Socks

Is this a known issue? Dead body outlines without bodies? After seeing lots of red chalk lines with the first defibrillator I purchased a second one. I was sorely disappointed when nobody was there (pun intended).

I have thought about this as well. Like what you said, large differences in scores happen because one team makes it to the safe room more often than the other team. It does not matter if the losing team survives for 99% of the map. With the winning team racking up 50 (or was it 25?) points per survivor that makes it to the safe room, we already have 1,000 points gap. Maybe the games were fair and balanced all along. Perhaps we just felt the games were unbalanced because the point system never reflected the true 'skill' level of the 'losing' team.

Disabling team switches is the only solution that will stop team stacking. Other solutions, while they do have their own merit, will still be open to abuse and will not fully prevent stacking from happening. Of course, disabling team switches has its downsides. With team switches disabled, when a game becomes unbalanced (either naturally or by poor scramble) players have no means to correct the problems themselves. To be clear I am not in favor of disabling team switches. I believe we should seriously consider other options before we disable team switches completely. However, I am hesitant to give my full support to other suggestions because all of them require the players to balance the games themselves. Whether it is swaps or drafts, it requires a good player to join the weaker team voluntarily. But how often do you see this happening right now? Currently we have all the tools necessary to balance the game ourselves but matches are rarely fair. Tacking on more ‘features’ will not stop stacking or balance the game. Whatever solution we decide to implement if we don’t change our attitude, especially the attitude of the members and regulars, nothing will change. Of course, we can always disable team switches. It will not make games balanced, but it will stop stacking. Permanently.

In my opinion deathracing is bad sportsmanship which is against the GC Rules. Perhaps you should ask for a way to skip finale and/or change maps.

How about disabling the team switches except for players like SK? That way SK can continue his noble crusade against Voldemort while dirty peasants like myself can run around like a headless chicken trying the extend my insignificant life.

I have given this issue more thought and I have concluded disabling the team switches is the only viable solution. I agree that it is very difficult to correctly assess the 'fairness' of a match and thus hard to discern if a particular team switch can be considered 'stacking'. Unlike rushing and hacking, stacking cannot be proved with a single snapshot of an event (such as what I suggested). Even a five minute demo will not be enough to prove, without a doubt, stacking did occur. This means if we still want to punish someone for stacking we will have to rely on the credibility of an accuser, since most of the 'evidence' will be primarily hearsay. This causes even more problem since by definition stacking is committed by a person with a known skill level, i.e. a regular or a member. Consider what would happen if I accused Biggs of stacking. And what would happen if Biggs accused me of stacking. I imagine the debate will quickly turn into either a popularity contest or a screaming match. While I was thinking about this issue, it occurred to me from all the hours that I have spent on this server I have never witnessed anyone getting banned or kicked for team stacking. I think my anecdotal story describes this problem quite well. Team stacking is a problem that is not worth our time or effort. I say we simply disable the team switching and move on. edit: grammar and spelling.

I agree that the Members should be held to a higher standard. If the Members are unwilling to step up to the plate then their status should be downgrade to the Donors: Let them have spectator spots, !hats, !lights, and other cosmetic stuffs, but remove the !votekick and other moderating privileges. Perhaps once the members recognize and understand their responsibilities we will have a more welcoming community. Regarding team stacking, since topic has moved away from improving team scramble to team stacking rather than derailing the thread I started a new thread here: http://gamrs.co/forums/index.php?/topic/41619-suggestion-stacking-deterant/

I think one of the ways to prevent people from stacking is to give people means to police themselves. Right now, it is hard to tell if a player was trying to stack. I think we need a simple and easy way to quickly review the result of a players switching teams. I suggest that we output some information in chat when someone changes teams. Such as: [Player X] has changed teams from Survivors to Infected. Now there are [##] Infected vs. [##] Survivors. Infected team is [winning/losing] by [##] points. New Infected Avg. PPM is [##]. New Survivors Avg. PPM is [##]. Etc.

1. We need an effective (or efficient) scramble not more scrambles. I think it is safe to assume the average 10v10 L4D2 campaign lasts about an hour. That is why I am arguing for more team scrambles. It is just not possible to keep the teams even throughout the campaign with a single scramble at the beginning of the match. 2. People need to get over the fact that not every game can be fair and balanced. I agree that some people just need to grow up and stop being sore losers. But expecting people to lose every single chapter of a campaign and remain somehow content with their current situation is just asking too much. 3. Team scramble punishes the team working together and rewards the disorganized team. I really don’t understand why people insist on playing with the same people from start to finish. I have played CS, DoD, and TF and teams get scrambled all the time; Sometime manually and sometimes with a map change. I think L4D2 is the only game where having a balanced match is not a priority. Perhaps I have misunderstood some comments, but what is so wrong with playing first half of the campaign with the Team A and the second half with Team B? Does it really interrupt the flow the game so much that it disincentivizes people from working as a team? I really do think we should be happy with current scrambling system because nothing will address the big purple gorilla in the room. No, I am not talking about Jackie who don't know SQL. I am talking about the noobs. Rather than asking why teams win we should be asking why teams lose. Noobs are obviously heavy burden to a team that carries them. Not only do noobs hold back the team from advancing but they also donate points to the opposing team. Maybe these things can be measured and tracked, but what about the other costs that noobs inflict? What is the cost of a player that don’t know how to use point system or a player that doesn’t help the team from defending the choke points? In both cases nothing will reflect their cost to the team even if measured number of incaps, overall death ranking, purchasing behavior, etc. Lastly, I think Diretk has offered the best solution thus far. I am sure if the admins, mods, members, and regulars chipped in we would have a balanced match every time. Certainly I will be doing my best to keep the teams balanced from this point on.

Sounds like a plan, neighborino! edit: The griefer struck again!! I guess I hurt his feelings when I called him an amateur. Anyways, please let me know if you get the anti-griefing mods running on the server. I really want to start some big projects. Thanks.

I don't think the scrambling algorithm is the problem. We just need to scramble more often. Even if we had a perfect scrambling mechanism teams would gradually become unbalanced throughout the campaign as people come and go. One scramble at the beginning of the campaign, however perfect it may be, cannot guarantee teams would be fair and balance near the mid or end of a campaign. Also, I think increased team scrambles would deter people from stacking.

Wait, is stealing and PK'ing allowed in the GC server?

It is nothing serious. It is amateur griefing at best. Someone defaced my house (they could have just burned it down) and took some valuables (instead of taking everything).

Does the server run any anti griefing mods? It seems someone destroyed my house intentionally.

Don't you deny my glory Jackie.

Pfff. Lightweights.

I was there as well. Few of us asked Pomf to stop, but of couse he just ignored our request. Here is the video of Pomf =3 mic spamming.

I am able to connect to the server after the update as well. I like playing vallina Minecraft so the lack of plugin does not effect me at all.

In my humble opinion, torrent is the greatest invention since sliced bread. You can share just about any file you want however large. Just use your favorite torrent client (like uTorrent) to make a torrent file and post it here.

It would be great if you could get the server up to date. Thanks.

I am getting this error message every time I try to connect to the GC Minecraft server: Connection Lost Internal exception: java.net.SocketException: Connection rest I have looked for a solution online, but failed to find one. I was wondering if anyone here encountered a similar issue and perhaps know a solution. Oh, and I am currently running version 1.2.5.

Samurai Apocalypse STEAM_1:1:43734470 I saw this guy playing few days ago. Recoil looked suspicious to me so I grabbed a demo. By the way, I am sorry about quality. It was record on 8600GT and I couldn't use the spectator mode since I am not a member. I also included an epic 250+ ping tank play as a bonus. samurai.dem

Was it something like this?

To summarize, the definition of a rusher is: Running ahead, alone, away from your teammates. Abandoning your team with less than 75% of the level cleared.