Legions Imbalance

[Dreamer]

Hello,

I searched and have found no one else mentioning this topic on the forums, so I will bring it up. I have discovered a very simple, but pervasive team imbalance issue coded into Legions. I have played Legions for at least 5 or 6 years now, and only just now taken notice of this problem.

ISSUE:
If there were statistics of team wins/losses, I could guarantee you that Alpha would have a higher ratio than Beta today. If the code doesn't change, I could guarantee that statistic indefinitely. The issue at hand is that Alpha holds a simple advantage over Beta in every game.

The problem is simple: If player numbers are even, and a new player joins, the team that player is added to is Alpha.

Well, so what, right? A new player has to join a team. But this means a simple fact. Ignoring people changing teams or quitting--just paying attention to Legion's natural function of adding new players to servers--there is only two team situations that present themselves: Either team player #'s are EVEN, or Alpha has an EXTRA player. Beta will never hold an extra player over Alpha through natural code rules when someone joins.

Sidenote: This problem is much easier to see while playing in smaller games, but is offset in its effect when the server becomes full.

As far as I'm aware, player-adding code looks like this: Alpha-Beta-Alpha-Beta-Alpha-Beta-Alpha-Beta. Again, this pattern will always give Alpha an extra player until it's evened out when a player joins Beta. The best pattern to solve this is the following: Alpha-Beta-Beta-Alpha-Alpha-Beta-Beta-Alpha. This pattern greatly reduces any inherent favoring of team numbers. It results in Alpha first having an extra player, then Beta does, and so on, alternating teams with an extra player.

Thank you for your time,
Dreamer

 

[Jordahan]

 

[WildFire]

hurr durr here I was expecting an actual balance post so I could let rip.

 

[Application-1]

 

[Fixious]

Nice to see some mature responses...

Any dev care to confirm this claim?

 

[Piggeh]

It's something I noticed too - I wonder why it doesn't automatically put you on the losing team (as that would seem to address your balance concerns).
Without any mathematical data, I cannot make any true claim about this topic. From personal experience though, this has never seemed like an issue.

 

[WildFire]

Serious answer time - honestly because there isn't much care about public games being 1 person over the other team. It always going to happen if you have an odd number regardless. At the end of the day it's only a public game, it's fun to be competitive and try to win, but it's another to only have fun if you win or are winning. Public games don't matter in the long run.

 

[Dreamer]

It always going to happen if you have an odd number regardless.

This completely misses the point. I'm saying odd numbers only happens in favor of Alpha through natural game rules. I'm suggesting to alternate odd numbers between Alpha and Beta to even out the pattern.

From personal experience though, this has never seemed like an issue.

Anecdotes and personal experience--I'm truly not meaning this to sound rude!--is irrelevant to the math. As demonstrated, Alpha always will have a natural edge over Beta as people continue joining a game. Whether the community cares about this imbalance is not up to me, but if people don't notice or care, it doesn't change the presence of the imbalance. I'm just reporting it and have suggested an easy solution (should be an if/then check) to wipe out that edge over Beta as it plays out throughout a game. Cheers.

 

[Piggeh]

This completely misses the point. I'm saying odd numbers only happens in favor of Alpha through natural game rules. I'm suggesting to alternate odd numbers between Alpha and Beta to even out the pattern.

Anecdotes and personal experience--I'm truly not meaning this to sound rude!--is irrelevant to the math. As demonstrated, Alpha always will have a natural edge over Beta as people continue joining a game. Whether the community cares about this imbalance is not up to me, but if people don't notice or care, it doesn't change the presence of the imbalance. I'm just reporting it and have suggested an easy solution (should be an if/then check) to wipe out that edge over Beta as it plays out throughout a game. Cheers.

Oh I agree - that's why I said I cannot make any true claim about the matter.
Your assumption is interesting - that having an extra player in a PUB will tip the scales in favor of the team with one extra player. It's possible that that extra player is actually a hindrance to the team (llama grabs at inopportune times, etc.) I do realize though, that it is also possible that the extra player is ridiculously good.

At the end of the day, I don't think this is an "imbalance" in the game. And unless we have statistics that show that teams with one extra person have higher win rates (which I doubt we have), we cannot come to any conclusions regarding this "issue."

 

[imliterallyshaska]

you should play PUGs so you don't care as much about PUBs, 1 person really doesn't matter

 

[Perfection]

One person can easily make a difference, whether it's a good one or not, they could indeed ruin caps or carry. The solution would be have new players join the losing team, because even with your proposed alpha-beta-beta solution one team can still hold a one player lead. Even so, nobody has complained about a one player lead, unless that one player happened to be someone capable of carrying. Overall though, it's not really something people have complained about. I don't think this has caused Alpha to win more games than Beta, either. The fact is there are no statistics, and so saying that Alpha has higher win ratios because of this additional player is mere speculation.

 

[Fixious]

Something else that might help is a server announcement when one team has 2 more/less than the other. A few Tribes 1 servers did this, simply by sending "Even the teams!" in the chatbox. Saves people from having to tell others.

 

[Dreamer]

One person can easily make a difference, whether it's a good one or not, they could indeed ruin caps or carry. The solution would be have new players join the losing team...

Those two statements back to back...lol. Not logical...

Perfection, if your solution (new player joins losing team) is only referring to scenarios of tied amounts of players, then that is the most elegant solution I've heard, above the alpha-beta-beta pattern. If you are referring to your solution as new players join losing team by default no matter what, then that is awful! Heh. The point isn't to favor a losing team by stacking endless people onto it. My whole point was to NOT favor teams through the default programming when new players join throughout a game. But because you're right that one-player leads are inevitable during tied numbers, it is best to give that to the losing team. Great idea.

Still, I guess it's too subtle of an issue for many people to care. Oh well...

Fixi, while OT, I agree with you. Good thought and it'd be cool to see that in some form as well.

 

[Ucantry2run]

Just make it random or have the extra player join the losing team ./thread

 

[k e v i n]

Just make the extra player join the losing team ./thread