Red vs BLU winrate on Payload

[僕の名前 (仮)]

It seems like RED have very low winrate on payload maps, attack win most of the times. REDs not blocking cart not help to wn either.

[EmethSAS]

Yeah, that's not really uncommon. Having the cart make progress is generally more fun, so yeah, while some maps or portions of maps are weighted more towards Blu or Red than others, they all favor Blu to a certain degree so the cart can progress and have a dynamic play experience that is fun for everyone. Stalemates aren't usually considered as fun.

That's why competitive play on payload (and Attack/Defend as well) maps compares capture time on the map total with teams switching between Red and Blu sides. Team 1 plays Blu against Team 2 playing Red and their capture time is recorded, then they switch and the Team 1 is now playing Red against Team 2 playing Blu and tries to keep Team 2 from winning as quickly as they did. Sometimes they play multiple rounds switching back and forth like a tournament series. Sort of like baseball or a racing sport...

[lolschrauber]

Defending is harder though. That goes for attack/defense as well.

Red usually get's pushed back slowly and suffers from higher respawn times.

[Mashpit]

Red has the defender's advantage - aka, positional advantage + sentry gun.
Blu has spawn advantage and health/ammo from the cart.
Pubbers have no idea what the hell positioning is, and the Engies all build their sentries at the same spot and don't use wrangler.
Any fool can benefit from spawn advantage and free heals.
There you go.

[The Extreme Potato]

Originally posted by Mashpit | Teamplay.tf:

Red has the defender's advantage - aka, positional advantage + sentry gun.
Blu has spawn advantage and health/ammo from the cart.
Pubbers have no idea what the hell positioning is, and the Engies all build their sentries at the same spot and don't use wrangler.
Any fool can benefit from spawn advantage and free heals.
There you go.

^ That's pretty much the reason.

[TheAmberArrow]

They're designed to be balanced, but sometimes one side is just better than the other.

[Mashpit]

Also:
Maps with a lot of chokes are favorable to defenders (attackers need to push through spam)
Maps with lots of open areas or with multiple entrances to each area are favorable to attackers (harder to zone out the attacking team).

[EmethSAS]

Also, from what I've noticed, even regular pub servers have the "same" team play Blu through all three sections of a Payload map, then switch and have the "same" team play Red through all three sections of the same map before changing maps. However, it's usually hard to track that exactly because auto-balance frequently switches players between sides, not to mention players that intentionally switch sides when people inevitably leave in mid-round.

But yes, usually Payload and Attack/Defend maps have 3 stages with the 1st being heavily weighted in favor of Blu, the 2nd being slightly in favor of Blu, and the 3rd being the closest to even or slightly favoring Red. That way the game is dynamic, progress is made, most matches should end up going through all 3 stages; then the "teams" are switched and you do it again before the "match end". At the "match end", the server settings determine whether the map changes (usually) or it restarts the whole thing over with a "new match".

So yeah, Payload and Attack/Defend are designed to have both teams each have a turn playing Blu and Red before the "end" (and the Win Count for the teams tries to reflect this), but due to the nature of pubs it's hard to be able to tell that this is how it works exactly.

[Mashpit]

Meh, I'm used to single-stage payload (Upward, Badwater)
Can't tell you much about maps like thundermountain or hoodoo.

[timon]

It's balanced, all it takes is a well placed uber or crit rocket/grenade and the entirety of the cart/point is wiped clean.

[Dayal]

Isn't that because of the colours itself?
As far as I know, red is usually a better colour to have on more aggressive gameplay that last a short amount of time, like 5cp and koth. Whereas blue favours thinking for a longer period of time, like payload.

And before you start saying I got it from Game Theory, I already started to notice it when looking at the graphs of win/loss ratio in MOBAs.

[EmethSAS]

Originally posted by Night:

Isn't that because of the colours itself?
As far as I know, red is usually a better colour to have on more aggressive gameplay that last a short amount of time, like 5cp and koth. Whereas blue favours thinking for a longer period of time, like payload.

And before you start saying I got it from Game Theory, I already started to notice it when looking at the graphs of win/loss ratio in MOBAs.

That data was on completely symmetrical, mirrored games, so overall it'd be more applicable to KotH or 5CP than to an assymetrical setup like Payload or Attack/Defend. The video game data was on old Quake tournaments, if I recall correctly, but it showed similar results to data taken from other sports.

Besides, that data would suggest that Red would have a higher winrate instead of Blu, but OP says that Blu wins Payload more. This is because the assymetrical design is made to favor the attackers (Blu) as I explained in my earlier posts.

I'm also not convinced how much it really applies to MOBAs at this point because as far as I've seen, most had some slight deviance from an exactly symmetrical setup (going left to right instead of right to left, which changes where HUD sections show up) or use colors other than Red and Blue (or now in LoL, make you always appear Blue to yourself and enemies always appear Red). I'd say it's also more complicated by having different characters/classes, some of which favor aggression more and some of which favor strategy more. In regards to Game Theory's suggestion that Blue wins more often in LoL because of strategy, I call foul, because going left to right rather than right to left creates far more differences (location of Dragon and Baron plus the HUD factor) that have actual mechanical effects (similar to how assymetric design is different) than color as a psychological effect goes.

Regardless, the color factor doesn't really apply to Payload in TF2.

[僕の名前 (仮)]

That's why competitive play on payload (and Attack/Defend as well) maps compares capture time on the map total with teams switching between Red and Blu sides.

That's also how Assault played in Unreal Tournament: switching team trying to beat clock time of first team (or win more objectives, if first team didn't beat it, which happen rarely in UT) I don't know, why Valve didn't made similar system in Payload.

By the way, I had no idea there is competitive payload. I only saw Capture Point and King of the Hill. What league have Payload, are they on twitch?

[Mashpit]

Originally posted by SomeGuy:

That's why competitive play on payload (and Attack/Defend as well) maps compares capture time on the map total with teams switching between Red and Blu sides.

That's also how Assault played in Unreal Tournament: switching team trying to beat clock time of first team (or win more objectives, if first team didn't beat it, which happen rarely in UT) I don't know, why Valve didn't made similar system in Payload.

By the way, I had no idea there is competitive payload. I only saw Capture Point and King of the Hill. What league have Payload, are they on twitch?

Most Highlander leagues play pl_
UGC, ETF2L, etc

[僕の名前 (仮)]

I also noticed that many RED players don't bother defending cart, more focusing on killing people. While BLU try to push cart all time, even the sniper and spy classes. Maybe one of reason why BLU win much more (by defending I mean block with body so it don't progresses)