Locking in with friends

I really hope there is a planned mechanic to allow you to stay on the team with your friend(s). Playing with my friends (on my team) in a game where teamwork is essential is very important.

And I hope teams get scrambled to prevent stacking!

"Stacking" =/= expecting to be able to play with a friend. Without having an ounce of knowing how teams will be balanced you are already screaming stacks! stacks! Yea I get it, teams need to be fair. I would hope, in a scenario with a full server and one friend, you would never get split up. Even if you are the two best, you can take on some of the worst players to even it out.

I don't want to play against my friend(s) because the balance demands the algorithims get as close to 50/50 teams and completely ignore who is friends with whom. There needs to be some leeway and some amount of prioritization(recognition) of friends over 50/50.

Argh, tricky and will only weight on the game. I suggest an actual scramble system instead.

Wonderful, the "pug vs. premade" debate exists here too. >_>

I don't know what you mean by weight on the game. You think it's too tricky for programmers to add a little more code for their balance system? Give me a break.

This is not a pug vs premade debate. This is a request (this is the wishlist forum right?) for some semblance of acknowledgment of who is your friend(s) that you'd like to stay on the same team with if teams can still be reasonably fair.

The "scramble" as you put is not acceptable in my book when all I'm asking for is to at least attempt to balance teams while keeping friends together. Why scramble when I can still get even teams AND play with someone I want to play with?

If someone from UBER wants to talk to me about ideas via PM I have a few for this. I am done fending off the cries of team stacking without comprehension of what I'm asking for.

I didn't said it was tricky for them, tricky to figure out what's the best way to deal with your "suggestion" and only makes the game more heavy. Plus the people "Why do I have to always play against those two all the time? why won't one of them come on my team just once?" And you might find yourself alone in your server.

What's the big deal fighting against your friends anyway? I find it very fun )

Let's start with "heavy". What do you even mean? You mean more work before release? You mean 2 more MB of content you'll have to download? Going to ignore that one, not a valid complaint to me.

2nd point. Are we friends? Maybe if we were friends you would have a better chance of being on my team. Just because I am always with one person doesn't mean you (random complainer) will always be against me either. You can still be on my team too you know. Why should the game strive to make sure random guy gets to play with me over my friend?

3rd point. This game thrives on teamwork and the best way to ensure teamwork is playing with someone you KNOW has your back instead of rolling the die every time to see what you are stuck with. These games are better with your friends, period. Don't blindly whine to the point where you can't even consider what I'm asking for is an overall improvement for the game.

It's fine if you want to be stubborn however I'm not whining, if at all, it is you that is whining.
What I didn't explain quite well so far it's that it's an extra that doesn't need to be enforced because it's unfair, starting from the part where the other team gets penalized because they are playing with strangers.

Again this works more than one way. What if there is more than one groups of friends. You would rather blindly split them up than keep them both together even if teams would be even with the friends playing together?

Maye you're a lonewolf, but I think it's asinine to neglect the appeal to playing a multiplayer game with friends. That's the #1 selling point in multiplayer games. You may as well be playing with/against AI in your shoes.

It's like I'm talking to someone with their eyes closed and fingers in their ears. NO it MIGHT NOT BE FAIR. We can't entertain the thought. Scramble I say. Scrambe!

I was never asking for it to create unfair teams, merely suggesting for a way to identify friends and create tendencies to balance the teams without splitting up friends when possible.

I wanna be able to play -with- my friend. Not against him. That's boring. Chances are, if we end up against eachother, we're either not going to try or we're going to leave so we can play with eachother.

Sup Hako? I recognize that avatar from the GA forums.

Personally, I enjoy smashing my friends' faces in and talking smack while doing it just as much as I enjoy steamrolling with them. If there's a way to keep teams balanced and keep a group on the same team, I'm for it, but keeping people together just because they're friends, no thanks.

I don't understand what is so controversial about this.

If you can't have premade teams under any circumstances, your game is simply not competitive.

One of the most important elements of a game like this is coordination both tactically and strategically. It's unrealistic to expect any consistent level of coordination in a game that only supports scrambled teams.

I don't see why you wouldn't at least include the option of having servers where players could pick their teams. People who prioritize their fear of stacking over any desire to compete can have their anxieties soothed while still allowing us to play with people we trust to pull their own weight.

I don't mind playing against pre-mades in any game, it just makes me aspire to be better so that I can handle them.


Also, howdy, Geno.

`
Changeteam

Ta da!

People should be able to play with their friends. The whole balance argument is something I've been hearing since day 1 of Demigod and I'm extremely sick of it. I've seen this argument happen a bazillion times. Stardock eventually put in a familiarity meter in game and it destroyed people's capability to play with each other.

If I want to play with my friends, I will. And I shouldn't be bashed for playing the game better because of it.

The very bottom line is that this is the height of reasonable expectation where a PC game is concerned.

This is fundamental to the community surrounding PC games. My friends and I have been doing this for YEARS. It never once occurred to us that this was even a problem one could have.

This is a team-oriented game where you have no control over your team.

Ridiculous.

It's absolutely simple. Not being able to form a consistent team means the skill ceiling and the depth of gameplay is cut ridiculously short, and a lack of depth is what prevents games from lasting.

Yes, the game is fun right now in its current state, and scrambled servers should exist, but if players aren't allowed to pick their teammates, you cannot have team vs team fights. You cannot have teams fighting competitively against each other. Any hope of serious competitive play in this game is ruined before it gets off the ground if you aren't allowed to form and stay with teams.

And that's really a shame, because the game is so well-focused on teamwork.

There needs to be a balance between people playing with their friends and, well; balance. I had the unfortunate experience of playing on a server last night where the teams were ridiculously stacked. We downed the money ball in maybe three minutes on two or three (or maybe four) separate maps. Unfortunately, my friend was stuck on the losing side and it sucked for him (and was not very fun for me.) I'd rather be playing with him, getting destroyed alongside him than what occurred (I didn't know about ` changeteam last night)

Right now, we're in some sort of team balance purgatory, where the solution isn't optimal no matter which side of the fence you're on. I think it'd be nice to include a server-side option which can toggle the team selection process to some of the following settings:

1) Teams are chosen randomly at the start of each new round
2) Players are assigned a team based upon their performance last round (guy who made the most money goes to Hotshots, next two go to Icemen, then one to Hotshots, one to Icemen, etc- newcomers are treated as having 0 money and are randomly assigned)
3) Players choose their team
4) Good old fashioned "oh god I hope I don't get picked last" schoolyard captains. The top two money makers (or kill/death ratio havers, or top killers, or whatever) are the captains of each team, a MNC coin is flipped, somebody picks first, the other gets the next two (similar to #2 but mostly player-driven, as well as adding the additional element of permanent social trauma)

Additionally, it'd be neat for players to be able to vote for a scramble (again, an option that can be enabled/disabled in the server config) if X% of the player base (where X=a number determined by the server config file) is in favor of a scramble, the teams are re-shuffled randomly.

I'm 99% confident Uber understands the whole team thing this time and we won't have Stardock familiarity meters again.

I think Uber wants to promote playing as a team, not discourage it.

+1

Maybe a competitive mode so we can play as an organized team against other organized teams, because this game would be awesome with coordinated teams.