Feedback on Auto-assign of Teams

[Edge92]

I've noticed that since yesterday, #25 (and possibly other GON servers - idk) have begun automatically assigning players who join the server to a random team.

I presume the reason this has been brought about is due to the the constant feedback of stacked teams every match, and though I appreciate the admins efforts to address this issue, I'm sorry to say that this is not the solution to the problem.

Here is why. There are two main groups of people who add meaningful value to a team, those who don't care what team they are on and those who want to be on Blu at the beginning of every match. With the auto-assign, there is still is the ability to join spec after you first join the server and select manually the team you wish to join, a flaw widely abused in this system. This results with the stacked team not just having your usual offenders, but also half of what was to be a semi-decent opposition. Thus leaving you with the classic Heavy/Medic rush vs. Newbies, which turns sour very quickly.

I'd appreciate it if you could remove the auto-allocate for this reason. I think the only clean solution to this problem is to wait for people to become bored of these dull games... which is highly unlikely to happen seeing that this particular server has had this problem ongoing for possibly more that 2 years. An alternative proposal is to hand out temporary bans for repeat offenders, I do believe team stacking violates the server rules and there are always plenty of people waiting on that auto-join list for that vacant spot.

Thanks again to the admins for their ongoing support.

[Bicketybam]

Considering that most of the complaints on the 32 player servers are in regards to stacking, that is the reason why it has been turned on.

With the auto-assign, there is still is the ability to join spec after you first join the server and select manually the team you wish to join, a flaw widely abused in this system.

While unfortunately this is a flaw and one I knew was there turning it on, the next step is introducing a plugin that will remove the ability for the player to go into 'spectator mode' (for a set time) so they can't wait it out until they can stack the teams. I've been playing on the server quite a few times since I turned it on to see how it goes and while unfortunately there are those players that just ignore the auto-assign and any scramble, for the most part the other players accept it.

[yammingtons]

Whilst I totally disagree with this as an anti-stack measure, can we at least get a !scramble option? At the moment the teams end up randomly stacked and we cannot do anything about it ...

[papillon]

this is a very bad anti-stacking plugin. I played like 5 maps last night each time forced to be defender (red) and stuck with a bunch of newbies..

Check what the 'AUS' servers are doing .. they've done it right, there's a scramble vote and teams automatically get scrambled between rounds if it's obvious one team is just rolling the other one. It just works a lot better..

[Mythor]

this is a very bad anti-stacking plugin. I played like 5 maps last night each time forced to be defender (red) and stuck with a bunch of newbies..

The thing about randomly assigning teams is... it's random.
There are going to be times where you get randomly assigned to a team destined to lose. And there'll be times you'll get assigned to a team destined to win. Ideally, these will even out over time.
Obviously if you're used to joining the winning team more often than not this may lead to disappointment, as you might actually lose a little more often than you're used to.
But all the people who try and play fair probably see it a little differently.

they've done it right, there's a scramble vote and teams automatically get scrambled between rounds if it's obvious one team is just rolling the other one. It just works a lot better..

About half the scramble requests I see are when one team hasn't even finished their turn on offense. Half the rest are just people complaining the other team is better than their team. Which is pretty much inevitable.
The servers already do have an autoscramble in place if one team is clearly dominating the other, by virtue of winning a certain number of rounds in a row.

I played on #25 tonight and - big surprise - saw quite a few evenly matched rounds and an occasional easy victory. All without the usual "sitting in spec after the round has started" business that occasionally infects the game.
Mission accomplished! (Pending further examination.)

[Transition27]

Scramble alone won't do ****, it'd be the same as the auto assign atm.

Scramble and/or auto-assign with the 'No joining other team' for a certain amount of time works in a way but not perfect. You can't limit players too much or they'll just rq, same goes for being too lenient, causes the others to rq.

Simply put, not all can be satisfied. It can't be completely stopped in most cases.

But then again, if it does go stricter and even if the servers gets a lower amount of players on average there's a high chance it would be joined by better players, or they'll improve.....or it'll just turn into a spam and **** fest all day long no matter what is done to try accommodate.

[CB4]

It's ironic that it's the TF2 server that now has this feature as all the other valve/source games I have played on node are lone wolf type games like CS, DOD, DOD:S and CS:S.. and TF2 is the one that involves more of a co-op aspect (medics etc), perfect for playing with friends. And now you can't do that 50% of the time because the server wants to tell you who you can and can't play with. In my 10 odd years of gaming I've never seen anything like it.

Unbalanced teams are an issue in any of these games and always will be. All you can do is enforce that the number of players on each team is even, it's not possible to regulate how much talent/skill is on a team at any given time. Already TF2 has this auto scramble thing half way into a map, if it's been too one sided. That's already alot more than these other games have. Yet all of these games seem to manage fine already.. for years and years.

I don't know why some people get so obsessed with winning in "pub" though. Ever been on a CS:S team that is blatantly dominating? It's hard to even have someone to kill. It goes both ways but it's just a part of it. Sometime's the games will be great, other times they will be unbalanced. No one wants to be on a team where they have to try and kill 5 people at once (no chance) and in TF2 as Engineer in particular, it can be frustrating but no matter what anyone says or does, being beaten in something competitive will always be frustrating.

Some games are good, and even and balanced. Some games are not. Such is life.

My main point I want to make though is the type of people who are prone to complaining about "stacking" or uneven teams:-

Alot of them aren't good players to begin with and play with alot of frustration and in these cases, they will never be happy. For example, you can be on a bad CS team but still maintain a 1-1 k:d ratio.. like a 10-10 score, but not if you are swearing and throwing your arms in the air and blaming it all on the teams. I have been on TF2 teams where all the "good players" are on that team and they still get steamrolled. There is so much that is out of one's control like the classes everyone chooses, and whether or not people are AFK, it's very random and that's what makes multiplayer gaming exciting. The unpredictability of real human players.

Being on a bad team is frustrating for any game but for TF2 specifically I don't care about winning or losing so much, but if I join a server because certain people are playing, I want the ability to be able to play with them! Very frustrating. Servers 14 and 25 on Node have a big social/community aspect and these new server settings hamper that.

[CB4]

Not to mention, you can no longer switch to spec to record a demo and see if a player is cheating or not.

edit - This whole issue reminds me of my Grade 12 Maths teacher who made us all sit in a "designated seating plan" so we couldn't chat with our friends during class.. it's supposed to be a fun cartoonish computer game not a classroom.

[MunchY]

I'm all for any method to prevent the stacking on the 32 player servers. It was getting to the point I'd rarely play on them even though they're my favi3z.

[.♥. Cupcake .♥.]

I played for about 2 and a half map rotations, and unfortunately they were all extremely one sided! I think it was pure bad luck and coincidence howevevr - as you would think a random auto-assign would help take away stacking.

[goosmurf]

Whilst it's unfortunate that the forced auto-assign sometimes leads to unbalanced matches I still think it's overall a better outcome than before. I stopped playing #25 (and #14) for the last few months of 2011 because the games were all intentionally stacked. Now I'm inclined to give them a go again.

In the meantime I have been playing a lot on the 'AUS' aka Payload and Grapes servers...

Check what the 'AUS' servers are doing .. they've done it right, there's a scramble vote and teams automatically get scrambled between rounds if it's obvious one team is just rolling the other one. It just works a lot better..

This has it's own flaws as it tends to scramble a little too enthusiastically. Perhaps the settings could be tuned though. On the upside the fact that it does scramble aggressively discourages stacks coz you're just gonna get split up after one round anyway. Overall it seems to have better outcomes than auto-assign though -- you can still choose to be on your friend's team but if it's horribly unbalanced something will be done.

!votescramble is also enabled on the PL&R servers but I find that's typically not that useful. Most of the time the auto-scramble because of winning frag ratio / difference in scores / win time kicks in before !votescramble.

In the end all of these mechanisms encounter pathological cases which make them imperfect. At least with auto-assign you can put unbalanced games down to luck, and most times there are good players on both teams so the opportunity exists to get the class balance right and work together to turn the game around.

I'd be pro auto-assign + auto-scramble system similar to PL&R but conscious that it all requires admin effort.

[Spiritech]

I don't particularly like the auto assign. The random assignment can still result in stacks, often worse than when we chose teams. That said, I quite enjoy the stacked against team, because it provides an extra challenge. Regardless I don't believe the stacking issue will ever kill the server population so why attempt to address it? GON #25 is probably the best 32 player server from a regular players/lag/map rotation standpoint.

If it is something that concerns administrators, I suppose it has to be dealt with. But there is surely a better way that will still allow people to play with their mates on the server.

[Agent Provocateur]

Auto Assign has it's drawbacks, I cant spec suspected cheaters and teams can be unbalanced with it on, gone are the days when certain clans that would team up as medic heavy combo and just laugh as they rolled the opposing team, those two clans that were guilty of it have members who left or play on other servers.