Team Balancing

There is no team balancing in Monday Night Combat.One match I was put with two level 0 and other team had two 90. It's no fun playing with a team that doesn't know how to play so I think the teams should be level balanced.

yah, the same think happens to me.
since im such a high level (slim lv84) and all the people that I end up playing against are like almost never all-starred to balance the level difference I always get put with the really bad people and the other team if half decent and I lose because I cant carry every single wonking person on my horrible team

Yeah and as an Assassin I can't win the game on my own.

i find i tend to get paired with the other allstars in the lobby.

well thats probably because you always play in a party or are lucky

I always notice a sharp difference in player levels in pub lobbies period

Granted, I don't think a level system is much of an indicator of skill but when it keeps lumping people that are in single-digit non-all-star levels against teams where not a single player is below level 80...Something just feels wrong

What people don't seem to be realizing is that most people who have "prestiged" are playing in a party with other "prestiged" players. Pretty simple explanation.

This may be true but very frequently my party of 3 will be placed on the same team as the other All Star party of 3.

Back to not quite so simple...

I was simply explaining why the teams are unbalanced, since it seemed nobody else was getting it. Not a solution.

Oh, I get it. I was just making a point.

To elaborate, a lot of us all stars figured out long ago that it is very difficult to find games when you are partied up with 5 others, so we just don't do it. Then the game matches our party of 2, 3 or 4 with the other party of 2, 3 or 4. It happens to me A LOT.

I think they should give you the option of playing a "balanced" game, in which the game would IGNORE or not allow parties AND attempt to balance the teams based on total level. However, it should definitely be an option and not mandatory.

What about an option to "vote to shuffle". This idea coming from the facts I mentioned in my previous post here.

Once the matchmaking happens, RT to "vote to shuffle". 33% needed to shuffle. 33% would mean that more than half of your 6 person team was unhappy with the matchmaking.
If after the shuffle, the same 6 people are on one team, leave. Let them sit in a lobby and wait for players.

That's a good idea too! I really think there need to be some kind of options to make teams more fair. I wish Uber would say a word or 2 on the subject.

My thoughts on team balance, lifted from a reply in another thread:

A good, balanced game is extremely rare because the lobby does such a bad job of balancing teams. I hope this is something that Uber address in a future patch, because when teams are balanced this is one of the best games I've played.

I know it's not an easy fix, but the lobby does some things very obviously wrong, like not rebalancing teams if people leave in the last 10 seconds before match start when the teams have been selected, so the match starts 6v4 or worse. Rebalancing teams every round, based on skill level and players results from previous rounds, would also lead to more exciting matches. Currently good players who happen to get teamed up together end up staying together match after match, as the weaker team repeatedly rage quits and gets replaced by new players, often mid match where their team is already getting stomped.

Parties should always be kept together, even at the expense of balance, although I'm sure the game could take this into account when balancing teams.

I'd also like to see team imbalances addressed mid-game. Either give the team with less players some kind of advantage, or introduce autobalance and swap players to the other team.

I think this is the most serious issue MNC currently has, and one that is no doubt leading to the loss of new players. I hope it's the next thing to be addressed.

I agree completely that team balance in probably the single biggest balance issue facing the game. Sure I have a few thoughts about juice, but when it comes down to it, if the teams are roughly evenly matched, most of the remaining balance issues (and I don't think there are many major ones left) become less of an issue.

To elaborate: MNC is a game that has special appeal for a number of reasons, but one of the primary draws over more mainstream multiplayer shooters such as Halo or Call of Duty is that MNC is a GENUINE team game. When I say that, I mean that unlike most other console shooters out there all of which have "team" modes in their multiplayer, MNC makes actual teamwork almost essential to victory. It is basically impractical for a great "lone wolf" player to lead a team of 5 other awful players to victory against a moderately skilled opposing team that is somewhat coordinated. This is why I love this game and why I come back to it. I actually think about strategy, which is something I've never REALLY done in shooters over the years (yes, people pay lip service to it in CTF type modes, but let's be honest, there's barely any real coordination going on and MNC is an order of magnitude different).

That being said, this great stregth brings with it a weakness; a genuine team game can be very frustrating when you end up on a very bad team. In Halo, if I play a team match and I am an excellent player, I can still have a great time racking up kills as my team sucks around me. In MNC, I mostly just want to throw a brick through my TV. Again, it is an undeniably good thing that MNC manages to require and reward good team play. The question is simply "What changes can be made to mitigate (as far as possible" the downsides of Team Play?"

I think that a large portion of the answer must lie in a more robust team balancing system. Many of the suggestions in this thread are good ones, specifically:

1) Correcting for player drops right before the beginning of the match.
The opening moments of a game are important and starting with a differnt player count can be crippling. As far as is possible (respecting XBL Parties who want to play together), the game should rebalance. If you are playing solo, it should not matter BEFORE the match starts which team you are on. Force balancing in the middle of the match is a much trickier proposition since it yanks a player out of the progress he or she has been making.
2) Adjusting team makeup based on the results of a previous match.
This is very important. I frequently find myself quitting out and re-searching for a new lobby after a bad game because I know that the game will likely leave me on the same poor team against the same good team. Again, this should be subject to the greater priority of keeping parties together, but as far as possible, players should be reorganized based on results to approximate as much balance as possible. Perhaps have a threshold, so that if the match is close, no balancing need occur. If a team loses in minute 4, however and the average stats (kills, $ etc) of the winner team are double or triple the losing team, the game should take a crack at rebalancing. This also does not require as much long term data as 3)...
3) Improve initial team balance for a new lobby. At the very least, the game should take the player number ranks into account when selecting teams. Granted, these are a very, very rough and coarse grained metric, but unless I am completely blind, this simply does not happen. It is almost universal that one team has a lion's share of players with high ranks. While rank does not necessarily related to skill, it is certainly a better metric than random assortment. More robust user-invisible matchmaking ranking mechanisms such as that found in Halo are a good long term goal, but I suspect that such a system is also much harder to code and works better with a larger volume of total players on the servers. I would still suggest it as an eventual goal, time/resources permitting.

Those are my thoughts. I thoroughly enjoy MNC and find that it draws me back more than any other multiplayer game I have played on xBox, I just want to give constructive feedback where I can so that the experience can be even better.

Agreed.

The general forum is becoming swamped with topics about team balance! I really think that Uber should at least have an option to play in a game that TEAMS CAN'T JOIN. If nothing is done, no one new will buy the game after losing in under 2 mins every time they play the demo.

EDIT: I've played LFD2 almost since it came out. One of the main reasons that skilled players haven't taken over that game is because organized teams have their own servers. Pubstomping still happens be it's rare and looked down upon. Most teams would rather play other teams anyway. I think I similar system could save MNC

Pub stomping teams aren't the main problem. Balance is broken for your average pub match with 12 solo players. One team gets the majority of skilled/experienced players, who then win and stay on the same team match after match.

Team only options would be nice but a core balancing mechanic needs to be introduced to the lobby.

I totally agree. I was just saying team only matches are the least they could do.

I've an idea that might work. We could have several lobbies that represent different levels of skill.

If you're new to the game you would enter the Novice lobby. If you're an expert player you would enter the All Star lobby. Or if you just don't care, you could enter the general lobby and be matched up with whomever.

This way the folks at Uber wouldn't have to come up with some formula to calculate skill, and people could have a choice at what skill level they want to play at.