View Full Version : The Once and Future RETARDED BALANCER.
Scourge
10-24-2015, 01:53 AM
This topic has been done to death, but the problem persists.
Play any game for too long, and someone will join a team that can completely change the outcome of the game. That's fine - it's luck of the draw, it's to be expected.
But the way in which this typically happens doesn't make a lot of sense. What happens if a team is strong already and just has fewer players or had a rough start? The way players are placed in games is based first and foremost on the number of players, and then on the overall performance of the team in that particular game - and not on historical performance of all the players in each team, or the overall effect the player joining might have on the game's balance going forth. What that leads to is situations like this:
2614
This is an especially frustrating problem when the join order is such that very strong players get put on one team, and novices on the other, or the balance completely fails to take into account how fragging ability is distributed among players. I think a better approach than what's being used now would be to have stronger players get held back from playing, or switched from their current team in a way that restores balance, rather than join order - assuming they don't have a heavy investment in items. (I once got balanced after rejoining from a crash, losing two nukes and an amp that I was holding).
We've had lots of good upgrades and fixes to Siege lately. I'd be happy to donate for a good balancer alone.
HIGH[+]AdRiaN
10-24-2015, 02:05 AM
I think i already suggested this before:
IF the teams has the same player count: The next to join should player in weaker team (dont matter who join), so the weaker team will have +1 player (as usual)
Them:
If the next who join the server have the same skill (with a margin of +/-10 cookies) or to be weaker, this new player should keep in the team that he joined (the stronger team, cuz this team has -1 player)
but
If the next who join the server to be more than 10 cookies stronger, that last player who joined in the weaker team, should be auto switched for stronger team (that previously had -1 player), and the stronger, between these 2 guys shold play in losing team.
That is enough, dont need keep auto switching the players whole match.
So, Red is winning, Blue is Losing, both teams has 10 players.
Kermit join the server, and he will play for blue. Then Blaze join the server, so kermit is auto switched for Red (rip), and Blaze join in blue team.
_________________
I think this is not hard to do. Looks to be simple programming codes.
evilserpentman
10-24-2015, 03:34 AM
Balancing doesn't really work on this game in general, considering the rate names get changed and the fact IPs in our modern world are hardly static.
I agree that balancing would work better in an in-game context rather than a history context. Shit, I have hundreds of hours and still play like jizz pie, yet due to the amount of points I've banked and the amount of times I've won, I'm worth way more according to the balancer than I am in reality.
There's not going to be a perfect system, but when people are intentionally sitting out because they'd fuck up the balance or stack on purpose so they get an easy win (in a game that literally doesn't matter, mind you), there's a problem.
Maybe just do a dice roll on who gets switched on a points/time ratio eg, no-one over 200 points by 30 mins gets re-balanced. Would save taking a huge amount of strength from one team and would do more for balancing than if a skilled player was the last to join in most circumstances.
Cella_V2
10-24-2015, 03:56 AM
Would encourage noobs to build nukes before sc/shp probably if they came to know thats the way it works.
On a map like simplex you can also just save your nukes for overtime since its pretty much a waste of time nuking in regular time which ends up not getting around 200 points in 30 aswell. This basically also goes for people that like to defend their base with their dicks for as long as the map goes, calling out Mr. Nice, Ish_Ka_booble and many others. They just wont get good scores like that.
Doesnt really look like a solution to me.
HIGH[+]AdRiaN
10-24-2015, 11:20 AM
Would encourage noobs to build nukes before sc/shp probably if they came to know thats the way it works.
On a map like simplex you can also just save your nukes for overtime since its pretty much a waste of time nuking in regular time which ends up not getting around 200 points in 30 aswell. This basically also goes for people that like to defend their base with their dicks for as long as the map goes, calling out Mr. Nice, Ish_Ka_booble and many others. They just wont get good scores like that.
Doesnt really look like a solution to me.
Simplex, niven, butch and other maps is completly useless nuke the core in public, or you destroy the defenses, or wait the last seconds for use the nukes.
Chamberly
10-24-2015, 05:20 PM
Higor have a Cacus Team Balancer but peoples avoid it so the original problem gonna exist anyway.
Scourge
10-24-2015, 05:49 PM
Higor have a Cacus Team Balancer but peoples avoid it so the original problem gonna exist anyway.
What do you mean by "avoid" it?
HIGH[+]AdRiaN
10-24-2015, 06:27 PM
This is that balancer that auto switched the player like 10 times in each match?
Higor
10-24-2015, 06:47 PM
AdRiaN;100724]This is that balancer that auto switched the player like 10 times in each match?
The balancer has been upgraded a whole lot since then, but... it has one little flaw:
It removes all switching control from Nexgen and I never added the switch queue that allows two players to exchange themselves among teams.
Great, now I remembered what's missing from it.
--- Updated ---
I think I'll also add an inverse exponent (user defined) to the strength measures, so ATB-to-CTB strengths get passed from - to like this:
100 -> 100
99 -> 97
90 -> 75
60 -> 30
30 -> 20
20 -> 17
I gotta write this down somewhere...
HIGH[+]AdRiaN
10-25-2015, 12:34 AM
The balancer has been upgraded a whole lot since then, but... it has one little flaw:
It removes all switching control from Nexgen and I never added the switch queue that allows two players to exchange themselves among teams.
Great, now I remembered what's missing from it.
--- Updated ---
I think I'll also add an inverse exponent (user defined) to the strength measures, so ATB-to-CTB strengths get passed from - to like this:
100 -> 100
99 -> 97
90 -> 75
60 -> 30
30 -> 20
20 -> 17
I gotta write this down somewhere...
We cant just try the system that i suggested?
AdRiaN;100739']We cant just try the system that i suggested?
The system you suggested....we haven't fully tried the one from Higor. I'm all for trying again but the fundamental issues around client identification need to be addressed first.
'On the fly' balancing won't work due to the nature of siege. You might be thinking 'I'd be fine being switched' but if it came to a point where your team was underdog, started winning after a massive wrestling match and you get switched due to your performance? You can never have on the fly balancing. Nor will you ever get a fully balanced match unless teams are locked and we add a 'joins' queue. The joins queue the balancer could pick the best person to join.
Balancer should be tied to ASC id instead of name.
Chamberly
10-26-2015, 05:19 PM
ASC id
ASC id can be cheated just like Nexgen id can be changed... if you didn't know that.
Scourge
10-28-2015, 04:07 AM
ASC id can be cheated just like Nexgen id can be changed... if you didn't know that.
What information is available to the server that is specific to a player? Is there nothing that can't be changed, at least not easily?
francoise
12-24-2015, 12:49 PM
La problématique de l'auto balance des équipes est complexe.
Souvent lorsqu'une équipe est "trop forte", le flux des départs de joueurs devient important dans le camp de l'équipe perdante. S'il n'est pas compensé par l'entrée de nouveaux joueurs, la partie devient sans intérêt et termine à 5 contre 3 (par ex.)
Le fait que les joueurs sur "siege" ne puissent se déplacer d'eux-mêmes est aussi un gros soucis (bien entendu, il faut que le joueur qui se déplace ne déséquilibre pas la partition entre les équipes). Dans ce cas de figure, on pourrait admettre qu'un joueur puisse se déplacer dans l'hypothèse où il manque au moins un joueur dans l'équipe faible. Ca m'est arrivé à plusieurs reprises, les faibles manquaient d'un joueur, mais je ne pouvais les rejoindre. Ceci devrait pouvoir se corriger au niveau de la programmation de l'autobalance...
Moskva
12-24-2015, 01:46 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_mDTLphIVY
][X][~FLuKE~][X][
12-24-2015, 07:29 PM
One name, no aliasing on the siege server, pug it doesn't matter. System can then be implemented unique to that players name. Problem solved.....
Groundhog day subject......... most players DGAF
Higor
12-24-2015, 07:45 PM
What the hell I never get to play on Adrian's or Dangerboy's team anyways, aliasing or not.
On the other side I'm way more likely to play with Camilo than against him...
Balancer does do funky things.
(bO.o)b
12-28-2015, 05:32 PM
Certain players join a game and Suicide over and over to lose cookies, thus playing the system.
For this reason (and the fact that certain players do better on certain maps), the balancer will never truly work.
I'd turn it off if this was my server. It makes as many problems as it solves.
A better mod would be something that Randomly Scrambles players just before a game starts, so at least we could be assured that a stacked team from the previous game will not carry over to the next. :cow:
Don't worry. There is (I think) a balancer in the works which takes 'map strength' into account too.
DontWorryBeHappy
02-06-2016, 07:10 AM
A few months ago I stumbled upon something in the AutoTeamBalancer.ini but forgot about it. Or maybe I posted it before?
ATB readme.txt made me curious.
Especially the standard values of
MinSecondsBeforeRebalance=20
bNeverRebalanceWhenTeamsAreEven=False
ScoringMethod=2
seem to be worth fiddling with.
A lot of times the weaker team gets two players extra like 15vs17 or something like that. I think this is correct and not a fucking bug and thus should not be broken and forced into 16vs16. When I look up mutate strength extra... well, mostly I cry.
--
We are using ATB, right?
Besides that I'm all for Mr Higor and his new balancer. It cannot be worse than ATB. :asslicker
A lot of times the weaker team gets two players extra like 15vs17 or something like that.
Clever apes on the pub server continuously "balance" teams. SO pretty impossible when they don't let the balancer do it's job.
UT-Sniper-SJA94
02-06-2016, 08:21 AM
There has been a bug for the last year or so, the balancer kills the second to last player who joined, and moves no one.
DontWorryBeHappy
02-06-2016, 09:20 AM
Clever apes on the pub server continuously "balance" teams. SO pretty impossible when they don't let the balancer do it's job.
Yeah, I know :(
But I think bNeverRebalanceWhenTeamsAreEven=True is exactly what would prevent this. When the balancer thinks 15vs17 is even no manual !t override is possible or am I misunderstanding this whole thing?
TimTim
02-06-2016, 11:42 AM
Some of those settings don't work correctly at all lol.
!T is separate and a nexgen function. Which is why Higor's teambalancer totally overrides it.
DontWorryBeHappy
02-06-2016, 02:06 PM
Ok, thought it was worth a try since the description of the variables seemed so straightforward...
I'll take a look at it at GitHub then and hope for a release in the near future :)
4.2.3