Not the Problem. The solution.

[Greator_SST]

...silly Ozzy, as if you and weed make the perfect compliment of coms (and what I'm to infer from your last post is that your quite the perfect com).

No, 90% of game are stacked, and it's not because 90% of games are commed by unequal commanders. So down the tube goes your logic. The real truth is, when there are two equal coms, games still become stacked.

And you know what. If you can't play with anything less than your perfect list of coms, just wait in the lobby and when your chance comes to join your 'team' of choice, do the quick double clicky thing. And voila, nothing's changed for you, is it? For me a lot will change. I can join a game straightaway and know that at least I'll have a decent chance of winning instead of a 6% chance. And so what if I lose a game because 'MY' com isn't so perfect. I'm not worried. My ego can handle it. How 'bout yours?

[Tigereye]

Great Post, Ozzy, but I have a few rebuttals.

I agree that commanders play a much larger part in balance than team makeup. It is important to have even commanders, or else the game will never start.

QUOTE (Ozricosis @ Jul 26 2006, 06:12 AM) The only effect I see this new system of "equality" having on my beloved game is creating MORE NOAT time and more of a chatroom with poorly commanded games followed by 30 minutes of blah blah blah.

I disagree with this because:We already have a commander problem. Balancing the teams doesn't do anything to solve or worsen this problem.Right now, when even comms magically appear, it takes 5mins for people to slowly join and even themselves out for the game to startWith a "Balance button", all players without a particular preference will be sorted across both teams, cutting down on initial join timeA bonus would be, once even comms magically appear, there will be no chance that this even start turns into an uneven end as every vet joins the same team. As it is right now, there's still the possibility of even-comms turning into a stackfest since players as a group can't be trusted to join evenly.

QUOTE (Ozricosis @ Jul 26 2006, 06:12 AM) So, waiting on NOAT whining about how I can't stand this commander or that commander is going to be really fun let me tell you.

Commander-whining is currently the #1 reason games don't start quickly enough, and the #1 reason why people stack. The balance button does nothing to solve or worsen this fact - you cannot say commanders will suddenly become less plentiful with the balance patch applied.

If anything, you could say that even commanders may be MORE plentiful since now commanders will be assured that if they request balance=on, they won't be severely stacked against. As it is now, many commanders refuse to command against an evenly matched commander for fear of being stacked against. Remove that fear and there can only be more evenly-matched commanders available.

Again, though - unmatched comms will still be the largest reason for delayed games, and that is the same as we have it right now. The balance patch does not make this worse.

QUOTE (Ozricosis @ Jul 26 2006, 06:12 AM) You know, no matter what the people who whine about stacking will continue to whine about it after said "balance button" goes into effect. It will be, (and not mistakenly said) ELO is WRONG! ELO is WRONG! instead of STACKERS! Nice STack!

You are right. Thankfully ELO is not used by the balance patch. The balance button does not touch ELO. It uses the value in the rank column.

Finally, I just wanted to say that as far as unmatched commanders go - if there are two evenly matched comms available that the majority of the people want to command, and there is still some "carebear" player in the command seat who is CLEARLY unmatched against their opponent and refuses to give up command... they are in violation of RoC SR#5 and are hostaging the server.

They would be preventing the game from starting against the will of the majority. If they do this, they will be banned by FAO staff. If the majority of the players do NOT want you in command, you must relinquish it.
This should help in encouraging more evenly-matched commanders.

--TE

[Freeza]

Greator, why do you think if people don't fly for people who are horrible, they NEED a "perfect" comm? Ozzy said no such thing. Ozzy has certain expectations for commanders as I do with teammates. We understand that no one is perfect, but they should damn well know something about the game. A lot don't.

Ugh, people are still blaming stacks when they don't actually know the problem. I have explained it in here at least three times, so I'll just copy & paste what I said.

QUOTE [With this proposal]The incompetence would be equal, but the incompetence is still there, so there still will be frustration. Since there will be frustration (even on the winning team) people still won't command and people will still stack as much as possible.

...It just isn't contiously fun dealing with incompetence every game, which is what happens and ALWAYS be the case. Commanders will contiune to deal with this incompetence and have take breaks from commanding, even if they win. ELO balance will just make games smaller.

...At certain points of the day the games are dull for more experianced players, because everyone is just doing their own useless thing. Both teams need more vets than voob/noob for a great quality game. The balancing may drive the vets that make good games away...

With this system, the teams may be "balanced," but there won't be enough quality vets there to make a good game, anyway.[/quote]

Summary [again]:
Nothing will fix commanders wanting to take a break, because even on the most stacked teams there is incompetence. If commanders still take their breaks, we'll get a lack of competent comms, like now. Vets won't fly for the idiots [incompetent]. You'll have much smaller games if you try and force the vets onto one team by not allowing them to join the other, even if there is a free slot.

Also, you WILL be sorry if vets leave, unless you like your 6v6 Out9 rix crappy games, etc. Just be warned and remember "we told you so." I hope and pray nothing will change with this system, but the system may destroy quality player games and create 30v30 noob fests. This is my last post about the issue and all I have to say.

[Greator_SST]

...honestly, Freeza, I won't be sorry if the vets leave because the 'vets' you're talking about are generally not the ones I enjoy flying with anyway. And speaking of vets I enjoy flying with, where is Trasher these days? He's my argueably my favorite Alleg pilot. Uber whore, could own any of your 'vets' freeze, but never smack talked and ALWAYS joined the non-stacked team. Hmmm, maybe he's not here any more for the reasons Lykourgos already stated. If the new system brings back and keeps 'vets' like him, it gets my vote. I'll enven try and enroll all my dead relatives to vote as well. After all, I'm from Philadelphia. /smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />

[Lykourgos]

QUOTE (batman @ Jul 26 2006, 02:19 PM) I think Pook needs to have a ban button for stupid people posting stupid $#@!ing replies to posts like this.

It would be nice to have another couple of hundred new folks here. If some of the vets don't want to play -- so be it. That is their choice.

QUOTE (CronoDroid @ Jul 26 2006, 02:46 PM) Frankly I don't think anyone would give a flying $#@! if some of these arseholes left the mother$#@!ing game.

You two need to shut up. Now. This sort of thing isn't going to help this so-far remarkably constructive and civil thread.

Raindog: The real question is, will you be more likely to command with the new system?

Under the current system, comming isn't usually fun. Therefore most of the people who are smart enough to be good commanders are also smart enough not to comm, since they know they probably won't have fun. See Weedman's post above. Definitely part of the reason comming isn't fun is because if you are the underdog, you are horribly stacked against and will remain the underdog forever. Possibly this change will fix that- in which case it's a good thing.

[Raindog]

Yes, I will continue to command when other competant commanders don't step up, just as I do now. As Pook stated, however, we will see more competant commanders stepping up to comm by alleviating the number one issue commanders reported as stopping them from commanding-the stack.

I can also see myself playing alot more if this is implemented. To this day I have never intentionally stacked a game since release. I have, however, sat out hundreds of games because the teams were way too stacked for me to make any difference. I am not alone in this either. Overall, players have sat out of tens of thousands of games or quit early for the night because the teams were too stacked to be competitive. I am not one of the people that is hoping that the people complaining about team balancing quit, but I'd much rather have hundreds of Trasher type people return and/or play more than make an extremely small minority of vets happy.

[Picobozo]

I too will play more and even command more.

I was one of the people who responded to Pook saying that the stack was the #1 reason why I wouldn't command. The number 2 reason being that I am usually much more help to my team as a player then commander.

Yes, I could see myself playing more. Further, I think I might be able to convince quite a few people who have left this game to come back and at least try it with the new balance feature.

[Ozricosis]

QUOTE No, 90% of game are stacked, and it's not because 90% of games are commed by unequal commanders.[/quote]

Trying to make my logic seemed flawed with fake statistics is truly ignorant Greator.

Where do you get your statistics from? Please state your sources. My logic still stands. End of discussion.

All in all this is a big messy mess. People are too busy pointing fingers at a few people instead of seeing the bigger picture.

I'm not leaving this stupid $#@!ing game. I will give the new system a chance. (whenever that is 2 weeks™)

If the sorting system takes into account the current rank of commanders and refuses to sort due to "commander rank imbalance" then this system seems alrightish.

Honestly, I am done with this thread. Too many of you are too willing to just throw random insults instead of have an adult conversation about a very real issue in the community.

To those of you that did post in this thread, thank you. It is truly wonderful to get all this out into a public forum to talk about. Hell, maybe come up with better solutions?

But don't fight about it.

[Terralthra]

The solution proposed, to keep the teams within a certain balance based on a threshold of ranking scores, seems like it will do something for game balance.

The problem is circular, comms don't want to play because of stacking, someone steps up who isn't a good comm just for the sake of getting a game going, stackers join the other side because of commander imbalance.

It's a tough problem to solve. You pretty much have to pick a place to interrupt the cycle and hope the rest sorts itself out. With any luck, once games are forced to 50/50, Elo scores will begin to more closely resemble actual contribution to a team, so the balancing will actually get more accurate over time.

Once games are balanced via any system, Pook and Co. can begin to implement a system of rating commanders via win/loss/etc., so that game balance can be evened out even further, but in order to even begin to rate commanders in a fair manner, the games they're commanding have to be balanced in terms of team-skill.

This system isn't perfect. Sometimes, as now, your choice will be join the team you don't want to, or sit in NoaT, but this system will at least make the games that result more balanced, and once they are, commanders can be rated. Once commanders are rated, it will be easier to get more even commanders on either side of the game, resulting in less impetus to stack in the first place, and thus, an even more balanced game.

A note to people who have "I won't fly for x" lists: Commanders can improve over time, some of the bad comms of last year are the good comms of this year. Rep still rules, but the rep of being a bad comm won't go away if they lose to stack after stack. Suck it up and fly for the comm you didn't think did a good job in That One Game. You may be surprised.

[CronoDroid]

Frankly I don't think anyone would give a flying $#@! if some of these arseholes left the mother$#@!ing game.

The few who are proclaiming it's a bad idea because they won't be able to stack anymore aren't anywhere near the majority of the community.

If they truly feel like leaving if it gets implemented, that's their call. The community may miss them, but it won't suffer from their loss.

--TE

Almost exactly the same thing, just with less profanity. So you shut up, fool.