Scrambles & Balancing

[Oscar]

I was just curious if anyone could explain how the scrambling system actually works, preferably answering questions like:

What determines where players are placed during a scramble?

What specifically causes automatic scrambles?

At what point does scrambling not happen instantly? (I.E. How long into a match does it have to be for it to display the "Teams will be scrambled after the end of the round?")

Does scrambling take into account HLStats or is it solely based on the scores of the current game?
- Why? (for example if it only takes into account one of the 2, why is that? Or what specifically does it take into account on HLStats, is it only positioning?)

What causes the teams to be scrambled instantly upon the start of a match?

Are there any plans to change this system in the future?

I only ask these questions because it seems to me that the system can be rather flawed and more than 50% of the time after a scramble the game is still quite unbalanced, in some cases it can even end up being more unbalanced than before and it can be really frustrating to play several unbalanced games in a row.

Feel free to add anything else that isn't these specific questions, anything from bonus information or your own personal experiences would be appreciated

 

[VintagePC]

Note we use a custom scramble plugin rather than the stock game mechanics. I can generalize our configs, but more specific questions would probably be for @Jaws, who is one of the plugin's developers.

• Player placement: Top players are shuffled to the weakest team.
• Triggers: there are many, which consider scores, dominations, frag ratios, and consecutive round wins over the other teams.
• We have used hlx skills in the past for shuffles, but these can be problematic if someone is having a markedly better or worse day than usual. For example, they may be playing off main due to an abundance of that class on their team already. Shuffling someone who's got 1000s of points as sniper to the other team doesn't do much good if they aren't playing sniper.
  • Currently, game scores per 10 minutes is the scramble metric.
• Offhand I can't recall what determines when a scramble happens, this is internal plugin logic rather than explicit configs. There are definitely some cooldowns but you also want to avoid e.g. a scramble if it's close to the end of a round/win, because that was often abused in the past to grief (e.g. a losing team all spamming scramble votes to deny a win)
• While we're open to feedback and considering configuration changes, so far any complaints we've investigated about scramble being "broken" have concluded the plugin was functioning as configured/designed. One of the challenges here is that there is no universal threshold because the game logic itself is a mess. Some maps have mini rounds/stages, others do not. Round/map timer types are complicated. Additionally, plugin code changes are beyond the scope of the work I am currently taking on.
  • If there are any specific things that seem "broken", please report the server, map, and day/time it happened. This allows us to review SourceTV of the gameplay and identify issues vs just a lack of meeting conditions to trigger a scramble.

~Vint

 

[Mr.Pie]

scrambled eggs

 

[Jaws]

I only ask these questions because it seems to me that the system can be rather flawed and more than 50% of the time after a scramble the game is still quite unbalanced,

Unfortunately there's no perfect solution to this. Previous scramble used pure HLX which often produced laughable results.

Current score/time metric is per-map rather than over a player's whole connection time, for comparability, so it takes a good 10 minutes of play or more to actually build up a good portfolio of which players are performing well and which aren't. Furthermore the game awards lots of score to Medics and in other situations such that the player with higher points may not be the one getting the most frags.

Personally, I still find the new system a vast improvement and think when we release on steam (if I can get it working on the new port by tomorrow) it will be much more accomodating for all those new players than any other system

 

[Jaws]

Being the neurotic developer I am, I always check the scoreboard after a scramble to see if it looks like it's behaving properly.

What I usually encounter is that scramble works exactly as intended, but then players join/leave, or swap teams because they have their own opinions on the balance. Suddenly my carefully curated teams mean nothing!

 

[Jaws]

Spoilers btw, I didn't manage to fix it for steam. We are left with native-only scramble rn

 

[Oscar]

That's okay, I've noticed that people seem much less opposed to voting to scramble with the native system since it only requires a single quick button press as opposed to the comparable cumbersome task of writing out "!votescramble," could be something to consider

 

[Shens]

i just kinda wish that the scramble system had the map extension split into a separate vote. sometimes there's like <10min on the server timer and the teams are insanely unbalanced and you kinda wanna finish up the game but scrambling would mean playing it for another half an hour (and ain't nobody got time for that)