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Reevaluating PW Team Balance

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13 years ago
Licho, before you logged off, you said that if somebody wanted a fair game, they should play normal Zero-K. I would go one step further and say that if you want a fair game, then you should wait for cloning technology to mature so you can play against yourself.

I don't think Rafal and I are arguing about the fairness of a match. The heavy amount of complaints in channel and the large number of exit votes indicate that players specifically do not wish to play games where there is a serious difference in the number of people on either team. Are matches with even numbers of players any more likely to be fair? I certainly doubt it. I know almost every match I'll ever play in any game will be clearly unfair and unbalanced.

The problem isn't that these games are less fair than others, the problem is that they appear unbalanced in a more obvious manner. The same people who don't want to play these games would be perfectly fine with a huge skill variation among players, and probably only complain about that when there is something else obviously unbalanced – like a clear clan stack, or a team of new players against regulars, or a size difference between the start boxes.

I mean, think about it. A lot of maps are asymmetrical, if you look at the metal percentage captured in an “even” split across most maps you'll see a difference of seven or eight percent. However, people play with this – in part because they aren't aware, and in part because psychologically the visual difference in box size would trump the mathematical difference in metal placement.

The problem with the team sizes first and foremost is that you're going up against basic human psychology, and the players are clearly not happy with or adapting to it, in general. Some of us are willing to, I had a few very nice 5v7 and 2v3 battles in recent days. Some people only complain when their team is not favoured, when their team is smaller.

I agree that we're here to play competitive matches, but I can't think of a competitive game where numerically unbalanced teams are the norm, although it is a technically legitimate method of creating challenge. It drives off players, it leads to griefing and whining, and even pretty active players like Jasper, Japko and Rafal will spectate rather than play a game which is 5v9.

The idea was good, but it isn't working very well. It didn't work well in the previous version of PlanetWars when we had two factions. Sometimes you have to compromise your ideas with the reality of the player experience – and it isn't like you'd have to abandon this as a balancing tool to do so. Some check in terms of maximum team deviation, or some autohost command to change the weighting of the three factors could improve the situation. As I suggested, I'd play around with the weighting of diplomatic stances and maybe the number of players active in a battle from a particular clan. If alliances were split in battles more often it would probably clear up most of the issue.

Anyway, I need to get the the airport. I'm just trying to help, I'd like to see more people playing PW more regularly and I'm very happy with much of the work you and the rest of the team are doing.
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13 years ago
Requested TL;DR (For Rafal, fortleza, et al.)

The problem isn't that matches are unfair, the problem is that people don't like them being unfair in this way and it is negatively impacting play. It would probably be good for PW if team size differences were less common and less drastic.

I'd split up allies more often or add an alternative balance method which favors team size and ELO even more.
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13 years ago
If you think that it balances well. Think again 5x10. 5x7 and on small map. There is simply very low no-chance to win. "Hey they are two ppl short less just comrush and kill em all" and it simply works. Even one player diference sometimes is much 4x5 i just played game on map in which are 4 strategical points and extra goes air, but in other team to go air is very risky. So other team dont build aa coz there is no air man and other must coz there they saw that there is gunships or bombers or so,

conclusion start with less players with less metal and u must build aa which is costly and not effective (mobile). How is that balanced. And if they are clan stacked?
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13 years ago
It is to except unbalance between 2 even teams.
When planet wars is off, only elo and stability of elo (or something like that licho told me) is considered in the balance. When a game is uneven you must forcestart to start the game and call a vote for it where only the smaller team can vote.
In PW anyone can start an uneven game without a single vote (this is what I'd complain about). I've been teamed up in a 6 vs 9 on a small map; I was with jasper and lost very badly despite the !predict command saying we had more chances to win. I've been teamed with in a 5 vs 10 on a small map; I was with cutebunny and lost very badly. On these maps most people com rush and when there is 5 extra coms there's almost nothing you can do. I personally do not care I lost these games because I accepted the challenge knowning I'd lose despite what the !predict command said. But some other people were mad and I fully understand them.
About 6 vs 8's it becomes too unfair in most maps. Even more when the bigger team is full of pros and the smaller team is full of noobs.
But with PW I'll never complain about teams if they are even. After all you almost choose your clan, don't you?
About people that are in no clan: if the game is say 5 vs 6, the guy without clan join the room, he will not necessarily put in the smaller team. The elo will prevail over the number of players, which is bad IMO. 5 vs 7 is a strong handicap on most maps for the smaller team. Because even though players in the smaller team have in general a higher elo than the average guy in the bigger team, there's almost surely someone with a decent elo in the bigger team that can kind of "exploit" the player number superiority. For instance it's very common that an extra player goes air and make precision bombers and kill most coms if not all.
Licho knows about it as we played a 4 vs 3 on a medium sized map and I exploited to be the extra player in the 4 players team. I went air and killed all coms. The smaller team had 2 pros and 1 average, we had 0 pro and 1 total noob (first game?). We won quickly and licho lost this game. This was totally unfair despite the !predict command saying that licho had 71% chance to win.
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