An easy way to balance teams is to equally distribute players with colored names.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

lol.. now thats a.. hack

Well a registered user system would be nice but it also requires a infrastructure to maintain it. And it needs to be bound to something. Commercial games do this with a CD key and a pricetag on the CDs. Well things like the email address or an forum account could be used but it needs to be an optional feature. Except for some of the ladder servers maybe.
Maybe it can be done for 3.0 or something like this.

Maybe an optional user registration system?

You don't have to register, but it reserves your name, it can track your stats, and it helps with team balancing?

It would be nice, and could perhaps open up some other options, but perhaps it is too complicated.

Dokujisan wrote:I guess if you switch names then you would be offsetting the team balancing code because the server wouldn't recognize you.

I suppose you could track the IP address but it would be a bit of a bugger if someone on the same network as you, (big university campus or whatever), was playing and the connection used NAT.

esteel wrote:Well a registered user system would be nice but it also requires a infrastructure to maintain it. And it needs to be bound to something. Commercial games do this with a CD key and a pricetag on the CDs. Well things like the email address or an forum account could be used but it needs to be an optional feature. Except for some of the ladder servers maybe.

That would be my favourite as wel, at least with regard to people who 'act the fool' and irritate others. Registering could also give extra facilities. Maybe access to some servers, (possiblly with a password?), or something along those lines.

In any case my daughter plays a game called City of Heroes, (didn't I already mention that? ), and they get idiots on there as well. That costs about £10 (US$17), per month so that's not the complete answer either.

Maybe a simplified way of kicking people off at least until the end of the game might be in order.

That raises a couple of questons. I believe I'm correct in thinking that the game connects to a central distribution point to find servers which register with it when they come on line. Is that correct? If so, does the central server or the servers themselves keep track of which IP adresses are connecting?

The point being that if there are no instances of multiple connections from the same IP address then maybe you could assume that an attempt to connect from an IP address from someone who's been kicked off is the same person. Thinking about it though the NAT question would still arise, wouldn't it.

Maybe some encrypted cookie might be used, generated from a combination of the machine's initial IP address when the software is first installed and run, the CPU ident and maybe the date and time. The username is then simply for ease of human interaction.

I thought of this issue tonight when playing a game when 2 players staring banging away at each other 'over the airwaves'. We went from about 12 players to 2 in the space of 2 minutes.

All the excessive 'lol' 'ing when someone frags someone else is a bit irritating as well although I accept it's part of the game. Personally I try and only do it when I get fragged and I usually say 'ns' or 'good one:)' as well but that's just me I suppose. Generally I don't really mind it but some people get REALLY worked up. I've taken to 'having a quiet word' with them if they're on the same team as me so the other teams players don't see but it doesn't always work.

As I say, 'lol' ing is part of the game and all that but at a certain point it stops being just part of the game and you start just being a stupid arse. Well, again, in my opinion.