Endless shuffle votes will kill NS2 finally
dePARA
Join Date: 2011-04-29 Member: 96321Members, Squad Five Blue
Join Date: 2011-04-29 Member: 96321Members, Squad Five Blue
We have this problem since shine exist:
5 years of "Press M and shuffle" - every fukin round and these shuffle marathons becoming worse end worse.
Waiting 15min on a server, only to see multiple shuffle votes, 1 reset cause 3 left one team and reshuffle again is like pain in the ass.
This or noone is shuffling even with a skill difference of 1000 and more.
Most of the time you have a combination of above:
1st noone is shuffling and the round starts
Then people whining about stack
1st rest
And the shuffle marathon start:
People are not in the team they want? shuffle
20 skillpoints difference? shuffle
No com on rine side? shuffle
Is it so hard to force a autoshuffle if the teams are not balanced?
And dont tell me "Ask a admin to to activate this in shine". This needs to be in vanilla.
70% od the current playerbase didnt even know what shine is. No tutorials are explaining admin mods, so they dont know the M-Key or what shuffle means.
NS2 is the only game i ever played, where i have to repeat game basics (and shine is NS2 basic stuff) like an idiot in every round.
Just imagine CS:Go
"Press B to buy" - every round, for years
"Press M and shuffle" , i cant hear this anymore and i dont care anymore.
If people cant open the scoreboard and dont care about skill difference of over 1000, well, gg NS2.
5 years of "Press M and shuffle" - every fukin round and these shuffle marathons becoming worse end worse.
Waiting 15min on a server, only to see multiple shuffle votes, 1 reset cause 3 left one team and reshuffle again is like pain in the ass.
This or noone is shuffling even with a skill difference of 1000 and more.
Most of the time you have a combination of above:
1st noone is shuffling and the round starts
Then people whining about stack
1st rest
And the shuffle marathon start:
People are not in the team they want? shuffle
20 skillpoints difference? shuffle
No com on rine side? shuffle
Is it so hard to force a autoshuffle if the teams are not balanced?
And dont tell me "Ask a admin to to activate this in shine". This needs to be in vanilla.
70% od the current playerbase didnt even know what shine is. No tutorials are explaining admin mods, so they dont know the M-Key or what shuffle means.
NS2 is the only game i ever played, where i have to repeat game basics (and shine is NS2 basic stuff) like an idiot in every round.
Just imagine CS:Go
"Press B to buy" - every round, for years
"Press M and shuffle" , i cant hear this anymore and i dont care anymore.
If people cant open the scoreboard and dont care about skill difference of over 1000, well, gg NS2.
Comments
- Relies on a single score for each very different team (my tier 4 becomes a 2 at best on Marine = I'm always a huge handicap for them)
- Does absolutely nothing to try to keep us on our preferred team (it is extremely common to be swapped with another player of equal skill who unlike me has either marine, or no preference set!)
It also doesn't help when teams are super close in skill (less than 100 points off) and the idiots in the server are still calling for shuffle.. --> Then shuffle goes through and people get forced to different teams --> People end up leaving or hitting F4 because they got forced to the team they don't want to play = Teams are off by more than they were before shuffle.
Ironically some of the best most balanced games I've had in the past year, were games that were not shuffled at all!
+1 to this..
It's stupid how just a couple green rookies can lower the average enough to allow a stack to be considered "even"
Team 1 - A tier 7, tier 6, and two tier 4 players
vs
Team 2 - Two tier 5's, and one tier 4
All it takes is a couple rookies on team 1 for this to be considered "balanced"
People get frustrated for the game not starting or being resetted, for being shuffled to the other team, and they just leave.
I think there needs to be a bigger cool down for shuffle votes, if the teams are kinda even, so it's more likely for the game to start.
And if the teams stay kinda even in the early game, it shouldnt be possible to shuffle like 2 minutes into the game to reset it.
Also agree that shuffle can be rather underwhelming, when it comes to high skill variance on servers.
Sometimes it's just off how low tier players are distributed.
Seen too many bad alien rounds, because too many low tier aliens don't know what to do, how to fight against high tier marines and how to fill all those crucial roles on the team (Gorge, Lerk, Fade). Those 1-2 carrying high elo Aliens aren't enough in those cases.
Rookie servers are a nice idea and have apparently improved player retention by lowering the skill gap between players in a game, but once a player "graduates" they're forced to play against the rest.
inb4; You can say matchmaking or skill segregation, but this is all far too little far too late.
One thing you could try however.. Make a competitive duel and/or doubles mode for NS2. It might offset some of these high skilled players so skill gaps lessen a bit on pubs, if the mode is attractive enough that is.
EDIT: Let me make a better case for a duel gamemode.
One of the things that bother me about the state of NS2 right now, is how long it takes to seed a game. Either servers are full and it takes forever to get a spot, or servers are empty and takes forever to fill them. With a bit of work you can get your spot, but then you are not remotely guaranteed a good game, often pub games are not. Gathers aren't much better these days in my personal opinion, so there really isn't any space to play for high level players these days.
A duel game however, doesn't require 11+ other people. You need ONE to organise a duel. There's little concern about "team balance", you generally have an idea of who in the community is around your skill, so getting a game is not nearly as much hard work.
I've actually been working on something very similar to that. I'm calling it Extermination and it's sort of a mashup of the combat mode and counter-strike and seems to work well for 3vs3 up until 8vs8. I'll be writing up a description for it and maybe a gameplay video later once the balance flux settles down.
People shuffle, re-shuffle over and over because they're afraid to loose their precious skill points.
It happens if they see 2/3 top players on the over side and the skill factor is greater on their side.
So the root problem never been shuffle. It's the skill-point-wallet.
The real problem to solve is :
- What a player can do ? (The real skills: Can he shoot? can he build? can he obey/react/anticipate?)
- What a player is willing to do (if only we had huddles) ?
- Is it looking ok compared to the opponent team and what they can do.
- Is there anything to loose except time (as entertainment)?
Profiling players is the key. Is he a Fade/gorge at heart... Kharra,Marine... builder, shooter. Sadly nothing ever provided any solution for this. Setting up the game in NS2 is almost as important as the game itself.Unfortunately a lot of the things described a long time ago did happen. I hate my crystal ball.
They think after next shuffle new commander is coming.
Teams can be completely dead even waiting for someone to hop in the chair/hive... and people will start calling for another shuffle..as if shuffling magically makes people suddenly want to command.
Maybe lock shuffle
- if teams are less than 200 pts apart
- if the game has already started
That would at least put a band aid on the problem (which is the best we can hope for without a revamp of the hive system)
Bots also frequently screw up balance and shuffle in low pop games... It was better in the past when they were only on certain servers as a "players vs bots" seeding mode...
Here are some of my simple ideas:
- try this mod in vanilla
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1466904680&searchtext=shuffle
I really like the idea behind it.
- if you have even teams, lock the shuffle
Now the "i am only playing alien" starting to whine and maybe leaving the server. Well, "you cannot make everyone happy"
- After to many players left a team short after shuffle, just reshuffle automatic. People voted for "balanced teams" before, so they want this. The need of another manual vote doesnt make any sense in this context.
- If a game start without shuffle and a skill difference greater than 200, autoshuffle with a HUGE text why people are in other teams now and prepare for people leaving the server now cause this stupid shuffle. (Did i mention u cannot make everyone happy? aehm, yes.)
In the end: Everything is better than another "Press M and vote shuffle" yelling.
With an discrete but well programmed automatic algorythm, shuffle could realy improve the overal game experience.
Small side note:
If an admin forces shuffle and a roundstart on a server, 95% of the players are only happy that the round finally start. So no real complaining most time.
This should be the goal for a shuffle system.