Why do the MMR in CTF ban necro and engineer?

You forgot about dwarf.

 

Or since there would be so many issues and things to watch out for just not allow it in matches? Whew

 

Well, they were both considered overpowered for match sized games in the past, and they just have never been removed tbh. Personally I think necro is currently completely fine for matches, and a class like engineer actually has massive potential in a match setting. I'd actually like to no classes have mandatory bans and leave it up to the discretion of the reps on a match to match basis.

Having to watch for more stuff isn't really an issue at all. It's not like watching for rule breaks at the current moment is at all difficult, and for stuff with necro and engineer specifically it's fairly obvious when it's is being abused.

 

Right, if there was only one issue I would understand, but the problem is that there are multiple, multiple issues when it comes to it. Why try to force limit a class with so many problems?

 

If so much of engineer has to be restricted to allow fun / fair gameplay, why would we even still use the class? Not to mention, how on earth would you categorize what is "flag camping" with a turret? You could set up a turret 30 blocks from a flag carrier and it would still do work, or you could set it up at the beginning of a hallway with the flag carrier at the end.

Personally, I think the classes were banned due to the fact that they were the most unavoidable and self sustaining out of all the classes. What I mean is that these classes can be nearly unavoidable while keeping their own health.

• Engineer's turret already has a large radius, along with the engineer being able to direct the arrows. The engineer also has the regeneration cake, which, if they use correctly along with their turret and knockback pick, can be the sole item necessary to keep an engineer's health full.
• Necro's minions are able to act freely on their own while roaming, dealing out damage to unsuspecting players while the necro can go and hide (of course this isn't the best option for the necro, but it's possible and players will do it)
• And dwarf is just a whole other basket case. It's damn near impossible to dodge a dwarf, and if you stick a medic on it, you're ****ed.

Now you may ask, well what about archer? Archer has huge range and can headshot! Well the archer isn't protected by a regeneration cake and a turret, and the archer can't rapid fire arrows at the same speed as a turret. You can easily target an archer, and that takes away the problem. An archer can't clone itself and have its clone fire arrows while it hides in a corner. An archer doesn't have a snowballing effect with the end result being something near unkillable.

The point is that these classes all force the opposite side to target them because they can't avoid them, and this is annoying. You have to target the engineer, or else your entire offense will be taking steaks of damage. You have to target the necro so the mobs don't keep hitting you around the flagroom, or pissing off your offensive ninjas. You have to target the dwarf at the flag post, because honestly, you don't really stand a chance of capping unless you kill it.

This all takes away from the basic gameplay, which is capturing the flag. Hell, it's called Capture the Flag for a reason, and that reason is because the main objective in the game should be capturing the flag. Official matches should not be holy ****ing christ we need to target the engineer to get to the flagroom in one piece or someone kill the ****ing dwarf because we literally can't even get out of their flagroom or where the **** is the necro hiding. These all take away from the basic gameplay, and this is very, very frustrating to deal with.

Are other classes unfun to play against? Yes! However, most of them are avoidable, and if they aren't avoidable, they are easily distracted / killed. You can distract an archer very easily with ninja, but it takes more than a ninja to kill an engineer, and you'd have my eternal praise if you could constantly assassinate a veteran dwarf with a medic. Pyro can be hell to play against if your a soldier, but if you stick a ninja or buffed heavy on it, you can easily get a steal.

A major factor of why these classes are so hard to kill is also their self-sustainability.

Engineer can easily keep its distance away from possible damage with a knockback pick and turret, the only true danger being a headshot, but an engineer can easily hide while staying relatively close to its turret. Not to mention the regeneration cake, which can keep an engineer sustained without them even needing to use a steak. Chemist also has a very high healthpool which players find annoying to deal with, but a chemist doesn't have an auto firing and auto lockon turret to hide behind.

Dwarf alone can be worn down after many attempts, but a defense with a dwarf will make its top priority to keep the dwarf alive since it deals the most damage and knockback. Dwarf's only weakness is assassin, which can be used on some maps, and completely useless on others. A good dwarf will know when to block, and a good defense would kill the assassin before it even reached the flagroom.

Necro is kind of the odd-one-out here, but necro still has its knockback pickaxe and relatively high armor, meaning that it can hold its own in a fight. Necro can also hide behind its mobs or hide in them to protect themselves.

Not only are these classes hard to avoid and have high sustainability, they are able to do massive amounts of damage to multiple classes in a large range.

Now I'm going to talk about an Economics term I learned in my AP Micro Econ class. The term is opportunity cost.
Opportunity cost, for those who do not know, is essentially the second best option that is given up when you make a decision. Now you may ask, Kevin, what the hell does this have to do with a block game? Trust me it makes sense.

Simply put, a good defensive mage can be hell for an offense. However, a mage cannot be everywhere at once, and this is where opportunity cost comes into play. A mage has 3 routes to defend, and he can only defend one at a time. Let's say out of route A, B, and C, he chooses route A to guard. Now maybe he's lucky or already saw an offensive player coming down route A, but by choosing A, his opportunity cost was guarding route B and C, leaving both open for offense to sneak by.

However, and engineer does not have as large an opportunity cost as a mage might. Engineer can set a turret down at the right place and boom. All thee routes or two of the three routes are covered by the turret's range, and the engineer can simply sit back and relax. (Yes I know archer can also secure 3 routes, however archer does not have rapid fire turret, and an archer can be killed easily) This same concept also applies to Necro, making it hell to play against.

Now your restrictions might help alleviate some of the more pressing concerns of these banned classes, but that doesn't solve the fact that these classes simply take away too much from Capturing the Flag by being to good and protecting the flag. Are you planning on nerfing their abilities so they aren't so annoying to play against? Maybe necro now might slip into a match here or there, but I wouldn't expect it often simply out of that banning all three is tradition now, and you of all people should know that CTFers do not like change.

Generally speaking, these classes are the most un-fun to play against due to their unavoidability, self sustainability, and lower opportunity costs that other classes and they take away from what the major gameplay should be, capturing the flag.

 

Arrow spam (manual), probable spawn camping could get more out of hand than @Proterozoic, medic camping it, flag carrier camping it, tunnels, bypassing archer by teleporting past it, telecaps, needing to send 3 players just to kill one -_-, did I mention tunnels? , defense couldn't handle the pressure of an offense coming at them 3x faster and since they can tele past archer it would mean that the full offense would be there, tunnels, tunnels, and as Kev explains above ^.

 

Arrow spam from engineer should not be an issue. If you get spawned camped in a match you're doing something wrong since you hall full communication between all of your players. Archer can just camp the exit teleporter and get free kills then go break it. Telecaps and 2x1 tunnel abuse are easy to watch for. If a defense lets and engineer set up, then they deserve to get players teleported into their flag.

Tbh noone is practiced against engineer in a match setting. If teams started to practice with/around it we'd learn how to counter all of these things.

 

If we haven't found a viable and easily repeatable way of dealing with engineers in casual CTF, what chance to we have against them in competitive CTF which is just a harder version of casual CTF?

 

I find shutting down an engineer in casual ctf incredibly easy personally. I don't think it's all that difficult, especially in a team setting where the engineer cannot get a lot of support due to match sizes.

 

Maybe it's just me then, because I find shutting down engineers very annoying. However, it should be noted that the engineers we would be facing in team matches would be at a completely different skill level than those in casual CTF.

Also, although the engineer may not have as much support as it might in casual CTF, you also don't have a ton of disposable manpower to focus the engineer. Just how many players would you be willing to shift to target the engineer in an 8v8? If you send 2 (which would be the very least), you already are wasting 1/4 of your manpower.

Personally speaking, I don't think necro would be downright terrible in matches, but it would need some testing.

I can agree with your point that an engineer's effectiveness can definitely be increased or decreased with the map. However, you are forgetting about the biggest choke point of all on every CTF map. The flagroom. Most, if not all, offense eventually leads to the flagroom, so the closer you put your turret to the flagroom, the greater probability of having its radius overlap the other team's offensive routes. Put your turret close enough to the flagroom, and you already created a natural chokepoint where most if not all offense will eventually converge, running into your turret.

Now there are definitely some maps where this may not hold as true, and as you guard one entrance more you give up more of the other entrance, but generally speaking this concept would stay constant, no matter the map, since there is no map with two completely separated tunnels as the only way to get to the flagroom.

 

They both don't really require any real skill to play since they aren't pvp classes.

 

What's the point of having necro?

 

I think it became a part of mmr because there was no team that didn't ban those 2 classes, so it just became easier to put it in the mmr. The teams that wanted to play with them could just state it in the rules, this makes it easier for the majority.

 

Simply won't happen with Engineer or Dwarf. Necro probably since the rework, but you could easily cause a **** storm with Engineer and tele-capping. It's clear that it would be too op, and pretty sure 70%-90% of the community would be pretty mad about having to deal with engi's. I seriously don't think @BrandinoB will take it lighty in an actual CTF match having engi.

 

Hello I don't read through many posts from others and whether this has been mentioned or not but i think maybe because how engineer and necro were it wasn't really the players playing and the turret/zombies playing in place of that player. Kinda like putting a CPU in a game of smash or some automated thing in anything competitive. Automated opponents in games I believe are mostly just for practice and making things a tad more difficult to prepare for the games that are taken record of. I wouldn't mind having either classes in matches but i also feel like it would just be wrong having something automated in something that is recorded through stats and stuff.