What is Balance?
This in itself can be a complicated question. Balance is having so both armies have got exactly the same abilities, numbers, activity, etc. Saying "we need more balance" is easy, however actually balancing armies in GC is hard. Start with a set of scales and a set of blocks all with different size's, weight's and shape, colour, and material. It's very easy to put them on the scales so that the weight's are balanced, but there's a lot more to play to make sure that both side's are actually the same. When you have to factor in all of the other variable's you're sitting with a much more difficult task on your hands.
The same applies to GC. There are quite a few comment's on our survey (and this is less than 12 hours on) which beleive that if we solve factor X (other than factor X being "balancce") then all our problems are solved. This is rarely the case. As an example I'll include what kind of information is to be considered for all players in order to start trying to make a balance. I'm sure some of our more recent officer candidate's could even add to this. Most of these could even be broke down, for example for Armour Skill the person would be evaluated for their ability in each idividual asset. For Availability the HC group of an army would take a look at a persons past attendance, as well as what they've said they could probably do this campaign.
Infantry Skil
Armour Skill
Air Skill
Level of Teamwork
Attendance of Battledays
Times Available on Battledays
Attendance of other event's (Training, BO's)
Squad Leader Willingness
Squad Leader Ability
Squad Level Communications
Forum Participation (Feedback threads, AARs etc)
Geographical Location
Attitude
There are more that can be added, but those are all things that are commonly added. Everything has different levels of importance, of course. I've seen EXTREMELY skilled players being ranked very low due to a very poor attitude. When it comes to officer level, the importance of some of the above change, and there are some more added into the mix:
Leadership (NOT SL, Officer Type Leadership) Willingness
Leadership Ability
Leadership Experience
FC Ability
RISK Ability
AAR Input
Those are a lot of factors to balance. It's easy to see why we have imbalance, and also very easy to miss out some of the factors. Not an easy job to do.
How are Draft's done?
We've tried multiple different type's of draft in the past, the standard we alway's fall back to though is the football lineup style. If you're unfamiliar, 2 individuals are piccked to be leaders of the team, and they take turns picking players from the rest of the group until there is no one left. There are even variations of this, but I'll discuss that later. We typically run what I like to call the "Sensible" variation, which is where we split people up by signup division, so there is an infantry, Armour, and Air draft.
The draft selection systems are probably the most "secretive" process as prior to campaigns end, armies do a cleanup of the draft document. This is usually just to save drama and/or cause hurt feelings and arguments. Draft Document's will contain feedback about each player from all officers in the army, sometimes this feedback may be negative, or people may be unhappy with how they've been "sorted" in the list.
A typical draft document will usually be a Google Spreadsheet with different tab's per division. Each row will start with the name of the signups. The next columns will be a number rating of that player from each officer in the army. Further along in the document are spaces for officers to lead feedback on that player. This may be something like "A very good player, a must have for the army, potential first pick" or "Player has said he can play all battleday's for the full 6 hours. He's said this the past 2 campaigns and has only made 1 battleday out of 3, and only stayed for half of it". The feedback may be in the form of an "FYI", or it may be placed so that other officers can read prior to casting their rating, and have that influence their decision. a DO NOT WANT rating will often be considered and move that player down the sorted list, even if their average is OK.
The way player's are typically rated in the document that has became "Standard" since Runaway's army in BF3C3 is as follows (I'll clean up a document and post an example later). There are variations on this document, but this one seems to be the one that has been picked up and/or modified by most armies.
1: Must Have
2: Almost Must Have
3: Would Like to Have
4: Draft Late If Available.
5: No Opinion (Does not count towards averaging)
6: Actively do not want.
When it get's closer to draft time, the ratings of the officers get averaged and the draft order is decided by a sort on the average. Often the armies will move people up and down on that list independant of that rating, but it's a good way to start your sort order. An example here being a person with a single rating of "1" but every other officer vote's "5" (which isn't counted in the averaging) will find themselves at the top of the list. If only the one person has voted "1" though, chances are they'll be moved down the list in favour for a person with five "1"s and a "2".
There will also be some small change's in the list as the draft is actually being done. Some people may be picked as "counters" to the enemy picks. Sometimes a few people will be skipped after picking one person, as you know they play well with player X so you choose them next.
When it comes to an armies draft process, the ultimate responsibility ends up with that General. Although the officers all have a say, it's up to the General to make the final decision during the draft. It's also the responsibility of the General (and by extension, their HC) to make sure that all officers are putting the time in to rate people.
I'd like to say, as it seems a lot of people are unaware: the TA's do NOT have a say, or get involved with the draft choices. The involvement of the TA's with the draft is to make sure it goes smoothly, and to make sure that people go to the correct armies after being picked. The TA's play a minor part in balance by assigning the post-draft signups, but there are typically very few of these. If a significant number signed up, TA's would work with the armies to put people in the right place.
Different Draft Styles
In my time at GC we've tried many different types of draft system, and discussed many more. As you're now aware, balancing armies is not an easy task. We put a lot of work into designing systems and doing the draft itself.
Football Style
2 leaders, all "unassigned" people are part of the same group. Leaders take turns picking. It's simple, but it's indredibly hard to keep any kind of balance when infantry, armour and air are in the same group.
"Sensible" Football Style
Same as above but we split the draft into the Air/Armour/Infantry signups and draft through each group before moving to the next. This is the "standard" and what we always fallback to
Complete Balance Draft
All of the players who have signed up are compiled into a list, armies work together and move people between each army until they are both happy (read: mutally unhappy) that the teams are balanced. This is incredibly time intensive and usually still doesn't work as both teams will be sour at all the comromises that had to be made, and also things like player attendance is impossible to balance due to the fact things happen in peoples lives and that effects their ability to play.
Skill Pre-Draft
The higher skilled and "key" players are sorted as above. It usually results in the same thing, as when it comes to the lower end of a balance draft playernames are just being placed anywhere because everyone is getting sick of the meeting. There is usually a little bit of this every campaign. Usually as airforce has only got about 8 people signed up, the Generals feel pretty happy to try and balance them out.
Groups
Some people really want to play with others. In some cases it's a couple of friends within GC who work well together and want to stick together. Sometimes it's a case of there being a "primary" member who is active in GC, and he has a bunch of friends who aren't really part of GC, but play with us because the primary member does. They're only really interested in playing with the primary, if they're not kept together they just won't turn up. It's a bit crap, but it's what happens.
We try to keep groups together, within reason. Sometimes it's been an active part of the draft. We've had cases where the "groups" have been involved in whatever form of "pre-draft" is going on. We've had agreements that if you pick one member of Group X, your next picks will be the remainder of the group. Usually there's an unspoken agreement that if you pick a player who has "hangers on", you'll pick them soon too. You can continue with the draft as normal but don't take the piss and leave them till the end, or have them ending up on the other team where you know they won't play. That's unfair for that team and unfair on those players who don't get to play. I'm going to hit groups later on too, as there are some other factors at play with how they sometimes work.
Officer Draft
Officer Draft is quite a bit different from the standard player draft, maintaining balance is just as important though. You could have an army of amazing players, but if you don't have the office corps to get them working together, your army will lose. You could have the best officer corps the community has ever seen, but if the players you pick for your playerdraft are just people who turn up just for battledayss and don't even look at the forum, they're not going to be able to lead and develop the army effectively, and they'll lose. It's important not just to have a balanced officer group between the armies, but you also have to work with the fact that these have to people who work well together and are the type of people who are willing to work to building the type of army that the General wants. Again, there are many factors to consider.
When the Generals are picked, they often get together and work with the "Dev" group and work out High Command. The Dev group consists of TAs, Execs, and any "persons of note" of previous campaigns, usually the last couple of campaigns worth of Generals. The group will take a look at people who have volunteered to HC roles, say who would be an effective counter for another person, suggest people who are maybe not on the list, and suggest groups who'd work together well. Even calling them "advisory" is a bit much, it's more that the group just provides some feedback on certain people who are good to the role, there shouldn't be much pressure on the Generals to pick any of the suggestions. The Generals make the picks.
Both armies HC's get together to decide the Captains, Lt's and any Warrant Officers. They choose and invite the people who they think will do well for them. There is not always discussion on this. At officer level and above, it's based on invites. The only true "balancing" act that takes place is agreeing on the numbers of officers per side. Some armies like to talk through and agree their picks with the other side, some armies like to just choose their own guy's with no consulting or checking with the other side. Both armies try to get the "best" officer corps they can, this usually naturally ends up with some kind of balance. It won't be perfect, but because it's a smaller group of people things shouldn't be too far out of whack.
Hopefully this gives some good oversight to the drafting systems we've used, and also a small look into the "why". All of our fancy systems for doing drafts has resulted in total failure, we go back to the you-pick-I-pick because it's simple and works best. If anyone has any questions, speak up. If you have suggestions on different systems, we're open to hearing it. it's quite probably we've discussed it before, but even if we have, things may have changed since then or you have a better idea for implementation.
Survey Feedback
I'd like to address some specific feedback I've seen from the survey so far (again, not even a full day yet, I will probably revisit this), no names:
I'll start with the second part first: SAD were handpicking players. As were JANUS; it was a competetive draft. I'm not sure what's meant by a "random" draft, if this is basically putting everyones names into a random generator and hitting go, there are two big problems with that. The first being that is pretty much a complete guarantee there WILL be unbalance, I don't see how that will solve any of our problems. The second being that does not allow our Generals to build the armies they want. Instead they are forced to work with this group of people they'd possibly never have picked, that doesn't seem fun for the players or for the officers who have to work with them. As for proof, the draft date for the past few campaigns has been announced well ahead of time and it's been public for anyone to hear. I'm not too sure what else is needed? If you want to maybe explain your points (or arguewould like too see random draft with some kind of proof. felt like SAD was handpicking players,
) feel free to post here or PM me to continue it, I'm not sure I fully understand. This is something I've been thinking about for a long time. What can be done, once a campaign is underway, to tip the balance? Most things lie with the Generals and the team they build: For a while in BF3C4, DARK Gladius were winning. That's not how it ended. Star rallied and came back to destroy. Is there anything we can do external of the armies? TA's tend to assign more post-draft signup players to the losing army, the problem is there aren't enough signups for them to be effective in any way. I like the idea of having some kind of "Neutral" group again, compiled of very good players. This neutral group should play with whatever army has the lowest WCP. The problem with doing this is that it keeps those players out of lots of the community buildding stuff. They don't get forum access as that could lead to no end of drama ("OMG THEY KNEW MY STRATS!"), they don't feel as involved, they don't feel "part" of an army and they don't want to play so much. I don't know how to solve that problem. The best we can do is have the TA group full of MLG So SkiLlZ players, but those type of people aren't necessarily going to make good TAs.So far so good. Maybe make a way to ensure one army doesn't end up dominating the other throughout the entire campaign.
But mah bodyyyy. Mah bodyyy's telllen me yeaaaaahhhhhhhMy mind's tellin me noooooo...
This is back to groups, but there's multiple parts to this. If a player recruits a friend in the middle of a campaign and they signup after the draft, as long as they mention on the draft that they want to play with a friend they will get to do so. The TA's Crystal Ball is unfortunately many years out of calibration so they can't make that pairing happen if they're not informed.if you recruit a friend he will always be on your army. Otherwise there's no point of recruiting friends.
When it comes to someone who has played with GC before, it's a bit of a different story. GC is all about meeting new people and building friendships, and then mercilessly tearing those friendships apart as you're put on different teams and become rivals. I mean, continuing to build links within the community when armies change and you end up with new teammates. Signing up with groups doesn't really work towards that goal.
It's certainly allowed, and tolerated to a certain extent. It really depends on the people. I view there as being two kind's of groups, and I'm going to go with the two extremes. The Ghoul / SargeBUD combo and the old KCK possy. Ghoul and Sarge are both long time player's at GC, they get involved in community stuff and are both outstanding guys. They prefer to play on the same side but won't refuse to play if that match isn't made. I don't think I've ever seen them split up.
On the other hand there was the old KCK grouping. (Some long timers know EXACTLY the people I mean, not everyone in the group was bad.) There was a group of MLG So Pro guy's who came around, destroyed everything infront of them, while being dicks. They didn't participte in any community stuff whatsoever, sometimes it felt like they just used us for "practice". People did not work to keep that group together.
Some people in this community are dead against any kind of grouping whatsoever. Most people are willing to tolerate so long as it doesn't take the piss. There are people who sign up late EVERY SINGLE CAMPAIGN with the idea of guranteeing a chance to play with their friends. This just adds another massive headache to balancing, and it's frustrating for Generals and TA's when it happens. I feel sometimes that the people who do this are taking advantage of the TA's lack of spite, it's very tempting to put them on the opposite team whenever I see it.
So a tl;dr for groupings: They'll be tolerated, so long as they aren't too big, and so long as the people in them aren't trying to take advantage and game the system.
3000 words holy rattlesnakes. I've been typing this at work, time for me to actually start working lol.
), but I think I was on the money there 
