TheVille

I know i've asked this before and i've heard the reasons, but i'd like to try again.

Nobody likes stacked teams, there are times when I play rounds of TF2 where the teams are very ballanced (a full 30 minute round of coldfront which ends in a stalemate for example), but sometimes teams are just beyond unballanced (a team winning 5 times in 20 minutes on turbine) and nothing is able to be done about it. When unballances like that happen, people tend to bail because 'their team sucks' or they just don't want to deal with the frustrations, I know i've done it once or twice. I mentioned this before in a different thread but i'd like to take another shot. Is there any way to add the ability to votescramble or something along those lines to the list of supporter commands? I've heard the arguement how scramble can commands reset map timers but i've also heard some people say they wouldn't mind another 30 minutes in a map with better teams.

On another note, what became of the implemented scramble option that valve patched in a few months ago? From what I noticed that one didn't reset timers, though it didn't do too good a job either. What if, supporters don't get a votescramble option, but instead reinstate that timer so that should a team win 2 or 3 in a row, it mixes the teams a bit to maybe try and balance things?

I'm just asking, it gets real frustrating sometimes when you're pinned down by a team who has 3x more points than your team's best.

Map changes tend to be more effective, assuming people don't intentionally stack on the next map...

Stevo wrote:Map changes tend to be more effective, assuming people don't intentionally stack on the next map...

I do that every so often, usually when a team wins 3 in a row in a short order, but I don't like to skip most maps, I love most maps and want to play them myself.

I don't make any of the policies related to this, so this is my opinion rather than an official line, but here are some observations from my time admining against stacks, and alleged stacks.

- As you mentioned, map timers. Some folks don't mind another complete repeat of the same map, but a lot of people do. We'd often lose just as many people from the extended map timer as we would from team-frustration, especially given that once 2 or 3 wins are on the board, the map is within a hair's bredth of finishing anyway. I've even see a last-minute scramble, after winning a vote, completely kill a server, as half the players depart rather than play the map again, and the others decide there aren't enough people to stick around.

- Scrambles are not guaranteed to actually result in more balanced teams, and it feels like much of the time the resulting teams are just as bad as before, except now there's another half hour to an hour of playing with them.

- If there is an actual stack going on, ie people intentionally grouping together in order to make it unbalanced, they will simply switch around to do that again if they're seperated. Basically, without an admin on who can manually switch, kick, and lay down the law to a real stacker, it punishes everybody but them.

- I've found that most of the time, teams are not really stacked. Pretty much every time I go on one of our rotation servers, I hear people on whichever team just lost a round loudly complaining that "teams are stacked!" and crying about it instead of making a strategy, or changing classes, or working with their fellow players. Of all the times I've been called to a server to address stacking, maybe 10%-20% of those occurences actually warrant administrative action. The rest of the time, it needs action from the players to actually play their opponents, rather than playing their own little games. Last time I was on and was being told "These teams are so stacked, please scamble them" the team doing the complaining had the top 3 scores on the server, and had just won the previous round! The teams were the same as they had been previously; they were whining because they were losing the current round, and weren't willing to accept that. All they needed to do was work together, and adjust to fight what they were facing, instead of feeling sorry for themselves and repeatedly throwing the same tactic over and over against a well-prepared counter.

If you feel like you've got a stack that needs addressing, by all means do call an admin, because they certainly sometimes do need an adjustment. Don't take offense, however, if the request is declined after investigation. Scrambles need to be saved for the real messes, not be a substitute for for tactics and teamwork, which is what my experience tells me they would rapidly become.

I don't think there's a way to vote the new Valve-auto scramble which avoids the added time problem. It's either on or off. It would be nice if there was a cvar where when the scramble parameters are met a vote comes up, but I think that's pretty pie-in-the-sky right now. Besides, who's to say the stacked team won't just vote to keep going.

Really the only thing to do is vote to move on to another map. I think you have to decide if the teams are so unbalanced that a new map will be more fun than the way the current one is going. All the servers are on rotation, that map will be back around in due time.

If intentional stacking continues into a new map, call an admin in or file a complaint so we can be aware of and monitor the offenders.

In the TF2 Beta, they're currently testing a voting system that lets players call up votes for kicking players, changing the map, and, yes, scrambling the teams.

I hope so, I really do. It may just be the hours I'm able to play, but it's rampant, and I hate always having to complain about it.

afaik, the scramble command was taken out of source mod anyway...

ive hardly ever encountered "stacked" teams...hate to be elitist...but it seems most people need to just l2play...i.e. not complaining and using teamwork/strats