That F*@kin& balancer!

[pooty]

1. Yes the balancer is still on
2. Its as good as its going to get for the most part
3. I've done a stats analysis with and without balancer -- its clearly better with it. But doesn't mean every match goes to OT single digits for both teams..

Without going into all the gory details (you can read about much of it on the forum here). The balancer works pretty good from a math perspective, I've also updated it with Categories so that you (hopefully) don't end up with all the super DMers on one team. There's five categories
1. Gamebreakers
2. DMers
3. GoodPlayers
4. Default (anyone not in one of the other categories)
5. Stains - Players who generally are worse than average, no strategy
6. ShitStains - Players who are horrid, prolific vehicle wasters, or just don't bother to learn the game/vehicles/strategy.

No, I am not going to say who's where, but mostly that's subjective on the admins part.
After that it balancers by PPH by map within each category in order. So it does Gamebrakers split by pph, then DMers, then Good players, etc. It also hopefully prevents you from getting a team of shit stain boat anchors.

Joins are balanced as follows: Even number teams, new join goes to weaker current pph team (eg. Balance command). If one team is short a player new player goes there REGARDLESS of PPH Balance. Specs do not follow this, there's game technical reason why this doesn't work, so they either join randomly or preferred team (can't remember which)

It works pretty well at the START.

Things that make it break:
- Skilled players not in a category
- Players changing keys/giuds which then goes to the one above...
- Players using shared keys .. impossible to balance..
- Leaves/Joins, especially with even player count teams -- say Red is winning but has one less player and Anonymous joins.. he goes to red, sorry blue.
- Nautikal eating chicken wings -- what this means is sometimes players are just playing better today.
- Teamwork -- is the team coordinating? Comms? Or is it just BLA$TER sitting in a tank camping?
- Vehicle wasters - are shit stains Hectoring the mino or suiciding all your fliers? Doesn't matter how strong the team is if most of your good vehicles get wasted.

[McLovin]

...
- Nautikal eating chicken wings -- what this means is sometimes players are just playing better today.
...

I call this BS, ie, sitting idle without the courtesy of going to spec. It's a total disregard for your teammates. Idle auto kick should be set to 30 seconds, with a penalty of no re-entry until next map, IMHO. All hands on deck, soldier!

[pooty]

I call this BS, ie, sitting idle without the courtesy of going to spec. It's a total disregard for your teammates. Idle auto kick should be set to 30 seconds, IMHO.

Usually its less egregious than that... and problem is idle is movment/mouse.. so if you're sitting quietly sniping and don't move 30s can get you kicked wrongly easily.

The point being is at times players in the zone, and sometimes not, maybe too drunk, too high, not drunk enough, or just having a bad day.

[captainsnarf]

Our maps are vehicle heavy. A lot of it depends on the vehicle you get. That makes randomness still a part of it. gtku gets the mino and hector gets the bender or the other way around will decide that match.

[Rhamp]

Lots of maps are decided by the use of a few key vehicles. On Dria last night, anon took the mino first round and went wicked sick and it was a complete stomp. All the fast movers that are needed to take the mino out kept getting wasted. Second round ankeedo took it and he promptly Hectored it and lost the round. Third round anon took it but I kept zerging him until he died, and the match was a lot closer.

A balancer just will never balance these maps. They are usually decided on how much the best players are able to whore the power vehicle(s). As much as my maps are spammy, I ensured that they all have plenty of vehicles capable of countering one another. That way the games aren't decided based on how a couple vehicles are used, instead they are decided based on how the team works together. Stains can jump in the more op vehicles without feeling like they are hurting the team since there are plenty of them. I'd rather play a spamfest where the vehicles are all able to counter one another instead of playing a map where whichever team blunders the power vehicle first loses.

[pooty]

I'd rather play a spamfest where the vehicles are all able to counter one another instead of playing a map where whichever team blunders the power vehicle first loses.

I'd rather more intelligent play, that just encourages vehicle wasting, and then you play a map with strategy and not a spamfest and those bad habits wreck them, since now everyone figures there's an endless always ready supply of vehicles so why be smart? Also say the core vehicles all respawn super quick -- then it stalemates with the primaries being contested for 10+ minutes.

But back on topic.

gtku gets the mino and hector gets the bender or the other way around will decide that match.

back in the day, if you wasted the power vehicles you got an earful from your team.

[YEAAAHHHHHHHHHH]

A side note to the new admins: This balancer configuration was hashed out over the course of many months. Pooty ran tons of combinations of setups and compared stats. If you have an idea about how to improve the balancer, see the other thread about it as we may have already tried it. Not saying anyone shouldn't bring ideas to the table, just saying pooty put a ton of work into it and we should be respectful of that.

[pooty]

Not saying anyone shouldn't bring ideas to the table, just saying pooty put a ton of work into it and we should be respectful of that.

Thank you. And not just me! Several before me on Omni and many of our current admins and players had input. We've tried many schemes.. they only get so far due the reasons I laid out below.