I've just finished playing a ctf game and for more than a few games at a time certain people,, (very good players), kept playing on the same side whilst new players kept gravitating toward the other side time after time presumably in an attempt to even things up.

So, we had good player1, good player2 and good player3 on one side and, for instance, some guy called Pietro who wasn't particularly good, (well, not on that showing anyway), and didn't speak English, me and Sparkling, (who put up a sterling effort I must say ), on the other in an attempt to try and even the score. Pietro came and went... then it was someone else... and then someone else again with the same result.

Now I don't want to nag on like an old woman here but, ffs fellas... come on!!!!!

I counted about 3 players who I hadn't seen before who came, 'dipped their toe in the water', so to speak, and then fvcked off. Do YOU think they'll come back again??? Because, frankly, I don't.

I started playing about a year back and I sort of expected the servers to be kept busy by about now but it just ain't happening and if THAT'S how people are treated I'm not surprised.

I realise that that's going to happen anyway on the tdm and rune servers by the nature of the beast but the way I see it ctf is different. By it's very nature players have to cooperate, at least among the teams and, IMHO, it should extend to team balance as well.

Let me make a suggestion to try and help things along here.
Why don't we make the default ctf games force players balance. Is that possible? That way new players at least feel as if they've contributed to a win in some way, however small.

When I'm playing and I haven't seen the other player before I try and engage them in a little conversation, maybe ask them a few questions like, 'played before?' and such like. If they haven't I try and give them a few pointers. I mean, I'm no bloody good... but I try to help them anyway.

What I really DON'T get is that, apart from anything else, just what do people GET out of winning things 200-5? What's the point? Isn't it more fun to have a reasonably even match?

Anyway, rant mode off now... Mrs. Codger has warmed the bed up so I'll see you guys tommorrow.

I guess thats a big problem in team matches. But first its very hard to get balanced teams at all. I have some screenshot of a game were i had as many points as the first two from the other team combined and my team still lost by one point at the end. Besides the one 'cheater' comment at the end by some player i never noticed before one has to wonder what a great team i was on .
Second you get the most fun of it when you are on a good team. For me a good team is one were the members try to support each other and try to not do stupid things. For example to watch that there is at LEAST one person defending. I like to defend but certainly not for a whole match. Its very frustrating when switching from defense to offense and getting the message 'your flag has been stolen' just the moment you take the other flag because noone was defending.
Then there are people that think the 'capture' in ctf is the most important thing. It happend quite a few times to me that i was defending alone on a 4-6 member team. Its especialy bad when getting overrun by 4 attacks that then grap hold of your base and capture one flag after the other and noone from my team comming and helping to retake our base.
Also people should not just stand around and spam with the mg or hagar at the other base.. thats totaly useless.

So i can understand why some players try to play together though i do not like it unbalanced teams. I try switching teams when i notice things are too unbalanced and often complain about unbalanced teams. I think we should make the two buttons (auto) and (spec) MUCH MORE VISIBLE in the next version of Nexuiz.. i think hardly anyone uses the auto button that would make him join the smallest team. And very often thats the weaker team.

Finaly yes its possible to auto balance teams but it only means it will put a new joining player into the smaller team. There was a thread about making this more intelligent but i'm not sure its very easy. Then there is also a option to force a rebalance when someone leaves. Both might be good ideas to enable by default (Or having a server admin enabling them) however but you do not get skillwise balanced teams only balanced by numbers thats why i still like people to use their brain when choosing a team..
Sad thing is just that this option is failing waaaaaaaaaaaaaay to often..

After all this ranting i also would like to point people to my team communication thread: http://www.forums.alientrap.local/viewtopic.php?t=555

esteel wrote:Finaly yes its possible to auto balance teams but it only means it will put a new joining player into the smaller team. There was a thread about making this more intelligent but i'm not sure its very easy. Then there is also a option to force a rebalance when someone leaves. Both might be good ideas to enable by default (Or having a server admin enabling them) however but you do not get skillwise balanced teams only balanced by numbers thats why i still like people to use their brain when choosing a team..

I think both are a good idea for a default setup. Like you, I also sometimes 'jump ship' to join the weaker team if it's obvious that my side's going to win by a huge margin. Not that I make a huge difference but at least it saves them having to try and shoot me as well.

esteel wrote:Sad thing is just that this option is failing waaaaaaaaaaaaaay to often..

It's like the old saying... 'common sense isn't that common'.

esteel wrote:After all this ranting i also would like to point people to my team communication thread: http://www.forums.alientrap.local/viewtopic.php?t=555

Interesting stuff but, to be honest, I DID mention the imbalance the other night the old fashioned way and all I got back were a few smilies and a comment that nobody likes to lose, whatever that's supposed to mean.

Still, there we are... People, huh?

It's truly a pet peave of mine when people all stack one team just so that they can win. They may be winning, but they're not winning fairly, and they really drive people away. As to the "everybody likes to win" comment, well, it's just a game, who gives a care? Honestly, this issue is quite common, and I've seen alot of nice people leave a game because of it. Maybe a team balancer is in order?

"What is CTF?"
Well, CTF is pretty easy. You have to fight the ennemy, get their flag, fight them again, bring the flag to your base, wait for your team mates to return your flag and finally make the flags touch and stay at the base to fight off attackers who try to get your flag. Now you only have to make sure all your team mates know who does what and when.

...

TrueGamer wrote:It's truly a pet peave of mine when people all stack one team just so that they can win. They may be winning, but they're not winning fairly, and they really drive people away. As to the "everybody likes to win" comment, well, it's just a game, who gives a care? Honestly, this issue is quite common, and I've seen alot of nice people leave a game because of it. Maybe a team balancer is in order?

Well, as esteel pointed out, there ARE options in the server setup for force team balance when joining a team and when someone leaves but it only works in relation to an existing map. I imagine this is because variables aren't carried over from one map to another so if topgun1 and topgun2 both want they still can be on the same team until someone gets sick of it and then leaves. It's a bit late then.

The last time I complained about lack of balance, (before this one), I got a load of abuse. This guy went absolutely apesh!t and started swearing, clogging up the top of the screen with expletives. Just goes to show the mentality of the sort of person that thinks it's fun to batter people I suppose.

I even tried another couple of games including sauerbraten and another one, (forgotten the name!), and one of them had a facility to only allow people with a password to play. The thing is part of the attraction of nexuiz is that ANYONE can just just join up and 'have a go'.

Still, if people are being driven away when they do give us a go - what's the difference???

I usualy try to balance the team by changing team if i think its to unbalanced, however since so many ppl part as soon as things get a bit rougth its realy hard to keep it balanced. Realy, its no fun changing team 5 times in one map. so.. i guess the good players need to think more abt balance and ppl in general need to stay in the game.

full ack to tZork, its always a difficult call.

ive done similar, so .... i call out "dudes, 5v2 !" or whatever & jump team, and find others have too. imbalance back the other way.

then theres the joiners and parters that alter the balance too.
ok its not great when one teams skill is v.high, what do u do? call a poll mid game ?
to be fair i think senior players normally balance on joining anyways.

maybe best to stay put, and just enjoy the shooting. i agree it can get tedious getting thoroughly thrashed, but hey, persist. its not always the talented that prevail, its usually the ones that stick with it.
"old codger" ..... eek i thought that was me !

It is more fun to be outnumbered.

and outpinged

but it was a fun game nonetheless?

and yeah, uts fun to be outnumbered :







more aw http://www.tchr.no/

Dave wrote:It is more fun to be outnumbered.

No offence Dave and tChr but I think you're missing the point.

It's not just about numbers and, trust me, I am MORE than used to being beaten so that's not the problem. Maybe it's just my age, (I'm 51 ), but I really don't care if I lose. What does annoy me is when people who are obviously new keep leaving because some people, (not the 'major players', it has to be said), keep joining the same teams time and time again. That's just unnecesary and, frankly, it's just plain bloody rude.

Maybe the answer is just for server admins to make it common practice to set the balance option on for CTF servers. As others have said, people can still act like jerks if they want but at least it will be more obvious to the rest of us. Maybe an advisory can be put into the server setup instructions?

That would be my suggestion, anyway. What do people think?

On a techical question, though, can someone confirm that player variables are not maintained across maps? This would explain why it's difficult to move goodplayer1 and goodplayer2 to different teams when the new map starts.

Couple of other points, slighty off topic maybe.

1. I can only dream of 150+ fps. Mine can drop to about 4-5 on default settings and even down to 800x600 with no video effects it still only manages about 30-40. At 1024x768 it's less than 30.. That reminds me... must get a new video card!

2. On that same subject, when I run at 800x600 resolution some of the maps, (particularly the towers in facing_worlds), players appear and disappear as I move the mouse. Has anyone else had that problem or is my video card even worse than I thought?

tChr wrote:

I was the 'Ken' in that screen shot. Like I said, I'm used to being beaten :D:D

For reasons I mentioned earlier I changed my name because that guy who objected when I called him out, (for playing 2,3,and 4 v 1), spent the next few days 'stalking' me across the servers ruining the games... not for me because, frankly, I'm not bothered, but for the other people playing.

Actually, on that subject I must make an apology to Phocion and a few others who were caught in the verbal crossfire. Well, there wasn't much from my side tbh, but from his/hers there was an avalanche.

hi old_codger..

No we are not at all missing the point. Both dave and I was just reffering to a very fun CTF game we played yesterday.

If you ask around, you'll learn that I am often the one to change teams to balance them out, even if I'm on the winning team, id ont mind changing to the other team, as i think its much more fun to play an even game, than to win my 600 points

My reply was just a friendly teasing of Dave, as he had pretty good control when it was just me and him in a nice 1on1 CTF yesterday, and then Genocide joined, wich made the game very uneven

but still fun

Edit:
I dont play on default settings.
With my 6600, i exec lowcfg, then enable realtime ligts, thats all i play with, or i drop just as low as you

the g_balance_teams setting will autobalance all players that joined the server automatically, which means that people connectiong to the server won't even see a menu where they can select a color. This setting, however, doesn't re-sort teams if players change the side or players of a team disconnect from the server. To get that you'd use g_balance_teams_force. I am not very fond of that feature since it simply disturbs me when I suddenly get pushed to another team while I am playing. (An improvement of that would be to just move players once they died, afaik a centerprint-information is already shown when your team color was changed by the server). A useful thing is also the "g_balance_teams_prevent_imbalance" setting, since it won't allow people to switch to bigger teams (you can, however, go to smaller teams). so my favorite server setup for team games (FFA Server) would be g_balance_teams=1 and g_balance_teams_prevent_imbalance=1.

tChr wrote:hi old_codger..

No we are not at all missing the point. Both dave and I was just reffering to a very fun CTF game we played yesterday.

Fair enough I suppose but the fact that experienced players sometimes like to play in teams where the numbers are uneven is, shall we say, a 'different' point to MY point that new players are driven away from the game if they think they're going to constantly lose because better players congregate onto the same team time after time.

If you're not the sort of person that does that sort of thing then these points aren't addressed to you.

Look, I'm not trying to fall out with anyone here. Frankly, the people replying to this topic are precisely NOT the people I'm referring to. It's just a general point and my idea, (there may be others), as to what can be done about it.

tChr wrote:If you ask around, you'll learn that I am often the one to change teams to balance them out, even if I'm on the winning team, id ont mind changing to the other team, as i think its much more fun to play an even game, than to win my 600 points

My reply was just a friendly teasing of Dave, as he had pretty good control when it was just me and him in a nice 1on1 CTF yesterday, and then Genocide joined, wich made the game very uneven

but still fun

Like I say, good man for changing sides when appropriate. I do the same, for what it's worth in my case Frankly I have sometimes considered changing to the better side to give them the, (er-hum), 'benefit', of my help.

tChr wrote:Edit:
I dont play on default settings.
With my 6600, i exec lowcfg, then enable realtime ligts, thats all i play with, or i drop just as low as you

Hmm... Nvidia TNT2 myself. Hope you're not looking for sympathy on this end? :D

Can I also say that these comments are as a result not just of one or two games I've played but more as a result of the fact that I mentioned this game on another board, (totally unrelated to Nexuiz or any other game), and the experiences of some of the people that came to have a look was less than positive.

I doubt they're the only ones.

Anyway, I've put up a server called 'DSL CTF Server' and would like to hear what pings you get from it. I think the ping is too low for acceptable play being ADSL but I'll leave it up for a while anyway. Send me a PM or leave a message here if you want.

old_codger wrote:Frankly I have sometimes considered changing to the better side to give them the, (er-hum), 'benefit', of my help.

Thinking about this further maybe I should be called the 'curse of codger' or COC :D:D

GreEn`mArine wrote:(An improvement of that would be to just move players once they died, afaik a centerprint-information is already shown when your team color was changed by the server)

Hmm thats a good idea, i'll keep it on my private todo list..

And to add an other piece to the puzzle:

How is one supposed to play CTF with 3 other guys that gather 3 points in total after a whole round of ctf? Not to insult anyone but how is such a thing possible at all? And yeah i have to admit i felt a bit lost in that match

yELLOW? I've played that guy.. he should be way better than that. He's a decent player maybe he joined at the end of the match But anyway this might also bring up a point that came up to my attention when reading Green's post.

GreEn`mArine wrote:A useful thing is also the "g_balance_teams_prevent_imbalance" setting, since it won't allow people to switch to bigger teams (you can, however, go to smaller teams). so my favorite server setup for team games (FFA Server) would be g_balance_teams=1 and g_balance_teams_prevent_imbalance=1.

There's one flaw with that imo, what if there's a bigger and a smaller team, say 6 vs 4. But there's very good players in the smaller team and you would need to join the 6 players to even it out. Now I'm not saying that is common but it could happen and also has happened to me a few times. Then the g_balance_teams_prevent_imbalance wouldn't allow it. Sure if those players have any commond sense they should change team but what if they are a clan or whatever or they just are too stubborn to listen.
There's obviously flaws in the auto team balance in CTF but just brought this up as a pointer.

One thing that occurs to me is that the scoring system used in CTF in Nexuiz doesn't seem to encourage newer players to focus on the stretegic part of the game (capturing and defending the flag). Although there is a significant bonus for actually capturing the flag, players ALSO get points for fragging each other.

This is very frustrating when your team is up 2-0 in caps, but BEHIND in points due to some players simply camping portals (*cough*Great Wall*cough*) - this is irritating, but more seriously I think is thatt another result is that newer players rack up points by "playing DM" and have less incentive to learn some of the tactics that esteel talked about in his excelent post. In addition it makes Nex CTF more defence-heavy and slower than games where scoring in CTF is based only on caps.

The other thing is that it becomes hard for experienced players to balance the game - it is simple to see that winning 5-0 is unbalanced and for a leading player to move to balance teams, but what if you are a player that is 100 points ahead of everyone else (in the current scoring system), but the rest of your team is roughly the same as the other team?

Having been an admin for many years in a UT99 community for newbies, I have a fair amount of experience in coaching newer players, and I do feel that a simple cap-based scoring system makes it easier for newer players to relate their individual actions to the team goal, and so learn more quickly.

Well its currently not that easy to change the scoring as adding an other thing to display on the screen is not that easy.. but it should be done in the future and everyone on the team aggrees that this needs to be changed as soon as possible..

As you mentioned the ctf guide: http://www.forums.alientrap.local/viewtopic.php?t=849

Also i think great wall would be improved by moving half of the spawn points out of the base into the open area in front of the base.. similar to the map controlfactor. Greatwall is the only ctf map i do not like.. its too campy and almost impossible to take.

ai wrote:

GreEn`mArine wrote:A useful thing is also the "g_balance_teams_prevent_imbalance" setting, since it won't allow people to switch to bigger teams (you can, however, go to smaller teams). so my favorite server setup for team games (FFA Server) would be g_balance_teams=1 and g_balance_teams_prevent_imbalance=1.

There's one flaw with that imo, what if there's a bigger and a smaller team, say 6 vs 4. But there's very good players in the smaller team and you would need to join the 6 players to even it out. Now I'm not saying that is common but it could happen and also has happened to me a few times. Then the g_balance_teams_prevent_imbalance wouldn't allow it. Sure if those players have any commond sense they should change team but what if they are a clan or whatever or they just are too stubborn to listen.
There's obviously flaws in the auto team balance in CTF but just brought this up as a pointer.

Actuallt scratch that. I have now been playing a lot CTF testing stuff and I've come to the conclusion that g_balance_teams_prevent_imbalance=1 is totaly worthless. In my opinion it's way better without this setting... why? Well here's the deal.
In every public server now that I've been on have this setting enabled which prevents teams to be uneaven numbered. But this is not a good thing to have as people join the server randomly and in many cases all the good players are in one team and all the bad players in the other. When I play and see this happening I want to change to the other team to even it out but can't. IMO this setting will make new players abbandon Nexuiz instead of thinking it's a good and even game. This has happened to me A LOT, so I recommend any server that has enabled this setting to turn it off. That way at least there will be a chance for people who want to even teams out to do that.

And now to something that isn't just refered to CTF but to this topic is that I would want that voting for mapchange, kicking people etc. should be enabled by default. And I'm not the only one who thinks that. Recently there has been a lot of people killing their own teammates just so they could get a hold of the flag and score some points. That annoys people a lot and I've seen them complain and trying to kick them but couldn't as the option is not enabled.
But also in my case I accidently and without any idea have picked up a guy who hates my guts. I apparently have a special aura or something that inspires people to hate me I have a guy that as soon as he see's me joining the same server as him he starts to spam bad words and sometimes just generally spam and annoy people. Now it doesn't bother me at all but think about the others. And also recently he starts to kill me everytime we're on the same team, and in CTF on Facing Worlds that can bother you as when you grab the enemy's flag and your own teammate nex'es you down from your base. And he really aims for me. The only thing I can do is to change my name and model to hide myself. And so this lead to a conflict we had today in CTF.. As I changed my model and name he started to shoot random people and then everyone just started to kill each other in my team, ally and foe alike. Esteel was also playing on that server and left cause there was no point in continuing playing. Now I have no idea why he hates me and I don't even care.. but I don't want other people to get involved because of guys like that and their issues.

So I say, enable kick-voting as default and g_balance_teams_prevent_imbalance to off. This is my opinion until a better system shows up.

ai wrote:But also in my case I accidently and without any idea have picked up a guy who hates my guts. I apparently have a special aura or something that inspires people to hate me

Yeah, I've noticed that about you too...

ai wrote:I have a guy that as soon as he see's me joining the same server as him he starts to spam bad words and sometimes just generally spam and annoy people. Now it doesn't bother me at all but think about the others. And also recently he starts to kill me everytime we're on the same team, and in CTF on Facing Worlds that can bother you as when you grab the enemy's flag and your own teammate nex'es you down from your base. And he really aims for me. The only thing I can do is to change my name and model to hide myself. And so this lead to a conflict we had today in CTF.. As I changed my model and name he started to shoot random people and then everyone just started to kill each other in my team, ally and foe alike. Esteel was also playing on that server and left cause there was no point in continuing playing. Now I have no idea why he hates me and I don't even care.. but I don't want other people to get involved because of guys like that and their issues.

I was playing at the same time. I was 'verbatim', or, rather, 'VB (not OC)', because, as is obvious, there is absolutely no connection between verbatim and old_codger. These are the lengths I've had to go to avoid the nutcase I mentioned above. Eventually he'll probably get bored, grow up, or his mummy will find out what he's doing and send him to bed without any supper.

Actually, when reading your description a horrible thought occurred... I wonder if he thinks you're me? I certainly hope not but, if so, I apologise although, frankly I've done nothing to apologise for.

ai wrote:So I say, enable kick-voting as default and g_balance_teams_prevent_imbalance to off. This is my opinion until a better system shows up.

Personally I still like the idea of preventing imbalance to enforce 'common sense' because when the map changes it has a chance to even things up in the next round. I don't think it's any accident that the CTF servers with 'balance' enforced, (initially, at least), are the ones with the highest numbers of players. People DO like that aspect of the game.

I agree about kicking people off who 'troll', for want of a better phrase.

maybe it would be a good idea to have a new votable command (or that command gets executed every 5 minutes or maybe more often) which does this:

- determine the FPH (Frags per hour, or frags per minute, or whatever, to determine which players are good and which not) of all players in all teams (spectators excluded of course).

- remix the teams so that both teams have about the same amount of FPH. this will ensure that both teams have skilled and unskilled players.

Of course this will need a though algorithm, since there can be many exceptions (e.g. uneven number of skilled players, etc.).

That command could be called "smartbalance" or similar , not just dealing with the number of players of the teams, but with their skills, too.

As I mentioned before, players should only be moved once they got fragged to avoid confusion and frustration !

I totaly agree with everything you just said.

GreEn`mArine wrote:maybe it would be a good idea to have a new votable command (or that command gets executed every 5 minutes or maybe more often) which does this:

- determine the FPH (Frags per hour, or frags per minute, or whatever, to determine which players are good and which not) of all players in all teams (spectators excluded of course).

- remix the teams so that both teams have about the same amount of FPH. this will ensure that both teams have skilled and unskilled players.

Yeah, I can see the point of that as a server option but, personally, I still prefer the existing option. The thing is most people don't mind losing as long as they realise it's just for a round or two.

My own preference is that the server initially balances the player numbers but people have the option to change. If you then get the few idiots that constantly change to always win then they can be kicked off by a simpler 'kick' option, if such a thing is easy to implement.

I played last night on a server that forced balance and esteele made the point in the game that it was getting boring being either on the winning or losing side which had been 'decided' by the balancing algorithm that had 'got it wrong', i.e. placing the good players on the same side a few times in a row. But it has to be said that it then changed so that the teams were more balanced. There's also a lot to be said for just 'sticking with it' as someone said before.

I agree with many points in this thread, and I wanted to add my 2...er....15 cents or something.

I've been playing Nexuiz for the past month or two. On that popular CTF server (Elite CTF or something, it's the same one everyone plays on). Lately, I've typically been one of the top scorers, on average. Though I have higher ping than most (150+ usually) and I have limited hardware and play on the lowest graphics settings. Still, I've managed to get pretty competitive at Nexuiz in a short time.

As a person who can hold his own in Nexuiz, it absolutely bothers me if teams are not balanced. I don't like being on the dominant team, and I don't really like feeling like it is only me versus four low-pinging, dominant players. If I am on the dominating team, I tend to prefer changing teams (F3 and then F5) to balance things out.

I recommend that other people do the same! If you are a good player and you are on a team that is dominating. Hit F3 and then F5.

It would be great if the server had this built-in (as an option, of course). It doesn't seem like it would be too difficult to program. It would involve some kind of user score tracking. It won't be perfect, but any effort at balancing teams is better than nothing.

Even better if the server keeps a log of the past past week of player activity and uses that information to provide balance.

I personally enjoy competing against top guys, even if the guys are out-pinging me, but I can easily say that my favorite games are those that have really balanced competition, where the scores are really close and it is back and forth. That pushes me to be a better player.

What I don't like is when there are four good players with low ping versus just me and 3 completely new players. Then it's not a very enjoyable game. I like being an underdog, but sometimes it is just crazy, where I'm spending most of my time looking for a weapon, and I am going back and forth between offense and defense.

When playing with new players, teammates can work against you without intending to. An example of this is when they take all of the weapons in the base, even the ones they don't need, and then they die 5 seconds later. Meanwhile, I'm standing next to them and I only have a shotgun, and I'm supposed to fight off four guys attacking the base with nex and rockets. Newer teammates can be one of the biggest challenges in Nexuiz CTF. If teams are very unbalanced, then it can seem like your own teammates are working for the opposing team at times (not purposefully, of course...they are just new to the game).

So please... if you are a good player.... have a heart...have a spine...press F3 and F5 often. Until Nexuiz has this built in, make it your responsibility to balance the teams.

I also agree with what GreenMarine said in his last post.

"smartbalance"...sounds good to me.

Of course this will need a though algorithm, since there can be many exceptions (e.g. uneven number of skilled players, etc.).

As you suggest, the hard part is to implement this during the game as players join while a game is in progress. Your suggestion about waiting for someone to die might not work well, because you would have to wait for the magical moment when those two players are dead at the same time in order to swap them between teams. I don't see that happening.

Perhaps a 5 second warning would be nice...

"You are about to switch teams for balanced gameplay.... 5, 4, 3, 2, 1..."

Dokujisan wrote:I agree with many points in this thread, and I wanted to add my 2...er....15 cents or something.

I've been playing Nexuiz for the past month or two. On that popular CTF server (Elite CTF or something, it's the same one everyone plays on). Lately, I've typically been one of the top scorers, on average. Though I have higher ping than most (150+ usually) and I have limited hardware and play on the lowest graphics settings. Still, I've managed to get pretty competitive at Nexuiz in a short time.

Congrats... and welcome

Dokujisan wrote:As a person who can hold his own in Nexuiz, it absolutely bothers me if teams are not balanced. I don't like being on the dominant team, and I don't really like feeling like it is only me versus four low-pinging, dominant players. If I am on the dominating team, I tend to prefer changing teams (F3 and then F5) to balance things out.

That is really the best way but, as has been said, common sense ain't that common.

Dokujisan wrote:I recommend that other people do the same! If you are a good player and you are on a team that is dominating. Hit F3 and then F5.

It would be great if the server had this built-in (as an option, of course). It doesn't seem like it would be too difficult to program. It would involve some kind of user score tracking. It won't be perfect, but any effort at balancing teams is better than nothing.

Even better if the server keeps a log of the past past week of player activity and uses that information to provide balance.

Haven't studiedthe code but I imagine that would be impossible with the current setup. Not because of any coding as such, just because the server doesn't keep track of who you are. I've had about 5 screen names in the past few months so how would the server know who I am?

Part of the attraction of nex is that anyone can join and 'jump straight in'. If we had some kind of joining routine like sauerbraten, (IIRC), it means that some people won't bother which would be a shame.

Dokujisan wrote:I personally enjoy competing against top guys, even if the guys are out-pinging me, but I can easily say that my favorite games are those that have really balanced competition, where the scores are really close and it is back and forth. That pushes me to be a better player.

What I don't like is when there are four good players with low ping versus just me and 3 completely new players. Then it's not a very enjoyable game. I like being an underdog, but sometimes it is just crazy, where I'm spending most of my time looking for a weapon, and I am going back and forth between offense and defense.

When playing with new players, teammates can work against you without intending to. An example of this is when they take all of the weapons in the base, even the ones they don't need, and then they die 5 seconds later. Meanwhile, I'm standing next to them and I only have a shotgun, and I'm supposed to fight off four guys attacking the base with nex and rockets. Newer teammates can be one of the biggest challenges in Nexuiz CTF. If teams are very unbalanced, then it can seem like your own teammates are working for the opposing team at times (not purposefully, of course...they are just new to the game).

Tell me about it!

Dokujisan wrote:So please... if you are a good player.... have a heart...have a spine...press F3 and F5 often. Until Nexuiz has this built in, make it your responsibility to balance the teams.

Sometimes it's difficult. I played a game with XanT today and (s)he/it was on top form. In the end I suggested the other 5-6 players all play against (s)he/it. Worked OK until somebody broke ranks and joined him/her/it.

In the end I did my new trick of joining the 'winning' side and playing as a fifth columnist, blasting my new team-mates. I told them I was going to do it if they didn't even the sides up but they didn't react so... funnily enough they didn't seem to see the funny side. No sense of humour, some people.

Heres a scenario that happens preddy often to me. I join a game, join the loosig team and teams balance out better. Next game my team is winning, but not w/o a fight, ie its preddy balanced. 10-50 point from winning somone join, get on my team and offsets the balance. Now for the sake of this argument easy lets say im the best player there. Should i now join the other team and loose a game i worked hard to win, or stay on the team and win easy?

This is a oversimplification since its often hard to say "whos best", peticulary when facoring in how ppl work together. But i hope you get my point.

And do remeber if every game was *perfectly* balanced every game would end on timeout with the score 0-0. i dont think we want that..

At times i find myself in a (team or no team) game against an oponent(s) that clearly outclasses me. Most of the time i rely like those game since thay encurage me to improve and i usualy learn a new trick or two.

The thing that does get my temper into the red zone is ppl w/o manners who curse and swear when gettin fragged or worse yet rack down on ppl they frag (Buhu you sux blabla). That stuff ruines the game far more then a round or two with unbalanced teams IMO.


With that said a better autobalancing system would be nice indeed. I cant see any realy good way to do this w/o a system with registerd users tho. Another option would be not to let anyone join in the middle of a game, ie they stay spectators untill the next game. This would perhaps make it more easy for the players themsels to find a good team balance.

Definitely a registered user system would be ideal, but I don't see that happening.

I guess if you switch names then you would be offsetting the team balancing code because the server wouldn't recognize you. I mean, certainly people could screw up the balancing code if they wanted to, but why would they do that purposefully? At least there would be some kind of balancing effort made by the server. If people want to go out of their way to have unbalanced teams, then I suppose that is their choice. I don't see people doing that right now though...switching teams so the teams are unbalanced.

Should i now join the other team and loose a game i worked hard to win, or stay on the team and win easy?

I did this three times last night. I lost two of those matches. So I guess you know my answer