Clan stack issue

[123vtemp]

I do not like games lacking competition.
Recently I got a PM that voiced a big concern.
I thank kaiser for becoming motivated enough to put it to words in a
PYB was very careful to avoid doing this to NOTA
I find it very sad that BA really does lack the players to cause such a problem
Infact I am ROFLing very hard to find out teh NOTA has more games that are balanced than BA and that NOTA does not have these problems ROFL

PM:

i was going to post this on the forum but the last thing i would want to do is beef was posting as a response to your inter-clan tourney, then i went on a tangent, and it doesn't need to be publicly posted.

first off, this is a cool idea! i like it. good work, i'd even take part because tourneys are fun and i'm often online at the same time as many PYB players; if you need an extra give me a shout. also if you run a 2v2 tourney, put me down +1 if you need an extra team to join up.

now, i'm going to take a moment to bitch about clan [PYB]... please don't anyone take this personally as this is my opinion regarding not individuals, not the clan itself, but by the trend of imbalanced games that seem to always be going on around the time that i'm in the late evening / early morning on weeknights.

it's not very much fun playing against a clan, game after game, when the allies that you are provided with on the other team are often less than optimal. if everyone stuck with their ranks, then in some cases this would be fine... you might be able to attain a semblance of balance... but with a combination of random single chevron PYB players appearing and unclanned players who really SHOULD start a smurf account (as their current rank is not indicative of their skill.)

look at it this way... in a 6v6 game, balanced by clan;rank, you end up with matchups like :

gold star pyb -> gold star scrub who plays like a 3 chevron

vet star pyb playing as silver star smurf -> player on their 1st account, silver rank

or, even with rank honesty on the part of the clan, you can end up with something like (in a 6v6) 3 PYB players w/ gold stars, 3 "new" accounts (at least one of which is invariably a smurf) vs a team of silver star players. in that timeslot, players who are good, and not in the [PYB] clan are very few and far between.

i realize it's fun to play as a clan; you have teammates you can rely on and can run some crazy strategies; i also play with clanmates sometimes, and have renamed before to PYB so i could play on a team w/ you on teamspeak.

that been said, around that time of night (or day depending on where you are) when all that's normally going on is hunters 4v4 game, a CA game of a test version i cant play, and a 8v8 DsD game, it gets pretty tiresome having to deal with the same sort of story each time. for me personally, i can take a lot of beatings before i get angry and feel sick of playing, but for someone who was a new player logging on, learning in the basics vs the AI and then trying to play in a team game, it makes the learning curve a hell of a lot steeper.

on the other hand as well, it probably gets pretty frigging boring playing against a disorganized team constantly; when every strategy you try works, you learn nothing about the game.

i fully support this mini challenge, and the idea of minileagues in general. i wish that the spring community were large enough to support MANY clans like [PYB] and support large clan games where there was a good challenge going on at all times of day.

Another person once wrote this which follows teh same subject closely:

please consider, if only so that you can benefit from having decent competition EVERY game... split up your clan when you are playing vs. a bunch of idiots... its not much fun being on "Shit player's" team EVERY fucking game lol.

playing vs 4 pyb in a 6v6... I cant win! not unless triton or cefte happens to wake up early that morning.

Playing with each team having 2x pyb... makes for an interesting game because I know that at least two players are going to work together and do something useful, and that there is a semblance of balance.

I'm just frustrated about the situation that seems to have really swelled recently over the last month or so, and I'm sure I'm not the only person who is starting to feel frustrated about it.

Cheers man! I hope this doesn't seem too ridiculous, I'm just trying to bring some perspective here... if anything I'm supportive of the idea of having proper clans going on in our timeslot, but I'm not sure if that's ever going to happen with things as they are

Elitist problem:

This was discousion about makeing a clan battel forum in which Swift brought up a teh problem of Eletism

[4:32:02 PM] <[PYB]123v[NOTA]> the idea was to promote a more organized / competitive scene
[4:32:07 PM] <[PYB]123v[NOTA]> perhaps then the correct direction is not a clan battle forum but a tourney and clan battle forum to promote more player activity
[4:32:24 PM] <[PYB]123v[NOTA]> or some thing like that
[4:32:59 PM] <[WarC]SwiftSpear> well, promotions is more needed, the game and lobby forum is already there for that
[4:33:24 PM] <[WarC]SwiftSpear> "Use this forum to set up games and tournaments and discuss played games."
[4:33:34 PM] <[WarC]SwiftSpear> it says it right in the description
[4:33:38 PM] <[PYB]123v[NOTA]> yes it is quite functional as is
[4:34:28 PM] <[WarC]SwiftSpear> changing the name really won't ramp up the activity of the competitive scene, and neither will putting a bunch of unused subforums, ok
[4:41:02 PM] <[PYB]123v[NOTA]> on the contrary I think that a name change will change the atmosphere,
[4:41:02 PM] <[PYB]123v[NOTA]> not drastically ofc, but for people glancing at the forum who are not there because they want to dedicate their free time to reading/writing posts, a more exciting forum name about upcoming events will attract the awareness of these valuable individuals
[4:41:16 PM] <[PYB]123v[NOTA]> the forums are not used very much by the player base of spring but the developer and testing base
[4:41:24 PM] <[PYB]123v[NOTA]> if the player base starts getting networked it will help it self to grow larger
[4:41:52 PM] <[PYB]123v[NOTA]> my -2- uh more like 102 cents XD
[4:45:15 PM] <[PYB]123v[NOTA]> as you can probably see I have been thinking a lot about developing the player base
[4:45:47 PM] <[WarC]SwiftSpear> Well, I'll think about renaming, but I'm not adding more forums ATM anyways
[4:46:31 PM] <[PYB]123v[NOTA]> XP
[4:46:41 PM] <[WarC]SwiftSpear> "Organized play" maby? I want to avoid the word "competitive" as it usually comes with elitism
[4:46:51 PM] <[PYB]123v[NOTA]> simpler is always better
[4:47:05 PM] <[PYB]123v[NOTA]> true ^^
[4:48:43 PM] <[PYB]123v[NOTA]> yes elitism does not work well at all in a small community
[4:48:48 PM] <[PYB]123v[NOTA]> and probably not even a big one for that matter XD
[4:50:02 PM] <[WarC]SwiftSpear> well, there comes a certain size at which you do want to segregate your high end competitive play from your casual play... we're just no where near there yet
[4:50:20 PM] <[WarC]SwiftSpear> I don't want a group of lik

Some one once said that every BA gams is a stacked game because some one is smurfing or the ranks are not true ranks or because some player will fail the team in a key spot too epically.

I find that we need more skilled players with newbier plaeyrs playing their own games or specking pro games.

But as it has been said there are not enough players


Solution:
-Make the spring site more usable by newbies
-Make the simplest most helpful battle client for newbies
-Make sure it is clearly conveyed to newbies how to get spring content and use spring
-Get the word out
-Have enough auto hosts for all updated mods so that spring can reach it's full potential entertainment = highest support of player interest
Question: is there a # at which the server will start to lag?
does this need a fix for spring to grow?

We get this done and spring will be The Best Thing Out There

[123vtemp]

For Now... Perhaps PYB will form in to a battling clan to support internal skilled battles. This way people will not have to fear being aggressive and finding that their Allies are not at their side for it is that which causes the normal be game to be a game of porc to protect my self and then play eco till I have a way to hurt the enemy team on my own with out support

PYB for better games:
http://nota.strategyboards.com/party-at ... 00.htm#453

[REVENGE]

I have to say, I'm guilty of hating on newbies, at least when I play as a PYBer.

I have seen, and have done, things such as kick newbies out of games because they are playing poorly, etc, in addition to being generally obnoxious to new players. I'm letting my alter ego in PYB run a little too loose, and I feel bad about it sometimes not just because I'm being unfriendly, but because I could seriously be putting a hurt on Spring's expansion of its player base. I don't want Spring to turn into a shitnest full of assholes and trolls, I want pleasant people to play.

In truth, I wish the autohosts could be separated into tiers by min/max experience level. Spads is already capable of applying both a minimum and maximum rank limit. I suggest we have newbie hosts, intermediate wide range hosts, and experienced level (Generals) hosts.

[123vtemp]

like...
1-3 bar
3-silver
silver - gold
gold-vet
?

[123vtemp]

btw PYB tries to !balance but half the fuckin auto hosts give us this:

* [Overdose]Autohost * Balancing according to current balance mode: clan;rank (teams were already balanced)

and rebalance does jack for helping the problem

[YHCIR]

Best solution would be to overhaul ranks (I have no idea of a better way to do it though) or to remove !cbalance from autohosts and make it so you can't just spam !blanace (like SPADS).
Or make it so you can only !cbalance when there are two different clans of equal number of players etc.
Or weight 2+ or 3+ clan members really heavily on !cbalance so they would be placed with newbies.

Different rank hosts is not that great because there really isn't enough players to fill them/distribute evenly. It takes long enough to get a game already.

[YHCIR]

btw PYB tries to !balance but half the fuckin auto hosts give us this:

* [Overdose]Autohost * Balancing according to current balance mode: clan;rank (teams were already balanced)

and rebalance does jack for helping the problem

Can't say I've seen PYB do this, but many clans will just quit or ctrl+d if someone does !balance and instantly starts the game.
[MARS] comes to mind.

[Beherith]

I must admit, you really nailed this issue, 123v.
I dont know who mentioned the smurfs on clans issues, but I kind of think that is a huuuge contributor to this problemguilty as charged
I would be totally for autohosts employing gargamel and balancing based on the true rank of a player.

Also, since we have more autohosts, we could live with rank limits and rank caps being much stricter.

[bibim]

btw PYB tries to !balance but half the fuckin auto hosts give us this:

* [Overdose]Autohost * Balancing according to current balance mode: clan;rank (teams were already balanced)

and rebalance does jack for helping the problem

Some clarifications regarding SPADS behaviour with !balance/!rebalance commands:

• balance mode
  The only purpose of the "!balance" command is to balance according to current balance mode. If the "balanceMode" setting is set to "clan;rank", teams will be balanced respecting clans, then ranks. If balanceMode is set to "rank", teams wil be balanced respecting ranks only. If balanceMode is set to "random", teams will be totally random etc. (you can check the allowed values for "balanceMode" setting on each SPADS AutoHost by saying "!list settings" to it)
  So if you decide to balance without respecting clans, all you have to do is "!set balanceMode rank". Then everytime someone hits "!balance", it will balance according to this mode so you don't have to yell at him because he changed the balance mode...
• re-balancing
  SPADS balancing algorithm is based on a random seed so that it can swap players that have equal ranks. However, this random seed DOES NOT change when doing !balance => you can say "!balance" tons of times, a battle with same players will be balanced in the same way (so you don't have to yell at someone because he did !balance until he is sure to win). If you want to change balanced teams, you have to use the "!rebalance" command (which requires vote by default). That's the only purpose of the "!rebalance" command: changing the random seed so that it tries to alter currently balanced teams (the random seed is also changed at the end of a battle, so that teams are changed between battles)

[Regret]

PYB was very careful to avoid doing this to NOTA

NOTA has such a tiny playerbase that half of it is in PYB. Congrats on not clanstacking against yourself.
I didn't read the following walls of text with dozen mentions about PYB and how awesome and fair they are.

Clan stack issue

Every game where you end up on the losing team is a stacked game. Since you lost, it had to be stacked as in a balanced game you wouldn't lose, amirite??

but many clans will just quit or ctrl+d if someone does !balance and instantly starts the game.

Some people use their [tags] to play together in teamgames, if you force them to be separated then it is alright for them to quit the game.

[hunterw]

I HAVE GODDAM IDEA

can hosts have a way to rate peoples skill privately from 1-10, then autobalance using that? springlobby feature?

[Jazcash]

I HAVE GODDAM IDEA

can hosts have a way to rate peoples skill privately from 1-10, then autobalance using that? springlobby feature?

Explain what the hosts would rate the skills on. This is pretty much the whole point of this thread, what the players would be ranked on.

How about players who use !ring the most get the lowest rank?

[hunterw]

just using my brain i can pretty much rate every player from 1 - 10. i already do it in all the games i host but just by memory.


if you wanted to get all fancy and write some autohost LUA script that would parse the damage dealt log of each completed game, calculate the percentage of time that any given player was leading the graph, 2nd place, 3rd place, etc, then accumulate a rating derived from that, that would work pretty well.

[Jazcash]

To be honest, there isn't, never has been, and never will be, a perfectly balanced way of ranking players.

Each player plays differently upon their mood, time of day, health and other IRL issues.

I think the current rank system is ok as it is based upon experience so it's correct. Veterans do have more experience than any lower ranked players. It doesn't mean they will be better or even know more, but it does mean they have more experience which is what the currant rank system is based upon.

A few players are starting to agree now though that their is not enough variety in ranks. What's needed most is an extra rank between gold star and Veteran as there is a giant split there. Possibly also a rank after Veteran, something like 1500 hours ingame.

[KingRaptor]

Springie stores the win rate (and d/c rate) of players playing on it, if this was connected to a central database it could provide a nice alternative criterion for balance.

[Jazcash]

I vote for alphabetical order balance.

[Zydox]

if you wanted to get all fancy and write some autohost LUA script that would parse the damage dealt log of each completed game, calculate the percentage of time that any given player was leading the graph, 2nd place, 3rd place, etc, then accumulate a rating derived from that, that would work pretty well.

I'm a bit affarid of just looking at the damage dealt... afaik the porcers get quite a lot of damange before they are utterly destoryed... but they usualy don't help the team to victory...

Perhaps some way of looking at the mobile units damage dealt... and maybe including the current game time as well, as it's harder to deal damage in the beginning of a battle than in the end...

[Peet]

Hey cool, ANOTHER player ranking system thread!

[Beherith]

Hunter: in the manage groups dialog in tasclient you can set a replace rank value for players.

http://spring.clan-sy.com/wiki/Lua_SyncedRead

Code: Select all

Spring.IsGameOver
 ( ) -> boolean


Spring.GetTeamStatsHistory
 ( number teamID, number startTime, number endTime ) ->
   {
     [1] = {
       "time"             = number,
       "frame"            = number,
       "metalUsed"        = number,
       "metalProduced"    = number,
       "metalExcess"      = number,
       "metalReceived"    = number,
       "metalSent"        = number,
       "energyUsed"       = number,
       "energyProduced"   = number,
       "energyExcess"     = number,
       "energyReceived"   = number,
       "energySent"       = number,
       "damageDealt"      = number,
       "damageReceived"   = number,
       "unitsProduced"    = number,
       "unitsDied"        = number,
       "unitsReceived"    = number,
       "unitsSent"        = number,
       "unitsCaptured"    = number,
       "unitsOutCaptured" = number,
       "unitsKilled"      = number
     }, ...
  }

Zydox:
Damage deal is a very good indicator of a players actions in a team. I dont care if he got that damage dealt through porc, because that means he didnt build useless porc, and actually weathered big attacks

[Zydox]

Zydox:
Damage deal is a very good indicator of a players actions in a team. I dont care if he got that damage dealt through porc, because that means he didnt build useless porc, and actually weathered big attacks

So you're telling me that a player that stays in the back and just builds eco and statics defences is a good player?
Are we discussing Chicken defence strategies here, or what did I miss?