Stacking Mod Proposal

OK - very controversial, but this gets at the one thing we all do and also all complain about. I have to admit stacking against another team is fun as hell, if you are on the stacked team. But we all know it's just not fair and will never give you your best matches. The best you can hope for is some vets will join and reverse stack it for the win.

SO - we have VoteBan, Nominate, NextMap the infamous solution to stacking RTV - all intended to give control of the game to the players.

What if you added a UNSTACK, if you get (n/2-1) votes. That is 4 votes for 10-11 players, the teams are shuffled. Obviously this requires a great deal of thinking on how to unstack teams. If I only play NF and was dumped on BE, I might just quit. So the shuffle might be 1 person swaps. or if the group voting for unstack are all on the same team - then they get the extra player.

Another option is if a team votes UNSTACK before the game starts - everyone is dumped into SPEC. This would require a minimum of three votes to keep some idiot from doing this when only 2 people have joined with one vote and piss people off. 2vs1 stack fix is simple - sell the barracks and kill yourself.

Lots more to think about for this algorithm - but you get the idea. Obviously this option should be OFF until enabled by an admin until the kinks are worked out.

Vinnie

 

Too complicated. It's better to demand random teams (completely skipping the team placement screen and getting automatically placed with no user input) and start banning players if they delay a win.

It's silly to expect every game to be fun, but it's not unreasonable to want stacked games to end as soon as possible.

 

I think if you ask the programmers they'll tell you most of the algorithms in this game for automatic choices are very complicated. What I recommended is actually fairly easy since it's just based on numbers and not tracking history of every player like I had recommended previously.

I'd hate to see SPEC go away. I like to watch games and learn tactics. I do think there should be a SPEC option.

Maybe reduce the spec time to games in progress, and 1/2 of the count down time. If you join spec - you are auto placed on a team at 1/2 any time after 1/2 of the start up time. You can only remain in spec the first minute after a game completes. Not sure this is a good idea, but this is a discussion and brainstorming ideas.

A rebalance option will require more thought and could get very complicated, but worth a discussion at least.

Vinnie

 

I've noticed this trend and no matter how frustrating newbs are you can not just start banning them for not knowing how to play. Next you'll be asking why no one is playing Empires anymore. I do think an admin sending a message like "You are invited to a training session every Sunday at 1, 6, and 10 pm est on XXX Server. During this time we will train you on every aspect of this game. Special COM training sessions will be setup upon request. Your contact for this session is xxx@yyy.com, email him today if you are interested".

Vinnie

 

At the core, I think you're trying to fix bad matches. I think that's the wrong direction. A loss isn't that bad, it's losing that sucks. People don't quit when they lose, they quit when it starts to feel hopeless, but the end isn't in sight.

Ideally, the stacked team should get robo-fn to com for them. He's ruthlessly focused to ending matches as quickly as possible, thus minimizing the suffering of the losing team. But we obviously can't automate fn's comming, lol.

 

Not sure I have time to read a "million" threads. Also I too agree a "shuffle" will not be acceptable and would vote against it.

Is there some rule to not welcome new threads in Empires Forum ? I've honestly never run into a forum that complains about people posting new threads like this one. But then again you guys are a rare breed indeed.

Vinnie

 

I meant banning vets that are trolling. After a time out, they might give it their all.

 

When you start a match with all newbs against a match of all vets, it's never fun except for the other team laughing at the fun they're having playing with their food before eating it. Last night we even had Sargent Security join five minutes into the match and he could do nothing to bail us out. I had five newbs sitting in the barracks repairing it while the whole other team of vets feasted on us. There have been times I told newbs - "Don't get upset - we will not win this match. We're using it for training against a better team. Keep playing and learn something".

Next match 3 vs 2, we fought on the 2 side the best we could - had an early lead, waiting for one more person to balance the teams and just go clobbered when the COM started pushing vehicles himself making it truly uneven. When I COM I will hold vets back and not intentionally take advantage of unbalanced teams. I'll tell the other team we won't attack until someone joins - but we will do a land grab.

 

You're right. That's why those unfun matches need to end as fast as possible.

 

Is it just me or are you very quick to suggest how others should use their time rather than using your own time for your suggestions? The unstack suggestion, fair enough but its not going to get implemented simply because its either far too complicated or doesnt work. If it unstacks the game by changing 2 emp_recruit to your team in return for 1 vet, is that worthwhile?)
You could setup a server and host these training sessions handy enough.

 

This horse has been beaten to death. Then beaten into a pulp. Then used to make fertilizer. Then used to grow grass. Then used to feed many more horses.

For each horse fed, repeat the previous algorithm. Infinite recursive dead horse beatings.

That's how much people have tried to deal with this, that's how much people have argued for letting it be. It's a discussion that's full of fallacy after fallacy after fallacy. And those are just the ones I can pull off the top of my head that I've seen. In fact, these threads tend to get so fallacious, that we'll never know if a better way of doing things will ever exist because everyone tries to find a perfect solution instead of a good enough solution, and if someone does find a good enough solution, he'll get argued against with arguments that essentially boil down to "It's not perfect so things should stay the way they are, instead of using a solution that would improve the current situation."

 

Admittedly, almost every suggestion in here is like that.

 

Given that the forum admins do not let the original poster to close a thread - I'll just let this linger until it changes topic or dies out. But if there is an option to do SOMETHING about stacking - regardless of how old a topic this is - then maybe we should entertain it.

Weathy soup - "Is it just me or are you very quick to suggest how others should use their time rather than using your own time for your suggestions?"

Are you suggesting that I download the code and make changes ?

Ahh hahaha - thanks for the laugh. Then I could take all the abuse that the coders of this game take from you guys for every change or map they make ? Ahahahhaa ! The coders of this friggin ingenious game are the least respected group of people I know. I rarely hear compliments for all the hundreds of hours these guys spend coding, but I do see a lot of guys shitting on them for their attempts to improve the game. I'll stick to money making ventures and use my free time for enjoyable endeavors. As for setting up a server - that certainly can occur and I wouldn't mind mentoring some newbs. I do it all the time on Viper. Although I think it would just be one more of the many unused servers that no one ever joins. Maybe I could get admin rights on some unknown server and push some newbs out of our games to train them on that server. That at least would be helpful to the Empires community.

 

Empires is a game that requires a lot of teamwork. Stacking ensures that players can rely on at least a few players and therefore reap the benefits of teamwork. So without stacking, those players don't have fun. And now you see that there is all but no incentive to entertain any ideas of neutering stacking.

As Candles bluntly put it, this horse has been thoroughly beaten. However, the same people that can fix the problem are prime stacking suspects. There's no reason for a crooked cop to close his own loophole.

 

No, but you could code a SM plugin.

 

Maybe some day. I wouldn't entertain it until December though. Then I get to be among the heavily abused, no pay, masochistic programming team for over indulged imbeciles.

If you are one of the coders - serious kudos to you and the crew. This game completely rocks. I enjoyed Left For Dead until I found Empires mod. That game is just friggin redundant. Once you gain the skill there is nothing left to do but play the same way every game. I can play the same map on Empires 100 times and it would be different every time.

What is the development environment ?

For now - I'll focus on training newbies to get them to addiction level. One of you guys will have to take them further. Maybe by then I'll have learned enough. I am not at GREN level yet.

It would be funny to have badges for levels of achievement:
Scout, Engineer, Rifleman, Gren, Comm.

I admittedly jumped Gren, but have gone back to spend some time on it. If there was nothing to learn - I wouldn't be playing.

 

Nope im not, credits go to Jephir, Brutos, Beerdude and Marcin for that at the minute.
Empires is coded in C++.

For anyone thats interested this used to be the old test for programming (set by m00tant, not sure if its still used): http://www.spoj.com/problems/BITMAP/

 

I'm sorry, what?

By all means, elaborate.