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Team Stacking - Match Balance

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Richard LeMoon:
I made a few suggestions in this thread that would greatly help this issue in a more passive manner. Though basing it on level instead of 'real' skill is a stopgap, showing players the levels of crews before they joined any match would discourage many lower level players from joining a stacked game.

If there was any match locking, I would not go with hard levels of 1-4, 4-7 whatever, but make overlapping sets. 1-3, 2-5, 4-7, 5-9 and so on. Otherwise, you can suddenly be thrust into the next bracket without being ready. At level 4, you could join either 2-5 or 4-7.

The easy team switching ship option has been suggested in another thread, and is a good idea.

On to the rant...

NoWuffo, I got the same rant from a Cox captain in a string of about 10-15 matches where every match was 5-0/1. Could have been you, but I didn't really pay attention. The excuses in your rant really illustrate the problem.  I would hear advice to the new player that cycled in maybe once every 3-5 matches, counter to your claims both here and in the matches. Most of the time it was simply telling your crews to bring the best possible loadouts for the best possible builds. Most of the players would only stay for one or two games after getting insta-killed over and over. They learned nothing, other than what I told them in the match.

Another excuse was that Cox had just gotten out of a challenge match with another clan, so the 'stacking' I saw when I first came on was incidental. That is totally fine. However, I have to mention here that as Cox members started to leave for the night, any time a higher level player would join the match, someone on your side would insist they join the 'winning' team, leaving the other side with max level players lower than the lowest level players on your team. Any request to level the teams out or to switch one ship to the other side was ignored or derided, with the now-familiar mantra of "We will tell the other team what to bring, and give them advice, but we will not blah blah blah (we just want to have the best everything)."

Then there was the excuse of the Cox team 'practicing'. Practicing? Really? Against 'pugs'? How is any strategy you learn by stomping ships that are not even remotely a challenge transferable to higher level matches? That is like a pro boxer beating the crap out of neighborhood kids and saying it is practice for tonight's match. If you want to 'practice' like that, go to the practice map. In matches, show more good sportsmanship.

Then one of your captains had the gall to try to say it was my fault for not supporting the other ship in a few of the matches. These were new captains that charged straight into your traps, while your ships barely moved to shred them. They had no strategy at all. You offered them no strategy advice of how they could beat you, despite your constant claims. While they were charging in, I was instructing my crew where the guns and components were, when to shoot which guns at what range, and when to or not to fix things with which tools. The other ships had no such benefit. I was also trying to advise the other captain to hold back and stay grouped.

The icing on the cake is when I heard this gem: "I am streaming. I am not going to handicap myself against anyone." I really have to wonder how many people loved watching Cox stomp new crews over and over. From what I gathered, all Cox team members were also communicating outside of the game, giving basically everyone the advantage of 'Captain chat'.

Sir, not only was that intentional team stacking on the part of Cox, it was a disgrace and show of pure, poor sportsmanship. You are wrong on every point you made, and this is exactly why there needs to be better tools to use against the piles of excuses proposed by others like you. At least one first time player told me he was not going to play anymore because not having a chance at all was not fun. I encouraged him to try more novice matches, but first impressions are hard to break. That is lost revenue for Muse, both in the sale of items, and word of mouth game sales.

As for your claim of 1 occasional complaint per 2 praises or whatever from players that want you to throw everything you have at them, this is just ridiculous. It is leaving out the majority of people that just simply get fed up and leave without saying anything. What you have there, son, is a sever case of confirmation bias. If two players have told you they like how you act, and stay around, but 100 leave without saying anything, you have failed. However, you latch onto the two positives with an iron grip and hold them up for all to see with a "Look mom, I done good!" If everyone voiced their opinion, you would get a far different picture.

I'll leave off with this. If this was baseball (or whatever sport your country prefers) game, what I saw was like pitting a pro team against a stream of Little League kids after the main 'pro' game. The pro team brought only its 'A game', trying to claim that the kids were never going to learn if they went easy on them. Inning 1 ends by slaughter rule, 3 outs on the first three kids, and 50 home runs for the pro team. Over and over for 10 games straight.

Stop pretending to do this garbage for other players' good. This is pure pride buried in excuses. Your rant is null.

/counterrant

NoWuffo:
Hi LeMoon, how are you?

First off, I don't appreciate you calling myself and my clan out like this in a open, public forum. This is a very pointed attack and is unwarranted. I actually remember you and your complaints, that's who I was basing most of this post about, but I never did nor would I ever bring up your name. Attacking another person or group like you did is kinda low class.

As to your counter-points, I am sorry those matches went so poorly for yourself. I'm not going to argue back and forth with ya on the forums. If you want you can pm me directly and we can hash out our differences privately, I think that'd be more appropriate for the discussion at hand. Thanks.


--- Quote from: Capt. Knight Relyks on October 20, 2013, 10:18:10 am ---That's an idea, though those numbers seem a little low for me.

Novice: <100 games played.
Rookie: 100-249
Intermediate: 250-499
Expert: 500+

Is where I'd put it at, but a solid idea since like you guys said going by level wouldn't work.

--- End quote ---

If there was some sort of segregation, I think matches played would be a good litmus test. You can't play just sheer numbers of matches without picking up a thing or two. I also like the idea of having overlapping levels, to avoid the immediate transitions.

Maybe a good way to do this would be when you set up an arena , you can set a level cap or skill cap of some kind. You could then specifically invite players you still want to play with into it (friends, newbies you're training up, lower level fellow-clan members, ect). That might have some merit there.

Thomas:
I would never suggest to absolutely force even teams. Players should still be able to set up matches where they can put players where ever. All I'd like is an option that lets players get into more fair matches. Think of it like an official and unofficial match choice. Where the official uses one of the suggested methods to sort of force and highly encourage even matches, and the unofficial uses the old system of people just piling in. But you would have to have a system to encourage players to use the 'official' matches more. Such as achievements, stats, and bounty systems only working there, where the unofficial is more of a fun practice with no repercussions.


I do like Richard's idea of staggering the limits (although I'm still pushing for my overtly complicated system), as this can help prevent the population from being squeezed into little chunks. We do have lots of players, but we don't have massive amounts of them. And the more we 'cut up' the population with limits (such as only rank 1-4, 3-5, 4-7, 6-10, etc), the harder it can become to fill the matches. The staggering can reduce this, but not remove it.

For example if we have 100 people online and we use strict limits (1-3,4-6,7-10) we could end up with a group of (40, 50, 10) respectively. If we stagger it (1-4, 3-5, 4-7, 6-10) we might end with (50, 40, 50, 20), since most people will qualify for at least two different divisions. This is highly exaggerated of course. But it shows the problem we might run into, with some groups getting quite low in numbers at certain times, making it difficult to find a match they qualify for.

StrawberryDelite:
How about, instead of ranking players, we simply get the root of the problem: Stacked teams

If a certain match ends up having the exact same crews on one side winning multiple times in a row with the other side constantly having different captains and crews and still constantly losing, people will have the option of marking the match as stacked. After X amount of people mark the match as stacked, it'll appear as so in the lobby.

If any two matches get marked stacked, then the matches will automatically be merged so as to have two stacked teams fighting against each other. Marked matches should also have higher priority for anyone with 2+ ships in the "Form Crew" option.

If there are an uneven amount of stacks and someone decides that they want to rise up to the challenge, then joining the match will show them a list of other members who want to try fighting them as well. From there, they'll have access to another chat in which they can organize each other into going to "Form Crew" and matching up against the team.

This'll be to prevent those level 1 engineers going in as a captain on a ship that obviously wouldn't work, but, at the same time, allow players who actually know what they're doing to group up and rise to the challenge. Honestly, in my experience, the real challenge to fighting a stacked team is just finding a team that doesn't include a level one engineer as captain.

If the teams are obviously still stacked (Either the first game goes 5/0 or a team wins three times in a row), both teams will be given the option of requeuing for a different match.

This way, we have a simple system that will ensure that people who want to play together will still get to stick together without having to fight against unorganized teams without forcing anyone into tiers.

The Churrosaur:
"Teams are being scrambled"

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