Stacking teams after a scramble.

Does our server need a plugin that prevents team stacking?

  • Yes

    Votes: 5 55.6%
  • No

    Votes: 4 44.4%

  • Total voters
    9

Tekku

aa
Aug 31, 2008
723
873
So basically this issue has been risen during the latest gameday, and since in my opinion this is an issue that should be dealt with, and also to avoid unneeded discussions during the gameday, I have created a thread where every member of TF2Maps is free to express their opinion about the issue.

Whether stacking teams after a gameday host has initiated a scramble should be allowed or not

Also if the "Yes" count in poll will exceed "No", then a plugin that prevents people from going to spectate and switching teams will be introduced to our server.
If the opposite thing happens, then there wont be any rule or plugin set, that will prevent people from switching teams.

Everyone is free to discuss as long as you follow forum rules.

Note: the results of this poll will not be the only thing that determines whether or not we install the plugin. In other words, this poll is just a suggestion to the staff. - Seba
 
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Trotim

aa
Jul 14, 2009
1,195
1,045
That's a loaded question. Stacking teams is always a negative thing, but that's not what people were doing. Nobody e.g. waited and kept hammering RED RED RED to be on defense on a map where defense already has the advantage so only players who don't care/are worse/took longer to load are screwed on offense - that's generally what counts as teamstacking on pubs. When the majority of good players joins the same team on purpose.

The actual issue was: after an admin has done a scramble, may 1-2 players still switch to the opposite team to be with their friends/teammates? What about when they want to manually balance teams further when it's obvious the scramble wasn't enough?

Also it blocking you from spectating is a thing that should be fixed either way
 
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Harribo

aa
Nov 1, 2009
871
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I not happy with people making polls to change our permanent server rules when they are in no position to do so so I will be closing the poll. Here's the rules:

A Event host can apply rules to his event, like no team-stacking after a scramble, if they want and are allowed to enforce those rules appropriately i.e. kick if people aren't behaving after being told the rule they've broke or warned about it etc. Also, it's the host job to make sure the tests are balanced. feel free to say 'think we need a scramble blah blah blah' to whoever is hosting, other than that, don't worry about it.

If you want to discuss this issue talk all you want inside the rules of the forum, it doesn't mean we'll change our stance on it.
 

Dr. Spud

Grossly Incandescent
aa
Mar 23, 2009
880
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This poll and the possibility of activating a new plugin on the server all seems extremely rash.

I wasn't in the server when everyone got pissed at each other, but I don't believe for a second that it was because of a legitimate team stacking and balance issue. That's never been a serious problem during gamedays from my experience - scramble works just fine. And if you're not a dick to people, they'll switch teams if you ask them.

Keywords: if you're not a dick.

Judging by the TF2M chat, some people are pissed off for the sake of being pissed off. Calm the fuck down.
 
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Sel

Banned
Feb 18, 2009
1,239
2,570
A Event host can apply rules to his event, like no team-stacking after a scramble, if they want and are allowed to enforce those rules appropriately i.e. kick if people aren't behaving after being told the rule they've broke or warned about it etc.

Ravidge has already shut down tech's "no S&T on the same team", rules twice now, and this issue has already been dealt with, however Tech seems intent on going on a crusade about this.

Also last I checked we already sorted this issue out two years ago, guess I was wrong.

Yes

How to deal with teamstacking, what teamstacking its, etc. is irrelevant to the question at hand.

I'm not sure if you're being serious or not.

Also, here's a better idea, how about we add that balance buddy sourcemod plugin to the servers so that people who play together don't get separated at all.
 
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Sel

Banned
Feb 18, 2009
1,239
2,570
Also from the thread I linked: Ravidge hitting the nail on the head.

Personally, I don't care who is playing and how they are playing. As long as they aren't actively trying to ruin the game or cause trouble for their team, everyone is welcome.

Selentic seems to be receiving a lot of flak for pocketing trotim. I'm trying to see both sides of the argument here. But my personal experience when playing with selentic is that he pockets the demo while still healing people who call for it and are in range.

Pocketing is a huge part in 6v6 and it's not really the same thing as "healing only X", you pocket someone because you trust them to protect you in tricky situations, and to have someone reliable available at all times.

Very important in bold, as a medic this game becomes frustrating and boring if I don't get to pocket one of the small handful of players who play here that I trust to protect me and do a good job, and if you are one of the people who has a problem with me pocketing Trotim, I have a response for you, GET GOOD. It may not be nice, but it's all there really is to say on the matter. Go start pocketing someone yourself and play against us or something. If you want to play somewhere where no one uses basic teamwork then I suggest you go join LotusClan or something, because you really do not belong here.
 

Seba

DR. BIG FUCKER, PHD
aa
Jun 9, 2009
2,364
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I think Spud pretty much summed this entire thing up in one phrase: "if you're not a dick." Please behave reasonably and considerately at all times, on all platforms - forums, chat, TF2, whatever.
 

Trotim

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Jul 14, 2009
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I mean if the problem is that my being in the server frustrates other people then say that. For the record I don't think I'm very good compared to some other players I know thanks to Tightrope but I can understand if a Medic+pocket combo can be a problem when most players still need to learn the map and so on. I get that a level of organization may be needed to beat it that just can't be provided on random maps with random players who sometimes stand still to leave feedback etc.

If you just want me to screw around instead of playing properly, fair enough, but Sel won't like it because he likes playing Medic the best and it's very frustrating to him when nobody tries to protect him.

That's why the "FLAME RUINED THE TEST" thing is relevant - this has come up before and it's a difficult question. Do you force the players with the most points to play a class or loadout they're not good at? Do you just kick them from the server? Doesn't that undermine proper testing? Or does them dominating a quarter of the enemy team hurt testing?

Or is it just the map being imbalanced and giving a certain class an unwarranted edge? On one map I remember going Pyro on last specifically to airblast people off of the CP into a deathpit because that was by far the best way to defend. Now yes that can be frustrating but what if you actively discourage that behavior? Wouldn't big map issues just stay undetected? Without a good Medic+Demoman combo how do you know if a wrangled SG spot on a map isn't actually beatable?

I'm also thinking of spawncamping here. Most of the time the spawn is badly designed if camping it is too easy... so do you just tell the spawncamping players to piss off and never redesign the map? Only for everyone to then spawncamp on that map because normal pub servers don't enforce that kind of rule?

I mean whenever I see someone play a gimmick class like Rocket Jumper + Market Gardener Soldier or something I think a similar thing, namely that that's not really helping the test. But do we really want to establish exceptions like that?

But to end this post I just want to point out that random crits being enabled (ignoring that it's adding a big random variable to maptests) also helps dominating players stay dominant because their critchance gets much higher than other players'...
 
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Tekku

aa
Aug 31, 2008
723
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Is all this drama really over a pocket medic combo?

Seriously if you want to get mad at someone get mad at me for playing exclusively Demo Knight during tests.

No, you got it wrong, this "Drama" is because of people ignoring the purpose of the scramble, and that people should not try to switch back to other team either just because their friends are playing on that one, or your pocked medic, or just because it they do not like their new teams.

I am just saying that I really do not mind anyone playing together with whoever they want, but I do not enjoy someone defying the purpose of scramble.
 

Sel

Banned
Feb 18, 2009
1,239
2,570
Is all this drama really over a pocket medic combo?

More or less, Tech has singled both me and Trotim out in the last two gamedays, and then when Rav told him for the second time not to pull this stuff he had a meltdown about being the only person who runs gamedays therefore he could do whatever he wanted in his gamedays.
 

Auwi

Certified in best in fun
aa
Dec 12, 2012
188
498
I know how it is like when people constantly re-stack the teams to be with their friends. The server I always go to has many people who are interconnected and enjoy being on the same team. It can be annoying when somebody is a medic and they switch to the other team because they have a friend there. Team stacking will not always ruin testing, as it can still show where issues are on a map. If a stacked team suddenly can't push anymore then you can still find out where the chokepoints are. Not all rounds will end in stalemates or with the stacked teams winning.
 

Ravidge

Grand Vizier
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May 14, 2008
1,544
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Just for the record, what I said was that we have no rules, written or unwritten about scramble-avoiding, or 'playing together with friends'. I mentioned that it was discouraged practice to dodge scrambles, but not punishable unless it was actively disrupting the effectiveness of the test.


As for that last part: It's damn rare that any 2-man combo are actually responsible for wins by themselves. Most of the time it comes down to the enemy having a worse class composition, but failing to realizing this, and then blame it on player skill being uneven between the teams.
I know for a fact that the trotim+sel combo isn't strong enough to skew a match so bad that it renders a maptest null. Unless they've somehow become really good in the last few months. There's typically 22 other players there doing the majority of the work.

Furthermore, Scramble doesn't have any actual balancing purpose as it's set up right now, it just randomizes the teams without regard for anything. It's just as likely to balance teams as it is to skew them even further.
 

Bermuda Cake

L9: Fashionable Member
Feb 20, 2009
679
480
-snip-

Or is it just the map being imbalanced and giving a certain class an unwarranted edge? On one map I remember going Pyro on last specifically to airblast people off of the CP into a deathpit because that was by far the best way to defend. Now yes that can be frustrating but what if you actively discourage that behavior? Wouldn't big map issues just stay undetected? Without a good Medic+Demoman combo how do you know if a wrangled SG spot on a map isn't actually beatable?

I'm also thinking of spawncamping here. Most of the time the spawn is badly designed if camping it is too easy... so do you just tell the spawncamping players to piss off and never redesign the map? Only for everyone to then spawncamp on that map because normal pub servers don't enforce that kind of rule?

If you found a way to get into the enemy spawn, you'd (hopefully) point out that issue and then move on. You'd make the author aware of the issue, and then test other things! It's not like we have to choose between constant exploitation of map flaws and ignoring them outright. Once it's established that something is an issue, we should look for other issues. It doesn't mean we're not going to address those issues in later versions of the map...

If a map is broken in such a way that just by playing normally, the red team completely rolls the blue team, or vice versa, then ok, the map maker needs to take a look at those places and say "hmm, ok, I need to do x to change this". Depending on the map, past a point, there's only so much you can learn.

But if someone is exploiting oversights in development, and I'm talking about people who joke around spending half a round in the enemy's spawn just because they can, or people who get bored and market gardner everywhere if a map has skybox high fences or something, they're not really contributing past a certain point.

So I don't think the points you're bringing up are relevant to whether or not a demo with a pocket medic would unbalance a test. That said, I don't really think it would anyway.

But regardless, if the guy running the gameday has said "hey, let's see if rebalancing the teams will fix the issues with the map, or if it's just bad design: Sel, Trotim (or whoever), in order to balance the teams let's have you guys on separate teams" you should GO ALONG WITH IT. We're essentially debugging the maps here, and a key way of doing that is to see how things run after we've changed around certain constants. One of those is the distribution of players on the team. You shouldn't undermine that just because you want to play with your friend. If it turns out that the issues are still there, then we've learnt something. But if we never remove uncertainty then we're defeating the point of map testing.

Maybe we should run the symmetrical maps like koth and 5cp before running asymmetrical maps like a/d cp? That would give us time to weed out issues with the skill distribution on the server EDIT: (if that's even a thing)
 
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Trotim

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Jul 14, 2009
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Oh I didn't mean being inside spawn or anything, just camping the spawnroom door. If you can do that once it might've been a fluke, you need to be able to pull it off multiple times for anyone to know if it's the map's fault really
 
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Tarry H Sruman

Large Orphanage Proprietor
aa
Jul 31, 2011
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1,021
"Don't be a dick" sounds good.

But when there are two people who, when playing together, are vastly better than everyone else in the game, and then consistently switch teams after scrambles to always be together, that's called being a dick.

That's all fine and well if we're doing casual play or something, but during a gameday we are doing scheduled testing of maps so that the mappers can improve them; we aren't playing just for fun. So if you get put on the team opposite your friend, suck it up and deal with it for ten minutes instead of deliberately unbalancing the test just so you can play together.