Fixing boring unbalanced scenarios

[Idrinth]

Could you expand on that thought? Why exactly is giving Pugs an option to learn, not a guaranteed win, on a "whole new level of stupid" in comparison to whine threads?

btw, wrong character from spawn, that clown is not really anyone welcome in any kind of community

As it turned out its pointless waste of time, any info on my opinion on the matter is in my signature. So I'm just here to enjoy the show.
btw, its the best character from spawn

I guess I just missed the larger part then would love to get more input, especially from someone where I currently fail to follow their logic - you might change my opinion or we could find a better solution.

ok, ok, he's a fun character

Wait! the idea of a "surrender button" is actually really good.
You can cast a vote for your team and if enough players (2/3) accept the surrender vote, the sc ends and the enemy gets the victory.
( Like in League of Legends )

This has been discussed already, it has as many problems as benefits it brings.

Personally, i hate the idea of surrender buttons, if you dont want to play the sc anymore, leave it and let others join and the ones who are in try.

I won a fair amount of scs where the usual "we didnt win the first fight, lets leave" idiots are already out.

Can you tell me the problems it brings? The only problem I see is that you might lose a sc that you might have won.

less reason to group up, because you can just leave and retry until you win. A lot of fun when you manage to turn it around. Challenges.

[th3gatekeeper]

I do believe a LARGE part of the balance issues stem from the current "Que Entry" system.

If you do the "wait, give me a minute" thing and get into the game even 30-45 seconds late, it often has very harsh rammifications.

What I have noticed is you will usually lose the "middle" of whatever map you are playing, not just that but more than likely part of your team will die before you even get there, putting everyone on alternating spawns etc etc.

The opposing side gets a massive advantage right off the bat, be it "mid" flag or bauble, and it makes it very difficult for an un-organized/non-premade group to come back.

This is why I continue to support a system that doesnt start the game until all the players are in.

While this wont fix the full premade vs pug issue... It will help create more balanced games.

Then I think making more specific targeted fixes - such as a "forced bauble pickup by whomever gets the Death Blow" would help those games go much quicker since you cant NOT pick it up just to farm kills. Another thing you could potentially do there is rather than making a damage/time based on duration held, it should be based on distance from middle combined with a 50% inc heal reduction.

So if player A has the bauble and stands in middle, he doesnt take any damage, merely receives 50% less inc healing. If he then runs to his own spawn he would take 3k+ ticks AND have the 50% inc heal depression. This forces the game to be played towards the middle. Things like that, may end up helping, IDK...

As for flag caps, it seems like not enough "weight" is put on the caps. Although I have seen teams win getting dominated but just focusing on flags and zero kills. I often just see zergs running around trading caps everywhere which inevitably leads to just a massive zerg at someones spawn... So possibly providing less points upfront on the caps and then having a "scaling" point system where the longer you hold a flag, the more and more points you get in the SC. Thus, a team could actually win if they held 1 flag the entire time and merely tried to contest/swap the other two. It could put the focus on trying to "backcap" more often - not allowing teams to hold flags for long or EVEN leaving a defending force on a flag to maintain its capture...

This would also force those teams who stretch to get 3 caps, become a little leery of pure zerging at the enemy spawn, which means they may leave 1-2 players at the other caps, preventing a backcap, which inevitably leaves them outnumbered if spawn camping the enemy... Providing a way to fight back.

Just a few ideas...

[saupreusse]

Can you tell me the problems it brings? The only problem I see is that you might lose a sc that you might have won.

hmm yeah I see that, but as the whining got so loud in the past time, maybe the bigger part of the community thinks that a instant surrender button might be good? idk I personally never leave an sc, but i still see the positive effects of a surrender vote.
It works great in Lol - (yeah war is a whole different kind of game, but you could put the needed number of players that must vote for a surrender a bit higher ( like 3/4)
Edit: and maybe you could put a timer on the "cast surrender vote" button, so it wont come to more than one vote within a sc. and you could make votes just available after minute 7 (so that only the long sc are effected.
maybe that could work

[th3gatekeeper]

After further reflection on this topic, I very much dislike a Surrender button. This post may be a little long but it may help to dissect this issue.

Current "issue": Premade teams, or imbalanced teams, end up dominating. The game is then several minutes of players sitting in spawn, or even leaving.

What can we do to alleviate this? Well, before that can be answered, what needs to be addressed is WHY does it happen? Why cant a team in spawn push out of spawn? Why do they get there in the first place?

- It seems to me one of the issues on how they get there, is the "delay" factor, where half the team doesnt show up until 1:00 into the match, by that time, a few people have died, or I have seen some even leave knowing its just going to be a 1 sided game from the get go.

- The other issue I see, is you will have a competent premade team who is say 2/2/2 versus a team looking like 4/1/1 (of pugs) who are able to stick together, via heals/debuffs/focus fire etc etc, provide little to no chance for a team not able to communicate. Even if you get 2-3 players to focus fire someone, chances are they wont be able to do much in a competent group who can swap guard, have other heals, focus fire back etc etc. The power of a balance/communicating group, is too much, and as it should be, however it doesnt even provide a fighting chance. I want to be clear on this, I am NOT saying a "fighting chance" at winning but even just killing 1-2 players a few times. In those games, I will see 1 side have 50+ kills while the other team has <10, most of which were in the beginning before things got situated, where as most of the 50+ kills came while camping their spawn.

Now, of course there are OTHER factors involved in this, but many things such as "forced group comps" will only increase Que times. So aside from things that would have big negative impacts on que timers. What are our other options?

SOLUTIONS:
1) "delay" factor - This Needs to be addressed. Currently you can have up to 2 minutes to accept. I know people want to just "cut it off" at 1 minute, but something that needs to be considered is when que timers ARE long, most people will do things like RvR in the meantime. If you get flagged into combat, you cannot join. Therefore many times I have tired to accept ques and not been able to due to being stuck in combat. For this consideration, I think the best "medium" approach would be:

When you que, and it "pops" you are provided with 3 options:
- Join now
- Give me more time
- Leave

Now we know what Join now, and leave do. But lets discuss this "give me more time"... What I think this should do INSTEAD is rather than give you an EXTRA minute, it merely will finish the minute that you have and then NO MATTER WHAT is happening (combat, quest, AFK) it will "auto-accept" and port you to the match. You could be halfway through a BO capture, halfway through a 1v1 in RVR, or @ 1% HP in RvR and about to die - it wont matter. It ports you anyways,, inside or outside of combat, into the SC. You would NOT be able to "give me more time" and then IN combat, "join now" the auto-join effect would only kick in once the timer reaches :00. Meaning its not something you can really "exploit" to your advantage.

Will there be situations where players will avoid death due to this? Yes. But that will be a very MINOR cost at the benefit it provides; more fair/balanced SCs.

Now, ANOTHER part of this is the SC timer, should start after 1:00. So when it "pops" the SC is counting down from 1:00 to :00 - which alligns with the "auto-force-join" when you press "give me more time" so at the very WORST you have a few players pressing "give me more time" that auto-join the game JUST as its starting. This, I feel, will greatly aid in the QOL players feel in SCs, who join with <half their team in the match, lose the "BO" right off the bat, then have little to no chance to come back.

NEXT:
2) premade team - So this is a bit more complex. As mentioned before premade teams SHOULD and always will have a big advantage. So I think what would honestly make this game more fun, add more complexity to strategy AND provide greater opportunity for a PUG to have fun against a premade would be: force-spreading out the winning team.

- What do I mean? Well when you que for an SC and end up against a premade team, what ends up happening is they are able to stick together and create a massive zerg against you uncoordinated team. usually they never will "hold" points (on flag capture games) since they can just push to far point, capture it, farm kills and even if you do back-cap them, who cares! They zerg quickly to go take it back, and then re-zerg your team again. Ive been on both the dealing and receiving end multiple times and am very familiar with how these games turn out...

So, how do you split up the teams, providing a small "opportunity" for the losing team to stage a fight? Force the winning to to spread out. How? By putting MORE weight on objectives that force this - like defending captured nodes.

The best way I see this being done for "flag" games would be to provide points/sec based on the length that point was owned. So this means if all you do is "trade caps" in a zerg, you wont have very many points ticking... Versus a "losing team" may be able to focus effort on defending 1 flag and end up ticking for a TON of points towards the end of the game. it rewards defense!

The other thing you can do, is the "initial points per captures" could be based on the length of time the opposing team owned it. So if its a relatively fresh capture, you get next to zero for capping it. If its something they have "entrenched" for 5+ minutes, that should warrant a large tick of points. What this does is force, again, defense! If team A caps their home node and proceeds to stomp the losing team into the ground, they could send a sneaky stealthed player to "backcap" an undefended node, netting them a BIG tick of points. If they DO leave a "defense" this means they have LESS players doing the "spawn farm" meaning they have a small dis-advantage.

For Bauble games - I dont know the best way ti impact this. But for flag games, I can see this being more appealing to seasoned players, premades, and PUGs as now a premade is able to communicate, set up a strategy, a defender, attacking team, etc etc. But PUGs will feel there is "opportunity" to attack, either frontal assault, or shoot for a "backcap" and get a big tick of points and hinder the zerging/winning teams ability to spawn farm and win.

[saupreusse]

I totally agree to your first point. There must be a change to the timer.
The thing about changing the flag counters aso. is, that it is a nice idea, but it takes a shitload of time, to get it balanced ..,
I remember some old scenarios like phoenix gate or dragons thingy ( i dont remember the name)
They were pretty good for pugs because it wasnt all about whos side gets the most kills. reikland factory is also very good at this point, because the flags give you a good amount of points, so you can "stretch out" the players a bit and force them to scatter all over the map.

[incredible]

For your point #2: The problem is that you then "break" the underlying fundamentals of a trinity game. If I que with a group that is 2/2/2 and then am forced to split my group to hold points... I'm breaking the entire point of queing in that group. (to have a tank, dps, and heals). The highest level of coordination in this game should not, in my opinion, be penalized for coordinating. Instead, try to bring equal levels of coordination against one another for compelling matches. i.e. - coordinated groups play against coordinated groups... and uncoordinated players, if they choose, can play against other uncoordinated players.

It really is, in my opinion, that simple. We keep trying to make bads "get coordinated" and in your approach, spread out coordination to make it more level with uncoordinated bads. There is no need for this.

let people that group up and play coordinated play against coordination. let people that don't group up and play uncoordinated have a scenario to play against other uncoordination. everything else will take care of itself.

[Landaren]

Maybe weight kills more heavily for points?

That way it will at least end faster for the suffering side.

[Genisaurus]

This is a pretty good thread and I'ma let you finish, but I just wanna let you know that the proposal in the OP isn't going to happen.

Balancing should never happen after the fight has started.

Spoiler:

You have two sides fighting, A and B. A is beating B, so some system starts dynamically buffing B. How do you determine what kind of buff is appropriate? Obviously If it's too small to help, why buff at all? It's also obvious to see that if the buff is too strong, it disincentivizes fighting, because you know that the other team is just going to get buffed enough to beat you as soon as you start winning.

The problem is that the same disincentivizing occurs if the buff is just enough to make for an even fight - which is in itself an impossibility in this game, but accepting that leads to the above two points. All fights in RoR are over objectives. You're fighting for control of a BO, or a keep, or for scenario points, or scenario objectives, or whatever. Even a fight away from objectives is arguably to restrict the enemy's progress toward one of the above. If two sides are evenly matched, or guaranteed to be one through a Deus ex Machina buff, every encounter will lead to a stalemate. If an encounter is guaranteed to be a stalemate, you don't fight. Sides A and B will dance around each other to cap objective, because that will be the only way to win.

Now, you can say, "well if the fights are even, then skill would prevail!" Except that what you are proposing is a buff based on performance.

Here is how scenarios are balanced:

1. Both sides are within the same level range
2. Both sides are further bolstered to even out level imbalances
3. Both sides have access to the same gear
4. Both sides have the same number of players
5. Both sides start an equal distance from the objectives
6. New: Both sides are as likely as possible to have even compositions
7. New and Future: Premade and PUG-only scenarios will reduce the occurances of pug vs. premade matchups

All of these balancing steps take place before the scenario begins. Any other balancing systems, like MMR matchmaking, we don't have the population for. As-is, everyone has the exact same opportunity to succeed, if they put in the same time and effort. Yes, getting better gear counts as time and effort. Yes, making friends/joining a guild, downloading teamspeak, and forming a premade counts as time and effort.

Feel free to continue discussing other ideas, within the context of the rule: Balancing happens before the fight, not during.

[th3gatekeeper]

I totally agree to your first point. There must be a change to the timer.
The thing about changing the flag counters aso. is, that it is a nice idea, but it takes a shitload of time, to get it balanced ..,
I remember some old scenarios like phoenix gate or dragons thingy ( i dont remember the name)
They were pretty good for pugs because it wasnt all about whos side gets the most kills. reikland factory is also very good at this point, because the flags give you a good amount of points, so you can "stretch out" the players a bit and force them to scatter all over the map.

Reikland is actually one of the games I was thinking about when writing this, but not in a good way. I have seen FAR too many Reikland games be just a "trade caps" game where the entire zerg ends up running from 1 point to the other.

I think from a large perspective the lack of rewarding defense if part of the issue. Sure you get points/few seconds from holding the nodes and thats how you win games, but you ALSO get ticks from capping them AND kills. So much so, that the ticks you get from owning flags, almost becomes secondary. So the goal would be to increase the "value" of defending nodes, so that players dont just do full zergs everywhere.

Which is why I think the points/sec should be increased but only after X duration, otherwise it would still just be better to zerg nodes. In a few other games Ive played, there was ALOT of weight on defending capped points, to the point that kills AND caps were not even rewarded at ALL towards the win, so losing a node meant ALOT towards the win. I dont want to go THAT far, but I think putting an increased weight on defense so you remove the "zerg" is a good idea...

For your point #2: The problem is that you then "break" the underlying fundamentals of a trinity game. If I que with a group that is 2/2/2 and then am forced to split my group to hold points... I'm breaking the entire point of queing in that group. (to have a tank, dps, and heals). The highest level of coordination in this game should not, in my opinion, be penalized for coordinating.

Im sorry you see it this way. I think you are looking at this from an "all or nothing" approach. You 2-2-2 group can all stick together and be a HUGE dominating force, but risk losing the BOs you are not at... OR you can split up 1-1-1 onto two different nodes. OR you could have a "scout" sit at a node in defense, going 2-2-1 etc etc. The options are endless. I think it actually rewards groups more, and creates more "rolls" for classes. Such as a burst DPS class for instance, being able to roll up on a node and if defended by only 1 person, nuke them and take it. Makes a super tank even more rewarding as they can hold a node for a VERY long time solo. But I dont know if I agree that full 6 man PMs should be rewarded in just zerging with everyone else... Coordination there is merely calling targets /assisting where as THIS other option of play would also still require those things but also require more field awareness and Objective focus rather than kill mindset.

Instead, try to bring equal levels of coordination against one another for compelling matches. i.e. - coordinated groups play against coordinated groups... and uncoordinated players, if they choose, can play against other uncoordinated players.

Again, this would DRASTICALLY cut the Que times to non-existant. Other games have had the same issue... They make it based on "ELO" rating or ranking, or other premade groups etc etc. You qualify the requirements so much it becomes impossible to pop...

It really is, in my opinion, that simple. We keep trying to make bads "get coordinated" and in your approach, spread out coordination to make it more level with uncoordinated bads. There is no need for this.

let people that group up and play coordinated play against coordination. let people that don't group up and play uncoordinated have a scenario to play against other uncoordination. everything else will take care of itself.

Hoe do you propose to make "bads" get coordinated? Have you thought that maybe the players arent"Bad" but merely just played at a time their guild wasnt on... Or non-peak hours... or just got into a bad PUG game with 5 Warrior Priests and no tanks? No amount of "L2P, Coordiation" will fix that...

If we want to start making Que times longer, we can enforce the "PMvsPM" only mindset. Otherwise, I see this as the BEST option that IMO even MORE rewards coordiation, but not the necessarily the same type of coordination that is currently required.

[th3gatekeeper]

[*]New and Future: Premade and PUG-only scenarios will reduce the occurances of pug vs. premade matchups[/list]

To continue a point made on my last post, I respectfully dont think this is an avenue you guys should pursue UNLESS the player base really gets massive. It has far too many variables involved.

For instance, PUG-only: Does this mean no Duo Que teams? Or trio-Ques?

If yes and its ALL solo players - my guess is this que wont pop much, if at all and it surely doesnt promote team play. Also, if yes, how do you enforce "odd group sizes". Say you actrually get enough people grouped for this and have a group of 6 + 4+3... Who gets split up? Or does the que not pop? Etc.

If no, and you put a limit on say "1-3 players max qued" then youll end up with a guild who ques 3-4 teams of 3 players JUST BECAUSE THEY CAN. and coordinate que pops... Then also you run into... "what if you get a 6+4+4 qued... who gets dropped.

"odd party sizes" makes a premade Que hard to do.... And even if done correctly, it will STILL drastically reduce the Que times. When I think a better way to address this issue is make the entire purpose of the game less zerg-rewarding. Because thats basically what it is right now.

Bauble games? Just zerg around the bauble.
Flag games? Just zerg from one to the other.

The stronger team makeup and better /assisting usually wins.

Rather the game should drastically HINGE on the objective. So much so, that noone should want to leave a flag un-defended. Leaving ROOM for the behind team to zerg ONE of the areas and possibly stage a "stand" there and earn some points. Creating scenarios where they have opportunity to atleast put up a fight, rather than just rewarding 2 6 man PM zergs where even if by chance you got 4 pugs FF a target, I bet they wouldnt kill anything due to guard/heals/cc etc.

This also requires a greater level of team play than currently required in SCs. I have played games that do it this way, and not saying that game is better or not, however I have seen the benefits of making PVP VERY "objective" oriented where kills are not the focus. This game seems currently a LITTLE to heavy on the "kill" side.