Licho, before you logged off, you said that if somebody wanted a fair game, they should play normal Zero-K. I would go one step further and say that if you want a fair game, then you should wait for cloning technology to mature so you can play against yourself.
I don't think Rafal and I are arguing about the fairness of a match. The heavy amount of complaints in channel and the large number of exit votes indicate that players specifically do not wish to play games where there is a serious difference in the number of people on either team. Are matches with even numbers of players any more likely to be fair? I certainly doubt it. I know almost every match I'll ever play in any game will be clearly unfair and unbalanced.
The problem isn't that these games are less fair than others, the problem is that they appear unbalanced in a more obvious manner. The same people who don't want to play these games would be perfectly fine with a huge skill variation among players, and probably only complain about that when there is something else obviously unbalanced – like a clear clan stack, or a team of new players against regulars, or a size difference between the start boxes.
I mean, think about it. A lot of maps are asymmetrical, if you look at the metal percentage captured in an “even” split across most maps you'll see a difference of seven or eight percent. However, people play with this – in part because they aren't aware, and in part because psychologically the visual difference in box size would trump the mathematical difference in metal placement.
The problem with the team sizes first and foremost is that you're going up against basic human psychology, and the players are clearly not happy with or adapting to it, in general. Some of us are willing to, I had a few very nice 5v7 and 2v3 battles in recent days. Some people only complain when their team is not favoured, when their team is smaller.
I agree that we're here to play competitive matches, but I can't think of a competitive game where numerically unbalanced teams are the norm, although it is a technically legitimate method of creating challenge. It drives off players, it leads to griefing and whining, and even pretty active players like Jasper, Japko and Rafal will spectate rather than play a game which is 5v9.
The idea was good, but it isn't working very well. It didn't work well in the previous version of PlanetWars when we had two factions. Sometimes you have to compromise your ideas with the reality of the player experience – and it isn't like you'd have to abandon this as a balancing tool to do so. Some check in terms of maximum team deviation, or some autohost command to change the weighting of the three factors could improve the situation. As I suggested, I'd play around with the weighting of diplomatic stances and maybe the number of players active in a battle from a particular clan. If alliances were split in battles more often it would probably clear up most of the issue.
Anyway, I need to get the the airport. I'm just trying to help, I'd like to see more people playing PW more regularly and I'm very happy with much of the work you and the rest of the team are doing.
