stacking, stacking, stacking...

Today, in FBY Beginner, I was playing the only Axis in Resurrection.
The allied team had: Ronin, Taufin, Polat, EXP(IKX). 
I pointed out that it was 4on1 - I was ignored.

Then Silent Hunter joined and went Axis. 
So it was 4on2. 
Still stacked. 
I left in disgust.

And then Mac Claus joined Allied making it 5on1 against Silent!!
What a bunch of *******!! 

After a couple of minutes, EXP did the decent thing and changed to Axis to help Silent.
Then I left to post a gripe in here. These guys come in every day and usually ruin other people's games. Everybody enjoys a spree. But playing only for sprees, and team-stacking to do it, is spoiling the server for everybody else.

daijizai wrote:Today, in FBY Beginner, I was playing the only Axis in Resurrection.
The allied team had: Ronin, Taufin, Polat, EXP(IKX). 
I pointed out that it was 4on1 - I was ignored.

Then Silent Hunter joined and went Axis. 
So it was 4on2. 
Still stacked. 
I left in disgust.

And then Mac Claus joined Allied making it 5on1 against Silent!!
What a bunch of *******!! 

After a couple of minutes, EXP did the decent thing and changed to Axis to help Silent.
Then I left to post a gripe in here. These guys come in every day and usually ruin other people's games. Everybody enjoys a spree. But playing only for sprees, and team-stacking to do it, is spoiling the server for everybody else.

So ... you're saying Ronin was stacking?  NO SURPRISE.  That irritates me with him and a few others like him.  Not just being on stacked team, but joining the server and then joining already stacked teams.

Guys,

  We have been talking about the stacking and are working on it. Keep doing like you did, tell us. Sometimes I get so involved in the game I forget to check if teams are still even. Thanks.

Don't worry, we'll gripe

And thanks for the support, Lower

You forgot. Rushing objectives. Completing them out of order out of order and messing up the spawn and the game and there by rushing the map. 
I'm not surprised at all. There's one on your list that I have seen rushing in the above fashion. Can you guess who that is? Anyone?
"The allied team had: Ronin, Taufin, Polat, EXP(IKX). 
I pointed out that it was 4on1 - I was ignored." 
 daijazi,  If you can spec a rusher. you can demo him by hitting F12. Then post it here on the forum so that the admins can deal with the twisted dingle berrys.

Ok, Twister, thanks for the F12 tip

And, no, I can't guess who.

(I was only recently able to start playing again, so I don't really know who all the gits are yet, lol)

Twisted wrote:You forgot. Rushing objectives. Completing them out of order out of order and messing up the spawn and the game and there by rushing the map. 
I'm not surprised at all. There's one on your list that I have seen rushing in the above fashion. Can you guess who that is? Anyone?
"The allied team had: Ronin, Taufin, Polat, EXP(IKX). 
I pointed out that it was 4on1 - I was ignored." 
 daijazi,  If you can spec a rusher. you can demo him by hitting F12. Then post it here on the forum so that the admins can deal with the twisted dingle berrys.

Taufin.  I think Polat is a good player, generally follows rules.  Ronin has probably never gone for any objective, always hanging back on the stacked team sniping.  I don't know about EXP ... so I'm going with Taufin.  ??

Not always.

FWIW, in my few times on with daijizai, I've appreciated an effort to try to even off the teams a bit.  I always do too, except when I don't notice the disparity.  And of course, the FBY guys do.  Thanks for that, mate.

Nice post, smuck

I forgot something:
Before I left the server to gripe in here, I told them that I was going to report them. After I posted in here, I looked at the server again - they'd gone, lol!
(Usually the repeat offenders are in for hours.)

So it looks like some people are at least beginning to see that team-stacking is being taken seriously. 
Hopefully, we'll soon see an end to it. That and the rushing, and all the other crap

We have been "taking this seriously" for a long time.

We have even removed one FBY admin last week (Maria) for being on a stacked team. I had mixed feelings about this because other admins stack too without punishment. Even ones who are highly competent have been documented joining stacked teams when they connect to the game, or not moving to balance the teams when they get lopsided.

Even admins who complain about stacking will be seen stacking. It is not an intentional act like using a cheat, but something that people do thoughtlessly.

Banning half the clan over this is not something I want to do. I have threatened to do this but it doesn't help. It is too much work to train new members just to remove them for not moving to the weaker team when they don't notice teams have shifted.

It is very difficult to get people to take this seriously. It requires continuous pressure from the top of the clan to remind admins to move when the players start stacking. Stacking happens 100 times a day. The teams change very rapidly and get stacked over and over and the admins give up and stop caring after they move themselves a couple times.

There is currently no technical solution to this problem. We run three mods on beginner - jaymod, enhanced mod, and omnibot. Jaymod and omnibot do not work well together for preventing stacked teams.

If you use the jaymod settings to force the team balance, then the players won't be able to switch teams to balance out the omnibots.

The omnibots are intended to be added to whichever team is smaller. This defeats jaymod's team balance setting. So if you enable jaymod's team balance capability then no one will be able to move at all since both teams will be evened out by omnibots.


It requires human intervention and admins watching the server all the time.

Obit, good points you make.  It's desired, but no easy solution.  I don't mind it necessarily that people happen to be on a stacked team, I don't notice myself sometimes.  I mainly mind when the team that has 2, and against 6, asks for people to balance and they don't.  There's no excuse then, but that's the standard occurrence.  Yesterday, Goomba happened to be on a stacked team (sometimes hard to notice), and even though he expressed the desire to play allies, he did switch to axis to balance teams.  I appreciated that.  And that's what I'm talking about--even it out, especially when the lesser team puts the request out there.

Yes, it's hard being admin, I've done it in other clans.
(And I know you take it seriously, I was only referring to the gits that cause the problems, lol.)

So I truly understand the problems you have, Obituary.
I'm sorry for all your grief, and very appreciative of all your hard work.

And I agree with Hashshashin, it's most vexing when people just ignore you and refuse to change. 
Sometimes I don't notice the teams becomiong stacked, but if somebody points it out, I'll always change (if Air doesn't beat me to it first, LOL)

The thing to remember is that you run an excellent clan, and excellent servers.

Thanks, Obituary

Viva FBY

Oops, forgot, sorry - there is an old unwritten rule of gaming etiquette: 
Last person(s) to join the game, should be the first to change team.

A new server message, maybe? 

Eg:

"If you've been moved to the other team, it's an admin's command to balance the teams. Please do not argue with the admins."

It's only a suggestion, and I'm certainly not trying to tell anyone how to do stuff.

I'm only trying to help

Good suggestion Daijizai !!
Selene and Obit, What do you think?

We have a banner saying "Please join or switch to the weaker team". My idea, when I was writing it, was that the "join" part would refer to whoever connected last. Perhaps it should be worded more obviously. "Switch" was referring to the players who were already in the stronger team.

Selene, your message is perfectly clear. To anyone with a brain and a shred of decency, hahaha! But perhaps it does need emphasised.
I'm sorry you get so much grief, Selene, and thanks for all the hard and patient work

I know this has been discussed somewhere here. I  remember we talking about score verses player count. I see players connecting and going to the team with the fewer live players a lot of times. When in fact, it is the stronger team by score. Now the teams look even by player count. However it's now more stacked then before. And so it can get shady when there is 6 on the weaker team and 3 on the winning team. Which team do you join?
  Could it be most players don't know that? 
 It may be better if Selene or Obit explains it better. I know it's been talked about, but some of the newer players may not have seen that thread. Clan or non Clan.
 I try not to, but occasionally I find myself doing it. It's easy to get twisted up when there's 2 to 1. However when I realize it I switch. Not all players have the same skill level. And a players xp is not always a indication of that. Some low xp players are very experienced players.
 Usually it's the attacking team that get stacked. No matter if it's Axis or Allies. I've seen them so many times switch between maps. Some times 3 or 4 players. Then you find yourself on the stacked team.
 Who's in the wrong here? I think it's the players who switched. And that leaves those of us who care to help keep the teams even, end up having to switch teams. The best way is to PM a admin if present. of not then the player with the highest score. A long timer. Most of us are helping the clan balance the teams.
 There is a plus here. It's always more fun to take out live players then bots. At least to me it is. The more the merrier. 
 I hit L and switch my spawn and go hunting campers. It may not always win the map. But it's a lot more fun then getting owned repeatedly coming out the forward spawn. And it usually gets one or 2 of the campers hunting me. It keeps them on their toes. Always having to watch behind them. Giving the me or the bots a better chance to shoot them.
 Which means my bots have a better chance of getting out of the spawn.
 Oh and gas and smoke are good defensively when your spawn is camped on all sides. Toss it out the exits. It well obscure the campers shot. Again giving the you or the bots a better chance to take them out.
Then again? If you don't want to go after the campers you can camp their spawn too. That is if you can get out of yours.
 I like to plant mines in the path of the tanks. If they camping your spawn and your holding off their bots. You can win the map this way. Been there done that.
 There are usually always options.
 I don't mind the stacking so much if I got another spawn. I get to kill more live players.

More stacking tonight...

I came on as obit and it was 8 humans against 2 humans and 6 bots. I pointed it out and... I was completely ignored.

The teams had been badly stacked the previous map with the same exact group of players. So I shuffled at the beginning of the next map.

So even though I shuffled at the beginning of this map, within a few minutes it had completely re-stacked.

I had left to go eat some food when someone told me in teamspeak that the teams were re-stacked just like before.

I started kicking people off the server because they would not move. I kicked one person at a time with "stacking" as the reason. Only one player moved to the empty team to avoid my wrath.

One of the stackers was an FBY admin too.

OK I am putting up a new banner on the server:

"Recently kicked for stacking: UncleFkr, iron_horse, Titan, Lance Boil, [FBY]RealmNY"

Proposed "New Stacking Policy":
 
The picture below shows a clearly stacked team. There are three visible signs:
 
1) There are four players more in the Axis (7 vs 3).
2) The Axis have 870 team XP for the map, versus 330 team XP for the Allies.
3) The Axis have a combined player XP of over 800,000 while the Allies have a combined player XP of about 360,000.
 

 
 

We will define a "stacked team" as a team that has at least two of these characteristics:
 
A) A team with three or more human players than the other team (example: 8 people versus 4 people)
 
B) A team with a total personal XP of the players is at least double the total xp of the other team (example: 1,000,000 total versus 200,000 XP)
 
C) A team where the XP achieved in that map by the team is at least 50% higher than the other team's XP for the current map (example: 1200 versus 750)
 
This accounts for the situations where there are more players on a team with lower average skill. That would not be stacking.
 
If admins witness stacking, they must follow this procedure:
 
1) announce to everyone that teams are stacked and players need to move
2) use !putteam to move the best players to the weaker team, or move the player who most recently joined the stronger team
3) !kick players who restack or go to spec and wait a few minutes then join the stronger team (!kick ETPlayer stacking)

We will no longer remove admins from the clan for stacking as it is often unintentional.

Thanks for that, Obituary, I never really noticed the team/map xp scores. 

DOH! 

I learn something new about Enema Territory every day. And then forget it. 

Double DOH!

The reason I sometimes call it Enema Territory is because the 1st time I played, I saw a dead guy with no trousers, and another guy bent over him, doing something.
I typed, "Eeww, who's the guy interfering with the dead bodies!?"
Then somebody explained about coverts, lol

Anyway,when I join a server, if the teams are equal, I usually ask: Hi, which team?

But sometimes get ignored. 
I understand, though, that if yer in the middle of a fire-fight, arming/disarming dyna, etc, you might not be in the mood for typing, so I wait for a reply.
If I don't get a reply, I usually stay spec for a while until things change, or join what looks like the weaker team.

In future, though, I'll try to take the team/map xp score into account

Obit Excellent, very good analysis tells to all.

I must tell you that in my case, if the teams are equal, I always ask "Which team" or, I look at the progress considerer time. And also, I check number of XP (even if its not realist) but this gives me an idea. Finally, the map xp score and the best player, accuracy....
However....
We are all motivated to solve this problem or to mitigate it, we are on the right road.

Hey, I forgot....
A pretentious gentleman ""Goomba"" (again) says I'm a bad admin  in a game (evening later this week).
It was 2 against 2 when he told me this.

When I was alone (1-2), I was holding the game, the Allies not moving, barely and another poor player play with me (2-2). I changed my team to help them (1-3) but we walked too fast (not balanced), so I returned to my team (2-2)

Goomba connect to the game and blablabla about this (2-2), and that I am a bad administrator lollllllll
I ignored this stupid message and, the poor player disconnect after some minutes (1-2).
Believe me, they do not have more advanced or just a little bit Goomba and other player lollllll.

I dont undestand why he always judges before they know what it is spent there 2 minutes besides it has still not been able to move forward too even when I was alone. It is for this reason why I ignore this gentleman (sorry but realistic).

Finally, I just wanted to show you that "as experienced players", there is always someone who cry !!!

Wait, what? Goomba is cool!

I admit sometimes he will panzer his team-mates in a playful way. I've had that from him and we ended up just goofing around for about 10 minutes.

The point is he has a sense of humour and isn't a griefer.

I believe he was probably joking with you, NeroQC, at least that is what I believe

Hmm... Sorry Ox I have to agree with Nero.  If I recall correctly he's had a couple of vacations. I don't believe the gentleman has any respect for admins or the rules.

Gotta be respectful of everyone.

On a separate topic, the other day while playing minas, I inadvertantly blew up a gate ahead of its time.

I had planted at the preceding gate, threw three cans of gas on it and then got panzered.

When I re-spawned, I figured it was impossible that my dyno could have been disarmed, so I rocket-jumped up to the next gate and planted before anyone could stop me.

Then some seconds later when no one came at all, I realized that my dyno at the previous gate HAD been disarmed, impossible though it seemed.

I also noticed that from that moment on, my engie class had no more dynamite! If that is an anti-cheating measure, then kudos!

I don't know G00mba well, but he was very helpful in trying to teach me some jump tricks, but he is maybe a little, hmm, aggressive, but maybe he's just playful.

And...Ox ?  LOL!!

"Be careful with that axe (oops, I mean "dyna"), Eugene!!"

 

Question about stacking bans:

Are they permanent? 

UnclFkr is currently showing on the autogenerated recent bans scroll.  But he's playing tonight. 

Fender and I were on, but not sure what to do.  I left and checked the Forums:  he's not on permanent bans.  And I don't see anything about him elsewhere.

If this comes up, do you want us to kick?  ban again?  Or leave it alone and assume it was either rectified (player apologized, bought Selene chocolates & flowers, etc...) & they were un-banned, or the ban length simply expired?

I believe he comes up on the "Recently Kicked for Stacking" not the Recently Banned list.  He was one of the players on when Obit joined the server and decided new guide lines on stacking were needed.

It's a half hour "time out."  I am guilty of not paying attention to the sides.  A lot of times I will point out that "we won" but that it was 1 v 5 or some other similar unfair stack.  Sometimes I will look and it's fine, but then by the end of the game half the other team (I usually like to play allies) is gone.  But if it's happening during the game, it's hard to keep looking. 

I try to switch when I see someone complain and it's a legit complaint, but sometimes, like the day I got kicked, I didn't notice the messages until it was too late. 

It's no fun when you have zero chance of winning. 

I wasn't bothered by being kicked.  It's not a big deal and let's face it, a half hour is nothing more than a light reminder.

UncleFkr wrote:It's a half hour "time out."  I am guilty of not paying attention to the sides.  A lot of times I will point out that "we won" but that it was 1 v 5 or some other similar unfair stack.  Sometimes I will look and it's fine, but then by the end of the game half the other team (I usually like to play allies) is gone.  But if it's happening during the game, it's hard to keep looking. 

If it's stacked 7v5, that's one thing ... but 5v1?  That's hard to miss.  If you think this when you're playing: "Wow, we're just running through them so quickly!" or "I haven't killed a human player in a long while" or "I haven't died in a long while" ... then maybe, just probably, you're stacked against the other team.  This is especially true on any map where you're moving a tank.  Stacking is so obvious (especially 4v1 or 5v1) by how the map is going.

I came on and teams were terribly stacked (like 8 to 2 or something ridiculous like that). I kicked five people on the stacked team for stacking.

For stacking we will just kick as a lot of people don't even realize it is going on. Others do it intentionally because they want to win or they suck and don't want to get owned.

Tonight, my team Allies was 3 and Axis 4. I was working alone, others??
Contrariwise, in my team, he camped in the distance, many XP for us but lost goal again and again...It's very frustrating.
And when you look at Internet statistics, these players are rotten (gains little) (sorry but true).
Usually, we were 3 and 4 on the other side, not too difficult or chalenge for us for not move.

I do not know why, but since 4-5 months, I change my team many times, really.... even 3-4 times in one map.
I look forward to a clear rule was passed or we find a way to mitigate this frustration.

NeroQC wrote:I do not know why, but since 4-5 months, I change my team many times, really.... even 3-4 times in one map.
I look forward to a clear rule was passed or we find a way to mitigate this frustration.

If I'm on, ask me personally to switch if you think it's not balanced.  I will.  Sometimes it's hard to know for sure when it's 3v4 and the 3 has the higher XP, as you mentioned.  ~ Hash

It's not you Hash, when I ask you, you immediately changes.

I hope I've gotten better in the last month. 

I now try to keep an eye out for the sides. 


Annoyingly...  while I was waiting to see if everything was "unstacked"  I got a message to "play or go spec"  It couldn't have been more than 20 seconds into the game.

I see 3 scenarios playing out that make it difficult to make a firm policy on stacking.  First scenario where everyone jumps to one side at like 3am to kill bots for an hour. I think we can all agree that is an allowed stack as long as now one complains.  HOWEVER it is one thing to be playing 3x3 then someone joins and make it 4x3 then someone moves over to make it 5x2 etc. and that's where it creates a problem.  XP is another scenario.  You can have 2 seasoned players versus 5 newer players and that might be a fair fight. It is not always the number of players that creates a stack.  It is tricky to make an all encompassing policy. 

I really like this server to play on and there are some tough competitors but recently I have seen more cheating going on (the admins catch them and kick them almost always after a while) and stack jobs now. I joined one today where it was 3x1.  I joined the 1 player and then THAT GUY MOVES TO THE OTHER TEAM to SK me and my bots so it was 4x1.  Just not good gamesmanship.  

Keep up the good work admins, being an admin really is a thankless job but I will tell you thank you!  Keep catching those cheaters and hackers.  I guess we can't name names in this forum, but I feel like it when you see people with 88% head shots.  :/

Just take a vid and post it and let the rest take action over it.  Or take screenshots, post them.  Sometimes pictures are stronger than words.  Don't let the noobs discourage you.  We get them eventually.

Thank you for this information. As always, we collect all the information and try to fix this. As OneOldMan says, try to take a video record or screenshot, with evidence, we work very quickly with proofs.

We have a great team of admin and I believe we have an exemplary collaboration all together and especially for the 2 pricipals administrators (listen our admins).

See you on ET soon!
Tks again.

If you observe blatant stacking like the story above, where someone deliberately moved to the stacked team, then take a screenshot and send it to us.

We have banned players (and clan members) for stacking. One clan member was even banned from all the servers. So we will take action. However I will do NOTHING without a screenshot. These vague stories of unnamed players stacking mean NOTHING.

I want to be absolutely consistent in our policies. This means if you get caught stacking, you get abused, and eventually banned. If we aren't going to do this then we may as well unban all the people who were already banned for stacking.

Again, take a screenshot and email it to us, or use a website like tinypic.com and post it on the forum. Thank you.

In my experience, folks are good about moving when it's called out.  I'm on maps often, where it starts out even and a few folks leave mid map.  You don't necessarily notice, if the 3 that are left on the other team are great players and still kill you enough.  But when someone calls it out, I move.  I've called it out also, and seen folks move.  People seem good about it, good enough for my tastes anyway.  Once in a blue moon, nobody feels like moving and it's a shit fest for the whole map.  If it's just me against 8 players, I'll join the 8 guys just to draw attention to it.  Maybe I have been lucky that there's usually an admin on, or a regular who get is.

I don't know, I still get a lot of complaints about stacking. It's one of the biggest problems with the game. If you lock the teams then people can't move and if you leave them open then people stack.

It's just part of the game, there is no technical fix besides continuously reminding players and admins every day to watch the teams.

I'm sure you do, jefe.  I guess what I mean is that there are different kinds of stacking.

Sometimes it's just someone letting off a little steam through a one-sided beatdown--that doesn't last long. 

Sometimes folks just didn't notice that half of the other team took off--that fixes itself generally once someone points it out.

And sure, some people would just rather be on the dominant side or play a certain side during a particular map or play with their buddies, etc.

Of course, you get to hear the complaints.  But as someone who has no moderation responsibility, I can tell you that I don't see a ton of intentional abuse of the rules.  Beginner is basically the only server that I play on, and it's in large part due to the successful implementation of your guidelines.  So thanks.

i didn't read every single post, but i read a lot of them...one in particular caught my attention...about xp points...i think for the most part that that is almost irrelevant since i have noticed several players who have reset their xp many times...and until now i didn't know why they would do that...and people flip sides or drop out so fast that it is hard to keep the teams from getting stacked...players who have been playing for any length of time can tell who the best players are though, regardless of xp points...though i do agree with someone saying that the teams are stacked and need to be balanced, it almost seems like a lost cause most of the time...they only seem to stay balanced for a short period of time before they become stacked again...i also sometimes miss the message, but will try to pay more attention...thx

I've been trying to think of more ways to fix the problem.

1) I am raising the difficulty of the omnibots from 2 to 3. Baserace desert will remain at 2 since at 3 the bots are too tough due to the open spaces on this map.

2) I am lowering the number of bots to 10. This way it will be harder to stack since there won't be bots to help.

3) I have added shuffle to the beginning of every map. So even if you stack, and admins are not around or not paying attention, the teams will get shuffled every map anyway.

Hope this helps.

I can't say I'm thrilled about the shuffle idea, but I understand and will try it...