Alternative Voting system

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iRobot
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Alternative Voting system

Post by iRobot » Wed 13 Jun , 2012 10:40 am

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Can we have it so rather than voting, a random map from the entire Race/AS roster is chosen automatically?

I've seen this working on other servers pretty well. You'll get an exceptionally nice variety for a change.

Having the maps grey out for 25 games helps, but that same 25 cycle of maps repeats. Often I've even found myself just voting the #26 just out of habit.

So, think this would be worth a trial? It might help reduce the void of anger and apathy between racers/assaulters if there is a chance of either every single match.

I do enjoy a mix of both myself.

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Takeo
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Re: Alternative Voting system

Post by Takeo » Wed 13 Jun , 2012 11:03 am

From your description I don't get whether you want people not to vote at all or vote for either RACE or AS.

Giving people the opportunity to vote between RACE and AS seems more logical to me. The map itself could then be chosen randomly, right Izumo? ;)
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iRobot
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Re: Alternative Voting system

Post by iRobot » Wed 13 Jun , 2012 11:05 am

The concept is for no voting to take place, and random is vital, as if you simply alternate game types then people will leave and return when their preference is due.
Takeo wrote:Giving people the opportunity to vote between RACE and AS seems more logical to me. The map itself could then be chosen randomly, right Izumo? ;)
The issue with this, is the RACE community is simply larger than assault, which ends up making a vote rather redundant. I am campaigning for ways to keep both sides of the community happy, in a way that everyone can enjoy.

The reason I feel a forced random vote will work, is the RACE map pool is larger than the AS one currently (if my memory serves me well), which would result in RACE being played slightly more often, but not disproportionately so, of which it is currently.

Think of LDG #1 as a King of the Hill style tournament currently. Once enough AS players make a foothold, they will chain vote AS and then the RACE players all leave. This just perpetuates the AS voting, which will eventually kill the server for a while. Occasional alternating between both types on a more consistent basis will prevent such events.

There is also the issue of needing RACE players to 'bump the numbers' for assault matches. This is a given and pretty obvious to anyone. RACE players are unlikely to leave due to one AS map, or maybe even two.

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Re: Alternative Voting system

Post by iZumo » Wed 13 Jun , 2012 12:34 pm

Ok let's say it this way - how it went with the voting.

About half and a year ago, we've created a weighted voting system, to boost up AS games (as the server were moreless RACE only). The idea for that was to balance the number of matches the two groups of players want, while the number of players belonging to each group was very different. Initially this worked as a revival for AS. Also when the server is full of racers, let them have their race; and if the server is full of AS players, let them have their AS. We're only issuing force when there is conflict in the demand for both gametypes.

Around August, it turned out that voting AS with high playercount leads to RQs, because either the map was too small or it resulted in pure spam. Thus weighting was reduced for a reasonable playercount for AS (i.e more then 20 plrs -> no weight).

Then in January 2012, AS gathered enough people to get it voted without the need of weigted vote, so it was turned off. Small maps / bad maps received voting penalties (Chaos, Lego etc.)

And you know the rest well: recently, AS was dominating on the server, showing there is enough ppl to keep AS alive: so the server was splitted for a trial: result? RACE server worked fine, AS server not, because most of the players spectated and complained over low playercount (4 spectators, 2 players) or could not be bothered to play on the AS at all. Right - they somewhat would deserve not to merge it back and "care more or no AS", but this would dismiss all the work that was done by Aza and Socio, so it's not an option at all. So it was merged back, but with several penalties. All mapbased penalties in RACE were removed. When balancing RACE and AS, I now view AS as the "second class gametype". And in order to prevent the chainvote domination by AS players, vote weight for AS players has been adjusted, to underweight it: reduces to 0.60 when out of last four games, 2 were Assault. This makes long chainvoting AS quite unlikely now. Here, don't forget that AS game takes twice as long than RACE.

Also, tbh I won't support the effort to have RACE players bumping AS players, I'll just leave it as it is (i.e won't push AS vote after several RACEs). Also many AS players just play AS to pwn noobs, by taking the role of backup players and own all the noobs trying to get objective, without themselves ever trying to get the objective, if they attack, and calling for more players (and crying if it's 3v3 or 4v4). We all know that sole RACE players are noobs, playing just to relax or piss around, it's pointless to force them to play something they don't want to.

But back to the "random map", I don't think that would do any good. Sure, there could be lists from which to pick based on the playercount, eliminating horde of players voting small map, and perhaps helping with some maps being a bit overplayed (such as Ballx - nothing wrong with the map though). But say, a bunch of AS players want a gg in Proseidon, and it would pick Lego or Chaos ... rageworthy, eh?

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Re: Alternative Voting system

Post by iRobot » Wed 13 Jun , 2012 12:44 pm

Izumo_CZ wrote:And in order to prevent the chainvote domination by AS players, vote weight for AS players has been adjusted, to underweight it: reduces to 0.60 when out of last four games, 2 were Assault. This makes long chainvoting AS quite unlikely now. Here, don't forget that AS game takes twice as long than RACE.
That is not the case. Race was played for a long period yesterday and assault was still hitting the 0.6's. I wouldn't be here taking the time to make this topic if I felt it was working.
it's pointless to force them to play something they don't want to.
This is exactly how the assault fans feel, probably.

You mention people take spots just to annoy other people and don't attack, I have never seen this. Not once. Never have I seen a team deliberately boycott an objective just to farm more kills.

Besides, from personal experience, the weaker players are more likely to be hooked into something such as LegoWars than Poseidon.

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Re: Alternative Voting system

Post by Azarael » Wed 13 Jun , 2012 5:53 pm

Regarding the accusation that AS players go for kills without trying for the objective: Yes, some of us do, and for a reason - anyone can get an objective, but not everyone has the same combat ability. It's better, tactically, for the strong players to keep the objective clear, which gives even the worst noob an actual function - taking the objective.

On the topic - I'd support this if the maps were of such uniform quality that it wouldn't matter which map won, only the gametype it was a part of. Compare DM, which is saturated with good maps. However, as Izumo says, not all maps are good. This idea would have been a better solution than gametype alternation, though.

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Re: Alternative Voting system

Post by iZumo » Wed 13 Jun , 2012 10:28 pm

iRobot wrote:That is not the case. Race was played for a long period yesterday and assault was still hitting the 0.6's. I wouldn't be here taking the time to make this topic if I felt it was working.
Probably they were voting Pierons, Chaos or Lego, which are permamently on 0.60.
iRobot wrote:This is exactly how the assault fans feel, probably.
They wouldn't be forced to play RACE, if we didn't have to close AS server for above named reasons.
iRobot wrote:You mention people take spots just to annoy other people and don't attack, I have never seen this. Not once. Never have I seen a team deliberately boycott an objective just to farm more kills.
Check again, it happens quite often. I do agree with what Aza says - he has a point, eventhough from some point of view I think it's still sort of farming, and some AS players won't go for the obj at all, even if it's clear and risk incrementing the death counter. Also you're clearing the objective, but have low attention of defenders, instead of disctracting them. While in UTComp R02 vehicles are excluded from deaths / net (to prevent farming), it perhaps might not be a bad idea to disable deaths / net (and the stats) completely.

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Socio
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Re: Alternative Voting system

Post by Socio » Wed 13 Jun , 2012 11:47 pm

About the topic subject, yeah, it would be great to have a wider variety of maps played on the server this way, but this system has too much flaws. Most of them was already mentioned, like the spam maps, fuck ups with small maps winning with big playercounts and opposite, possibility to cause mass RQ from players, and grasping your lucky charm every map change to not let your personal worst maps win like LIFERAISTWO/THREE.

About the AS kill farming, well, there is farming kills Janissary-style, sniping defenders from 45694m plus running away like a pussy when someone from defender side tries to engage the player in direct combat and there is providing actual cover for teammates standing on the objective or luring away defenders away from the objective providing distraction, if someone doesnt do that I will see more delicious bio globs blowing away a couple of idiots standing on a hold objective or even worse, everyone on the attacker side would just go LOLOBJ and shieldupandrun forward.
> team-spec*Socio: i see a new rais map
> team-spec*Socio: curious if ikea
> H&some: its not
> H&some: its actually pretty good

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Re: Alternative Voting system

Post by iRobot » Thu 14 Jun , 2012 9:10 am

If you are all sure there are these bad maps that make the game poor and encourage people to take a break, then why the FUCK are they on the server

=.

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Re: Alternative Voting system

Post by Socio » Thu 14 Jun , 2012 10:35 am

I dont know. Using the term "shitmap" everyone here thinks about his own, personal picks, for example I find Legowars and Gasoline playable with a decent playercount, while Aza finds both as being terribad, no matter the playercount. I personaly have not much problem with most of the maps, except some relics of the past like Chaos and GC, and RAISAS maps like EggRais and Pathwais. GC was taken down at some point in time, but Kimi asked to put it back since it looks like some people still like the spam and ugly. There was a perfect chance to drop Chaos once and forever when the RACE and AS server were merged together, but for some completly unexplainable reason Izumo did put it back on despite my prompting him not to. And RAISAS has as much people liking it as hating it.
In general, removing maps will cause whine, like Pablovic asking me everyday where is Airfight. If we would remove one or two maps from the list I dont think they would go deskflip.jpg and quit the server in an instant, since they have other maps they play on, but the moan would be loud, I guess.
> team-spec*Socio: i see a new rais map
> team-spec*Socio: curious if ikea
> H&some: its not
> H&some: its actually pretty good

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