Auto-balance in lobby

[Anti-Distinctlyminty]

Hi all,
First of all, I'm sure this must have been suggested already, so I'm sorry for duplicating if this is indeed the case, but I searched and found nothing. Anyway, my experience in while setting up a game invariably a far more tortuous affair than it should need to be.
For any given set of players there exists an optimal balance: teams evenly matched in terms of rating, similarly skilled players facing one another, etc. I was wondering what the feasibility of adding a button to the lobby that will automatically balance teams. This would make the experience much smoother.

[Aurion]

Hi all,
First of all, I'm sure this must have been suggested already, so I'm sorry for duplicating if this is indeed the case, but I searched and found nothing. Anyway, my experience in while setting up a game invariably a far more tortuous affair than it should need to be.
For any given set of players there exists an optimal balance: teams evenly matched in terms of rating, similarly skilled players facing one another, etc. I was wondering what the feasibility of adding a button to the lobby that will automatically balance teams. This would make the experience much smoother.

I agree that a distinct button would be nicer, but I believe random positions actually balances teams (and therefore, is not actually random).

[Col_Walter_Kurtz]

Random teams already sets autobalance, but I agree, the name is misleading. That's a valid point!

[Iszh]

I also think it should be mentioned better. People are afraid of it. I would like to play more of those autobalance games because handmade balance takes more time and results are .. average.

[Turkey]

The other thing is that random spawn will balance teams, but not positions (I found myself in Seton's air against MnB because of this once). An autobalance option in the lobby would be useful to get the teams right, then positions can be balanced manually. Balancing positions automatically as the OP suggests would be more difficult to implement, because map symmetry is not consistent.

[yeager]

is this because of our games last night? that was awful (well for me, you guys enjoyed it)

[Col_Walter_Kurtz]

The other thing is that random spawn will balance teams, but not positions (I found myself in Seton's air against MnB because of this once). An autobalance option in the lobby would be useful to get the teams right, then positions can be balanced manually. Balancing positions automatically as the OP suggests would be more difficult to implement, because map symmetry is not consistent.

I believe that the positions are balanced too, I hardly ever see a mismatch on Setons.

[Anti-Distinctlyminty]

Well that answers that question then. One potential area for improvement - though I have no idea how this would be implemented - to to auto-balance with constraints. e.g. Auto-balance as best possible but with keeping certain players on the same time.
So much time is wasted in lobby farting around trying to make everyone happy, and I think if FAF is to grow, then making these things as painless as possible is necessary.

[Downlord]

This should've been done months to years ago.

[ckitching]

Well, they added the poorly-named "random spawns" feature that really does autobalance.
I'll add a button to do it in-lobby in the next couple of weeks: we plan to do some UI changes as hotfixes chasing after 3641, so this can go in with those (as well as the long awaited unfucking of manual-mode autoteams).

Such are the scheduling issues when you only have 1-ish developers.