VanillaGaming

After playing for a while I see that the Vanilla gaming servers are quite prone to team stacking, which kind of ruins the fun for one side. I was wondering if there could be a team scramble feature added, since that does not really change the core gameplay.

There is a feature …. unfortunately, the statistics of the situation say that you’re probably not going to be able to separate enough good players to make the difference. I’ve tried a few times. It kind of makes me want to develop my own scramble procedure which factors in HL stats ranking…

Yeah, I’ve tried my best to stem the tide of stacking myself – and believe, I do sometimes try too hard. But when it comes down to it, some people just like to play with one another and others simply spec until the see where a few chosen are going. This also was a chronic issue in my old clan’s server (the Melon Pit), and is something that is not easily remedied.

Yeah a lot of people have been complaining about team stacking. The vanilla admins and many of the regulars try to prevent it and always go to a team that is getting rolled. This worked great when we had one server because there was always a few people to prevent team stacking.

Now that we have 2 servers many of the admins and regulars are playing in that to get it full and get the ip in more peoples favorites.

We are looking at some fixes.

First Team scramble which does not really work. I have played in servers with it. Admins use it or people vote it when a team is getting rolled. You have no idea how many times I have seen 5 players roll a team. Then when teams get scrambled those 5 players end up on the same team or maybe one or two get moved. It just does nothing but piss people off more.

We also looked into forcing people to randomly choose a team. This is also a disaster waiting to happen. It is very well possible that the good players will auto blue and the bad auto red. Now will this happen all the time no. The problem is when it does happen if we force auto no one can change teams so people cant swap to balance teams on there own.

Any other ideas?

If not I think it comes down to people needing to mind the fact that teams get stacked. People should all go on the same team to rape the other. If a team is getting raped some good players need to swap to the other one.

People also need to realize that they are going to lose sometimes, even though we are trying to prevent a team from getting rolled.

i acctually completely agree with farmer on this issue…

the only thing i have to add is if u realize your team is getting rolled .. play a class that u know ur good at.. if u have no medic play medic.. alotta the time its not that your teams bad its that u have 4 snipers or 3 spys.,

and in conclusion one team always has to win..thts the way it works

I hate team scramble. It gets abused and the teams constantly just get scrambled over and over whenever one team is getting beat, regardless of stacking. It’s usually a case of a team with a shitty class loadout or just lack of teamwork.

So yeah, like handi said, just play medic and heal someone and you’ll probably improve your team exponentially.

Medic? Pssh … F that.

I’ll be the 5th sniper.

Battle Snipers … CHAAAARRRGE! Then after you’ve rallied your lazy snipers, pick people off while your team gets slaughtered ;-)

But seriously though, most teams just need a medic who’ll pair himself with the least retarded demo or soldier there.

2 medics. Its guaranteed that one of them is going to decide that they want to run in front of the solly/demo and eat rockets.

haha i hate that.. idk why u would run infront of the man ur healin anyhow…

I try not to team stack, but if I’m playing with my friends, we tend to go to the same team (usually me, whitehawke, and bravesirrobin). Unfortunately, there’s no real server plug-in solution to unbalanced teams, as has been said. Team scramble is just annoying and usually does nothing. The best solution is, if you happen to find yourself on the team that is getting rolled, to encourage a change in class selection and to communicate a lot. Communicate with your medic, or your heal target if you are medic, call out spies, tell your worst sniper out of the three to switch to another class, etc. I’m guilty of not communicating a lot, but I usually don’t care if I’m on a team that gets rolled, so meh. If you’re on the stacked team, you could also take that as an opportunity to switch to a class you are weak in and practice with it.

Ultimately, it all falls on the players themselves to balance the teams out.

Usually I try to auto, but there are a few exceptions, there are a few people who make me die a little on the inside, generally, i dont try to stack a team, but i try to choose the team that they aren’t on…and then i proceed to whine for a medic.