Feedback for the new scramble teams plugin

GardenGroveVW

GardenGroveVW

USS VIN NUMBAH?!?!
Executive
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We installed a new plugin on Turbine and gravelpit.

174.37.160.62:27015 24/7 =(eGO)= |TURBINE| NO BOTS! =HLstatsX= EdgeGamers.org

208.43.203.94:27015 24/7 =(eGO)= |GRAVELPIT| NO BOTS! =HLstatsX= EdgeGamers.org

Please let us know how its working until we move it to all servers.

Thank you!

EDIT: WE added this plugin to PL MAPS as well.


eG's and up can view this thread agent made.
http://www.edgegamers.org/forums/showthread.php?t=89991

agent edit:

Some things that WILL be changed:
  • The frequency for rebalancing is too high. There will probably be a limit, such as 1 rebalance every 15-20 minutes.
  • The algorithm for choosing who to balance will be adjusted.
  • The messaging is poor, that will also be changed.

Some things that WILL NOT be changed:
  • No admin/player interaction. Its by design, you can't stop it, be immune to it, start it, effect it in any way.
 
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For on Turbine -

When there are, say, 10 v 10 in the server. The rounds seem to go quicker and have 2 times as many kills, so it will scramble every round. I had this happen 3 times in a row, and honestly it was getting annoying.

The scrambler after 3 rounds works great. I had noticed it scrambled and the teams were a bit more even and the game had lasted longer. Great job :D

Other than that, the scrambler works great, and once we get everything working how we want i believe this will be a great addition to our servers and im look forward to it :D
 
Scrambler did a great job in Gravel Pit, saw it activate once, and things were relatively stable after that. I like it, a lot of pubs have been wondering why we didn't have one. :D
 
While I appreciate leadership's eagerness to tackle the stacked teams issue and agent's time and hard work in coming up with a solution, I very much dislike the auto scramble.

I play often with friends. I'm perfectly happy to be playing with them whether I'm getting steamrolled or whether I'm on a stacked team.

I've been on a steamrolled team many times, but with patience, it always, always turns around. One time, with good intentions, I asked an advisor to scramble teams. There was such an uproar from players and admins alike, I swore I'd never do it again. It wasn't worth it.

There are two kinds of players: The kind who will tough it out and help his team turn it around and the kind who deserts his team to join the stacked team. But at least we have the choice. We lose that with this scramble thing.

After a scramble, if you try to change teams you get this message (not sure if only admins see it or if everyone does):

[SM] Team changes are blocked after a switch or scramble.
[SM] =(eGO)=™ A Nurse From Texas is trying to re-stack the teams. For shame!

Nothing is more infuriating than to be playing with my friends or a team I've just spent 30 min or better getting acclimated to than to be scrambled. The three times I've experienced it, I was so flustered, I wanted to leave the server. I haven't tried it yet, but if leaving the game and coming back will allow you to change teams to get around it, I will be so inclined, as I'm sure others will be.

A great deal of the time the losing team is losing because they deserve to be, because there are too many inappropriate classes or because they care more about backstabbing and sniping than they do about helping their team win, not because the winning team is stacked. Maybe I have a cold-hearted stance on it, but I'm sick of the "the teams are stacked," incessant whining coming from both pubs and members, and I think we should not cater to them. Tough it or switch teams. It's a game!

I have the most fun and stay the longest in a server when I hook up with a friend in-game. I have some pub friends who don't have time to play for very long periods. We like to spend that time playing together. Separate us and we won't play as long or we'll find a server that doesn't scramble. I would imagine this will be the case with many others.

You don't see me voicing my opinion much around here, but I feel very strongly about this issue. IMO, it should be left alone, as Valve intended it.
 
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A Nurse From Texas said:
While I appreciate leadership's eagerness to tackle the stacked teams issue and agent's time and hard work in coming up with a solution, I very much dislike the auto scramble.

I play often with friends. I'm perfectly happy to be playing with them whether I'm getting steamrolled or whether I'm on a stacked team.

I've been on a steamrolled team many times, but with patience, it always, always turns around. One time, with good intentions, I asked an advisor to scramble teams. There was such an uproar from players and admins alike, I swore I'd never do it again. It wasn't worth it.

There are two kinds of players: The kind who will tough it out and help his team turn it around and the kind who deserts his team to join the stacked team. But at least we have the choice. We lose that with this scramble thing.

After a scramble, if you try to change teams you get this message (not sure if only admins see it or if everyone does):

[SM] Team changes are blocked after a switch or scramble.
[SM] =(eGO)=? A Nurse From Texas is trying to re-stack the teams. For shame!

Nothing is more infuriating than to be playing with my friends or a team I've just spent 30 min or better getting acclimated to than to be scrambled. The three times I've experienced it, I was so flustered, I wanted to leave the server. I haven't tried it yet, but if leaving the game and coming back will allow you to change teams to get around it, I will be so inclined, as I'm sure others will be.

A great deal of the time the losing team is losing because they deserve to be, because there are too many inappropriate classes or because they care more about backstabbing and sniping than they do about helping their team win, not because the winning team is stacked. Maybe I have a cold-hearted stance on it, but I'm sick of the "the teams are stacked," incessant whining coming from both pubs and members, and I think we should not cater to them. Tough it or switch teams. It's a game!

I have the most fun and stay the longest in a server when I hook up with a friend in-game. I have some pub friends who don't have time to play for very long periods. We like to spend that time playing together. Separate us and we won't play as long or we'll find a server that doesn't scramble. I would imagine this will be the case with many others.

You don't see me voicing my opinion much around here, but I feel very strongly about this issue. IMO, it should be left alone, as Valve intended it.
Click to expand...

I'm quoting this, because it sums up the majority of what i have to say. Now me personally i don't care, i'll play on any team, with, or against friends. its all the same to me. But alot of people want to play together, thats all there is to it. We are losing the point of playing a game: To have fun.

The only thing i want to add in regards to this plugin specifically is... that K:D is such an important factor. I am a pretty good player, but my K:D is (most of the time) very low.. Because of my play style. I may not be getting the most points, or the most kills, but i do help the team. because i go in there, blow crap up. and die. Paving the way for the rest of the team to come in and win.


I didn't like the scramble-teams when it was an option, and was glad to see it gone. I don't really like the idea of an auto-scramble teams either.

/shrug.
 
I think it has its uses when things are completely lob sided, but I also agree with Rellik and Nurse. Rellik I especial agree with the point you made of losing the point of the game.
 
Lets not hijack this thread into a scramble plugin vs. anti-scramble plugin. Garden made this thread to get actual feedback from those who have experienced the plugin in action. If you have not been in Gravelpit, Turbine, or PL Maps, when the scramble activated, then don't post here.
 
Rellik and Nurse pretty much said why we don't need it, and need another type of scramble system, Or not one at all. Maybe make a scramble command for admins? That way if teams are REALLY stacked, Then it will be solved. It also won't scramble every 30 minutes or so leaving people confused. Just a simple command to execute it would do fine in our servers.

It was useful a few times, but got annoying quickly. We'll need an alternative to this I think.
 
Heavy sigh.

This is a very polarized issue. I realize that. Every time it comes up there is a lengthy discussion that involves:

pro vs. con fights
and
suggestions for ways it could be just a tiny bit better

Believe me, at this point I've heard it all.

To address some specific concerns:
I specified in my eG private post about why this is fully automatic and there is no admin intervention. There are specific reasons for it; to summarize, its a conflict of interest. I don't think any solution that is not fully automatic is going to work.

I completely agree that there is no statistical way to create even teams. I understand your anger at being separated from players you want to play with. I know this isn't the perfect solution. I am always trying to find ways to improve it, but I can't please all the people all the time.

We went without for a while, because a vocal group was unhappy with the previous solution. We are testing something else now. If you don't like it, you can wait and perhaps it will get better. That's about all I can promise.
 
A Nurse From Texas said:
You don't see me voicing my opinion much around here, but I feel very strongly about this issue. IMO, it should be left alone, as Valve intended it.
Click to expand...

I tried out Gravel pit and both teams were quite happy the person who had complained switched teams. Then the teams were autoscrambled. I did not appreciate it. It was useless and should be left alone or let the players have a choice.
 
I just played on GP. My experience tonight was one of excessive team switching. (I changed teams about 6 times in an hour of playing.) It seemed like the plugin activated after every other round. But that could just be confusion between the stock autobalance and the plugin. The server was constantly fluctuating in population thus making the autobalance activate like normal to keep even teams. This alone swapped me about 3 times. Then when the plugin activated, I'd get chosen to be switched. Maybe there needs to be an immunity setup for those who were recently autobalanced.

2nd issue: The plugin repetitively swapped the same players. I guess as soon as the plugin immunity wears off, your a instant target to be swapped. This makes sense though, because good players should usually stay good and have the same ratios that caught the plugin's attention.

3rd issue: The plugin swapped the wrong players. Example: Me and another player (a soldier) were MVPs for a round win, plugin did its calculations and guess what? We were both swapped. I could see one of us being swapped, but both? Then the next round our team rolled the other team. Vicious cycle. My suspicions on this one is that looking at the K:D, the soldier was very high, and looking at mine it was very low. (thats expected, I'm a medic) However, in the plugin's calculations, the soldier was the best on our team and I was the worst. It would make sense to balance that way, but in reality I was the reason the soldier had a low death count.
 
I understand the point of scrambling teams, I really do. But I hated the command when we had it and I'm not very fond of this new plug-in. I played Gravel Pit earlier and teams got scrambled atleast 4 times in the hour+ I was there.

And I could tell people weren't that happy with it. The server struggled to keep 32 players and I felt their pain. It sucks to get a team cohesive and working together properly and then once you do it's ruined 20 min later by a scramble. I think it's hurting the servers more than helping them.


PS- This game has been out for a long time and team based play isn't new to the gaming community. The adventure of playing with new teammates and getting that team to work cohesively is what we all play for. If a team wants to play with 4-5 snipers and spies, they deserve to lose until they can get their act together. If they want to play a class for fun without regard to the game they can just go to our 2Fort IR servers.
 
I play on Turbine most of the time, and rolling seems to happen a lot there. Part of the fun of the game for me is trying to comeback after being rolled. Naturally, there are those people who switch to the winning team for the easy way out. This made it harder to come back.

When the auto scramble came along, it partially solved the stacking problem. But sometimes even after the scramble, one team still was dominating. I think it is effective sometimes, but other times it is plain annoying and disrupts game play for me. I think it should be done away with. If a team IS getting rolled, that means they aren't working together well enough, or each player is thinking about their stats rather than the teams well being.

Like others have said, building a rapport with the team takes time, and having that tossed away is not a good thing.
 
First off big kudos for agent86 and the time and effort he is putting into this problem. I was on Gravel Pit earlier today and noticed the auto balance once. IIRC, it did a good job at balancing the teams, but I don't recall if we actually hit the parameters that were needed to initiate the auto-balance. I don't recall if either team was getting rolled.

The initial reaction encountered when I was present was a number of pubs asking what the heck just happened and why am I attacking/defending again. Sprinkle in some colorful words and some warnings and you get the drift =). However once that settled down and play resumed, I believe we had some tight matches.

Some suggestions I can think of would be some kind of god mode message to notify all players that auto-balancing has kicked in (and if possible stating why. x number of back to back wins). This should help to answer the questions to what the heck happened.

To help counter the problems listed above about medics with low k/d ratio, is it possible to create an algorithm based upon their points and time on server? I know that won't necessarily be accurate as well when considering afker's, but it's another way to calculate the ranking of the player. Or perhaps the points per time for the number of rounds that are being determined for the auto-balance...

Just some thoughts...

-Groo
 
After playing on Turbine, I got switched once or twice. I know there is a plugin out there where you can select "buddies" in the server, which will keep you on the same team as them. I think that in association with this plugin would solve part of Nurse's point. I also think the feature where I couldn't switch to spec should be removed, as I was just answering the phone really quick. I had to resort to the command to force myself to spec to answer my call.

I agree that agent86 can't make everyone happy, but it would be nice to see a few in forum votes take place before there is an official working model of this plugin made. But we should continue to beta test this plugin in the server, as I would love to see how it changes.
 
One thing I have noticed, is that since the plug-in has been enabled, every once in a while the Gravel Pit server (dunno about the other ones) will spontaneously reset without explanation. I don't know if it is in any way related to the plug-in, but I've only seen it happen since the auto-scramble was added. Thanks. :)
 
I haven't been near the servers with the autobalance. However, to address Nurse and the other people who enjoy playing with friends. Would a "buddy" system work? I have seen it in use on other servers, and you type something like "/buddy" you choose the player and then "/lockbuddy" or something and it keeps you two together while autobalance is in action. I don't know how effective this is, but it could stop some headaches and people complaining about always being switched and not playing on the same team as friends.

I dunno though, I don't really care which team I'm on. I talk to everyone and anyone when I'm playing =)
 
Been playing on Turbine and although its great when you are on a team that is loosing but when you are on the winning team and you get scrambled it makes you want to quit. Ide rather play on a server that doesnt support this function.
 
It seems to be working OK. I haven't heard any praise or complaints about the plugin on Turbine, but on the other hand I haven't heard any complaints about the LACK of the plugin on Turbine, so it's at least filling a niche.

However, during one autobalance, I don't know if it was a wonky balancer or a whole bunch of silent ragequits, but BLU had 6 people and RED ended up with 12!

A buddy system would be nice... however, like Agent said, make everything automatic. So if you want to add that functionality, just have it pick whoever you have the most assists with :D

Finally, +1 for the Godmode Message. Instead of putting the message in the bottom left corner, smack in the middle of the screen would be good. And don't make the message sound like a punishment ("You've won too much!") like the current message... spin it into a positive. Even just "Team Scramble!" would be better than the current message. Maybe have an admins only message that explains why. (Doubleplusgood if you can somehow make the game use the Announcer's "Team scramble!" lines (from Arena) when it happens, so it feels more part of the gameplay :D)

FINALLY finally... could we change the scramble limit on Turbine? Turbine runs pretty fast, and it's pretty common that a team will lose 3 matches in a row right after the server resets the map (Happens to me EVERY TIME the map resets). Setting the scramble limit to 5 would still take care of the balance problems while not punishing a team because they got their act together quicker :D
 
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