Project Reality Forums

Well, I've seen many people complaining about balance and I'll like to hear the following things from each of you.

1. What is a 'balanced' game for you?
2. How to achieve this balance?
3. Why do you think that doing the above will balance the match.

In my opinion a balanced game is any in which the ticket difference is less than 80/100 against conventional factions or up 120/130 for non-conventional factions during AAS. In terms of INS, its way more of a shit show which all depends on cache, map and the competence of players to attack which cache at what time. I'd expect about 150 tickets coming around the last and one before the last caches as being balanced. Anything higher means the insurgent side is unbalanced or is filled with people who don't want/know how to play insurgency. Anything lower than 150 tickets with less than half of the caches destroyed means the Blufor team needs to be redone.

Achieving balance depends on how bad things actually are. A lot of people say scramble doesn't work, but I believe it does and it is just used incorrectly and interpreted differently. Scrambling should be done when the ticket difference is extremely high (400/300 vs 0 at end) and at the first match post scrambling if the ticket difference gets about to the low 300s or mid-high 200s swapping of specific squads to tweak the balance.

I believe scrambling if things are really bad can actually make it way better afterwards with a little bit of fine tuning, If you have ever used a microscope and had to adjust to the perfect focus you'd know exactly what I'm talking about in terms of balancing.

Losers dont feel cheated. Winners dont feel like they cheated.

Coalz101 wrote:Well, I've seen many people complaining about balance and I'll like to hear the following things from each of you.

1. What is a 'balanced' game for you?
2. How to achieve this balance?
3. Why do you think that doing the above will balance the match.

A simple response for me would be:

1. Map design: the winning team should sway both ways given normal teams. Also, the match doesn't regularly stall out at one flag on the map, making it all about a small area. For instance, Kashan at the bunkers, or the docks on Adak.

2. Adjustment experimentation of these factors:

A- Flag orders

B- Asset capability

C- trans capability

3. Those things would work because they would be more natural or realistic factors to adjust. You want asymmetrical warfare also, but the game to be able to go either way.

-Flag orders because I think it is too mundane to have a 4k map with no options to advance other than in a straight line. Having more variety can allow more spontaneity of options

- Asset capability because sometimes assets like CAS can have it too easy. Not sure why having all assets has to be a must for everyone.

- Trans capability can be just overwhelming on some maps. Adjusting it up or down would increase or decrease a team ability to take the map faster or slower giving the other faction more time.

This is going to be a slightly long text Read my reply on the bottom of the page to get a less detailed answer https://www.realitymod.com/forum/showth ... 135&page=9
See as a flex or whatever you want to call it (I need the feel to justify what Im about to say) but I feel the need to reply to this thread before it breeds a variant of players thinkin and complaining about balance when in reality they have no clue what they are talking about.

Just for some background, Im currently the Admin with the most commands used in PRTA since the we started tracking it, Im a Admin in almost every single server and Im pretty sure I probably hit more than 1000h-2000h (or more) of gameplay as Admins, I consistently managed to balance the server within 1-2 rounds and give consistent balanced games. This to say I think I have enough experience to know what Im talking about (doenst mean Im 100% right never the less)

Coalz101 wrote:

1. What is a 'balanced' game for you?

A balanced game is a "complex thing to describe" and subjective its not simply based on tickets nor K/D you are silly to base yourself on only one of these.

• Squad Leader choices. Cant tell you the amount of time I see a balanced game and one team looses because SL decided to fuck around somewhere else in the map and led to a capback or asset battles, while the K/D was close and I knew player wise it was fine and watching people crying for scramble
• Up to 100-200 tickets (because tickets doesnt mean everything, flags, people giving up and asset influence this) or 300 if the the SQL do super poorly on the point above, its their own fault doesnt mean the players arent set up to have a close game. Note that I think its silly to just say if X tickets are remaing it means the game is not balanced, thats simply not always the case Id say its more a guide line to start worrying about.
• Factions and Map design knowing who has the advantage
• Having a "equal" capable number of players on both team to face each other both Asset wise, as SL wise to face each other
• K/D can also be a pretty good indicator
• Not even going to consider INS in this thread because its simply another style of gameplay compared to AAS.

Which leads to my other poin: Forget about the scramble its a dumb idea (it can work but only in extreme cases).Its a movement that started getting traction lately while for years it was agreed almost server wide that it didnt worked and it was never in use, only now for some reason people convinced themselves its a good way to balance!!!
Scramble is a way of simply being a lazy Admin and hopping it succeeds, its a shot in the dark and you hope it works; while the clans/friends will switch to play together leading to the same issue. Basically instead of having the care to switch individual Squads based on their perfomance and knowledge of the player base and achieve a balanced round from rational thinking and knowing you can fix stuff, you just say: Fuck it, lets give it a go. I truly believe this is getting more support due to:
1) Admins simply not caring.
2) And Im going to be 100% blunt here but I have to say it: Admins being less capable than in the past (from the point I started Admining, not pointing fingers or saying they are bad or it shouldnt be this way) and thus being less able to balance (I know what Im saying might get some people annoyed but its simply my opinion from my personal experience).
3) There are more randoms playing and clans left which leads you scratching your head if it will actually work out switching some SQs, and individual clans/friends having a bigger impact agaisnt teams that dont have such experienced players.


Im sounding pretty harsh here, Im aware that Im making a big statement and might get different opinions about me, I highly recommend you taking 2min to read my reply in that link, but this is something that completely scratches in the wrong when this discussion is not well based.

A balanced game is anything that results in anything less than 0-100 in tickets.

Admins do the mistake of trying to balance games before the next one start. Add 2 minutes more to the briefing time and balance teams from there depending on who stays for the next game.

UncleSmek wrote:Admins do the mistake of trying to balance games before the next one start. Add 2 minutes more to the briefing time and balance teams from there depending on who stays for the next game.

There is no 'group' switch function as far as I'm concerned. So if I decided on switching PRID at the start of a round to balance I have to individually switch ~16 of them which are online (This occurred to me once when I thought there was only 8 of them, but turns out it was 16.) and servers also have auto balance which may just switch a random player back to the other team in order to get even numbers. Resulting in this being extra time consuming.

With this you have to think about whether or not if the people you switched will do inf next round or do assets and consider how they may play differently this round compared to last round. Its a big controversy that is difficult to predict the results.

I think balancing teams is a huge challenge for admins but also one of their most important responsibilities. When all the best players on the server are on one team and that team is just creaming the other one, it sucks for players on both teams. On the winning team, it's just boring. On the losing team, it's frustrating. Admins have to nip it in the bud and do some selective teamswitching when it starts to get bad, or from one round to the next, it gets worse. At a certain point, good players give up on their bad team and just want to play with some other good players, so they switch teams. I've watched this happen a whole bunch of times. Of course I want to play with my favourite players, but what I want most is to play with some of my favourite players, and also against some of my favourite players. The hardest part about this for admins is that it involves knowing the player base and being able to tell by looking at who's on each team whether things are balanced enough. You can't really tell by the result of a round, because one good team can wreck another good team. But our community is small enough that admins generally can tell what's what.

So I'm grateful for the balancing efforts that admins do apply, and I hope they'll keep on top of things. I'd love to say that we as players should take some initiative as well, meaning that if you know you're one of the better players on a team that is kicking way too much ***, or if you're one of the players that's making a terrible team terrible, maybe try to switch teams. Preferably at the beginning or end of a round. And of course don't divulge intel.

I had a great night of PR sometime last week with exceptional team balance. I think I played 5 rounds because they were so competitive and ended so closely I had to stay. They were also a mix of AAS and INS, and not just modern combat either. I think it was achieved by just having competent squad leaders on both sides willing to work together, and maybe a clan squad on each team. I think this should be the goal, and if you are on a team that wins by 400 tickets, ask to be switched and lead a squad on the other team if you think you are or can be competent at the task.