8 in the morning, 12 people on VIPER, legit 5v5 going, wtf candles

I actually thought the skill bar was better than about a year ago

 

The newer players we're getting now are far better than the ones we've been getting for the last 3 years. I'm properly impressed. The people asking me to give over squad lead and comm positions were the people who appeared in the last 3 years, so that kind of proves my point.

 

You sure about them being new?
From wht I've seen, most of people that played the alst couple days are vets that just switched nicknames.

 

I have basically every Empires vet on my friends list, so I can tell who are and aren't the new players.

 

I use this new friends icon next to the scoreboard to determine what team is stacked.

 

Why the hell can't we balance teams this way?

When one team has most of the "vets", the match is generally considered unbalanced.

So why can't we force the number of "vets" to be equal on each team?

We do the same damn thing with the overall number of players and everyone is cool with it. A noob isn't really a useful player, so why count them alongside useful players?

 

No autobalance will be perfect.

The point is that we KEEP coming back to counting vets/friends as a means of judging the stack.

We keep using it because it's a simple & accurate way to judge stacking.

So why not fix it?

 

It really does mean that much though.

I know I've heard Trickster say something to the effect of "It's stacked because all of my friends are on one team."

Paradox flat out admitted to also using that methodology to judging stacking.

I know I use it when I'm estimating stacking.

It works.

 

I was wondering if you could set up a dummy achievement for playing ~100 hours (or whatever criteria) and then I think there are APIs to ask for a list of player achievements. It wouldn't be tied to any particular server.

 

I kinda agree with flasche tbh. There are always a bunch of people claiming to be vets who really just cause more trouble in the team. They mouth off and get team members confused, then appropriate them for hit and runs that leave other areas completely vulnerable. They are worth half a newbie, if I'm honest.

A true vet will be adapting to situations as fast as I can grasp or relay them, or if not, will be doing real damage on the front lines. And if they mouth off to me, it's simply because I'm not doing what's right. Generally speaking though, they're a little calmer when telling someone they're a retard.

 

You can be a vet and still be crap, also lots of old players actually get worse when hey just expect someone else to carry them.

Sometimes people want to experience teamwork but aren't prepared to make it happen. That's the difference, other than having a slightly better aim, or thinking a bit quicker the best players are simple the ones who try the hardest in every game.

Likewise the best games are just the ones where everyone is trying their best, you can have a game full of the "best" players (kdr & points whores) and even if you are winning it can be uninspiring because everyone is just going through the motions.

But now seems pretty good, a balance of new players & the fact we haven't played for ages means it feels pretty fresh.

 

I'd beg to differ here, there is no way in hell 10 newbies are going to win against 10 vets even if u really them together. 2 squads of vet is going to guarantee you every part of the map.

If you can get a 5 man vet stack together on a pub night where its 30v30 you can easily send that 1 stack to either location and guarantee theyll take it for u, if they are actually trying.

E.g. ýouzy spike nihia quetzal doc put 3 of them on engi youzy and spike on rifleman, no fucking way anyone survives

 

We had the skill system years ago that would do proper auto balance. Was a simple MMR system where your kills and points minus your deaths would give you a nice global rank. Worked quite well from what I remember but it was all Python based and hung off this heavy server mod IIRC. If we could have it built into empires rather than someone having to use the awful shit that is Sourcemod then everything would be dandy.

 

It really depends. I've won with newbies against teams with vet stacks on them. Mostly because from the start I've pointed out that while we might not be as great, in Empires teamwork trumps skill. So the newbies work extra hard to win.

If you're talking about in a match game pitting newbies vs vets, well obviously that's not going to work.