Improved battle autobalance

[dont_you 70]

Usually I have a hard time finding a battle where the outcome is not obvious from beginning. Many battles consist of a team which has more players, better ranks and better equipment beating a smaller group of noobs and mults. Just after battle begins and becomes clear which team is the weakest one, smart players will leave from the weak team (or even change sides in non autobalance battles), then nobody will join the weak team leaving it with fewer players... all that in the first 90 seconds of the game.

 

Players behavior is logical, as rewards are better for winners and nobody likes to lose. The problem is that small differences in the perceived team strenght evolves very quickly (in a matter of seconds) into a disbalanced battle. As players joins a new created battle the team which is perceived as weakest will get, with current system, a player less until teams are fully completed, so that team will become *actually* weaker. One player less in a battle with (still) few players is a very significant disadvantage: it would be no surprise if the smaller team starts losing. Then the loser team will be perceived as weaker making the situation worse: some players will leave but nobody will join except noobs... the battle has just started but it is already ruined.

 

In real life casual matches of soccer where players join as they come it is very common to allow they to enter in pairs, the strongest player going to the weakest team. This works very well, as players are balanced by skill and both teams remains with an equal number of players. In tanki it would be difficult to balance by skill, and even more difficult to force a player to join one of the two teams. But I think that it is possible to balance at least the number of players.

 

I propose a simple improvement to current system: when both teams have the same number of players, allow to join only to the weakest team. This way the weak team will improve its situation briefly (balancing the battle) until another player joins the strongest team, at which point both teams will have an equal number of players.

 

The change is tiny, and smart players will of course keep spamming the join button of the strongest team. But at least both teams will tend to have the same size, which is very important just at beggining of battle.

 

This is actually not very different of what happens now, as it is rare to see both join buttons enabled. You spam click the disabled button of the team you want to join (it is disabled because it has more players) until another player joins the weak team, but you immediately join and the button of the strongest team becomes disabled again. The difference with my proposal is that the number of players remains balanced in the period waiting for a player interested to play in the weakest team.

 

By the way, how to determine which one is the weakest team? I would just take the sum of each player score as an indication of team performance, that rarely fails.

 

Pseudo code:

 

if (number_of_players_of_red_team < number_of_players_of_blue_team) {

    show_join_red_button    // red has less players

}

else if (number_of_players_of_red_team > number_of_players_of_blue_team) {

    show_join_blue_button   // blue has less players

}

else if (sum_of_scores_of_red_team < sum_of_scores_of_blue_team) {

    show_join_red_button    // equal number of players, but red is performing worse

}

else if (sum_of_scores_of_red_team > sum_of_scores_of_blue_team) {

    show_join_blue_button   // equal number of players, but blue is performing worse

}

else {

    show_both_buttons       // no players or no score (rarely exact performance)

}

 

 

Let me know what do you think about this Hazel. Cheers!

 

[r_GaIaxy2 8,611]

Good idea and good code :)

[Indra_Otsutsuki 329]

Hazel said that he is leaving from the I&S section totally because people were complaining that his comments were "sarcastic"

[dilsharox 2,395]

good idea

[i200000 717]

Hazel said that he is leaving from the I&S section totally because people were complaining that his comments were "sarcastic"

He often check this forum anyway, just not post any comment. 

 

+1