New scramble teams feature.

[SConforti]

Ok it has come to my attention that some people do not like the new scramble teams feature.  Please everyone help decide it's fate.  Explainations are helpful as well.

[Smurfette]

Ok, personally, I hate the damn thing.  I am all about keeping the teams even, and I think that is a good idea...but we had this issue before where TE members got mad when they were auto balanced.  That is why the feature was put on so that TE members could not be auto balanced!  It is not very often that I get my husband in the server to play, so when he is in, I want to play WITH him on his team - not be moved at random.  And last night, when I was moved, I only had 10 pts!  I was a shitty ass medic.  And I was moved to the even shittier team!  Yet, every other TE member who was in playing got to stay on the blue team - NOT FAIR IN MY BOOK!!!  So yes, I rage quit!  So I will put it this way - IF we can modify it that TE members are not effected by the balance - then keep it!  Otherwise - I want no part of it and my vote would be to remove it all together.  It is OUR (TE) server and if we want to all screw around and goof off one night and "stack" the team as we are accused of doing at times, then we should be aloud to do so.  Just saying!  So, I placed my vote under the modify option, but I would like to hear from Crazy as to whether we can do this or not!

[crazydog]

Modification options:
(Any of these can be changed per map or per game type)

• Scramble only after a full round? (No scrambling in the middle of staged maps)
• If the winning team has 2 times (can be changed) more kills than the losing team, scramble
• Call a scramble vote instead of scrambling the teams?
• If the winning team finishes in less than 2.5 minutes (can be changed), and has 1.5 times (can be changed) more kills than the losing team, scramble
• If the average score of one team is 10 points (can be changed, currently off on payload) greater than the other team, scramble
• If a team has 7 (can be changed) more dominations than the other team, scramble
• If one team never captures the point in KOTH mode, scramble
• Who should be immune to scrambles? Currently only charged medics + engies with buildings. Admins can be added.

I had admins not be immune, because if I remember correctly the votescramble plugin didn't make admins immune.


The BIGGGGGGEST feature that I think we should change is the method it uses to scramble.
Right now, we are scrambling it by points. This means it makes it so that if you look at the scoreboard, the amount of points on each team are rather even. Each player on each row almost matches up.

The way I think we should be doing it, is points per minute. That means that it will sort it so that the teams have an even number of people who get points at the same rate, resulting in much fairer teams. The problem is that is that by looking at the scoreboard, you might not think the teams are even. That's why we switched off of that.

Any of the "can be changed" values can be changed specifically for any map or game mode, and any of those features can be completely turned off, while not affecting the other ones. The options listed above are our current settings.

If anyone interested, here's the whole config for the plugin:

http://pastebin.com/m7PM3bKz

[SConforti]

Modification options:
(Any of these can be changed per map or per game type)

• Scramble only after a full round? (No scrambling in the middle of staged maps)
• If the winning team has 2 times (can be changed) more kills than the losing team, scramble
• Call a scramble vote instead of scrambling the teams?
• If the winning team finishes in less than 2.5 minutes (can be changed), and has 1.5 times (can be changed) more kills than the losing team, scramble
• If the average score of one team is 10 points (can be changed, currently off on payload) greater than the other team, scramble
• If a team has 7 (can be changed) more dominations than the other team, scramble
• If one team never captures the point in KOTH mode, scramble
• Who should be immune to scrambles? Currently only charged medics + engies with buildings. Admins can be added.

I had admins not be immune, because if I remember correctly the votescramble plugin didn't make admins immune.


The BIGGGGGGEST feature that I think we should change is the method it uses to scramble.
Right now, we are scrambling it by points. This means it makes it so that if you look at the scoreboard, the amount of points on each team are rather even. Each player on each row almost matches up.

The way I think we should be doing it, is points per minute. That means that it will sort it so that the teams have an even number of people who get points at the same rate, resulting in much fairer teams. The problem is that is that by looking at the scoreboard, you might not think the teams are even. That's why we switched off of that.

Any of the "can be changed" values can be changed specifically for any map or game mode, and any of those features can be completely turned off, while not affecting the other ones. The options listed above are our current settings.

Lets just immune admin's if that will make everyone happy.  I think that is the best option as of right now.[/list]

[crazydog]

If anyone interested, here's the whole config for the plugin:
http://pastebin.com/m7PM3bKz

As of the next map on the TF2 server, admins will be immune to scrambles.

[Giant Flying Head]

You can't make admins immune, that would defeat the purpose of the plugin in the first place.

[Baltika (#9)]

i don't mind being scrambled...

the only problem that i see with scrambling teams is that we play each map only once, so you might end up playing offense/defense twice...or work hard getting to the 3rd level of a PL map only to get swapped to defense and then get rolled

question:
if you scramble a medic with a partial charge, is it possible to give them the partial charge back?
if no,
if you scramble a medic during setup, is it possible to give them some kind of charge (some set percentage greater than 0% would be awesome) (this assumes that they'd be charging during setup).

i see there's a buddy system - any chance that people would be interested in using the buddy system and making TE NON-immune from the balancer?

[SConforti]

I see someone else voted to modify.  What modifications do they recommend?

[Mach]

i don't mind being scrambled...

the only problem that i see with scrambling teams is that we play each map only once, so you might end up playing offense/defense twice...or work hard getting to the 3rd level of a PL map only to get swapped to defense and then get rolled

question:
if you scramble a medic with a partial charge, is it possible to give them the partial charge back?
if no,
if you scramble a medic during setup, is it possible to give them some kind of charge (some set percentage greater than 0% would be awesome) (this assumes that they'd be charging during setup).

i see there's a buddy system - any chance that people would be interested in using the buddy system and making TE NON-immune from the balancer?

I just voted for modify and wanted to give my thoughts on it.  As Baltika said in his quote above, with the maps only being played one time through with each team on offense and defense only once, you start putting people onto those twice.  I guess my modification would be to have the maps run through twice rather then one time.  The point of a team scramble/autobalance is to even things out.  Well if you're only doing it one time through then by the time it has 'balanced' the teams somewhat the map changes.

So I guess my modification would be to change the number of times a map is played.  Either that or set it to a high frag ratio/quick time win so it would have to be an extreme imbalance in skill to change it with only one time on the map.

[crazydog]

I wasn't sure if we wanted to have the buddy system on. I remembered that we had it on for the old plugin, and it never got used (as far as I could tell). I'm all for turning it on, if it means we can scramble admins again.

I agree with the attack/defense things too. It doesn't really bother me, but I do see how it can bother others. The only times I've seen it scramble on those maps is for the 10pt averages (or 2.5 minute captures). The 10pt average difference is off on payload, so all I think we need to do is augment either the minimum round time, or the kill difference when the minimum time is reached (right now it's 1.5x more kills if they finish below 2.5 minutes).

[Giant Flying Head]

or work hard getting to the 3rd level of a PL map only to get swapped to defense and then get rolled

It's currently disabled on PL maps.

[crazydog]

GFH: Not sure if you were aware, but I re-enabled it on PL maps, but disabled the average score checker, since that was the issue.

[DiscoStan]

I'm in favor of just leaving TE/Reserved Slotters immune. We're here to have fun after all, and sometimes fun means playing on a team with people you enjoy playing with even if it does get stacked every now and then. I think most of us are mature enough to switch it up when people are constantly getting rolled anyway.

[Giant Flying Head]

You guys got to get over this we HAVE to play on the same team issue! There's nothing wrong with competition. Plus people that play with it think it's pretty unfair that they get balanced and we don't. It's just a game. It's just as fun playing against the people you like to play with.

[SConforti]

You guys got to get over this we HAVE to play on the same team issue! There's nothing wrong with competition. Plus people that play with it think it's pretty unfair that they get balanced and we don't. It's just a game. It's just as fun playing against the people you like to play with.

haha GFH for example on pl_badwater I kept saying you guys were stacked because 3 te on your team but none on mine and i f'ed you guys up!   

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