<!--quoteo(post=1976823:date=Sep 12 2012, 11:40 PM:name=Deadzone)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Deadzone @ Sep 12 2012, 11:40 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1976823"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Look at the bright side - playing against a player (or team) who is better than you will make you improve.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
God forbid all the people who just want to have fun, rather than practice at a facsimile of a sport.
ScardyBobScardyBobJoin Date: 2009-11-25Member: 69528Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow
<!--quoteo(post=1977016:date=Sep 13 2012, 06:58 AM:name=Arkanti)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Arkanti @ Sep 13 2012, 06:58 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1977016"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Every time I've been accused of stacking I haven't actually done so intentionally, and I'd say the same would be true for others. Forcing random is still highly likely to result in one team having better players.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Unless you have a rating system so you can ensure good players are evenly distributed.
<!--quoteo(post=1977010:date=Sep 13 2012, 05:45 AM:name=Floodinator)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Floodinator @ Sep 13 2012, 05:45 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1977010"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->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?!?!<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Because when Marines win, it's only due to a skill imbalance.
This is <i>not</i> a dev issue. This is 100% a server administration issue. The only <b>actual</b> fix for this problem is to have a server with a strong admin staff that plays a lot, gets to know the regulars, and is on the server or otherwise available to help fix problems when they occur. There does not exist - nor can there exist - some sort of automated solution that could detect personalities and preferences, know the server history, have a good idea of player skill, etc etc.
Active, involved server admin staff are the <b>sole</b> solution to this.
This is <i>not</i> a dev issue. This is 100% a server administration issue. The only <b>actual</b> fix for this problem is to have a server with a strong admin staff that plays a lot, gets to know the regulars, and is on the server or otherwise available to help fix problems when they occur. There does not exist - nor can there exist - some sort of automated solution that could detect personalities and preferences, know the server history, have a good idea of player skill, etc etc.
Active, involved server admin staff are the <b>sole</b> solution to this.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> I think this is completely wrong. Server admins can react to problems that occur (abusive players, map change requests, server restarts, etc) but they cannot easily deal with issues that need to be resolved pro-actively.
The issue of team balance in NS2 needs to be dealt with before round start. I think the easiest solution is for the better players to manage this themselves, choosing to balance teams as best they can. This will not always happen though, so a stats system that could partially balance teams would be ideal.
Sometimes people are legitimately stacking for sure.
But I also think it's one of those things that goes with "that guys is a hacker", but it's even more common. People call team stack if they lose most of the time, not because of legitimate stacking.
As for a balance feature, imo you should get no options or preferences if you want to balance teams on such small numbers. For every piece of fluff/option you add, the quality of the balancing will suffer greatly, not to mention bump up the development time of such a feature quite a bit. If you want to pick your team side or play with friends, don't use team balance. You cannot balance a team size of only 16-24 properly while giving people options, it would just be bad. Global Agenda is a shooter game I played for a while that used a Truskill system and the balancing was pretty bad even with 500+ players at a given time because they had just a few key options/preferences for people that caused the queue times and the actual balancing to suffer significantly.
<!--quoteo(post=1977148:date=Sep 13 2012, 01:20 PM:name=1dominator1)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (1dominator1 @ Sep 13 2012, 01:20 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1977148"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->God forbid all the people who just want to have fun, rather than practice at a facsimile of a sport.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
so you play a game to lose? i love this argument. yes, play a competitive game but youre not trying to win at all. mkayyyyy
Of course admins can be proactive: "Hey Alice, Bob, Cindy, and Don: y'all need to split up next round/this round/however our server rules work."
It's simply not possible to write a program that can handle the subtlety and complexity of how different server communities will want this addressed.
<b>Any given programmed solution will make more people angry than it will satisfy</b>, and I'd expect it to satisfy very few people indeed if imposed by devs upon the entire playerbase.
The problems with a stats-based system are legion: 1) What stats are collected? 2) Where are they stored? 3) Who has access to them? 4) What rubric do you use to grade players? 5) How do you account for relative differences? (i.e.: a player with a high K:D on one server could still be dogmeat on another) 6) How do you detect teams? An organized clan will almost always beat an "equally skilled" group of players that have never played together before? 7) Do you take ping into account? Why or why not? 8) What happens when gets put on marine/alien for the sixth time in a row?
On and on and on forever. It's <b>impossible</b> to write a program that can take all this into account, and again, that program has no idea how individual servers want to conduct themselves, even if it could be written. Which it can't. Humans are the only actors with the ability to collect all the necessary information and act on it in a sensible fashion, and even then there will be occasional drama.
Before the big boom of new players balancing teams wasn't much of a problem. I think the current problem is due to the skill gaps between new players and everyone who has been here for a year or more. You need at least 40 hours of game play to really get into the swing of things and right now about 90% of the players are below that mark. I bet right before release the team stacking problem is greatly improved but then we will have a massive influx of new players again and the balance will be destroyed until the majority of the new players get enough play time.
The only team stacking problem is that 15 of the 20 people in the server just started playing the game and 2 good players on the same team is a team stack right now. Over time this problem will disappear. Of course real team stacking will always be a problem, AKA 6 clan members on the same team.
<!--quoteo(post=1977187:date=Sep 13 2012, 03:07 PM:name=VeNeM)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (VeNeM @ Sep 13 2012, 03:07 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1977187"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->so you play a game to lose? i love this argument. yes, play a competitive game but youre not trying to win at all. mkayyyyy<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
^that I like to be good at what I do, even if I just screw around at it. Would anyone intentionally suck at something? (other than for the lulz/trolling) People act like anyone trying to better themselves at a game is some elitist jerk.
Anyway, so much butt hurt in this thread. No two teams are perfectly even, and random will not change that. Not even "team balancing" will change that. Crying about it will not change that.
It is not really fun playing a game and losing repeatedly, I get that. But don't expect wins to be handed to you by some system.
I think a lot of people here are getting my point wrong.
I'm not against good teams who win, and I also like playing with people I know.
This thread was about games where 5 people sit in the readyroom, hoping to get into the winning/their favorised team after 10 minutes, while a 5vs3 game is running. It happens quite frequently. I don't want auto-balance, I hate to be team-switched automatically.
That's why I came up with the idea, that a script reads the input of players after the match has been running for some time and then randoms them.
I thought it'd be a good idea, maybe I'm the only one.
<!--quoteo(post=1977249:date=Sep 13 2012, 05:24 PM:name=countbasie)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (countbasie @ Sep 13 2012, 05:24 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1977249"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->This thread was about games where 5 people sit in the readyroom, hoping to get into the winning/their favorised team after 10 minutes, while a 5vs3 game is running.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
wat
that is not teamstacking, and actually does not require an admin to fix
that requires a script that kicks you if you sit in the RR while a match is going
teamstacking is when a clan joins a server and repeatedly destroys the uncoordinated pubs for fun
I don't think you can solely blame people waiting for a slot to open. Some people are genuinely AFK, especially after a long game. It's tradition in NS to take your piss/smoke/food break at that time.
Any kind of forced team selection just creates a new problem of too many AFKs. If there was a way to tag yourself AFK and not get autoed or kicked, that would work (edit: on second thought, no it wouldn't, it could easily be exploited) -- but it wouldn't be fool-proof unless everyone somehow knew the command. I think this is just an organically formed problem with how NS games have come to function.
Also, unless the server is full, no one should be kicked for being AFK, period. IMO.
<!--quoteo(post=1977187:date=Sep 13 2012, 08:07 PM:name=VeNeM)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (VeNeM @ Sep 13 2012, 08:07 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1977187"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->so you play a game to lose? i love this argument. yes, play a competitive game but youre not trying to win at all. mkayyyyy<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It's almost like fun is a subjective term and differs from person to person. I know weird right?
In terms of skill-stacking, I just want to point out that it's probably not a great idea to look for a technical solution to a social problem. If people really want to skill stack they will be very clever at working around technical impositions. We live in a world where we try and evade effort and responsibility by turning to technology and regulation for solutions.
Before I go on I want to roughly define what constitutes a skill stack. It's important to be reasonable and allow some flexibility. I don't bother too much about tracking exactly who's better than who, but I'll take note of players that I think are significantly above average. If one team has 3 more of those players than the other, then I'll probably start making some noise.
So, how to solve this problem? Start by <ol type='1'><li>announcing when a skill stack is happening (get consensus) - must be done at the start of a round, it's pointless later.</li><li>name key players (promote awareness)</li><li>ask for key players to swap teams & call for a restart</li></ol> If at this point skill-stacking isn't resolved then you better believe that the skill stacking is deliberate and that technical solutions like voterandom and randomall would be worked around. Still, there are more options available to discourage this kind of behavior...The way I tackle this problem is through a bit of light social engineering: <ol type='1'><li>escalate to name & shame for repeat offenders</li><li>leave the server/join a different server. Feel free to mention why you're leaving in game chat but if you do, try to sound indifferent/matter-of-fact rather than angry.</li><li>counter-trolling options, ranging from cheesy game strategies (eg: mine rush, drifter rush, gorge rush etc) to non-participation options (getting everybody to just build a massive clog-fort) to active-denial ("ragequit"/f4). Your enjoyment is only limited by your creativity. Most importantly, if you have consensus of a skill stack don't positively reinforce that behavior by trying to play the game properly - but absolutely don't do this alone. It's whole team or nothing!</li></ol>
Player quantity stacking is not normally much of an issue because the game normally prevents someone joining a team with more players than the other (max difference = 1). That's broken at the moment. Once that's fixed, the only cause for quantity stacking is from people disconnecting mid-game voluntarily or involuntarily. In the early game it's usually enough to just say 'teams' and someone will swap. In the late game it's usually due to ragequitting. Don't ask for people to swap teams in the last 5 minutes.
At the fun topic: I can understand the people that only have fun when they are winning. Mostly comp-players I guess. But I myself can have fun loosing too. But only when the match was fair. When the teams are extremely skill stacked it is simply boring to play. Than I have no fun. But if the teams are near to equal skilled, I will have fun. No matter if my team loses in the end. The game was fun for me than.
<!--quoteo(post=1977678:date=Sep 14 2012, 12:24 PM:name=spellman23)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (spellman23 @ Sep 14 2012, 12:24 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1977678"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->FALL INTO THE RANDOM PIT
Back in my LAN days, we'd all scream "Comm join first. EVERYONE F3!!!!" Good times.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Pardon me but that was a single file line of aliens and marines working together as a team. It might as well have been synchronized skydiving. It was beautiful.
<!--quoteo(post=1977684:date=Sep 14 2012, 09:28 AM:name=Mr R0YB0T 0)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Mr R0YB0T 0 @ Sep 14 2012, 09:28 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1977684"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Pardon me but that was a single file line of aliens and marines working together as a team. It might as well have been synchronized skydiving. It was beautiful.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
True. It's a true testment to the awesome that is the NS community. Brought to you via Ready Rooms.
I personally prefer running into the Random hole to F3. But Everyone spamming F3 helps be a little more random (assuming people aren't gaming the system).
Strange how people say it's a server side issue with the anti-stuck command when there’s a “annotate stuck†command to lets the developers know there’s a bug, glitch or problem with that spot.
<!--coloro:#FF0000--><span style="color:#FF0000"><!--/coloro--><!--sizeo:3--><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo-->Such as the spot between terminal and courtyard where I have seen everyone and everything that can get stuck will get stuck. <!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec--><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->
Comments
God forbid all the people who just want to have fun, rather than practice at a facsimile of a sport.
Unless you have a rating system so you can ensure good players are evenly distributed.
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?!?!<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Because when Marines win, it's only due to a skill imbalance.
This is <i>not</i> a dev issue. This is 100% a server administration issue. The only <b>actual</b> fix for this problem is to have a server with a strong admin staff that plays a lot, gets to know the regulars, and is on the server or otherwise available to help fix problems when they occur. There does not exist - nor can there exist - some sort of automated solution that could detect personalities and preferences, know the server history, have a good idea of player skill, etc etc.
Active, involved server admin staff are the <b>sole</b> solution to this.
This is <i>not</i> a dev issue. This is 100% a server administration issue. The only <b>actual</b> fix for this problem is to have a server with a strong admin staff that plays a lot, gets to know the regulars, and is on the server or otherwise available to help fix problems when they occur. There does not exist - nor can there exist - some sort of automated solution that could detect personalities and preferences, know the server history, have a good idea of player skill, etc etc.
Active, involved server admin staff are the <b>sole</b> solution to this.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think this is completely wrong. Server admins can react to problems that occur (abusive players, map change requests, server restarts, etc) but they cannot easily deal with issues that need to be resolved pro-actively.
The issue of team balance in NS2 needs to be dealt with before round start. I think the easiest solution is for the better players to manage this themselves, choosing to balance teams as best they can. This will not always happen though, so a stats system that could partially balance teams would be ideal.
But I also think it's one of those things that goes with "that guys is a hacker", but it's even more common. People call team stack if they lose most of the time, not because of legitimate stacking.
As for a balance feature, imo you should get no options or preferences if you want to balance teams on such small numbers. For every piece of fluff/option you add, the quality of the balancing will suffer greatly, not to mention bump up the development time of such a feature quite a bit. If you want to pick your team side or play with friends, don't use team balance. You cannot balance a team size of only 16-24 properly while giving people options, it would just be bad. Global Agenda is a shooter game I played for a while that used a Truskill system and the balancing was pretty bad even with 500+ players at a given time because they had just a few key options/preferences for people that caused the queue times and the actual balancing to suffer significantly.
so you play a game to lose? i love this argument. yes, play a competitive game but youre not trying to win at all. mkayyyyy
Of course admins can be proactive: "Hey Alice, Bob, Cindy, and Don: y'all need to split up next round/this round/however our server rules work."
It's simply not possible to write a program that can handle the subtlety and complexity of how different server communities will want this addressed.
<b>Any given programmed solution will make more people angry than it will satisfy</b>, and I'd expect it to satisfy very few people indeed if imposed by devs upon the entire playerbase.
The problems with a stats-based system are legion:
1) What stats are collected?
2) Where are they stored?
3) Who has access to them?
4) What rubric do you use to grade players?
5) How do you account for relative differences? (i.e.: a player with a high K:D on one server could still be dogmeat on another)
6) How do you detect teams? An organized clan will almost always beat an "equally skilled" group of players that have never played together before?
7) Do you take ping into account? Why or why not?
8) What happens when gets put on marine/alien for the sixth time in a row?
On and on and on forever. It's <b>impossible</b> to write a program that can take all this into account, and again, that program has no idea how individual servers want to conduct themselves, even if it could be written. Which it can't. Humans are the only actors with the ability to collect all the necessary information and act on it in a sensible fashion, and even then there will be occasional drama.
The only team stacking problem is that 15 of the 20 people in the server just started playing the game and 2 good players on the same team is a team stack right now. Over time this problem will disappear. Of course real team stacking will always be a problem, AKA 6 clan members on the same team.
^that
I like to be good at what I do, even if I just screw around at it. Would anyone intentionally suck at something? (other than for the lulz/trolling) People act like anyone trying to better themselves at a game is some elitist jerk.
Anyway, so much butt hurt in this thread. No two teams are perfectly even, and random will not change that. Not even "team balancing" will change that. Crying about it will not change that.
It is not really fun playing a game and losing repeatedly, I get that. But don't expect wins to be handed to you by some system.
I'm not against good teams who win, and I also like playing with people I know.
This thread was about games where 5 people sit in the readyroom, hoping to get into the winning/their favorised team after 10 minutes, while a 5vs3 game is running. It happens quite frequently. I don't want auto-balance, I hate to be team-switched automatically.
That's why I came up with the idea, that a script reads the input of players after the match has been running for some time and then randoms them.
I thought it'd be a good idea, maybe I'm the only one.
wat
that is not teamstacking, and actually does not require an admin to fix
that requires a script that kicks you if you sit in the RR while a match is going
teamstacking is when a clan joins a server and repeatedly destroys the uncoordinated pubs for fun
Any kind of forced team selection just creates a new problem of too many AFKs. If there was a way to tag yourself AFK and not get autoed or kicked, that would work (edit: on second thought, no it wouldn't, it could easily be exploited) -- but it wouldn't be fool-proof unless everyone somehow knew the command. I think this is just an organically formed problem with how NS games have come to function.
Also, unless the server is full, no one should be kicked for being AFK, period. IMO.
It's almost like fun is a subjective term and differs from person to person. I know weird right?
Before I go on I want to roughly define what constitutes a skill stack. It's important to be reasonable and allow some flexibility. I don't bother too much about tracking exactly who's better than who, but I'll take note of players that I think are significantly above average. If one team has 3 more of those players than the other, then I'll probably start making some noise.
So, how to solve this problem? Start by
<ol type='1'><li>announcing when a skill stack is happening (get consensus) - must be done at the start of a round, it's pointless later.</li><li>name key players (promote awareness)</li><li>ask for key players to swap teams & call for a restart</li></ol>
If at this point skill-stacking isn't resolved then you better believe that the skill stacking is deliberate and that technical solutions like voterandom and randomall would be worked around. Still, there are more options available to discourage this kind of behavior...The way I tackle this problem is through a bit of light social engineering:
<ol type='1'><li>escalate to name & shame for repeat offenders</li><li>leave the server/join a different server. Feel free to mention why you're leaving in game chat but if you do, try to sound indifferent/matter-of-fact rather than angry.</li><li>counter-trolling options, ranging from cheesy game strategies (eg: mine rush, drifter rush, gorge rush etc) to non-participation options (getting everybody to just build a massive clog-fort) to active-denial ("ragequit"/f4). Your enjoyment is only limited by your creativity. Most importantly, if you have consensus of a skill stack don't positively reinforce that behavior by trying to play the game properly - but absolutely don't do this alone. It's whole team or nothing!</li></ol>
Player quantity stacking is not normally much of an issue because the game normally prevents someone joining a team with more players than the other (max difference = 1). That's broken at the moment. Once that's fixed, the only cause for quantity stacking is from people disconnecting mid-game voluntarily or involuntarily. In the early game it's usually enough to just say 'teams' and someone will swap. In the late game it's usually due to ragequitting. Don't ask for people to swap teams in the last 5 minutes.
I can understand the people that only have fun when they are winning. Mostly comp-players I guess.
But I myself can have fun loosing too. But only when the match was fair. When the teams are extremely skill stacked it is simply boring to play. Than I have no fun.
But if the teams are near to equal skilled, I will have fun. No matter if my team loses in the end. The game was fun for me than.
You're welcome.
You're welcome.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
FALL INTO THE RANDOM PIT
Back in my LAN days, we'd all scream "Comm join first. EVERYONE F3!!!!" Good times.
Back in my LAN days, we'd all scream "Comm join first. EVERYONE F3!!!!" Good times.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Pardon me but that was a single file line of aliens and marines working together as a team.
It might as well have been synchronized skydiving. It was beautiful.
It might as well have been synchronized skydiving. It was beautiful.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
True. It's a true testment to the awesome that is the NS community. Brought to you via Ready Rooms.
I personally prefer running into the Random hole to F3. But Everyone spamming F3 helps be a little more random (assuming people aren't gaming the system).
<!--coloro:#FF0000--><span style="color:#FF0000"><!--/coloro--><!--sizeo:3--><span style="font-size:12pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo-->Such as the spot between terminal and courtyard where I have seen everyone and everything that can get stuck will get stuck.
<!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec--><!--colorc--></span><!--/colorc-->