A not so subtle whine, yet maybe not whine but something subject for discussion.

[Tristan]

Generally I love wine but hate whine.
Cheesy? Maybe, but true.

Yet circumstances on the servers need be discussed as there are currently some problems. Most of might not be fixable, others I might not want to fix.

I currently see some tendencies who is winning rounds on the public server:

1) The team with most members of an organized clan who does good tactics and the rest of the team follow orders.
2) The team with most cavalry.
3) The team with most archers.

That could lead to the easy conclusion that banner balance, cavalry and archers are OP. But I do not believe this to be true. Banner Balance has some build-in imbalances but in my oipinion the fun they bring far outweighs this. Cavalry is next to useless in strategus and has a far harder time against organized masses of infantry. Still very good in tournaments though. And archers work mostly as support now. Rarely being the ones with the most kills.

Yet day after day we see more and more servers losing the "fun" because a team has the better cavalry simply pawning the random team with no tactics, especially if that cav is supported by decent archery.

I love Banner balance simply because it allows me and my clan to play together.
And only when we are doing so can we counter the huge advantage cav has against unorganized masses.

What do I want to do about it? (TL;DR)

I'd like to hear if one thing is possible.

Could the team balance check if the player has a horse or strongbow/longbow/warbow equipped and take that into consideration when balance is made?

[Kafein]

Yes. It's rather silly to have all the cav in one team and all the archers in the other one. The map decides everything in those cases.

[MayPeX]

Sometimes banner balance can be a best, the first round seems to be the most balanced round in sense of randomness. After that banner balance can accidentally stack better players together. Though this is the majority of the time.

[Kafein]

Sometimes banner balance can be a best, the first round seems to be the most balanced round in sense of randomness. After that banner balance can accidentally stack better players together. Though this is the majority of the time.

There are usually more than one clan playing so pub vs clan matches rarely occur. Some clans have better players and teamwork, but it heavily depends on the players themselves, who is connected etc. so I don't think banner balance is such a big problem.

[Spawny]

Yesterday I had great fun in the "Village by the river" map.

Pecores server, prime time >110 players.
My team had 6 cav: 1 1h/cav (me), 1 HA and 4 lancers.
The other team had GK clan stacked: 4 HA's, 2 other HA's and quite a number of lancers totaling to well over 10 cavalry.

Didn't pay much attention to infantry and archers, but I guess that was about equal.

Now, guess who won the map?

[MouthnHoof]

Generally I love wine but hate whine.
Cheesy? Maybe, but true.

I like cheese with the whine wine.

Could the team balance check if the player has a horse or strongbow/longbow/warbow equipped and take that into consideration when balance is made?[/b]

No a bad idea.
There are typical items that define a role. To select who to move between the teams could be made per category:
1. Select all the characters that spawned with a horse. If one team had much more than the other, move.
2. From the remaining of #1, select all those that spawned with a bow. If one team had much more than the other, move.
3. from the remaining of #2 (the rest of the riffraff infantry), If one team had much more than the other, move.

[okiN]

Cavalry is next to useless in strategus

Whaaaaat?

Somebody hasn't played in open field battles.

[Elerion]

Equally distributing player roles between the teams would help a lot. +1

[EponiCo]

Ah, Niko, thanks. I was under the same impression but then there were only two open field battles I could get into which weren't just a mess of 20 2h and archers spawnraping 500 tickets because the other side had no gear.

[Butan]

I had the same interrogation as you Aemaelius, but not the same conclusion.



I think it would be too bothersome to have a Banner Balance WITH a kind of Class System that would make the game more balanced in terms of numbers of footmen/archers/cavalry in each team.



How about adding a Class System Balance to EVERY SERVER that will exclusively balance the numbers of players having RANGED WEAPON and/or HORSES, without even thinking of the banner ?

Then every admin on every server would be able to choose between FUN MODE (banner balance, permits players to play along their comrades) AND SERIOUS MODE (class balance, permits everyone to play against a balanced team).



When the balancer banner fails SO MUCH that the fun isnt there anymore (like OP said, when a team has far more cav and/or archers), we would be able to switch to a more enjoyable balance, even if clanmates will have to kill each other (I think it's not too great a price when we are talking about a a 100 man server).

[Tristan]

Whaaaaat?

Somebody hasn't played in open field battles.

True 

Yet I doubt it with all the pike formations I am seeing in organized battles.

[okiN]

Ah, Niko, thanks. I was under the same impression but then there were only two open field battles I could get into which weren't just a mess of 20 2h and archers spawnraping 500 tickets because the other side had no gear.

I played in a number of open field battles in the DRZ-Fallen war, and cav dominated there at least as much as archers did, probably more.

[SchokoSchaf]

How about implementing a system that inlcudes the kill/death-ratio of players?
That would take out the possibility of really good players to get matched together in one team.
Plus, those of the cav players who at least decently know their job should have a rather positiv ratio as well and the others don't really bother anyway.
But I support the idea of gear-matched teams as well.

[Elerion]

What is the current team balance based on? XP?