(Server Suggestion) Stacked Teams on Servers

[Gundecker]

This isn't intended to be a whine post, but rather a suggestion that I think would improve the play experience on your TF2 servers.

I play quite a bit on the 24/7 Dustbowl server and I have normally have a pretty good time. The exception would be when I am left with teammates who are completely inept at just about any aspect of the game. Once again this is not meant as a whine because I understand that people of various skill levels enjoy the EGO servers too. I am completely ok with that. Time to move on...

On any given night it seems like there is always a several hour stretch where one team continues to stomp the other team into the ground. I saw somewhere that your organization measures its server success by full servers. That number is somewhat misleading in this regard. Yes, the dustbowl server stays full most of the time but during these times where the teams are so lopsided the people on the losing side are often leaving after one bad round (e.g. getting run over on defense). The server stays full because there is always someone to take their place but the point is it would be nice for the losers to still want to stay too.

I don't mind losing. If you can't handle that you shouldn't be playing games. What I do mind though is when I have to lose for 4 hours straight. I have mentioned it in game a couple times when ego people were around but I figured I should finally sign up and suggest here as well.

I think it would be a good idea to have map changes every hour or so. Yes I know its a 24/7 server and yes it can stay a 24/7 server with this. You just change the map to the same map. (I've noticed this tends to happen anyway at the 80-100 round mark).

This would go along way to help solve the stacked teams problem. Could it still happen? Of course, but at least this would force a team shuffle every hour. I also anticipate people saying "Well what if I lose my spot on the server reset?" Yes this could happen too however I think that would be a minor problem and its generally not too difficult to get back in.

I will probably continue to play on your servers regardless, but I hope you'll consider this idea for two reasons:

1) The game isn't that much fun for either team, especially the losers of course, when they are lopsided so badly.
2) The game is always more fun when the teams are closely matched. It makes the offense feel like they've achieved more when they squeek out that last second capture point cap for the victory.

/end Wall of text

 

[midget31394]

the admins can now do a team shuffle i think, and teams vote but im not sure, an admin will need to confirm this.

 

[Caval1er]

Midget is correct. We've recently installed a new admin plugin that will allow an admin to initiate a vote on the server to scramble the teams in order to prevent situations like the one you are describing.

I am not a frequenter of dustbowl but can those 'domination' stretches really last 4+ hours?

 

[BlindCow]

Hey Johnson.

As you know I'm one of the admins that play DB quite often. I can appreciate your frustration at what I see happening on DB from time to time. When I am on I monitor the situation to see if the domination is so one sided and lasts for several rounds. I have thought about using the scrambleteams vote once or twice but generally I haven't seen a need for it.

The tide tends to turn pretty quickly on Dustbowl, and it's rare to see a team winning all three stages quickly (it happens), but it's even rarer to see that happening more than once.

Your idea of an hourly reset is an interesting one, but I'm not in a position to comment on the feasibility or the merit of it. I know personally though I like to see the scores build up over a couple of hours.

I look forward to seeing you online and if you ever feel a situation is out of hand please feel free to add me to your Steam friends and send me a message. I'm always happy to chat and do what I can to help out.

 

[GardenGroveVW]

I'm going to focus on this, this weekend. I'm going to change the server timelimit to a shorter time. You have made some valid points.

I'll be testing this weekend i will pull an all nighter and watch how things go.

Thanks for your interest in making things better.

 

[Vainiac]

my understanding of eGO's policy towards map resets is that the most common time for people to leave is when a new map is loading. for that reason we like to reset the maps as little as possible to keep as many people as possible in the servers. like the eG's above me said we now have the option of instituting scramble teams vote, but I agree with them that I have never encountered a situation where it was really necessary.

 

[Vainiac]

lol garden just beat me to the post, listen to him, not me
out of curiosity garden what were you thinking of setting to time limit to?

 

[Gundecker]

I appreciate the interest in my post. I can see how you may not see a need for it and rightly so. There is rarely a need for much of anything. I just know that when I'm on the team getting destroyed that I often relegate myself to sniping which may or may not be effective depending on if I'm hot that day.

An example would be that on stage 1 cp2 I was often the pyro that would stand on the far right stairs by the grate doors and airblast any ubers off the ledge thereby wasting a good 3-5 seconds of uber and insuring that it was never allowed to get into the cap point area. When my team is getting steamrolled I'm much more inclined to just start doing my own thing in order to try to squeeze what little fun I can out of the disaster.

I guess my point is that any time there might be even a small opportunity to keep the teams as even as possible we should seize it because that seems to bring out the best play and team play in everyone.

Oh and to address the scramble teams thing. I have heard from admins on the server that they can only initiate a vote. Perhaps rather than map resets we could get a plugin that simply allows an admin to force a scramble. You have to remember that there are plenty of people on the winning team that are going to automatically vote no to a scramble vote for the simple reason they like winning.

As a final point to the issue of team balance I have noted many times where people on the losing team are obviously going spectator to force the next joiner to pick the losing team and thereby allow themselves onto the winning team. I've even been guilty of it a few times until I found it was against the rules. I also tried to reserve it for the most dire circumstances. (hours of losing).

P.S. I don't know if you are still looking for admins but I'm willing to give it a go. I'm not trying to ask for that though. I've done that kind of thing before and I know how admin stuff has a tendency to blend the lines between fun and work. If doing that will help the tf2 servers I am willing. It does seem that you have pretty good admin coverage already but I noticed the in game message about admins needed.

Man I really need to stop typing so much At least there are paragraph breaks!

 

[Nini]

I've never seen a scramble that fixes team stacking. Before scramble, the losing team would at least make it to stage 2. After scramble, the team can't even win stage 1.

It doesn't matter if you send people with higher scores to the other team. I've seen the worst player with the highest score, it just means they played on there longer than others. As a full time medic, I'm usually in the top 5 on my team. You can put me on the losing team, but it won't make much of a difference. If the offensive classes are not doing their job, its pretty much hopeless.

I'm all for server reset after some hours.

 

[J-Bizzle]

I don't know if you are still looking for admins but I'm willing to give it a go. I'm not trying to ask for that though. I've done that kind of thing before and I know how admin stuff has a tendency to blend the lines between fun and work. If doing that will help the tf2 servers I am willing. It does seem that you have pretty good admin coverage already but I noticed the in game message about admins needed.

Hey LongJohnson,

eGO is definitely recruiting mature, thoughtful players like yourself. You should consider applying in the TF2 Recruiting Office. Make sure you read the stickies as well, in particular, this sticky.

In regards to the team scramble, I'm afraid I don't have a lot to say as I don't frequent Dustbowl and I haven't found myself in a scenario that needed a team scramble. However, I have seen players (admins and pubs) in Warpath in the past switch off the winning team to see if they can affect change on a losing team. I myself do it quite frequently, though I'm not sure how much of a help I really am. xD As you can imagine, it's very, very hard to maintain absolute (or even close to absolute) team balance without unnecessarily imposing on players' experiences in our servers. But, as you've heard from GardenGrove, the issue is definitely one of our concerns. I hope you'll continue to play in our servers (and maybe even join the eGO community) and tough out some of the longer losing streaks.

-June

 

[shaly]

I know that I personally would love to see team scrambles more often on any server. This is a new found love after playing a long day of arena matches I enjoy the dynamic it brings to the teams and it shakes up the strats of each side a bit. That being said as i dont play on Dust Bowl very often the only time I have really been affected by a stacked team is on Warpath and to a lesser extent Gold Rush( although the swapping O/D tends to even out Gold Rush more often than not) so i wouldnt mind a scramble after a side wins say 5 games. Just my 2 cents

 

[Ancient of Ways]

The reload seemed to occur upon the hour on the Turbine server last night. I liked it. It doesn't solve team stacking, not completely, but it helps, and the tide of battle went back and forth more often instead of one team just rolling the other over and over.

 

[.[BORN]2kill]

The reload seemed to occur upon the hour on the Turbine server last night. I liked it. It doesn't solve team stacking, not completely, but it helps, and the tide of battle went back and forth more often instead of one team just rolling the other over and over.

Agree, I was on Turbine with you last night and after the server reloaded it was WAY more even... and fun!

 

[midget31394]

im not too sure about 1 hr resets, as you know some maps will take forever to win (toyfort) and i guess with the shorter limit, it makes the teams want to win even more, although id hate it if i went into a team without any comm, like i was on red 2fort, everyone chatting helping, got auto'd to blu and all aws silent, no typing either...

~midg

 

[DNice77]

The reload seemed to occur upon the hour on the Turbine server last night. I liked it. It doesn't solve team stacking, not completely, but it helps, and the tide of battle went back and forth more often instead of one team just rolling the other over and over.

LOL definitely didn't solve the stacking completely but the games did last a little longer ... i think maybe just the teams I joined became cursed last night

I was wondering if there was a plugin to scramble or auto-balance teams based on a hidden FPH (frags per hour a la Unreal Tournament) or PPH (points per hour) calculation...

 

[EricJergensen]

My Gold Rush Experience

I have played TF2 for just under 2 months. Most of that time I have played Gold Rush on an Edge server. I have really, really appreciated the atmosphere that Edge provides. Having polite, decent and sportsmanly gamers to play with is awesome.

LongJohnson does bring up the minor flaw, tho. I've found that most of the time (say 70% or so) one team is noticeably outplaying the other -- sometimes (say 30%) one team is completely steamrolling the other. It does, eventually, balance. Often it's because a bunch of people quit at once and auto-balance accidentally spreads out the good players.

This is made worse by the fact that the "churn" is almost invariably on the losing side. The odds are pretty high when a player joins that he's in for a beating for a while. This was particularly bad on the recent free play weekend in honor of the Heavy Pack. I think many visitors came away with the idea that the only difference between an Edge server and others is that at Edge they're polite while they beat you up.

As for the idea that good players voluntarily switch to help out losing team ... Well, I may have seen that once, but I probably just missed the auto-balance message. And, it doesn't do enough. In a real steamrolling situation, the losing team needs 3, 4 or more good players. The key here is not that we don't have nice gamers playing, but the lack of a good "scramble" mechanism to let them do the Right Thing(tm). I have some ideas for that, which I will bring up in another post.

 

[DNice77]

The key here is not that we don't have nice gamers playing, but the lack of a good "scramble" mechanism to let them do the Right Thing(tm).

LOL I love the ? here. classic

 

[GardenGroveVW]

I've never seen a scramble that fixes team stacking. Before scramble, the losing team would at least make it to stage 2. After scramble, the team can't even win stage 1.

It doesn't matter if you send people with higher scores to the other team. I've seen the worst player with the highest score, it just means they played on there longer than others. As a full time medic, I'm usually in the top 5 on my team. You can put me on the losing team, but it won't make much of a difference. If the offensive classes are not doing their job, its pretty much hopeless.

I'm all for server reset after some hours.

I'm pretty sure if you and your bf or whatever moved to the losing team you could turn it round.

But we've been down that road.

 

[Gundecker]

I played for an hour or two last night and granted it was later but it did seem like there were periods that the server wasn't as full as normal, but the teams did seem to be more fair. For example during one of the map resets I looked and the team score was 7-7 as opposed to arbitrary number of 73 - 25 that it normally seems to be.

GardenGrove do you have any hard data on player volume last night and if so how does that stack up against an average night of the old system? It is probably too early to tell how positively or adversely its going to affect this server at this time but I'm interested in results because it they are bad I'll be the first one saying I was wrong and to change it back.

 

[GardenGroveVW]

I'll be watching those servers like hawks bud.

If this makes the servers less popular, i might have to up the time limit.

Current timelimit is 90 mins