Free Allegiance Forums

Any of the rank/autobalance attempts haven't not worked because of something to do with an algorithm or some such
it doesn't work because PEOPLE DON'T WANT TO USE IT

what is this, 6 years later? still wasting time kicking that dead horse. You know what happens every time someone flushes teams with AB on so everyone's autobalanced onto teams? everyone immediately drops out of the game or resigns

but if you really want balanced games just drag out the Alleg lifespan for another say, 2 years, at which point every decent player will have left, and everyone still playing will be terrible.

and when everyone playing is terrible, games will be balanced!

The problem there is the flush/AB interface is not friendly. You are in NOAT chatting away minding your own business, whoop you are on a team. Nobody likes that.

Autobalance should work in an on-demand basis, that is, pick your team when you want to join. Otherwise there needs to be a secondary pool players who are willing to play can join (like the third team used when you are picking). Being on NOAT and without having your AFK set shouldn't make you a candidate to be whisked onto a team.

As it stands now, a 3rd-team-pick-pool is the best way to balance teams but still nobody cares enough to bother doing that. aint seen a pick pool in years.
people want to play with the people they want to play with/for any attempt to force people to do otherwise will just cause them to not want to play at all
just another reason for people to not want to play (not getting to fly for/with whom they want), another reason for comms to not want to comm (not necessarily being able to have the pilots they want)

I know you have the best intentions but I think you are both wasting your time and actually making things worse
the situation is as its always been

most people want to play with certain people
if they can't, they won't play

I think people will play if it's a fun game. Guarantee they'll be on a competent team under a competent commander (replace competent with equal in skill to the opposing team) and I don't think they'll mind autobalance. I think you are overemphasizing the need to play together. That stems from the desire not to be on a @#(! team, IMHO.

Here's the thing of it, let's toss everything aside and look at two perverse examples.

1) Babel is a rank 16, he can pod almost everything alive and is certainly more capable that the majority of the next 5 higher ranks.

2) Fuzzy is a rank 7, yet newbies without a clue what a nan is are ranked higher sometimes.

Two random examples of why the entire system is messed up, and there are many more anyone can see.

So even if the autobalance was perfect, GIGO.

Part of the reason is repeatedly being on the winning team (or vice versa) doesn't as rapidly map to your skill in Alleg as it does in other games.

Take something like Counterstrike. Both teams are on a pretty even footing every single game and the only real variable is player skill. Play 50 games of Counterstrike, and TS can tell who is good and who sucks, no problem.

In Alleg, every game also has the variable of commander matchups, game settings and faction balance on top of player skills. So intuitively it would take a lot more games for TS to arrive at a decision since the effect of these variables should be factored out.

So yes, I agree with you, speed of convergence could be a real issue. Sliding window probably has more to do with people having zero skill early on or taking long breaks before getting back into the game.

too much is placed on rank imo. Its not like everyone performs the exact same every game, or even tries to. And thats to say nothing of faction/map/settings matchups.

Also if we had a better points system, we could keep a running average and display that in addition to the rank to see how the two line up. We could even optionally use either method while balancing.

But that's a ways off.

That would work nice with the achievements system.

I wish I could code this, I can playtest and create the system and the graphics, I just can't code it.

Games are not imbalanced because we don't know who's better than who. Games are imbalanced because stackers want to stack, and comms let them get away with it. Poor comms who leave autoaccept on are the worst.

Leave the ranking system alone. Chances are high you'll just $#@! it up even worse by trying to fix it.