wight-airmash
commented
4 years ago Main issues related to the balance:
- players connect and disconnect within one game;
- the players want to take a break and just watch;
- the players can go into a long afk;
- people are reluctant to use manual switching, and those who use it can often harm the game;
- very few players come not to play, but to spoil the game to others (make the game unbalanced manually).
I see a complex solution, which I started to implement, but suspended at the moment. The idea in a nutshell is to fully automate and prevent manual intervention in the balancing process. More on that:
1. Сhange in the mechanics of participation. Make the "lobby" mode as it was in the BTR. The connected player cannot join the game immediately, first (s)he is sent to the lobby, i.e. spectate mode without the possibility of manually spawning.
Players who are inactive for a minute are also sent to the lobby and also lose the opportunity to return to the game manually. This applies to both those who have left spectate manually and those who are just standing afk on the map.
This step gives us control over the players' random connection/disconnection/function.
2. Real-time balance calculation. The calculation of balance points must be done efficiently in real time. The server should know the exact balance of forces at any time (now it happens only once during the break between games).
At this step we give the server knowledge of the balance at the moment when we need to connect a new player or vice versa to understand what happened after the player was disconnected.
3. Store the database of players. This will require using something like the @derpsderps69 /whois command (so that changing the nickname does not allow you to mislead other players and the server), maintaining a balance score of recently played players database to know the skill-level of the connected player.
At this step we define the level more precisely for the connected players (now the server assigns a minimum score to all newly connected players).
4. Full automation of the balance by the server. Remove the /switch command, prevent parallel fake connections with /whois, and transfer full responsibility for the balance to the server. As it is supposed to work:
- The player connects and is sent to the lobby. The server determines its level and decides which team to send the player to. You can allow a slight imbalance, or you can transfer bots from one team to another. If the current balance situation does not allow a player to enter into the game (for example, the player is too skilful), the player will have to wait in lobby until the connection becomes possible (step 2 allows us to monitor it).
- The player disconnected or moved to the lobby because of afk. The server checks the balance of power, if it is insignificant, the server can also move the bots. If the balance is heavily disturbed, then the server can forcibly transfer players, starting with those who connect later on. I don't see a big problem with that, because the main goal is a competitive game. If changing a player's team makes the game more interesting, everyone will benefit from it.
- The player decides to return to the game from spectate mode. Everything happens in the same way as in the case of connecting a new player.
5. Abuse monitoring. Players can always connect to the game and do nothing somewhere flying on the map, or use different connections/hardware to trick /whois command. Tracking this automatically is quite difficult. Therefore, people should feel responsible for their actions. So that they have an understanding that there will be consequences for destructive actions.
Whatever methods of protection are added, there should be periodic checks by the administrator/moderator of the server. Convenient game logs should be available to the administrator. It may also be useful to have a command available to the players to notify the administrator of the moment of the game to check.
spatiebot
After a CTF shuffle, it's very discouraging to find yourself on the wrong side of a deeply unbalanced game. It requires some sacrifice to switch sides, which a lot of us are not willing to make.
1) How can we have a better balancing mechanism during the shuffle? 2) Is it possible to have a light version of balancing in the first part of the game if some players stay inactive or leave?