Have we waited long enough?

I'll give you my number so you can invite me to the grand unveiling.

I'd say you're a narssicist but, I mean, so am I... so yeah, let's go with that XD

 

Ugh none of this would be argued on if we just had more coders

 

I've gotten to the point where I blaim the community for this. If the devs, (Nom) and the Mods (You know them) made some ideas and added them. If they were a change an they dident break the game. I woudent even care. They could make Necro a free recovery class and Assassin a tank. I woudent even care. I mean, the community flips the **** out every time theres a change anyway.

Also, I feel like a complete rework of the game would be ****ing sexy. Like compeatly new classes. Same capping and all, but all new classes. It would just like be a restart.

 

The outrages were minimal to nill when Mage and Elf were introduced, ninja was reworked, and engineer was reworked.

 

So then we have had changes that helped? Yeah, but anyway an outrage is still and outrage and is bad in the way of change weather or not it was appropriate.

 

I agree I don't think anyone would get mad about the fact that two horribly broken classes finally got their well deserved reworks. But (imo) not many people would be very happy if those reworks ended up having a negative impact on the game - which is a reaction that is bound to happen if those classes are ever reworked because everything else is so messed up.

 

I think every CTF class needs to be changed or reworked, some more then others. It's more beneficial to start planning that now then by doing small band-aid fixes, and this could be accomplished, but it wouldn't be easy xD (CTF v2.0!??!?!?)

 

Community, community, community.

Honestly, the community is the biggest deterrent in my mind. The staff are essentially forced to come up with a perfect rework that will hit all the marks, or we think the community will just go absolutely ape. I feel like we can't even try solutions that we think will work, for fear of lash back from the community.

Also, trying to incorporate the community's opinion to keep the community happy. That is what the mods want. And they will be the first to tell you it drives me insane - just ask @Quarrelt or @Nohox, for example. I don't think it's possible to cater to the community when there is no community-wide opinion. Everyone has their own solution. How are we supposed to choose without angering the community?

Basically, I think we've reached a very tough situation where we have this expectation that we will make everyone happy. Obviously, that's not possible. So we fumble and stall and try and come up with an impossibly perfect solution.

I have basically given up on trying to make the majority of the community happy. Instead, I try and focus on making the experienced and reasonable players happy. For example, I am still extremely passionate about removing instakills, even though the poll results were not in that favor. However, the discussion of the thread was very productive, and much better than a simple poll, and I think some very good points were made.

The main argument for removing instakills is that instakills keep the game fast paced. Which is true. But no instakills =/= not fast paced, e.g. Ninja. So I am for a solution that is apparently unpopular within the community, even though I strongly believe it is the superior solution. Now what - do I listen to the community, or go with my gut? I was promoted to make decisions.

So in my opinion, the current state of CTF is certainly not for a lack of trying, but basically because of an overly optimistic goal of making everybody happy.

 

Nom the legend.

 

Well when you look at Dwarf and Necro both classes are so massively screwed up that they both need reworks, not tweaks so changing a few things doesn't really work there

@NomNuggetNom just saying, the community didn't go on a rampage of negativity when Mage or Elf was released or when Engineer was tweaked/sort of reworked. Sure the community (ppl like me) want CTF to be 'more perfect' and that isn't an unreasonable expectation, but I doubt anyone seriously thinks the game should be or hell, even can be perfect.

Regardless, I don't see how the community is the problem. I think the perception that you outlined of the community expecting stuff to be flawless is more of an issue. CTF is just a game after all so why does it need to be perfect?

I would imagine that a bunch of gamers, which is basically what we are, would just expect whatever changes that are made to make gameplay more enjoyable. Obviously no change can please everyone so why try to?

 

Engineer was a rare situation where there was really no disagreement about what was needed. @Nohox produced a perfect rework design, with almost no disagreement, and it was implemented. Easy as can be. That is obviously not the situation with pyro right now. There is a lot of debate about what the role of the class should be, how powerful it needs to be, etc.

It's fine if you don't see how the community is the problem. I am telling you what I have observed working with the other CTF staff for about a year. I agree with you that we shouldn't have to strive for perfection. That's why I have given up on that.

 

As far as like a Pyro rework goes, I think it would be good to pick one you like. Code it and everything, then add it. If the community flips out for good reason, revert it. If not great keep it.

I would rather see a compleaty failed atepemt out of no where that was all Xx_Randi_xX's idea then no atempt at all. (Im not saying your not trying I dont really have any facts on that). But sure you may be wasting time coding somthing just to revert it, but is it a waste? You'll know the community dosent want that and you now have more of a place to start.

Bruh just start throwing random reworks out and see what happens! But rework more then one thing at a time, add 4 reworked classes at the same time. So people have no background knowledge at all. It would make it harder to say its a bad rework(s) right from the start.

 

who gives a flying **** what people think? if the rework works well and is balanced, people have to get used to it.

i'm tired of the argument that "removing archer's instakill makes it impossible to play" and "removing pyro's instakill will make no one defend". if you change things, people have to adapt. just make sure the changes are a step forward in terms of game balance and at least a few people will be fine with it.

 

Good point, but if the rework is absolutely crap, it needs to be rolled back (ahem banners)

 

Wow, if current CTF is causing this much outrage in the community that can't stop whatever you do, then just imagine the outrage when 1.9 comes out and Brawl updates...

 

They don't have to change anything.

 

What I want is constant and minor changes. I'd rather us fix one thing then change what we have to rather than try and do multiple things at once and hope it works. I enjoy the idea of live testing and seeing how changes play out in the current game, but one of my worries is that something will happen where we can't make changes for "x" amount of time and we'll be stuck with it. Another issue with this style is it requires a lot of coding, recoding, undoing, trashing, starting over and reverting instead of "we're gonna make this change and never look back."

My biggest issue for overall CTF is Defense v. Offense. Right now, people expect to be able to solo cap. When they can't solo cap, the number one thing I hear is, "all I need is the pyro dead and I can get out." If you're playing in a team match, what's the first priority or only priority? Killing the Pyro. While this is saying Pyro is OP, isn't this also saying that our capping classes are OP? That it only takes one skilled person to cap against a room full of people? That defense is so weak that if the Pyro is dead, the rest of the defense is basically irrelevant? The problem with no instakills is if someone gets out, no one can catch up to the person. Right now, defense basically has one chance to kill the carrier because the recovery classes are class cannons so any small mistake pretty much gives up the cap. The way I see no instakill/defense balancing changes playing out is nerfs on the capping classes that will force offense to have to use teamwork and/or be more venerable for recovery. Now the problem here is we can't force people to use teamwork, so solo capping will actually become much more difficult - as the classes will be made to work with a team rather than individual skill. With all of these thoughts in my mind, this is why I'd rather tweak what we have right now and only change what we have to.

I'd start the ball rolling with the pyro instakill changes, tweak some things, see what happens and go from there. Constant change, constant updates, constant feedback etc... Changing what we have to. Obviously we can't make everyone happy but people are going to have to live with that. Everyone has different opinions on what annoys them, but it's a game, things are always going to annoy you. If you die to something, you'll get annoyed. If you fail at something, you'll get annoyed. We're just going to have to suck it up and deal with it.

Overall, I don't know what the end game would be, but this is how I would run the changes if I could decide how it goes. We just have to not expect the first change to be perfect. I'd be willing to try it, come here and post on the forums, get feedback, take it to skype, whatever needs to be done. Sometimes, yes, we'd have to deal with a crappy change but we'd just have to be calm about it. As long as reverting is easy to do and we're allowed changes with decent timing, I see no reason to try things - we just have to start and set the bar with how changes will work.