Team captain's choice - balance method

[Beherith]

Since the community is quite small, you can make a good guess of most all players. In sports it works very well - have the two highest ranked players be the team captains - and they take turns choosing players for their team.

The issue with this is doing it before game start - as ppl leave and join too often; but I dont know if a player can be switched teams after game start, or if it can be done ingame at all.

Any feedback appreciated.

[Jools]

You mean that each team would have a captain, like in football? I like the idea.

[zerver]

An excellent idea that also would eliminate clan stacks. But as you say it is also difficult to realize, mostly because the turn based procedure takes time. No to mention picking the captains...

Therefore I'm still more in favor of the balance thumbs up/thumbs down voting system that I suggested earlier.

[danil_kalina]

I like)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaAw-xRro5g

[Beherith]

Can it even be done inside the engine? Or would it have to be lobby?
Because if in engine, a 1 minute time limit could be given after which the remaining players could be distributed by rank.

The highest ranked players would be the captains.

I must have missed the thumbs up/down concept, could you link it?

[danil_kalina]

The highest ranked players would be the captains.

No way! voting only!

[PicassoCT]

I always was the last to be chosen. Now i sort out the jocks. See them specing left and right!

[KaiserJ]

this is a great idea; i think team captains could be voted upon from the highest ranked players available (like if you have 5 gold stars... all players vote for their captain out of the 5 before the picks are made)

in sports you generally either get first ball or choice of side, that could make things interesting too if you could veto your first pick and choose what side of the map you wanted your team on

[Beherith]

The first choice/play side can easily be mitigated with the following:
First pick chooses 1 player
Second pick chooses 2 players
Third also chooses 2
...
Last one gets the dork.

[Floris]

you can make it even quicker...

let team captains submit their top playerlist and then server decides who wants someone more and devides the players. you can also let the server just devide the lowranks randomly


.. but a sidemark is that this way the exitement of the process gets lost a bit.

[Senna]

is a good idea, This is like human hosting, where a good host should know all player skill and balance the teams, ive been doing this many times, but people blame to mutch when something fails, and about autohosting is really hard, but keep with the idea, its good

[very_bad_soldier]

I like the idea because its kinda fun to have a captain and stuff.

But when I think about it: Isnt it quite similar balance-wise as having a server with a properly maintained chrank-database?

EDIT:
I think it has two drawbacks also:
-It is sometimes quite hard to get a game running. You wait for players, they ready up, they choose start positions, they ready up again. This system would mean to introduce another step in this process. Could be especially annoying when a game has to be restarted cause someone crashed, left, whatever. (you might need to re-do the balance stuff cause a player left)

-The system assumes there are always at least two players around carrying a smurf-database in their head. These players have to materialize this knowledge before each and every game to make a proper balance.
I think it would be more cool to let those players, for example, chrank to build up a database so an automated balance system (as for example SPADS is doing) can use it.

[Jools]

I think in XTA everyone is at least gold star. If someone is not gold star, then he's probably a smurf. So rank alone is not a good indicator.

[PicassoCT]

Actually behes idea is really neat. No code to maintain, and protect against hackers. Only thing to improve, would be, if there is a startposition by time of picking. First choices get to the front, last to the rear.

Well done Behe, well done. Now release that freaking map. You dragged it out long enough to make me beg. Happy now.

You freaking teaser torturer.

Release it. Now.

In this very thread.

Behe, i see you browsin the board. Stop it, this has gone on long enough. Post it.

[albator]

In case of multiple choice for team captain, pick the one with lower id account to encourage non-smurfing policy

[Cheesecan]

Now all you have to do is implement it in a lobby bot of your choice.

[Neddie]

I think I suggested something of the sort for SL a very long time ago; I'm still in favour of the idea.

[Google_Frog]

Can it even be done inside the engine? Or would it have to be lobby?

It should definitely not be implemented in the engine. Did you mean it can be done ingame as opposed to in the lobby?

We would need lua control over player teams. Control at the very start of a game may be sufficient.

[Cheesecan]

Why not just lobby bot command

!pick <playerxyz>

?

[Beherith]

I would be partial to this happening in game, because that is when the player list is static. But if it cannot be lua-d, then I must do it in lobby.