The Nature of Capture the Flag

The following is used as an example to emphasize a design flaw in CTF, not as a specific complaint against certain classes:

A Ninja as it currently stands can capture an enemy flag on your average map in about 20-30 seconds from spawn to cap. This statement in itself makes the Ninja sound like a profoundly unfair and broken class; it makes all of the players fighting in the middle of the map essentially useless extras, since the Ninja can simply skip past the whole battle with 1 (maybe 2) ender pearls. The counter-argument for allowing such a ridiculously powerful strategy to exist is that the Ninja is armor-less and therefore easy to kill; it's your own fault if you fail to kill a ninja-capper.

However, the supposed difficulty of this strategy does not excuse its stupidity (and considering how many times I've seen ninja-capping, I don't think it's really as hard as defenders propose); no one should EVER have the inherent ability to evade the entire enemy team and capture a flag in less than a minute from spawning unless the enemy team is completely ignorant.

Your whole team can be fighting the good fight, beating back the enemy to their spawn, but a single Ninja can ignore this whole battle and take your team's flag anyways; it has happened to me hundreds of times.

The only consistent method to preventing Ninja-capping is to stand next to the flag with 6 buddies. The Dwarf class especially encourages this type of camping. But how is having half of your team stand next to a flag to prevent captures any more fun or creative than having a class that can take a flag in under a minute?

See, the fun part of Capture the Flag, the unique and creative battles, all occur in the body of the map -- that empty space that everyone takes a side route to avoid. And why does everyone avoid the center? Because its easier to just go around the battle, and most maps totally allow this to occur. I used the example of a Ninja and a Dwarf to show the two extremes of this structure: you either rush the flag or camp the flag, or else you fight a useless battle somewhere else on the map that any sensible person would just walk around. This is worse on some maps than others, but I have yet to see a map where the people who fight in the mid-field ever actually leave the mid-field to steal the flag.

 

Firstly, it is only easy for a pyro or heavy to kill a ninja if said ninja willingly engages himself to fight said classes, which, if he's going to capture the flag, he will not do. No class can quite catch up with the speed of a Ninja (save perhaps an Assassin), and their ender pearls make the window for ranged attacks limited, if the Ninja is found at all.

Of course it makes sense to avoid the middle -- that's why everyone does it. My point is that, yes, the objective of the game is to capture the enemy flag. But when the game's objective is disconnected from its functions (team-based PvP), then you've missed the purpose of the game. Avoiding the major battles in order to make it easier to get the flag is very logical, but it makes said players doing all the fighting useless. The purpose of all of these 13 classes presented in the game is to create a variety of unique battles, where players participate in an attempt to get a few team members through the enemy's defenses and to their flag, and then to support these teammates in returning the flag to your base.

Ninja-capping, excessive amounts of side routes in maps, and flag-camping all prevent these dynamics. They instead replace it with a simplistic, repetitive motion of running to the flag, attempting to grab it without getting killed, and then running back to your flag if you didn't die. It's frankly pretty stupid, bland, and again, defeats the whole point of CTF -- to be a team PvP game, not a speedrun.

 

And what does CTF being a team game have anything to do with the problem? CTF is about capturing the flag, and it needs to make that goal something that requires a whole team to acheive -- not one Ninja rushing the flag, not one Dwarf camping their flag, etc. The game needs to grant victory to the team that most effectively fights against the enemy, not the player who found a way to bypass the whole team.

Because that defeats the whole point of CTF being a team game.

And the reason the defense is so clustered is precisely because how stupidly easy it is to capture a flag.

 

Do you actually think I would make this post with 8 minutes of experience? I've played for about 4 years.

My point is that most games of CTF entirely consist of randies, defenders, and cappers. In a game whose objective is to capture the flag, both teams should almost entirely consist of offense/cappers. Because, in reality, what difference is there between offense and defense? The sole objective of defense is to kill the enemy team. However, offense complete this goal just as well, on top of actively attempting the goal that matters: capturing. The only real difference between offense and defense is where the player is standing, and where they are trying to go.

What I'm saying is that a game with an offensive objective should have teams comprised mostly of people actively participating in the objective. The current state of the game, however, encourages people to either go around killing random people you see with no purpose, sit at your flag, or else throw yourself at the enemy base and hope to get out alive. Defense can exist, and needs to technically. But for the most part, the offense should be the defensive line -- just as two warring armies are both fighting to claim the enemy's encampment as well as to keep the enemy from their own. Paths around the focal battle should be limited -- a good map should implicitly funnel players through areas (without going overboard, of course) rather than allowing players to run wild through a gigantic maze. When maps are made to big to make a good defense/offense in, all of the focus pulls back to the two flag rooms, which defeats the point of a map.

 

I know it's a game and map design problem. As I said at the start, ninja-capping was just what i used as an example about the map and game design problem.

And yes, I get that the chances of completely altering the metagame would require a complete redo of maps and classes, which is obviously not going to happen. I'm just here to point out the flaws in the game design.