New Autobalance

[seddrik]

switched a LOT more.
x5 for one or maximum two rounds
Team switches so much u hardly can develop a strategy for handling the opposing team like before.
Before the patch (after the first round) you knew: ah there is this extreme good cav on the enemy team, have an eye on him. Or there is this guy to stick with, and so on. Now that is totally gone, and when I get switched 4 times on 1 map I don't even bother to think on which side I am and where I go, just charge and be done.
Maps last very often to 6+ rounds because of constant losses switches.  Not enjoyable to drag out the game like this.

Some swings sweem slower too... are we gonna just make all weapons to the same thing same speed? no challenge?
Simpler solution would be to NOT mess with the weapons constantly, but make leveling a little faster.  Then ppl wouldnt be low level as long and the diff would be more the level of a persons skill.  I loved the old system of being able to get to 40s in level.  Even as a peasant it was like "ON NO!" here comes the boss... but taking them down was awesome.  And it gave u something to really work for.  Now when u get 31... u might as well just regen/repeasant urself.  Going beyond 32 just... eh.

Please don't take away all the variety in the game.  Thats what makes it challenging and the enjoyment lasts longer.

[CrazyCracka420]

Exactly. Team scores look more even, but generally what's been happening is the biggest clan group is winning (as they did before), the difference is they switch sides now and so it looks like it's more even. Additionally what this means for the non-clan people is that rather than how before where if you got put on the clan team you could get up to a 3x, 4x or even 5x and actually get some good exp and gold, you'll be on the clan team, then off, then on, then off, etc. This results in larger clans still keeping x5 constantly, but rather than having the non-clan or small clan people get decent multipliers every other map, they all sit at 1x and 2x.

edit: Just something else I'd like to add. Teamswitching constantly makes it impossible to form any kind of counter to the other team's strategy. For example, last night got a map where the other team had 2 cav that were steamrolling our team, so I grab my longspear... and got switched to the cav team. Or another where one team kept camping a roof, so we grab ladders to get up to them, and half our team gets switched and we have no ladders.

*blushes* ah thanks!

all kidding aside, that last long spear kill you had on me last night was only because I was logging off for the night, I never would have rode through there otherwise

[The_Bloody_Nine]

switched a LOT more.
x5 for one or maximum two rounds
Team switches so much u hardly can develop a strategy for handling the opposing team like before.
Before the patch (after the first round) you knew: ah there is this extreme good cav on the enemy team, have an eye on him. Or there is this guy to stick with, and so on. Now that is totally gone, and when I get switched 4 times on 1 map I don't even bother to think on which side I am and where I go, just charge and be done.
Maps last very often to 6+ rounds because of constant losses switches.  Not enjoyable to drag out the game like this.

Some swings sweem slower too... are we gonna just make all weapons to the same thing same speed? no challenge?
Simpler solution would be to NOT mess with the weapons constantly, but make leveling a little faster.  Then ppl wouldnt be low level as long and the diff would be more the level of a persons skill.  I loved the old system of being able to get to 40s in level.  Even as a peasant it was like "ON NO!" here comes the boss... but taking them down was awesome.  And it gave u something to really work for.  Now when u get 31... u might as well just regen/repeasant urself.  Going beyond 32 just... eh.

Please don't take away all the variety in the game.  Thats what makes it challenging and the enjoyment lasts longer.

hell of a post.

[von_felty]

I find the new autobalance annoying as hell as it feels like I'm being thrown to a different side every round and there is no sense of team. With the old system you had a 50/50 chance of getting a x5, but now it seems like its a 0% chance as you are switched to a different side each time. Its really bad on siege as some maps are overly unfair to offense or defense depending on map.

I don't mind being on the losing side as long as its consistent.

[The_Bloody_Nine]

mh, me thinks autobalance starts being an independent existance and does what it wants.

I only played two hours since chadz said to check again and in that two hours I switched 1-2 times maximum per map, was very good to play again.

[Elmokki]

The current autobalance seems rather close to the old. It might be a placebo effect but teams in general are slightly more balanced and 5-0 win streaks are a bit rarer tho.

[CrazyCracka420]

The current autobalance seems rather close to the old. It might be a placebo effect but teams in general are slightly more balanced and 5-0 win streaks are a bit rarer tho.

The autobalance system is clearly fucked up.  The way it balances (at least I've noticed) is that when one side is winning, it will throw everyone that's good onto the other side and that side will completely dominate the round.

As an example, one side was easily winning the map then the round ended and it switched teams around.  The team that was winning had 3 people with 7 for kills, and the rest of the team had 3, 2 and 1 kills.  The other side had the first three people with 15 kills, and the rest of the team all had almost double the kills of the previous winning team.  If  you looked at the scoreboard it was obvious the autobalance just put all the people getting kills on the team it wanted to "make stronger".  Of course the team that had been losing won the round easily.

Autobalance doesn't mean when one side is losing you switch people over so they can't lose.  It means making both sides about equally balanced.  I think the equation is basically just trying to keep the wins and losses of both sides about even, and not actually trying to make both sides "as equal as possible". 

Also to the one posting about siege balance, it's always been that way where it will switch you from attackers to defenders (usually at least once per map) so it's hard to keep a multiplier going because the maps are very unbalanced.  Most siege maps have a clear advantage for the attackers or defenders.

[Thomek]

The autobalance is very good, and very clever.. Still think it could be moar clever though, but that would require research into following areas and quite a lot of guesswork on top of that.

Why I think x5 Rolls happen are several factors:

1. Map imbalances (They are not symmetrical, they are not thoroughly playtested for balance etc. etc..)
2. People quit when they loose their x.
3. More people quit when they get on a loosing team (And the autobalance doesn't have a chance to react because people quit after they spawn..) 
4. Players from Winning Team gets shifted to loosing team, but they have to "Learn the map" from the other side from scratch. I often get switched and try a flanking run just to find I run into some cav highway, archer nest or just die from some xbower who has been hiding in the same bush for 5 rounds. (Which I didn't know because I was on his team)    (This could be fixed by removing some weighting from a switched player the first round he is switched)
5. Class imbalance..  Dunno if this is now rectified though.

It is certainly not because the "Best" players are all on one team.. At least not with half full or full server.

[von_felty]

mh, me thinks autobalance starts being an independent existance and does what it wants.

I only played two hours since chadz said to check again and in that two hours I switched 1-2 times maximum per map, was very good to play again.

Hrm.... In my last game on NA_1 server I was switched every round during an entire game of battle. I got 2x twice and then got switched to the losing team.

[Grumbs]

The autobalance is very good, and very clever.. Still think it could be moar clever though, but that would require research into following areas and quite a lot of guesswork on top of that.

Why I think x5 Rolls happen are several factors:

1. Map imbalances (They are not symmetrical, they are not thoroughly playtested for balance etc. etc..)
2. People quit when they loose their x.
3. More people quit when they get on a loosing team (And the autobalance doesn't have a chance to react because people quit after they spawn..) 
4. Players from Winning Team gets shifted to loosing team, but they have to "Learn the map" from the other side from scratch. I often get switched and try a flanking run just to find I run into some cav highway, archer nest or just die from some xbower who has been hiding in the same bush for 5 rounds. (Which I didn't know because I was on his team)    (This could be fixed by removing some weighting from a switched player the first round he is switched)
5. Class imbalance..  Dunno if this is now rectified though.

It is certainly not because the "Best" players are all on one team.. At least not with half full or full server.

Another big one is that people start using cheaper equipment when they're losing, and the winning team will start using their best equipment. When people feel their team is on a roll they also can start playing more aggressively and launch strong attacks together

Maybe x1 multi is too low for people? Could be better to have more gold given at low multi but still keep a good incentive for people to play as a team and win rounds

Personally though I prefer to get stuck with x1 multi sometimes rather than have teams juggled around too much. Better x1 multi wouldn't be unwelcome tho

[bonekuukkeli]

Last couple days for me it have been different than after "new system" was introduced. Before I used to get switched all the time and it kept it nicely balanced (by doing lot's of annoying switching sure) but now it feels just same as old system was before. I might get switched once after first round and not once after that. And often... I see 5-0, 4-1 situations again like it used to be.

Did they change it back to old? I can't notice any difference here. At least balance-wise it's same, other team dominating most of rounds.

[CrazyCracka420]

It is certainly not because the "Best" players are all on one team.. At least not with half full or full server.

And you're factually wrong, and I can tell you that because I've experienced and witnessed it multiple times.  It's usually most prevalent on the 2nd or 3rd round.  If team 1 wins, and team 2 loses the first round I've witnessed a lot of times where the teams get divided into team 2 getting all the players who have the most kills, and team 1 getting the players who have a lot less kills.  I've seen where team 2 had at least 40-50 kills total, and team 1 had under 20. 

My point is that I think the algorithm being used only tries to make it so that team 1 and team 2 have equal number of wins each round.  I don't think it's making an effort to keep the teams equally balanced, i think it's only trying to keep the wins equal.  Which leads to some really unbalanced teams (if only for a round). 

[BADPLAYERold]

I played for about 4 hours nonstop on eu1 tonight, except for the first banner-related switch after the first round on a map I was never ever switched from one team to another. I was always one of the best concerning kill/death ratio, and I was on x5 mostly. Bam.

Do you use a banner alot of other people use?
I'm usually the only person on the server with my banner and I am switched almost every round (whether my team wins or loses) and it makes it incredibly hard to keep a multiplier.

[Tears of Destiny]

Do you use a banner alot of other people use?
I'm usually the only person on the server with my banner

Wat? Hmm, this must be rather new.

[BADPLAYERold]

Wat? Hmm, this must be rather new.

Not really.. most LLJK except me and Smoothrich only play Strategus and not cRPG itself.
And when too many LLJK come online I switch to a different banner anyway