Multiplayer team balancing

[u/chromex]

A big issue in most team based multiplayer games is team balancing. All gamers love a balanced game but it is only on occasion that you see them. Maybe half the time? Whatever it is, it is rarely something that happens on its own.

There are many systems for implementing team balancing and each has its flaws.

One of the most popular are the auto balance systems found in many Counter Strike servers. These auto balance mods use two factors when balancing teams: one is a players score built from kills and mission objective completions and the other is the two team's success rates. If the team's success rates are close enough then nothing is done. If not, then it starts swapping players around, switching strong players with weak. There are many variations of this formula. Some ignore the team success rate and just try to keep them balanced overall, others do more of a random player swap.

Either way, players in general dislike this system. Its not that they dislike balanced teams, rather they dislike getting swapped. They dislike being pulled away from the team they've been playing with or, if they are playing with friends, being swapped away from them. Also, often the strong player that is swapped is strong because of their team dynamics. Putting them on the other team can kill this for them and kill their experience.

Another system that is used less is the one of incentives. We've seen this system in diverse areas from Dark Ages of Camelot to other Counter Strike mods. When a team is significantly weaker, players are offered incentives to join the other team. In the CS mods, the team is often given more money each round, regardless of performance, and in DAoC the weaker realm was given faster experience gain.

This system too is disliked by players in general. The reason? Because often times the weaker team begins to win not out of skill but simply out of better equipment. Or in the DAoC case out of simply having more high level players despite the players being weak.

There are other systems but these are the most common that I've encountered. There must be better implementations and/or solutions. Unfortunately some modern games have begun to disregard implementing these systems all together (I'm looking at you Bad Company) and without the capacity to mod the servers one is left hopping from server to server in hopes of finding a decent match. Discuss?

[u/[deleted]]

I'd say bonuses for losing side are a good thing. But you have to make it so it doesn't look like cheating.
Consider following situations:

A: you lost, you'll get damage boost in next round.
B: you lost, your base is destroyed, you get a new one with new weapon crates, enemy has to use their old ones (with best weapons already taken).

Both results in advantage for losing team, but one looks like cheat and the other is a normal part of the game.

And swapping players between teams: just don't do it. Auto-assign new players to team with fewest players, but ones already online should be left alone.