Auto Balance

[DrkEagle]

Hey, just from a quick observation, the auto balance settings seem a little out of wack. I noticed the teams being auto balanced like on Dustbowl after a stage being capped maybe too fast, or being held the entire round and it auto balancing after only 1 round. I think the duration should be bumped up to maybe 2 rounds. And on Badwater, I remember defending the cart before the second cap point, and when the round ended, we got balanced. IE: The same team that held the other team at the second cap point didn't get a chance to attack with the same team, it got balanced.

[Dave]

Unfortunately the auto-scramble plugin doesn't let you specify after how many rounds to scramble. The best we can do is set it to scramble after a full round (X stages). Also, the Rotation server has much fewer regulars (more noobs) than Payload so the auto-scramble settings will be more strict. But we'll take a look at the settings on each server and see about adjusting them.

[MegaMouseGW]

If anything I don't think the auto balance is strict enough. Several times i have been on the rotation server and chosen my team only to be OWNED by the other. The auto balance never kicked in those times. I am not sure how it works myself but it is not fair sometimes at :'( all.

[Goofball666]

So far it seems to just want DrkEagle and myself on different teams.

[DrkEagle]

lol I got auto balanced earlier and I didn't even die! I was in the middle of killin' and I randomly get changed! Sucked!!

[Plasma]

Hehe. Yea, the auto-balance plugin can sometimes do that. Especially on Rotation.
We're still relying a lot on quickplayers for traffic on Rotation, so skill level is often low, and that means a lot of auto-balancing. And it will try to put the best players on separate teams.

[DrkEagle]

I thought quickplay didn't connect players to 32 person servers, only 24 slot...?


Edit:

I increased the max number of players above 24. Will that cause my server to not receive quickplay matches?

Not entirely. The quickplay system looks at the max reported number of players. (It does not check any tags.) If the max player count is higher than 24, a scoring penalty is added. The penalty amount depends on how far over 24 the max players is set. It is relatively small for maxplayers=25, and increases up to maxplayers=32. If the max player count is set above 32, the server is completely excluded. We add this penalty because the game has been tuned for 24 players. Increasing the number of players beyond 24 can have negative effects on performance and gameplay balance.

The quickplay system uses the server browser under the hood, so the player counts (both current and maximum) it uses in its decision making are the same player counts shown for your server in the server browser.

Ahh, not entirely excluded, but penalized.  (lol --> penalized

[Hadden]

We have a plugin on the server that changes the slots to 24 or 32 on the fly.

If the server has emptied, it reverts back to 24 slots. Once X number of players is reached it changes the cvar back to 32.

Dave or Plasma can comment more on it for you if they wish

[DrkEagle]

Yeah, I know about those plugins. It's not if the server empties, it's if it drops below 24 players it changes to 24 listing then back to 32 on the 25th person.

[Plasma]

Right, there's a quickplay penalty above 24 players up to 32. 33 means you're not listed, 32 means you're listed but with a big penalty. I don't think it matters, we like 32 player servers that's the reason we run them, quickplay rules or not. As for traffic, I think 32 players is also the best solution.

We do use a dynamic slot plugin, that's something a lot of servers do. It's more a psychological effect than anything really. You're less likely to join a server with 10/32 than a server with 10/24. That's why we scale back down the visible slots when there are less than 22 players on. It doesn't change anything for quickplay though, we still get the 32 players penalty, it only affects the server browser. I think it's a good plugin, and it doesn't hurt anybody. I like this better instead of running bots or fake player count plugins (I hate servers that run both as well).

[Cirno]

If the max player count is set above 32, the server is completely excluded. We add this penalty because the game has been tuned for 24 players. Increasing the number of players beyond 24 can have negative effects on performance and gameplay balance.

>Valve
>Balance

HAHAHA, no. Nice try, Valve.

[MegaMouseGW]

Plasma mentions that he hates bots. My feelings on them is they have a place and that place is in achievement servers. I have been on a couple servers that used bots and didn't have any fun at all. The bots are very predictable and easy to get behind. And again as far as the auto balance tonight was a real hoot. I think it stuck all the good players on one team and the noobs on the other. it was total ownage tonight for one team.

[Plasma]

Bots have their purposes. I wouldn't mind playing against 4-5 bots when the servers are empty to try to get players to join. But it's not a good solution because usually players don't want to play bots, and then will assume we are running bots all the time.

To reiterate, we will never run bots or fake player counts. The number of players showing up on the server browser is the number of real players on the server playing (or spectating).