I hear ya, which is why I added the last poll options about team balance, exp system, game modes, etc...
They are easily bigger issues than specific balance issues atm...but I fear that the crpg devs have moved on from making any major changes like that and will just be doing that in Melee instead now.
Ah, I forgot in my last post that one of my misplaced paragraphs rambled on and on about banner balancers... thanks for the reminder. Basically, I have mixed feelings with the damn broken thing. I hate that it could never have balanced gallonigher and myself, even if we were the only 2 from our clan in a 20-man server on the same team. This was one of the major reason he left... why bother being in a clan with your buddies if you are never on the same team? While I am sure the rest of the server was glad, it still really sucked being in our position. Ever since he left the clan, we have been on the same team as often, if not MORE often than before... makes no sense. On the flip side, I was really glad that if we both had really high scores relative to the rest of the population that we were split, since the balancer tried to preserve balance by splitting us. Okay, A for effort, unfortunately it doesn't do so consistently at all. The only time the score balancer ever takes precedence over the banner balancer seems to be when you have one or two stand out players. For example when KUTT stacks siege with 8 or so players at once, they will consistently stay on one team since they have a whole range of skill sets. EVen if the server has only 20 players, odds are almost all of them are on one team, save for maybe 1 or 2 tops. The problem here is, while a some of their members might not be topping the scoreboard, that could be for a variety of reasons... perhaps they are camping the flag, in which case they are arguably doing more for their team than the ones topping the boards. Or maybe they simply aren't as good as several other members of their team or the opposing team... having an off day or whatever. And yet the balancer keeps them together, since the numbers don't show their incredible value. Having 8 members in one TS to coordinate while you are playing against pubbies is a huuuuuuuuuuuuge advantage. Having 8 members of the same clan, no matter how skilled at combat each member is, is incredibly helpful. Especially when the server is so sparsely populated as it often is. Heck, even when not in TS, i just naturally work better with my clanmates since we all know how each other play by now, and how to best complement them.
While splitting larger banner stacks in half is pretty lame (I know first hand) it isn't all that bad. I've had just as much, if not more fun fighting against clanmates (since that allows for more good humored trash talking of each other) as alongside them. When a whole clan is together, they tend to actually play seriously, use strategy, etc, since you've got to "represent your clan well." What clan, when dominating an entire team wouldn't try at least a little harder than normal so that they don't get stomped by the pubbies?
TL;DR: Would be nice if sometimes banner balance took into account the fact that a large presence on one banner has inherent advantages. In siege often times one side is down by 2-3 players... this wouldn't be so bad if it was an entire clan vs. a slightly larger team. Unfortunately this isn't the case.
Edit: Huh... Elindork... can't believe I never thought of that before. I will have to keep that one in mind...
Poll