(Server Suggestion) Stacked Teams on Servers

[Cicatriz]

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.

That is the thing about scramble, it's totally random. I rarely seen scramble even done, much less pass the vote. I think I've seen it voted on three times and passed only once.

I sincerely hope other admins aren't jumping to scramble after a few rounds of losing because that's not what it's in place for. It's for those TOTAL, and I mean total, domination of another team(all eGs and up can read the rules on it in private forums). When people ask for it I usually just see how the next 2 rounds or so go. Usually auto-balance or people leaving/joining help the situation and we don't need to scramble.

On a separate note. There are plenty of people that join a server to play as friends/a team. I see it happen on multiple servers and under a variety of clan tags or no clan tags. These gamers obviously are at an advantage because they play together on a regular basis and work as a team. Nothing is wrong with that because that's the idea behind TEAM Fortress. It's nothing that should be acted upon because it's totally within our rules and honestly it's nice to see people working together so well.

People that are constantly losing get bored/frustrated so they leave and then the numbers drop. Once that happens the winning teams starts to get bored because it's no more fun and they leave. So our servers suffer. It's a very fine line and is something that should be thought about seriously when admining. You have to be 100% sure in cases like these because if a scramble isn't needed it could ruin a good match up but if it isn't used it could end up killing the server.


PS- I don't know if a server time limit change work. People that have friends/made friends during the match will decide on which team they will be on together after the server refresh. Doesn't change much in my opinion.

 

[JRS_gamer]

Can you please put the timelimit back to 8 hrs or so I always loved trying to go for 1000 pts in a sitting with friends playing now wont be as fun to me and my friends atleast put a vote on the forum if you should keep it the same was gonna try for 1000 saturday but now thats spoiled because he had to post this non sense

 

[Darkshade]

Yeah thats a good idea the teams could be stacked and for 80 or so rounds the stacked team could win most of those rounds and that would make the server not fun. Nice job.

 

[/Aqua Blue]

1000 pts in 1 sitting is quite a feat my friend.I never saw anybody go over what 300 in a regular game or rarely get over it.If you do get over it I suggest you stop playing and look out a window.I think that the timers are fine the way it is and even with the 3 hour server limit rejoining the server isn't a big hassle just wait a min and you're back again.

 

[Deac]

1000 pts in 1 sitting is quite a feat my friend.I never saw anybody go over what 300 in a regular game or rarely get over it.If you do get over it I suggest you stop playing and look out a window.I think that the timers are fine the way it is and even with the 3 hour server limit rejoining the server isn't a big hassle just wait a min and you're back again.

I once got over 400 in a sitting, during toy fort. Boy were my hands sore after that. LOL

 

[Whiskey Barbas]

Can you please put the timelimit back to 8 hrs or so I always loved trying to go for 1000 pts in a sitting with friends playing now wont be as fun to me and my friends atleast put a vote on the forum if you should keep it the same was gonna try for 1000 saturday but now thats spoiled because he had to post this non sense

I think this is a parody of the stacking gamer, considering the tone and lack of punctuation.

Anyway, I've been running servers for about ten years now and stacked teams are a problem in every game I've run across. The only times it really puts my nose out of joint are when they occur intentionally (like with the spectator method mentioned before). Normally I'd warn those people, make a mental note of them, and consider a ban if it became std practice for them.

When it occurs unintentionally, I'll either tough it out by working on a certain skill or I'll pretty quickly move on to another server. Not being a kid, my free time is too precious to spend getting totally whomped on, lol.

 

[EricJergensen]

As promised (threatened? ;-) ), here's my idea for asymmetric maps where red defends: after a full round that is won by blue, let red vote on a scramble of the teams.

This approach has the advantages of being less disruptive than a restart (no reconnecting required with mp_scrambleteams), being pretty rare (a full round is all three stages of Gold Rush) and not requiring admin intervention. I also like letting only red vote since, if it's been a real steamroll, blue has basically been having fun at red's expense.

I've written a server plugin that does this. I've tested it on my server for pl_goldrush. It should also work on pl_badwater and cp_dustbowl (I'll test tonight). I'll be publishing the source code after a little cleanup.

In any case, if you have any suggestions or refinements or would like to get on my server and see how it works, post here or pm me.

 

[/dev/null]

A few thoughts on this.... Just realized Warpath was restarting more often than normal and know why now.

We don't seem to be losing people with 1.5 hour cycles. Good.

Seeing a game won, then the next game pushed close to point 4 when the timer expires. Meh. Be nice for two hard fought rounds to complete. That said, when things start steam rolling, rounds start go much faster. Possible to change things so the server restarts after 4-0 rounds in addition to the time factor?

What is happening, is folks are hanging out in spec, often until the third point is captured, before joining in. Not good. It can make things even worse than when we started.

Were I able to make a change to the shuffle (or restart), I'd have people auto assigned rather than dumped into spec to choose. With a 15 second timer, they should be able to make up their minds in another 30 seconds or so.

Failing that - would be nice if folks got auto kicked off of spec after a minute or two when we are at 30+ players on a 32 person server.

Random ramblings... Came close to looking up the command tonight. Need to add that to my crib sheet.

 

[ack]

A few thoughts on this.... Just realized Warpath was restarting more often than normal and know why now.

We don't seem to be losing people with 1.5 hour cycles. Good.

Seeing a game won, then the next game pushed close to point 4 when the timer expires. Meh.

Yeah that was bugging me today too. Every couple rounds would end because of the time limit. I like the idea of an auto scramble every couple rounds or just having the map reload at the /end/ of the round.

Failing that - would be nice if folks got auto kicked off of spec after a minute or two when we are at 30+ players on a 32 person server.

It would also be nice to auto-kick idle players vs just people in spec. So frustrating to be getting your arse handed to you on warpath2 only to see 2-3 afk people in your respawn

-ack