I'm sure it isn't news and I'm certain it's been mentioned before but should team stacking be allowed? The teams usually consist of the same players joining team and ganging up on a weaker team. The weaker team usually consists of players who are new to the SpA servers and it's abit off putting loosing 4 maps in a row to a team that has remained the same through out.

There is not much we can do about it (automaticly). If teams are very unbalanced you can ask an admin to come in and sort the teams. The admin menu contains options for teamswitching players.

Of course I've seen some players doing that.
But my experience is that it lasts only for some rounds that the stacked team is in the lead.
Eventually some players switch or the "weak" team suddenly really kicks some ass.

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Ze Ãœbermensch

Well, playing on server 1, I noticed it happening through dustbowl, goldrush and badwater.

I always teamstack. Not because I want to win but because I like playing with people I know. If there's none then I'll just switch servers or go do something else.

I've seen servers that automaticly assign you to a team when as soon as you join so, yeah, it could be "fixed".

What I'd really like to see though is a class limit 3, especially since it's a 13vs13 game.

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Comfortably Numb

I saw that solved by scrambling teams - basically any player can start vote for scrambling, and based on number of players certain amount of votes is required to scramble teams.

scramble vote won't happen. I jus switch teams when I see a very obvious shift in power. Usually when I join the game and see there are lots of spa players on one team I will join the other team. Even though its frustrating for me to be on the ''sucky'' team, its always better to actually try and do something about it then go ROFL LOOK AT MY AWESOME 200000 TO 1 K/D RATIO some people on our servers seem to do.

Typical statwhores
Look what team is more powerfull
join that team
pick demoman
shoot stickies
go wtflol I pwn everyone with my l33t skillz

(Sorry, but demoman is still lame ass with his stickies that have the damage of an A-bomb and can be made to explode near instantanious, the destroy sticky thing didn't change a thing)

Yes I hate demoman, and can probably write a whole rant about why its such an unbalanced class.

Back on topic, just ask people to try and even out the teams a bit skillwise. In my experience the manual switching option we admins got is very lacking. Saint could you look into getting a scramble teams button in there? Because by the time I switched some players around the map usually is already near finished. Oh and people just go switch back to the old team asap (OMG MY STATS MIGHT GO BAD!)

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Da boyz need themselves a Nob they do

The sticky destroying update has changed one thing: it's make choke point camping a bit harder. Especially if a heavy's walking in. The mid-air detonation, pipe bombs' splash range and the rest have not changed though.


Soo..class limit 3..anyone?
Yes, it's personal. I HATE the mindless spamage on maps like goldrush.

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Comfortably Numb

Dustbowl stage 3 is even worse imo.

Any map with one or two nice choking points are hell. 4(5) demo, 4(5) soldiers and let the spammage begin. Everybody picks a corner or a window and starts the left-click mania hoping for crits. It sucks ass, tbh. On larger servers it's even worse.


ps. I'm not ranting against people that can kill stuff on their own, I'm ranting against team tactic.

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Comfortably Numb

Well, for example I hate when i have been autobalanced to another team (even to better). It's really annoying.
Nearly like me ;DDDDD . But, I always look just on few players to choose team (not only SpAs) when there is possibility to choose team. When there are no spectators, and in one team there are less players, then I go to this team, simple.

And to say something about this whole "problem", I think that you should do a voting system. Look at one in Enemy Territory - Shuffle and Shuffle by XP. You could do something with random shuffling teams and with shuffling by players "skill" from stats (to do teams, where average "skill" is nearly equal). That's only suggestion, but it could be nice to see something like this on server.

I hate class limits, could do it like another server i infrequently use as a backup, class limit 3 and then if you donate you can break class limits.

Maybe we could buy class limit immunity using points

Team stacking is just a fact of life, it just happens by accident all the good players end up at the start. At the end of the round, wait and see where the top couple players go from the last round, follow them you'll less likely suck.

I hate being on the sucky team, because if my team mates suck i just get raped. Which just frustrates me, stick it out though because at the end of round/map all change

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Computer is fixed. That is all.

Sometimes, but in my experience if certain group of people group together the game becomes a rush through all maps untill enough people quit and a good team on the other side forms.

Once upon a time, when futari still played publics we went on the loosing team and managed to half the player population on the server, simply by owning too fucking much. It was quite funny though, but shows how certain combinations of people on one team and lack of that on the other team can change the game around ALOT. So if you see something like this happen, try to get some other good player you know off on your team. A good heavy medic pairing can function as an anchorpoint for the whole team for example

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Da boyz need themselves a Nob they do

I'll ask again, Saint is it possible to have a scramble teams button in the admin menu? Because the current solution is slow and not very user friendly

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Da boyz need themselves a Nob they do

Afaik there are no plugins currently supporting this. We could ask our techs to think about a implementation for this.

Awesome, while they are at it, can they also code in a whisper that will be send everytime someone picks demoman or shoots stickies? I already prepared some lines for the whisper

1. Did you know that research has shown that 90% of the demoman players are insecure about the size of their dick?
2. Did you know that pwning with stickies is like stealing candy from a kid? Its neither cool, nor nice.
3. Did you know that everytime you fire a sticky, god kills a kitten?
4. Congratulations on your ability to fire stickies, now go learn to play a class that actually requires some work to pwn with.
5. Hey did you know that you also have a PRIMARY weapon that doesnt shoot stickies?
6. Everytime you shoot a sticky, chances that you go to hell increase by 15%
7. Haha, had your fill of uberness? Now try that with a different class.
8. Even grandmothers can pwn with the demoman

That would be really awesome!

Yes I am pissed of Valve basically has done nothing about the real problem with the demoman. Namely, the insane damage on stickies and the near instant explosion. I already hear you say, buh buh you can now destroy stickies. This is very very inefficient, even with a heavy you can't destroy them fast enough. OH and btw while you are shooting at the ground everyone else and their mother will laugh at you and run up and slap you, because you are shooting at the ground and not at them.

Seriously valve, change the stickies back to undestroyable, but put a timer of 5 seconds on em before they can explode. That would actually be a solution. Now you just nerfed the trapping part of the demoman but did nothing about the SUPER AWESOME offensive weapon that is called sticky bomb.

When they do that they can also go change the pipebombs, because wtf direct hit is instant kill on 125 hp classes (or if you are lucky you are stuck with 5 hp)? Its not that hard to aim the damned things, even the soldier needs two rockets to actually kill a 125 hp class. Pipebombs should be just be 60-70 damage on direct hit.

/done ranting

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Da boyz need themselves a Nob they do

About the team stacking:we've thought about this for a very long time now and still have no viable solution for this problem.
Here are some solutions we came up with:

Scramble teams by vote
We don't want any votes on our server. They disrupt the gameplay and could be harmful to the fun

Scramble teams by admin
Too subjective and too much game disruption if misused

Balance teams by stats
Stats are too inacurate for this (especially because of new players and the point inflation with the hardcore players)

Force players into teams (disable team switching)
nobody would accept this, it's only natural to want to play with friends

Admins manually switch players
we already have this, but it get's used rarely. and it is good this way, because it can seriously piss off players


Btw, it already is possible to scramble the teams for any admin with rcon. The command is mp_scrambleteams. And there are plugins that would support votescramble too.


OT:
the best solution for stickies is, if they would have to charge before they do max damage, much like the sniper rifle has to. so if you plant a sticky it does very little damage immediately but after a few seconds lying around it does full damage. player could hear faint charging sound and the stickies would grow from small to normal during the "charging phase".

Too subjective? WTF when team A has about 4 times as many points, it most certainly won't suddenly swing around next round.
Manual switching is labourus and by the time you done it, people will try and switch back to their old team.

FUCKING IDIOTIC MINDSET, OH NOES I GO ON SUCKY TEAM MUST GO BACK ON EASYMODE TEAM KTHNXBYE.

I have kicked people for switching back to their old team after I balanced the teams out. I never do it anymore because A: by the time the WTFPWN WE ROFLOL OWN YOU team has some people die the round is already near done. B: they just switch back as soon as possible. C: They go wtf why you switch me you retard admin <-- I would love to ban those pricks

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Da boyz need themselves a Nob they do

For easy use, could we add this command to adminmenu_custom.txt?
Sounds like a good idea.

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function printSig(){ print "Code is poetry!"; return true; }

The idea has been around for ages, but apperantly valve doesn't want that... or perhaps it just requires more coding and they don't want to spend that much time on it.

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Da boyz need themselves a Nob they do

Would be esier to just give them a 4piece ammo clip and less ammo to boost, no?

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Comfortably Numb

Oh, you totally made my day.. that was such an awesome game.. emptying the server because of our liet skills 0_0
Once upon a time..? I'm not -that- old, am I?

You're not old. You just suck because you woun't play with us.

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Comfortably Numb

I barely have the time anymore to play in our public servers.. with the warteam, <strike>l4d</strike> and school ;p
oooh.. or I just don't like you guys <33
eww.. my server activity says 0%.. that's just nasty..

Done. Only Superadmins can access it though.

That three suggestions sounds great. If there will be mixed first with three, it's going to be really cool.

How about disabling Rank?

ps:dont flame me

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XD

imho either a voteable way to scramble teams (although it would never pass unless it had a low thresh hold) or people just ride it out till the end of the 30 mins/3 rounds. or whatever it's set to now.

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Computer is fixed. That is all.

votes are out of the quetion.

Rank is irrelevant if you take into account that this is a team game. A pyro who sticks to a sentry protecting it from spies and incoming damage is a very valuable member of the team even if he ends the round with 5 points.

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Comfortably Numb