Idea for a votable team shuffling mutator

[BlueCloud]

I was thinking of adding a team shuffling mutator to the PUB clan's US Warfare server, but the existing ones don't seem to fit the bill.

Note: I am talking primarily from the perspective of Warfare in this post, but most of it can be applied to other gametypes.

As we know, bad team balance can really ruin a game, not only for the losing team, but for the winning team as well. Many good players don't want to switch and the others may not get a chance to switch because the teams are even in number and the 'new players' on the other team don't know how to swap with them.

The community's answer has been mutators like TitanTeamFix and GOWJustice. TitanTeamFix balances only by numbers and randomizes teams completely randomly at the end of a match. Also, people can get annoyed by suddenly getting switched ingame(this is usually turned on in TTF).

GOWJustice looks at the scores(actually points/min) of the players in the previous match and shuffles teams based on them. This is a big improvement over TTF, but it shuffles teams after every match(correct me if I am wrong). There are problems with this approach.

I quote xeanderthal from this long thread on UMG forums in which most people didn't like TTF being turned on. http://www.umgleague.com/forum/viewt...ac79296af0ff52

Team Randomizer: I like playing 3+ maps in a row with the same people (or against the same people ). The team cooperation is better after a few maps and overall play is more fun. You get a feel for who is flag running/sniping/tanking/etc. TTF randomization every match inhibits better game play.

Needless to say, TTF was removed from the UMG servers.


I tend to agree. Sometimes there's a good match with well balanced teams and then in the next match teams are shuffled and the teams lose their flow, even with the shuffling being done with skill level in mind. The solution is to keep the same teams when they're balanced but shuffle when they're not.

My idea is a votable team shuffling mutator that allows people to vote for team shuffling after a round is complete. About 30-40%(this is tweakable) of people voting for it should trigger team shuffling(based on skill like GOWJustice). I know there's already support for voting Epic's mutators in Patch 2.0 but I don't know if custom muts have the same option, as well as will the mutator shuffle teams on being loaded(as needs to be done) or just at the end of a match.

Or maybe a new mutator can be made that always runs but shows an option at end game for team shuffling.

If this is not possible, maybe the mutator can look at the time taken(round finishing in 3 mins!), core scores (100-0 twice in a row with same team winning), and/or players scores at the end of the game to decide whether to shuffle teams or not.

Thoughts?

[Infra`]

Bad teams suck, but normally it doesn't really get to me.

For the thread, I think a team shuffling that added each sides elo ranking up and sorted teams based off that would be another good option. Yeah elo isn't the most accurate thing out there, and new aliases would be a small road bump, but overall it would be better than nothing.

Shuffling based on points just does't seem like a good idea. Some really good players defend in tanks or whatnot for half the map, can't expect them to have a load of points. Also plently of newbies at the floodgate node just healing it 24/7, but idk pretty much any system will have its flaws.

[BlueCloud]

ELO should be definitely better than points/min, but I think it's much harder to do technically, even if it's possible at all.

Also plently of newbies at the floodgate node just healing it 24/7

Hey! You didn't just call Irukandjl and Tricky newbies did you?! : )

[BlueCloud]

Don't know how the current team balancing system works but how about something more sophisticated to quicky balance, between games, like one that uses score variance to produce a standard deviation based balance for the next game -quickly done using computing power, it could even use pph for those joining late

GOWJustice already does exactly this.

http://www.ut3gow.com/GOWJustice

The issues:
1) Epic run servers don't run any community content.
2) This mutator shuffles teams after every match which is not desirable.
3) ELO is better than pph. But really this is not a deal breaker.
4) Any non epic made mutator puts the server into the custom stats list. And people who like their pure stats don't like this. Also I heard that custom stats don't update properly(if at all) after Patch 2.0. Personally I don't care a **** about stats if it makes the gameplay better. Epic used to whitelist mutators in UT2k4 which don't affect gameplay(like anti cheat etc.). They don't do that for UT3.

[Liol54]

Yeah, on second thoughts, scores aren't always a good measure to judge with,( eg. joining and destroying a core would produce a crazy high, false pph). It'd be better just shuffling based on ELO- though whether this is easily accessible at game server level, I don't know.

[Mr Evil]

ELO should be definitely better than points/min, but I think it's much harder to do technically, even if it's possible at all...

Elo (note that it's a proper name, not an acronym) rating is available to mutators, so it would be trivial to do instead of by points.

[The Demon Slick]

I like justice, because it only kicks in between maps, so it never kills anyone off during the game. Also, if you are stuck in a lopsided match, you know it won't go on map after map. It's not perfect, people joining/leaving, or not scoring highly despite being a good player... it can't account for that. Something is desperately needed though. As previously stated, some people won't play just because it's a mod, no matter how well it works. People can't be counted on to do the right thing (see: US economy). Sometimes you can't... trying over and over to switch teams, while nobody see's/understands the team swap request, as they type over and over about teams. Or, the one good player swaps with you, and nobody else moves, so you get stuck and massacred, over and over. Or you get a clean switch, there's a big turnover in players, and teams are whacked again. The dl for justice is 13k including the read me. Epic could have easily done this, but they didn't. I see no problem with it mixing after each map. When we get a full server at gow custom on Sunday nights, Justice works completely awesome. Everyone knows it's gg games. People hardly notice it's even there. So, whatever you mod up, you still will have people complaining about the one time it messes up teams, and not mentioning the 100 times it worked well. Sad, I know.

[coolcat22]

lol forum are fun this thing about team ballends hase bin type t many times
sad thing there all
got the great idea if some make a mod like that
and that mod gett s out
pll dont notis it
it not like epic is gone do some thing

[«MechikTåj»]

I agree with Slick. It has its flaws, but GOW Justice seems like the best team balancer out there. A votable team shuffler seems like an interesting idea though.

The best team balancer is the players themselves. But good luck getting some of them to even LOOK at the score board. Then there are those who talk **** when you "cry about the teams".

[The Demon Slick]

You can make justice votable, we had it that way on our votable multi-gametype server, but when it got switched to fulltime warfare Marky didn't put it on, Still bugging him about it.

[pacerx]

Elo (note that it's a proper name, not an acronym) rating is available to mutators, so it would be trivial to do instead of by points.

Really!? What's the object & property? I'm willing to make a version of Justice that uses Elo rank rather than score.


I'll also look into providing an option to do team balancing based on votes. That would be cool too.

[Mr Evil]

Really!? What's the object & property?..

PlayerReplicationInfo.PlayerRanking

It's called rank, but it's actually Elo rating.

[ctr2yellowbird]

The problem with votable mutators is that people must actually vote for them. Often times, more than half the server won't even vote on a map which makes one wonder if they even care to look at the vote screen after each match. Furthermore, you have to raise awareness for the mod for the people that would vote it but just don't knowit's there. Finally, the good players that like being on the winning team won't vote for it.

Those are the in-game challenges that you face.

[BlueCloud]

You're right ctr, but there are some other factors here. The voting should be quite visible, maybe alongside the map voting screen. Most good players on the winning team also don't like winning the game in two minutes because it's no challenge.


And pacerx comes to our rescue as usual. Now the only hurdle is that running that mutator will push the server into custom stats which some people don't like.

[The Demon Slick]

Stat whores. Pffffffftttttt!!!!