Quote:
Originally Posted by the_cake
So what if we applied that paradigm to CTF? It would be forced ovd, scout would only have concs, demo could only pipe the flag, everyone else would only have 1-2 weapons, you could have scout/medic/spy on o, sol/hw/demo/engi on d. Everyone is there for a purpose and has a specific role.
This would piss everyone off to the point of probably ending the game.
But we do the same thing on hunted. And in CS. And in Cops and Robbers in pre-school.
In a game about protecting generic assassination target guy (mob boss, president, who knows) we don't question why gameplay is restricted to portray him as what he is (you can only have 1, you can't fight, you can't move fast) or why the assassins are portrayed as assassins (you can only play as sniper or spy, you can only use sniper rifle, tranq, or knife against the hunted), or why the entire objective is to assassinate a target.
cwuttheydid there? They shoved their restrictive gameplay elements down everyone's throats without anyone noticing. This is the game design concept of "themeing," that is you present your game as something commonly understood (assassinating an important person) and draw parallels to it in the actual gameplay. When you do this, most people (specifically new players or new gamers) see the theme and not the game design, and will rarely question any kind of game design choice as long as it fits the theme; it doesn't even have to be a very good design, as long as it fits.
Team Fortress implies defending, and by extension invading a fortress of some kind. And that's kinda it. Most people can put 2+2 together and understand the flag and command points are the gameplay elements meant to represent this.
But you know that thing that exists outside of Fortress where healers and scouters pickup shotguns and jump on grenades to fly through the enemy base, or where your core defender appear to be Ted Kaczynski, or where jumping let's you ignore the laws of physics in weirdly specific ways?
Yea neither does anyone else. Best gameplay ever, but also worst themeing ever.
This makes limitations in favor of organized fortress gameplay look arbitrary, and makes the player feel like they're being nannied for no reason. They just don't understand it, but they're new and the only direction being provided is akin to mom telling them "do your homework Jimmy, you'll thank me when you're older."
That's half of the reason why this approach always blows up in our faces. With this you're kind of left with the hope that some players will take up the old-school gamer ethic and invest time learning for themselves how the game works, and being inspired by players who already have. Though that doesn't seem to have worked very well unfotunately.
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I could say a lot of things that would seem contradictory of my previous points, about how this example is more obvious, and there for more acceptable. So I'll just say I don't think it's so black and white.
I'd also say that if hunted were played as much as ctf, as in hunted is only played and there's no servers where you can play anything else, people would get tired of playing certain classes and probly lament the restrictions. Hunted restrictions probly also see a higher degree of acceptance due to the over all novelty of it. Kind of like playing heads up 7 up in the 2nd grade. You're teacher really just wants everyone to put their heads down and stfu, but you're more willing to go along with that because it's a game now, and not the same school work you've been doing all day.
I mean basically what you're proposing is that the game be mechanically defined by the pickup standard. And even though in the opinion of a few, me included, that's the best way to play, I don't know if there's a way to do that which I can agree with. Or even scales well into full games.
Tbh I'm not really against the idea entirely, just using it on our one and only pub server. CS has strict competitive style pubs, that's great and that's something I'd love to see in FF, if we had that type of community to support all sorts of public play. I guess progressing along this line is a valuable learning experience and could provide us with a great variety of gaming options, I don't deny that nor am I against it. Just that while we have one pub I would prefer to see it more open.
Another thing to consider, is even if this is the way that a majority of our current pub scene plays, plenty of them still take quite hostile to it. Anything remotely "competitive" sounding has the potential of sparking quite the ire.