Improving CTF gameplay

[Skanky Butterpuss]

Originally Posted by [AE] 82694

oops did I do that?

what, completely miss the point ihmhi was making? why yes, yes you did.

[illogicality-]

You know - I just got to work and started thinking about this thread (how sad, right?!) and I just thought of something which makes me disagree with squeek and credge completely.

CTF is not a broken game style. What is broken is the fact that there are new players and experienced players - there really isn't any middle in FF. The problem, in this game, arises when you have a 22 slot server of 15 new players and four talented players. Before the talented players get there, the new guys have figured out that they are supposed to grab the flag - and they cap it. When the experienced players join the server and start contesting the new players, they can't respond with anything because they have nothing with which to respond. They lack the ability to bunny hop, conc, effectively time grenades during a DM; they lack the fundamental movement thus rendering them defensless during an offensive attack. It's kind of like putting a 8 year old kid vs a professional in a hockey game - the 8 yr old will eventually get bored and go skate into the boards or quit because they simply can't compete with the upper level player.

That said, there is no real fix for it... well, there is.. and it's called TF2.. a completely redesigned game where all of the upper level skill (bhop, concing, gren timing) has been removed and you're left with a basic, boring, slow game where you don't have much choice to grab a flag.

This post is in NO way a slight against any players or this game - I'm just pointing out that CTF is not broken - it simply may not work the BEST in this game because of the differing dynamic levels of player skill sets. We're in a different time than we were in TFC, and even then TFC took quite some time to develop the skill levels. Players progressed together - they went through the phases of learning how to time grenades, rocket jump, conc out of the water on 2fort, then learn to drop conc, hand held conc, strafe jump, bunny hop, conc off the bhop, etc.. it wasn't like FF is now because there are players who already know that stuff which makes it all the more difficult for new players to join in and do well because they're still at that beginning phase.

I've been actively participating in FF for a year now and still see some of the same guys from when I first started. MANY of them have greatly improved in their skills - some have learned to bhop, conc, etc - but some couldn't give a crap and still only play the same two classes they did a year ago. That's a bit off track, but it's relevant because this game's community is so small that it's more noticable than it was in TFC back in 1999/2000.

Ok, I think that's all...

[xks]

That's a good point to make illogicality.

Part of the problem comes from the fact that this game is effectively an older game, remade like the older game in many ways, or with improvements on the older game decided upon by the experienced players. This means that those with previous experience in TFC are leagues ahead of any newcomers to the game. It's not like a brand new game coming out and everyone starting from the same novice level.

I don't see the gulf in skill levels as being a big issue for the devs to worry that much about however, simply because people have to learn somehow. Providing helping hands every step of the way is not going to teach them much other than complacency and it will certainly frustrate those who have taken the time to practice and improve.

CS solved this problem inadvertently with the way their recoil system worked. Each bullet was a progressively increasing random distance away from the previous bullet when firing a fully auto weapon. It meant you could never truly learn the behaviour of the recoil and it brought an equalising element of 'luck' to the game. Now, I'm not much of a fan of having 'lucky' things in what I class as skill games. However, it's pretty hard to argue against the way CS works, given that it allows new players to achieve kills on experienced players and accomplish something whilst also allowing the skilled players to achieve an advantage through superior tactics, movement, knowledge and of course firing in a semi automatic fashion.

What we need is a way for the newer players to learn important skills such as the use of grenades (all types in many situations for multiple purposes), positioning, quick switching weapons and throwing flags/ammo packs. These are the kind of things that make a good player great and give them a massive advantage over the rest.

One simple way to do this would be the production of some well made tutorial movies. Starting with the basics of RJing and where to stand (demonstrated visually rather than in words like the tooltips). Such movies could easily demonstrate how to conc on a variety of maps. But more importantly than just teaching the method of concing they will show the viewer where to apply that skill, where it can give them an edge and why.

There is no need to show every possible position or move on every map, but a couple of basics would certainly help the viewers see how that scout went past them last night or how that medic dropped them with a grenade before they knew what was happening.

[MonoXideAtWork]

IMO skill movies would accomplish this better. There are not tutorial movies for quake 3, just watching the top players in frag movies is enough to pick up on more efficient ways to do things.

I'd like to do a movie of the top 20 or so players raping public servers, so we can show effective tactics that newer players may not know about.


Anyone wanna help me get some footage? I need about 30 seconds of good stuff from each class.

things I'm looking for:

scouts : double-concs, ramp slides, trimps, coast to coast flag runs.
medic: coast to coast flag runs with 4+ kills
sniper: great shots on fast moving players
engineer: single player defense
demo: kill streak, pimp jumps
soldier: kill streak, bounce shotty, rocket jumps
spy: SG sabotage, knife kills, tranqs, flag runs
hw: single player defense, kill streak
pyro: flagruns, area denial

[illogicality-]

Good post - I agree, except for this part - you may have not been around long enough in this community to see this, but here's where the problem lies:

Originally Posted by xks

That's a good point to make illogicality.
I don't see the gulf in skill levels as being a big issue for the devs to worry that much about however, simply because people have to learn somehow. Providing helping hands every step of the way is not going to teach them much other than complacency and it will certainly frustrate those who have taken the time to practice and improve.

This is an area of concern for the devs primarily because you have people, like credge, who tend to be almost too vocal on things that don't matter. For example, a topic of discussion, for the longest time (and please, dont turn this into the topic of discussion now, credge) was the engineer and how 'weak' his sentry gun is. Many players thought that the SG should be able to stand its own against an attacking offensive player.. which is simply not the case. While there were changes made (and continuing changes, I'm told) the devs did do a good job and finding a middle ground on how strong the sg should be. In my opinion, the focus shouldn't be on improving the strength of a skilless tool, such as the SG, it should be improving how we help the engineer.. and every other class for that matter. One of the things the Devs did that I really think helps a lot of new players is when you hold a conc until it goes off, it boosts you a little bit in the air - like a mini-conc. This helps new players get a feel for what can be.

That was all a bit off track, but I wanted to point out that there are people (devs) out there that do exactly what you're saying they dont -- they cater to those who haven't taken the time to get better and claim that things don't work when they simply haven't taken the time to learn them -- and I assure you, the engineer and sentry gun combo work just fine. Not to mention, here we are in 2.3 and pyro is STILL extremely overpowered and is a HUGE FPS hog...

Originally Posted by MonoXideAtWork

Anyone wanna help me get some footage? I need about 30 seconds of good stuff from each class.

I'll help if I can ever get some free time :-/

[teh_rape]

Originally Posted by Credge

When you only have some people going for the objectives, it's garbage. It's not fun. It would be like trying to play laser tag, paintball, basketball, football, hockey, soccer, or whatever other thing out there when only 1/5th of the people are actually trying to play.

Rahh rahh rahh.. Im posting this way after you said this. Yes, I am. Deal with it .

Anyway. I have to ask: Have you ever actually played paintball? I worked at a couple fields and I know how the games are played. It's nearly the exact same as how public games work. Some people know what they are doing.. rush at the start pick off a few then swing around and flank (depending on the field- this would be the experienced FF player). Some are 'new' and just lay in one spot the whole damn game (compared to a noob in ff). And then there are those who talk a lot of shit, but cant back any of it up (enter retarded FF community members name here).
I have played countless times. You CAN NOT rely on your team to do what you tell them to. They simply do not have enough experience to know what the hell they are doing. And guess what the MAIN gameplay in paintball is? CAPTURE THE FLAG. Yeah sure there are times where the teams are so uneven one side gets wiped while the other only loses a couple. Thats why they switch teams up, making it as even as possible.
Guess what? Nearly everyone loves playing it too.

I skipped over 90% of the posts here. I admit it. so I have no idea if anyone already called you out on this. However, one last thing.
You say people would rather just DM. Fun fact: DMing is allowed in public CTF.

[Tyrant]

GoW is win.

[guy]

Love the ideas!

[MonoXideAtWork]

Thanks be to illo and TR. I've been crying L2p the entire time at the engineer stuff.

As most of you know, I am far more likely to play a pub than a pickup due to my work schedule, and to be honest, I enjoy myself for the most part. I play with music running and voice_enable 0 most of the time, so the personal stuff that happens in ctf doesn't affect me.

The things that limit my enjoyment of the game:

Too many of 1 class on either team, no class variety.
The swing from defense to offense that 1 good player can cause:
When a good offensive pub player such as geo or myself join a team (in my case, typically the team with less players or a score that is > 0 but less than the leader), after the first flag gets out, my entire team usually switches to offense and begins to dominate the other team. The only thing that offsets this is another player of qual or greater skill on the other team that can shut down the MVP.

Finally, the inability to randomize teams really gets old, as typically, offensive players go blue, and defensive players go red, this leads to defacto ovd, the exceptions are autoassigning, and when there is a rival in the server. Just my 2p.

[Hammock]

Originally Posted by MonoXideAtWork

As most of you know, I am far more likely to play a pub than a pickup due to my work schedule, and to be honest, I enjoy myself for the most part. I play with music running and voice_enable 0 most of the time, so the personal stuff that happens in ctf doesn't affect me.

I pub soo much that I'm hearing reports from random pubbers that I'm one of the best FF players out there. I just laugh when I hear that statement, and tell em, "Naw the best just don't pub".

Personally I like ctf the way it is, I agree with illo's post above about how it's the descrepency of skill that makes ctf break down. But only to a degree. CTF maps let people do whatever they want. Some people just like running around and shooting at things. Like seriously why would you ever have a random encounter in the lower halls of aardvark? There's no point for people to be in that bathroom, but seriously it happens, you'll just randomly run into an enemy down there.

I know objectives are nice, but try as you might you'll never get someone to go for the objective if they don't want to (even though they know what to do). It's fun for people to just run around and kill things. I think this is why we need a collection of maps like rats or turkeyburgers. Blockfort is the closest thing I've seen to this, but it's very limited, only solly's and demos, and it's quite small. But a map like rats3 has a theme to the room, people run around, they hop in the spaceship to try and get more kills (but usually end up being the target of everyone).

It would be nice to see a map like rats3 with small objectives in it. Like say there's 3 different command stations in rats3, they start off neutral, if you run into one it glows your color and you gain a small amount of points for every few seconds. If you die and someone else steps over it they get points. This new person can stay to defend it, or just keep moving on deciding he prefers to roam and kill instead. Having people randomly spawn after death would ensure these command points could never really be held for any given length of time, and you don't want an even number of command points as you have teams, so each team couldn't just pick one and sit there guaranteed to get points. Then nobody would even move. That way you have objectives for some people, and the mulching other people enjoy.

*Edit: I wouldn't even want these command stations to give fortress points to the team, just direct fortress points to you, and/or your teammates in the immiediate vicinity of it. That way you don't have the people who are only about winning bitching at their teammates for not completing these objectives. They would be just for personal gain, and then beginners don't even have to worry about them.

Put in them bounce pads to get to different heights, secret tunnels, cool pathways, man I just really think rats3 was awesomely designed, it was small enough to work with only 2 or 3 people, but large enough to support a full server, and I have no idea why none of these maps have been recreated. With minimal health and ammo packs (no armor) spread around you're guaranteed to die, this is what makes blockfort so good, cause newbs can kill vets cause eventually everyone dies. Sure the vets will probably have a higher kill ratio, but newbs will make kills too it's inevitable. I'd limit each team to 1 sniper/hw/spy (cause those would be the most annoying classes to have an abundance of).

I would play maps like this all the time, there just seems to be too much emphisis on making people complete objectives and goals, while most beginners don't know how to, or other people just don't care about it and they're just looking for a good fps game they can hop into and shoot people in.

[xks]

Hammock, people do like to kill things but I am against the idea of making further divisions in a mod which already has more than it's fair share of gametypes for people to play.

Those kind of things come naturally when you have a thriving community, but right now there is no such thing for FF. You have to focus on your best product to get a foothold in the market, the crown jewel in your arsenal.

What if that server was made and 10 people played it every day, that could be 10 less on a CTF server and that's enough to cause the remaining few on that server to stop playing sooner and come back less frequently (if it stays practically empty).

Monoxide's use of the word swing is perfect to describe the way most public games of FF go (in any gametype). The difference a good offy player makes to a team alters the dynamics on the server dramatically. It's far greater than the difference a good defensive player causes, since defences need to be coordinated to stop even a couple of attackers.

In the old days these skilled players would have the intelligence to join opposite teams but that doesn't seem to happen as often in FF. You frequently get two good offy players on the same team, which even with 6-7 defenders on the opposite team is going to result in a big win for the offy players team.

I like the way the Engineer works right now, but his gun should really go one of two ways. Either it needs to get some of it's push back and a little faster tracking once it's locked on or it needs to be a bit harder to kill.

Personally I think the ease at which it dies makes things very intense and interesting so I wouldn't change that. I suggest getting some of the push back because literally any class can run towards the SG and due to it's low damage usually get a couple of grenades and a lot of shots off at it before they die. As for the tracking, the lock on speed is about right, you can outsmart it if you are clever or if you are fast. But it's also far too easy to get away from it once it's actually locked onto you and that's where I'm saying the tracking could be a little quicker.

Although it has been said before that a rework of the Engineer is coming, whatever that may be.

You could go for another angle and allow the Engineer to upgrade his gun via different upgrade paths, one for superior damage, one for superior armour, one for fastest tracking/reactions. Each one would be weaker in the other areas of course.

Saying that, it's probably like that in TF2 or something

[Hammock]

Originally Posted by xks

Hammock, people do like to kill things but I am against the idea of making further divisions in a mod which already has more than it's fair share of gametypes for people to play.

Those kind of things come naturally when you have a thriving community, but right now there is no such thing for FF. You have to focus on your best product to get a foothold in the market, the crown jewel in your arsenal.

What if that server was made and 10 people played it every day, that could be 10 less on a CTF server and that's enough to cause the remaining few on that server to stop playing sooner and come back less frequently (if it stays practically empty).

It wouldn't be a server dedicated to running these maps, as of yet no public server dedicated to running a specific style of map thrives.

The talos server is a great example, and personally one of the best pub servers atm imo. It has short rounds, so you never get stuck on one map for too long which is a good thing especially when one team is dominating. That map plays CTF, it plays AvD, it plays maps like blockfort, it plays it a wide variety of maps, and it almost always has people on it each night. And it offers a wide variety of maps to vote on for rtv. It has almost no rules at all, I don't even know if skywalker has banned anyone from it, and yet it thrives quite well. It's diversity that keeps people around. If some map gets voted on that someone doesn't like, many times they don't even bother leaving cause that map gets rtv'd almost right away, or the map time doesn't last too long and they live with it. Or if they do leave they will usually pop back in half an hour to see what the next map is.

I couldn't play the same style of map over and over and over again, diversity is where it's at.

And I don't exactly see partial's trimp/conc community hurting anything, and his server is full quite often. Just goes to show people enjoy different things.

[MonoXideAtWork]

Agreed hammock.

[illogicality-]

Originally Posted by xks

Monoxide's use of the word swing is perfect to describe the way most public games of FF go (in any gametype). The difference a good offy player makes to a team alters the dynamics on the server dramatically. It's far greater than the difference a good defensive player causes, since defences need to be coordinated to stop even a couple of attackers.

In the old days these skilled players would have the intelligence to join opposite teams but that doesn't seem to happen as often in FF. You frequently get two good offy players on the same team, which even with 6-7 defenders on the opposite team is going to result in a big win for the offy players team.

I agree - that is the perfect term for what happens. I try to play one class an entire round and stick with it. Let's take Shutdown, for example - many of you see me camped at the top of the ramp and I stop a lot that comes through - whether it's 1, 2 or 5 offensive players. At some point I normally ask my team to help out in some way.. normally by having one of them engy and put it in the fr.

I really miss the coordinated way TFC used to be played (like on Odins, for example) - when you'd have 8 people on a team, 4 on offense 4 on defense. If a defensive player wanted to go play offense he'd see if one of the offy guys would switch - but there you had all skilled players, or at the very least, players who were learning and actually wanted to get better.

Originally Posted by xks

I like the way the Engineer works right now, but his gun should really go one of two ways. Either it needs to get some of it's push back and a little faster tracking once it's locked on or it needs to be a bit harder to kill.

I'm not really looking forward to the sg changes.. i think it will drastically change the dynamic of the game and will make pub play next to impossible.. At any given time on a full, 22 slot server, you can find 4 engineers per defense. If the changes to engy are going to make him and his SG as good as it seems, I think the devs should include cr_engineer 2 in the server.cfg file...

[Hammock]

Originally Posted by illogicality-

I really miss the coordinated way TFC used to be played (like on Odins, for example) - when you'd have 8 people on a team, 4 on offense 4 on defense. If a defensive player wanted to go play offense he'd see if one of the offy guys would switch - but there you had all skilled players, or at the very least, players who were learning and actually wanted to get better.

Odin's was not a casual pub though, it had very strict rules, and if you broke them you could be quickly kicked or banned. It wasn't just by choice that you had to ask a fellow teammate to switch positions, it was a rule that you weren't allowed soo many defenders. If an entire team didn't follow the rules they would be team slayed even.

Odins also had some plugin that slayed you if you touched the enemy flag, before full game (7v7 or 6v6 wasn't it?) was established. Even there if the player count climbed or fell you would bounce from a full game to OvD. You had to know what you were doing on odins. It was basically a public pickup server.

[squeek.]

There is way too much text in this thread for me to read right now, but I just wanted to point something out:

Originally Posted by illogicality-

CTF is not a broken game style.

That said, there is no real fix for it

And that is exactly what I outlined in one of my posts. You are simply agreeing with me, illo.

Originally Posted by squeek

Public CTF isn't fun because:

A) A minority of the people work towards the objectives (all four of them: defending team 1's flag; defending team 2's flag; capturing team 1's flag; capturing team 2's flag)
B) A minority of the people communicate effectively
C) A minority of the people playing offense provide any competition to a skilled player playing defense
D) A minority of the people playing defense provide any competition to a skilled player playing offense
E) A majority of the people are, in one way or another, still learning how to play

[illogicality-]

Originally Posted by Hammock

Odin's was not a casual pub though, it had very strict rules, and if you broke them you could be quickly kicked or banned. It wasn't just by choice that you had to ask a fellow teammate to switch positions, it was a rule that you weren't allowed soo many defenders. If an entire team didn't follow the rules they would be team slayed even.

Odins also had some plugin that slayed you if you touched the enemy flag, before full game (7v7 or 6v6 wasn't it?) was established. Even there if the player count climbed or fell you would bounce from a full game to OvD. You had to know what you were doing on odins. It was basically a public pickup server.

You're right, it wasn't a casual pub, but it did lead the way for most of the other public servers to follow a pattern - Blue is offense, Red is Defense and once the game reached 5v5 then it became a full game.

I actually played there prior to it having the plugin installed that slayed people so the players had to manage everything themselves - which actually worked out quite well.

Originally Posted by squeek.

There is way too much text in this thread for me to read right now, but I just wanted to point something out:



And that is exactly what I outlined in one of my posts. You are simply agreeing with me, illo.

You can't say CTF is broken - it's not. This game's variance in the skillsets of its players is the part that's broken.

[xks]

Originally Posted by Hammock

It wouldn't be a server dedicated to running these maps, as of yet no public server dedicated to running a specific style of map thrives.

Well the 2fort/well SNT server is the most popular European server by far, even if it's misnamed a little. It's been running 2fort/well/sd2/aardvark as it's cycle for the last week or so. Over the last month it's total player count has risen from around 400 to around 2000.

That server is on it's way to showing that CTF is still the gametype the majority wants and it's steadily growing.

[Hammock]

Originally Posted by xks

Well the 2fort/well SNT server is the most popular European server by far, even if it's misnamed a little. It's been running 2fort/well/sd2/aardvark as it's cycle for the last week or so. Over the last month it's total player count has risen from around 400 to around 2000.

That server is on it's way to showing that CTF is still the gametype the majority wants and it's steadily growing.

So you're a Eruo player? Then why would you even be worried about a US server running these types of maps exclusively? It's not that we steal your players regularily. People choose to play where their ping is nice before they choose what maps are being played usually.

Over here in NA we have O-T's server which from what I can recall usually plays CTF maps as well for it's map cycle, but does have the option to vote on other maps, and they're quite busy. But we also have Talos's server which plays a wide variety of different maps. Play CTF, AvD, blockfort, and even waterpolo. I love waterpolo and always nominate it, there's a few people in the server everytime who whines about the map, but seriously if it wasn't soo popular it wouldn't win the vote half the time that it does. Ksour is also another really popular one that's played regularily. And the Talos server is the one server where I've seen that map get voted for extension 5+ times in a row.

But you've really helped prove my point though, you have your ctf rotation server that does quite well, so do we. We also have a server that rotates all sorts of different maps that does quite well. zE Has his server that has every fucking map ever made (I mean seriously he really keeps on top of new map releases better than anyone else), which provides EU servers with a variety of stuff when they're looking for something different, like his trimp maps or the stuff he's working on, or just random maps I've never seen before. We have partial's server which seems to do mostly trimping but has a ton of conc stuff, and the occasional normal map is played. We have our pickup servers, as well as you.

Look how small our community is, and look how diverse we manage to keep it. A little bit of something for everyone, and you never have to be restricted to just one thing. And I'm not sure why you're even fighting against maps like rats3 or turkeyburgers. You remember how popular they were in TFC? I sure do. People always had a lot of fun playing them and they would just be 1 more thing to add to a rotation.

They are also far easier for a newb to get a handle on, cause the only thing that matters is killing. The fights are also usually spaced out, unlike CTF, and especially unlike AvD where you're pretty much forced into engagements unless you're hiding in the far reaches of your own base.

Originally Posted by illogicality-

You're right, it wasn't a casual pub, but it did lead the way for most of the other public servers to follow a pattern - Blue is offense, Red is Defense and once the game reached 5v5 then it became a full game.

Ya, that's true enough. Blue = O, and Red = D. We do try to replicate that too on the servers when there's low numbers. Which causes problems, cause once the server fills up everyone is still stuck on the OvD even though it's now 11v11. Many times the people don't want to switch it up for a couple reasons.

1. Red team finds it completely discouraging to even think about catching up to blue who's had free run at them and scored enough to make it 110 - 0. There's no catching up.

2. Blue knows there's no catching up to them and don't need to switch to play D until it becomes a close game, so any red who might be running O, tends not to encounter any Blue defense cause nobody cares about it. The one guy making an effort to balance the game out gets bored (I know I've been that guy many times), so they go back to D.

One possible suggestion to allieviate this problem (not fix it entirely), is to make the score 0-0 for any player to join the game. What I mean by this is that say the map's been played for 15 minutes, the people who've been playing for 15 minutes see a score of 220-50. But to anyone who joins at that point, the score will be 0-0. Say another 5 minutes go by, and a few more caps are made. The people playing for 20 minutes see 220-100, the people playing for 5 minutes see a score of 0-50, and the person who just joined sees a score of 0-0.

I do this in my head anytime I join a game. I don't care what the score is when I join a game already ongoing, I had nothing to do with that score. I only care about what the score is at the end for the length of time I played. So in my mind I can "Win" more often if by the end of the game my team has produced more than the other team for the time I've played.

This might even stop people from joining the "Winning" team as soon as they connect cause to them they won't know the score, it'll just be 0-0.

[Iggy]

Originally Posted by illogicality-

You can't say CTF is broken - it's not. This game's variance in the skillsets of its players is the part that's broken.

I have been saying the same thing in the Beta forums for months now.
I'm open to trying out new things to help make CTF more "pub friendly"... although I'm really not sure what else can be done without breaking the rest of the game.