Game need more playerbalance
Paniohitus
Join Date: 2012-11-09 Member: 168790Members
Join Date: 2012-11-09 Member: 168790Members
When i join a game and see 3/4 players with a playertag in there name it's almost useless to play, because most of the time they always win. If you to suggest ingame to even the teams they don't respond and game after game they win in about 10/15 min. THis is not only with clan-players, but also when 2 players on 1 team kills about 90% of the other team. I think everyone has seen this before...
Everyone is hammering on 'Fade needs buff', this is wrong/ that is wrong. But the most fun games i had were those games were the players on each side have the same 'skills' or better, the same kill/death ratio.
My point is, balancing is not only about buffs and nerfs, but the most impact are the outbalanced teams that are playing. If i play in a bad marine-team (where players hits only walls and kills themselves with grenades), the conclusion cannot be 'marines need buffs', but 'teams has to be randomized' I have the feeling that all discussions are about the extra HP/ dmg etc, but never about this issue that has a bigger impact in balance. I hope my point is clear...
Everyone is hammering on 'Fade needs buff', this is wrong/ that is wrong. But the most fun games i had were those games were the players on each side have the same 'skills' or better, the same kill/death ratio.
My point is, balancing is not only about buffs and nerfs, but the most impact are the outbalanced teams that are playing. If i play in a bad marine-team (where players hits only walls and kills themselves with grenades), the conclusion cannot be 'marines need buffs', but 'teams has to be randomized' I have the feeling that all discussions are about the extra HP/ dmg etc, but never about this issue that has a bigger impact in balance. I hope my point is clear...
Comments
I agree with you, it's a real problem. I'm just not sure what the best way to address it is right now. I don't think UWE has the time to build a worthwhile match maker at this stage in release, so it's kind of left up to us, the fans, to solve (or at least make server mods that make the situation better).
When i get a bunch of marines on my team to listen to me, we totally dominate the aliens and they scream nerf nerf.....
Its a team game, the most powerful thing you can do, is work as a team, that shouldn't come to a surprise.
When i get a bunch of marines on my team to listen to me, we totally dominate the aliens and they scream nerf nerf.....
Its a team game, the most powerful thing you can do, is work as a team, that shouldn't come to a surprise.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I agree, but not all players (including me) have the time to join a clan. I only have the time to play 1/2 games a day max after my work. The 'pro' players who have 5/6 hours a day will always dominating. So the question is, must i join a clan to balance the game, or have the clan to play against another skilled-team? I think for the clan it cannot be fun to just rush over the other team again and again right?
Also it's very frustrating to play another team that is allot better in play. I'm not saying there should be no diffrence at all, i'm saying that if 1 teams has around 1:1 kill/death ratio and another 2:1, the second will win (or the commander is not doing anything). In those situations the players should be randomized i think
That kept the two groups apart most of the time pretty well.
That kept the two groups apart most of the time pretty well.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Problem is not only clanplay, but the main issue are unbalanced teams. I don't like combat, also in NS1 i didn't like it... I also think that those high-player server are popular cause of this problem. On those servers the skill-problems are less, because 1 player on a 6vs6 performing bad is a bigger problem then on 12vs12
From there ready room players are always placed accordingly based on their rating/ranking.
Force random is the ultimate solution to this problem. Sure, it isn't perfect, but neither is match making by any conceivable stat. The benefit is that force random requires no extra processing, no extra information, basically no extra code.
Now to the general problem of skill-stacked games. Some ideas for solutions have already be named. I like the following the most:
1) use the existing admin mods that allow vote-random-teams
2) reintroduce the quick-match function, upgrade it with a match making system (the good thing, you would get a global ranking for free)
3) Introduce weapons / mechanics in the game, that make it easier for new (less skilled) players to have more fun / succeed, to lessen the gap between skill levels. Explained in the <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=125624" target="_blank">penny arcade balance video</a>. we need a weapon that gives more power if you have less skill. I will explain this more:
Like in the video, there is this very easy move in street fighter, that let you succeed with low skill. More skilled players don't use them, because there are more powerful moves in the game, when you have the skill to use them right.
How does this translate to NS2? Now, as marine you got this LMG. It is pretty accurate and you only need 9-10 bullets to kill a skulk. But most new players have real problems to aim straight at the fast moving skulk. The next weapon, the SG doesn't make it easier. You need even more aiming for it. So what about introducing a weapon like a machine pistol? The com would need to upgrade it. It would only cost 5 pRes for a marine, has slightly more damage than the LMG but is badly inaccurate. This inaccuracy has 2 effects. For people with bad aim: It actually helps them to hit skulks because it is a spray and pray weapon. They don't lose much accuracy, because they don't had much aim-skill to start with. For better players, this weapon is uninteresting. The small damage buff doesn't help when your good aim gets useless. So they stick to the LMG / SG.
This way we got a weapon, that helps lesser skilled players but gets uninteresting as soon as you got enough aiming-skill. Following this example, we could make this game more newb-freindly AND we make the gap between skilled and unskilled players smaller. And that leads to more balanced games, even when the skill level of the teams differ.
make ingame ranking system that calculates playerskill level, ofcourse this can't be accurate but it would certainly make more even games than now.
after that, random teams so both teams have equal playerskill level.
you're welcome.
This has been a problem forever, the better servers have admin that will force random when you start getting stacked teams. I remember asking for a basic match making system in 2003, granted its not an easily solvable problem. Oh well...
I dont have hard data, but im willing to bet you'll find little correlation between hours played and skill level. I reckon the graph would look more random than the night sky.
Did you read the topic title? I didn't complain about players who are better, i'm complaining about unbalanced teams fighting eachother. My experience doesn't matter in this case and is totally irrelevant in this discussion.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Something that's tracked for everyone is hours played. Maybe that could be used for a matchmaking system via the server browser and team randomizer on every server.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I don't think tracking gamehours is a good stat. I think the unbalanced teams are skill, and skill is mostly kill/deathratio. I don't say it's the only thing that is important btw! But it helps allot if 1 marine can kill 5 incomming skulks and can build the Res-node or a skulk that kills 5 marines alone that pushed a hive.
I think tracking kill/death ratio over an X period of time with the option to join an randomized server will do.
I am against matchmaking. It destroyes the server communities and AvP made me hate the whole system for all eternity.
And for the clan tag stacker argument: I have seen many rookies (most of the time 3-4) to glue together and join every round the SAME team before the rest of the server even connects. And then they start whining and insulting non-rookie players to the max. Just right before they bunch together and join the same team again. For ***** sake, split up into two teams and stop complaining about stacks :P
Oh, and normaly when I latejoin, I join the team with less kills. But surprisingly that is not always the weaker team. Aliens need less kills to hold the same or even more territory of the map if they are not bad. Because they rush the rines, die a lot, but hold off the rine advance. So I don't think that k/d would be a good base for balance. Playtime on the other hand could be more usefull.
And another Idea: divide between beta and non-beta players and make servers for only one group. Then we don't have to get insulted and we can play in a balanced environment as well ;) What about that? In the end it will all be settled. In one year only the people who like NS2 will stay and the majority has enough experience to ensure balanced matches. Awesome!
Everyone is hammering on 'Fade needs buff', this is wrong/ that is wrong. But the most fun games i had were those games were the players on each side have the same 'skills' or better, the same kill/death ratio.
My point is, balancing is not only about buffs and nerfs, but the most impact are the outbalanced teams that are playing. If i play in a bad marine-team (where players hits only walls and kills themselves with grenades), the conclusion cannot be 'marines need buffs', but 'teams has to be randomized' I have the feeling that all discussions are about the extra HP/ dmg etc, but never about this issue that has a bigger impact in balance. I hope my point is clear...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
this is how all of what you just said appears to me: wahhhhh some people want to play with their friends so don't let them. wahhh some people are good and everyone else is really bad so they should be punished.
no
Fixed...
And no, i don't care that you want to stack teams with your friends. NS always had this bad habit of turning into naturally stacked rounds after a while. Because good players don't want to play with new players, so after a while good players end up on the same team, where they don't have to explain the game once again to half the team.
That leads to subtle dynamics where teams will be stacked at some point or other if the server has too many new and not enough experienced players on it.
The only way to fix that is to enforce random teams, otherwise people will just stick with the "good players"
If you and your friends are so good then you should probably trying playing against each other instead of just pub-stomping Marines that mostly don't even know what an Observatory looks like.
So while this may be considered (by some) to be a worse issue than game balance, the relative ease with which game balance issues get fixed (compared to the massive systems required to fix player skill imbalance) makes that the better thing to tackle.
That said, there are certainly far easier solutions like a Randomize Teams vote (which I imagine can be done via mod.) Of course those far easier solutions are also worse solutions (because if 4-5 friends are playing together they're almost certainly going to vote no to randomizing teams.) So the better solution is either to make it in their best interest to balance teams (which is almost impossible, because their interest of playing with friends is naturally going to be very high) or strictly enforce fair teams at a matchmaking level.
Force random autojoin 30 sec after game starts and idle kick after 3 minutes
It's a ridiculously easy to implement feature but it solves two issues at one:
1) no more players humping the rine/alien gate for 10 minutes
2) Effectively enforces random teams as noone joins after they realize that teams begin to stack
I don't think matchmaking systems are any good because in a game as complex as NS2 you really cant put a number on someone's skill. Maybe the tip-top players always perform, but even for a regular like me the day-to-day skillevel jumps from "total moron" to "not bad at all" depending on gow much coffee I had at work, If my gf is nagging me in the background, If I already had my after-work beer, if I've been playing like a maniac for the whole sunday and so on.
Lately people seem more like they're just throwing out the surrender vote at any hint of a challenge, then blaming it on stacked teams.
Fixed...
And no, i don't care that you want to stack teams with your friends. NS always had this bad habit of turning into naturally stacked rounds after a while. Because good players don't want to play with new players, so after a while good players end up on the same team, where they don't have to explain the game once again to half the team.
That leads to subtle dynamics where teams will be stacked at some point or other if the server has too many new and not enough experienced players on it.
The only way to fix that is to enforce random teams, otherwise people will just stick with the "good players"
If you and your friends are so good then you should probably trying playing against each other instead of just pub-stomping Marines that mostly don't even know what an Observatory looks like.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Screw you! (take this with a pinch of salt please)
Seriously, I get to play 2 nights a week, usually - and I like to play with whichever of my real-life friends are about. We're decent enough, but not great. 'Stacking' 2 or 3 friends onto a team isn't going to win/lose the game in our case.
It seems to me that the people who are calling for random don't have real friends they enjoy playing games with. Honestly, I don't want to go back to planetside 2 (and don't intend to...) but at least we can all get on the same team and work as a squad together there. The most frustrating thing in NS2 for me is how long it takes to get 3 or 4 people on the same team.
Just because you don't have any friends, don't assume the rest of us haven't ;)
Now I'm a dad (and with a stupidly long commute to work too), I get really very little time to spend gaming in a week. I want to spend that time actually playing games with my mates, not attempting to play games with them, or getting annoyed that we constantly have to split up (or constantly go aliens because of nubs stacking marines all the time...).
Roo
no<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
And this appears to me as: Not reading this topic and post a random reaction that is even relevant as no reaction. Please, if you can't read, don't respond.
<!--quoteo(post=2044501:date=Dec 12 2012, 06:53 PM:name=Roobubba)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Roobubba @ Dec 12 2012, 06:53 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2044501"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Screw you! (take this with a pinch of salt please)
Seriously, I get to play 2 nights a week, usually - and I like to play with whichever of my real-life friends are about. We're decent enough, but not great. 'Stacking' 2 or 3 friends onto a team isn't going to win/lose the game in our case.
It seems to me that the people who are calling for random don't have real friends they enjoy playing games with. Honestly, I don't want to go back to planetside 2 (and don't intend to...) but at least we can all get on the same team and work as a squad together there. The most frustrating thing in NS2 for me is how long it takes to get 3 or 4 people on the same team.
Just because you don't have any friends, don't assume the rest of us haven't ;)
Now I'm a dad (and with a stupidly long commute to work too), I get really very little time to spend gaming in a week. I want to spend that time actually playing games with my mates, not attempting to play games with them, or getting annoyed that we constantly have to split up (or constantly go aliens because of nubs stacking marines all the time...).
Roo<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I agree, it should be an option or something.
did you even read MY post? it wasnt an attack. the only thing you CAN do is play and get better. stop being so gd sensitive maam