Level of gameplay and team balancing
Gameplay level
Currently the plugin “nonoobs time” (reserve slots for regular players) is inactive due to some technical issues (PS2 stats are not computed anymore) and the fact that there is maybe not enough online time for all regular players to be considered as regular visitors. Plugin is custom written so it’s possible to convert it to use PS3 data instead of PS2. Sometime in the near future (during this week?) it will be active again, hopefully.
What I’ve observed is that the gameplay really suffers because there are lots of more noobs than regular players. Now, because there are lots of noobs many good players get insane scores by killing lots of noobs. Because noobs cannot coordinate their attacks the few regular players cannot do much to get their team winning.
Pay attention to level of gameplay now and after the nonoobs plugin is enabled again.
Balancing teams
Team balancing is always a bit tricky question. Most players seem to think this as trivial but then again most players are stupid. Here are some thoughts about how team balancing can be done (either in wrong fashion or correctly).
1. Admin swaps player from other team to another
This might be the most popular method of manual balancing. This method further divides to atleast two categories.
1.1 Swap “random” player from winning team to another
Swapping “random” player is not a good solution. Consider situation where team A is winning clearly and admin then “balances” teams by swapping someone to another team. Then team B starts winning and in the end scores are even - everybody happy? No. Even though the scores are even doesn’t mean that the teams are balanced. Swapping one good player (ie. anyone in PS3 top-50) can and usually does change the balance upside down. Usually players seem happy with this option even though it is clear by the next round that team B is going to start their winning streak evening the scores till the map ends.
Swapping one (good) player to another team has kind of double-effect. First it takes one good player away from the team A and gives that extra skills to team B. Not surprisingly the player who was swapped has lots of money, good weapons and kevlars and can continue his killing streak in the team B. Then team B starts winning because team A has actually lost the skill of the swapped player and team B benefits alot of this extra skill. This is the wrong way to balance teams!
1.2 Swap worst player in the winning team
This is quite much the best balancing option. Swapping some complete noob (who are omnipresent) does not change drastically team A’s tactics but gives a bit of extra firepower to team B. In 95% of cases it is just this insignificant noob who does not realize his position in the team which can make all the difference in balancing. However swapping noob in a balanced situation is not likely to have any change in the gameplay. That is, the noob does not have enough skills to play as a member of the team and as such does not affect the whole gameplay drastically. By complete noobs I mean players who get scores like 1 - 7 after 8 rounds.
2. “Fair” player swaps himself to another team
Sometimes this works but usually not in the intended way. Any player in the top-25 makes so much difference that if such player swaps himself to another team it completely changes balance. The player himself might see that he is balancing the teamplay by going to another team and make the other team win. That is not balancing! That is going to teamwhore in the other team with all the good weapons, kevlars and lots of money. The other team doesn’t expect anyone to be against them with AWP and are used to kill people with couple shots (enemies don’t have kevlars because they don’t have money). The “fair” player who swapped himself to another team now gets lots of easy kills and can quite easily make his team winning again because the other team lost his skills and the other team gained his skills. Anyone in top-25 shouldn’t change his team during one map (unless autobalanced).
3. Autobalancing
Mani admin plugin does autobalancing quite nicely even though it is completely random. There are some balancing plugins which look at the player skills, kills or other information to do balancing. However it is very common that these plugins overbalance the teams. It really kills the concept of teamplay if every round one or couple players change sides to make teams as even as possible. It’s not teamplay anymore.
4. Conclusion
Teams are balanced when it is X vs. X (X is some number). Usually atleast. Sometimes it just happens that the other team plays better than the other. That is not reason to swap some player to another team to make game “balanced” - by “balanced” I mean that the other team starts winning so that the scores are even at the end of map. Just like in any other sport sometimes the other team is just better. Just look any national sports league and you can observe that sometimes some good teams just play badly. That is their fault! They should be improving their play rather than getting extra players! Next month the same teams meet again and the scores can be upside down.
Don’t cry for balance - just play better.
4 Comments
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You’re right, but there is another problem. Regulars and skilled players dont give a fuck about balancing teams (maybe rde and fakfejs and few others are exceptions) but still majority act totaly noobish.
Comment :: March 22, 2007 @ 1:47 am
Heh, I read your post just after writing all that stuff about balancing. Post again if you have opinions about balancing
I remember that I have couple times told Fakfeijs about not to “overbalance” teams. Currently he is ranked 20th on PS3. Just try to watch sometime when some good player change his side to “balance” teams and the team balance actually swaps around in couple rounds. The team which was winning starts to lose a lot. Do not look at the score which of course is balanced at the end of the map - look at the balance during rounds.
In my opinion if there was a threshold of 12000 who can join the server then there would be less whining about balance. Good players realize what needs to be done to make their team winning rather than whining for extra players to their teams. Even though it is popular nowdays to whine “balance” whenever your own team is losing I’d say it would not be so big problem if all the players were above some skill threshold.
Of course, it is still possible to get uneven teams even with that kind of skill threshold by putting top-12 players in team A and worst players above threshold to another team but that kind of random chance is not very likely.
Comment :: March 22, 2007 @ 2:20 am
I agree with you. Its not a shame to lose when team do their job, play with tactics. But when 3\4 of teammates are camping spawn and hiding, dont cover, (you play against top players or even medicores) its really impossible to win ans SO frustrating. And this situations happens more and more frequently lately. It’s critical to have in team few people who will rush with or do other tactics, but will help not hide.
BTW: It’s not a “whining” post, I just want to make the appeal to “regulars”. Choice wisely your sides in the begging of each round - join weaker side! AND COVER MY ASS WHEN I COVER YOURS, stop rankwhoring.
Comment :: March 22, 2007 @ 3:49 am
How about [b]not[/b] thinking to much when joining a team (begining of round) and see what happens from there. The simple fact that most of the players here prefer to play on the easy side on some aparently bissed maps that require gamplay to be won is more iritating than any team balancing efforts. In my opinion best gamplay is achieved when teams aren’t modified and kept throught out the map, that is considering both have some idea about things to do and not to do etc, and with autojoining I believe this is possible.
Don’t know what to think about extend -> team-swap sollution. I think it’s related to the balancing effort so I’ll post it here. It’s not the fact that if you won the round before the swap you’ll spawn with the money the loosing team usualy gets and vice-versa, but it’s really a pain in the ass when a team starts playing, wins the map on the ‘harder’ side and than after team swap said team gets to play on the ‘easy’ side, loosing that feel of acomplishment.
i.e. wining tero side on dust needs more skilled players than the ct in a 12-12 match, after the teams are swaped the fresh tero start to camp, and there’s no hope for them to even post a challange even tough they saw what needs to be done to win in the rounds before the extend.
Comment :: March 22, 2007 @ 8:49 pm