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Fleece Johnson

Mildly Menacing Medic
These are public servers, not MLG/UGC/whatever professionals use. The fact that autobalance is based on W/L Ratio "WLR" makes zero sense in the interest of fair and balanced teams. Despite the fact that TF2 is an objective game in theory, it does not mean that players on "pubs" play that way.

Autobalance should be based on individual Kill/Death Ratio "KDR" or a hybrid of KDR, WLR & points earned for the following reasons:
  • There are almost never entire teams cooperating as a unit, therefore, players (usually a majority of each team) often gain wins or losses without having any objective involvement in the actual game's win or loss
  • KDR (preferably also accounting for assists) is an accurate analysis of each individual player's skill, cooperation & involvement in the game
  • Under the current system, strong and involved players are often switched to adjust each teams percentage of WLR, causing their objective work for their team to be used against them when switched (which is absolutely enraging as it often results in an unfair and completely counter-intuitive loss)
  • Teams are almost always unfair because strong and weak players alike are akin to WLR with zero distinction
  • WLR is only accurate in a perfect world where everyone has equal playtime, involvement, tactics and cooperation.
  • Logic dictates that individual players' stats should be based on those individual players' performances (i.e., WLR Autobalance should switch the entire team because it is based on the team and not the individual players)

In summary, individual players are switched based on a (random) team's performance. It makes zero sense and it sucks. Please correct this as soon as possible.

P.S. Offering the option to donate for or earn Autobalance Immunity does not correct the blatant ignorance of the current system or its effects on the fairness and enjoyability of the game.

Cheers:)
 
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Bottiger

Administrator
Um no. It isn't simply based on your number of wins and losses. Everything you are worried about has already been taken into account. Please read the description of the rating system in the news section.

Also people can earn autobalance immunity but not autoscramble immunity. And you will eventually be scrambled into the weaker team, and if you aren't good enough for your rating, you will lose.
 
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Fleece Johnson

Mildly Menacing Medic
That's a bullshit cop-out and your system is shit. It is not a perfect world. Your system dictates that being unfairly autobalanced is your fault and that you need to play worse in order to succeed. That is shit. Complete shit. A hybrid KDR, assist and objective point system would be far superior and uh... fair to good players, who by winning and enjoying the server would attend more frequently, benefiting the server and increasing the likelihood of donation. Moments ago, my friend played Harvest and captured the point for a majority of the round, but was autobalanced for the last 30 seconds to the losing team. He was quite disgruntled at the game the system stole from him.
 

Roboute Guilliman

Australian Skial God
Contributor
That's a bullshit cop-out and your system is shit. It is not a perfect world. Your system dictates that being unfairly autobalanced is your fault and that you need to play worse in order to succeed. That is shit. Complete shit. A hybrid KDR, assist and objective point system would be far superior and uh... fair to good players, who by winning and enjoying the server would attend more frequently, benefiting the server and increasing the likelihood of donation. Moments ago, my friend played Harvest and captured the point for a majority of the round, but was autobalanced for the last 30 seconds to the losing team. He was quite disgruntled at the game the system stole from him.

What? Where did he say you need to play worse in order to succeed? Or rather, where the heck did you even get that notion? He just told you that the server balances people by their WLR. Logically, wouldn't players with more wins be better players? Now before you get into the whole "some people don't play objective thing", the idea of balance is so that both teams are just as likely to win as the other. If some people don't give a wooden nickle for objectives, that's their style, but their overall skill and just getting kills is still a contribution to the team, many times I see a singular skilled soldier or demo utterly demolish entire teams, allowing perhaps their own not so stellar team to win a game (Hello Goldrush).

KDR doesn't dictate an individual's skill or contribution in many cases. More often than not, good medics don't have very high KDRs because of the nature of the class they play. However, they still tend to have higher winrates than the average joe just because that they are doing their job and supporting the team.

And how would a hybrid KDR, assist and objective point system would be far superior then our current system? Medics are going to get underrated while Engineers get bloated which in turn will lead to skill imbalance. There are other classes that may suffer from similar issues, but I'll just point out the easily seen issues.

And yes. We all have our autobalance rages. But you know what? It happens everywhere.
 

Fleece Johnson

Mildly Menacing Medic
I feel that you should read my posts again. I will concede that Engineers will have a bloated ratio, but at the same time, those players should be aware of that and be open to a "nerf" in that regard. As long as ratios are being scaled and that's your reasoning for leaving the current system, why not just implement a more accurate system to begin with? A hybrid KDR system would be actively accurate whereas a WLR system is more passive. Most of what I've heard supporting a WLR system is that it will eventually work itself out. Boo.
 

Bottiger

Administrator
If you feel we should read your posts again, then you should read mine. From your complaints it is clear that you did not read it. And I'm not going to waste my time repeating it here for you.

We have statistics showing that the system works very well. Before when we scrambled based on KD, there would be imbalances of up to 20%, and now they are down to 3-4%.
 

TF2PublicFerret

Somewhat Threatening Sniper
As an objective observer and one that is not too familiar with the inner workings of the system, what I have noted is that the new system is superior. Teams more often than not tend to be much more balanced, easily better than Valve's in house scrambler which I call LORD SCRAMBLOR because hes a god and prone to whims of seeing a team suffer due to stacking.

Thing is I can understand your annoyance in being autobalanced in the last 30 second of a round, it happens to all of us. You do feel very cheated out of the investment you have made to your team for it all to be thrown back in your face. Unfortunately its a fact of life in TF2 land but to be fair it does not happen often. Usually scrambles are at the end of a round and everyone is okay with a blank slate.

From the point of view of lesser players what can be irritating is that one team consistently wins. I remember being on a server years ago which developed a habit of having an "Old boys club" they would congregate on one team and rek the other. That sentiment is still active today. What I will say is that team stacking causes servers to die, and the death spiral can be catastropic as one team holds these ace players while another dies and takes in new recruits and some peeps from the other team.

The new system doesn't seem any harsher and is much better. Overall an improvement.

P.S. Is Points over Time a thing? Personally a K/D ratio doesn't cover everything whereas somebody who got 10 ponts in 3 minutes is much better than 50 points in 30 minutes...