Team Stacking By Donators

[Rydawg 14]

I do not want to play on some shitty demoman-only server. I'd rather have fun. Everyone abusing the most abuseable class is even less fun than these so-called "unbalanced teams".

I gues syou missed my sarcasm, its lost over the internet but i thought i made it obvious

[Melissia 7]

And yet, my point still stands.

[Rydawg 14]

oh i know demo spam is annoying, tis why i hold off on playing demo unless A) i need to get on track (demoman = easy button) or my team needs a sentry killer) I can't understand people that like dustbowl, its a demo spam magnet.

[h3gi 5]

Heh. My scenario was actually reflecting myself. I'm not a donator either, so I feel the pain that others feel. And on the note of spectator switching, that's sort of what I meant by all the good players drifting to one side on all servers, just slower. I know I've been doing it since I started the game; the primary reason was to be on the same side as my friends, the team domination was a side effect.

[Plasma Waffle 0]

being on teams will not affect your stats. Killing higher skilled players will raise your skill more than a higher skill player killing you. Notice how Keg, Miyari, and myself have all dropped off the top of the rankings, because holding a rank that high is goddamn near impossible, no matter how many people you kill. If we teamstack for stats reasons you are wrong. Because killing 15 idiots for each time we die to one of them (lolcrits) our skillpoints still drop, we stack to have fun, we stack to dominate the opposition. Once again, did the United States scramble teams with Iraq when we invaded them? traded our tanks and troops for their inferior ones? No, why would we, that is stupid.

Again, US Vs. Iraq were set teams, it was not a pub match.

[You suck and have no life 203]

I play dustbowl for the very purpose of demo spamming. Have you ever played the game with 3 medics and 13 demoman on defense in stage 3 of dustbowl? Its pretty damn fun, and automatic win.

[Repth (Hatred) 2]

i dont think it's a problem to play with friends i actually think it's a good idea what i think is the problem is that ppl are acting like playing a game with 6 friends and against 6 friends is un-exceptable.... from what i've seen it's every time any of the decent regulars join it's oh i dont want a chalenge i want this on easy (these ppl are realy good to).... so the not stacked team is like well wtf imma use a diff server from now on.... i dont think a compramize is unreasonable.... i think it's pretty lame how some ppl are like quit bitching or go away cause if they all did these ppl wouldnt have a team to play, and ppl say things like get better than, and it's realy hard to improve when you can stay alive for only 15-20 seconds before the spawn campers kill you.... but then again my opinion doesnt count even though i donate... i just wish that ppl would be a little more open minded about things and more conserned with having fun instead of winning and saying it's stacked cause they want to play with there friends... 4 ppl doesnt stack a team 16 does... lol but this is just what ppl make it seem like to me over the last 4 weeks i've been useing lotus servers.

even through the errors, this is the best post in this thread thus far.

just wanted to say ty it means alot comming from you i have played on your team before and against and your one of the best and nicest ppl i have had the plesure of being killed by or teamed with ROFLMAO i'll continue to use lotus servers without the team switch (unless it's to be on :]'s team cause he's my friend) cause i do believe that everyone will find a fair solution to this problem and cause i more often than not, like to have a challenge so i can hone my skills and keep getting better

and thank you again Mana for giving me a place to kill people

[You suck and have no life 203]

I play for the sole purpose of making the other team cry and rage quit. Playing TF2 isn't about having fun, its about beating the other person.

[+Henry Spencer 117]

All right Mr. Internet Tough Guy, that's enough. Idk why this thread isn't over... I'd say most people are just arguing for the hell of it now.

inb4 say that to my face not online, etc.

Edited March 25, 2009 by Henry Spencer

[You suck and have no life 203]

Its easy to get a 3:1 KDR. But to be able to get a 3:1 KDR AND be able to Bench 300, Squat 360, and Deadlift 450, now thats sexy.

[h3gi 5]

I play for the sole purpose of making the other team cry and rage quit. Playing TF2 isn't about having fun, its about beating the other person.

[+Henry Spencer 117]

Its easy to get a 3:1 KDR. But to be able to get a 3:1 KDR AND be able to Bench 300, Squat 360, and Deadlift 450, now thats sexy.

Perhaps to women. My sort of sexy involves drag queens.

[Nket 16]

set teams or pub match, I plays to win

[Repth (Hatred) 2]

set teams or pub match, I plays to win

agreed i always try my very best

I play for the sole purpose of making the other team cry and rage quit. Playing TF2 isn't about having fun, its about beating the other person.

and i realy hope you are joking cause it just show how weak someone is when they can only pick on ppl weaker than them with a stacked team... if your not prove it, dont bring a gun to a fist fight then act all tough.... but eventualy what goes around comes around you can avoid that....

[Miyari 33]

Don't worry, I've got this one covered.

Edited March 25, 2009 by Miyari

[KillerKeg 10]

I love spawncamping.

Wait what are we talking about?

[Nket 16]

so I was totaling having sex with this girl right? and shes loving it! And then I see she has a dick.. and I start loving it too!

[The Lorax 25]

................

Are we all done now?

[Rydawg 14]

I love spawncamping.

Wait what are we talking about?

We are talking about Cocaine. Cocaine is a hell of a drug

so I was totaling having sex with this girl right? and shes loving it! And then I see she has a dick.. and I start loving it too!

You and Henry have something in common, let me play match maker!

................

Are we all done now?

The horse, it is dead

[The Lorax 25]

The horse, it is dead

Good, I was worried we were all going to get pissed at each other, stop being friends, and then we wouldn't be able to stack teams like we always do. If that happened we wouldn't be able to kick the collective asses of all the non-donators who can't stack with us. We wouldn't be able to see all our stats go up as we laughed our ases off at how lame everybody else is, and how we are all so much better.

lolololololololol roflcopter

......wait......What?

err....I mean...err... I'm glad it's over.

[Atlas 0]

I'm a donator, and I usually switch to the losing team if the team I am on is completely rolling them. Sometimes I do not switch though, because my friends are on the team.

[Melissia 7]

Lorax: Wait what, we were friends? I thought every member of lotusclan hated every other member. Except miyari, whom is mutually loved and gangbanged every sunday.

Edited March 25, 2009 by Melissia

[Rydawg 14]

by gandbanged, you mean gagged yes?

[h3gi 5]

I APPROVE OF THE CONTINUATION OF NKET'S PENIS STORY. ELABORATE.

[Mana 3,867]

You do realize that Mana has to keep the non donators just as happy as the donators right? Cause if he scares away non donators his bank roll will shrivel cause he will not have new people signing up and I doubt he or any donator wants the servers to tank... Simple business economics.

Not really. I was able to pay for the servers even before I offered donator benefits. It sure helps a lot. But doing extra work for stupid people online isn't going to kill me. When I started my first server in HL1DM days the goal was so I could play with friends... If the game mode is Deathmatch then I played to beat them if the gametype is Team Deathmatch then I play with them to beat strangers.

We use Valve's autobalancer which is hooked to ignore donators. It works on balance points. Valve came up with this idea and so the more balance points you have the higher chance that you will be auto balanced when dead. So if Valve thinks this works then I'm sure it does, because it's the default autobalance solution. If Valve thought it was a problem then they would adjust it so skilled players would get balanced more than those who suck or just joined (Like engineers get less balance points because their engineers) That way skilled non donators would be forced to even teams when they die. But instead they choose to balance people who die often or just suck. We tried using a custom autobalance system but people (non donators exclusively) complained about it being too evil,harsh or whatever it was (it also prevented you from joining the other team after you were autobalanced for a few minutes). During which time the team win ratio was far more equal yet people (non-donators again) started complaining/leaving because of how it kept the teams leveled.

Some people have problems with Valve's lacking autobalance, some people have problems with a strict autobalance that keeps teams more even but most importantly... MOST people do not give a crap because all they want to do is join a game and play. Most of the traffic on the servers isn't made by regulars but by new people who hop servers everytime because they see a free slot and all they wanna do is play the game. Not everyone has the time to find friends online and stay in spectator mode to wait till a team opens. And those who do will always find ways of doing it.

There's 10+ Lotus servers. I tend to rotate through them... from Payload UK to US Arena. Just because there's more regulars on a few of those servers who want to play with each other doesn't mean that I should worry and waste time implementing some new balancing solution which will be hated by some group of people anyway. Sometimes I join the team where there are no regulars because the regulars get into a losing spree and stay with each other anyway because they would rather lose with friends than join a team of people who they don't know. Also, the main server ip's have changed. And as with all IP changes some people are just too stupid when it comes to understanding what "MOVED" and "NEW IP" means and so we might never see them again.

The first time we moved servers we got a bunch of completely new regulars and months later some of the old regulars would come back saying "Oh wow I thought you guys died I've been playing at X server, do you still have 24/7 Dustbowl?" and they would go play on our Dustbowl server.

Also a different IP range can mean different people in the same location (That's how Valve's server browser works) so moving from IP range 7x to 6x might make the new server less visible to some old regulars depending on how many servers their steam client gets and what not.

Oh by the way... That scrambler made by Valve sure comes in handy. Most of the time it's been used the good players seem to be put on the better team... Yet again Valve sees no problem with this/ Maybe it's just random luck. Though there's one really good thing about using Valve's scrambler command and their autobalance which is if and when Valve makes changes to either (they do this from time to time) it will automatically take effect on all of our servers as it's part of the game. So if Valve believes that skill stacking is a problem on servers and it's worth their time to change it for the good of the community (which could either make it worse or better... who knows with Valve) then it will happen. A lot of the TF2 servers are mostly unmanaged and ran by server hosts where there's no one to babysit players to make sure the teams are even and that people aren't trying to play with their friends by using such cunning methods as joining spectator and team switching! So if it's a problem exists expect Valve to fix it sometime. TF2's been out for what? almost 2 years? There's still time. But I'm done with trying new autobalance ideas.

I hope the above is enough to convey the message.

EDIT:

And with this I actually meant to close the thread but I ran off to look for the Linux hats source :/.