refused. Disconnecting and reconnecting to the server over and over until they were finally placed on Alien.
Judging from the other thread (which side do you prefer) it really does seem that most people greatly prefer one side over the other, and some sort of algorithm to prioritize giving those people the team they want would be immensely helpful. (and something beyond just joining the team you want before the shuffle, because that does nothing whatsoever. At the very least 8 out of 10 times when I'm on Alien before the shuffle I get forced to Marine.)
Anyway.. thoughts? Does anyone else consistently get shuffled onto the side they hate playing?
Will there be any way to choose what team you'd prefer to have shuffle place you on?
If not what are the chances of having something like this added. I think it would be extremely helpful as most people seem to prefer one side over the other. Sometimes so much so that they refuse to play the side they hate, which leads to one team being down 1-3 players in the first minute.
Or at the very least having the "switch" feature from the TacticalGamer server put into vanilla so people can type switch to trade places with someone on the other team...
Currently it really seems like shuffle goes out of it's way to place me on the Marine team... It doesn't matter the circumstances. I can even join a server with equal teams (lets say 8v8) and it will force me to Marine literally every single time, even when the average Alien hive skill is 500+ less than the Marine average!
Clearly I'm not alone either as yesterday there was another player in the server who hated playing Marine so much they flat out refused. Disconnecting and reconnecting to the server over and over until they were finally placed on Alien.
Judging from the other thread (which side do you prefer) it really does seem that most people greatly prefer one side over the other, and some sort of algorithm to prioritize giving those people the team they want would be immensely helpful. (and something beyond just joining the team you want before the shuffle, because that does nothing whatsoever. At the very least 8 out of 10 times when I'm on Alien before the shuffle I get forced to Marine.)
Anyway.. thoughts? Does anyone else consistently get shuffled onto the side they hate playing?
Comments
Some problems with shuffle can be directly attributed to hive. Such as some rookies starting at 0 hive skill while others start at 1000. I wrote this proposal to fix that one thing, and it has been implemented into hive 2.0.
There have been some other back end improvements to algorithms that Mcglaspie or Moultano would need to explain. You could ask them on discord.
No one should expect any of this to make shuffles perfect under any circumstances. Team balance is and never will be guaranteed. We do know that hive does a reasonable job, and hive 2.0 will further enhance its accuracy and quality. This only scratches the surface of what is needed to have balanced games.
The best way to obtain balanced games is to have near skilled teams. Near skilled teams would be had with skill segregation. This alone would greatly enhance shuffle quality. This is not possible given the concurrent playerbase NS2 has had at any time in the last several years. The amount of skill variation on any given server is far too high to have near skilled teams. Until the playerbase dramatically increases, if ever, shuffle quality will only marginally improve.
I encourage anyone to use the command "sh_teamstats" after a shuffle. This will allow you to see the average skills of both teams and the standard deviations. Shuffle is supposed to find a team combination with the closest possible average hive skills and standard deviation of skills. Standard deviation of skill is a measure of how widely varied skill is on the team. Even if average skill is equal, games will be imbalanced if the standard deviations are not equal. You can have a balanced game with high standard deviation but the amount of quality games from those shuffles would increase if the standard deviations were smaller. To have near skilled games NS2 would need both teams to have a standard deviation under 200. In reality this almost never happens, and will not happen frequently until the playerbase multiplies in size.
TLDR: Shuffle is not the problem. Little can be done to dramatically improve improve shuffle quality. It is what it is.
But yea, shuffle also got big problems to get the teams fair. I agree that it is not easy to make shuffle work better with elo as the only source of skill judgment and a small playerbase.
So when you agree to that, why is shuffle still in the game? There only downsides to it while the only (theoretical) good thing (balanced teams) is not working too well.
I'm not sure it's better though, and it's a bit of work to implement. I would like to revisit this at some point when I get the chance. One of the goals is to take into account both team preference and the stddev of each team's skill.
Once hive2 has been in the wild for a while and people's skills have settled down a bit, then maybe we can start experimenting. Hopefully it will be better enough without further modification that people will be happier with shuffle results.
Following scenarios happen usually:
1) teams are almost ok, but its 1200 (9 people) vs 1000 (10 people)
So the balance will be even worse, very likely after someone joins...
Or
2) teams are fine
But then the followong happens:
a) people join afterwards and its impossible to reshuffle and we have uneven teams
b) people are afk/get kicked for that and teams are uneven again when they rejoin because they can't join the team to balance everything
This is what happens mostly from what I've observed.. people whine about the wrong reasons that ppl stack on purpose, but that's mostly not true. The issue is with the shuffle or the restrictions in the settings.
As a server op, I can say with extreme certainty that if I did not have a shuffle on the server it would be abused immediately by those who would stack in order to decimate the rookies. I say this, because I've run the experiment both recently and in the past. The community at large can not be trusted to police themselves.
Shuffle is what it is, a shuffle. Making it give preferential treatment to players for what team they want to join kinda defeats the purpose. Random is random. Further defeating the purpose is also contrary to the idea of a shuffle. What happens when a low skilled player is swapped with a high skilled player? Oops, now the teams are suddenly off balance again.
Almost everyone has a different opinion on this, and there's never a consensus.
Many servers have systems in place where you can donate, or pay for a slot that doesn't get shuffled. For right now that may be the only way for people who don't want to be moved around to get what they want.
lol
Shine's version of shuffle tries to let players stay on their chosen team using players in the ready room to balance the average skill. You can also set tolerance for average skill and standard deviation. On my servers I have a fairly high average skill tolerance and I've recently stopped shuffling for standard deviation whith good results. Configuring shuffle this way is a good compromise that let's people play on the team they want most of the time.
I feel like I have them where I want, although I did make a few changes. I suppose it's been so long since I've configured it that I hadn't realized more features were added. Thanks for letting me know!
Didn't say my server was one of them. But thanks for your input.
It's worth checking out the Shine's changelog every now and then. I have noticed that new features are added with updates and they are not announced in any other way.
The default tolerance for standard deviation is 40 or 60. I have found that this setting is too low and causes shuffle to unnecessarily move people around which is one of the most common cause of complaint on my servers.
It shouldn't be too hard, let people select their preferred team in the options menu somewhere. 3 options.. "Alien" "Marine" and "None" with the default option being "None" Then have shuffle take that preference into account. So if two players of equal skill are in a game, and one has "None" and the other has "Alien" the player with the Alien preference will always be placed on Alien...
I don't know if that made much sense because I'm tired as hell right now.. I just know that this game desperately needs some sort of algorithm added to shuffle to take team preference into account. OR at the absolute very least have an algorithm so people aren't forced onto the same side over and over and over and over and over...
If I get shuffled onto Marine too many more times I'm likely to end up uninstalling NS2 altogether. After all why bother playing if I constantly get forced onto the team I absolutely despise playing with every fiber of my being.
/end rant
However, i thought this was already in place to some extent. I remember some post i think moultano posted w a pic of Obama and some text along the lines of 'if you like the team you're on, keep it.' A nod to the buttfucking awful thing known as obamacare that was being rolled out at the time.
Do you know which shuffle method the server is using? There are several out there.
No clue..
These days I'm usually on either dmd or ibis (because they tend to be the only servers populated)... It seems to happen more on dmd.
It's easy to figure out: After a shuffle try to use sh_teamstats in your console. In case that command doesn't work the server uses the vanilla forceeventeams otherwise teamstats will tell you what shuffle settings the server is using in addition to details about the teams current setup.
Please copy paste that information in the future if you run into issues with shuffle.
It lists each players score, the team average, the standard deviation, tolerance values, then how many people match the shuffle and how long ago it was...
Where does it show the settings?
I hopped onto dmd this morning with enough time for 3 games.. Shuffle placed me on marine in all 3. I had to disconnect/reconnect to the server then wait until aliens were down a player, just so I could get one game on aliens in before work...
4+null option. "alien or marine" "Alien" "Marine" and "Spectate" + "null" = afk -> autokick in a few minutes.
After that check Hive scores for stackd teams.
!revote would be nice also.