Official forums for BZFlag.org

I have joined into games occasionally where one team is absolutely devastating another team. This can go on for a lengthy time. As a result, the team being devastated have very low morale and tend to leave quickly. To help remedy this I would recommend that when joining into a game a player might be weighted slightly more to the weak team instead of trying to balance teams on numbers alone. This would help shore up a very weak team and bring more balance into a totally out-of-balance game. That is, a very strong, or stacked team, might operate with relatively fewer players until the team overall team scores begin to move towards a balance to some degree. Some type of algorithm could be designed that would help the auto-selection on a server to help alleviate this overwhelming team problem.
After all, most players are looking for a good game but when they end up joining a team that is currently being totally devastated by another it turns quickly into a very frustrating experience.

This can be done with a plug-in. There is an API event that allows external logic to decide what team to place a new player in.

I have also thought about that a lot recently, in light of whenever I join ziggurat it's always 1 team pounding another (despite there being "etiquette rules" that even half the admins are unaware of). Could it reference Strayer's League Strength Index and involve that in team-balancing? I'm just a teen though so I have no idea what's practical and what isn't

Flag Alert!!! wrote:Could it reference Strayer's League Strength Index and involve that in team-balancing? I'm just a teen though so I have no idea what's practical and what isn't

My Strength Index is highly inaccurate due to the fact that I play on HTF Maps often, which means high negative scores. This would not be a good stat to use for determining this. I would think player's normalized ratios in game would be the best factors to go by. Some players may have really high scores, but playing a long time for it usually means they are up to standards in terms of playing level.