Stacking, does it really lengthen you're e-peen?

I miss my elite Aussie crew

 

Exactly, I can't even remember playing a game on a team without 1 or 2 'Vets'(AKA: clanners) in them.

The reason is not because I am afraid to lose or that I wan't a high k/d ratio, but because I wan't to work together, I wan't teamwork - because I enjoy working as a team.

I don't enjoy games like CSS or CoD, I play Empires because I like the epic-ness of battles and the way they are fought.

I don't wan't to run around like a brainless savage only caring about a sky-high k/d ratio, I wan't well tought strategies, tactics and battles.

So unless I know there is atleast 1 person in a team(wich I know of) that can organise his team then I'm not playing.

 

Clanners != Vets at all.

There's shitloads of clanless veterans.

That's what makes it even harder to avoid stacks.

 

Well, what I am refering to is something I see happening daily,

It's like people concider a clan tag to be a sign of skill,

Personally I have seen plenty of people with clan tags wich I wouldn't ocncider skillfull.

And I have personally seen enough clanless people wihc I could concider to be "Vets"


And what is a "Vet"?

 

Technically I believe a Vet is someone who's been playing for more than a year or so.

But in my opinion it's just the elites who know basically the whole game and keep the games community alive by simply sticking around for ages.

 

Also, note:
Vets/Clan people tends to fuckaround a lot.

 

We have LOADS of randomly tagged people that are not in Empires clans, but rather other clans or just no clan with tags. These people are just random...our active clans atm are; epic, cw, bsid and jpl.

Now if you've seen me in the game, you know I fail a lot, but the mark of me being a vet is that I know most of the time what's going on, even if I die waaay too quickly to do anything about it...or fall off a cliff, that's always fun.

 

I'm agreeing with FN. /me checks to see if there's peace in the middle east

 

what if you want to play with a friend on the same team?

 

It's never a problem with "a" friend. The problem starts with its 5, 6, 7 or more.

 

I don't know about you, but I haven't that kind of stax since you carpet banned FN and some other BSID.

I don't really see what the OP is whining about.

The OP's idea is also terrible. It has been done before, everyone hated it, ect ect ect. Stop crying.

 

So we've had a good pool of players for the last few nights, meaning we've had a chance to test out the rating based autoteambalance. The two "negative" things I've seen are actually by design, I think people are just weirded out by what it's doing:
1) complete_lamer and a few others at times accused the balancer of allowing BSID stacks. It's true that more BSID were on one side than the other, but actually it was 2v3 and one time 2v4 regarding BSID (multiple BSID were using aliases, I can provide logs if you prefer to call me out on it). To make this perfectly clear, your clan tag has zero relevence in the rating formulas, and the plugin makes no attempt to stop "clan stacking" because it's not about clans. The sooner this incorrect perception is corrected the better. Also, every time I checked into accused stacks (referred to as simply stacking or one time BSID stacks) the team with more BSID has less overall players. In fact one time it was 5v9 which turned into an incredibly close game. Oh, and one time it became relatively stacked because some players left on one team. The only way I can fix that if by forced teamswitching mid-game, and I really don't want to do that, so I can't help if someone leaves... you'll have to just invite a friend to take their place or hang on until a random person joins.

2) As touched on above, player count on each team holds only part of the weight of the balancing formula not all of it like the default balancer. This means games that are "skill stacked" on one side can be balanced by being "player stacked" on the other. Thus far I have only seen one lopsided game to date, and it was District with the team I would have guessed to win actually losing (from a rating perspective it was even but based on names alone I would have guessed it a steamroll the other direction... at this time I'm thinking there was a huge tactical error or mass afk or something). It was relatively common to see 4v6, 5v7, etc during the testing, most of the time during the higher player counts it was 11v12 and 15v16.

Again I say, I have only seen one lopsided game thus far, and I'm basing all my opinions on the competitive nature of the games which is the only angle I'm attempting to balance by. So please, no empty complaints about clan stacks, the numbers don't lie, and you can pull them up with !ratings whenever you want. If you see someone with a rating you disagree with, that would be an example of a flaw in the plugin. If you see 4 BSID vs 6 "not BSID" don't call stacks because it only is if someones rating is messed up, not if the tags are all the same color.

Feedback and Suggestions are welcome. Thanks guys.

 

wasn't me. i complained about the !failvote on your server

 

1) People trying to hide themselves does not foster trust spawn. If you see a cop and run away, what kind of message does that send?

There is something to be said for five people who play together regularly when matched against six or seven who don't. Therefore, I disagree with your statement that clan stacks are completely irrelevant (they are most of the time).

2) Not always. There are very few static components in Empires, which is why it's so hard to balance.

Regardless of my personal opinion of the system you've created, I see you're trying to find a solution to stacking, and that's what matters.

 

Agreed with Recon, Soundspawn. One player on his own can hold a key area from 5 people. One squad, fully functional, fully communicative, can win the game. Where do you find such squads? From clans. Odds are that 5 random pubbers will NOT forrm a permanent squad (multiple games), and be successful.

 

@Recon and PreDominance
1)I was not using an alias so don't look to me for that, I can offer their logic though: A few players were under alias (and openly admitting they were in BSID) because they were seeding the server before testing and didn't want people freaking out that it was virtually all clan members in the server. When testing started, no one bothered to change their names back. I also saw many non-BSID sporting aliases during the testing. As far as trust goes, I have implemented an xinfo plugin available to all players, and loaded all BSID members in to it, so we most definately are not trying to be dishonest, we are trying to provide a fun experience even when the server is full of clanners... perception of stacks ruins games too and we would like to avoid that.

As for Clan tags being irrelevant, let me explain. Clanners may perform better, and thus have a higher rating... meaning the fact they are in a clan does not FORCE a higher rating, however having a higher rating may be indicative of being in a clan. Let me put it in to context. Let's take Wilko who currently has the highest rating on the server. If he was not in BSID would he be less effective as a player? Probably, yes, so I can agree with you there. But the part you are missing is that by being less effective as a player, his rating would go down naturally, so I achieve the same result you expect to see and thus should not "double tax" him by increasing his rating because of a clan tag. Therefor, my original statement should make sense to you, the tag itself holds absolutely zero relevance to rating.

 

I always join the stacked team to lower the skill level.

 

I see where you're going with that, Soundspawn. The tag in and of itself does nothing, but the being in a clan is what matters.

 

Yes exactly, this also accounts for clan members that suck not having artificially inflated ratings, as well as unknown alt accounts not having lower ratings simply because we haven't labeled them as a clanner yet. Glad I could make sense of that

 

One clanner is irrelevant. Five together is not.