Author	Comment
0 Eavy 0 Administrator Posts: 451 (10/2/00 8:33:05 pm)	How to force team balance - FEEDBACK I need some feedback on how to properly force team balance if the option is turned on: 1) Current implementation: When one team is severely unbalanced, the players on the bigger team can't respawn until teams are rebalanced. Advantage: Nobody in particular is forced to switch, if you're dead, you either wait until someone else does or you switch yourself if you don't want to wait. If nobody switches, nobody will respawn, and eventually someone will have to change unless the whole team wants to lose. Disadvantage: Those who really don't want to switch will just sit there, dead, unable to respawn. Each time they try to respawn, a spawn effect will be displayed, but they stay dead where they died. 2) Another possibility: When one team is severely unbalanced, if a player on the bigger team dies, they will respawn on the other team. Advantage: No waiting or staying dead, teams will be balanced automatically, they smaller team just has to kill someone on the bigger team to make them switch instantly. Disadvantage: Might be a bit confusing, you just had a great run and almost finished the whole map at once, then you die and have to suddenly adapt to the opposite situation. It's also impossible to play with your mates since you can't control when and if you will switch. 3) Any other ideas?! ATTENTION: This is an optional feature, of course, and the server admin determines when teams are unbalanced by defining how many more players a team can have without being unbalanced. By default it's off, but since teams should be balanced automatically on public servers, I'd guess most will turn it on. I'd like to implement the best way to do it without breaking anything else. Do you prefer 1 or 2, or have a suggestion for 3, then please post...
Ai Apocalypse Registered User Posts: 1 (10/2/00 9:53:39 pm)	Re : How to force team balance - FEEDBACK Kinda new to this, but here I go On option could be to when a players tries to change teams to unbalance them either by a bind or through the menu's : he dies, and each time they try to change they die, so eventually a players will get sick and tired of dying from trying to switch that they either give up or leave the server. Like I said new at this but a suggetsion. Apoc --------
ION Ace Registered User Posts: 34 (10/2/00 10:36:10 pm)	Re: Re : How to force team balance - FEEDBACK I just played strikeforce and when u join a game u get amenu come up showinh how mnay ppl on each team and who and one to pick ur team, I'll send u a screenie if u want. u could make the screen flash of the team with more players, which would be a bit annoying for them )
Mc Gatekeeper Registered User Posts: 1 (10/3/00 11:32:18 am)	don't like 1 or 2 For instant u are killing everyone. Got a godlike. U canbreak the new record of a map but noooooo u respawn at the opposite clan Or u breach 3 times in guardia and then switch to the defending team. WOW u got a new rec of 50 frags there. And u also have some people who will change 2 red or 2 blue if teams are balanced. So there isn't much u can do. Or: Some Mi5 on red and blue. But then newbies change teams. Making the teams unbalanced. And if a Mi5 dude respawns he goes 2 the other team. Then the blue team will be stronger (if the Mi5 dude went 2 blue from red) and it will also be confusing for that dude. Cuz u keep shooting at red people but then u go red. Then u will keep shooting at the red's instead of the blue's. So I suggest keep it how it is right now. IF anyone knows something better post it! (((don't check my spelling) (it's BADDDDDDD)
0 Eavy 0 Administrator Posts: 453 (10/3/00 4:21:03 pm)	Re: don't like 1 or 2 Yes, good point, I guess I'll keep it as it is... Fancy menus and such are not possible, everything that pops up on a remote player's screen must be on their computer, that's why I can't make a better scoreboard either. My goal was to keep the mutator server-side only, no downloads necessary, even when released as part of the pack. Since the bonuspack includes maps, it has to be downloaded anyway, but after the initial release I can fix any bugs in code and maps just by releasing a patched mutator for server admins. I couldn't handle it that easily if the code would have to be client-side as well because then version mismatch problems could come up. So the only way to do it properly is to keep it simple, small, server-side.
Anjutka Registered User Posts: 3 (10/7/00 5:55:13 pm)	Re: don't like 1 or 2 The way like it is now... Woohoo, no I do not come to Nilz at all... It turned to be very stupid place now =P
0ptical Registered User Posts: 1 (10/7/00 10:54:27 pm)	Re: don't like 1 or 2 this contant spawn thing is getting a pain if you suicide to get back your spawn point quickly to rearm or to get in the boiler room quickly it can end up being a real pain if someone leaves the server at that point ..now if you say that its wrong to suicide in order to do these things then ok fare enough this team balance thing does 2 jobs but for my style of play (and i know a lot of others who do the same thing) its a real pain so much so that i just tend to leave the server the idea is a good one to try and keep teams evenly matched throughout the whole game but if you end up bieng the guy who is frozen out then its a real pain in the ass.
0ptical Registered User Posts: 2 (10/7/00 11:05:33 pm)	Re: don't like 1 or 2 sorry not to put a suggestion as to which one is best but i dont feel as tho ether will really do the job as for a solution to it .......i dont know maybe option 1 is the best for the majority of people it just doesnt suite me and some people i play with.
SteelHORN Registered User Posts: 1 (10/8/00 1:08:42 am)	Re: don't like 1 or 2 I don't like it, spoils the flow of the game which I reckon is more important than one team being down for an assaulr. I'd prefer to keep the current team balance where its sorted at the end of the map. I liked the idea of preventing someone purposly unbalaning temas though.
0 Eavy 0 Administrator Posts: 463 (10/8/00 12:04:18 pm)	Re: don't like 1 or 2 Don't worry, guys, I've already figured out the best way to do it. The current implementation really sucks, that's why NIL was running it, so I could check it out in a real game. It's very important to see how it works with real people, I can't test that very well at home, so bear with us while we improve the changes that need improvement. Not only is the current feature buggy, but it's also confusing, I noticed most people thought there was a bug or something - all of those problems will be fixed with the new idea... Besides, it's an option, anyway. It will be disabled by default. But the new one will be working a lot better nevertheless.
git Registered User Posts: 14 (10/11/00 5:52:50 pm)	Re: don't like 1 or 2 Yeah, sorry I've been neglecting my beta testing role for a bit, work has got in the way. The general concensus is that "the server is fscked" when the team balance kicks in I've turned it off for now, it's certainly a hard issue to fix and keep everyone happy Maybe just a big warning message in the middle of the screen saying "Teams are Unbalanced" just like those racing games that say "Wrong Way" when you decide to have a bit of fun... or is that just me And maybe (but I'm not sure about this one) not allowing people to change teams if it'd mean the teams become unbalanced.. that might help the effect of too many helpful people changing teams (something I've also seen a lot when people try and balance teams)
0 Eavy 0 Administrator Posts: 472 (10/11/00 7:42:10 pm)	Re: don't like 1 or 2 Yes, I thought about adding that message, and maybe I'll do it if I keep the feature in. Otherwise I'll probably disable it as I won't be able to finish it before the initial bonuspack release. I can't prevent people from switching teams, though, not without adding a lot of overhead and forced switching back and forth. You can enable the force team balance option in the server settings, of course, then UT should prevent switching. I don't like that setting, though, if I play with a friend it's often almost impossible to get on the same team. If switching were allowed, we could switch, and someone else could balance. Often people are nice enough to allow that, but if the server prevents it, it can be frustrating. Or if one team has a lot better players, if the team size is equal, but skill isn't.
Tenaka2k Unregistered User (10/13/00 1:26:42 am)	Choices ....... How bout you try this . make the smaller team faster stronger or live longer. ex 7 on blue and 4 on red red now has a max health of 150 and does 1 1/2 damage while bule remains at 100 and normal damage. May sound un fair but when you are all alone with 3 ppl on you the health and strength will make it like you have a partner to back you up some. Just a thought. Tenaka2k "Honor is in the man , not the weapon."
The Bird Registered User Posts: 3 (10/13/00 2:41:50 am)	Re: How to force team balance - FEEDBACK How about, When the team is unbalanced, say when one side have 2 more people than the other side, the game will be paused and clock paused too. Show a message in the central of screen like 'The team is not balanced, please balance the team to continue game' The game will be paused forever until the team is balanced... However, have a option to set the number(the number of people on one side minus the number of people on the other side) to describe when the team is unbalanced.
0 Eavy 0 Administrator Posts: 478 (10/13/00 3:17:42 am)	Re: How to force team balance - FEEDBACK I already considered both of those suggestions: 1. To increase damage done by the smaller team while decreasing damage done by the bigger team. It still is a possibility, not as powerful as the new way planned, but could be used as a fall-back if the new idea turns out to be too complicated. The reason I didn't use this one is because it's harder to test, if one weapon does a bit more or less damage, it's hard to notice. But it's very easy to implement and so it's still on the list. 2. To stop the timer for attackers when they are outnumbered, or to prevent destruction of objectives when the defenders are outnumbered. Not pausing the whole game, that could be abused too easily, people unbalancing and freezing the game at will. I already implemented it as a test, but it had a serious flaw, some objectives are triggered with other switches. So I'd have to disable those triggers, too, and the triggers that trigger them. That would get very complicated, and only disabling a few isn't what I want to do, so either all or nothing. 3. My current plan: Instead of keeping all players dead when teams are unbalanced, freeze only the excessive players, and cycle through the frozen ones. So if it's a 12:6 match, only 6 people on the 12 player team could be active, the other 6 are frozen. When one of the active players dies, they get frozen, and a frozen one will become active. If you're frozen and don't want to wait for your turn, simply switch teams, so balancing will be optional whereas balance will be enforced. Balance or don't, but teams will be balanced, at all times. I still have to fix some kinks, but if it's possible, this will be the best way to keep gameplay balanced even when teams become unbalanced!
The Bird Registered User Posts: 6 (10/13/00 3:33:57 am)	Re: How to force team balance - FEEDBACK The frozen people should receive a message 'The team is not balanced, switch your team to get unfrozen...' etc They should know why they get frozen, otherwise they will think something wrong with the server and leave. (I don't like to see that)
0 Eavy 0 Administrator Posts: 480 (10/13/00 4:13:32 am)	Re: How to force team balance - FEEDBACK Info messages were planned all the time.
Haden Unregistered User (10/25/00 10:09:43 pm)	Re: How to force team balance - FEEDBACK Couldn't we just start to educate people to check the teams before they start playing (get onto a server, press F1 to see if the teams are balanced, if not, switch, if they are, play)? My problem with freezing players are the players that might get frozen maybe the ones who have been there the longest and weren't the reason of the freeze. It would be better if you just froze the person who came into the game or something. As for people leaving the game in mid play...well, I'm not sure if that's something that can be battled. IT would be very annoying if you are havnig an excellent game (as said above) and you die and you're ready to go again and all the sudden you're frozen and can't play until you switch teams ('cause who on your team is going to switch jsut so you can play again while they are still playing) or you spawn on the other team....both have the same out come. I think I would leave a server that had that implemented. The idea of stopping the objectives and such...it would be hard for newbies to understand this (unless explained and told to switch teams) and I think it would end up lengthing play and confusion. Just my two cents.
0 Eavy 0 Administrator Posts: 501 (10/25/00 11:08:50 pm)	Re: How to force team balance - FEEDBACK This whole thread is obsolete by now, I removed the old team balancing feature, and added a damage balancing feature instead. Nobody will be frozen, but the more teams are unbalanced, the more or less damage you do or take. Attackers will take less damage when outnumbered, defenders will deal more damage when outnumbered, and the team size differences that constitute "outnumbered" are configurable. By default, however, no balancing is done. Sever admins are encouraged to turn it on only when their players aren't educated enough to check and balance teams on their own. On the other hand, it certainly is fun to play a lone defender against a dozen attackers, and get a monster kill with a single flak shot.