About banners-

I'm getting used to it, actually. And I think they're more obvious than the wool - trying to find a single dropped item in 15(?) seconds using only your compass was pretty hard, but the banners are really visible when they're dropped.

Also, what's wrong with helmets being replaced? It doesn't seem like a huge problem to me

 

I miss having a fence post, but I dont cap so Im not too bothered. Would be nice to have the wool block back though, but it's their server now. I thought Brawl was going to ask the community about changes they were going to make before they made them...guess not..

 

I would much rather a dropped flag to be a wool block, as Ive seen some pretty glitchy stuff involving flags. Besides that, it'll just take some getting used to trying to grab the flag. At first I was a bit mad at the change, but when thinking about it most of my issues were just bugs that came with the update and not the addition of banners.

The helmet thing isn't a severe issue either, unless you're a heavy it's not too much of a defense decrease. Maybe reduce poison damage to compensate for the higher vulnerability to fix such a thing

 

I actually like the banners, the hat/placed visibility is really nice and they look good... So, seconding what was said above.

Once the flag pick up is finished being tweaked they won't be much of an issue. The pick up radius has already been extended and the major glitches have been fixed.

 

The slight defense reduction from the banner replacing helmet I actually sort of like since it makes recovery a tad easier

 

I like the look of banners but there are a few problems:

1. Difficulty picking up the flag: The defense knocking you silly and pushing you through the banner.
2. Getting stuck in the banner: If you stand (or more importantly get knocked) in the banner it can impair your ability to defend.
3. Recovery woes: As an assassin recovery player I get this a lot. A player drops the flag and the flag flies onto a ledge 2 blocks above. You climb to get the flag but as you do a ninja enderpearls into your body instantly killing you before you can recover! *This also effects archers a lot =(
4. Lack of helmets lowering defense resulting in a lot of ninja recoveries.
5. Not being able to effectively F5 resulting in death from behind.

Ways to fix this:

1. Set a barrier block in the upper half of the banner: This removes the ability to get knocked through the flag and actually mimics the old fence and wool mechanic pretty well. This will of course lead to people standing on top of the flag but that really shouldn't be a problem.
2. Give the flag item a "CanPlaceOn" NBT tag the removes the ability to temporarily place a flag down resulting in abuse of the barrier mechanic listed above.
3. Remove the random drop or make it easier to recover for those classes that can't fly up walls or enderpearl to the final resting place. Another related solution is to make sure the flag spawn on a block at the same height of the flag holders death.
4. Fix flag timers is a given and I won't cover this much as I'm sure Nom has received plenty of spam from mcpvp players about this one. (If anybody is wondering what this is about please post a response I'm sure somebody would be happy to let you know ;-D)
5. FIX TEH COMPAZ PL- Ehem I mean please make it so you don't need to refresh the compass every time a player picks up the flag, and make the player who has the flag their team color in the compass text and the scoreboard! (sorry that's kinda unrelated to the banner fix, just needed to be mentioned)
6. For the lack of helmets a simple not to intensive solution is to summon an armor stand that teleports to the flag holders position repeatedly. This could then hold the banner leaving the flag carrier banner free and helmet enabled. DOWNSIDE: Possible lag... would need further testing to determine if that could be a legitimate problem.
7. If you you used the ideas discussed in #6 you can have the armor stand half a block below a player (eg. ~ ~-0.5 ~) so the flag wouldn't stick out so far above the head.

If there's anything I missed please respond to this comment with your question or concern!
(If you found any spelling or grammatical errors please PM me so I can fix them. I typed this out quickly and only proof read once so mistakes are bound to occur! =D)

Thank you for the time you took to read this,
EBLkinz