The balancer ignores parties in games it can easily balance. It's wild that you have to goto the website to create a party.
#For the love of god, fix parties and let them play together
silk crown
My suspicion is the balancer is trying too hard to create a perfect balance where as in many RTS it is normal to play games where one team is slightly favored - that is part of the skill adjustment after
paper iris
Personally, I prefer the OS balance being placed above Parties. I'd rather have a fun game where you might be slightly inconvenienced VS a complete stomp because you get to play with your friends together in voice comms while i'm stuck with a bunch of randoms with limited communication
If you're so absolutely hellbent on playing together, you're welcome to run a boss lobby with balancing turned off and can explain to everyone who joins why it's off.
silk crown
that's like not how any RTS works
would you rather people play on comms vs thier friends ?
just b/c this game is open source it doesn't have to try to recreate all the sort of tried and true mechanics of an RTS
they should figure out what they want to be unique and different, which i'd argue is the scale / units / gameplay, and not try to reinvent mechanics for multiplayer, settings, lobbies, etc.
i'd argue if you want a healthy player base you would want people to play with friends. i'd rather if you're hellbent on some elite matchmaking that should be the exception
also a lot of games are 8v8, so the implication that the balance / open skill system is really accurate is probably not the case
stable scaffold
The balance has a max balance deviation of 5%
Also parties can be forced broken up by the lobby settings iirc
fossil plank
I think if the lobby balance mode is set to clan;skill it will almost always allow parties together
5% deviation is pretty substantial
If you can't balance in the lobby you're in, maybe try to find a different lobby
silk crown
i have seen it about 50% of the time with clan/skill not match the party
whch feels absurd given how most RTS work with respect to this - it is pretty user-hostile tbh
and i don't think 5% deviation is substantia given how inaccurate OS is, given how 8v8 plays, and given how MM works in other games, which everyone is familiar with
you're usually not even exposed to the MMR deviation in other games
i have bounced around from lobby to lobby but i'ts kind of a surprising thing to have to do. again this is all feedback that will be overwhelmingly hard to grok for most people if this game goes at all mainstream
sullen linden
I think party support will work differently with matchmaking, which is also waiting on new lobby. I think the OP's complaint is somewhat valid, and it depends on team sizes as well (here I assume 8v8 and not +- 4v4). It depends how many there are and the OS range of the players you're against. I think with better pvp matchmaking than the current pub lobby system it is more possible to keep parties together. E.g., if matchmaking is always trying to fill 3 lobbies of ranges 0-18, 14-30, 20+ (these are numbers off the top of my head sorry), then you would only have a difficult time with players that have very low and very high skill rank
hidden pelican
i think this is not a problem because balance can be just turned off; the thing is then random players who join click balance button and realize its off and often just quit and join another room (I do it) - so this shows everything is ok cause ppl just dont want to play stacked games (eg where there is 4ppl in party in 8v8 game and it makes it imba)
dry dune
yeah, the thing is, if you let parties reliably play together, you have to find some way to identify quite clearly to everyone that parties are playing together, because many (including myself) at the very least want to know when they're playing against a stacked team, or more commonly don't want to play in such a game once you realise one of the teams is stacked.
vagrant plover
Also the funky thing is that $explain will reveal all the parties and party website will do as well.
I usually find that you can have two parties fight against each other quite easily.
silk crown
If the goal here is to have some niche game that like 100-1000 people play, sure, all these "workarounds" people are coming up with that sound great to them individually are reasonable and you can make up whatever justifications you want for providing lots of friction to players who want to play together and imagine that some small number of people will put up with them to have fun and enjoy the game. If the goal is to have broad appeal, at all, then parties need to work and not involve a ton of friction. And sure, maybe there needs to be some minor compensation or minor adjustment made to balance teamed vs individual players. For example, when Warcraft3 was at its height, arranged team (parties) was a separate ladder and match making system than random team (no parties.) Overwatch also originally tried to balance the number of people in a party on one team vs the other. But, this should really not be a new mechanic. Mainstream RTS and other games with competitive multiplayer have handled this, dealing with how to show parties, when to pair them, what the limitations are, etc, including LoL, DOTA2, HotS, which have player bases of millions with mixed party systems. The idea of putting all the friction on party players and splitting them up is not a viable solution for most players. Equally, players are used to the idea that they some teams have differing levels of coordination and that that may impact the result of the game. It is part of the reality of playing teamed multiplayer. I could just as easily say "play 1v1 if you're so worried about teamed players on the other team working together", or "try harder to get your team to coordinate". It feels like we could argue back and forth about the merits of party vs solos and all that stuff, but I think what I would ask for is somethign much simpler
Which is, regardless of all the above, clan;skill balance should actually be clan;skill balance. It shouldn't give up so easily. It gives super easily. You already have "skill" balance mode. Why do you need "clan;skill" but just kidding, the balance was slightly off, so it's not actually "clan;skill" mode.
One, it's confusing b/c it's hidden functionality, two, it's really not necessary, as I've said before, it's not like these open skill ratings are that accurate or that accuracy in an 8v8 is paramount importance
So my suggestion is update clan;skill balance to actually always prioritize clan, then skill. it can spit out a warning if it's really really unbalanced
dry dune
If the goal is to have a large player base (and in some ways, it's also the solution even if it's not the explicit goal), the best thing you can do is have matchmaking of various team sizes, so then you can come on and play against other matched teams (implicit in that, in case I didn't say, is the idea that your team is your party)
silk crown
agree
but narrowing the debate, I think the current clan;skill balance mode is flawed severely
since skill balance mode already exists
fossil plank
Yes, it may be very flawed. One thing to remember is about 2 months ago the number of people who played this game was about 5% of what it is now. The devs are working on match making, however, they are volunteers with a lot of other work they have to do too. Someday it hopefully gets better but for now it just is what we have
I personally haven't had a problem getting on the same team as someone I partied with