Balance
TL;DR - Skill Pre-draft, or in the BF4 case : Complete balance draft is more likely to consistently insure a better balance.
Competitive football style draft doesn't. Each army tries to win the draft, and one army often does. Props to that army officer corps for gathering more/better information and evaluating it better, but campaign is pretty much over when that happens. What should we do next? announce that army as the winner of the draft and as such the winner of the campaign, scrap the campaign and elect new generals?
The only good outcome (community wise) is when both sides "loose" and end up in a "draw". But as we have seen it rarely happens.
The pre-draft / Balance draft get its balance properties from the principle that says more people (with more time to think it over) are less likely to be wrong. Allowing more people to get more time to think about it reduces both bad decisions and opportunism .
Skill pre-draft happened at BF3:C5 and i think it worked pretty well.
It has few cons to it:
1) More time consuming
2) Giving out "free intel/info" to the opponent.
3) Officers. On this point later.
I think point 2 is the biggest problem. From a bystander point balanced draft is better for both sides, however in practice there is a difference in how the teams approach the player draft. Some armies spent a lot of time gathering information and rating players while the other side doesn't. Then during the balance discussions each side needs to explain why it is balanced/unbalanced, and that requires revealing that hard-gathered information to the opponent "for free". The more time and effort you put into gathering that info / the more valuable info one posses, the more unfair it seems to share it.
While its unfair to the officers, that information sharing is exactly what leads to a more balanced draft, and its better for the community. There is no point in winning the draft and thus 'winning the campaign before it even started'.
BF3 had a higher learning curve and more skilled players. So ~30+ people were sorted during the skill draft, which is ~50%.
In BF4 there is smaller skill gap and most of the players are about the same level. So it seems a complete balance draft is the only option.
Con #3 of this system is that it doesn't balance out the officer corps.
The officers are about 50% responsible for the outcome of the campaign. Since there are 10 officers and ~30+ grunts, the impact of each officer is significantly bigger then of grunt. If an army has 1-2 bad officers (i use simplified terms to make this article a bit shorter. "bad" doesn't mean actual negative influence, rather 'less then expected from an officer', for example if the officer is mostly inactive), So if an army has 1-2 bad officers it may be overlooked by the rest of the army, but 3+ unbalanced officers and the rest of the army will simply not trust their officers as a whole to lead them to victory even if the "player draft" is equal.
That said, no other proposed system does balance the officers either.
Only when both armies agree the draft is balanced (or mutually unbalanced) it is made official.
Additional stuff that can be applied to further increase balance:
- Swap:
If one side thinks the draft is balanced but the other doesn't agree, or the draft is being made unbalanced by one or both armies, then an Army-swap can be done. This way the side claiming the teams are not balanced ends up with the "stronger" draft, and the other side ends up with an "equal" draft and everyone suppose to agree. The possibility to force side-swap is supposed to encourage both sides to make the draft more balanced, further eliminating opportunism as it might back-fire if the armies do get swapped.
I am aware the way this draft works and that proposed army swap goes against the officers wishes to have specific players they themselves choose ("control over the army" etc..), but our past shows that when officers get to pick freely whoever they want it doesn't end well for the armies (both) and their officers either.
- Community vote:
Since the more people agree the draft is balanced, the more likely it is to be balanced, its might be a good idea to present the draft for a community vote. If 70% of the community agree that it is balanced campaign may start, otherwise the Officers go back to the drawing board.
The 70% value is not an arbitrary number, it is a result of a few assumptions that can be discussed if GC chooses to peruse thing type of draft.
In my opinion the balance % this system offers out-wights the restrictions it imposes on the officers to choose whoever they want as that doesn't work anyway. Plus GC is all about meeting new people right?
Attendance
I don't think that's the biggest problem.
Mostly attendance tends to be the same. People that show up sometimes are still only going to show sometimes regardless them signing up for 6 hours every battle.
One guy that doesn't show up doesn't change the balance much, especially in BF4.
There aren't that big fluctuations and the teams tend to be unbalanced even before the BFI, perhaps one side miscalculates the attendance of its players, but then it doesn't fall under the "unpredictable attendance", though i guess knowing when it is predictable and when it isn't isn't easy and requires very good memory, or an attendance tracker. Knowing the people might also help (for example they might tell you they go for a 3 week vocation, or play at LevelBF first).
Officers attendance is more important and does tend to have an impact. It also happens more frequently which is a bit ironic since they are supposed to be more responsible. I don't know why armies tend to leave that "ghost officer" as it is instead of adding another officer though. Lack of interest? lack of experience? or lack of candidates?
Its a good way for an army to fix itself. However i'm worried that might change the core of GC, as armies will turn into nothing more then hiring mercenaries.
Beating the other side won't mean doing better strategies and improving teamwork, rather more aggressive recruitment as it will probably tilt the balance much more. Winning simply by getting better players is less rewarding IMO. If officers get burnt out doing map strats and FCing, imagine how much more effort itt'll take to recruit day and night.
Whats the difference between that and allowing skilled groups joining a particular army?
Kinda makes the whole tournament meaningless if you get outside help.
turns into nothing more then a recruitment race.
I don't reject the idea, just offering a different angle on the matter. We can always try and see how it works out.
) or any of the million things that happen, and your carefully crafted balance is completely ruined.
