Info > Feedback and Suggestions
Team Stacking - Match Balance
Thomas:
As fantastic as it would be for players to police themselves and set up only fair matches, it doesn't happen. There are a number of reasons for this. Firstly we have to point out that it's not always the fault of the 'stacked team'. In many situations, they enter that lobby as a group looking for a challenge from similarly skilled players. But with the large variety of skill ranges, it will often start to fill with people who aren't nearly as experienced and coordinated. Once that happens, another 'stacked' team looking for a match will overlook that particular lobby because there's not enough room for all of them. Chances are they'd be forced to start their own lobby, also hoping for a skilled team to appear and face them, and the problem just multiplies.
Once the teams in the lobby realize that there's a skill gap between them, they can certainly try and correct the situation. This can be done by having one of the ships from the stacked team swap with one of the ships on the other team. We do have the ability to swap ships, you just have to enter the spectate and change places. A swap ship option would only help the problem of people showing up in the middle of the swap and taking their slots. The thing it wouldn't be able to help is people refusing to change places, which can happen and prevent the swap in the first place.
Then there's the likelyhood of the stacked team not wanting to swap. This most likely is not from their desire to win, but their desire to play together. That's why they formed up on the same team in the first place. With all of these blocks preventing an even match, players decide to proceed anyways, which can cause some people to lash out at the end of the match.
After re-raising the issue of stacked teams and the desire for even matches, I've spent more time observing matches in an effort to collect information. Seeing just how many matches are 'stacked', how many that looked stacked but really aren't, the win/loss rate of those matches, and the leave rate of the losing team. Needless to say, I spent a lot of time looking at a lot of matches. In all that time, there was only a single match that tried to balance itself.
So can we police ourselves in an effort to bring out fair matches? Yes. Are we likely to do so? No.
We will need some kind of system in the game to force/encourage balanced matches if they're going to occur with higher regularity. One that still lets us play with our friends of course. It's been done in other games, it shouldn't be impossible to do in this one.
NoWuffo:
The whole issue of policing ourselves and "stacked teams" in general in my mind is not the fault of the accused stacked team in most scenarios. Most lobbies, even completely fair lobbies where there are balanced teams of equal skill, will eventually go to a stacked scenario. I'm going to use player levels here to pain the picture, even though it doesn't fully describe skill, whatever.
Start with a completely fair lobby, led by a few lvl 10+ crew, with lvl 4-7 core crew and maybe a few good 1-2 players as well. As individuals leave a lobby (to go play another match, play another game, sleep, ect), you inevitably get the level 1-2 new players who will join in, often times very much green, and a lot of times not very cooperative with their shipmates. They tend to weaken one side, and then that team will potentially lose the next match(s). This will discourage the lvl 4-7 base of that team, and they might switch sides or go off to find another lobby where they might have a better chance at winning, potentially finding themselves on the other side of a stacked match. This begets more lvl 1-2 newbies, and before you know it you've got a completely unfair match of stacked players. It's an unfortunate but very redundant scenario I see all the time. If the one side doesn't want to split up because they're all friends or they're trying out a new build combo, all of a sudden they become vilified for stacking teams and making things unfair.
I would totally be behind something where we could fix the match imbalance, but not if it is going to hurt clans or groups of higher level friends. A few Muse guys that I've talked to about this have even agreed that they like the fact that people are grouping up to make more competitive lobbies and matches, they absolutely don't want to limit the possibility of this happening. Anything where it's forcing a clan to separate or swap ships or whatever is basically limiting what groups can do together, and potentially lessening their enjoyment of the game.
Whatever scenario we want to come up with, it shouldn't LIMIT anyone. In order to please some, I fear that you're inevitably going to hurt others. Sure, other games have come up with a good solution, but no other games have THIS much teamwork and cooperation involved, we can't just split teams right down the numbers by level and pretend that this game is going to be anywhere near as enjoyable as it is.
Thomas:
I don't believe anyone has suggested not allowing friends to fly together, or breaking up clans to force even teams. So I'm not sure why people keep bringing it up. My suggestion is based on the MOBA type games that do matchmaking queues, and... wait for it..... also allow you to group up with friends before entering said matchmaking queue.
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So for example, under this system you would group up with 7 of your friends, filling up two ships. For funsies, lets say one of your friends has a sudden urge to rush off on a long bio break due to questionably cheap mexican food, leaving you with 6 friends.
Step 1:
Form Crew - Invite all your friends to that crew, and enter queue when ready.
Step 2:
Fill up remaining slots. Since your premade crew isn't 100% full, the matchmaking system tosses a compatible person in there. (ie: it won't give you a second captain)
Step 3:
Depending on how the system is created, it will find/create an opposing team of similar skill level (the entire reason I suggested the rank/score system. Since we currently have nothing that quantifies skill)
Step 4:
It places both teams in the pre-match lobby. It is here that you can set up your ships, vote on the map, and finalize your loadouts before the match starts.
Step 5:
Play the match
Step 6:
Post-game lobby. It is at this point you can re-enter the queue or exit and return the main screen.
Step 7:
If you entered the lobby, do whatever. If you re-enter the queue, proceed to Step 2.
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There would have to be more included to make it function well, but it fills just about every desire/need.
zlater75@hotmail.com:
It's still more limiting than compared to what is.
step 1: There is a party function to form crew.
step 2: Would a program or code define who is a "compatible" person? restrict classes? What if captain of a galleon wants to be engineer? And you want to ahve the freedom to choose yourself what class to be or have?
step 3: to get a random similar "skilled" opposing team? You mean it would search fro similar crews and then put them against eachother? Again the option to choose who to invite or to let anyone join or invite a certain clan or party waiting.. Where would that be?
step 4 - 6: exist. what is different to what already is?
what if people want the choice itself more than a program simulating balance? I mean the community of this game is way more helpful and supportive than many other games. If games are unbalanced have people asked for the other team to balance it? And what about fluctuating skills? some matches can be very different due to map, timezone, host, beer, etc..
Many clans have varied skills. level 1 to max. personally i don't see any reason for any form of skillmeter to the game. Ship swap mentioned would be a direct way to balance when asked without any jump risk just the whole ship swap with other ship. Who knows if it'd work? You can't change human nature with programs. it will remain. people usually find a way sooner or later. But with support it can change even if it's the hard way.
Commodore Phoenix:
Personally I don't see a problem with the game as far as stacking is concerned. If anybody joins and they see a high level crew they usually leave which leads to an empty lobby so you have people like me who are stuck in an empty lobby because we are high level and you want to encourage this saying if you are to good you cant play anybody else well let me tell you I just spent 30 mins playing a game with a galleon a crew of noobs and an enemy galleon with the same setup lets say a lot of hwacha weren't being used with heavy clip. So instead of encouraging players to fight against a team of good players you say make them all join each other so they can teach them how to play. YAY! FUN! I totally payed to teach other people how to play this game over and over and over and over again because that's the aim of this game, right? teach every one how to play? right? Not really its about creating a team and developing as a team to be the best you can be and how can your team develop if you have to split up all the time to make it fair... The oh so famous quote "life isn't fair" comes into mind here, this game has a great community and I say this all the time but you can't push the CA role on everyone because its what you guys want to do, players like me want to play not teach I'm not a volunteer that's what the CA's are for.
If you want to police the games why don't you just split the community up that'll work. Oh wait it doesn't. This is a game not an elitist group we are all equal. If there is a level 1 and they think they can take on a level 10 let them try I say its an experience they can learn from and will go on to do better from it. Let them teach themselves. Stop trying to make this game a ladder based system just leave it as it is, is it really that bad? are there people leaving by the hundreds as they keep getting pounded on by high players not really, no. I play everyday and I rarely see more than 5 10+ players on during a weekday and any lower than that are usually just messing about in an ordinary game. There is no organised pub stomping you are seeing problems where problems do not exist.
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