Heh - no last night I lost my rag 'cos of the imbalance and the resulting steam-roller(s).

That's not arrogance at all (seriously- to quote Innigo: "Youkeep using this word: I do not think it means what you think it means.") that's just observation. While new guys are sometimes a pain I'll take a team full of them over the usual point-grinding smacktards we seem to get more and more of each day.

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"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

Biggest bullshit I've read recently. Either force auto join teams or bring scramble back, manual balancing doesnt work at all, lets say you switch BAM to other team that has no medic, so now BAM plays demoman and they still have no medic, this may stop steamroll a bit, but will not make a game better for anyone, certainly not for player that just got switched. And by doing this you have probably unbalanced teams, so autoteam balance will be triggered in a moment, which will switch player with low score, but that can be like Balls who just joined - bang teams unbalanced again. I'm playing a lot on polish server, that has scrambler based on players request - afair you need 50% + 1 player votes to trigger scramble, it also can be triggered by an admin. Of course its random, but I rather have this, than unplayable rounds. Its better to scramble teams 2-3 times, than make people leave due to massive stack. And its happening a lot - most of the time you see 5-10 Spa members on a server, 10 regulars and couple of random pub players, who will leave when they will be steamrolled. Thats why when servers arent populated by SPA players they are empty at 11-12 pm even at weekend. In my opinion its really a matter of decision - if you like to keep servers mostly to spa members and few regulars then dont do anything at all, cause most of them dont give a shit about unbalanced teams,but if you want to make new players come and stay you have to do something.

Can't fault that. Bart can you find out what plugin they use?

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-"You've really worked out your banter, haven't you?"
-"No, not really. This is a different thing, it's spontaneous and it's called wit."

Both servers are full YAY

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Classy is when a woman has everything to flaunt, but chooses not to show it!

Dude, chill out. I was referring to the url's posted to the scramble plugins. I'm not claiming scramble is useless in any situation, but just those plugins are useless for it.

I've heard people are working on a hlstatsx based balancer. Now that would be the best possible way of balancing, but no idea when it will be ready.

Anyway, as i stated before, the plugin we used was the best available, it just needs decent per-map settings. Just fill in and agree on the settings, per map, and then i can upload those settings. I tried to do it myself but it messes it up.

Who is going to write it?

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-"You've really worked out your banter, haven't you?"
-"No, not really. This is a different thing, it's spontaneous and it's called wit."

Afair someone was working on those settings already, but maybe they didnt work well ?
Plugin using stats would be the best as I suggested some pages ago, I hope it will be good, except some situations, like balancing Nameless, his kdr drops below 5 = rage quit

Does that guy even speak! jeez

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-"You've really worked out your banter, haven't you?"
-"No, not really. This is a different thing, it's spontaneous and it's called wit."

God no! That would be the WORST possible plug-in in the history of the internet! Having a balancer based on stats would just be a living nightmare and I would not even entertain the notion of playing on a server that used it.

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"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

Because?

stats, nuff said

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-"You've really worked out your banter, haven't you?"
-"No, not really. This is a different thing, it's spontaneous and it's called wit."

Because stats in TF2 do not represent skill. Stats represent point whoring and nothing more. If they didn't we would not see a stats leader-board populated by full-time snipers and spies.
The stats system does not represent a persons ability to play as a team but rather there ability to score points. This isn't Quake. In a game like TF2 your ability to score points is, on its own, utterly worthless

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"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

However I would go on to say you cant deny that stats can and do indicate to a persons rough skill level - aka the skill to shoot something, heal something, cap something, defend something, say even if its only 30% accurate, it will still be a better attribute to balancing than sheer randomness and should balance teams more effectively than a pure random scramble.

also on the topic of stats: it seems to be biased against medics, it doesn't seem to count assists.

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It does count assists, and medic specific ones, but i'm not sure if the points for them are of the right weighting (and i dont know if they can be amended/increased)

http://hlstatsx.specialattack.net/hlsta ... ic&game=tf

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-"You've really worked out your banter, haven't you?"
-"No, not really. This is a different thing, it's spontaneous and it's called wit."

If that were the case I would be ranked higher. Ego or not it is simply the truth. I'm a great medic and a formidable Heavy. I am also more than competent at sniper (it was my class for 10 years pre-TF2) I simply don't play it often and scout (or mini O-cap as I look at him). However, because most of my time is spent playing Medic my stats and therefore my standing is crap. Fair? I think not.

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"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

Well thats just you QQing about your stats ;D doesnt mean they dont show some level of skill and/or experience at the game in question

If you delve into the stats there is actually quite a lot of detail, more than just who has the most points and kills.

http://hlstatsx.specialattack.net/hlsta ... ns&game=tf

Hate to disagree, and dont be offended, but stats aren't the worst possible thing for the scramble to reference, i mean, do you really want to play against a team with has coar, le fu, nameless, balls, and bart on it? So if the scramble plugin splits those people up and so on, is that really a bad thing? It's not perfect, and i doubt there will ever be a perfect solution, as stats only represent past achievements, even the most skilled players have their bad days...

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-"You've really worked out your banter, haven't you?"
-"No, not really. This is a different thing, it's spontaneous and it's called wit."

Heh

No, not even slightly. I really do not give a damn about stats - mine or anyone else's. Truth be told I have no idea what my stats are as I have honestly never checked (but I will assure they are bad given the reasoning above). Point is - they are categorically unrepresentative and serve as nothing more than an incentive to point grind. This is the issue.

A balance system based on stats would be a nightmarish thing and serve no useful purpose

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"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

hmpf, fine ignore my post !!! hehe

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-"You've really worked out your banter, haven't you?"
-"No, not really. This is a different thing, it's spontaneous and it's called wit."

Nope, sorry. Detail does not add usefulness. The stats are geared towards kills, kill-streaks and dominations: all the things you get far more regularly as spy and sniper.

They are worthless.
Wait your turn!

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"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

You're always on my team balls, cause you're afraid of me knife and revolver
We should give stats based scramble a try, random scramble from what I've experienced make take 3-4 tries before properly balancing teams.
Howard being awesome heavy is nothing to be proud of tbh After last major updates its just easy mode, and since it always attracts medics thats it. But that's just my opinion, and surprisingly most people that disagree play heavy

Not really howard, a single medic assist equals the same amount of points as a single domination. So as a sniper i can earn 3 points dominating someone (and if they get revenge i loose 2 i think) whereas if you are healing someone and they get one kill, you will earn the same about of points.

Stats are just quantitative data essentially, and they dont lie or anything, and i agree with bart, it would be better basis than the pot luck scramble we had before, which usually did more harm than good.

It's not unreasonable for us to try the stats based scramble, who knows it might just work (not perfectly) but it might help teams be more balanced. Then all you have to worry about is the team actually BEING a team, no matter how scramble works and who it moves, you still cant win a game without decent medics, engys and offensive players with BIG Cojones!

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-"You've really worked out your banter, haven't you?"
-"No, not really. This is a different thing, it's spontaneous and it's called wit."

...Or just me as a spy

But you are a career spy, ergo your opinion on what is easy mode is utterly irrelevant

Heavy is a difficult as any of the other offensive classes, if not more difficult as heavies are the second biggest target on the map next to medics
Its FIVE points for a domination according to that chart you posted and THREE for a medic assist. Also, describing something as quantitative does not increase its validity. Of course its quantitative - its a system based on numbers. My point is that the numbers on which its based are violently skewed towards certain types of play.

As I said above, dominations and kill streaks are far more likely to occur to the two classes who risk least for each kill: Spy and sniper.

Furthermore (and this is the cold, hard, bitter fact of the matter) a team will lose without question or hesitation if they have too many spies or snipers whereas the the converse is simply never true.

Spy and sniper are absolutely the easiest of easy modes at their most basic level and yet they are the ones most likely to rank highly on a board and so they are the ones that have good stats. I am not saying the classes are useless: far from it. A good spy or sniper (or two even) can be an enormous boon to the team, but right now I would take any other class in an y given game as so few people play them well.

If you guys ( or rather, if Saint) feels the need to try out a stats based scramble go nuts. Let me know what you find. I don't believe for a second it will work but I am more than happy to be proven wrong.

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"Fire rained from the sky on the day I was born: 10,000 lives I ended before drawing first breath. Do not speak to me of guilt or regret, Jonathan.” - Brayan, The Keepers of the Fire

FYI BART FACE RUSKI!! im not afraid of you, (im afraid of some of the spies i see on utube) but for you, you are more annoying lol and i just hate wasting the whole round chasing you hehe, especially when a) no one spy checks b) some noobs who play as pyro never commit to killing a dead ringer

Plus we are like a team bart, A TEAM DAMMIT!

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-"You've really worked out your banter, haven't you?"
-"No, not really. This is a different thing, it's spontaneous and it's called wit."

Sorry my bad, the list has TWO dominations on it... which is weird,... (one just Domination = 5pts and the Other Domination (4kills) = 3pts.???.. if someone could explain that to me, id appreciate it lol!)

LOL, i know what quantitative means smart arse just the point is, numbers don't lie. (The only thing that effects the data is the point allocation system as it was devised by the a human). Im not sure either if the stats scramble works off "per Class" data too, so it for example, might not move you because you are playing engy and perhaps not scoring much in game, but then switches you when you change to medic because the stat data knows you will unbalance the round?!?! personally it would be nice to see it in action, then make a more informed opinion on it.

As much as i hate having 5 snipers on a team (no idea why that isnt capped) on rare occasions it had worked (bart, remember upward? ^^) but yeah its not good. But wouldn't the stat scramble split up those classes with high points so both teams would have high scoring snipers... isn't that some form of balance already?!
IMO, depends on the player how easy it is. Spy is a completely different style of gameplay, and its not easy. Sure, it is easy if you get that type of nub spy who cloaks, hides in a corner, and stabs one guy before having every single inch of his body raped by the rest of the opposing team; and the ones that LOUDLY uncloak behind me. But i've spec'd some of the good spies and there is a lot of things they need to constantly addressing as they play - i wouldnt call that easy. Sniping is easy, point and shoot - granted. The difficulty lies in choosing targets, and not being spy fodder (plus trying to be useful when you have 4 other snipers playing with you who are shit and or give away your position all the time) Plus i REFUSE to use razorback, a) for the added difficulty, b) its FUCKING LAME c) see B. Plus it becomes difficult when you are trying to eliminate enemies that might hinder the teams efforts all the while juggling a sniper battle with a skilled enemy sniper, AND spy checking constantly.

I say we give it a try, before we argue it out the door. OFC im skeptical too, but it sounds better than the last system as it might use the quantitative data.

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-"You've really worked out your banter, haven't you?"
-"No, not really. This is a different thing, it's spontaneous and it's called wit."

First of all Im not a career spy, since spy is my 4th most played class. And surely you know much about playing spy, as you tried it for 0.4 hours You can only go to some point in spy skills, rest depends on many variables, that you cant control - random people bumping into you, random spy checks, maniac pyros chasing you till you die for real ( Wildblaze ), failstabs etc. Btw Im still desperate for a cloak'n'dagger, I crafted mine months ago, since then I've collected enough items to craft 2 hats but still not one GOD DAMN C&D
As for the heavy you cant be more wrong - and this isnt just my biased opinion based on "omg Im getting owned by heavy so I hate him". Quick look at tf2 stats reveals, that heavy is not only leading, but he is dominating stats like points per hour, kills per hour and damage per hit. Its way ahead of other classes, and other 8 classes are rather close to each other in main stats, heavy is waaaay ahead - avg 96 kills per hour i almost 30 more than second class, the same for pts/hour. It is a big target, but his HP is enough to survive most 1/1 encounters, even those including enemy crits. Heavy was fine the way it was before damage spread was reduced so much, I mean guys like Johnny dominated the server long before those changes, and now when Heavy crits its almost pin point accurate across the lenght of a dustbowl... Not to mention Natasha, which is just a joke and a very bad one

Welcome to spa server, enjoy your sta(ck)y.