We need a smarter shuffle

[yourbestfriend]

Hey guys,

 

I'm new here but I wanted to pitch in on this.

 

In about 30% of the games I play, teams are horribly unbalanced. I don't mind if I loose, except when I'm completely being raped in a game. And this happens, a lot.

 

Also, the scramble doesn't always seem to actually take place, even if the vote passed.

 

I think, indeed, a better scrambler can be made by using gamers statistics. I think points are indeed a good representation of skill (since they are earned by hitting survivors, killing zombies, healing teammates, getting teammates up). Also server rank, or server playtime is a good one. People who like our server and played a lot on it know how to play well (or at least better than an average Joe). And maybe win/loose statistics. If a team is losing, you might wanna put more winners on it (a winner meaning closer to 100% win ratio and loser closer to 0% win ratio). Since better players will probably win more games than bad players.

 

So a nice way to even teams out would be to take a weighed average of the following skill indicators:

+ Points per minute

+ Playtime on server

+ Average wins

 

I hope I don't have to explain how a weighed average works, I presume were with enough bèta's here.

 

Now, this is not a perfect solution, but it's way more intelligent than what's currently used.

 

Hope to hear from you admins.

 

Regards,

Your Best Friend

[Lookback]

At the moment the shuffle doesn't appear to be working fyi.

 

It will run and no one will be moved.

 

That likely means that teams are properly shuffled.

[Soap]

I hope I don't have to explain how a weighed average works, I presume were with enough bèta's here.

 

 

a weighed what?

Edited May 31, 2012 by fxsoap

[yourbestfriend]

@Lookback, you are joking right? ;-)

Edited June 1, 2012 by yourbestfriend

[Baloosh]

I say whenever Mr. Herbs is in, we just go 19 SI versus him.

 

He'll be a slight advantage, but it's probably as close as we can get.

[Lookback]

http://en.wikipedia....i/Weighted_mean

@Lookback, you are joking right? ;-)

 

Well, yes and no.

 

No: because if you were to do a sort by PPM (which happens at the start of every map) immediately followed by a sort by ppm, there should be no changes.

 

Yes: because PPM does little to indicate who is better or worse and we could used a new set of variables to sort on to see if we get better results. That being said, the amount of whining that goes on around votescrambling when scores are with 2-300 points tells me that a selection of people are hoping that a scramble in a tight game will tip the odds in their favor.

 

Frankly, I am really tired of all the votescrambling and think it should only happen when there is a real rout on, something on the order of 700-ish points - anything less and votescramble is disabled.

[yourbestfriend]

@Lookback. You certainly have a point there, my friend. In the range of point differences under 300 per round, things seem reasonably fair and scrambling should be avoided. Sure, there are always people screwing with the system. But that's why it's a votescramble, if teams are already fair, it will not pass. But there is also a problem, if teams are not fair, the winning team will not like to scramble...

 

But in the essention, I think most fun is being haved (or how do you say this in English lol) on a server when you just barely win, or just barely loose.. Then it really is an achievement if you win, and it's okay if you loose, so maximized fun. And I think that is important since a lot of people play this game for fun (duuuh).

 

So if a new votescramble is to be made, a few things should be kept in mind:

Divide players into teams based on:

+ Points per minute (PPM)

+ Playtime on server (really important, if one team has 4 skilled players and the other 0, you know there will be a boring match)

+ Win/Loose Percentage

+ Is there already a big enough point difference?

 

But I understand what you are saying Lookback, it should not be misused of course.

[Socks]

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.

[Lookback]

I remember a period where it scrambled every round, it was a total pain in the butt and really took away from the game - it might deter stacking, it would definitely deter playing.. If you want to correct the drop/join stuff, just take away the ability to join a specific team and only allow a fixed !jointeam command and/or have the admins come down hard on stacking.

[yourbestfriend]

More scrambling might be a good idea, or it may not as Lookback said. But I think you're drifting away from the initial problem here: the cr*ppy votescramble that is available at this time.

 

What I see is that hard stacking is not put down by admins, in a lot of cases. But also, I think we might first focus on improving HOW scrambling happens, and then focus on WHEN it scrambles, perhaps.

 

Is anyone from the GC team who can change things on the server actually reading this? :-) I would like to hear your view on the ideas presented.

[Jerkoff]

We certainly do NOT need MORE scrambling but just a EFFECTIVE one. If there is a scramble in every map/round then you will destroy the union in a team. All their effort to pull the team together, keeping each other alive as the last two, will all be be pointless since he will be switched to the other team over and over again for the rest of the campaign. I would never feel that connection to my own team, or even root on for my teammates if there is going to be a scramble every round. It just seem so ridiculous at times we all expect each and every match to be PERFECTLY even. Even the times when both teams are fill with regulars but the other team is losing by a huge margin, they immediately think is stacked. Like it never occur to them that it could just be our team wasn't synchronize or just being outmanuever.

[ValenAlvern]

More scrambling might be a good idea, or it may not as Lookback said. But I think you're drifting away from the initial problem here: the cr*ppy votescramble that is available at this time.

 

What I see is that hard stacking is not put down by admins, in a lot of cases. But also, I think we might first focus on improving HOW scrambling happens, and then focus on WHEN it scrambles, perhaps.

 

Is anyone from the GC team who can change things on the server actually reading this? :-) I would like to hear your view on the ideas presented.

 

from what I understand it's against the rules to switch teams immediately after a scramble, not all admins are on. Not all people with '.gc' tag at the end are admins and members can use admin chat. Vote Scrambles have a cool down of 10minutes that should be half or the whole map, still having trouble on one map, you can place another scramble.

 

I feel Votescramble will never work as intended, since we're dealing with a game that lacks support for greater than 4v4, unlike the other source games like Tf2 or Counter Strike (Where valve openly supports the default options and 16v16 or even 24v24 servers, and even made it easier to make overly modded servers for those 2 games). The only good working mod I can think for l4d2 is the buy plug-in, which on this server has been heavily edited and improved upon (including getting rid of repeating lines).

 

If it was easy to create an automatic votescramble (Like TF2 or CS(also it isn't)) I would have it based on PpM and/or How far the collected teams got in one map, and at the beginning of the next would auto scramble 1minute after leaving the safe room door (to ensure everyone is in the game). If the collective distance is 150% or lower its an auto scramble, or at least 110% to 150%, hardly see teams both get 55% evenly, one team always does better than the other.

Edited June 1, 2012 by ValenAlvern

[Garychios]

I find it hard to believe that every time General joins, the entire game changes for everyone. Scramble or not. When he is on a team, its game over for the other team.

 

In all my years of gaming, I have not seen a legit player be that effective. He plays better that Fatality and thats saying alot.

 

I still think he hacks and I only caught it once where he was shooting through a wall far away. But I messed up the demo.

[JackieChan]

Thing is though, you guys say we need a better scramble system, but for that to happen the scramble system would have to go based ON something. Stats is really the only thing it would use to scramble teams. PPM is more effective than the old one, but apparently now that isn't good enough either. It's not as easy as flipping a switch and BAM have something working. I'm the only one that writes plugins for the server, and every plugin on the server isn't written by me. The stats plugin? Not written by me. That plugin relies on mySQL a lot and I don't know mySQL at all. I'm not going to tinker around with something I have no idea how to tinker with. The way I see it is that unless someone else writes a reliable scramble feature that takes every stat of every player in the server into account and applies that to a scramble, what is on there now is what everyone is going to have to work with.

[direkt]

sadly, Jackie is right. Maybe a solution to all this bickering is having admins and paying regulars working together to manually switch over to balance teams out.

 

Though for many, that may be too tall of an order.

 

Edit:: I wanted to add this in. More often than not, teams will balance themselves out, though it is usually too late to make the game competitive again.

 

We can also be a bit more aggressive against teamstacking. Because occasionally regulars will switch teams during the first map knowing that the teams are going to be unbalanced and switch over when the opportunity presents itself. Just food for thought

Edited June 2, 2012 by direkt

[Soap]

The way I see it is that unless someone else writes a reliable scramble feature that takes every stat of every player in the server into account and applies that to a scramble, what is on there now is what everyone is going to have to work with.

 

At the moment though it doesn't seem to switch anyone

 

and Direkt has a good idea with manually switching, i bring it up very often when the teams are imbalanced and the winning team acts like they can't see global chat

[Lookback]

The way I see it is that unless someone else writes a reliable scramble feature that takes every stat of every player in the server into account and applies that to a scramble, what is on there now is what everyone is going to have to work with.

 

At the moment though it doesn't seem to switch anyone

 

and Direkt has a good idea with manually switching, i bring it up very often when the teams are imbalanced and the winning team acts like they can't see global chat

 

PPM rated shuffle is PM rated shuffle, if it just got done, running another one won't change it.

 

I liked the idea I saw on win rate shuffle, or maybe we should just handica players... who knows? What I do know is that as soon as a team is losing (by any amount), the whinging for a scramble starts.

[Socks]

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.

[JackieChan]

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.

 

Not to badmouth anyone on the server, but a lot of regulars/members go out of their way NOT to do this.

[swatfishy]

Jackie, a suggestion:

 

I know admin has some sort of swap player power, so would it be possible for players to do this as well?

 

So I could type something like !swap jackie, and then it would show you a prompt that would confirm the swap (probably at least twice) then we would switch teams.

 

Obviously both players could use !afk and then switch, but for newbies its probably over their heads. There's also the danger of being slot jacked while in afk for non members like me

 

Unfortunately I don't see this being used very much, but oh well.

[ValenAlvern]

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.

 

Not to badmouth anyone on the server, but a lot of regulars/members go out of their way NOT to do this.

 

Unlike TF2 or CSS, this game isnt always Runny, Gunny, Kills and KABOOOMies. They probably dont go out of their probably because they dont to replay the map again as Survivors/Infected and wanna play it the other way for once.

 

personally I iant care if I play the map as the same side twice, just want it to be "balanced" so I dont hear people spout "team are stacked, teams are stacked.", would rather have people to laugh and have a good time. Wont be able to do that till a working Team Scramble is around, but you cant please everyone.

Edited June 3, 2012 by ValenAlvern

[yourbestfriend]

@Socks, your post makes a lot of sense.

@Jackie I don't know about your computer skills and your capabilities of learning new things and spare team you have for this, I can understand that you DO NOT want to make time free for something like this. But I have some programming skills for my education (Electrical Engineering) and I think it shouldn't be that hard.... I would like to help you if you'd require the help.

 

Basically we would need to acquire every player's: win/loose, PPM and server time, with a for loop. Weigh these (scale the variables to the importance we think they're worth) and add them for all players, so you know your 'team power'. Then you shift the 'best' player, calculate how much the 2 team powers differ. If this difference exceeds a certain threshold, shift again a second 'best' player. Check again (so another for loop). Now I do not know how to obtain the data (how to obtain the variables like PPM), but these are also displayed in the RANK screen (!rank). So there you must be able to find a function that collects the same variables...

 

Well enough with the nerdtalk.... Curious about your thoughts, pal.

[direkt]

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.

 

Not to badmouth anyone on the server, but a lot of regulars/members go out of their way NOT to do this.

 

Hence as to why I said for some that may be too tall of an order . Without naming names, maybe a suggestion into prodding people to stick with teams might be negative reinforcement from the regulars policing themselves. If a regular switches sides with the obvious reason to stack teams and win, just issue a votekick and have them rejoin the server should they get caught stacking. My thought line is that, if a regular is unwilling to help the losing team as best as they can (by stacking or rage quitting) then good riddance, let someone else willing to do the job teach the new blood how to play 10v10. I don't believe that regulars should be thought of as immune to votekicks especially when it comes to stacking.

 

Also, another maybe easier suggestion into coding is an rcon command to pause the game during map load-ins and the ready-up period. My reasoning behind the rcon command is that it MUST be typed into console and cannot be bound so an admin can't accidentally pause the game mid-round. During this pause the admin in game can then order people to switch (keyword: order), if there are no willing volunteers.

 

edited for grammar

Edited June 5, 2012 by direkt

[General]

On a side note, could you remove Swamp Fever from the rotation, nobody likes it, it has that cheap glitch where no one can spawn at the dock until the event is over. It doesn't happen every time but when it does, everyone gets a little mad.

Besides admins usually change it if they're on and if enough players agree to change it, which happens most of the time.

[Sess1on]

On a side note, could you remove Swamp Fever from the rotation, nobody likes it, it has that cheap glitch where no one can spawn at the dock until the event is over. It doesn't happen every time but when it does, everyone gets a little mad.

Besides admins usually change it if they're on and if enough players agree to change it, which happens most of the time.

Yes, please. Nothing clears the server out faster than Swamp.