MP Forced Balance in Skirmish, Siege and Captains Modes

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There should be a way to balance teams in the multiplayer modes, especially in skirmish. The reason for the drastic drop of players actively playing Skirmish and Captains mode is the lack of balance in teams, where one team is stacked with clan players (which are usually more skilled and experienced than casual players) while the other is casual players.

I propose a system where the first round results are taken (Kills, Deaths, Assists) to change some players' teams to make it fairer. This of course should not affect if both teams are filled with players of the same clan (ie: clan practice match).
 
With captain mode I've left games right at the start when the other team is full of clan players especially the Hawk clan, as of now the game mode can be exploited quite easily with a new meta for clans where 1 cavalry player dismounts at the spawn and all the other members mount up, now you got 6 rambo players all in the back line causing havoc, this isn't skill, if anything it shows the lack of it.

This is a serious exploit that abuses the AI such as archers focusing on trying to hit the rambos instead of fire at other archers but even then right now it only takes 1 rambo with a glaive to 1 hit archers with no effort (i've done it myself).

Imo a quick fix for this is simply to lower the riding skill of other units to the point where it's under the amount needed to ride horses, not a great long term solution but it's better than the current state as it'd nip this exploit directly.

In terms of balancing siege or skirmish there's no chance that you'd be able to split teams up as a lot of people simply want to play with their friends, it's a not a fun experience to be forced to split up in a game you want to play together, at the moment there's no ranked mode so yeah, you're going to have competitive players try harding in what would be considered a casual mode.
 
With captain mode I've left games right at the start when the other team is full of clan players especially the Hawk clan, as of now the game mode can be exploited quite easily with a new meta for clans where 1 cavalry player dismounts at the spawn and all the other members mount up, now you got 6 rambo players all in the back line causing havoc, this isn't skill, if anything it shows the lack of it.

This is a serious exploit that abuses the AI such as archers focusing on trying to hit the rambos instead of fire at other archers but even then right now it only takes 1 rambo with a glaive to 1 hit archers with no effort (i've done it myself).

Imo a quick fix for this is simply to lower the riding skill of other units to the point where it's under the amount needed to ride horses, not a great long term solution but it's better than the current state as it'd nip this exploit directly.

In terms of balancing siege or skirmish there's no chance that you'd be able to split teams up as a lot of people simply want to play with their friends, it's a not a fun experience to be forced to split up in a game you want to play together, at the moment there's no ranked mode so yeah, you're going to have competitive players try harding in what would be considered a casual mode.

Another fix for archers shooting at illogical targets would be to implement a way to tell archers what to aim at. I actually was frustrated over this many times. Sometimes you want them to shoot at a specific target, but they shoot at another.

I wonder if ranked games will ever happen. Currently skirmish is monopolized by clans, in the meantime siege server and team deathmatch servers almost always reach full capacity. The reason for this is simple, the clan people team up and practically destroy the opposing side, leaving every casual player hesitant to play again. Its a trade-off, do you force balance or let friends play together?
 
My issue with forced team balancing in the way you suggested is that it could split a couple of friends up who are just trying to have a bit of fun and play the game together (as @RitoDurito already pointed out).

Also, with Skirmish and Captain, part of the idea of those types of game modes is that you try to counter your opponents with each spawn/round. If players were being switched back and forth it would leave little room for any strategy or team play to develop.

However, I do think in a larger, more casual game mode like Siege, some form of team balancing that takes groups into consideration could be a good idea.
 
My issue with forced team balancing in the way you suggested is that it could split a couple of friends up who are just trying to have a bit of fun and play the game together (as @RitoDurito already pointed out).

Also, with Skirmish and Captain, part of the idea of those types of game modes is that you try to counter your opponents with each spawn/round. If players were being switched back and forth it would leave little room for any strategy or team play to develop.

However, I do think in a larger, more casual game mode like Siege, some form of team balancing that takes groups into consideration could be a good idea.
How about adding bots in the server when it is unbalanced? Like if it was 15 vs 14, then that 1 bot would join the 14 to make it 15, (don't mind the math :fruity:). Not sure if it's a good idea
 
How about adding bots in the server when it is unbalanced? Like if it was 15 vs 14, then that 1 bot would join the 14 to make it 15, (don't mind the math :fruity:). Not sure if it's a good idea
The balance that I was hoping would be addressed is more focused on the individual abilities and skills of various players. I doubt adding bots to the ostensibly weaker side would come close to solving the issue. Skillful players will cut through the bots like a knife through butter. My proposed solution- if implemented - would evenly distribute players among the teams based on their K/D ratios (and assists). Although I have not discussed a particular method, you could take into account their K/D ratios in previous skirmish games or in the warmup phase (the former would be better and more accurate).

I would like to take this opportunity (my post gaining a bit of popularity) to further discuss my proposal. If Taleworlds does indeed bring about a ranked play system, my proposed balancing (or some variation of it) will have to be implemented, because there simply isn't enough players that play on the same level (ie: rank). A ranked skirmish game will have teams consisting of players belonging to different ranks. In such a situation the game would have to balance the teams based on player ranks.

The logic follows, for example, if one team has a "gold" player, the other team should have a "gold" player or two "silver" players, if one team has 2 "gold" players and the other team does not have any players ranked higher than "silver" then one of the "gold" players is forced to switch etc.
 
At the very least, it'd be nice to give players the option to leave the winning team and join the losing team between rounds. Not many people would risk their precious KDRs, but some would. I find it super boring to get stuck as the random 6th man in a BTL 5-stack against all randoms, I'd much rather be fighting them.
I'd also really like to be able to help out the losing team if players quit/disconnect, but there's no way to do that now, short of quitting and hoping you can be queued back into that match.

Sure it could be a little wonky, I think if you only let players switch teams if they are currently on the winning team and there is a player count deficit, and only once per match, it shouldn't be open to much abuse.
 
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