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Old 02-05-2009, 02:01 AM   #1
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My biggest gripe with the game.

The maps, or at least how they get played.

Here's a run down of the various styles of play and how they get played.

Public CTF: Yard DM. No teamwork. Might as well be a DM map. This happens on all maps. Every one of them.

Public AVD: Lack of teamwork, nothing but DM'ng. Just kind of dull. Nothing special ever happens. One highly skilled player unbalances the game for either side. Not really interesting or dynamic.

Competitive CTF: Layered defenses. All games on the same maps are the same, but with different players. Defenses are rarely anything different, offenses consist of one to two classes. Never feels dynamic enough to warrant high skill play.

Competitive AVD: Fun, but rarely played. No leagues, nothing of interest. It's all dull. Game type is best played with at least 7 people. Anything less is lame.

All of these pose severe problems. They are either boring or not enough people exist to make them fun. These are the same problems that have existed for a while, but the freshness of the mod has worn off on me a while back, hence me only beta testing recently with the occasional league match.

To summarize: Pub play is too unorganized and the existence of any good player makes the game lopsided and boring. League play has become predictable and drab, with too few players playing to get anything fun going.

Meh.
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Old 02-05-2009, 02:14 AM   #2
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WWWWWAAAAHHHHH
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Old 02-05-2009, 02:35 AM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Credge View Post
The maps, or at least how they get played.

Here's a run down of the various styles of play and how they get played.

Public CTF: Yard DM. No teamwork. Might as well be a DM map. This happens on all maps. Every one of them.

Public AVD: Lack of teamwork, nothing but DM'ng. Just kind of dull. Nothing special ever happens. One highly skilled player unbalances the game for either side. Not really interesting or dynamic.

Competitive CTF: Layered defenses. All games on the same maps are the same, but with different players. Defenses are rarely anything different, offenses consist of one to two classes. Never feels dynamic enough to warrant high skill play.

Competitive AVD: Fun, but rarely played. No leagues, nothing of interest. It's all dull. Game type is best played with at least 7 people. Anything less is lame.

All of these pose severe problems. They are either boring or not enough people exist to make them fun. These are the same problems that have existed for a while, but the freshness of the mod has worn off on me a while back, hence me only beta testing recently with the occasional league match.

To summarize: Pub play is too unorganized and the existence of any good player makes the game lopsided and boring. League play has become predictable and drab, with too few players playing to get anything fun going.

Meh.
+1

Also, the old timers private community hurts the game as a whole, imo.
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Old 02-05-2009, 02:54 AM   #4
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Negative on that Mono, Tnx to the old timers people are sticking around because they like that type of server. They join my server, and they hear like 4 or 5 guys talking at the same time and calling each other noobs. Other people just can't stand curse words and the Old Timers gives them a good place to play ff. I guess you could say it is a private community, a community of people who are not stupid enough to break the server rules and like that kind of environment. So you are wrong when they say they hurt the community, they are actually helping us have a unique server from the rest.
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Old 02-05-2009, 03:14 AM   #5
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Yea, it does seem a bit repetitive, I haven't played Comptetitve, so I don't know what that's like.
I find a good game every once in a while though, though I don't play OT because they don't like my name. (Too short).
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Old 02-05-2009, 03:17 AM   #6
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join #ff.pickup at gamesurge for a competitive game
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Old 02-05-2009, 03:55 AM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Rehab View Post
WWWWWAAAAHHHHH
Oh cool.

Except I'm not crying at all .

Quote:
Originally Posted by GeoKill-----> View Post
Negative on that Mono, Tnx to the old timers people are sticking around because they like that type of server. They join my server, and they hear like 4 or 5 guys talking at the same time and calling each other noobs. Other people just can't stand curse words and the Old Timers gives them a good place to play ff. I guess you could say it is a private community, a community of people who are not stupid enough to break the server rules and like that kind of environment. So you are wrong when they say they hurt the community, they are actually helping us have a unique server from the rest.
It's a double edged sword. When the only non-private populated server is OT, as it used to be, being banned from that server sets a real negative message and turns people off.

Yes, it gives a niche group a place to play, but that niche group doesn't represent the community. That niche group represents the niche.
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Old 02-05-2009, 07:44 AM   #8
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IMHO, those pub situations are happening because the mod is growing (slowly, but growing), so there are always new players on the teams which lead to no coordination or teamwork.

I hope that after a while, people will know how to play correctly each gamemode and 8v8 fun Dustbowl games will be more common. Or 4v4 Avanti/Ksour, which are even more fun.
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Old 02-05-2009, 10:18 AM   #9
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If closed servers or servers with harsh rules scares away new players it's a bad thing, if there are no alternatives. I can understand harsh rules in a player flooded game like CS but in FF? Isnt there enough time to handle abuse manually and not by automated tools who cant be argued with? I cant imagine the burdon is to heavy with the current player base. But private server owners do as they whish. It is not the responsibility of them to attract new players, if what they want to do is to have their private, mature gaming clubs. And God knows that TFC lacked maturity and those who went on to FF knew what they wanted.

But I cant see what opening the servers would actually do to FF. Would it boost the player base? I dont think so, maybe marginally.

But kicking life into some of the currently empty pub servers wouldnt be that hard at all. Just populate them, pick a server, connect to it once in a while.
2 regulars is the start of a community.

Maybe an Adopt a server campaign with some nice prices? Integrate some forum function to show server adopters with some stats, player count and a connect link. I dont know.

The empty FF servers could benefit from some hands on help directly from this forum. Maybe some sort of server status listing. Click a button to cue up to a certain server, when enough people are in the cue you connect. And the cue status is updated in real time for every forum visitor.

Crazy idea maybe and hard to implement.
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Old 02-05-2009, 11:20 AM   #10
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credge, you know we're already working hard on focussing public play for both avd and ctf by making the objectives much clearer to everyone, and there are lots of ideas in the works for new public server gamemodes/maps.

as for competitive play, imo it's great IF you can get a good game, but that doesn't happen often atm sadly. it doesn't have to be the same drab/stale tactics all the time, that's entirely up to you. anyone can make a clan and play however and whatever they want to! imo the huge problem with competitive play atm is simply low player numbers and lack of fresh blood and ideas coming into the game.. the solution to which is obviously improving public play, and then (and only then, cos we won't get a 2nd chance) getting as many new players as we can to try the game as we can.

so yeah, let's do our best to get public play focussed on clear objectives with some interesting and varied gamemodes, and then see what happens when we go onto steam

to any mappers out there who want to help: we really really could do with a good looking version of ksour, so if someone takes the ff_ksour_classic vmf and makes it look all sexy then i might give you a million pounds.
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Old 02-05-2009, 01:44 PM   #11
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Credge View Post
The maps, or at least how they get played.

Here's a run down of the various styles of play and how they get played.

Public CTF: Yard DM. No teamwork. Might as well be a DM map. This happens on all maps. Every one of them.........................

Meh.
It all comes down to the quality of the people you are playing with.

You have your team players, and then you have the people that have no idea what team work is about. And then you have the group of people that know the difference but do not care.
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Old 02-05-2009, 02:19 PM   #12
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The way I see it, you don't have a "gripe" with the game. You just have a gripe with how people are playing it.

Unfortunately the only way to fix that is to get more people playing. You can't force pubs to play exactly how the game is designed, or the pub community will die instantly. And we can't have interesting strats for competitive play when we're pretty much limited to 5v5's because of our player base. We need more people playing so an AvD league could open up, and keep a steady 7v7, 8v8 or 9v9 league going. AvD would be awesome but when we have troubles getting 5 people out just for wednesdays how on earth are we gonna get 7+ out for AvD.

Right now the only way I could see how to "mix things up" in competitive play is to turn our 5v5's into 5v5 OvD, limit each class to 1 per team to force 5 different classes on O and 5 different classes on D. Then you'd see some interesting shit, instead of (and yes I agree with you here) the same old boring repetitive setups and strats over and over. We could even play bigger maps then, like redgiant (which is actually surprisingly fun when played right). The smaller maps might get a little spammy, but seriously playing a couple teams already on some maps is spammier than a full pub.
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Old 02-05-2009, 03:20 PM   #13
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Credge doesn't even play FF, at least i never see him pub, but i guess that's b/c its boring to him, who knows? lol Anyway i know alot of my friends in steam make fun of me, for playing pub so much not going to mention you guys names but its all in fun i know. They call me the pub allstar, lol but i just play pub alot b/c i try and help the new guys and keep them playing the game, plus have them spread the word. I recently started playing a little bit of TFC again too, and been spreading the word about FF to some, and im still suprised alot of them have no clue what FF is, yet they tell me they have been playing tfc for about 2-3 yrs now, so can we foccus on trying to convert a few of them, at least some of you here that still play a little tfc now and then, ask the people on the server if they heard about FF, i know i got this guy to visit the FF site when i told him about it, i'm still looking to see if he will show up on a FF server in the near future, we will see.
Also Credge i have lot's of cool moments in any map style, but i do admit atm AvD IvD, etc are more fun in pub's, and i love pubbing MOAR if a couple of my steam friends are present, simply b/c it makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside, especially ostrich_eggs he gets everyones man juices flowing, rofl. sorry eggy i had to add that lmfao!
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Old 02-05-2009, 03:36 PM   #14
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The problem is die hards who want to still play TFC will play TFC it was that solid of a game. The people who wanted something new and with big change went over to TF2 and that has original content. FF is nearly the same game as TFC if you break it down it really needs more original content. If ff had original game play that people didn't know already chances are they would stick around awhile and learn it.
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Old 02-05-2009, 03:40 PM   #15
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You can't really do anything about the way pub gameplay goes, nor can you control what they can do. This problem cannot be complained towards the developers, because it's a dependent variable in the pub players' hands. Only they can control whether or not there's deathmatching in the yard, or too many people concentrating on killing rather than building a strategy to get the flag. It's really something the devs can't do anything about. Pubs will be pubs.

The teamwork in pub play is very isolated, from my experience. Every one goes and do their own thing. Let's use pub play on 2fort for an example for CTF maps. Soldiers usually guard the entrance, snipers do their thing at the sniper deck, medics are always focused on the enemy flag (rather than helping out their teammates, offense or not), engineers building their sentry in lonely spots, spies randomly being ninjas without a plan, and so on. Although it may seem like they are apart at times, they are actually contributing to the team overall. Soldiers and HWGuys at the front stop some of the offense coming through, giving the flag defenders less of a problem. Could've in fact stopped the enemy capturing their flag. Snipers do the same, unless they're just having a fight against the enemy snipers.

I do know how you feel, though. I try and give our team a plan, but it's pub play. No one really listens.
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Old 02-05-2009, 04:41 PM   #16
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We can control what players do by changing the game. That's pretty much the entire point of game design and it's something we are discussing and working on right now.
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Old 02-05-2009, 06:01 PM   #17
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Credge doesn't even play FF, at least i never see him pub, but i guess that's b/c its boring to him, who knows?
You... know who I am right? I mean, you know that my in game name isn't Credge... right?

Besides, the only times I pub is when the map is on avanti as that map always seems to get players I enjoy playing with together. I play competitively, which I'm slowly stopping, because I enjoy challenge.

And I just realized another issue with competitive play. Competitive players tend to love the absolute worst maps on the planet.

Quote:
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The way I see it, you don't have a "gripe" with the game. You just have a gripe with how people are playing it.
You can see it like that all you want, but there is a reason people play it like that. It's because the game was made that way.

People wouldn't yard DM in CTF if they saw it as negative, or, if maps where made where yard DM'ng was an obviously bad thing to do. AVD would be better if... well, people knew what they were doing. This is most notably a problem on Palermo where I can just jump over every person on every cap point with almost any class.

League play would be much more fun if different classes were viable besides soldier, demo, engy, and medic.

None of these things are really dependent on the people. League players will continue to only use the best classes because they have to. Why would anyone go Sniper on O or D?

Quote:
Originally Posted by caesium View Post
credge, you know we're already working hard on focussing public play for both avd and ctf by making the objectives much clearer to everyone, and there are lots of ideas in the works for new public server gamemodes/maps.
Yep, and it's one of the only reasons I actively beta test and push for changes to classes that need them. Without more viable classes for competitive play, it will stagnate like it has in past versions and is starting to do now.

And the only time I'll actually start to invest some time in to public play is when an AVD server exists and becomes populated. Otherwise I'd rather play any other game with better DM mechanics out there.
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Old 02-05-2009, 06:14 PM   #18
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We can control what players do by changing the game. That's pretty much the entire point of game design and it's something we are discussing and working on right now.
Only to a certain point. If your game has no flexibility and restricts players to play in only 1 way then your game will soon die out. People like the flexibility to do what they want and hate being told what they can and cannot do. There are tons of people who don't like to focus on the flag, or on defense. They may just like to wander around and shoot things. Or chase random people in the yard, or build things in random spots, or pick on snipers by concing them over and over on the batts..or..or..or. Some of this stuff could be considered griefing, but if you remove these options and force everyone to play one way, there would be no variety to how a map is played out from round to round. The people being griefed on, may get super pissed off, but it's not like it might happen every round, so the next round it might be better for them.

So these comments along the line of "this game is no fun for me cause nobody is organized or focused on the map's goals" is somewhat of an elitist point of view, and definately doesn't look at the bigger picture of what "everyone wants to do", because pubbers aren't nescessarily looking for organized and set ways to play, otherwise they'd join a clan or do pickups.

Of course designing a map to "help" pubbers see the map's goals and objectives is a great idea, especially for beginners who don't know what to do at all. But there are many pubbers who aren't beginners who know exactly what to do and choose not to do it, and you can't design a game that will force them to play your way, they'll just end up quitting when they get bored of the same ol shit every round.

Why do you think 24/7 servers were soo popular in TFC? How on earth can a group of people play 2fort for 6 hours in a row? Cause everytime it's something a little different, do a different thing, you don't always have to run O, or run D, you could DM the bridge, or camp the snipers, or try and build teles in the enemy base...etc there was soo many different things to do that you could (and did!) play 2fort for hours.

Edit*

I just want to give one example of people "not playing the way they're suppose to"

in TFC owol had a server dedicated to bots. One team was always full of bots, (like 16), the other team were all human players. These people on this server never went after the flag, and AvD maps it was even detested when you capped. These people's entire goal was to kill the bots, and pin them back into their spawn points. Sounds ridiculous doesn't it? Still doesn't negate the fact that this server was fully populated from morning to late nights with these people repeating the same tactic over and over and over on every map out there. It was a challenge to them and they loved seeing themselves ontop with the highest kill count by the end of it all.

Last edited by Hammock; 02-05-2009 at 06:34 PM.
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Old 02-05-2009, 06:29 PM   #19
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My biggest gripe about this game is a community who continuously complains about the game... I don't think I've ever seen a post about "What have the DEVS done RIGHT?".. because I think they need it. We've beaten the horse to death... let's share some good now.

I like double jumping, trimping and the ramp slide physics.
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Old 02-05-2009, 06:43 PM   #20
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I can't say I agree at all Hammock. Every successful FPS game has structure to public play, aside from games that revolve around DM. Any modes that don't are not popular. See: TF2 CTF. It's not a popular mode.

Even further, the competitive community, being just as big as our public community, disagrees entirely with you.

Sadly, FF does not revolve around DM. It revolves around flags or assassination. The meat of the game might be in DM'ng your enemies, but the goals do not revolve around it.

Mainly, the idea that "PEOPLE FUCKING HATE BEING TOLD WHAT TO DO" is bogus. Public CTF needs structure. People aren't actively trying to complete objectives. That's not a good thing. Everybody stands around in the yard and fires rockets at each other. That's not a good thing.

Do you have any idea how many more players we would retain if public play was something interesting? I'd play public play every day if people actually attempted to play like they had an interest in the objectives. I know about 6 people that would do the same.

Mainly, there's no reason to play this game over any other game out there. Why would I want to play a game where DM'ng isn't very dynamic when I can play games that have dynamic DM'ng. Why would I want to play a game with no objectives when I can play games with objectives. Why would I want to play a game with no objectives and where DM'ng isn't very dynamic when I can play games that have both?

This is what your average person asks themselves after trying FF and then going right back to TF2, L4D, or any other mod they play.
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