CTF Survey Results

BEFORE READING: BE WARNED THIS POST IS EXTREMELY LONG

Before I go into any results, I'd like to take the opportunity to say thank you to everyone who took the time to fill the survey. I would have really liked to do it personally to everyone, but unfortunately there are 2 problems with that. The first is that some people decided to humour me with some frankly fantastic fake names, so I can't be sure it's them. The second is that there are 129 of you, and it would take me several hours just to do it. I think the best way round this is to thank you all collectively on here. Putting together all the responses into this one survey will hopefully give the CTF committee a LOT of useful information as to what kind of updates we want in the near future. Obviously, some of these ideas won't be implemented in the near future, as we don't even have a dedicated coder on board at the moment. This is of course a problem for brawl, which means (I hope) that they are working tirelessly already to acquire one. With all of that said, let's get into the survey itself!

The results of the survey surprised me in some ways, and was exactly as expected in others. None of the responses sent were really unknown to me. The major grievances have definitely been vocally expressed before, but of course nothing has been done about them. That is of course what this survey is about: it's about collecting the opinions of as many people as possible to get a better insight into what the community really wants to change. Given we had those 129 people (not including myself, I decided to remain unbiased and not fill in my own form!), I think we've got more than enough support to properly give the staff an idea about what they should be working on rather than whatever they are currently. This was done on a community basis, and of course the CTF moderators are also part of that community and so they had the ability to express their own opinion too. The only difference is of course those views are only as good as anyone else's. The questions weren't perfect and there are of course flaws with each. I'll try and explain those as I go through. There are also questions that I just couldn't add in because they didn't apply to the entire population I was trying to appeal to, like questions on the team system for an example. If you'd like, I can come up with a survey designed on the team system. I'm only doing that of course if you're willing to actually respond to it!

Finally, before I get into the questions themselves, in answer to several people who've asked me whether or not I'll do another one of these surveys. The answer to this depends on what the CTF committee decide to do. If they decide not to do a survey or 2, then of course I'll step in. If they decide on the other hand to begin doing surveys regular to gauge community opinion then of course there's no need for me to keep making them, they'll have already gotten those opinions. So without further ado, let's get into the actual questions!

Spoiler: Question 1: How Long have you been playing CTF?

The results for this question will not come as a surprise to you at all:

The first major thing to note is that it's a sweeping curve. There are more people that have been playing for longer. This is definitely an "ageing population" which undoubtedly brings some problems. Older players tend to have different priorities to newer players. Over the past few years, competitive CTF and regular CTF have grown in disparity. The CTF competitive teams have become better and better over the years whilst regular players have stayed very much the same, new players come and then quite a few leave. It also somewhat makes sense that more old players answered the survey than the new. A lot of the new players might not have even realised the forums exist as of yet, and so few of them would have even seen the survey thread, let alone responded to it. In comparison, I spread the survey through discord and skype groups, a community dominated by those in teams, and those containing older players. On top of that, it's clear they've been playing the game for so long, they care about it. Of course there are going to be more older players responding to the survey, not only do they have a higher chance of wanting to respond to the survey, but they also have a better a chance of knowing about it's existence at all!

However, this does predict a worrying trend. With fewer and fewer new players, eventually after the older players begin to leave the server will slowly lose popularity. It's something that's clearly already happening. Over the last few years we've seen a slow decline in the playerbase. It's still perfectly viable and a popular gamemode, but not nearly as important as it was in the days of 2012 and 2013, with 100 player games. This means that one of the priorities to keep CTF alive and kicking is to begin to advertise it, update it and make it appealing to a new generation of players. The challenge comes in also not changing it so much it doesn't feel like the same game to the veterans. The veterans are needed right now to keep the gamemode alive, whereas the new players are needed to keep it alive for the future. Striking a balance between the 2 groups is needed for both short and long term survivability. This isn't just something the survey is pointing out, it's also something that the players responding to the survey understand:
" I'd improve the advertisement of the server, kind of what it needs!"

" Focus on advertisements and buyable cosmetics to gather income and new players."
" Attract new players/increase playerbase."

" Add a tutorial, so that new players can get a feel on the basics of the game (it also prevents toxic regulars scaring people off because they don't restore steak as medic)"
" I think the only major thing that CTF needs is something to attract new players. With playing CTF for quite a while, I see that most new players just don't know what to do. Perhaps, if its possible, a video could be done explaining the basic core elements of the game and how to play "

These are just a few quotes about new players. I only did a quick search through the comments received in general and I expect there'd be quite a few more if I were to look harder. The fact is, everyone seems to be in consensus to begin advertising the gamemode more, and also making it much more friendly for new players.

There's a number of ways we can do this. For one, simply advertising the gamemode more. Tutorials (I believe Miskey said he was considering adding one, looks like people agree with him), Wiki articles, the guide section and the forums could all lend a hand in making this game more accessible to new players, and therefore more popular. It's not like the gamemode isn't still popular after all of these years, it's just lost some of the shine. Taking this opportunity, speaking about my job in the Wiki, I'm personally trying my best to update the CTF section in particular with useful information about how to play the game, information on the classes, the teams and maps. I'm intending to add some basic guides for each class when I have a spare moment. However, I'm sure there are more ideas that I could add which I haven't thought about yet so do PM me with any ideas you think could make the wiki better and more accessible to everyone. With all of that said, there are some other key issues later down in this survey that also hinder the arrival of new players and this can make it very difficult to retain players.

CLASSES

Spoiler: Questions 2 and 3: What do you consider to be the most Overpowered class and why?

Again, the results for this section aren't really going to be that surprising to anyone. There are some strange details, but overall there's little dispute:


As you can see, Archer by far and away wins the title as the most powerful class. Almost double the number of votes compared to any other class. There are quite a few reasons I think for this. Firstly it's instakill is well known for being incredibly annoying when you're trying to capture, which is a central theme in "capture the flag". I think we do have to put the figure into context in that because it's a free class there are obviously going to be more archers than say assassins. That means you're much more likely to be headshot than you are to be assassinated because there are a lot more of them. When you experience an annoying ability more, of course you're going to think that it's overpowered, because it happens to you constantly! Of course the votes here clearly can't be explained by simply having more archers than everything else and so archer must also clearly be overpowered. This in theory would make it a prime candidate for a rework (although that isn't actually quite the case when you look at that question but more on that later). People responding to the survey seem to agree with that notion with their responses to question 3, and provide some insight as to why they don't like it:
" Headshots have the power to change any game, used on recovery, offense, and just to kill*****."
" Headshots / bowspam"

" hmm... idk...lemme think... wait... I think I got it! H E A D S H O T S"

There are of course many more responses along the same lines to this, but I couldn't add them in as they were less tactfully worded (yes that means they swore). The problem clearly lies in the instakill headshot mechanic, meaning it has to be fixed. This could mean making it harder to pull off, or removing it entirely in favour of another mechanic. There are multiple benefits and drawbacks to this but it's a conversation for another day. I think it's about time a proper discussion about archer was made rather than constant complaints or random reworks. The time has come where the community needs to decide what they actually want to do with it (other than making it die in a hole for sniping them too much of course).

Dwarf was also highly voted for in this question, which comes as no surprise due to the high sharpness you can achieve, as well as the knockback, fire aspect and immunity to potions. It's pretty useless outside the flagroom but inside the thing is a nightmare to deal with. That knockback can make it very difficult to steal a flag and ninjas can be one shot by the sword. This again is a large candidate for a potential rework (again, see below for more information on that). In response to question 3, people seem to have a pretty clear idea what the problem with dwarf is:
"The maximum sharpness level"

"It's that it has the ability to charge up to level 11, where it can one-to-two hit anything in it's path."

"Because its practically a buffed heavy on steroids without speed"


It's the sword that seems to be the major issue, as it can do a massive amount of damage even with only a single hit. If we are going to rework this, something should be focused on changing this given it's the thing players seem to be annoyed about (for the record I really love the analogy in that third quote). This is going to be a tricky rework, given it has to keep the same role, but with totally changed abilities.


Another strong contender is heavy. This is a big problem, given heavy is supposed to be the only class considered truly balanced. We should be seeing heavy in the middle, not as either too powerful or too weak. The fact it's considered too powerful might in part be due to a certain well known critical hit bug which allowed heavy to dominate the meta for some time. The thing is, there was a soft nerf introduced to patch this problem quite a while ago, and people still think of heavy as one of the most overpowered classes. I expect this is a product of buffed heavy, which allows the class to deal an insane amount of damage without taking much in return. The most reliable counter to this at the moment being instakills from assassin and archer. Sure you can send a mage or pyro to try they could easily be still crit out. This means that whatever fix we do apply to these instakill classes (most importantly archer given people think it's overpowered) it has to remain viable as a reliable counter to heavy. Dwarf is also notable for being able to outdamage a heavy when it's sword is properly charged.

Realistically, the major problem with heavy isn't that it's overpowered. Like I've already said, it is usually used as the main example of balance. If we look at it from that perspective, the other classes appear underpowered. Relatively, the fact that a class used as a model for balance is considered too powerful means that a lot of other classes are weaker than they should be. The only classes seen as more powerful than heavy at the moment can reliably kill them in the right setting (archer in long range, dwarf with sharp 10) and so in line with this thinking, maybe instead of nerfing heavy, we should be considering buffing the other classes. This might explain in part why archers are so far ahead in polls, because you see a lot more archers than you ever do dwarves. In my mind, this suggests that the committee should be looking into buffing other classes considered underpowered rather than applying nerfs to everything. People tend to prefer having more power than less, and nerfing means you lose power. With that said, there are certain players that responded to the survey that believed nerfing heavy might be a good idea:
" Crits and the ability to nearly 2 shot every low amoured class"

" Takes forever to kill, and deals a lot of damage while being tanky."
" i feel like its just a better version of pyro at this point. the mentality i see a lot of people use is "why play ______ when heavy does anything that class can do, but does it better". to be short, way too much damage and armor to be balanced."
Those quotes suggest to me that maybe the community would feel a heavy nerf would be appropriate (I really like the justification in the third quote there, definitely suggests balancing of some kind is necessary).

All in all, the results for this section weren't surprising, but really interesting. Over 30% considered archer to be that annoying to give it that top spot. It really puts that headshot mechanic into perspective. As we'll soon see however, power doesn't always equal the necessity to rework. Dwarf, not surprising in the slightest, but maybe more would have considered choosing the class over some others. Heavy, those buffs really do play into how powerful the class is seen. I know I haven't really talked about those less popular groups, but they do feature, no class had no votes (even though I expect the necro ones are clearly trolls. Well you chose it so it's going in the figures, you wasted your vote ). Just because they weren't seen as the most overpowered didn't however necessarily make them underpowered, which was the next section on my survey.

Spoiler: Questions 4 and 5: What do you consider to be the most Underpowered class and why?

Unsurprisingly, the classes most voted for in this section completely differed from the first. Unlike the last however, there wasn't a clear class choice for the most underpowered. It was split three ways instead. No other classes were given a major mention, only a few votes here and there:


As you can see, medic, necro and elf were the three main classes that people rallied behind. Interestingly necro is no longer the clear favourite for the weakest class, meaning at least something good as come out of the rework.

The class most voted for in this category was Elf. This isn't really surprising, given the recent rework to necro and the "interesting" abilities elf possesses. The major problem with Elf is that it's skill cap is huge. You have to be skilled fighting in F5 to fully gain the benefits of the projectile shield. Moreover, it's not the bulkiest class, meaning although you can deal decent damage, you'll take high damage in return. The abilities themselves aren't actually that bad. You can stop fires, blow enemies (or yourself) away, trap them in an earthquake and deal a decent amount of true damage. However, none of the abilities really sync well with each other or make up a decent class on their own. You have to have a lot of skill to use those abilities right, and that means for the vast majority, they wouldn't learn it because of the dedication involved. You have to spend time to learn it, and many would argue it's not even great when you master it. Another major issue with it is in addition to having limited synchronicity, the abilities also cover such a wide range of uses, that elf lacks direction. The community seemed to have picked up on this as well:


" Elf needs to become more focused on either supporting offense or helping defense. It's somewhat good at a lot of things, but it's weak armor and situational damage make if very difficult to use effectively unless you're one of the few who are godly at it."

"it has many jobs but it can't really do them exceptionally well. Everything it does another class can do better."

" Elf doesn't really fit a role, and it's not very strong in combat."

" Its abilities have been nerfed excessively... for some reason. Necro is a close second, however I don't see elf getting killstreaks like I do necro nowadays. Another reason, I don't really understand elf's purpose in a match setting; it seems like the community wanted a counter to pyro, mage, and archer at the time, and elf was the "solution" billhelm came up with. I say "solution" because elf doesn't really solve any of the problems it was designed for. I've heard it's a midfield class, but with mage and archer on the field, elf is somewhat obsolete. Some people use it for capping, but at this point the wind element is just a waste of arrows, and its low armor makes it vulnerable to basically every other class."



There are more responses along the same lines. I particularly like the last quote there for summing up the problems with elf. It's got the abilities, just not strong enough and the staff have given them a nerf which they didn't need through increasing the amount of necessary arrows to use certain abilities. The fact it lacks direction means that whilst the abilities aren't terrible (except water element. Really? just putting out fires and a bit of resistance at full charge?) but throwing them all into one class doesn't help. Elf mains can do bits of every role decently but can't really focus themselves into a proper niche, meaning that other classes outmatch elf in their respective roles. If we're going to solve the problem by calling elf a jack of all traits, then at least buffing a few of their abilities (or armour, that could also work in a pinch) could make it better than it currently is. A proper rework (which again might not be a priority right now, see the rework question for what I'm talking about) would need to have a direction to focus on. One of the ways for elf to be really useful is to give it a role in which it performs better than any other class. Once that's done, people will see the value in the class, and it won't be considered underpowered.


Medic? Underpowered? I would have never guessed! All jokes aside, medic was pretty much guaranteed to end up as one of the major classes selected on this topic. I don't think anyone had any doubt. The reason is of course the lack of sharpness 1 on the sword. Honestly, I don't understand why it was removed. When it was removed, it made medic frankly useless in combat. It's the only class that doesn't guarantee a three hit kill on a ninja. That tells you just how terrible it's sword really is. The class hits like a wet paper bag, and whilst it has a decent health pool, it's damage output is so low almost everything beats it in a 1v1. It's another situation where you need to have a high skill cap to use the thing correctly in a battle. The only difference is, unlike elf you don't have mobility abilities or unique shields. Your ability revolves around healing others so they can fight for you. That has 2 effects on the class: it's unable to defend itself, and it makes the class relatively boring to play because you want to be able to fight yourself, not rely on everyone else to do it for you. Like it or not, the sharpness actually made medic somewhat viable in PVP, and taking that out meant that it became underpowered in combat. Medics don't really get seen on regular CTF as a result, and whilst they are on team matches they usually end up getting destroyed by a ninja (unless of course they're a god at PVP, but that's not an excuse for medic being so bad in a 1v1 situation). The CTF community seems to agree that the sword needs to regain it's sharpness 1:

" Although it is a support class medic cannot fend for itself, its sword being too weak"

" Lowest DMG output"
" it's hard to defend against another class while playing medic"

" No more sharpness. Crits are busted so medics die pretty easy." (crits got fixed, medics just weak to whoever put this
" #MakeMedicGreatAgain #Sharpness1"

I had so many of these about medic sharpness I thought 5 quotes would be appropriate. One even though medic was so bad that critical hits were still broken, which tells you that something is probably wrong with the class. That bug has been fixed, it's just medic is that terrible. Thankfully we've been recently a movement to try change this, with a sharpness 1 vote and a recent medic proposal and hopefully this will be worked on as soon as possible.

Now we move onto necro. The class has recently reworked and yet still appears as one of the most underpowered classes. Unfortunately it seems the rework really hasn't helped it all that much, what with the zombies, skeletons and blazes still not being massively useful and fairly easy to kill for a regular player. It's somewhat better in that the mobs aren't totally useless, they can at least get some semi decent power-ups. Unfortunately they're still pretty terrible, not to mention the necro has to rack up an almost impossible 15 killstreak to even get the highest tier. Given the necro usually dies long before this, you just don't see it happening. There are better classes for straight up fighting and the reward for gathering up a streak as necro doesn't make it worth playing. On top of that, it sits in a similar kind of niche as engineer, which is by all accounts much better than it. All of this has just lead to necro being completely sidelined as an inferior class in all situations. What necro really needs is a proper rework that doesn't just fix the zombies, but also give it a unique niche. It needs that to really stand out from the crowd, and unfortunately at the moment it's just, well forgotten. This has been noticed in the community as well:


" Mobs are still pushovers to tanky classes like chemist and heavy."
" Though the mobs have improved, they can easily be run around or avoided."
" Necro doesn't do crap for a team. They have no cc, their zombies have a crappy ai, and they have no sustain and get stronger by snowballing. They are decently tanky, but without anything special. Why use Necro when you can use soldier or heavy."


The third one there totally hits the nail on the head; why use necro when it's inferior to other classes that can perform all the other roles better than it can. What really needs to happen is for necro to be given a rework that gives the zombies decent AI, they're not as much of a pushover and actually allow the necro to have a niche. I think the idea is that a necro is supposed to be gang an enemy to effectively kill it. Right now the AI means even with all the zombies attacking 1 player at once you're unlikely to get more than a couple hits off with them if you're lucky. It's just terrible, and it's clear that the recent rework hasn't done a good enough job. That means it needs further work so that rework functions as it should have, or go in a completely new direction.


The results in general don't look too surprising. None of the other classes really got any support. The only one you could really talk about is assassin, not in the sense that it's truly underpowered but without assassinate you're not going to be killing all that much. Mage had a few votes, but I guess that's purely down to the high skill cap rather than anything else. With these three classes it's clear some buffing is needed of some variety, but like the question for it, this created some interesting conflicts with the question I asked on reworks (as you'll see in the next section). Unlike the overpowered question, there wasn't any logic to the relative power of these classes, it just looked like they didn't have the right tools to be threatening in a PVP situation.

Spoiler: Questions 5 and 6: What Class do you consider to be most in need of a rework and why?

The response to this question both surprised me in some ways, and didn't in others. Looking at the results of the over and underpowered class questions, I expected one of either elf or archer to take the most votes, and surprisingly I was wrong, by quite a way actually:

As you can see, it was actually dwarf that took the top spot by quite a way. Unsurprisingly archer and assassin lead the next two, but not by anywhere near as much as I honestly expected. Medic was there too but even lower. Amazingly, both elf and necro got fewer votes than heavy, a class designed to be the epitome of balance. All in all, a very surprising result.

It's not really surprising that dwarf would take a high spot, though of course I wasn't expecting following the results already seen. I've already explained why dwarf is overpowered, which is definitely a major factor in this, with more community responses like:


"Because Dwarf has way too much power"
"Dwarf is BROKEN. Any1 who says otherwise is un nub, punk, or liar."


Unfortunately whilst it explains why it should be reworked, it doesn't really explain why people voted for it over archer when they consider archer to be more overpowered. I think the answer to this is that dwarf is only useful in the flagroom and has a very narrow usage as a result. People can't use dwarves outside the flagroom (unless you're trying to troll with a dwarf capture) because the slowness makes them so immobile they're fairly useless. In a flagroom they're going to be useful in defending because the enemy has to come to them and not the other way around. In this situation dwarves become a nightmare to deal with due to that insane damage output. In other situations you don't even have to worry as they become either easy targets for archers or you can simply avoid them even by walking away slowly. The fact is, dwarf needs a rework over archer because:


"I think that Dwarf is the most boring class in the game. This is the reason why it needs a rework."

"I think Dwarf has been a class that not many people play often, especially since not allowed in matches either. Whenever someone does play Dwarf, sometimes people get annoyed if it gets too powerful during a regular game; yet, in most cases, going assassin a couple of times usually works in killing the Dwarf. I feel like the class could be changed so that it has a better fit with the game currently "


Let's be real, nobody wants to stand in a flagroom waiting for an enemy to come to you. You want to go to the action. It doesn't fit with the mobile nature of CTF and it's crazily overpowered in only 1 particular place. Reworking dwarf opens so many new opportunities for offensive and defensive support whilst removing one of the most overpowered classes in the correct situation. Dwarf doesn't just need a rework to balance it in gameplay, it needs a rework to change it's entire focus. It needs to become more mobile and involved in the entirety of a CTF game rather than just in 1 particular area. Changing an entire niche is going to need an entire rework with a total shift in focus, and no wonder people want it to be prioritised when it doesn't even fit with the regular day to day CTF gameplay. It would also explain why it's chosen over archer, because archer at the very least is mobile and can impact in multiple areas and fit in with that style of gameplay.


Speaking of archer, it was the second choice to be reworked. Again not exactly surprising given it was considered to be so overpowered. The real question here is why it wasn't nearly as much as dwarf. I think in part it has to be considered it fits into CTF gameplay much better. The community responses I got from this one all cite a very specific mechanic in archer, which you'll be able to instantly guess:


"headshots"
"instakill headshot is pretty dumb"
"Headshots are way to op, allowing for easy recovs/kills. *ahem* Chaos " (someone likes me, don't they?)


I'd say on balance, people don't like the instakill headshot mechanic. Whether or not this means like want instakills removed entirely is a different matter but they still feel that the instakill headshot mechanic as it is right now is worth looking into at a high priority. To be honest, that's not really surprising given how many people an archer can kill in a small period of time (take a look at BrandinoB sometime and that's more than enough evidence). Definitely making the instakill more difficult is necessary if the instakill is going to be kept, or potentially even making a snipe survivable is the way forward in this situation. There are a bunch of different ways you could take this potential result, but given this post is already a ridiculous length, I'll save that discussion for another day and another thread. Short range archer ability doesn't seem to feature, although bowspam was cited as a problem earlier. A bowspam debate definitely should be raised again in a thread given the committee didn't specify this in the latest team rules. Nevertheless this wasn't the major grievance raised.

The third most popular choice, assassin, again really isn't that much of a surprise. Assassin has been somewhat ping based for quite some time and with 1.9 looming it's needing a proper rework. With the instakill, the assassin has a good chance to kill the enemy player, but without it the class is almost useless. Difficult to consider over or underpowered due to these features, it didn't feature on the previous two questions, but definitely makes it's appearance here. The main grievance the community seemed to bring up about assassin was:

" With a looming 1.9 update blocking will be removed. As giving every class a shield is far from a viable option, assassin will need changes."
" It'll be necessary to rework assassin in order to update the servers past 1.8. Brawl can't stay in an outdated version forever."

"I actually consider both assassin and archer to be the most in need of a rework, not because they are instakills, but because of their ability to dominate a game very easily."

It's either the ability to dominate a game or equally as likely the necessity to update to 1.9. CTF can't stay in 1.8 forever, and the longer it stays behind, the less popular it will become as people move on to the newer and newer minecraft versions. Assassin is the one class holding all of this back due to the blocking mechanic being completely changed in 1.9, making it overpowered in the game. Unfortunately changing the blocking mechanic means you need another way to balance the instakill, otherwise assassin needs to be reworked entirely. On top of that you have to make assassin fun to play, which is equally difficult when you could yourself be one shot. A major is going to be need for assassin to accommodate the newer minecraft versions, and it's no wonder people want it to be one of the priorities so that CTF can move into the newer minecraft versions.


Other than this, a lot of the classes had relatively equal numbers of votes for varying reasons. Pyro and Soldier received the fewest votes, probably because they were least in need of reworking since they have already had recent successful fixes. With all of that said, 2 particular quotes not related to the above classes really caught my eye:


" Chemist is extremely underpowered by itself alone, but very overpowered in a team sense. A nerf to it's very op team play is found by Miskey on the forums somewhere, but I think to make chemist back to becoming a better class and being an offensive class again, like you never see anymore really, is to give it it's fire resistance back instead of only 30 seconds, and maybe expanding it's health pool to 7 heal pots? While reducing it's damage pots to around 8, because it's ridiculous how easy a chemist can kill a heavy. Chemist needs to get back to it's old state and revert to being a capping/support flag carrier class. Right now, it's basically just a buff and leave class, not really used on offense or defense."

" i was going to say dwarf, and i do stand by that, but as someone who plays matches only mostly, i'm going with chemist. i think chocolate_bar33 brought it up before that chemist should be more focused with support, but not as much as medic and he offered ideas I definitely agree with. changes that would make people who do play matches and people who dont play matches happy I'd think."


We've already had so many chemist nerfs, and yet we're still getting problems with it. Both seem to be suggesting a return to the old chemist ideal of being a support class rather than being a jack of all traits, and to be honest a class mastering potions would fit a useful support role really well. It's not a priority by any means, but I think these 2 quotes really open the future possibility of changing the chemist class role for the better with some decent justification for why they think this. Other than all of that, the only other interesting thing of note is that engineer is no longer as massively hated as it once was. It's obviously still had it's fair share of "engineer is OP" comments, but nothing crazy like in the MCPVP era, which suggests it's been nerfed to the point where it's tolerable for the majority of the community.

I can imagine you guys by now are cursing at me for making this so long, but all of this needs to be said for the committee to truly grasp what the community want. Not only that, but you deserve to understand the community position given you helped contribute to the survey. I'd advise a breather before the next section!



THE CTF COMMITTEE

Spoiler: The CTF Committee Part 1

The next section I asked the community about was the CTF committee. The first question I asked was based on whether you thought the committee in general was doing a good job. The results were mixed to say the least:

The first thing to note is that yeah, the community isn't doing badly at all. The majority chose higher scores than lower, which is definitely a good sign. It means that the committee is doing decently for where it is. It's when you look at the mean score it becomes more mixed. The mean score out of 5 people chose was ~3.3. Working that out as a percentage is a solid 66% approval rating, which isn't so good. By no means is it a terrible score, but it suggests that a lot more could be done to improve. This has to be taken with a pinch of salt of course, as nobody is perfect and the community tend to view those in a position of authority badly. With that said, this figure could definitely be improved upon, and with that many respondents in the sample, the likelihood is that it could be a fairly accurate view of the population as a whole.


One of the major points the community brought up through the survey was:
" A lot of mods aren't active, they sometimes don't give us any information about what's happening. Sometimes they are alright though."

" Could use more updates staff could be more helpful"

" I answered 3 because it's right in the middle. I have no freaking clue what the CTF Cominttee does. If they did almost nothing, I'm pretty sure I'd see the same effect as if they've almost reworked CTF behind the scenes. The map wave was great, finally got that pushed out, albeit way late. There's too little communication for me to know what you guys are doing and how effective you are at it."

Lack of communication has always really been a sticking point with brawl in general, and it's not exactly a surprise that people are beginning to get quite frustrated about it. I myself have at times been frustrated when I've asked about a particular update, plans and other matters only to be told that they either aren't allowed or it's a committee secret. This is a bit annoying after several weeks of being told the same thing, and it honestly does give off the impression the community are either being fobbed off, or the mods just aren't doing anything in general. I'm sure the mods are doing a large amount of work behind the scenes to make sure CTF runs smoothly. The problem with this is of course the community don't actually see anything behind the scenes and so don't actually know of these particular activities. It even gets to the stage where so little activity is openly shared with the community that people begin to distrust the moderators and their activities because they don't or can't share them with the regular playerbase. I wish I could give some more information myself, but unfortunately wiki members are counted as staff in some ways and not in others, this being one of them. It would staff information is only available to certain staff, let alone the entire community in general! Transparency is a key part of having the playerbase trust you and I'd urge the committee to give us more updates on what's going on, as well as when they're going to be inactive and being more open with the playerbase in general. This should be something spread brawl wide as well, as I'm sure CTF is not the only gamemode with players frustrated because of this.

Relating to this point, another glaring issue is:
" They are not really giving ctf any positive work or impact"
" Honestly I don't see many positive changes to the game by the CTF committee?"
" Because you dont hear anything about their work"

There of course more examples, but this a clear sign nobody can see the work the committee are doing. This relates to activity in part. Some mods are definitely more active in the committee than others (which we'll get to very soon) but on the whole even if they are active we don't really get to see them making much of an impact in the game. The update posts we've been given are few and far between, giving the impression not much is being done. I'm sure that a lot of mods have other jobs to do behind the scenes as well as having their own social lives, but the fact is the work they do behind the scenes never gets talked about or even mentioned in the job description and so we have no idea that's part of the job, let alone whether they're doing it or not! It just gives the impression that the committee are just lazy, which may in some cases be partially true and other false because they're working without anyone noticing. The same applies even in game if they're using vanish. They might ban a player, not unvanish and nobody can tell if that was the work of the committee or just a regular autoban. Again, transparency is a key element to changing this, as if the community is told what's going on, and updated more regularly then of course they're going to see more of the work that the committee actually does (or doesn't do). Thankfully this has already begun to change with the recent team system update, as I have spoken to Miskey and he has said that more is to come. I hope that this the start to a more communicative committee system as this would help alleviate a lot of stress between the 2 groups.


Finally another big and related problem raised by the survey:
" I've played CTF for quite sometime and the community I never really talked with until recently. The community and committee are really nice people from what I can tell."

" wait we have a committee for this game?"

"Very rarely listen to the community (as well as other staff members outside the committee), and show bias to people who they like and dislike. As well as this, many are not very active."

People don't feel like the committee actually to community input either. This system goes both ways, and without interaction, it feels not only as if the community aren't getting proper updates, but their voices aren't being heard. To a certain extent in the second quote there I can understand the need for sarcasm, because it sometimes really does feel like the committee don't exist. When the community don't feel like they're being listened to, it can be incredibly frustrating. If the committee really is listening to the community then there's little evidence to back that up, and when they're not, it can lead to unpopular decisions being made. Either way, it makes sense to both listen to the community, and make sure that people can see you're interacting with them. Again, this could be fixed by being more interactive with the community and make sure people understand you're acknowledging you've received those ideas and why those are good and bad. Sure the bad ideas don't have to be taken into consideration but at least make it known that the committee has recognised that it's an option and why it's not viable. The committee need to be openly seen working for them to be perceived as doing a good (or bad) job. The overarching theme of the committee's performance can be summed up in:
" The CTF Committee are doing a good job. Could do some improvement though."


There are also a number of compliments the committee received as well:
" I don't have a strong opinion on this, as I've only been somewhat involved in this community for so long, but it seems like they're genuinely interested in improving CTF"
" I think overall they doing a good job."
" The committee is open to suggestions and criticism and they want to hear from the players."
" Everything seems smooth."
and my personal favourite:
" We haven't gone to s*** yet"

Spoiler: The CTF committee Part 2

The survey also asked which moderator was best at their job. This wasn't aimed as a popularity contest, but more to see the moderator best able to keep the community happy. They weren't necessarily doing the most but definitely seen to be doing the most. A moderator can do a load of different jobs behind the scenes but never get seen by the players fulfilling that role and so never get the credit for it. The results of this were very interesting:

As you can see, gamren won by quite a large margin. To be precise, he managed to amass more votes that the next 2 most popular moderators combined. The graph above shows only the most popular 3 as I'm sure nobody would like being relatively unpopular and being singled out on a graph like this, even if it wasn't aimed as a popularity contest. Nevertheless, these are the most popular answers and so everyone else fewer votes than the ones I have shown.

So the first question to ask about this question is, well, why gamren managed to get so many votes. I think the reason has to do with gamren simply being easier to communicate with than the rest of the committee. You get to see him performing his role when he's around, which is what this question was all about. He also engages in the community often. He's the head of the match spotlight weekly group, a community project designed to give information about the team system, analysis and the like. Through that system he's also provided the community with a tournament, something which whilst the committee do provide, it isn't on a regular basis. He's also open to conversation with people, and will try to be as reasonable within his own limits. Obviously he can't tell us everything, but he does as much as possible to make sure we're kept in the loop, giving us updates and generally trying to be both useful and approachable. Some of the other moderators in the committee do this, but none go quite to the level gamren has. I'll take the opportunity here to say that you're doing a great job gam, and please keep doing it because clearly the community love it!


The next most popular mod was b0squet. This has to be down to CTF matches in general. B0s referees matches, a lot. He was by far the moderator with the most reffed matches last year, and I wouldn't be surprised if he was on course to rank highly this year too. He isn't the most talkative committee member, but he does put himself out with useful opinions and helping out as a referee. One of the reasons I think he wasn't voted for as much as gamren is probably that his persona tends to make him less approachable, which is really important when the community wants to have someone really personable to talk to and work things out with. He's a busy guy, but he makes time for the community and clearly people believe that he's doing a good job. He should definitely be proud he's got so much support from them.


Miskey was the third most popular, but honestly given how close it was this could have easily been a toss-up between the two. Miskey has been working hard recently to try and make some new changes to the team system, including some clarification of some of the major rules and the prospect of having necro being unbanned (for the better or worse). On top of this, much like b0squet, he's been putting time into being a referee for a lot of matches recently. He's also likely a current contender for the most matches refereed this year. Again, same problem as b0squet, he might not have quite as many votes as gamren due to approachability, as he doesn't interact with the community quite as much (although still a lot). With that said, he too got many more votes than the average and so he should be proud.


None of the other parties are really seen to be as active in the committee at the moment, and so it makes sense that they were voted for less. This really has to be changed for both the vote proportions to be evened out and for the committee to be seen doing a better job (part of a problem I've already discussed).


Finally, as part of this section I also asked the community how the committee could improve in any way. This was only a short question, and so the respondents were only able to say something they found to be a high priority to improve. There were quite a few things which came up a number of times, the first being:
"Most of them are inactive"

"Just generally more activity from all of them"
"More active mods??? I barely see Xelia Nohox Zombie or Kev in game and doesn't really feel like they do much at all. They need to get better ideas too!!!"
"Understanding they have lives, but if they could become more active and also create more events and stuff that'll be great"


Now obviously I've gone into excruciating detail about this, and given the already ridiculous length of this post, I'm not going to get into it again. Basically, not every moderator is inactive but seen to be because they don't interact with the community. Change this, and people think you will be active and useful to the gamemode!

Second major issue the respondents of this question addressed:
"More interaction"
"Yes. They should listen to people!"
"More community involvement (hence survey)"
"I dont know if the commitee is actually looking in the ideas section, i know alot there is pretty bad, but sometimes i think a good idea pops up every now and again."
"Be more open towards the community, comment on the actual change ideas (which happens way too rarely sadly)"

"Ask the mains of the classes what potential reworks could be like."
"Let the community be more involved in decision making. #Democracy"

Honestly at this point there are so many I had to include 7. There were SO MANY comments devoted purely to community interactions it was crazy. It's clearly a massive issue with the system that so many members of the community don't feel they're involved in the system. Again, I've already brought this up in this post anyway but it's fairly obvious that it's absolutely key that the staff take more time in interacting with the community so that they feel like their voices are being heard. This extends to potential reworks, changes in rules (both regular and team), suggestions, and just in general. The community clearly don't feel like this is happening right now, or so many people wouldn't have actually pointed this out.

So a few particular comments focused on something which hasn't been touched on yet and I think it's worth delving into them for a bit:


"Be more responsive in situations and recruit more EU ctf mods"
"They're doing a good job but i think they could do with some more maps and not ones that look good, ones that are good for gameplay like blackout instead of all these fancy new maps that are unbalanced and picked because they look aesthetically pleasing. Also there is hardly any mods on the server most days so i think that could be changed with some more EU mods."

"I'm missing a CTF SMod and at least more EU Mods. We only have Nohox who is very active and doing a great job but I think we need more CTF EU mods who are online at the time eu ppl playing ctf. Back the days I can remember we had like more than 3 EU mods on ctf. We should go back to that."

"need more mods from gmt"


EU moderators cropped up quite a few times. Now there aren't many of them. Xelia_ is EU, but unfortunately she's not the most active player in game and so doesn't really get to banning a lot of hackers, or interacting as much with the EU CTF community. That means right now we don't really have an EU CTF moderator that can really moderate in those hours. Sure TheZombieKat can cover some of the earlier ones and Eastern American mods can cover those later, but there's a big deficit during the middle where hackers only have to contend with the autoban system (great system for catching hackers as we all know). More importantly there aren't any moderators there to listen to the community playing in that particular window of time. Now obviously, CTF has the largest moderator base of all the servers. However, quite a few of them are inactive in game, and like it or not the community needs someone to fill in that position. Right now we're relying on Xelia_ to really be the active moderator in-game, and to be honest she's not being able to do that right now. That means we need someone else to moderate in this time window and so I'd like to take the opportunity here to formally request the CTF moderator applications be reopened specifically for EU moderators. I'd also like to say to all EU players we need someone to formally step up who's competent and apply for the position, because we need a reliable moderator to interact with during this window. Without it, the gamemode is simply being left unmoderated with players being ignored at this time of the day.


Those are the three main grievances that came out of the final question in this section about the moderators. With all of that said, there were a number of quotes that really praised the committee too:

"Nope, I think the committee is lovely!"
"I don't think the committee can improve in any way because they are already doing a very good job"
"The committee seems perfectly fine the way it is."

So the committee should definitely be proud they're still doing a good job, despite all of these issues.

I'm imagining at this point everyone's crying at just how long this is, but we've still got a lot to go yet. I suggest you have a break reading at this point, and come back because there's a lot more information to come yet!




MAPS

Spoiler: Maps (Yes, only 1 spoiler for this one!)

If you decided to do the sensible thing and take a break, well done for making it this far. If you're pushing through the whole thing at once, I'm really damn impressed. The first question I asked in this section was whether or not the community found the latest map rotation to be good. The results are in:

As you can see, this is less positive than the last. The average score out of 5 was 2.9. This could be a LOT better, and there are multiple reasons as to why I think the score was so low. Clearly a lot of work needs to be done to improve the overall rating the maps receive. When I asked how would you improve the map rotation, the first major response I got was:


"The maps have very poor gameplay which need to be improved"
"I'd say there weren't any blatantly terrible maps, but all the maps have been quite annoying to recover on. Maybe that's just me."
"Don't accept trash maps"
"I said it earlier. They're too focused on aetheistics and less on gameplay which is bad"


Now of course some of those quotes tackled the matter more eloquently than others, but the 4th sums up the problem quite well: that the aesthetics of a map are prioritised over the gameplay. We really shouldn't blame the builders for this problem given it's brawl itself that prioritises aesthetics over gameplay. This means that beautiful maps are allowed into rotation, but unfortunately suck when it comes to actually playing it. The problem is of course, people prefer good maps rather than pretty ones (although of course they'd rather have both) and so they're going to become either bored or annoyed really quickly if the maps are good to play on. As we've seen recently, these maps might be pretty, but aren't fun. Simple solution to this of course is either build maps that are both pretty and good for gameplay, or simply prioritise the gameplay over the aesthetics for a map. A map can be made pretty quite easily, but it's hard to make a pretty map into one that's good for gameplay and so it should definitely be a focus.


Another major problem raised by the community was:
"Less "reskins" that are basically exactly the same. . ."
"reduce the amount of variations of one particular map by either removing the reworks or originals based by popular vote. (i assume they could already be doing that?)"
"Some maps that didn't need a rework got one and ended up having worse gameplay than the original."


Reworks and reskins. Now some maps are already pretty good for gameplay, but after a while they get boring. This leads to a rework/reskin from some of the builders which is a really nice way of updating them and keeping them fun to play. The problem of course comes when these original maps are left in alongside the originals, and the a new map wave is mainly made up of these reworks. Everyone likes reworks in moderation, but of course there are too many of these reworks happening. Pretty sure the community wants some fresh new maps to change up gameplay. Of course this leads to a compound problem:

"remove unholy faith v. but on a more serious note there is LOADS of engi restriction on a lot of the new maps. there needs to be restriction to a degree but it is overdone on some maps imo"
"martian outpost (ripoff discovery)"

If the new map is of course terrible for gameplay, they're not gonna like it either. At this point I'll also shout out removing some of the old maps as they're also getting boring:


"Remove OC original"
"Remove Castle V" (PLEASE)


Some of them have been around for too long, and they need to go. Finally, another major issue with the maps of course were:


"No possibility of a repeat map/rework in a match."
"More new maps instead of remakes of maps that are constantly played. Take old editions out if you do add new versions in."
"Make sure the same 3 maps aren't played over and over again."


Let's be real, back to back maps are incredibly annoying. This has been raised in several different discussions and given the severe length of this thread already adding any more detail would bore someone to death. This needs to be fixed as lack of variety in a match is boring so people leave. At least make it so reworks don't appear after the original, it's becoming a nuisance. That's about it for the maps section (breathe a sigh of relief, it's much shorter than the other sections!) There was a few quotes also saying to reform the /y and /n system, and make further use of it. I couldn't agree more, we'd get more of an idea how community opinion changes and we can get more feedback as to how the map rotation is liked, rather than me having to put up a big survey like this. More information as to how people are liking the maps could be published too, I'd find that interesting.

IMPROVING CTF IN 1 WAY

Spoiler: Improving CTF in 1 way (yes only 1 spoiler for this too!)

So, to the very last question I asked on this survey, if you could improve CTF in 1 way, what would it be? I'm not going to go into detail for anything I've already talked about, because at this point people would begin to keel over. I will however mention some of the things that haven't already been mentioned in more depth. The following featured that I've already talked about:
-Map rotation
-Staff interaction
-making the server more attractive to new players
-nerfing/buffing certain classes
-tutorial (yes miskey, they want you to do it)

However, 2 things caught my eye
"Promoting teams more to players on regular CTF in order to build up the competitive aspect further"
"Being able to gift credits, I have all the classes and no idea what to do with these credits."


Teams are not really advertised in the system at the moment, other than a couple of in-game messages. Despite this, they're a major reason why so many veterans continue to play the gamemode. They're a major way for people to continue playing the gamemode, and therefore also be returning customers for brawl. In this case, it makes sense to try and promote the system to retain a customer base, not to mention make it more fun for those playing the gamemode. Right now the team system is still stagnating somewhat, and could really use the additional new players into the system.

As for credit gifting, I don't even know why this hasn't been done yet. Most of us don't even need the credits we earn as we've already acquired all the classes. Gifting them to other makes sense, and because we can open up new classes for them, they'd be more likely to stay in the community because they've managed to get something not everyone has. We don't need them either, so we have nothing to lose. There are of course downsides, they don't earn them themselves, but I'm sure useful restrictions can be placed around this to make sure everyone ends up happy. This should be a proper discussion in another thread.
Oh and:
"MAKE THE FLAGS WOOL AGAIN IT WAS LIT"
"remove engineer, have the wool back and nerf heavy."

"#BringBackWool"
"wool"
BRING BACK WOOL!

Thank you SO much to everyone who's taken the time to respond to the survey. Again, I'm hoping all of this information is really useful for the staff to take CTF in the direction it needs to be taken in. I also thank you for reading all that (if you have read it all of course). I get that a lot of you will find taking all this in a bit like reading the terms and conditions, and so given how long all of this is, I will (for once) include a legitimate tl;dr section so you don't have to listen to me go on about all the problems at length. I'd really love to do something like this again in the future!

Spoiler: tl;dr

Age
-More older veterans than new players

-advertise the server to get new players involved

-CTF tutorial

Classes

-Archer voted most overpowered. Runners up dwarf and heavy

-Elf voted most underpowered. Runners up medic and necro

-Dwarf voted most in need of a rework. Runners up archer and assassin

Moderators

-Committee voted just over average in how well they're performing (3.3/5)

- Committee thought to be inactive at times

-Lack of interaction with community noted

-Lack of updates also noted

-gamren voted best moderator at job. Runners up b0squet and Miskey

-Activity and interaction need to improve individually as well as collaboratively

-Another EU CTF moderator wanted by community

Maps

-2.9/5 scored for map rotation satisfaction

-Too many reworks, not enough new maps

-Too many similar back to back maps in matches

-People want maps with better gameplay

-Noted reform of the /y /n map feedback system

Changing CTF in 1 way

-All the above

-Advertising the CTF team system more

-Credit Gifting

-WOOL

Spoiler: Funny/amusing responses

What is your IGN?

"Ur nan"
"JORIS_SUCK"

"not lordchaos"

Why did you select this class as the most overpowered?
"SHARPNESS XI, KNOCKBACK III, FIRE ASPECT II SWORD WITH POISON, DAMAGE POTION, HEADSHOT, ASSASSINATE, AND DAMAGE IMMUNITY"
"Because it is"
"hmm... idk...lemme think... wait... I think I got it! H E A D S H O T S"
"Brandino on blackout."

"cuz joris is so noobie" (someone really didn't like poor joris in this survey)
"Spam, cough Slayway cough"
"f****** s***"

Why did you select this class as the most underpowered?

"#MakeMedicGreatAgain #Sharpness1"
"Idk xD"
"Because it is"
"Because it's elf"
"Ecks dee" (ok which member of BK wrote this)
"low armor, low damage, low arrows, too slow arrow regen... need I go on?"
"duuuh? shooting cobweb!!"
"is that even a question? it cant do anything since the nerf."
"hmm i wonder why"
"Do you need to ask?" (yes I do)
"Derp it's Necro"
"It's UTTERLY useless."

Why did you select this class as most in need of a rework?
"Headshots are way to op, allowing for easy recovs/kills. *ahem* Chaos " (love you)
"Because it needs it"
"Because it's annoying" (well, at least it's honest)
"emerald armour"
"answer above." (yours or the one directly above this in the list?)
"BC I AM MEDIC MAIN PLS SAVE THE GAME FOR ME"
"D E R P It's Mage"
"Engineer..." (...is bad?)

Why do you feel the Committee is doing a good/bad job?
"Dot."
"I just do. " (I do too. )
"they bsest"
"xdd why do u even ask"
"Don't care." (good to know)
"Who's the CTF committee? Do they know where I live?" (yes)
"Because it's ctf"
"I have never fought a single team game."
"Isn't it obvious"
"ITS AWESOM_E"
"wait we have a committee for this game?"
"We haven't gone to s*** yet"
"+1"
Do you feel that the committee could improve in any way? If so, how?

" gamren's a homie" (agreed)
" Nop"
" It can improve by improving"
" That's favouritism"
" wtf, germans all the way bby" (#MoreEUmods #MakeCTFgreatagain)
" necro in matches needs to die. Dream be need gone."
" he is hot and best staff member,others suck except gamren" (this one's talking about you TheZombieKat. Please hit up [anonymous] if you feel like it)

Are there any ways in which the map rotation could be improved?

" Here's an easy one: REMOVE UNHOLY FAITH V. Why someone reworked that awful map is beyond me"
" Remove all maps" (let's play on build instead?)
" Slums." (greatest map ever created)
" bring back ship battle" (NO. LET IT DIE)
" Don't accept trash maps"
" yeah let's put joris as a builder :^)"
" Eh"
" Can we just ban void, please?" (yes)


If there was one way you could improve CTF, what would it be and why?

" unban me !1!1!11!" (no)
" I would make more of these polls and stop nerfing the **** out of things. Also I would reject every map made by sportyman56" (agreed)
" give agge42 owner" (can't tell who wrote this one)
" It's dead [insert emojis here]"
" Tbh I'd burn it to the ground and start over."
" #FreeiToggie #Freereignofgoats #FreeByz #FreeSTD #FreeMyAlts #Demoteb0s #stopbanningeveryonebetterthanjames #Temzideisacheating***" (no)
" Get rid of it o/"
" Remove it XD"
" less toxic but that can't happen c: <33"
" Add guns :3 nah jk CTF is dank" (banned for even suggesting this.)
" [insert ok emoji]"
" Make Engi Gr8 again"
" Banning certain people from certain classes"
" ban chaos 4 aimbot!1!11!!!..." (man don't tell anyone)
" #BringBackWool"
" Community because salt."
" remove lionafp"
" Less bias, more kill*****"
" hi"
" Flagshooting???? Spawnshooting???? - n o t h a n k y o u <3 <3"
" Prank others" (prank I know that's yours)
" If it was a perfect world, then my food wouldn't be to salty."
" Remove Castle V cause that map is s***"
" MAKE THE FLAGS WOOL AGAIN IT WAS LIT" (had to end it with a wool quote)