Auto balance system and team switching

As most active players would know, the autobalance system sometimes moves all the high levels to one team and leaves the other team with all the low levels. This usually happens when one team's score is significantly higher than the other.

[AUTO-BALANCE] Survivor Score: 671 , Infected Score: 254
[AUTO-BALANCE] Level difference between teams is 585, where team 2 has higher levels
[AUTO-BALANCE] Teams are not balanced, scrambling...
[TEAMS] the admin Console forced the teams to scramble!
[TEAMS] Teams are being scrambled now

[Thanks to Angel for giving me the above text since I wasn't in game when posting this]


For example, Team A is winning Team B by quite alot because there are a few more higher levelled players in Team A. The next round, most of the high levels are moved to Team B so that Team B's score can catch up to Team A's. This makes the round for the new Team A be very short and unfair as they get trashed by all the high levelled players on the new Team B.

Looking at such scenarios that happen, I think perhaps the autobalance system should not consider the scores of the two teams but instead just look at the levels of the players in each team and balance from there. I think most people play to level up, gain points and have fun, so scores should not be considered in the autobalance process. It is especially annoying when the round is so short just because teams are unbalanced. [Even more so when you're on the losing side]



Also, regarding the team switching issue, perhaps the system could be something like Team Fortress' system. What Team fortress does [by default] is that Red and Blue team must always have the same amount of people no matter what. Players are only allowed to switch if one team has more players than the other. That way, in terms of number, teams will always be balanced. And if the above change is made to the auto balance system, teams will always be balanced in terms of both levels and number of players.

What do you guys think?

 

No one has really read this, so I'm gonna bump. Bump.

 

Oh, I forgot to mention, if both changes are applied, the problem of switchers will be reduced greatly, in fact, almost to nothing at all because the only way someone can actually switch is if Team A has one more player than Team B, so then one player from Team A can switch to Team B. But switching is frowned upon most because teams get unbalanced right?

So Team A has 8 players and Team B has 7, if one person from A Switches, the game would still be 7v8.

 

Actually, I asked Collector yesterday and he told me that this is already being implemented. That's good.

 

Some of you guys clearly don't understand the bigger picture of this game and it's structure. It takes the campaign score.

In your example, the scenario could also EASILY be this:

[AUTO-BALANCE] Survivor Score: 671 , Infected Score: 254
[AUTO-BALANCE] Level difference between teams is 585, where team 2 has higher levels
[AUTO-BALANCE] Teams are not balanced, scrambling...
[TEAMS] the admin Console forced the teams to scramble!
[TEAMS] Teams are being scrambled now

Round 1: Team 1 scores 611 points. Team 2 scores 74 points. Teams get scrambled.
Round 2: Team 1 has lower level players, and scores 60 points and gets crushed. Team 2 has higher levels, and scores 180.
Team 2, the higher level players in the 2nd map, did better on the 2nd map, and has more higher level players. However, they're still behind in total campaign score by far due to a scramble in the 1st round, even though in Round 2, Team 2 did 3x better than Team 1.

So, its VERY conceivable that a team can be down on total points for Round 3, 671 to 254, yet team 2 has the higher levels and won round 2, due to a scramble from Round 1 to Round 2. You have to look at the whole campaign. I'm not saying this happens all the time or whatever, but you have to look at the whole campaign picture, not just each round.

Also, 585 levels seems like a lot, but also, if it's 10v10, that's basically a 58 level difference per person. Its a good amount for sure, but if its a bunch of 130's verus a bunch of 188's, its a good difference, but not huge.

Also, if you guys paid attention to most high level players and guilds or played on the server for any significant length of time, you'd know that many players leveled down (most of the 210's anyway, and some of us several times), due to the Extreme lottery. Some of us leveled back up, some of us are leveling up once again. This is where this statement doesn't work:

There are many people, and several in my guild alone, that hit 210, and leveled all the way back down to 100. They still however keep ALL the skills and abilities they bought and maxed out when they were 210. So balancing based on levels doesnt work. They are basically posing as level 100's while having the ability of 210's. So you put say 4 of them on the same team, it doesnt look imposing when the other team has 4 level 130's, but I guarantee you it's not even close to even. The server thinks that the 100's (really 210's), are down 30+ levels on average per player, and they shuffle to add MORE players over on scramble to even it up. Or, it thinks it's close enough (probably no scramble on that level difference, or it would be close), when really it's an 80+ level difference for the OTHER side since the level 100's are truly 210 in skills/abilities due to leveling down for fun.

So, you just can't scramble purely on level. Maybe if you did it on max level ever achieved. Even then though, while it would be better, still has issues as you see in my very first example (671 vs 254). I realize some of the newer players don't realize that sometimes people's levels aren't their true levels or don't even know about extreme lottery it seems, but now you know. Love the enthusiasm though, but you gotta learn more about the server dynamics.

Lastly, I know a few Level 130's that are significantly better than many 180's on the server. I won't go into that aspect too much since nothing's perfect, but not even including that, there are a ton of holes in your "no-brainer" comment.

 

Well the thing is most high levels will be moved to losing team to catch up scores then there will be times that it won't scramble next round then scramble again.

 

Actually Tracer, I was using that to show people who didn't know that the autobalance system used team scores as well, not an example to prove my point.

Well, I kinda forgot about that. We'll see what admins say after reading that. Also, since you pointed out such a critical flaw in my proposed solution, what do you think about the switching solution? Is there anything wrong with it?

Are you referring to me? I've been here for coming to a year now. (If you weren't referring to me then nevermind)

 

I'm completely fine with your switching solution August. It's probably a good idea.

 

posted various times about the same thing, unbalanced teams and team switching, didnt get much of a reply...

on your note tracer, extreme lotto should level down some of those abilities and skills randomly too then not just level, lol XD

 

the scramble function = broken after the last update. used to be fine before. will look at it this weekend

 

NOOOO Lol. That wouldn't be fair because unlike levels, people used points and gems to buy those skills and upgrades. And yes I'm one of those 210s lol (level 99 now)

 

im lvl 210, im using booster when level 203 till level 210,,
i dont give a F*** for leveling down, because im bought booster from real money($$),,:wacko2:

people this day so lucky because Theres a HD Event,,im seeing most people lvl up quick with HD event,,
im leveled up to lvl 210, before HD event arranged ,,

 

loled

Auto balance is an old issue, just deal with it tbh =|