So considering the server is mostly filled with SpA............

[Hehe, i don't often, but that was just bad last night, and its not like Well is a complicated map at all.... its like granary, a straight fucking line... It attracts a lot that don't understand even the title of the game... TEAM! Seriously, i know skill levels vary, and thats fine, everyone has to be a noob at some point in a game but you learn as u play etc, but FUCK ME, i saw reds running past blues and both not doing anything, not even seeing each other, and people going the wrong way on a one way map, it's basic design like team colours and a 2 sided environment that gets lost and thrown out the window.

some may think that makes me sound like a narcissist or arrogant or whatever... i don't give a fuck, that isn't my problem and it is not my view.

Any scramble function is at random as well, which prolly means each scramble only makes it worse.

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.

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.

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.
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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.

Because?

stats, nuff said

Because?

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.

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

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

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...

hmpf, fine ignore my post !!! hehe

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!

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.

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 any given game as so few people play them well.