I don't know if this is a problem in EU where the siege servers might regularly have more players, but in NA, our siege servers rarely go above 40 players. With lower player numbers especially, maps heavily favor the attacking team, regardless of the autobalances attempts to balance player prowess. This is a significant issue and is limiting the potential of NA siege since victory and multiplier has more to do with spawning on the attacking side than on actual player skill or teamwork. I believe that correcting this issue would also make siege more popular as rewards are more closely related to good play rather than a coin toss.
Now that we have our wonderful WSE, is it not possible to adjust the previously hard-coded 30 second defender respawn timer? In my mind, there are two major factors that are not taken into account in the current system:
1. Number of players: Lower numbers of players in siege generally seems to favor attackers, while larger numbers swings the balance more toward defense. The defender spawn timer should be scaled to the number of players, ie, shorter defender spawn timers with fewer players.
2. Map balance: Maps vary greatly in terms of how much they favor attackers or defenders. This could be resolved if it were possible to pair each map with an autobalancing defender spawn timer in which attacker victories reduced the map's defender spawn timer and defender victories increased the map's defender spawn time. If this could be done, then over time a map's inherent asymmetries would be factored in and siege games would become more balanced and competitive over time as the spawn timer reaches some sort of equilibrium. This has the added benefit of making mapmaking easier since currently good mapmakers must be very aware of conforming to the 30 second defender spawn timer when trying to balance their map. If they know that the defender spawn timer can be adjusted post-hoc to balance their map, mapmakers not only have an easier time, but have a lot more room for creativity in their siege maps.
A very basic defender spawn timer system could simply adjust defender spawn timer based on attacker or defender victory on the spot. With two major factors involved, this may not adequately adjust for changing numbers of players, though I still believe it would be a great improvement to the current system. For example, "Hailes Castle" would start with the typical 30 second spawn timer but whenever attackers win, this is adjusted down by x seconds and whenever defenders win, it is adjusted upward by x seconds.
A more sophisticated system might be able to separately factor player number and map balance and account for the interaction between a particular map and player numbers since different maps likely have different scaling between player number and balance. You could simply store multiple autobalanced defender spawn timers for each map based on player number. For example, whenever "Hailes Castle" has 20-30 players, you use a defender spawn timer specific to map and player number, as opposed to "Hailes Castle" when it has 30-40 players or "Jameyyed Castle" when it has 20-30 players.
The degree to which attacker wins decrease defender spawn timer and defender wins increase it determines the volatility of the spawn timer. Ideally, you'd have high volatility for newer maps, but you could lower volatility as time goes on. In this way, new maps more rapidly approach some sort of equilibrium and older maps don't oscillate wildly in spawn timers. For example, "Hailes Castle" at 20-30 players would start with the typical 30 second spawn timer but whenever attackers win, this is adjusted down by x seconds and whenever defenders win, it is adjusted upward by x seconds. At the start, x, which represents the volatility would be higher, say 5 seconds, but as time goes on and "Hailes Castle" is autobalanced more and more at 20-30 players, x would decrease until it hit 1 second.
To implement this idea you need the following capabilities:
- change defender spawn timer
- take player number and attacker or defender win as input
- store defender spawn timers and associate them with specific maps and player numbers.
With WSE, I don't see why this cannot be done. I would be happy to design the functions, I just need player number and attacker/defender win for input, and defender spawn timer as output.
tl;dr Using the number of players and whether or not attackers or defenders won, autobalance the defender spawn timer so that it takes into account both the asymmetries of a map and the number of players on the server.
