Grrr playing on Public Servers

[Skouperd]

Guys, this is not a nice mail to write, but yesterday, I really felt crap playing with GRRR tags. We were all playing on the same server, but the teams were so unbalanced, with all the GRRR's ending up on one side of the map. This resulted in the opposite team losing 12 straight games in a row, each time in excess of about 200 tickets. (clearly the sides where unbalanced)

I have always bragged about the fact that GRRR does not stack and will jump over to the losing side if the other side is clearly unbalanced, at around the 10th loss or so, Badass and some of the HF guys jumped in (He was looking for a server and I said I could do with some help as I was in the losing team) He and the rest of the HF guys joined my side, but they were as disgusted (as I can only imagine the rest of the team) that they all quit before their second round finished.

I was too focus on the game itself, not to have realised that all the ranked players, with all the clan tags were playing on the other side, The losing side was a serious bunch of noobs, with only a couple of clan tags next to their names. This was pointed out to me (quite harshly) when BadAss looked at the scorecard and sniped that he thought GRRR does not stack? I would not have mind at all if we've lost 12 in a row, but they were all close calls, but losing by 200 tickets plus is a joke.

Guys, I know that we would want to win and do good in the competitions , play together etc, but if stacking against newbies, who could in the future decide to join our clan, on puyblic servers is the way that we are going to go about it, then something is wrong.

[Paul]

Thanks Skoup for bringing this to everyone's attention.

This is a tricky situation in that we need to squad up together in order to keep up the team cohesion but I also recognise that we can't do this at the expense of our core values i.e. not to be dicks.

I don't want to put rules in place and say if X amount of players are on then do this but I will just appeal to everyone to use their judgement. If the sides are stacked and it is clear that grrr are constantly handing the other team a beat down, then switch over and help out. Or if there are that many grrr's on a server then move to our server.

So once again, I don’t think we need to take any drastic action, just remember to live the grrr ethos

[SlipperyDuck]

Dude, I had that experience 3 nights in a row. It's the luck of the draw. I had over 30 straight round losses in a row thanks to being the only or me and one other [grrr] vs whoever (including or excluding grrrs) on the other side who were just much stronger.
3 nights of massive losses and a KDR plumet of monumental proportions. . . I definately know how it feels.

Besides, Mega n I swopped over to the Losing side for a few rounds last night, we still lost, but we played the smart game of slipping through the cracks (or - creating cracks) and capping the back flags.

All pointless at the end of the day since not a single member of the losing team would spawn on the flags we capped.
THEY WERE ALL OUT FOR THE KILLS - not the round win. So they would spawn in their back base even when we capped other flags - just so that they could be on the front line for a chance to get kills. <-- SAD, but true. it's a COD thing that.

[J_Th4ng]

Denis, I'm not sure when you're talking about, but it must've been late last night because I was playing until ~11pm and grrr was equally represented on both sides on the game.

Yes, the games were unbalanced, and the first several maps the team I was playing for was winning quite convincingly. However, there was a grrr squad in the opposition, consisting of (IIRC) Lee, Mega, SloDaz and Mikey. There were six grrrs on the other team (one full squad and myself and Ion in another squad).

Later, when things were going badly and people on the opposition team started leaving, I swapped teams in order to balance the numbers, once again ending up in a squad on my own as the four grrrbians already had a squad. I was later joined by Flycatchr.

Certainly later some of the grrrbians on the other side left, because you ended up on you own on the other side. In fact, just as I was leaving the server, you changed teams because you were the only grrrbian left on the other team.

Looking back at the time that I spent playing last night, I have no problem with the behaviour of our clan members. Obviously I can't speak for what happened after 11pm.

Incidentally, the imbalance in the teams at the beginning was rather unfortunate, one team was very dominant over the other. However, that had nothing to do with grrr deployments (we were spread across both teams), and it was impossible to change teams at that point anyway, due to the fact that numbers were equal on both sides.

[Skouperd]

The nice thing about battlelog is that you have a great track record of the games that has been played.

I've joined the ZA[Wage] yesterday just after 20:00 when the Danglers opted to use the GRRR server for practise. When I've joined, the server was empty with 6 out of 64 players. It filled up very quickly. The first couple of games was very well balanced, but then the Dangler's practise session ended and enough GRRR players was on the server to make a difference.

Herewith the stats for when the practise session was over and most of the Danglers joined. Ps, nothing against the Danglers, but that was only when GRRR could influence the team balance sufficiently.


Game 1:
Theran Highway: US won by 91 tickets
No problem in this game, it could have gone either way with most GRRR's playing in the losing team in any event.

US:
Megageth

RU:
U2M
Dr4g0nn3
Skouperd
xOnyx
Slodaz
Cr0n0z_za



Game 2:
Theran Highway: RU won by 48 tickets
Again, no problem on this game, could have gone either way.
RU:
Megageth
FlyCatchr

US:
SloDaz
Dr4g0nn3
Cr0n0s_za
xOnyx
U2M
Skouperd
Voetsek


Game 3:
Seine Crossing: US won by 114 tickets
Again, slightly unbalanced but nothing to be concerned about with most of the GRRR's playing on the losing side.

US:
Megageth
flycatchr
SlipperyDuck

RU:
Cr0n0s_za
Skouperd
U2M
xOnyx
Dr4g0nn3
sloDaz
Voetsek

Game 4:
Seine Crossing: RU won by 239 tickets.
BTW, Jarrod, this is when you swappend teams after playing on the losing side for 3 rounds.

RU:
Megageth
SlipperyDuck
Flycatchr
Dr4g0nn3

US:
U2M
Cr0n0s_za
Voetsek
Skouperd
xOnyx


Game 5:
Operation Firestorm: US won by 203 tickets.
US: (people with positive KDs = 15)
Dr4g0nn3
SlipperyDuck
Megageth
FlyCatchr

RU: (people with positive KDs = 3)
Voetsek
Skouperd

Game 6:
Operation Firestorm: RU won by 66 tickets
This was a much closer game, no complaints here, several players left the previous round after having lost 5 games in a row and some of the higher ranked players moved to the US side.

Jarrod, this is when I've swapped TS channels, note that I never swapped sides.

RU: (people with positive KD's = 13)
Megageth
SlipperyDuck
Dr4g0nn3
FlyCatchr

US: (people with positive KD's = 8)
Skouperd


Game 7:
Operation Damavand: US won by 187 tickets.

US:
Megageth
FlyCatchr
Slipperyduck
Dr4g0nn3
Icenflame

RU:
Skouperd

Game 8:
Operation Damavand: RU won by 234 tickets

RU: (people with positive KD's 17)
Megageth
SlipperyDuck
IcenFlame

US: (people with positive KD's, only myself)
Skouperd


Game 9:
Canals: US won by 251 tickets.
There was aslo 24 players in US side versus 21 in RU.

US: (positive KD's = 9)
SlipperyDuck
Megageth
Dryman
IcenFlame

RU: (positive KD's = 2)
Skouperd


Game 10:
Canals: RU won by 229 tickets.

RU: (positive KD's = 10)
Dryman
SlipperyDuck
IcenFlameZA
Megageth

US: (positive KD's = 3)
Skouperd


Game 11:
Kharg Island: US won by 210 tickets.
Again, the US had 3 more players than RU. It was during this game that BadAss and the rest of HF joined me.

US: (positive KD's = 11)
SlipperyDuck
IcenFlame
Megageth
DryMan

RU: (positive KD's = 6)
Skouperd

Game 12:
Kharg Island: RU won by 221 tickets

RU: (people with positive KD's = 18)
Slipperduck
Dryman
Megageth

US: (people with positive KD's 3)
Skouperd



Guys, I have no problem with losing, as long as I gave it my best. However the number of GRRR players that was on the winning side (and I am not talking 60 or 100 ticket wins, I am talking 200+ ticket wins) for the whole evening long, just can not be seen in a positive light by the rest of the community, now can it?

[SlipperyDuck]

so what you are saying is that when there are 4 grrr players on side on a 64player server, it's unbalanced?
Cool, thats a compliment.

Really, I understand the feeling of frustration when a whole side does NOTHING @ ALL, but I don't think it's fair to call US out on that? It was a 64 player server FFS.

Plus, like I said in me previous post, I had THREE FRAKEN Nights of that and did I go out and create a thread to complain? no. I just play the game.

So far as I can remember, the unbalanced nature of the game lasted for less than an hour, since the games went so quickly. The fact that it was a 64 player server meant we werent even aware that the GRRR guys had left from the other side.
The losing team did nothing to try and cap flags, I struggle to understand why it becomes our poor sportsmanship or bad ethos from US when the opposing team doesnt play the game, like AT ALL.

Hells mate, I've played several evening when it's me vs more than 8 grrr squad members and I get my ass handed to me continually ... I don't complain @ all.

Sorry if an hour of your gaming time was not as you expected, but I don't think it's fair to take that out on us.

[J_Th4ng]

I still don't see the big issue here, Denis. For the first three rounds, according to your BL reports, grrr had more players in the LOSING team than the winning team. TBH, I thought that I had been on the winning team for the first three rounds, but clearly my memory is fading as I get older

When I swapped, it was because there were few grrr's in the opposing team, and I was in a squad of people I didn't know on the other team (with the exception of Ion). I only mention this because your comment above seems to imply that I changed teams to get on to the winning side, something I didn't do.

Back to the point at hand. It seems that most of the stacking complaints that you level came after game 5, which co-incides with a number of grrr players leaving the server from one side, leaving the other side with more grrr players. I was unable to swap back at this point, having previously moved over to balance numbers (not that I tried, TBH).

Now I can't comment on why people then didn't swap to the losing team, I was only on for a couple of games after that, but I will say that usually, if there are only relatively few grrr players on the server (and one squad or less on one side), it's not typical for people to change. I wouldn't class one squad or less of grrr on a team as stacking, but do believe that when we have more than four that we should split over both teams (something that we generally do). One thing that I would say is disappointing is that you were on your own on one side for a few of those rounds. It's always less fun to play on your own and it's disappointing that no-one else swapped across to join you.

BTW, you mention that you swapped channels rather than teams, and I recall this. However, I also recall you saying on TS (just before I left) that you were going to change teams rather than play by yourself. Unfortunately the game wouldn't let you swap. Perhaps at this time you should've asked one of the other players to swap teams and squad up with you?

Anyway, regardless of the above, there is a perception that we as a clan were stacking last night. This is something that we need to be careful to avoid.

Oh, and one other point that's not exactly related, but may have some bearing on events - a number of us were having huge difficulties joining any servers last night, due to EA login disconnects. When I managed to get on to the server that everyone was on, I was just grateful to be able to play at that stage and wasn't bothering too much about who with. I'm sure that some of the others felt the same.

[SlipperyDuck]

Skoups - I appologies mate, since I could only play BF3 so late last night, along side the agenda of trying some things, I didn't notice that you were on your own on that side, if I did, I would have switched - I always do . . . anyway, hope there are no bad feelings, we will try to make sure you don't feel disappointed about a nights gaming - it should be fun after-all.

soz mate.

[Megageth]

(Apologies for comments that are off-topic)

The GRRR's may have ended up on one side but it didn't start that way. The balance changed through the course of the night and with so many GRRR's on the losing side on the first round I question the impact of our clan on public servers. I think we all need to work on staying alive, ha ha ha ha staying alive, and capping flags. I notice a lot our clan players losing focus on these simple objectives in Conquest mode. The value of Hubris as a player is his focus on these objectives as well as anticipation of the what the enemy will do. His WL ratio is a tribute to his abilities and I am puzzled why so many experienced GRRR players are so slow to move on flags. We are not that old.

Back to the subject at hand, I regularly change sides to balance teams. If I have failed to notice an imbalance then feel free to ask me to swap. Pls also make sure I have heard the request, the rich gameplay and sound of BF3 means that I don't always register TS comments.

[Skouperd]

Lee / Jarrod, I am not raising this because I was on the losing side (I don't care about losing the whole night), neither am I raising it because I was playing on my own, but merely that we as a clan need to be more aware of this in future as it does create an unfriendly environment for the rest of the community who was sitting on the losing team the whole night.

I always brag that GRRR never stack, and that if we see the other side doing badly we swap over, unfortunately yesterday this was clearly not the case. I am as guilty as everybody else is because you are right, the games did go quickly, I enjoyed myself on the server (I had good KD/s most of the night) and I was on TS with you guys, so I did not care about losing. I even tried to swap to your side once or twice to play in the same squad, and never even borthered to ask anybody to come help me out because we were losing.

I would not even have mentioned any of this if Badass did not draw my attention to it at the end of the round and I actually went and checked the battlelog afterwards that I realised just how badly these teams were unbalanced.

With regard to it being a 64 player server, I agree that the guys on the losing side was a bunch of noobs, but that should be even more reason for more of us to go to their side. Imagine you have never played a FPS and nobody is helping you around, all that happens to you the whole night is you spawn die, guess what that person will lose interest very shortly and the gaming community as a whole is worst off. With regard to making an impact, we have all seen it, a well organised squad can make a huge difference even on 64 player servers.

All that I am asking for, is that we just be more cautious when we play on public servers, if you as an individual have won say 4 or 5 rounds in a row, perhaps it is time to just check the team balance. (As I said, I am as guilty as the next)