Yes. But the vets can not know all players skills and players can change names (to emp_recriut or f.e. to Blight). Lets make one step further ahead of this problem and let's do a ranking system that would determine the skill. Then let's automate those vets, because they will always choose a player with the highest skill and this is easily automated and prevents "i get a buddy instead of other player that I don't like that much". Oh, We re-invented the balancer plugin. Again. Autobalancer produces fair teams, so noone stacks spec because there is no need to do it. Seriously, try it or ask anyone who used it.
With Empires moveing into the orange box wouldnt it be possible to have a stats system like TF2 where the client keeps the data about him/her self like kills, matches played..etc. Once the player joins the server the server can balance skill acording to team. Problem a bit less of a problem: Pros: would make skill staking less of an issue games would actully be good for once Cons: I can imange a crap lode of coding to get it to work
Lies! angry hillbilly: 1. We don't need a TF2-like stats system to balance the teams. Tests have shown that stats stored on per-server basis are sufficient and effective. 2. "a crap lode of coding" has already been done as plugin. I don't see a point in hardcoding it into Empires code, because as for now, plugin works well, but there is only one server admin that wills to use it. Lala (and other admins): contact me through PM if You want it installed on Your server. The plugin requires a database (f.e. MySQL) to run.
Ok, here is a link to a steamcommunity event, scheduled to 18:00 this Saturday (GMT timezone). The testing session will take place on the BDS server. Everyone is welcome to come and see how the balancer "doesn't really" work. Warrning: The balancer can not see into the future. It needs about 3 maps to learn how the player plays to sort him very well. If the player is new on the server, then he will be assigned on "old" rules (counting player numbers). There might be some players that will think that they will gain something by messing around for a few maps and then superskilling to cheat the plugin that they are noobs but really they are pro (notice only pros can do that). It's immature. They will just waste some time by doing so.
It needs to be hard coded... 90% of servers don't have a balancing plugin, this way, all servers would be required to have fair teams.
I don't say autobalancers don't work in a technical way. We don't seem to understand each other, you will just seperate the community by introducing rigid balancer plugins. Some servers have them. Some players don't like them and leave or play on a different server. Some players like them and stay on these servers (calling other servers "shit") This is not a problem for CSS or other games with a playerbase of a bajillion. I agree with recon here: If you don't force it unto all servers its gain is doubtable. Forcing it for all servers will mean loss of playerbase and not only morons will leave.
Notice that currently this is an issue on all servers that have NOT installed the plugin!! On the server that has the plugin, You can type buddy_set in Your console and follow the instructions to set Your friend as Your buddy. Your friend then can set You as his buddy, so You are linked. Plugin detects it and it puts You both on the same team so You can have fun. Note: the buddy system is inactive if there are less than 10 players on the server. Or maby it was 7? Note: You can set only one buddy at the time. So the plugin actually supports players playing with friends, unlike the standard balancers and mp_forceteambalance or whatever was it called.
You forgot 13) its always the commanders fault 14) its always the commanders fault 15) its always the commanders fault
Usually the stack counteracts itself after a few maps. For example, when Headshotmaster plays all the retards go "HAY GUISE IF WE JONI HEDSHITMESTR'S TEEM WE GET EZ WINZ!". Meanwhile all the good players go "lol, unarmored apcs" and join the other team.
another reason why I stack is that I dont want to be the babysitter for the whole team. I dont enjoy games in which i have to buy apcs to get the team to specific spots. Rush allone with tanks til there is a hole in the enemy defense. Build everything i see and so forth... Its not a enjoyable game for me if i have to care for everything myself because most of the other members of my team want to camp a spot for 30 minutes. EXAMPLE???: Some days ago I had a game with LordDZ as commander on Streetsoffire at the point we had superlights (reactive+3phase) we could win the game by rushing their cv with 2-3 tanks but the team doesnt know such concepts. Not to mention that we had 3/4 mapcontrol at that point. They refused to do it because they feard some lvl3 turrets -.- than we had meds with he. nothing changed than we had nuketanks... only difference was that my team was brave enough to enter the streets to the BE base... no joke... in the end we lost because we gabe BE more than 30 minutes time to ninja...
What about adding a vote-shuffle option? Yes, shuffling in the middle of a game can be annoying, but it worked very well in Enemy Territory, and solves both sorts of problems. If you don't like the idea of having everyone on the map suddenly die (which would be involved in shuffling mid-game), it could just be an option when starting a new game... Obviously, the comms should not be included in the shuffle.
I think auto-balancing systems are a somewhat reasonable short-term solution, but if any of us are seriously in pursuit of a long-term solution... I think the only way to truly deter team stacking, keep Empires fun & active, and keep even the slightly-stacked rounds somewhat fun, is to perhaps initiate some community-wide effort, teach the masses how to play well (I don't mean sit there and spoon feed everything to them in terms of how to perform in-game functions, but more-so the common practices and nuances of the game). A wiser, more knowledgeable playerbase will reduce the amount of stacking that can occur, and in the end may result in the playerbase being more attractive (so we can get more active players). There already exists Training Server, but most of the time the commanders and players there are unhelpful to newer players or players who just apparently have no clue what they're doing. Sure, you can yell, spam, recycle structures, lock vehicle factories, etc. But really, all you're doing is solving the problem for that particular round, or that particular day. I'm by no means an expert but Empires is about the only game I still play on Steam. Everything else is static, repetitive, and... no longer much fun to me. I've met some real morons lately in Empires, because I saw them doing most of the stuff that Mayama has described. However, most of them were willing to listen, and I had to take maybe one or two minutes here and there throughout the game to work with a few of them individually and teach them how to do something or why doing (or not doing) something is important. If they're reasonable (which, not all n00bs are unreasonable/idiotic, some are just straight-up "new"), they'll listen to you. Then the next round they've improved and know what to watch out for, who to listen to (the commander + any prominent team mates or squad leaders). For very technical "how-to-do-________", they can always RTFM, but then again there are bound to be many good players who didn't bother to RTFM but learned anyway. I just don't see how anything will work long-term unless we actually improve the playerbase.
im not the best player out there and i can be very verbal... if things go wrong but i personal think empires is not a game for people that want "single score whore fun". If i spam stuff like "take the fukin res nodes" or "rush north now" for 2 minutes on a standard server i dont do that because i hate my team. I want to have a chance to win. There are always people that say stuff like "calm down its just a online game" but in the end i think the ruin the fun for everyone else because the active try to not win the game by griefing.
Thats why I've got a rule for myself that when Im comming and give a major order like ignore ruins rush middel, and instead of listening they rush ruins and ignore middle, I get fed up and run off to where I wanted them to go and attempt it myself. This happened earlier today on duststorm and because they didn't listen they lost the game. I also thought it was funny that after I died I said "games over our com is in northwest with their com and nobody is there." on the mic like five times. Then Reef killed our Com everyone goes "WTF What happened?" That made me want to faceslap everyone on my team.... Again Team Stacking is a Myth.
Tea, If you have a team of 10 pubers and the other team is a team of 8 people that are members of the same clan, plus two pubers, are the teams "stacked"? Today, I commed round of isle (my least favorite map to comm) where I repeatedly asked my team to go gren (during the commander vote period) and rocket snipe the enemy bridges, and we didn't have a single gren on the team. What happened? The enemy team rocket sniped our bridges and that in my opinion, lost us the game (which BTW we did lose).
