Spunkmeyer wrote:QUOTE (Spunkmeyer @ Feb 5 2013, 12:53 AM) 5-Stacking is not a design problem. It's a coding problem. It's easily, easily solvable given enough development effort.
lol what?
Edit not to sound like a jackass
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Adding incentives to make people want to play for the weaker team is how you solve the stacking problem. The only incentives that people care about (other than the implicit one of getting a rewarding game) is certain stats (kills, drone kills, wins) on the leaderboard. I'm not making a very bold statement when I say most people give jack @#(! about an arbitrary "stack rating". If you mean you can solve the stack problem by coding a "better" autobalance; it won't work. If you force poeple to play for teams they don't want to play for it will only drive people away from the game.
Now, I'm not a game designer, but I think there are two viable ways of naturally encouraging evenly matched teams:
a) Reward players for playing for the weaker side. The question is how to measure the players' contribution, you would want to show a leaderboard number that increases every time you are a "game turning player". The datasomething dude that popped in here a while back and added a bunch of metrics to the client was on the right track, maybe some of the stats he gathered could be used to create a player stat that would *feel* rewarding. Hit % could be fun. Kills/ejects split per ship category would be great - you'll $#@! up your stats if you don't fly a hvy int all the time. There are a lots of exciting things to measure for each individual player which would add a reason for keeping on playing, and if done correctly, encourage even teams.
b) Add something meaningful to do when the team is doomed or make games end quicker. If commanders are uneven or the teams have been uneven for the first 15 minutes of the game, there's really nothing you can do to turn it around. The stacked team will have hvy ints and map control and your enh figs and 2 sectors will only be a killing ground until you convince your team to resign and start a new game. If there was something to do during this march of doom, it would be a different matter. You can already see vets joining and staying in games where their team is down to one sector THAT HAS AN ADVANCED EXPANSION AND HVY INTS. It's pretty fun to try to get as many kills until the enemy inevitably finishes you off. It's not fun at all if you're cannon fodder while you wait for them to finish. Going in this direction can be done with core design.
