Stacking, woo!

[Ziggy]

I've noticed these past few days that teams within the TFP servrs have been getting stacked. I admit, I've been on thier side as well as against them.

For those who dont know, Stacking is where players (usualy ones with the highest skill) all go to the same team and pretty much rape the other 57 different ways. Revieving team tends to know it, too, and mass scramble. I've seen 12/13 scrambles fail because no one on the towered team would vote for it

Just a tiny smal question. If mass scramble happens, does one think there's a plug in to detect that and do the scramble whether or not enough votes make the cut? Or should there be an auto scramble every few rounds?

EDIT: I think I relize now I put this in the wrong forums o.o

[NikkyVix]

Howdy there,

Okie, just to forestall any less civil or serious responses from others.. the issue of stacking (and times of legitimacy) is widely debated. Unfortunately, many people don't recognize the difference between a legitimate case where things should be evened out, or, a case where it's just a result of too many people not trying or making bad tactical decisions leading to a loss. In any case that's not what's being covered.

Our plug-in functions in a way where if our players feel that there's a justifiable reason to scramble the teams, it doesn't take an extraordinary amount of people to scramble. Due to the aforementioned difference in what constitutes the stack situation and the fact we believe in players moderating themselves in this position, we prefer not to take control out of our players' hands and push a force scramble (we could, even doing so if one team manages a certain number of wins or point differential, but we will not). Even in that rare situation where it requires one or two more people to scramble.

tl;dr: We just provide the tools, but we don't force them on you. :3

In the end, after much community feedback and debate on multiple sides, months of tuning and input on the issue, the current system we have in place is really the best thing we have for freedom and flexibility without stepping into the realm of punishing teams and friends just because they exercise the 'Team' in 'Team Fortress'.

[STrRedWolf]

[Kyle]

I'm not so sure that stacking is really a big issue anyway. I find that the game itself tends to encourage steamrolling, at least to whichever team gets an early lead. Crit boosts in CTF are an example, I guess. The difference in skill between the two teams may not be all that great, but it's probably magnified by some of the maps and game types. Typically I'll see at least three votes to scramble teams on a single map, regardless of who's playing. Ultimately, I see matches ending 8-0 far too often for it to be always be a case of stacked teams.

[Purplecat]

Valve said in their commentary that the most "boring" games are the ones that drags on forever. So some of their maps are actually designed to make it unlikely to go back and forth too much, such as cp_well apparently.

And yes there is the problem of people refusing to switch classes, leading to five sniper attack teams... which rarely does well. @_@

There is a force scramble, but you most likely will only see it in action on CTF maps.'

I seen the opposite too. I had times where I struggled through the first and second stage, and on third stage there's someone whining about stacking. On maps like cp_dustbowl I tend to prefer having at least both teams a chance to attack before I vote yes on a scramble. A bad defender team isn't necessarily a bad attacker I noticed. When I'm on the losing end, I usually try to figure out what me (and my team) is doing wrong and fix that rather than blaming on stacking.

TF2 ends with a winner, loser or stalemate.

[Sekh765]

Minor note - We cannot rebind the key for votes. We have tried in the past to rebind the key that people had to press for a mapvote to prevent everyone from reflexively hitting 1, but it is hard coded into TF2 as far as we can tell. Sorry. :\

[Helios]

[STrRedWolf]

Can the admins force a random choice of class within a team, or ban one person from a class? If an admin notices class favoritism, can't he/she/shi take action?

[Mr. Munchlax]

I seriously doubt that. The only real thing that can be done is to put class limits in place, but I don't see too many people being in favor of that. :p

[NikkyVix]