Koekje Posted January 10, 2013 Posted January 10, 2013 Dear Players, In the past few days, I have been wondering a few times why 'auto select' is not mandatory when choosing a team? It had not bothered me in the past, but this afternoon I saw the effect of letting players free in choosing their own team. This afternoon, about 10 players were online. About five of them kept choosing 'Marines or S.A.S.' as team when asked at the beginning of a new map. I always choose 'Auto-select' when asked. Result: I was the only one in OPFOR, against 7 in Marines at the start of the map! Auto-balance flattened this after a short time, but most of the medium- to high-skilled players kept playing in the Marines team. The result after a few maps was that the Marines/S.A.S. kept winning, mostly with a difference of 3:1 or 4:1. (e.g: 100 kills OPFOR / 400 kills S.A.S.). And it happened often that a S.A.S. player was transferred to OPFOR by auto-balance, and then manually swapped back to S.A.S. short after by himself. Furthermore, I like to argue that in some maps, Ambush for instance, one teams has an advantage over the other one. In Ambush, I find that the Marines-side is better protected against snipers because of the curved-roads. And the sniper spots on the Marines-side have a significant good line-of-sight on the mostly straight-formed roads of the OPFOR-side. I see you thinking: what is this guy whining about? Well... With these small advantages, but on top an overpowered team formed by players who don't choose auto-select, can form a significant impact on the gameplay. Conclusion-of-the-story: In my opinion, making auto-select mandatory will spread the players more evenly over the teams. Players clutching into one particular team will be prevented. Like to hear your thoughts, Koekje.
Gubbi Posted January 10, 2013 Posted January 10, 2013 Thank you for that suggestion. We had this discussion many times before. The conclusion is, if we make auto-select mandatory, our servers would not be ranked anymore, which would inevitable result in a decrease of server population. We can't force people to use auto-select at the beginning of the map, the only thing we/you can do is to ask someone nicely to help out. However, stacking teams after being moved by auto-balance is not allowed. Try to get the attention of an admin, or ask him for help via xfire, when you see things like that happen. Regarding the unbalanced maps, I see your point. Maps on our servers are changed regularly in order to keep a variety. People enjoy playing different maps every now and then. Almost every map has its advantages and disadvantages I would say.
Koekje Posted January 10, 2013 Author Posted January 10, 2013 Aha, I see. Strange way of filtering when ranking servers out if they make auto-select mandatory. That would indeed infect the amount of players on the server dramatically. Thanks for the explanation Will keep an eye on the stacking of players in other teams and warn an admin if possible.
SinfulRaevyn Posted January 10, 2013 Posted January 10, 2013 Thank you for that suggestion. We had this discussion many times before. The conclusion is, if we make auto-select mandatory, our servers would not be ranked anymore, which would inevitable result in a decrease of server population. We can't force people to use auto-select at the beginning of the map, the only thing we/you can do is to ask someone nicely to help out. However, stacking teams after being moved by auto-balance is not allowed. Try to get the attention of an admin, or ask him for help via xfire, when you see things like that happen. Regarding the unbalanced maps, I see your point. Maps on our servers are changed regularly in order to keep a variety. People enjoy playing different maps every now and then. Almost every map has its advantages and disadvantages I would say. There needs to be tighter regulations on teams. We have too many regulars stacking. Too many long term players that know we don't agree with it, getting away with it because we don't do anything. Do you know what else helps decrease the population? Seeing teams stacked with the good players 90% of the time. I was just in a match yesterday morning... it was six on six. I watched 3 people leave because one side was super stacked.... What else happens? People start joining the full/better team.. and we have to warn/punish them, because they're tired of being stuck on the losing team. Also most people do not usually respond to 'can someone help out the weaker team'? We have a few good players that don't mind, but they're not always around. Hell the other night we had a stacked team, and Lulu asked someone to move because it ended up being 1v3. What was the response we got? 'No, why don't you play'? We need to come up with a solution to this, instead of pretending it's okay. I am tired of losing my enjoyment of the game by 90% of the time, playing on the weaker teams.
Lulu Posted January 10, 2013 Posted January 10, 2013 Something that comes to mind - is there any way there can be an admin command to auto-balance the teams? Not switch the team of specific people, but just to make the auto-balance happen when we notice it needs it. I've noticed that when people get auto-balanced and switch back, they usually get auto-balanced the next time. It seems to targe the players it wants when they keep switching back. Given that, it might help with the team-stacking. When nobody is willing to move, we'd be able to auto-balance at will. I don't know if you'd want to only make it available to higher-up admins...personally I think that if it were abused it would do less harm than !warn... I dunno...something to think about...possibly a solution...is it possible?
Koekje Posted January 10, 2013 Author Posted January 10, 2013 In my W:ET time, I played on some servers with the !shuffle command. The server would than automatically shuffle all players. I guess it was based on XP (on which ET is based). It shuffled players so the XP was evenly balanced between the teams. I guess shuffling based on the level does not work great in CoD4. Level 55 players are often not necessarily better than level <55 players. It could be shuffling on the KDR of the last few minutes? Interesting discussion though. Another solution could be to shout the console a message in the chat when a player performs a team swap by himself. I really don't know if that is technically possible, but imho it will help admins to recognize players who are stacking. The problem at this moment is (what Sin also points) that it is hard for admins to see who is stacking. You don't always remember who was on what team 5 minutes ago. At least, I don't know. Only the high-skilled players get caught more often, I noticed. It draws more attention when a high-skilled player changes sides, because it influences the gameplay. The medium- / low- skilled players are not very noticeable and it is hard to remember on which team they were 5 minutes ago.
speedfact Posted January 11, 2013 Posted January 11, 2013 We don't have a shuffle command. We don't kick people for making their own choice for teams. We do kick if they unbalance the teams number wise, not skill wise. It's part of the game. I agree it sucks when one team is gettin raped by the other but its how the game goes. You can't have a tie everytime and you can't have perfect teams everytime. Best bet we have is as Gubbi said, ask them to move. They don't well then not much can be done...you can all move to spec in protest or you can fight back and maybe prove that you are better. Why should we punish the good players for picking a team? I mean it sounds like you all are targetting the better players instead of the weaker (yes I am a weaker player). @lulu Ive seen commands like that be abuse, it can do more harm than warn @sin Like I have discussed with you many time after you have constantly complained on server about it, if we warn/kick for it, it will decrease the population more than if we warn the sore loser. Thats why you usually tell, tell. tell then start warning. Honestly don't feel like typin everythin I have already discussed with you. There really is no win-win situation in this case. You can either kick the good player or warn the ones that are gettin raped. Either way our servers will decrease more. Thats why they have auto to even it out somewhat. no its not a perfect system nor is COD4 a perfect game but if you have a better solution that just targetin who you think are the better player, I'm all ears. Trust me guys I have thought of every possible solution to this problem and the solution we have now is the best. lol ask Gubbi me and him brain stormed this for a good couple days (mainly he listened to my rants lol). 1
Lulu Posted January 11, 2013 Posted January 11, 2013 We don't have a shuffle command. We don't kick people for making their own choice for teams. We do kick if they unbalance the teams number wise, not skill wise. It's part of the game. I agree it sucks when one team is gettin raped by the other but its how the game goes. You can't have a tie everytime and you can't have perfect teams everytime. Best bet we have is as Gubbi said, ask them to move. They don't well then not much can be done...you can all move to spec in protest or you can fight back and maybe prove that you are better. Why should we punish the good players for picking a team? I mean it sounds like you all are targetting the better players instead of the weaker (yes I am a weaker player). @lulu Ive seen commands like that be abuse, it can do more harm than warn Just to clarify...I was just talking about the numbers thing. I get a bit irked from time to time regarding the skill level thing, and I kinda wish that people would just auto-assign, but it has never bothered me that much... I've come to terms with the fact that I'm going to get killed a bunch no matter what.
speedfact Posted January 11, 2013 Posted January 11, 2013 Just to clarify...I was just talking about the numbers thing. I get a bit irked from time to time regarding the skill level thing, and I kinda wish that people would just auto-assign, but it has never bothered me that much... I've come to terms with the fact that I'm going to get killed a bunch no matter what. yeh i know, you were talkin bout sumthin that could kick in autobalance right? Like i said it could do more damage than warn. Think if someone spammed that lol, it would freeze the server up. Its kinda like when 3 people use warn at once...it lags the command lol.
GI-JOE Posted January 11, 2013 Posted January 11, 2013 As the original post's question was answered a while ago and it was handled in a nice civil manor (which is always appreciated) I think we can close this now. If anyone has any further questions or concerns related to this thread, please forward them to the contact-us button (members can submit their questions through contact-us or in the "ask us" section)
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