What's with all the imaginary rules?

[SME]

Originally Posted by krokko

I don't disagree with the right server admins have to run their servers however they wish but I think these rules are strict beyond anything seen in any other game and it's definitely going to cost you any potential casual fan base.

I think the problem is that you guys are treating this like TFC, you probably want it to be TFC and I'd probably want the same thing if I were in your shoes, but it's not in the interest of the game if it is to be successful and if you don't care about that you might as well play TFC.

If you admit that admins can do what they want then you really have no say so in other people's servers. BTW, those aren't *my* rules, I'm just saying they can make them anyway they see fit and THAT'S the end of that story.

No, I fully understand that FF is not TFC but that doesn't mean I can't make my rules the way I want them, even if they are similar to rules I used in TFC servers too. My no bhop rule, for example. While I understand that the devs crippled it and planned FOR it, it's still not allowed on my servers and that's my choice. If players want to bhop, they can type QUIT and find one that allows it. I alos have arule that states: "NO racism/homophobia/anti-semitism/hate spews/etc..." and while some tards may think they have a right to ignore my rules and say anything they want, I have the right to set my own rules as well as the right to kick and/or ban anyone I want.

Wow I though I'd been really clear.

People have the RIGHT to run their servers however they want. A majority of the servers running with these rules will in MY opinion be negative for the growth of the game's fanbase.

I OBJECT to rules like those we've talked about in competitive play because I think it's a game balance issue. You take a game and play it against others and you use whatever means you can to win and if some of those means make the game unbalanced, not fun, or whatever then it's a game issue and the game should be changed. You shouldn't make up rules for it. Banning OvsO is the same as banning concing regardless if you think one makes the game more fun and the other is silly.

Also, speech rules isn't the same thing as game rules

[SME]

Originally Posted by krokko

Wow I though I'd been really clear.

People have the RIGHT to run their servers however they want. A majority of the servers running with these rules will in MY opinion be negative for the growth of the game's fanbase.

I OBJECT to rules like those we've talked about in competitive play because I think it's a game balance issue. You take a game and play it against others and you use whatever means you can to win and if some of those means make the game unbalanced, not fun, or whatever then it's a game issue and the game should be changed. You shouldn't make up rules for it. Banning OvsO is the same as banning concing regardless if you think one makes the game more fun and the other is silly.

Also, speech rules isn't the same thing as game rules

But you're saying two different things, on one hand you admit admins can do what they want on their servers but then, on the other, you object to the rules, as if you count. You saying that admins shouldn't make up rules flies in the face of admins being able to do whatever the hell they want. Your objections only count on your servers.

My no bhop rule isn't a speech rule, try joining my server and telling me I shouldn't have my rules and see how long you last.

[Credge]

The rules that were listed aren't actually rules. They are gameplay guidelines for clan gaming (except the spamming the SG thing... that doesn't even make sense). In typical TFC leaguing, pyros were never used and it became a 'rule'. Note that I've played in league games were we trounced our opponent and somebody played as a pyro on my team because it was fun. We were not disqualified or penalized for this.

Again, these are not rules, but guidelines to playing a better clan match.

However, the OVO issue is a pretty major one in some leagues (all?). There are bigger reasons as to why there should be no OVO besides yard spam. The integrity of a clan match revolves around a structured style of play. And, since a match usually consists of 2-3 games (depending on the league), keeping that structure is key to judging them.

To extrapolate, the role of a scout is not to kill the enemies offense, that is the role of the defense. Keeping these roles separate is there to help the offense.

Originally Posted by SME

But you're saying two different things, on one hand you admit admins can do what they want on their servers but then, on the other, you object to the rules, as if you count. You saying that admins shouldn't make up rules flies in the face of admins being able to do whatever the hell they want. Your objections only count on your servers.

My no bhop rule isn't a speech rule, try joining my server and telling me I shouldn't have my rules and see how long you last.

This really isn't that intricate.
I have said that server admins can run their servers however they want, that doesn't mean I can't have an opinion as to how their running of their servers might affect the game/community. Leagues are a nother matter, they're most likely not played on the league's servers either if you think it matters.

Originally Posted by Credge

Again, these are not rules, but guidelines to playing a better clan match.

However, the OVO issue is a pretty major one in some leagues (all?). There are bigger reasons as to why there should be no OVO besides yard spam. The integrity of a clan match revolves around a structured style of play. And, since a match usually consists of 2-3 games (depending on the league), keeping that structure is key to judging them.

To extrapolate, the role of a scout is not to kill the enemies offense, that is the role of the defense. Keeping these roles separate is there to help the offense.

You're playing a competitive game, you're not roleplaying! If the game becomes a complete mess when everyone can shoot at everyone, can't you just admit that the game is broken for competitive play? Playing one clan match as 2 separate OvsD feels like a metagame, you might just as well do away with half the players and play 1 flag ctf.

If scouts shooting other scouts is not beneficial to the team they wouldn't do it.
If it's beneficial to the team then they Should be allowed to do it.
If it's counter productive to both teams then lets say one team is in the lead and they bring the game to a stale in order to preserve their lead, why shouldn't that be okay? It's the mechanics derived from the game design. If those are problematic, combat them at the roots.

Lets say FF gets really big and people play games worth tens of thousands of dollars, are you going to impose rules saying that they can't do stuff like that to win? Keep attacking with an increased risk of losing because it makes for a more fun game? That's not competitive gaming, that's casual gaming, i.e. pubs!

It's like, don't use control in a 1vs1 because you can totally rape the other guy because he has no items and that doesn't make for a fun game.

[Industrial]

Originally Posted by krokko

If scouts shooting other scouts is not beneficial to the team they wouldn't do it.

Those that have played for a long time and understand that it isn't beneficial to the team don't.

Originally Posted by krokko

If it's beneficial to the team then they Should be allowed to do it.

But it's not.

Lets say FF gets really big and people play games worth tens of thousands of dollars, are you going to impose rules saying that they can't do stuff like that to win? Keep attacking with an increased risk of losing because it makes for a more fun game? That's not competitive gaming, that's casual gaming, i.e. pubs!

It's actually all designed to even out in team versus team, not "whoever has the most soldiers and HW's and demos midfield".
In a team contest you put your team up to the challenge of beating other teams by being the one that captures most flags. If you believe your team will perform better then mine by spamming and killing anything midfield then be my guest. Seriously. Sign up for a league and prove your worth. Prove that your strategy is superior to mine. I dare you.

This it not hostile, it's all in good fun. I'm trying to prove my point(s).

[SME]

Originally Posted by krokko

This really isn't that intricate.
I have said that server admins can run their servers however they want, that doesn't mean I can't have an opinion as to how their running of their servers might affect the game/community. Leagues are a nother matter, they're most likely not played on the league's servers either if you think it matters.

I only have an opinion of the rules onmy server. Other admins can have any rules they want and my opinion doesn't matter one bit on their servers so I don't say that other admins rules are stupid, etc. because it's not my server.

League play is no different, if I don't agree with the rules and requirements of the league, I don't have to run a server in their league but I'm nt going to say their rules are stupid, it's their league.

EDIT:
Let me try this:
Do you own a car? What kind and color?
Do you have a pet? If so, what kind and what is it's name?

Originally Posted by fidy

Some examples:

• Don't shoot enemy offense
• Don't spam SG's with grenades
• Don't spam midfield
• Pyro not an allowed class
• Don't infect enemy players
• Don't chase FC past midfield

Why do these "leet" Fortress players have to come up with such ridicilous, completely imaginary set of rules? Is it simply the lack of skill? Why haven't they banned bunnyhopping etc?

dont shoot enemy offense can be cool come on it makes it o v d its fun though sound like league rules which i never played in but know plenty of people who do but pyro is FUN xD just if u ask me a server can have any rules they want as long as they tell u about them :P~ but the dont chase FC past midfield.. well even if u do and u kill him the flag will be capped u can try to delay it but it will be capped and the goal is to have the most caps so0o idk its league rules they can maek the game fun and more team based? idk just HF!! :P~~

Originally Posted by Industrial

It's actually all designed to even out in team versus team, not "whoever has the most soldiers and HW's and demos midfield".
In a team contest you put your team up to the challenge of beating other teams by being the one that captures most flags. If you believe your team will perform better then mine by spamming and killing anything midfield then be my guest. Seriously. Sign up for a league and prove your worth. Prove that your strategy is superior to mine. I dare you.

This it not hostile, it's all in good fun. I'm trying to prove my point(s).

I'm not arguing which strategy is better, that's beside the point. If spamming midfield is bad then let people do it and watch them lose and be done with it. Don't tell them they can't do it (again, talking about clan wars).

@ SME, it's not about the specific league rules, it's about the standards of competitive play, and that's decided by the community at large.

I realize all of you will keep doing it the TFC way anyway so all of this is just for the sake of arguing :P

[Mr. Happy]

I HAVE NOT READ THIS WHOLE LONG ASS THREAD

Let's tie this in with the "is FF dying?" thread.
Why do these rules exist? Because it's more fun that way. It's no fun walking out on well to find an SG on your batt's. Its no fun to land a perfect conc with the flag onto your batts on shutdown only to have a scout shoot you in the head and ruin your moment. It's no fun to have 7O and 2D on a team (or vice versa!) And so leagues made these rules to make the game more fun and fair.

On CTF maps that is.

You see the thing is, CTF is almost always no fun to play on pubs because people don't follow these rules, and they SHOULDNT BE EXPECTED TO. Why? Because "elite" jerks whom theink they are better than everyone else take our clan rules and drive off the newbs. I was trying to get a friend to play FF. He asked someone how to conc. They said "fuck off newb." He went to another server and potshotted, someone yelled at him on voice.

He's playing TF2 right now.


If you want FF to die, if you WANT there to be 3 active servers where everyone pisses on each other, sure, play the rules in pubs.


But like I said, it's no fun to play without the rules...at least, not on CTF.

We need more A&D maps, more Territorial Control maps, more creativity. Hate to bring this up, but why to you think TF2 is so popular? Not just because it's "Valve like whoah, look at teh graphics" but also because any idiot can play and have fun and do whatever they want just about without ruining the game for others. Because it's all CP maps, and on a CP map everyone shoots everyone and SG's go anywhere you damn well like.

And yeah, I'm not just bitching, been drawin layouts for a few days now


So, in conclusion, grow some balls server admins, let the pubbers have fun and ditch the rules, or make some god damn decent CP maps where it doesn't matter.

Newbs don't know what a clan-rules server is, don't read the motd, and more than likely would rather play a different game then look up this thread.

FF will die if this continues.

p.s. if you really want to yell at a newb for not RJ'ing that last CP on dustbowl, take a breath, count to three, and suggest to him that he'll have more fun and more likely cap if he does. Don't moan.

[onroP]

SORRY MY ENGLISH SUCK LIKE HELL!

im playing TFC since 1999 and this "rules" are more gentlemen agreements then Rules (mostly in Clanwars, but nice to see on Publics).
The most Clanpalyer play like this and they are "pissed" when other players breaking this "rules".
If you fight as an medic in the midfield, then you can´t take the enemy Flag. If you spam all your grens @ once, maybe you will kill the half of your Team.
If your team has 4 or 5 Defis, take a offens Class and help your Team to Win the map.
It is boring to play 8 defis vs. 8 defis. CTF = Capture_the_Flag and not kill so many players as possibil

[caesium]

I haven't read this entire thread either, but I pretty much agree with the jist of what Mr Happy is saying. This is a plea to everyone running clanstyle servers to please at least think about things. Basically, some of the ppl running clanstyle servers with seemingly complicated sets of ridiculous rules are scaring off new players, and also dumbing down clanstyle FF into a rehash of TFC (which it really isn't). I know there are ppl who genuinely try to help and teach new players when they come onto these servers, but the entire approach is making it unlikely for this to work for many.

If you go right back to basics and think about what we're actually trying to achieve with a "clanstyle" server, it's obviously one which simulates a clan match environment. This obviously means that all the teams are working together to complete the map's objectives to the best of their ability (this is different from a generic public server where many ppl, including myself, are usually just after a few funny moments and some random action!). If we now think about the bare minimum rules that will effectively force new and experienced players to play this way and focus on the map's objectives, there is only one rule needed imo if you want to effectively simulate a clanmatch environment on a public server (copied from motd of #tf.pickup public clanstyle server):

On CTF maps: attackers please do not shoot the enemy team's attackers (including flag carriers). This is mutually beneficial for both teams, and prevents the game from breaking down into a midmap fight. Defenders may use any tactics that help their team win.

Aside from the obvious common sense things such keeping teams even, and ovd on CTF maps if not enough ppl for a full game, this is all that's needed. It is easy to understand and explain, and I've had some v fun games with new players who join the server having no idea what clanstyle is but v quicky pick up the idea and really seem to get into it and like the fact that the focus is entirely on the map's objectives.

We don't know yet exactly how best to play FF in a clan environment, so imposing other rules such as "you can only use these classes on offy/def" is completely the wrong way to go about it imo. Experienced players should give ppl advice (e.g. if you see an offy HW, try suggesting he uses a faster class so he helps his team more) but ppl need to be allowed to try things for themselves (e.g. realise that when he switches to a faster class his team actually does do better!). Forcing ppl to recreate what you thought were good clan strats in TFC makes FF boring, stops clanstyle play developing, and puts lots of new ppl off.

One final note about class restrictions. FF's classes are actually v well balanced (even now before the HW tweak, every class has major strengths and weaknesses). Having too many of one class therefore always leaves your team extremely vulnerable in specific areas, and if the nme are any good at all you will loose. Once again, as with class selection for the various team roles, players need to be allowed to figure this out for themselves imo (e.g. realise that if they have too many engies in defence the nme offy will get a spy and they will get beaten badly, so they'll do much better if they have a mixture of classes on defence) rather than have classes restricted and never even have the chance to see why their brilliant idea for an amazing defence setup probably wouldn't work at all hehe...

-----

EDIT: little reverse-psychology teaching tip lol: If I'm playing offy on a CTF map on a clanstyle server, and an enemy offy starts repeatedly intentionally trying to shoot me (personally it doesn't bother me much at all, but his team will probably be annoyed at him because he's busy shooting me and not helping his team to get our flag!), I'll explain the basic rule to him for his benefit. If he says it's a dumb rule or whatever, I'll say sure OK then shotgun him back into the wall a few times. I then ask him again if he now sees the point in the rule and would like us both to adibe by it. The asnwer is always a yes The key is showing ppl why the rule is mutually beneficial for both teams in regard to letting them both focus on the map's objective and hence effectively simulate a clanmatch environment.

[theCops]

the problem with clan style pubs is there's no organization to pubs to begin with

tf2 has it right: control points
it's a lot easier for pub players to pick up and correlate their efforts to where they are needed, as opposed to a ctf map like aardvark where the map has the biggest yard i've ever seen. it lends itself to mid-map dming.

the hints can only help so much. it can't show people how to play

maybe someone could do a little plugin for pubs where there's picture-in-picture of the flag being dropped by the flag carrier, for everyone to see. "YOUR TEAM DROPPED THE ENEMY FLAG" doesn't really tell the player what happened. the flag could be nearly out the door, tucked into a little nook in a wall somewhere, and no one will really see it while trying to fight past defenders

telling someone who's played the game once or twice to not attack the enemy team because they want to cap their flag will only generate a couple laughs.

and then, even if a newbie does get the flag, they wander around aimlessly for a little bit, then may or may not ask where the cap is before they die (and if they die, they don't tell you where they dropped it, because they were lost to begin with). why didn't anyone think of a radar feature to counteract this?
a simple arrow leading them to the cap point would have been fine.

altogether, pubs should have NO (ZERO) rules. you can't tell joe pubber to "go o or go d" when he hasn't even figured out how to build an sg yet. that's where all the clanners learned the finer points of the game, and you're disrupting the natural progression of new players by stuffing rules down their throat from the get-go.

Originally Posted by Mr. Happy

I HAVE NOT READ THIS WHOLE LONG ASS THREAD

Let's tie this in with the "is FF dying?" thread.
Why do these rules exist? Because it's more fun that way. It's no fun walking out on well to find an SG on your batt's. Its no fun to land a perfect conc with the flag onto your batts on shutdown only to have a scout shoot you in the head and ruin your moment. It's no fun to have 7O and 2D on a team (or vice versa!) And so leagues made these rules to make the game more fun and fair.

I am as always speaking about clan wars:
Being shot out of the sky when you're concing not being fun is a non-issue. If you easily get shot out of the sky when concing then it's a game balance issue: don't conc, it's not effective. If having 7O makes the game 'unfair' then the classes aren't designed to handle such class distribution and thus the game shouldn't allow it. When you compete at a game you compete AT THE GAME, not some goofy game you make up within the game, like only kills with mélée weapons are allowed. That's principally the same thing, you're saying "this is in the game but we don't allow you to do it".

If you lot think that clan wars should be played in a certain manner because "it's about trying to cap the flag!" (it's about winning by whatever means) and that can't be done without imposing rules, then how can you argue that the game isn't flawed? The game design allows you to do things, you ban them because you don't like them, hence you don't like the game design! But yet you don't want to change it.

[SME]

Originally Posted by Mr. Happy

So, in conclusion, grow some balls server admins, let the pubbers have fun and ditch the rules, or make some god damn decent CP maps where it doesn't matter.

In conclusion, since you're a big mouth punk kid, you go on ignore like the other retards and if I see you on my servers, you're banned. You don't count and the sooner you children understand that, the less problems you'll have on other people's servers. If you don't like rules, run your own server, without any.

Grow up.

[Credge]

Originally Posted by krokko

If scouts shooting other scouts is not beneficial to the team they wouldn't do it.

It isn't beneficial. That's less health for BOTH sides going into the base to grab the flag. Less health=less survivability=less caps.

If it's beneficial to the team then they Should be allowed to do it.

Hacking would be beneficial, should it be allowed?

If it's counter productive to both teams then lets say one team is in the lead and they bring the game to a stale in order to preserve their lead, why shouldn't that be okay? It's the mechanics derived from the game design. If those are problematic, combat them at the roots.

Because it is the defenses job/role to prevent the enemy from grabbing the flag, not the offense. Again, it also hampers both teams progress if OVO happens. It's not beneficial to anybody but the defense of both teams, which would probably result in a stalemate, eventual mid field spam, and other such things.

Lets say FF gets really big and people play games worth tens of thousands of dollars, are you going to impose rules saying that they can't do stuff like that to win? Keep attacking with an increased risk of losing because it makes for a more fun game? That's not competitive gaming, that's casual gaming, i.e. pubs!

Yes. Every single professional sport has rules. In Football (american) you can't grab somebodies face mask. It would be very beneficial to the team performing the face mask, however, it isn't allowed because it:

1. Hampers the other teams ability to perform the best they can.
2. Is unfair.
3. Has no tact.

Competitive gaming has rules. Pubs, generally, do not. These rules are in place to keep everything organized. These are the sort of rules that stop grieving from happening, competitive play consistent, and game play fast and fun for both offense and defense.

It's like, don't use control in a 1vs1 because you can totally rape the other guy because he has no items and that doesn't make for a fun game.

Control...? Are you talking about mulching? There is nothing unfair about mulching in any way. It's all about who is the better player.

Keeping things like OVO out of league matches allows for a true test of offense VS defense. One can easily see which side performed better via how many caps they have. It's a valid way to see which side should win based on caps. If this was a deathmatch game, then rules would be stupid. However, it is not.

[Mr. Happy]

Originally Posted by SME

In conclusion, since you're a big mouth punk kid, you go on ignore like the other retards and if I see you on my servers, you're banned. You don't count and the sooner you children understand that, the less problems you'll have on other people's servers.

Seriously though, I prefer to play TFC in a clan-style setting, but I also like to play Fortress games, and if people play by the rules on a CTF map on pub's then there won't be any games to be found.

Originally Posted by SME

If you don't like rules, run your own server, without any.

Grow up.

Hehe he should learn to read posts. Ironic though, he'd get banned at...

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_\/

[mervaka]

^^ this thread's banned.