Scrambling Algorithm Goals and Problems

[LegendarySurgeon]

Goals for a better scramble algorithm:

- Minimize player switching (players like to say on approx. the same team especially when sides switch on asymmetric maps)
- Class distribution balance (balancing by points doesn't take into account the effect of support classes vs. attack classes)
- Skill distribution balance (obvious? For balance skilled players must be divided between teams)

Problems:

Newly joined players don't provide sufficient data for scrambling
- If possible to integrate with HLStatsX this problem could be mitigated slightly (this would be difficult, probably)
- Dynamically analyze factors such as time played, kills, deaths, assists, roles selected
- Auto-balance more often during round

Players leaving immediately after scramble
- I don't know exactly how much this effects teams but a certain number of players do leave because they don't want to play on RED/BLU for certain maps
- Re-scrambling / Auto-balancing after a certain number drop (even if teams are even # of players) should solve this issue.

Players who are doing poorly leave
- mid-round auto-balancing should occur more frequently, not just when one team has too many people.


Please comment with additional, er, comments, re: the scrambling system

[GoDM1N]

Agreed. Nothing to add really. Scrambling (of lack there of) is something I've been bitching about for quite some time though :3

[Vivi Hill]

We've gone over this many times, but we can go over it again. Integration with stats doesn't work because a large amount of players are new and have low rankings.

The scrambler we have is the most advanced one available and we've spent months testing various settings and tweaking them. Currently the system works as well as it possibly can. It takes many many things into account to make the scramble, and the scrambles it makes are generally as good as it gets.

Newly joined players work fine with the scrambler because it calculates score over time.

You can keep trying to add variables but eventually it blends together into a mess. The scrambler we have supports HLSTATS, domination differences, point difference, score per person, score per person per time, auto-fills medibeams, and more. It's horrendously complex.

The scrambler was updated today; it had several bugs. Let's get back to this later on once you've had a chance to try the not-buggy scrambler. Today it was working beautifully.

[LegendarySurgeon]

Sounds good to me; let's get some play-testing on this thing! whooo