Topic: Ax the team-forcing plugin?

[DoctorDave]

Edit: Please not that this poll is NOT an official vote in any way. I just want to see what people think.

Okay, so Kyord, I, and a few other people were on the TF2 Server yesterday (Saturday) afternoon, with only a handful of people to play (sometimes as low as three people). Obviously, when you get down to so few people, the player skill on each team really starts to become important, and unless the server assigns just the right people to the same teams, one team will get steamrolled over and over and over again.

To make a long story short, there's no way for us to balance out the team skillwise. We can't rejoin on a different team in hopes of balancing it out, either. And when teams aren't balanced, people stopping by the server come in, get utterly pwned, and leave, and then we're stuck in this infinite cycle of three-or-four players on the server. And it's all because of the team-forcing plugin.

When the server's almost or completely full, on the other hand, the plugin isn't needed because there are either enough people on each team to compensate for team switching (including the more responsible among us who will switch ourselves to rebalance the teams), or there's an admin on the server who can kick people who deliberately team-swap.

And let me not forget the minor annoyance that the plugin forces you to a team and then you have to go open the class select screen again, and so on...a minor annoyance, but an annoyance nontheless.



So, my question to the clan (and specifically the admins among us): Do you think we should rethink this plugin or not? I have a poll posted just to make things easier.

[kerchief]

I don't feel that the plugin enhances the likely hood of balanced teams.

[nanaki254]

well it does not let the player switch teams to stack it as i seen some people do prior to this plugin..

[mephisto_kur]

I am enjoying the lack of team swapping when one side starts to not do as good, and the team swapping to load up your clan all on one side.

Just so you guys know, this vote has absolutely no effect on the policy on the servers.

[kerchief]

well it does not let the player switch teams to stack it as i seen some people do prior to this plugin..

Indeed.  However that is not the only factor in unbalanced teams.  To do a fair comparison we would need to collect data concerning the frequency of unbalanced teams both with and without the plugin.  We would also need to consider the ease with which the teams can be balanced when an unbalance occurs.  I'd say most importantly we have to consider these issues with special attention given to the teams when an admin is not available, or when the teams could be rebalanced easily without need for an admin's direct intervention as the purpose of the plugin imho is to reduce the workload on the admins.  However, I really didn't feel like saying all of that when it all boils down to a simple question. 

In your experience are the teams more likely to be balance/fun with or without the plugin?

Of course it doesn't, Meph, but since someone posted the topic I might as well say what I think

[batt-76]

I think it works fine.  Keep up the good work admins!

[DoctorDave]

Indeed.  However that is not the only factor in unbalanced teams.  To do a fair comparison we would need to collect data concerning the frequency of unbalanced teams both with and without the plugin.  We would also need to consider the ease with which the teams can be balanced when an unbalance occurs.  I'd say most importantly we have to consider these issues with special attention given to the teams when an admin is not available, or when the teams could be rebalanced easily without need for an admin's direct intervention as the purpose of the plugin imho is to reduce the workload on the admins.  However, I really didn't feel like saying all of that when it all boils down to a simple question. 

In your experience are the teams more likely to be balance/fun with or without the plugin?

Of course it doesn't, Meph, but since someone posted the topic I might as well say what I think

I'd like to suggest that there is a very high likelihood that we have enough people playing at any given time (specifically clan or wannabe-clan members) who can be expected to act in good faith and either switch to balance the teams themselves or remind anyone who deliberately switches teams to knock it off.

Sure, I don't like to switch to the losing team, but if there is a real player shortage on one team, then I always switch and try to even it out. I just kinda assumed that most of the people in the clan would think that letting the people on the server as a whole have fun by balancing the teams would be more important than staying on a (stacked) winning team.

[DoctorDave]

Just so you guys know, this vote has absolutely no effect on the policy on the servers.

I would like to emphasize this.

I'm only throwing the poll out there to see what people think. It is NOT an official vote of any kind.

[Focused Moments]

seen stacking both with and without the plugin.  It does at least go a step to proactively trying to get rid of the stacking.

However, I've noticed people timing the time they join the game to get on a certain team ... really frustrating.

[Kyord]

seen stacking both with and without the plugin.  It does at least go a step to proactively trying to get rid of the stacking.

However, I've noticed people timing the time they join the game to get on a certain team ... really frustrating.

As much as Id love to complain about it, Ive seen a lot more fair team setups, since the plugin was installed.

[DoctorDave]

Is there any way the plugin can be triggered on and off depending on how many people are playing on the server?

[DAwG]

it doesn't matter to me, according to the golden rule of gaming, if I'm losing it's everyone else on my team's fault, I'm still good 

[Harry Lee Smith]

I always pick random for teams anyways so it never mattered much to me. I don't really care who I was playing with.

[Trlgg]

I dont play TF2 and dont know how bad an issue this is. But we do have admins and clan admins that play and can probably help balance the teams out. If its a matched thats stacked ask one of them to help switch people around. Using BF2 as a reference it sucked when teams were unbalanced..but we just worked harder to try and win from behind.

[kerchief]

On a flag cap map last night it ended up being 10 versus 5 for the last two flag caps.  The only way we could have manually fixed the balance would have been actually disconnecting from the server, so we ended up just winning so that the autobalance could do its thing.