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Suggestion Team size balancing ideas

Discussion in 'Annihilation' started by StormAerospace, Nov 28, 2021.

Suggestion - Team size balancing ideas
?

Which solution(s) do you like?

A: hide team size/nexus health while in lobby 14 vote(s) 45.2%
B: randomly add players to teams at start of Phase 3 11 vote(s) 35.5%
C: reduce games to 2 teams if not enough players are online 19 vote(s) 61.3%
Something else 4 vote(s) 12.9%
I don't think there's a problem with team stacking/outnumbering 1 vote(s) 3.2%
Multiple votes are allowed.
  1. StormAerospace Platinum

    XP:
    300,330xp
    Problem
    Imbalanced team numbers ("team stacking") still occurs, though mitigated by the queue system. It is common for players to sit in the lobby hoping to get into a large team, while the smallest one or two teams remain outnumbered, creating a "vicious cycle". This is further worsened when a team's nexus begins to lose points in Phase 2; no one wants to join the "losing" team.


    Proposed Solutions

    A. Hide team counts and nexus scores before joining
    People won't associate any given team with winning or losing if they can't see how that team is doing, either by number of players or number of nexus points remaining.
    • Remove player count from command to view teams
    • Remove colors from player names in server player list
    • Obfuscate nexus scores or don't show them in the lobby
    • Provide a command to look up which team a given player is on (so you can play with friends or against a rival)
    B. Randomly join players to teams upon the start of Phase 3
    Instead of kicking out any lobby dwellers, just throw them into the game and let them decide whether they dislike their team enough to quit and wait for another round to start. Upon the start of Phase 3, select a random player to add to the smallest team, until the lobby is empty. The same would be done at the start of Phase 4 for premium players (since they may still pick a team during Phase 3).

    C. Remove teams from play based on total number of online players and/or active servers
    Just throwing this one out there as a last resort. If there are less than, say, 100 players online, games should be cut down to two teams (three is an option, but probably imbalanced on most maps). This just accelerates the inevitable early loss of the weakest team(s) and heats up the duel of the two largest teams, since now you will always have roughly full-strength teams of 20-30 players. Depending on the map's positioning of teams, a pair of opposing teams would be chosen at random or on rotation, and the other teams would be treated as if they were already at zero nexus.


    Potential Problems
    • A: Some trial-and-error required if you want to start playing immediately and not pick a team that has a queue.
    • B: People may get frustrated if they join a team in phase 2 only to find out that it's severely outnumbered and quickly loses to a larger team rushing.
    • C: More upfront work to support 2-team games, may feel awkward (need some play testing), may cause more exaggerated imbalance of a clan vs. one other team instead of 3 other targets
    • None of these options solve a potential problem where a clan/team/group/etc could fill a team up with alts and then log out in order to circumvent the queue system (though, this seems exceedingly unlikely)

  2. ucutmeloose Silver

    XP:
    3,467xp
    I agree slightly with what you say but I think there's two major problems that are bigger than the team stacking problem, in Shotbow Annihilation. Namely, toxic players and scout being overpowered. I think that currently, the enormous toxicity of the playerbase is very unfortunate and there's nothing that Shotbow can do to bring back those players. If only there was a way to let them play but also stop them from being toxic in chat... Also, let's nerf scout again, because that's what the playerbase wants.
  3. cjn839 Regular Member

    XP:
    141,185xp
    I feel need to reduce to 2 teams around UTC 19:00 on weekdays.
  4. soto Platinum

    XP:
    1,536,055xp
    a cycle between 1v1's and 1v1v1v1's would be totally cool ngl
    Hingey likes this.
  5. StormAerospace Platinum

    XP:
    300,330xp
    [IMG]

    This is why people are just not playing the game, it is never running with the intended number of players, and so new users get frustrated with losing and go play on another server.
  6. MACILENTOPHOBIA Platinum

    XP:
    142,510xp
    I think C would be cool but they should make the 20-30 man lobbies a 1v1 map like: Duelstal1.0 Duestal2.0 Canyon1v1 Nature1v1
  7. soto Platinum

    XP:
    1,536,055xp
    Wondering if our beautiful Anni Lead is going to respond to constructive threads and give his own input besides replying to troll posts. People be spending time on posts only for them to ignore it amirite lads
  8. Taderr Regular Member

    XP:
    6,834xp
    nimasile
  9. JTGangsterLP6 Annihilation Lead

    XP:
    8,980,143xp
    Thanks for creating this thread, Storm!

    Our latest update has addressed the problem that you describe:

  10. soto Platinum

    XP:
    1,536,055xp
    >admins: preventing people from teamstacking
    >also admins: joining an already full red team in p4 to make the game even more unplayable (JTGangsterLP6, Carrots386, IEvadeTax, SnowVi1liers).

    showing a great example there to the rest of the community boys :oops:


    [IMG]
    GiveMeFlowers, 1tchen and Tobi472 like this.
  11. GoPency Regular Member

    XP:
    9,355xp
    gg now people cant even play with eachother...
    GiveMeFlowers and soto like this.
  12. GiveMeFlowers Gold

    XP:
    305,250xp
    Lmaooo
    GiveLifeB2Music and soto like this.
  13. Tahrien Platinum

    XP:
    58,918xp
    There is a larger issue at play here: not enough players are playing on this server.

    I think its good to create discussion, but its sad enough that we are resorting to possibly making games to 1v1 because there's so few players.

    The question then is: why do so few players play this anni?

    Over the past few years, shotbow's annihilation #'s have been steadly declining, with a peak low of about 3 players in november

    [IMG]:eek::eek::eek::eek:


    Over the past few years, shotbow's #'s have been steadly declining, with a peak low of about 3 players last November.

    I'm no brain scientist, but these numbers (or lack thereof) reveal that something is not really working.
    I won't bring up issues such as lack of community feedback in updates, lack of new admins with relevant game experience,
    lack of media coverage for clan wars — which are what really keeps anni alive, for the most part — and lack of major updates/
    meta changes.

    I could go on and on about the kb, meta, or admins, but i'm just beating a dead horse thats been dead for like five years. '

    So what is my grand and genius plan to save the server? You guessed it: nothing, because there are so many issues that have been accumulating for years that we would need to wipe the whole system clean, reboot and restart and delete and replace. A complete overhauling because the current system is stagnant.

    Change only comes from the server's management/dev team, so if there are changes the community doesn't like, this logically must be the source of the issue. I don't propose the entire staff is at fault because I genuinely believe that there are unrecognized people who exist who actually care about this gamemode. The community has spoken enough, and there are people willing to take on new responsibilities and put in the work to bring this gamemode back.

    Like I said, though: dead horse, nearly dead game.
    Paulossj and soto like this.

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