Auto Balance to stop rage quitters
Jesus Claus
Join Date: 2011-11-26 Member: 135384Members
Join Date: 2011-11-26 Member: 135384Members
If you really want to make a balanced even game than quit the rage quitters from quitting. Rage quitting doesn't happen in any other game I have ever played and started late in NS1 as it was dying off. This absolutely ruins games and keeps it from being competitive. I was just playing a game that was mid way threw and joined aliens even though it was horrible stacked on marines. I took out a power node where one of the marines bases was and destroyed there base. After that teams were stacked on aliens. Than marines took out a hive and teams were stacked on marines.... when i say stacked i mean 4-8 kinda of stacked if not more. One thing that drew me to NS1 was the fact that on a lot of servers this didn't happen much and would make epic turn arounds. Auto balance kept this BS from happening. It seriously ruins 90% of the games in NS2 and is just ridiculousness.
Comments
1) obviously
2) several million players across DotA, HoN, LoL, etc.
3) dota-like / moba; closer to a single-unit RTS with RPG-elements, but that doesn't accurately describe it
4) as you pointed out, NS is an FPS/<b>RTS</b>, in which <b>teamwork among multiple players</b> is more important or significant than in most games, <b>people die and respawn within the same round</b>, there are <b>positive feedback loops</b> exacerbating death and respawn, <b>rounds are long</b>, <b>rounds are very involving</b>, <b>rounds are hard-won</b> and <b>victory is often more important than playing the game</b>. Oh, what other games does that sound like? DotA comes to mind. Sorry buddy, but rage quitting is in the nature of the game.
5) there are lame-duck situations (read sirlin), caused by positive feedback loops (the rich get richer, the poor get poorer) but people usually just sit it through because the game is more "intimate" (if you can call it that; peer pressure because of very few players in a match).
<!--quoteo(post=1896063:date=Jan 20 2012, 05:04 PM:name=Zeikko)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Zeikko @ Jan 20 2012, 05:04 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1896063"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Public games are public games. There's no point to force people to continue playing a game they don't want to play. If you want to play games without people quitting midgame you'd better start to play in competetive team vs team setting or with pickup teams.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This.
What is really needed is a matchmaking service, for public games that are between "casual" (join the server) and "competitive" (arrange a match beforehand), with fixed teams and penalties for leaving. Hey, where did I get that idea from? HoN.
ensl.org gather - also works in steambrowser(i think)... best way to play in an organized environment even if you dont have a clan - there are also nice week bans if you ragequit or afk...
Is it rage quitting if my NS2 crashes and I start another game because I am pissed of?
Or when I need to go do other things (thats not a gather it is pub).
My GF has a special surprise for me (comon who wouldn't quit a pub for that?)
Need a break after playing 30min and we are still at the sameplace as 10min ago (ok could go AFK but I leave to leave some others my place)
And so on....
And never forget that many ppl get a CTD in NS2 from time to time (often at round end/start) or just quit because it isn't fun to play on a 5 tick server as alien with no hitreg against GL spam and (even at 1tick) nevermissing sentrys.
Ragequitting is not equal to quit!
id rather they have an option to leave to be honest than to stay in the game and ruin it for others
I was thinking something in-game and officially supported (and more than just officially endorsed).
<!--quoteo(post=1896272:date=Jan 21 2012, 07:43 AM:name=ogz)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (ogz @ Jan 21 2012, 07:43 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1896272"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->if they got to the 'rage' point of rage-quitting, then I think they're not enjoying the game anymore..
id rather they have an option to leave to be honest than to stay in the game and ruin it for others<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
A "concede" teamvote might be worth looking at. Anyway, I think that in terms of leaver penalties, we're more talking about "semi-competitive" games, i.e. matchmaking, where people have, ostensibly, fixed teams for the duration of a match. This can be contrasted with: "public" games where people can leave and join at will, a much more casual setting; and "competitive" games where clans (teams) pre-arrange a match to play at a certain time with a certain set of rules. It is only these latter two, public and competitive, that we are used to with NS. Some people (I would say a lot) want something more serious than a public game, but don't have the time (or simply don't care enough) to dedicate to train and play for a clan, and matchmaking would fill that niche.
well, i already suggested draw&surrender vote in some other thread but i guess they did not like the idea for some reason. but the introduction of onos, jp, exo and the post-1.0-nuke will hopefully improve this anyway, reducing the ragequits.
I've witnessed quite a few instances (the worst being last night) where 2 or 3 people leave a team I'm on, and the resulting imbalance of players on each team leads to our team to start losing badly. This triggers others to start rage quitting and the next thing you know a server that had 14 people on it now has 7 left that are all on one team. Quite annoying considering there is only one populated public Australian server atm.
Most of the public TF2 servers I play on have a reasonable autobalance. (some have the feature switched off, but I avoid those) i.e. it will move the last person(s) to join the stacked team to the other team as soon as there is an imbalance of 2 players or more. .
<!--quoteo(post=1896266:date=Jan 21 2012, 07:23 AM:name=RobB)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (RobB @ Jan 21 2012, 07:23 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1896266"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Singlehandedly killing half the enemy team, breaking a siege, advancing to forward outpost without defense, being killed by a stray att-TEAMSWAP. /ragequit<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'd rather that than the entire server emptying itself because the team numbers were allowed to get to 8 vs 3! I’ve had similar experience in TF2. Charge in pull off some epic capture / defence / whatever only to be balanced at next death. But it’s still miles better than watching a server that was 8v8 slip gradually to 8v6, 8v4, to Oh darn I guess I have to find another game to play until this issue is fixed.
The other thing is that 90% of quitters are just PPL whos game crashed and don't rejoin.
'Autobalance' in the sense of preventing WTJ or new players from joining the more populated team is fine; but if you forcibly remove me from my team and put me on the losing team in a game where you get as invested in the current round as NS2, not only will I rage quit, I won't ever come back to the server. Not only that, if FF is on I'd consider trashing our own structures before leaving, because you just wasted an hour of my time. I don't put up with that kind of ###### in a game where you get as invested in the current round as NS2.
If you're going to have autobalance, you need to tell me in big bold letters when I join the server so I can just leave and not waste my time. From my perspective, being autobalanced feels exactly like being forced to concede a round we are winning, artificially prolonging the end of the round and forcing me to sit in the penalty box and wait it out.
No, f-ing way.
You might, but there are a lot of players like me who will rage quit if autobalanced. Good bye server pop.
Maybe allow the option to join in as "auto-balance" ...similar to the current "aliens", "marines" and "random". The game will only pick players that joined in as auto-balance when switching players. If no one joined in as auto-balance then too bad I guess.<!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
Really? You know live human being are implementing features. They do in fact make decisions that can take this is to account. I could just as easily so "There's no reason it would swap commanders." The vested resources is something of an issue but in Pub games who really cares. Let them keep all their personal res when they are swapped.
From the bottom up, i say.
Otherwise you run into that scenario that WILL make people like RobB and myself ragequit - i hate being swapped when i am already thoroughly invested in a game in multiple aspects.
Also must take into account time (you can wait a minute or more sometimes) for more players to join, and most importantly ample time for feedback for the players being swapped. ("You will be Auto Balanced after your next death or in 1 minute" etc)
I'm sorry but I really don't think a 100 pres marine autobalanced to aliens when aliens are losing is really going to be "balanced".
As has been stated by multiple individuals, people are just going to rage quit if they get autobalanced, or worse sabotage then RQ. Autobalance is a negative experience for any player. The current "autobalance" functions as well as it can; it only allows players to join the team out of balance. With the functions of pres, and how they play into effect, it creates a negative experience that makes players feel robbed. It isn't CoD or TF2 where you can just switch people as much as you want without a numerical discrepancy.
If a player chooses to switch it should be their choice, not the game's.
Well considering that for the first 5-7 mins of the game as a marine I only buy a shotgun for kicks and giggles (I suck with it) because I have too many unused resources, I would totally abuse being abel to have my eprsonal res swap over. Go play as the only cool alien I want to play as, run out of pRes and go back to being a marine where pretty much the only gun I ever use is the machine gun anyways.
Obviously the commanders should never be swapped.
I would suggest it is there as an option for servers to run and yes state that when you join so those who like playing a game of 8v3 can go play stacked teams elsewhere. (I still don't understand how you can feel satisfied or invested when you are on the team of 8 in that situation, but meh, whatever I just don’t want that to occur where I play)
Let the server admin decide what an appropriate time is before the balance occurs. (In TF2 a message pops up saying teams will be balanced in 10seconds etc)
I’ve never rage quit a game of TF2 because of autobalance. Nearly all of my rage quits were due to stacked teams and the remaining few hackers.
BF3 was a fiend for games of 20 vs 10 too, it was the second reason (behind their terrible suppression function) that I haven’t played the game for months.
<!--quoteo(post=1935958:date=May 14 2012, 05:04 AM:name=stryker_montgomery)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (stryker_montgomery @ May 14 2012, 05:04 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1935958"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Well considering that for the first 5-7 mins of the game as a marine I only buy a shotgun for kicks and giggles (I suck with it) because I have too many unused resources, I would totally abuse being abel to have my eprsonal res swap over. Go play as the only cool alien I want to play as, run out of pRes and go back to being a marine where pretty much the only gun I ever use is the machine gun anyways.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This could be prevented by only transferring pres (or a percentage of it) on autobalance. Not voluntary swaps. The odds of you being swapped back and forward at convenient times for this probably aren’t that high.
Obviously the commanders should never be swapped.
I would suggest it is there as an option for servers to run and yes state that when you join so those who like playing a game of 8v3 can go play stacked teams elsewhere. (I still don't understand how you can feel satisfied or invested when you are on the team of 8 in that situation, but meh, whatever I just don’t want that to occur where I play)
Let the server admin decide what an appropriate time is before the balance occurs. (In TF2 a message pops up saying teams will be balanced in 10seconds etc)
I’ve never rage quit a game of TF2 because of autobalance. Nearly all of my rage quits were due to stacked teams and the remaining few hackers.
BF3 was a fiend for games of 20 vs 10 too, it was the second reason (behind their terrible suppression function) that I haven’t played the game for months.
This could be prevented by only transferring pres (or a percentage of it) on autobalance. Not voluntary swaps. The odds of you being swapped back and forward at convenient times for this probably aren’t that high.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
No one one the 8 side MADE the game 8v3. That's not their fault, it's the 5 guys who left's fault. Autobalance is a punishment for doing nothing wrong. You can't numerically stack teams. Thus, to even be on the 8 man side, you had to be there before the guys actually raged/left.
Also you would have to make complicated and ridiculous distinctions to choose who gets autobalanced. Apparently we've agreed on commanders not being autobalanced, but what about guys who have a significant amount of PRes? What if they've just joined? What if they have a lot of PRes but they're not skilled players? That's just silly to make something to decide like that on who to punish with autobalance. This, again, is why I believe you should have to choose to switch rather than being punished to switch.
And you've never rage quit? Cool story bro. A lot of people do, so your personal experience really doesn't matter.
If teams are that badly out of whack, the game has already been decided; just let it end so you can start a new one.
"teams are unbalanced, press F1 to switch teams"
i have often whished i would have gotten that message before the game is so out of balance that its basicaly half an hour wasted.
there is no need to force players to switch teams in a pub! there are plenty of people who wanted to play aliens, but there was only room at marines or the other way around.
sometimes i actualy think about playing marine when alien or vice versa, i just dont realice the imbalance bevore its to late.
and just let the switching player his pres, its not worth the whining to take it away or try to balance it out somehow.
Voluntary switching when teams become more than X players imbalanced might be a viable option. However, you'd need to ensure that players kept their PRes when switching teams (or few people would voluntarily switch).
IMO, the proper solution when teams become too imbalanced (think one team having less than half of the other) is for the round to simply end quickly. I'd like to see a surrender vote automatically pop up when a team has less than 50% of the other team for at least a min.