The “team balancing” in this game is absolutely atrocious. They tried to fix it with the last patch and it doesn’t seem any better to me.
I don’t mind playing on the losing team when you’ve got two teams trying. But that’s not how this game works.
What usually happens is that if one side starts losing a little, some of the players from the losing team immediately switch to the winning team. The losing side starts losing worse and other people jump ship and it becomes a rout. The mid round balancer? It does not work at all. Once the losers start abandoning ship, there is no stopping the downward spiral and the losing team gets creamed. Because of this dynamic, an evenly matched game is nearly impossible. Dice has tried to fix this and they’ve failed every time.
Its no fun playing in a game where you’re just getting completely dominated. So I find myself becoming one of the expert switchers. When it looks like one team has a slight advantage, I’ll immediately switch so I don’t get stuck on the sinking ship. I’d really like to be competitive and just try to win with my team but I know people are going to jump ship for sure and I’ll be left holding the bag. So I’ve decided I’ll jump before they do. I guess I’m part of the problem but I really have no choice. The way this game is designed is that someone will always be left holding the bag and getting stomped on the losing team. I guess its kind of fun stomping the remaining losers, but I’d rather fight to win.
Anyways, I believe this could be easily fixed with good programming. Its not rocket science for peets sake! It’s sad really that a game software development company can not figure out how to make balanced teams.
The teambalancer should be removed,its a complete failure.
Matches still start with 20 vs 30,you get switched seconds before the round is over,you get switched to already bigger teams. It simply doesnt work. And teamswitching and teamswitching together just cant work.
They must come up with some kind of method to determine player’s skill and usefulness to his team as an individual. Then, and only then we can try to implement some kind of team balancer to shuffle players in a way that would put equal amount of good and trash players into each team. Until then, there is nothing we can do.
Well I never switched for that reason and never will. I often play alone against stacking noobs in small gamemodes where my whole team goes negative and I loose round after round. the problem is that the teambalancing is based on the “skill rating” which is flawed by itself because such rounds won’t hurt my skill rating too much so the game keeps thinking that the games are fair despite what actually happens in the game.
I played some last night and it was as the OP mentions, the opposing team had a full clan plus many 150’s to my team of mostly noobs and one 150…The wipeout was looming and my game time is limited so I bailed on the game…I did look for opportunities to switch teams even though I find the practice disgusting, it does work and the game doesn’t punish you for it unlike in BF4
ALT+F4 is much cleaner, I never really feel like applying myself having switched teams anyhow, whatever the reason and if they get hammered bad it’s not really a target rich environment so while switching teams may give you a win there’s not much else in it.
I do the same thing when going for my operations battlepacks. If they aint gunna try and/or wunna camp, ill play with the team that wants to win.
What’s worse is i don’t know if the losing team are idiots, noobs, or too concerned with mah’ k/d ratio. They don’t spawn on captured flags, they camp in useless locations, they play supports but don’t lay packs…
Like the game I’m in now. I can’t switch because “teams would become TOO imbalanced”, which is cute they don’t want things to get TOO imbalanced. Grand ops, Monte Grappa, attackers, 3rd set of objectives; everyone just goes into tard mode. Defenders are flanking our spawns
As bad as it is, I’ll admit that I switch too. I think I’m a pretty good player so I’m always thrown on the losing team. And when I see that my team is getting spawn then yea I leave the potato team. A game jus isn’t fun if you can’t even spawn!
You always have the choice of not being a . Not winning does not necessarily equal getting stomped, and comebacks do happen (though not often). My code of ethics allows for quitting spawncamps (which are relatively rare on PC), but otherwise I work to try and turn the game around. It makes me a better player, and I still have a 62 percent win ratio to show for it.
This is factually incorrect and displays considerable observation bias. You are not always thrown on the losing team, no one is. Playing solo the expected win/loss ratio is approximately 50 percent, unless you are playing smaller modes and can carry your team. You are just rationalizing your despicable behavior.
I’d love to see some kind of reward for switching to or joining losing teams.
I’d always imagined if i made a game one way to even it up would be to add “mercenary/reinforcement alerts” that can pop up for servers in your area, the higher the deficit the higher the reward, the alerts would be subject to player skill so that better players get better rewards in harder situations. While mid level players won’t get alerts for teams getting utterly dominated.
When in suez conquest your team takes the transport car directly into the enemy’s first flag and you see that your teams only available vehicle is a mortar truck still stuck at your base flag you can quit the game as quick as maybe 2-3 mins in as you just lost b flag and the whole of the enemy clan and lvl 150s is just starting to swarm flag a.
The choice is clear, either quit or just be a cavalry and horse around. Team switching on the other hand is quite a despicable move.
what I don’t understand though Is why people keep switching sides. I understand why people quit (of course I don’t like them quitting but it’s understandable to a degree). however switching is just stupid. I don’t think steamrolling is fun in any way. it’s rather boring if anything. in fact I enjoy it more to get steamrolled while holding the enemy back at least a few times and doing well myself. at least it is challenging…
also I think as a good/experienced player one has some kind of responsibility towards his team. especially in smaller gamemodes when your the only one on your team your supposed to cary a bit. that’s in fact a part of the team balancing. if u just switch you Dont even give the system a chance. again what I think kills the balance is stacks because they are incredibly effective but is not being taken into account in any way when balancing teams…
Winner-teams and losing-teams are basically determined by the matchmaking/balancer before the game even starts. A new round is always heavily stacked one way by the matchmaker, which is very evident when it places new players on the largest team first, before it starts filling up the smallest team.
Actual turnarounds are few, and even the few that happen are only EVER accomplished by crutch mechanics (behemoths, elite kits in spawn etc).
There are of course occasionally close games, and I consider a close game a match that ends with less than 100 ticket difference. I mean REAL close games, games where the teams are so evenly matched the entire round that the crutch mechanics never spawn. Those are good games.
Losing or winning a game 990-1000 with no crutch mechanics involved are the absolute best games.
To those of you that say it’s unethical to switch teams, I get your point I think. However please remember that the atrocious team balancing mechanics of the game often create a death spiral for one team that ends up becoming a team of losers. The spiral begins because teams are not properly balanced from the start and then some players see this and bail. (I’m sometimes one of those players, but even if I personally don’t bail and stay on the down spiral losing team, it’s still most likely to lose.) Now if you could get everyone (not just me) not to switch teams, the losing team might have a chance. But that isn’t happening. So its unethical to use the in game team switching button in order to counter an unfair advantage? To me its an unfortunate and flawed feature of the game but the only way to avoid death spiral loser frustration. I don’t mind a fair fight, but the game balancing is far from fair. If you want to call me unethical for that, I won’t hold it against you.
And to those of you that say its ok to quit a losing team but it’s not ok to teamswitch, I think your walking a slippery slope. When you think its ethical to quit and abandon your losing team but its unethical to teamswitch, I don’t agree with you. Both are either unethical or they are not.
I never switch if I have spawned once, but I do switch to my prefered faction in the beginning and leave as soon as the game starts to get imbalanced. It usually only takes a few minutes.
I only switch if the balancer switch me first. I try my best to switch back and leave if I can’t.
I think it is like this. When first joining a game and it’s mid round or less, and you join the winning team, it is only a matter of time before it kicks you to the other team that is losing. At least that is what I see but that is the point of the balancer, correct?
Waiting/quitting, or then rejoining the ‘winning team’ defeats the purpose of the balancer I would think. Which ends up causing these so called ‘routs’ in the end.
If starting a game at the beginning of the match and you are winning you stay. Possibility being kicked to the other team still is possible. If for some reason you do get kicked to the ‘losing side’, you’re going to quit or switch back to the other team??
Seems to defeat the purpose of the balancer and just seems like a jacka** thing to do.
I never switch to prevent a loss. The only times I ever switch is to join my squad mates if we get separated.
If we lose, we lose, but I’m going down swinging. Being the only person on your team with a 2+ KD in a loss is more impressive than having a 5KD in a stomp. I’m too competitive to give in. Sometimes to my detriment.
Pretty sure the balancer has gotten worse since the patch. Before it wouldn’t switch you if you were high up enough on the leaderboard. However, today I got switched over while being on top and 900 tickets in, on CQ.
Yeah good point. Although I guees it could be good for balance to take the best guy from the winning team and put him on the losing team. Not so great for that guy though.
Starting balance is still terrible too. I was in a conquest game tonight where our losing team was clearly losing with only one objective held with the score of 120-180 and the member count for each team was 28-31. How is that kind of lopsided team count even allowed to happen? Its terrible programming.