Server #13 Auto Scramble

[Matty]

Not that I have been on much lately but 13 often has a pretty bad stacking problem. Auto-assign is something I've been suggesting for ages, but its hard when literally every TF2 admin and their friends (All with like 1000+ tf2 hours each) are on one side.

[goosmurf]

is it stacking if I have no friends and like attacking first? am I a bad person and should I feel bad?

IMHO what defines stacking is joining a team when it's fairly obvious that the team is already much stronger than the other, with the outcome being a massive steamroll.

So joining Blu because you want to attack is fine as long as the teams look fairly even. Joining either team because all your friends are on that team is also perfectly reasonable, as long as the resulting teams look fairly even.

Stacking is about the spirit of the game and is something of a judgment call -- sometimes you're beating the other team because your team has better teamwork and that's fine. But what stacking refers to is when you're smashing the other team not because your team has amazing teamwork but simply because all of your players are individually better than all of the other team. And more importantly, that everyone *knows* that and does nothing about it.

The end goal is that everyone should have a fun game -- in my mind that means experienced players should have a challenge, and more importantly that new players should not expect to be raped continuously for the duration of the map.

The way I think of it is analogous to playing a friendly soccer game in the park. You're there with a few friends and you've found a couple of other groups to play with too. It starts off with everyone playing on the same team as their friends but when it becomes obvious that one team is heaps stronger I'd think most people would switch up the teams.

Coming back to your Q, join Blu by all means but if after 5 minutes it's obvious you're steamrolling the other team you should consider switching teams. You'll get more of a challenge, and you'll help prevent the Red team feeling like they're just piñatas for the beating.

Edited to add: maybe a simple question to ask is "Do you think the other team is having fun?"

[flabcab]

am I a bad person and should I feel bad?

Yes and yes.

But seriously though I don't think i've ever not use auto-assign and I also don't have a problem with people playing with the there friends but when you get rolled like 10+ games in a row and the highest score on one team sits near the bottom of the next it can be frustrating as hell.

Also is there anyway to auto-kick afk because I have noticed a fair bit of AFKing on #13 as well lately.

[Articubone]

I know this isn't everyone's situation, but I always try to play on the same team as Train. Not because I don't want to play against him (killing him is pretty fun), but I feel like I can't contribute much to my team over voice when he's on the opposite side because we're playing in the same room. Unfair advantage, anyone?

So my vote is against auto-assigns. We'll definitely put more effort into promoting balance when picking a team, though.

[TrainOnPlatformSix]

Doesn't bother me either way, I (generally) enjoy playing both against stacked teams or with them.

Maybe forced auto + server alltalk could help appease both the play-with-friends and team-balance sides of the argument?

[GoToadGo]

This thread again? Seems like it pops up every few months or so with someone complaining about stacking. From what I've seen lately stacking doesn't guarantee you a win as I've been on the 'stacked' team and still had my **** handed to me. At most introduce an autoscramble after a set number of wins. Auto assign is an awful idea though and will only kill the server off.

[Mythor]

#13 already has an autoscramble after X wins. Because it's Payload heavy or round restricted it doesn't kick in that often.

I'd rather see forced auto assign than any kind of vote option, but then 99% of the time I auto so it wouldn't make any difference to me. People're always trying to call scramble votes after they get beaten and before they even have their own turn on offense. Sometimes they're right and a scramble is needed, sometimes they just need to suck it up and have their turn.

I still think if more of the regulars committed to auto-assign every round a lot of the problem would go away. Some followers would still join where they see certain people playing but the followers would be divided up a bit at least.

[goosmurf]

#13 already has an autoscramble after X wins. Because it's Payload heavy or round restricted it doesn't kick in that often.

The problem with the mp_scrambleteams_auto_windifference is that it requires at least 2 entire rounds to be played. When there's a steamroll happening you're asking the Red team to suck it up and get rolled once on D, then get stuck in spawn on A -- by that time half the team has left the server.

In contrast the autoscramble mod Bickety's looking at can kick in earlier (i.e. after just 1 round), and take into account frag/score [ratio] differences. It could also allow !votescramble which I think is useful in the payload cases.

People're always trying to call scramble votes after they get beaten and before they even have their own turn on offense. Sometimes they're right and a scramble is needed, sometimes they just need to suck it up and have their turn.

You're right which is why the !votescramble is typically set to a sufficient threshold that just a small group of whiners shouldn't regularly trigger it. Empirically 5 votes on a 24p server works pretty well - not everyone will vote, and it's not so low as to make it too easy to trigger.

There's also an interesting psychological aside to your comment "before they even have their own turn on offense". I observe that teams that could have been ok on offense (based on my knowledge of the players' abilities) often play really badly after they've been steamrolled. It's like they become demoralised or something.

I still think if more of the regulars committed to auto-assign every round a lot of the problem would go away. Some followers would still join where they see certain people playing but the followers would be divided up a bit at least.

I would love to see this but as GoToadGo said above this thread comes up every few months. Rather than dismissing it as a repost we should take it as evidence that there is a problem which needs an alternate solution to those already tried.

[TrainOnPlatformSix]

Oh, also, I should point out that auto-assign probably won't affect any regulars who will still want to pick a specific team, since most of us know that "Random" is actually:

Code: Select all

if Blu# <= Red#
   Assign Blu
else
   Assign Red

[goosmurf]

Oh, also, I should point out that auto-assign probably won't affect any regulars who will still want to pick a specific team, since most of us know that "Random" is actually:

Code: Select all

if Blu# <= Red#
   Assign Blu
else
   Assign Red

In forced auto-assign you wouldn't get to control the timing of assignment as you do in the manual case, so gaming the auto-assign can only work by reconnecting to the server.

Bickety's looking at auto-scramble anyway.

[Jez]

I'm wondering if OP's recent noticing of the stacking being worse than usual is related to the release of MVM, so A) there's an influx of new players who've just started TF2, and B) a lot of the regs are off playing TF2. I've certainly noticed that there are a lot more skilled regular players like seiboon frequenting the server who stop the stacking from being the rape it was for much of #13's existence.

Damn server still needs some good old-fashioned 5CP maps though, coldfront or something. My poor scout gets so few opportunities to scout cap.

[Otto-matic]

is it stacking if I have no friends and like attacking first? am I a bad person and should I feel bad?

There might actually be something in this. The 'regulars' who are arguably above average players know about the hard time limit and that the second attacking team will auto-lose half way through unless they are really quick. Thus they all join blu to avoid this.

If there was ever one thing I really disliked it's to be pushing the cart along doing really well when suddenly "YOU FAILED!" Kills any positive round to round momentum the non-stacked team might have had.

[flabcab]

#13 already has an autoscramble after X wins. Because it's Payload heavy or round restricted it doesn't kick in that often.

Yeah autoscramble occured last night while I was playing both times it happened just before a map change.

I'm wondering if OP's recent noticing of the stacking being worse than usual is related to the release of MVM, so A) there's an influx of new players who've just started TF2, and B) a lot of the regs are off playing TF2. I've certainly noticed that there are a lot more skilled regular players like seiboon frequenting the server who stop the stacking from being the rape it was for much of #13's existence.

Damn server still needs some good old-fashioned 5CP maps though, coldfront or something. My poor scout gets so few opportunities to scout cap.

MvM could have an affect on it I guess but i'm pretty sure I started noticing it before MvM was released. Also I have to agree I would like to see a 5CP map too.

[Jez]

MvM could have an affect on it I guess but i'm pretty sure I started noticing it before MvM was released. Also I have to agree I would like to see a 5CP map too.

Finally someone agrees with me on that.

[manifold_curiosity]

Tonight seemed to be reasonable in this regard.

I'm all for auto-assign though, and I would guess most would be fine with it. Despite it happening quite regularly I don't think the intent is ever to stack, more-so to not play against the stack. It can be a fun challenge to try and get a bad team to win, but not when the next map ticks around and the same happens again and again. And it only takes one stacked map to kick it off for the whole night.

The current scramble approach doesn't work either, as there's rarely more than 2 rounds on any map, and then there's a map change and the same occurs again.

I'd also be a fan of being able to vote for scrambles.