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Announcement Changes coming to the way you join a team

Discussion in 'Annihilation' started by Galap, Apr 13, 2018.

Announcement - Changes coming to the way you join a team | Page 2
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  1. Corrade Regular Member

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    21,864xp
    Stacking is not only numerical imbalance. Even if all the teams are of equal size, if one of them is full of amazing players, that team is still stacked.


    I think the situation with stacking could be expressed like this:
    1. *Players are able to join any team they want, provided the team isn't relatively full. Premium players are exempt from this condition.
    2. Good players choose to join the same team as other good players, so stacking occurs.
    3. *This stacked team is better than all the other teams.
    4. The better team almost always wins.
    5. Therefore the stacked team almost always wins.
    6. The game closes joining after phase 2.
    7. Therefore the outcome of a game can be determined at this time if stacking has occurred.
    8. *Therefore loss is inevitable from an early point yet can take long amounts of time to actually happen.
    9. Being on a losing team in this situation is not fun. Therefore players are unhappy.
    *Problem area that can be influenced


    I know you guys have stressed that the proposed new system is still in the works, but I think that the basic idea of a queue misses the point. All that a queue system really does is change point 1 to:
    1. All players, non-premium or premium, are able to join any team they want, provided the team isn't relatively full.
    The problem is that a queue distributes teams, not players.Teams might be numerically even, but one could still be stacked.
    For example, what if a certain group of good players all queue for the same team? Let's say they do this during map voting, so the other teams naturally fill up because people want the game to start. Now one team is already stacked. Many people joining will see this and will queue for the stacked team. Even if they have to sit in the queue forever, I guarantee some will do it because of the eventual outcome of point 9.
    You can see the evidence for this right now with non-premium players. Some will sit repeatedly checking team sizes using /team view, waiting for a spot on the stacked team. They are essentially in a queue, except the order of the queue is determined by chance or arbitrary reaction time instead of a system.
    A queue system will only put everyone in this situation and automate the process - there is nothing preventing people from sitting in a queue, waiting to stack a team or to join a stacked team, because queues distribute teams, not players.


    So instead of a queue system, how about making these following changes:
    1. All players are now automatically assigned to the team with the least amount of players. Both players and teams are distributed. This eliminates point 1 and therefore eliminates the whole issue entirely. However this also prevents players from playing with their friends and removes premium benefits.
    2. To solve this issue, players are now allowed to play in parties of up to x players. Premium players get larger party sizes. Stacking is still removed because; a) multiple parties are distributed across teams (i.e. teams will be evenly stacked, addressing point 3) and b) the size of an individual party is reasonably limited (i.e. party size would find a midpoint between being too restrictive and allowing entire clans to play together). The situation is resolved, players can still play with their friends and premium users still get benefits.
    3. A player who uses /hub no longer frees up a slot on their team. This prevents players from manipulating apparent team sizes. I don't know why this hasn't already been implemented, the issue seems like a bug.
    Point 8 should also be addressed, though it's a bit of a bigger issue. The game is sometimes inevitably lost for a team, yet that defeat can take ages to eventuate. I remember seeing this illustrated very clearly in a match in the spring tourney. One team was reduced to defending their nexus in leather/iron whilst another team was attacking them in leather. The other two teams were in iron/diamond. It was obvious that the defending team would collapse first, followed by the attacking team, but it took a while for all this to happen. The nexus decay update helped to address this issue but it's still problematic.

  2. Bergmanman Platinum

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    I agree with you about team size not being the only important factor, but I certainly don't agree with the latter point. Obviously I am biased because I am premium and want to play on the same team as my friends, but something like this would destroy both of those. Premiums would not have any real benefit, and players would not be playing with their friends, which would make them stop playing altogether.

    The problem with the teams full of amazing players is that those players are usually friends and are working together, which is what makes them amazing. After a couple weeks of playing Anni at varying times of day/night, my personal conclusion is that this is mostly a problem in smaller games, and here's why:

    When a game only has 20 people in it because that's what it needed to finally start the timer after waiting for 30 minutes, it's going to be a game that can be heavily influenced by just a couple players. I will give very specific examples just from a few games I played last night. In a small Cronos game, each team had about 6-9 players, so it wasn't too uneven. On my team, Snurkle was playing transporter and created 3 skybridges to each base and put launchpads and teleporters on each one. This made our rush of a couple irons and leathers far more powerful. Our team was able to take down every other team with almost no communication, just because Snurkle put in the work and made a difference in his game. It didn't matter how many or how good our players were because we had superior tactics.

    In another game that had been dragging on for far too long, with 2 teams left just defending against each other, I said in team chat to meet at melons for a rush, despite not having anything myself. 3 or 4 diamonds came and followed leather me to the other base. We got there, attacked their diamonds and ended the game. That game could have been ended probably an hour earlier had someone else coordinated a rush. All it took was leadership and strategy. Nothing to do with numbers or skill.

    One final example that I know everyone can relate to is getting ended by a single gopple succubus rusher. It doesn't matter how many people are on his team or the other team, but he single handedly made a huge difference and got his team the win.

    My point with these examples is that you don't need to be the bigger or better team to win. You just need to take the initiative to make a difference on your team, and start doing things yourself instead of asking others to. Instead of saying "can i get a tp to mid", go transporter and make the tp for your team. A team with larger numbers will likely have an advantage, no doubt. But that isn't anywhere near as important as who makes up the team.
    BadAdministrator and DutchBartje like this.
  3. WWII Platinum

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  4. Murgatron Retired Staff

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    970,785xp
    The Tournament has slowed due to teams trying to match dates and times they can both play. We're fairly confident it won't run into next year :wink:
  5. SpaceWarp Emerald

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    First I'd like to start off by saying thanks Galap, looks like some progress is attempting to be made.
    My only concern is that now I really only play Anni with people I know, what do I do when I'm playing with 4 friends and 3 of us are on red and he/she is on blue? Just say sorry sucks to be you oh well?
  6. Galap Developer

    XP:
    2,169,215xp

    You still choose the team you wish to join and your friend(s) can wait as long as they're willing to (up until phase 3) to join their chosen team. If your friends are premiums, the likelihood is that they'll also get in. If your friend doesn't get it, that's really unfortunate, but if we let them in any way, we'll be right back where we started with team's being able to stack.
  7. Corrade Regular Member

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    21,864xp
    How would my suggested change remove premium benefits and prevent players from playing with their friends? In addition to the first change you commented on I suggested a party system be included to address these issues.

    I agree that you don't need a bigger team to win, but you do need a better team. Your examples prove that an individual player can make a team significantly better. But this does not negate stacking because a stacked team has a greater chance of having more good individuals themselves.
    It doesn't sound like there were any stacked teams in your examples. My point is NOT that the team who wins is always stacked, but that the team who's stacked will usually win. There isn't always a stacked team and that's ideal, those are the situations as you mentioned where individual players can likely have larger impact.
    Nikogab22 likes this.
  8. sukidayo Platinum

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    826,772xp
    in Japanese plz
  9. Bruceja Platinum

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    1,145,770xp
    Sounds good, anything other than the current system is better, really...
  10. cave987 Platinum

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    I like it but it would be nice to see one change. Could it be made so that a small group (2 players or so) could join a team queue together?
    If this could be worry about team stacking it could be made only for choosing a random team
  11. Bboyan Emerald

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    When exactly?
  12. anniPARERA Obsidian

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    I never said I wasn’t unfair what I meant is platinum is slowly getting less perks and I’m sure you guys can do something about it like adding more cosmetic, pets features idk
  13. Navarr Councilor

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    The same perk is being maintained, we are simply curbing abuse

    Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk
  14. Mysterious_Seven Platinum

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    227,414xp
    What gives you the authority to decide this? You're just passing off your opinion as fact.
    I'm not going to read a wall of text if this is the preface.
  15. Mysterious_Seven Platinum

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    227,414xp
    Some games need to be 2 team games, I propose that players be allowed to vote for 2 or 4 team games.
    This would solve a lot of the issues with team stacking without changing the system itself.

    Obviously we need more 2 team maps if this is the case, but adapting 4 team maps to 2 team formats could be done by anyone. After all you don't need to build anything you just need to cut things out.
    cave987 likes this.
  16. connor564 Platinum

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    rip competetive
  17. Corrade Regular Member

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    That's the accepted definition of a stacked team. Look at other games where team numbers are always even, e.g. most FPS or MOBA games. Matches in those can still be stacked based on skill imbalance. You could even search up the term and any source will make it clear that stacked does not only refer to numerical advantage.
  18. Mysterious_Seven Platinum

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    227,414xp
    You're confusing team stacking with skill stacking.
    Perhaps the confusion arises when both are shortened to 'stacking'.

    We need better terms. ;-;
    YoungRichSnikers likes this.
  19. SpaceWarp Emerald

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    118,168xp
    Would a solution be capping the max number of people above the team cap at 5?
    Example
    Yellow 9 CAN JOIN
    Blue 9 CAN JOIN
    Green 8 CAN JOIN
    Red 14 CANNOT JOIN UNTIL MORE JOIN GREEN
    I can explain more if unclear...
  20. Galap Developer

    XP:
    2,169,215xp

    That is how the Queue works, as stated in the post, it's not a true balance as there still are reserved slots but it will only be a couple of players and will most likely be premium slots
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