I enjoy switching to losing teams, because my Sentry Gun has more fun when people are running at it, not away from it.
But when I join a server, unless IVE JOINED SPECIFICALLY to play with somebody, I just pick the first open team slot, Blu or Red.
The problem of teamscramble can broken down to two concepts:
1) Teams have n00bs.
2) Teams have whiners who think God has blessed them with the inalienable right to play Class X.
When I see an unbalanced team, it can usually be tracked down to the team having three Engineers with no sentries and 4 spies, all who still haven't figured out the disguise kit.
The thing I've finally come to understand is
These Class two people don't care if they win or lose as a team just that
they get to play their favorite class.
The difference can be found in how they complain. If they're just complaining that they are losing, they're n00bs. If they're complaining that the team isn't sufficiently doing X and therefore they can't snipe/rocket jump/plant stickies, they're Class 2.
You can't do anything about n00bs... at one time, I was a n00b, you were a n00b, everyone goes through the painful realizations of TF2. Yes, people spycheck. Yes, you have to disguise. Yes, snipers one hit kill if you don't juke.
The problem boils down to those class 2 players. The ones who have no problems on "Good" teams because everyone else is doing all the work, but suddenly "Can't do their job" on "Bad" teams. These guys are the real problems, and short of kicking them there's really nothing you can do.
Well... how about votescramble? A quote from Benjamin Franklin, inventor of electricity* might be apropos:
Mr. Franklin said:
When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.
A story: during the Turbine party this wednesday, my team had taken complete control of the turbines area, and the other team was crammed into their base. Immediatly three people started yelling "TEAMS!" and "BALANCE PLZ!"
The score was 1-1. And we couldn't break through their solid defense into their Intel EVEN WITH two level three teles going forward and 3 level three sentry guns watching our back.
They demaded a scramble. The game wasn't fair
because they couldn't play the classes they wanted to without being killed.
Now imagine we had votescramble? How often would "scramble teams?" be initiated by whiners like that?
Now imagine we demanded a simple majority instead of a supermajority? The whiners all vote, and the n00bs, new to the game and assuming that they're losing because of imbalance (the voice chat says so!) also vote yes. And a few pansy peaceniks on the winning side thinks that the rolling isn't fun (rolling can happen in a balanced game if the other side isn't working as a team) vote yes to. Bam! Majority! And everyone loses.
Why does nobody care about all the winners, who have finally found that most sacred and precious thing: a TEAM THEY CAN ACTUALLY WORK WITH, who will now quit in disgust that their team was broken up BECUASE THEY WERE SUCCEEDING.
Successful scrambles lose JUST AS MANY WINNERS as failed or rejected scrambles lose LOSERS. And because winning teams, by definition, have less "deadweight" (Class 2 ers) than Losing teams, we're choosing to protect whiners at the cost of good pubbers.
The final outcome is that Class 2 Players learn that they can "vote themselves" a team that does all the hard work so they can goof off, and they'll ALWAYS do so. Even if we switched to a majority vote, players would learn that they can "vote themselves" money, and the whole social contract of the game, that you work together or lose together, fails.
Now, there are cases when a "teamscramble" works well, and sometimes it's ginuinely unbalanced (25 wins in a row, seriously?). Here would be my recommendation for a scramble algoritm:
- Alert the server that the teams will be scrambled next round.
-- Optional; have a policy that teams are scrambled every five rounds**
- At the end of this round, sort all players by score.
- Going down the list assign the first player to RED, the second to BLU, the thrid to RED, etc, etc, until the scramble is complete.
This,
in theory, would scramble the teams fairly, placing equal talent on each side. However, people who resent scrambling will leave, or just switch teams again. So you'll have to block team movement, while somehow allowing a temp AFK to switch to spectate to go on a bio-break.
I just don't like the idea of voting yourselves teammates. I think, in 90% of the cases, scrambling isn't needed. Hey! In 90% of scramble votes... scrambling fails! How strange a coinkidink. I think, in all cases except the cosmically aligned 1-in-10 true stacking unbalances, the problem is Class 2 Players who thinks their team should support them. The best part about ignoring scrambles? Those deadweights usually leave, opening the slot for real good team player.
One more quote, from President Kennedy, who invented the Cold War:
Prez. Kennedy said:
Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.
Class 2 Whiners are asking what the team can do for them. Real players are asking what they can do for their team (or in the case of Engineers, asking the team to support them supporting the team.)
* Joke, joke. Question: How many people actually believe he INVENTED ELECTRICITY not that he DISCOVERED that Lightning was electricity, specifically the same type of static discharges as are found in a Lynden jar? I bet most of them are Class 2 players.
** I, personally, wouldn't want to play on such servers. By round 5, you've got a core of players who, while the others might goof off, you can depend on. Engies who support you. Spies who backstab the sniper picking off the team instead of the easy-to-slay-but-not-that-dangerous Heavy Goofball and his Medic spinning their minigun from one end of the map to the other.
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