Not To Open Old Wounds, But...
Bigtoy
Join Date: 2002-11-02 Member: 3766Members, Constellation
Join Date: 2002-11-02 Member: 3766Members, Constellation
<div class="IPBDescription">Lets discuss team change restrictions</div> Howdy All,
I am happy to say that I am the proud owner of a 1.04 Natural Selection server. It runs on Linux and I have both AdminMod and Psychostats running.
Prior to running 1.04 I was running 1.02. The sole reason that I was running 1.02 was because the team change restrictions were well, for me, just too restrictive. I have a group of friends that I prefer to play with so when we have enough public folks we like to match up our teams. Not to say we stack teams unevenly. A good bit of time when enough of my friends are on we will split up to even out the skill (especially if there are a number of new folks on).
I have seen a number of posts from server admins in the past requesting that the team change restriction be configurable via server variables. Those requests do not seem unreasonable. The are at least much less unreasonable than the "OMG the fades are too strong" or the "WOW, seige is just unfair" followed by "please change something!!"
From following the forums here is my take on what has happened:
1. The player and server community complained heavily about unbalanced number of players on the teams.
2. Flayra responded in 1.03 with the team balance rules and team change restrictions.
3. A FEW (actually I think it was one specifically) server admins flamed the hell out of the changes. The rest of the server admins provided reasonable suggestions for server vars, etc.
4. (This is supposition on my part.) Due to the flames the development team dug their heels in and will not even acknowledge the issue any more.
5. I am writting this post.
It is my desire that at some point the dev team (Flayra) will spend a few moments reconsidering the team change restrictions. It is also my desire that the player and server community be more respectful of Flayra and all he his hard efforts.
I will stay with vesion 1.04 for my linux server and be thrilled with it. I will most likely play NS for many years to come. It is not my intention to **** anyone off. So, can we please have an open discussion on the team change restrictions?
<a href='http://www.jayandkay.net/~naturalselection/' target='_blank'>http://www.jayandkay.net/~naturalselection/</a>
I am happy to say that I am the proud owner of a 1.04 Natural Selection server. It runs on Linux and I have both AdminMod and Psychostats running.
Prior to running 1.04 I was running 1.02. The sole reason that I was running 1.02 was because the team change restrictions were well, for me, just too restrictive. I have a group of friends that I prefer to play with so when we have enough public folks we like to match up our teams. Not to say we stack teams unevenly. A good bit of time when enough of my friends are on we will split up to even out the skill (especially if there are a number of new folks on).
I have seen a number of posts from server admins in the past requesting that the team change restriction be configurable via server variables. Those requests do not seem unreasonable. The are at least much less unreasonable than the "OMG the fades are too strong" or the "WOW, seige is just unfair" followed by "please change something!!"
From following the forums here is my take on what has happened:
1. The player and server community complained heavily about unbalanced number of players on the teams.
2. Flayra responded in 1.03 with the team balance rules and team change restrictions.
3. A FEW (actually I think it was one specifically) server admins flamed the hell out of the changes. The rest of the server admins provided reasonable suggestions for server vars, etc.
4. (This is supposition on my part.) Due to the flames the development team dug their heels in and will not even acknowledge the issue any more.
5. I am writting this post.
It is my desire that at some point the dev team (Flayra) will spend a few moments reconsidering the team change restrictions. It is also my desire that the player and server community be more respectful of Flayra and all he his hard efforts.
I will stay with vesion 1.04 for my linux server and be thrilled with it. I will most likely play NS for many years to come. It is not my intention to **** anyone off. So, can we please have an open discussion on the team change restrictions?
<a href='http://www.jayandkay.net/~naturalselection/' target='_blank'>http://www.jayandkay.net/~naturalselection/</a>
Comments
I am truely sad. <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif'><!--endemo-->
maybe a little change to that
maybe you can keep the current system BUT to add a var that after X time he can move teams without reconnecting...
for example.. game started 6 vs 6
2 ppl in marines left after 10 minutes
a player that just joined the aliens CANNOT move to marines, but a player that is playing for more than X(lets say 10 minutes here) can...
If a player who's been in a game for at least 15 minutes (for example) wants to change to balance the teams, they could be able to do so. After 15 minutes, you would (hopefully) have been after making some beneficial contributions to the original team anyways.
<i>edit: Eternal Bliss posted the same idea I did.. I was talking on the phone before clicking submit, so mine was posted afterwards. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--></i>
I agree, they've made the game too tight, with all the restrictions, and then dumbing down all the damage, when they could've upped some things instead, to leave us with a long, tough game, rather than weaker obstacles to overcome...
Flayra,
It has been discussed before, I will go find the . For now what I would like is a server CVAR that you can set to either behive in the 1.02 way of handling team switching, or behave in the 1.03 way of handling team switching. That way I could setup an admin mod script so that when I or one of my admins was logged in they could "relax" the team switch restrictions and move folks around as they saw fit. Otherwise, when the admins were not playing we could just re-inforce the stricter team switching rules.
There were a lot of suggestions from on the forums when 1.03 about the team switching that I liked. Unfortunately I cannot find the older posts. Maybe more folks will be willing to provide concrete suggestions and why they want them implemented?
Thanks!
<!--c1--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>CODE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='CODE'><!--ec1-->// Turn off autoteam
tfc_autoteam 0<!--c2--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--ec2-->
This in turn, gives the server op a choice to handle it's joining clients. You can chose "tfc_autoteam 0" and the client will join the team weaker in numbers or use "tfc_autoteam 1" and the client get's to pick thier favorite team reguardless of the team balance issue.
This team balance rule NS has now would be fine for CS where rounds only last 3 minutes or less but I have seen rounds in NS run for over an hour easy. So what happens in NS if the odds change during the round from 1 on 1 to 3 on 1 because some players left the game on a general publc server? You are not allowed to change teams to balance them again? This seems a bit unfair to me.
Now that adminmod works for NS, I would also like to point out a adminmod plugin for TFC that shouldn't be to hard to convert to NS.
<!--c1--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>CODE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='CODE'><!--ec1-->// Used by the TFC plugin only. If enabled, an attempt to switch
// teams will be rejected if it would unbalance the teams
// (0=disabled, 1=enabled)
admin_balance_teams 1<!--c2--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--ec2-->
I think this could easly handle any problematic team balance issues. Anyway, that's just my two cents.
An idea: before the match starts, let everyone join the team they want, but don't join them actually, just make them "candidates" to join the team. Upon the ping finish and the start, only all the [n] players at the weaker side and first [n+mp_allowedunbalance] players who tried to join the stronger side will join the teams and the remaining will get kicked back to the ready room.
Here are some examples of some worth-while changes I had in mind.
(1) Both teams have 6 players, no one can switch sides because it will off set the balance by 2 players.
(2) One team has 7 players and the other team has 6 players, the extra player on the team with 7 can change teams if he/she so choses for whatever reason.
(3) Teams started even but players have left the game. One team could now be 2 or more players short. Someone from the other team can change sides to help balance the player count per team.
(4) A server side setting that can enable or disable the team balance rule.
These examples of team balancing are perfectly reasonable and I hope to see something like these in the next patch.
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As I see it, there are two issues:
1. Players are stuck on one team after joining it even if the teams become wildly unbalanced (or perhaps they were unbalanced the whole time, but it only became apparent after some play).
2. Teams must be numerically similar. As I said above, this is a problem because there are occasions when achieving a skill balance (which is what we all really should want) sometimes requires teams to have marginally or even substantially disparate numbers of players.
I propose that four server variables be added:
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To address the first issue, I would add these two settings:
sv_lock_teams (0 or 1): If on, players would be stuck on the team they originally joined.
sv_lock_teams_trump (x, 0 disables): If lock_teams is '1', then a player (any player) may switch to the other team if his current team has x number more players than the team the player wishes to join.
Examples:
sv_lock_teams 0 - players may switch teams at any point.
sv_lock_teams 1 w/ sv_lock_teams_trump 0 - players may not switch teams at any point
sv_lock_teams 1 w/ sv_lock_teams_trump 3 - players may not switch teams unless their current team has three more players than the other team
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To address the second issue:
sv_balance_player_number (0 or 1): If on, some level of numerical balance among the teams would be enforced.
sv_max_allowed_unbalance (x, 0 disables): If balance_player_number is '1', then variable would set the maximum difference among the teams.
Examples:
sv_balance_player_number 0 - players may join any team regardless how many more or less players it has compared to other teams
sv_balance_player_number 1 w/ sv_max_allowed_unbalance 0 - "max_allowed_unbalance 0" would have to disable "balance_player_number" otherwise no one would ever be able to join a team because it would unbalance them by a total of '1'.
sv_balance_player_number 1 w/ sv_max_allowed_unbalance 3 - players can join either team so long as the maximum difference in total players would not be greater than three, i.e. a player could join either team if it is currently 10 vs. 12; at 10 vs. 13 any new player would have to join the team with 10 players.
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That's my proposal. I think it addresses the two big issues. It is a little complicated, but I think the names of the variables should be pretty clear. The "max_allowed_un 0" bit is the only ugliness. Anyone have a friendly amendment?
There are times when switching teams is needed (unbalanced teams) and there are times when switching in not needed (the I want to move to the winning team switch..) All one needs to do is add a vote.
"Player x wants to switch teams current teams are 6 marines and 9 aliens (put in a count for those that don't know there is an unbalance) press 1 to vote yes press 2 to vote no"
Do not allow switching if teams are not unbalanced and make it a majority vote. There are still problems like the team with more people may not allow the move, but there could be ways to stack the vote like is team a has 3 less people and team b they get 1 vote for every less player. That way the vote is even but the one who wants to switch swings the vote in the lesser teams favor.
I.E. 9 vs. 6 one wants to switch from the 9 (there is one vote to switch) the other 8 say no way. The 6 vote yes and get a credit of 3 due to the unbalance thus giving them 10 yes and 8 no.
dex
There are times when switching teams is needed (unbalanced teams) and there are times when switching in not needed (the I want to move to the winning team switch..) All one needs to do is add a vote.
"Player x wants to switch teams current teams are 6 marines and 9 aliens (put in a count for those that don't know there is an unbalance) press 1 to vote yes press 2 to vote no"
Do not allow switching if teams are not unbalanced and make it a majority vote. There are still problems like the team with more people may not allow the move, but there could be ways to stack the vote like is team a has 3 less people and team b they get 1 vote for every less player. That way the vote is even but the one who wants to switch swings the vote in the lesser teams favor.
I.E. 9 vs. 6 one wants to switch from the 9 (there is one vote to switch) the other 8 say no way. The 6 vote yes and get a credit of 3 due to the unbalance thus giving them 10 yes and 8 no.
dex <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Great suggestion for a server without an admin. Actually, I see a lot of great suggestions in this thread. I especially like the one with specific cvars detailed.
The only problem with the "vote" system is as an <b>Administrator</b> of my server I want more control over who is on what teams. With the existing no-switch team rules I have to force folks to retry/reconnect. A vote will not give me that power. However, I agree that a vote would be great for when the admins are not available.
admin_execclient x iwannachangetomarine
admin_execall say 1
dex
I read over mathyou's suggestions, and I have a proposed change for his 'sv_balance_player_number' and 'sv_max_allowed_unbalance' variables.
Instead of having two different variables, I think it makes more sense to have one variable. For the sake of example, I will use 'sv_teambalance'.
<span style='color:red'><b>sv_teambalance</b></span>
<span style='color:white'>0 - No team balancing (i.e. join rectrictions).
1 - A difference of 1 player between the teams is enforced.
2 - A difference of 2 players between the teams is enforced.</span>
Any number other than 0 would be defined as the acceptable difference in the number of players between teams. I believe this option is easier to manage than multiple variables. It also keeps your server.cfg smaller. Obviously, negative numbers are not appropriate values.
When 1.03 was originally released many players seemed to have a problem with the team locking feature that prevented players from switching teams without reconnecting. I, personally, never had a problem with this issue, except for certain times when, for fair reasons, a player needed to switch teams.
Example: The game is 6v6 and 2 players from a team leave. The team with 6 players should have one of their players switch to even it.
I think a server variable should be implemented that would set the difference between the number of players on the teams when a player may switch. I don't quite think I worded that clearly, so I have an example to help explain it.
<span style='color:red'><b>sv_teamswitch</b></span>
<span style='color:white'>0 - Team switching is not allowed at all.
1 - Team switching is allowed if the difference between the number of players on the teams is 1.
2 - Team switching is allowed if the difference between the number of players on the teams is 2.</span>
Again, this removes the need to manage two variables and achieves the same effect. Any number larger than 0 would enable team switching if the difference between the two teams is less than or equal to that number (excluding a difference of 0). Obviously, negative numbers are not appropriate values.
Of course, for any of these variables proposed, the name is not as important as the actual function, and sv_ can be replaced with mp_ or ns_ (since these settings seem to be related to Natural Selection alone), whichever Flayra feels is most appropriate.
If you have any questions I will be more than happy to clarify. Thank you for bringing this topic to our attention once again, bigtoy_i.
admin_execclient x iwannachangetomarine
admin_execall say 1
dex <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yeah, but exercising my admin powers to force a vote for the move is not the same thing as exercising my admin powers to put a player on a specific team.
<span style='color:white'>0 - No team balancing (i.e. join rectrictions).
1 - A difference of 1 player between the teams is enforced.
2 - A difference of 2 players between the teams is enforced.</span>
<span style='color:red'><b>sv_teamswitch</b></span>
<span style='color:white'>0 - Team switching is not allowed at all.
1 - Team switching is allowed if the difference between the number of players on the teams is 1.
2 - Team switching is allowed if the difference between the number of players on the teams is 2.</span> <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Spot on. My only alteration would be the variable names. The "mp_" prefix would be more appropriate than "sv_". Since CS has a variable "mp_limitteams" that does the same basic thing as the proposed "sv_teambalance", I also recommend "mp_limitteams" be used for consistency/simplicity/principle-of-least-surprise.
Be warned, <b>mp_teamswitch(ing) 1</b> could be abused by one player continually switching sides. If mp_teamswitching is to have a non-zero default, it should probably be 2 or greater. Having the behavior documented in the default server.cfg would also be necessary, as "mp_teamswitching" would intuitively mean to me "1 to enable, 0 to disable", no size-difference-restriction implied.
Has someone created the NS equivalent of adminmod's admin_ct / admin_t commands for adminmod, AMX, or metamod? Is such a thing currently possible with the hardcoded team-change restrictions? It'd be nice to be able to force a player to a specific team, no matter what the server configuration.
There is an adminmod plugin and an AMX plugin that can do that. They store data in the vault disconnect and retry a player, then have her/him join the desired team. IIRC, Golex wrote for AM and Suicide Dog posted about the AMX plugin.
That's why I went with the pairs of cvars. It is certainly clunky, but I think we could get away without providing any documentation. Epoch's solution is certainly more elegant though. I really don't know which would be best.
mp_teambalance
0 - No team balancing (i.e. join restrictions).
1 - A difference of 1 player between the teams is enforced.
2 - A difference of 2 players between the teams is enforced.
3 - A difference of 3 players between the teams is enforced.
... and so on
mp_teamswitch
0 - Team switching is not allowed at all.
1 - Team switching is allowed if the difference between the number of players on the teams is 1.
2 - Team switching is allowed if the difference between the number of players on the teams is 2.
3 - Team switching is allowed if the difference between the number of players on the teams is 3.
... and so on
mp_autoteam
0 - People can join whatever team they want
1 - The player is automatically put on the team with the least players, if both teams are have same amount of players they are randomly put on either one.
Not really related to the subject, but additionally, I would *REALLY* like to have a cheat to allow buildings to build at the normal speeds (with sv_cheats 1) since normally, if cheats are on buildings build too fast.
I've seen those; they do not do what I asked for. I want to be able to force a person to a team, no matter what. If it's 8 on 4 in favor of TSA, I want the ability to move an alien to marine.
I realize this is probably not possible under the current system, so my implied question was "what needs to be considered/changed to make such a thing possible in the future?"
There is a cheat to make them build instantly, its off by default.
its "bigdig"
With it off, the buildings build faster, but not instantly.
With it on, the buildings build instantly.