Comp Night: Balanced Teams

[Dexterous]

I've noticed in 2 of our games that we've had quite one sided matches, Snouty messaged me saying that in order to keep the game fun for everyone (not just the winning team) we need to have some sort of way of keeping the teams relatively balanced. He suggested telling the captains to try to pick based on skill prior to matches but that could cause some people to feel disappointed if they were picked later on, because of this I was wondering if anyone had suggestions on how we could keep everyone happy with the selections of teams but also keep the teams balanced in order to make sure everyone enjoys the game.   :g:

[TeaLeaf]

The first match last week was not one-sided.  It started 0-6 and looked potentially lop-sided, but ended up with a win by +1 or +2 rounds only and had been very close thereafter.   Last night's match OTOH was completely lop-sided.   The ballsed-up configs had a lot to do with this imo.

The fact that we never switched sides (config problem) gave an advantage, that we got free full armor every round (another config problem) which allowed bigger guns to be bought earlier and continuously by both teams and provided another advantage.   We also had a number of Virgin Media players (and Browne) who had ridiculous pings throughout the evening.    I suspect the combination of bad pings, too much cash, not swapping sides etc were the major culprits.

Picking on skill is the only way to keep the teams balanced.  But that means having captains who know how good every player is.   Certainly one of the early picks last night had me raising both my eyebrows (which is a not inconsiderable feat as they grow ever heavier with my increasing age) as it was not in the 'expected order' of skill selection.   Being picked last doesn't bother me, and tbh should not bother anyone else if they choose to sign up for a competitive match. In any group you will have best and worst, that's life, deal with it.

The only alternative solution would take more time and involve the captains picking their teams in private and then they could use the mod to take their chosen players, in public in whichever order floated their boat.

[Dexterous]

The fact that we never switched sides (config problem) gave an advantage, that we got free full armor every round (another config problem) which allowed bigger guns to be bought earlier and continuously by both teams and provided another advantage.   We also had a number of Virgin Media players (and Browne) who had ridiculous pings throughout the evening.    I suspect the combination of bad pings, too much cash, not swapping sides etc were the major culprits.

Picking on skill is the only way to keep the teams balanced.  But that means having captains who know how good every player is.   Certainly one of the early picks last night had me raising both my eyebrows (which is a not inconsiderable feat as they grow ever heavier with my increasing age) as it was not in the 'expected order' of skill selection.   Being picked last doesn't bother me, and tbh should not bother anyone else if they choose to sign up for a competitive match. In any group you will have best and worst, that's life, deal with it.

True, the config did heavily influence the match and hopefully next week we can get more of an idea of how it should work through seeing how it plays out. I agree that picking on skill is the only way to keep it balanced but I'm wondering in order to keep the teams balanced and allow people to see who is in general more skilled than others what exactly we will do. Will we just give it time so everyone who plays frequently on the comp nights gets a good understanding of every player and then we can use ".rand" to select random Captains, or will we have assigned captains who can week by week adjust their teams so that it will eventually balance out to a relatively even sided game.

Both methods would result in even sided games, but the random one would allow everyone to choose teams while taking a longer time to get the teams to balance out, on the other hand having assigned captains (Blunt and Slowhand etc. assuming whoever was selected was up for it) would mean that although not everyone would get to choose, it would result in fairer teams more quickly.

In a side note, sorry as I only just realised I didn't really make this very clear at all in my initial post.  

[Blunt]

This is always a problem.
On CS & CoD xmas comps I used to sort them out myself picking the 2 best, next 2 best, etc. balancing each team as I thought fit.
This seemed to work pretty well, although I doubt it will help you in this situation unless you ask people to sign up in advance.