Cap off EXP to help balance teams

[BZAP]

Okay,

From what I hear and know, teams are balanced by EXP rather than player count. While I don't specifically know how the balancer works, alot of players, including myself, can't help but feel bad for taking up more "room" on the team with our high EXP. I'm sure you developers have taken this into account, but I wonder whether you guys have yet to set a cap on EXP count. In other words, is there a maximum amount of EXP that any single player can contribute to his freq?

 

Besides extra capacity, which I can easily live without, my highest EXP item is antideath which requires 8000 EXP. Signature and all but one FTL items all fall under this requirement. Given that, I think it would be fair to count each player for a maximum of 8000 EXP.

 

On an unrelated note, I can't seem to buy thors from safe or any of the 4 corner safes in the map. I even tried to buy them at b8. Why are they disabled?

[Sound]

w/o cap

 

result

 

freq 1: vitaminz

vs.

freq 0: noob1, noob2, noob3... noob24

 

freq 1 is full

[Unix]

Realistically experience stops being a difference after a certain point. I guess as long as the experience evener was capped off at something, teams could get too uneven.

 

Some possible level off points would be 13k 15k and 20k ... 13k being the experience needed for all the capacities, 15k being about the time you have more than enough money and by then a few well built ships, and then 20k for TW Key.

[Samapico]

Some kind of logarithmic function could work

[Dr Brain]

Without getting into the details of how it's implemented (since that will bias your opinion), is the current system giving problems? If so, why do you feel that it is a problem?

[Emit]

Team with emit, and team without.

[Suicide_Run]

Without getting into the details of how it's implemented (since that will bias your opinion), is the current system giving problems? If so, why do you feel that it is a problem?

Giving problems once players starts to acquire more exp than a certain point. 1 player with 15k exp does not perform the same as 3 players with 5k exp each.

 

Going to the extreme: Like what Dare said, 1 player with 20k exp does not equal to 20 players with 1k exp each.

 

Assuming that is how the balance is implemented in terms of exp.

[Dr Brain]

I'm not asking if you think implementing it that way would be a problem. I'm asking if you think the system we've got (without telling you what it is) is a problem.

[Suicide_Run]

Then no, I do not think its a problem.

[Samapico]

Well I witnessed some serious cases of outnumbered freqs... like a 2:1 ratio. But this could also have been ragequit-induced.

 

Which seems to be another problem... ragequitters... I remember Arnk (I think) said he had made a fix for this; is this fix still in there with all the changes there were?

[Unix]

Without getting into the details of how it's implemented (since that will bias your opinion), is the current system giving problems? If so, why do you feel that it is a problem?

In theory the current system is nice and solid. However, just like communism, it just doesnt work because of how humans are. The biggest issues come with people who quit in the middle of the game then decide to spec, leave or whatever. So there is a slight flaw in the current system since there's no way to even out teams once they start to get lopsided.

 

Only thing I can think that might work would be if there was an added module that allowed the last person added (minus someone who was the lone lanc) was put onto the other team when there was like a 3 player difference or something.

[Lera]

Only thing I can think that might work would be if there was an added module that allowed the last person added (minus someone who was the lone lanc) was put onto the other team when there was like a 3 player difference or something.

 

I like this idea. At the moment I don't see any major problems with the evener. However, it needs to balance it when people quit. Not just when they join. If the team loses a lanc because of the evener then that should encourage them to stop bitching and ?buy Lancaster.

Edited August 5, 2009 by Lera

[Acer]

Only thing I can think that might work would be if there was an added module that allowed the last person added (minus someone who was the lone lanc) was put onto the other team when there was like a 3 player difference or something.

 

I like this idea. At the moment I don't see any major problems with the evener. However, it needs to balance it when people quit. Not just when they join. If the team loses a lanc because of the evener then that should encourage them to stop bitching and ?buy Lancaster.

Yes. I like the idea too, but it will most likely be a noob that cannot help out the other team what so ever. Unless their lucky and have someone hop. Also after a while no one would join the freq that has most exp, and maybe that player would have switch to a lanc, making him be one of the lancs and the module would change their freq. =o

[Deathmonger]

A better balancing metric than exp might be the players' net worth.

[vetta64]

Net worth just means you play a lot, like I do. Not that you are any good at the game.

[Samapico]

Exp is the same.

One could argue that you need kills for exp, but you don't get much money without kills either.

Also, time played is pretty proportional to skills...

[Gannon8]

Net worth just means you play a lot, like I do. Not that you are any good at the game.

Exp is the same.

Just like my little bro playing Call Of Duty, shooting at random walls hoping a person will magically be behind them, and screaming and crying when I give him the sad truth that he is not going to hit anything. (honestly, bolt action sniper rifles have almost no penetration.) And amazingly he always gets stuck with the team with the good players and I get stuck on the losing team 75% of the time.

 

Maybe kill/death ratio in addition to exp and time played? Maybe also whether or not you have a summon lanc or not.

 

I just see one problem. If we have perfectly equivalent teams, then the base game wouldn't really go anywhere. None of the teams would move up/down the base because they would be equally matched. In the end, they are going to realize this and blow off their money on fields and bricks and start item spamming to win, which I really hate.

 

Ragequitting I see just only if either 3 things happen:

1. The enemy constantly item spams bricks and fields.

2. The enemy decides to flank and clear your team when you are not even 20% inside the base.

3. Playercontinuum is on your team (JK JK JK JK)

Edited August 5, 2009 by Gannon8

[Samapico]

Anti-rage-quit suggestion:

I suggest that during the winning all-flags-are-owned sequence (i.e. music playing), it checks for the maximum number of opponents during that sequence, and uses it to calculate the reward. Or use the average during that sequence.

 

Balancing teams suggestion:

As I said, just a logarithmic smoothing over the exp, sum it all up, compare. Someone with 25k exp is pretty much equivalent to someone with 20k exp, while someone with 6000 exp is much superior than someone with 1000. Not talking about skills, but about the potential strength of ships/items and such.

Exp gain is somewhat logarithmic anyway, since the more exp you have, the less exp you make for each kill. So it would make sense.

[Unix]

If there should be another way to calculate your potential value to a team, the best overall way is your net value of ships. More money invested into ships will generally mean more potency in killing things, generally speaking. Of course that's not always true, and there'll need to be a way to balance out certain ships (ie ships with 3M items), but overall that's probably the best way.

 

A player with one ship somewhat equipped is far less a threat than someone with a fully loaded lanc. Let's face it, there are some players that arent necessarily good persay, but because of their ship configurations, they can be quite useful to a team.

 

There is also the possibility that you have a tier system related to this..

 

0-100k players

100-200k players

200-300k players

etc etc

 

That way one team doesnt have too many certain tiered players.

 

But still even so, the biggest problem right now isnt the system when people enter, it's when people leave.

[»Ceiu]

Logarithmic smoothing (I guess) would probably be the best option. Eventually, as it works right now, the system simply won't work as, as stated above, exp stops being important. I'd put the cutoff at 13k since, as above, this is where the capacity items are obtained and likely the last upgrade that player's main ship will be getting. From there, they will be working on others and will have access to 99% of the items, with a hefty some of cash to go along with it.

 

The other thing you could do is simply if(exp > 13000) exp = 13000; for the sake of the exp calculation... but that's kind of a cheap way of fixing this.

 

 

Edit: Hey thanks IPB, I didn't format my post or anything. =/

[Dr Brain]

I'm not going to "fix" the current balancing system if it's not broken.

 

Logarithmic is a terrible idea. It means that someone with 2x as much exp would count only slightly more (how much depends on the logarithm base). There's not a large enough range of exp to make logarithms behave the way you want.

 

Similarly, the gripe that exp stops being useful at 13000 has no bearing on relative player worth. Players that play more often typically fare better.

[Emit]

the real problem are the players being greedy mindless bunnies

[»Ceiu]

Brain, the problem is that basing, as it is now, requires very little "skill." Most players will hold ctrl and rush forward spamming repels* and bursts* along the way. So, after someone gets a decent ship, it tends not to matter if they're any good -- they're just a damage sponge anyway. Further, as sama stated above, the difference in value between a player with 20k vs a player with 15k experience is far less than a player with 10k vs a player with 5k.

 

Eventually, once exp becomes pointless late in a season, the system will be making horribly unbalanced teams based on a few players who refuse to go outside.

 

 

 

*Since I've brought it up: Why not move the purchase of all items to the ammo depots and reduce the counts to max inventory something much lower? Item spam is a bit ridiculous and really dumbs down the game.

[Emit]

This is what happens when you introduce items in warzone flagging with multitudes of shipsize variations.

[omni]

Rather than determining win money by the players on each team, just make it determined by the elapsed time of the flag game. This way, as people center, the win money will increase and it'll encourage more flagging. Ragequitters will just make it so the winning team will earn more money.

 

As for balancing, I really don't see how any one player can be better than another in a zone like this, other than having more access to things like fields and bricks. Make those less available and even newbs will be able to compete more fairly with top tier players.

 

Also, decrease reps. Ships really shouldn't spawn with reps on EVERY spawn. This breaks the flag game and keeps it from going anywhere. The attacking and defending teams just spend 5 minutes repping each other until someone wins. That's stupid.