Team Autobalance; joining a round late

[Slappy]

1) Autobalance doesn't seem to work quite right.
I've been thinking about this for some time, but Kiech just posted something in "Granks 1.2 Balance stats" thread, and so here I go..

Something else should be considered that I didn't see here. Many times a game will start with only a few people, but quickly grow into a full server of 10. In cases of this, the guard team will quickly become more powerful than the thief team as thief lives are used up. Example, a simple 2 on 2 game, where the thieves each lose 1 life, suddenly 5 human guards can be on a team against the 2 thieves. Check again if those thieves each lose another life, and 1 player tries to join, only to drop after spawning - now there can be 8 human guards on 2 thieves.

Sadly, the thieves that start DMing right away won't experience this problem as much.

Kiech

The problem seems to be that autobalance doesn't apply if one team is out of lives. So if there are 3 thieves alive with no extra lives, and 3 guards living (with 1+ AI left), any new players are allowed to join guards - even though the teams are already balanced, and allowing them to join makes it UNbalanced.

I suppose this was done purposely, because people who join want to PLAY, not spectate. However I would prefer it if new players in this situation were forced to spectate until the end of the round. Which brings me to my second point.

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2) Those whores who wait until the round starts before joining, so they can always be thief.

I think that the ONLY time a player should be allowed to join a team is before the round begins. If you miss that, you are a spectator for the round. Or, perhaps a vote could allow someone to join in late.

[Yenzarill]

I like the vote idea.

[Curunir]

2) Those whores who wait until the round starts before joining, so they can always be thief.

That pisses me off too, especially when I am forced to guard maps consecutively on maps that I love thieving, while they wait and thieve every map.

[Bloody-Reaper]

I think that the ONLY time a player should be allowed to join a team is before the round begins. If you miss that, you are a spectator for the round. Or, perhaps a vote could allow someone to join in late.

No... Many players computers are so slow that when they load the map, and enter the server the game has already started!

But yes... Those taffers are annoying. But maybe some kind of... Auto team force?
So if your in the game before the map begins, but havent joined a team you are either a) Forced on to a team so they even out, or b) Put to spectator mode.

[Machine]

Whatever, something needs to be done, it's so damn irritating when you've been a guard last round so you can specificly be a thief the next and it swaps you because someone can't play fair.

If you want to be a thief so much on a particular level then bloody guard the one before it! :x

[Stakhanov]

If you want to be a thief so much on a particular level then bloody guard the one before it! :x

Indeed , people tend to avoid being guard (It's way funnier than playing as a thief on certain maps) and noobs just always try to be thief.

However , unless you have the exact server's mapcycle , you can't really know if your favorite thieving map is next (besides , it's likely other's favorite thieving map too) because the next map is "unknown" before the round starts. So you have to wait for the other players to be sorted , then join the guard team when you can read the next map's title...
Anyway , I don't mind playing 75% of the time as a guard. I just hate seeing thieves DM the game while they would do a much better job as guards.

[Buho]

Getting a little OT for this thread, but

I'd like to propose that in the time before the game starts, when you have the option of what team to choose, the F2 screen displays the next map instead of Unknown. Is this do-able, or is this a falacy of the UT engine?

[ToTT]

What they should do, is have the computer track what the game timer is when someone joins... if the game hasn't started yet and they don't click until it DOES start then they should not be allowed to play. If they load late, then it's ok, I guess...