Battlefield 3's autobalance feature lacks one serious thing, actual balance. While balancing by number of players was all fine and dandy in Battlefield 2, things have changed, BF3 players with the eagle Icon next to their name need to be spread across two teams, as do their similarly leveled friends. Without fail, these players bunch up together, and it ends up with one team completely being outclassed by the other, the same thing occurred in BC2, and really hurt the experience.

There are many battlefield players who put a stupid amount of time into the game, and that's great, but not at the expense of people who just want to jump in and play. Higher leveled players will always get more points, but everyone should have an equal oppourtunity to at least win the match, a game on Seine Crossing where the other team just gets cornered in the first 2 minutes and then is spawn raped until all their 300 tickets are gone, is not fun gameplay.

Quite honestly I was thinking of vanilla Team Fortress 2 the other day and thought how great the game really was. Nine differenet ways to play and every class looks and functions exactly the same. Pure fucking balance. I really don't like what Valve did to it, nor am I sure this leveling mechanic in competative FPS games should be there. Period. In regards to Battlefield 3 specifically, I find there are a lot more balance issues than simple server inbalance. Getting an eagle by your name is not hard to do if you want to take the easy route. There are many servers with less than 5 people that run around taking turns capturing points. I've been in a couple of those games, with the average end score being anywhere from 11,000-17,000 points. It's not an exploit, it's just dumb. Battlefield 3 is a lot of fun, but after 25+ hours in multiplayer, I find there are too many bugs, exploits and balance issues that it ruins the incredibly strong core fun factor of the game. It's a shame really.

I agree. I find myself joining a server and either constantly winning or constantly losing.

Not a fan of auto-balance, especially when it's a mid-round kinda thing. I'm the kind of guy who ponders the map before spawning. If I feel left alone by my team in doing what's right, I will switch teams or servers.

I kinda assumed that the servers auto-balanced on the Skill Level statistic on your battlelog?

@Chainblast said:

In regards to Battlefield 3 specifically, I find there are a lot more balance issues than simple server inbalance. Getting an eagle by your name is not hard to do if you want to take the easy route.

An excellent point.

I play on the PS3, and I can say that rank doesn't mean a damned thing. If you don't have good team-mates then you will not win the match - speaking of Conquest, specifically. Without feigning humility, I am excellent BF3 player, and I am constantly taking down players with a higher rank; a higher rank does not mean more skill, it just means more unlocks. Sufficient teamwork, and microphones, will beat an eagle every time; the only advantage to rank is the unlocked weapons accrued - which doesn't count for much if you don't know how to use them properly (read: skill).

@Seppli said:

Not a fan of auto-balance, especially when it's a mid-round kinda thing. I'm the kind of guy who ponders the map before spawning. If I feel left alone by my team in doing what's right, I will switch teams or servers.

How about auto balance after a hour game of SUPER even battle. Super fun. And at the very end some ass rage quits and you get flipped to the other side.

Completely agree. It's crazy to think in this day and ages someone still hasn't come up with a better way of team balancing. I admit with friends squading up it isn't an easy problem to solve. It doesn't apply to just this game either. Most of the FPS game of this gen have the same problem with there online play. Personally I'd much rather a match go down to the wire than just steamrolling the opposition.

I know I've read on ea forums that the do use the skill rating as part of the matchmaking system. A few things to remember though, players of different skill may come in paired as friends, system can't match if people come in through server browser and also keep in mind, skill rating is different from your point grind rank. After a server is full or before each round it would be nice to see the system try to rebalance teams but again, if people are grouped it may be hard to split them up evenly.

Having eagles on one team or another doesn't keep me from grabbing a chopper full of people and flying off the map.

@Ninja_Welshman said:

Completely agree. It's crazy to think in this day and ages someone still hasn't come up with a better way of team balancing

Well, the way they used to do things, going back to the PS2 generation (i.e. SOCOM 2), was to separate different tiers of players, so the disparity between player rankings wouldn't be too large (i.e. highest rank wouldn't play against the lowest). I think I remember BF2:MC doing something similar (i.e. once you cross the line to CO ranks, you won't play against any one below them) , but I'm not entirely certain about that.

I can't support this.  People just need to get better.  This is war, man.

stop crying and get better!

Unless there's a squad or more or lvl 45+s it doesn't mean anything. They can still lose.

Too many people are not interested in competition. They just want to stack and win. Many times this devolves into 500+ ticket spawn rape. People quit which then exacerbates the lopsidedness. I've played 70+ hours and still feel like I'm somewhat learning the guns and maps. These people who say rank doesn't matter are ignorantly arguing that never in the history of man has a noob been pwned. I've been on servers where autobalance is constantly warning that it will switch someone. Then it switches last person to join who is probably some noob oblivous to the server situation. The bottom line is that when one side is dominating round after round, then it is clear that things are not balanced. It would be relatively easy to create a balancing algorithm that takes into account rank, k/d ratio, points scored etc and create balanced teams without splitting up clans. Yes, this might even mean that great players would be on a team that is outnumbered. Someone with integrity would rise to the challange and see it as a compliment toward their skill. I was on a server last night where there where 8 gold eagle players on one side and 1 on the other. The stacked side was dominating and was led by TWO DISTINCT CLANS. I suggested that maybe the two clans could challenge each other with no response. The hilarious part was that one clan tag was 1337 yet they refused to participate in actual competition. ...I guess then they might have to admit they weren't as great as they think they are. 'Get better' or "technically we could lose if a lot of better people got on the server" cannot be the solution to balance when the allegedly best players all try to be on the same team. I can hold my own against someone more skilled, but not against 5. When did competition and fair gamesmanship get killed by spawn raping and stat whoring?

developers have never cared about balancing in online fps games. The fact that they allow clans to roll around in ranked games running over people is stupid enough

I like a random balance shuffle every game, not while the match is in progress though.  If it's same teams, match after match after match, then it's not fun and i leave and find a new server.

This has been a problem with BF and other shooters of its kind. once the casual drops off your stuck playing against clans or just the elite. games become one sided quickly. 

@xdaknightx69 said:

stop crying and get better!

Anyone who thinks that some dipshit with a bird next to their name is the next coming of christ is in serious trouble a few months from now when they're a bird and still suck ass at this game.

Correct me if I'm wrong but being a higher rank can mean multiple things...

The first being yea, the person of higher rank may be more skilled at Battlefield than the average player.

The second being a higher ranked player has just put more time in.

The third reason being that the higher ranked player (abnormally high ranked) has been using cheats.

So it's not just a matter of numbered rank.

People saying that the rank holds no indicator to how the teams will be balanced are complete fools.

People who have put more time into a game will be invariably more skilled than someone who picked the game up a week ago on Black Friday.

I just hop around servers until I find one that kind of gives a shit about team play and balance. They do need to make the balance more robust because if I didn't know this was how Battlefield games were and didn't hate myself I would put this shit down.

@Franstone said:

The second being a higher ranked player has just put more time in.

That means a hell of alot, it takes a very long time to max out your level in this game, any player who has done so is not at the same skill level as someone at level 20 or 30.

@Mikemcn: Time does not equal skill, would be foolish to think so.

Give a more skilled player the few days needed to learn the maps and that advantage is gone.

Plain and simple, common sense.

The only thing you can determine by someones level is how much time they've put in, if even that. It's no indication of skill and can't reliably be used for balance in any situation.

Despite the title of this thread, I think the point was more that team balancing needs to be addressed differently, rather than saying rank is the end all be all. The "switch last person to join" approach does not create balance. And I guess is just a really weird coincedence that the top scorers on any team are generally the highest ranks. Team balancing doesn't occur over the timespan of days, it has to occur on the timespan of hours or minutes and in that context rank is one reasonable proxy of many for how well the person will perform against everyone else. Saying that the team getting owned needs to spend a few days to skill up in order for there to be balanced competition is nonsensical. Next ya'll will be saying that score and k/d ratio are no indication of someone's contribution to their team.

@Franstone said:

@Mikemcn: Time does not equal skill, would be foolish to think so.

Give a more skilled player the few days needed to learn the maps and that advantage is gone.

Plain and simple, common sense.

However, someone who is already at this point at such a high level must have a lot of skill, which made him level up fast, or he just put a lot of time into the game which also implies that he has a lot of experience. Either way, 90% of the time those people with the eagle symbols are much better than those level 10 guys.

And yes there definitely should be a balance system. I cannot count how many times I played on a team that got completely gangraped. The enemy would have 5/6 flags the entire match.

I'd love better balancing but I dont think its always fair to say that higher level players make as much of a difference as in other FPS games. I usaly go online to ply BF3 with a buddy and repair / revive / assist each other as it should be but it seems that there some system that puts better players with shitty players way too often. While I hate games where my team owns all the flags and pushes the enemy back to their spawn all the time id rather be on that team than the team of fuckwitts that dont try to capture anything and just sit in their deployment sniping or waiting for jets to spawn. I hate to agree with the notion but I must, If you suck at a FPS game that you can be the top scoring person on your team by randomly throwing heath/ammo/mines around a map or by standing next to a flag without firing a single shot you need to find a new game/genre/hobby.

I kind of agree. They have better map knowledge and better weapons. Not really fair.