StrikeFear

I've been thinking about it, and I haven't come up with a good solution concept yet - but I'm gonna lay down my thoughts in the hopes that it's one more step toward solving the issue.

Pokerface -
It's not so bad to be autobalanced alive. Particularly if you're allowed to spawn in immediately.
Really, compare that "disorientation" to the disorientation you feel when you're normally autobalanced. You're obviously in the middle of squad action, catch a bullet in the head, and suddenly all your friends are your enemy, and you have no squad. Ouch.

Compare/contrast that to MileHighAko's suggestion of auto-balancing squads (which I'm really starting to like). At least in that case you move an entire, self-contained, operating unit TOGETHER. That's less disorienting, even if it's alive.
There you are, you and your buddies, defending a CP against stiff opposition, when suddenly you're killed and the message appears, "Your squad has been autobalanced to the other team." You pick your kit, spawn in with the squad leader as usual, and operate with the same group of players - with the positive note that there is a virtually undefended enemy CP out there.

There are some obvious pros/cons to this implementation. If you choose the smallest squad, then players will be encouraged to fill squads up to avoid auto-balancing. On the other hand, you immediately make sniper squads an air-force squads (2-man bombers, attack helo squads, etc) likely candidates for playing musical teams.
That's ESPECIALLY bad, since the other team probabaly already HAS a bomber squad, and now 4 guys are competing for one jet on one team, and an empty plane sitting in the hangar on the other team.

So that's a problem.

Perhaps some way of Commanders making transfer choice? Commander gets a notification - "You must select a squad to autobalance" ?
But of course, he picks his worst squad of team-killing slackers, and that actually makes it worse for the other side.

The bottom line is that we're trying to protect friends who don't want to get split up. Is there a way they could identify their group to the server so that they're autobalanced together? This obviously opens up possibilities for abuse, but we could put it on the server for a few days (reporting each case where an attempted auto-balance was overturned due to that group setting), and see if it's being abused. If not, why not leave it?

So - no real solutions. But it seems to me that the auto-balance problem as it exists is far too egregious to be tolerated, and there are lesser evils we could replace it with.

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Telorn

StrikeFear,

The suggestion I have been giving would solve those issues. for the most part. No man who has been in the game for 5-15 minutes is going to be that 'deep' with his squad anyway, and it wouldn't be so much of an issue if he is switched. As far as coding goes, I don't know if it would even be possible to move a whole squad at once. It would be a nightmare to make sure the code knew how to do that properly! And you wouldn't have to worry about any well established squads losing key members due to the current auto-balance feature.

And if two friends joined a few minutes apart, using a code as I've suggested, would select both of them to be moved to the other team and both would be moved, providing when they die the other side still has a shortage.

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Telorn

StrikeFear

2 things, Telorn.

1. If an auto-balance event occurs once in a map, then 1 of the two friends who joined within seconds of each other will get moved, and spend the entire map on the other team.

2. I don't really know the odds of the scenario above occurring. Tho it does seem like it could easily hamper 3-4 friends trying to play together. But that aside, there is still another problem facing us. That is, how do 2-4 players join the server and get on the same side? It's currently not possible, no matter how much you click the team tab.

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Telorn

Joining as a team is just not possible. Not unless we shut off the auto-balance and leave it to the TG community to move where help is needed. Of course, what I'd see happening here is 'TG' against 'pubbies', which I wouldn't neccesarily mind, as we, the TG community, take the initiative to move to the smaller team while the pubblies move to the team that has the best chance of winning.

Which makes me think of another issue. As TG members move to even the odds, pubblies will follow to the team that is winning. If that is usually the TG side, then we'll constantly find ourselves playing switcharoo.

Unless you are doing a 'clan' event and starting a private server for your use, BF2 does not really support friends playing on the same squad or even the same team. It isn't possible with public servers. They didn't think that far. A prime example on how it would work nicely is Halo2. They have an awesome buddy system and it woudl have been great for BF2 to have support a up to six man 'buddy group' like halo did. But it would still be a huge problem when joining public servers...because in a public server the game is ever going, whether you are there or not. A team system, like you want, is only possible when the environment only begins and ends when your 'team' joins and leaves or in a MMO like Planetside.

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Telorn

StrikeFear

Then turn it off.

Don't try to predict what's going to happen. Just do it and see. I'd rather play with my buddies (TG or otherwise) and lose (it's not ranked anyway), than allow the game to ignorantly rebalance us individually.

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Telorn

I see it hurting our gameplay more than helping, and I'm sure that is why the auto-balance was turned on and modified by Poker in the first place. Because they know it isn't possible.

But we do all agree it needs to be different than it currently is.

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Telorn

Pokerface

It's rare that off-balance teams lead to a good game. That's why the autobalance is in place; because as much as we'd like to play with our friends, if the other team is a full squad's worth of people down, then the other team isn't likely to have fun.

The easier solution would be to make more friends. That, to me, is one of the selling points of TacticalGamer: no matter the teammates, I'm generally guaranteed a fun game.

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Red_Dog

I enjoyed this thread, but I really don't think there is a solution for the issue of playing with a buddy consistently. I've had to join and quit several servers so my buddy and I could play on the same team and squad. Live or die did not matter, but playing together. My buddy(s) and I will also play in a LAn setting so it is more fun to look over at tell him what's happening or what to do. At least in DC we had Coop where buddies could always be together. That may still be the only best option. wait for the mods.