Dragonball Volunteer System

[Kudzu.7569]

Hey guys! Love the game, but I've noticed a bug with the Dragonball game this year. I'm not sure whether it applied to previous years, as I only played one other Lunar New Year and can't remember whether this system was around at that time.

Bug Precursor Conditions:

• Significantly uneven teams are playing in the Dragonball game, such as 3-1 or 5-2.
• A message asking for Volunteers appears. Important: The message tells users they will receive a "bonus" if they volunteer.
• Any player from the populated team volunteers to be swapped.

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Bug Description:

• There is no bonus. A player who volunteers for the outmatched (usually losing) team will not receive anything.

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My Guess:Most volunteer systems either have their own special reward, as when volunteering when a map has too few people in PVE, or else grants the players whatever "win" reward they would have gotten if they had played the game to completion on the winning team in a PVP/activity setting. I suspect that this is happening because the volunteer system is set for the PVP/activity type of setting, and is expecting players to be compensated by the "win" reward; however, in Dragonball, there is no reward for winning a single game - the only rewards come from achievement progress, which the volunteer "bonus" does not count towards. The net result is that volunteers receive a bonus of 0/NULL.

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Why is this worth fixing?

• Players who volunteer in Dragonball for the first time often feel cheated by the text.
• Players who know there is no bonus are often very reluctant to volunteer.
• Players who have done very well on a balanced matching can be forced to lose at the last second if opposing team members leave toward the end of the match, because the teams will auto-balance and there is no incentive for anyone to volunteer. (I saw this happen to some poor soul last night who basically led the team to victory and was swapped at the last moment.)

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Suggestions:In no particular order, here are some alternatives I and others have thought of that may help with this issue:

• When players volunteer to be swapped, count the game as a win for the "Dragonball Boss" and "Dragonball Champion" achievements. This would cause the system to work more like other PVP/activity volunteer systems, since the achievement rewards are the actual "win bonus". (From personal experience, this appears to be what players are expecting given the current volunteer reward text.)
• When players volunteer to be swapped, carry points they won over to the unbalanced team with them. This may help even out the scores and thus the playing field. The volunteer reward text would need to be updated to reflect this, maybe by removing the treasure chest icon and letting players know their points will be carried over. I do realize this option may be more complicated since team points appear to be based more on "deaths per enemy team member" than "kills by home team members".
• Insert a specific volunteer bonus that does not rely on the achievement rewards, such as envelopes from the Lunar New Year event. Update the volunteer text to reflect whatever the actual reward is.

There is also the option to simply remove the reward text from the volunteer popup so that players will not think they are getting a bonus at all, but this would not help with the problem of people not volunteering.

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I'm really sorry for the long post! Thank you for reading it all to anyone who did. :)

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

I believe it's always been that way, or, at least, for a long time.

[Kudzu.7569]

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:I believe it's always been that way, or, at least, for a long time.

Thank you! That's good to know. (The last time I played the festival was its first year, I think, so it's been a while.) Maybe this is the year it gets patched!

[Leablo.2651]

Autobalancing should just be removed from the game IMO. There is practically no situation in which autobalancing restores the match to a competitive state. The losing team is better served by expediting the completion of the match.