Standing for what CTF was, ready for NowTM

Most of these stuff have either been answered by a mod on other threads, or don't make sense to add currently (new classes). I can elaborate if you'd like but I feel this thread is pointless as mostly everything has been answered, and it isn't the time to add what's remaining.

 

My older brother knows Java, C basic, C++, html, etc. and is a developer for a company in the northwest. He makes a good salary doing that. A lot more than he would if he took out 15-30 hours a week to work for Brawl (rough time estimate here). Point being, its not as easy as you think to get qualified (and dedicated) devs for a declining server especially because it doesn't pay much and those devs can get jobs elsewhere for a lot more (there's tons of companies who will pay you absurd money to screw up code for them).

Could not agree more with this ^^. I like playing Dwarf and Engineer entirely because they're easy to play, deal massive damage with, and get lots of kills. I do not, on the other hand, like playing Necro because it's sucked ever since it got that terrible rework back in 2013 (props to @Miskey for trying to make it better).

Relatively speaking CTF is very alive compared to MC-WAR, MC-WARZ, HG, and (to an extent) Raid. CTF still gets 50-70 players at peak hours most days and 100+ on Friday. I do agree though, that the active playerbase has declined by at least 100-150 on a daily basis. As someone who hasn't played much CTF lately its entirely because its just not fun to play, which is due to issues with classes, maps, and being burnt out with Minecraft in general.

#2 was going to take forever after Nom resigned.

Where are these complaints you speak of? In the past, people complain after updates get released, not before (with Necro being the big exception).

Tbh I'm kinda surprised you're the staff "very selfish" since (I assume) they applied to be staff to help the server. I mean, moderators are volunteers. They don't have to be doing anything for CTF or Brawl or whatever. They could spend their time on literally anything else and it wouldn't matter because they're not paid employees.

Isn't that the opposite of selfishness?

Interesting that you're telling people to "stop complaing and start doing" (paraphrasing here) when I can only find one thread by you for an idea on how to improve any aspect of the game since you've been on Brawl forums. That was in July 2015 (and it was another version of a fairly popular idea: 40 minute games). Let me put that another way, you have made 105 threads, and only 1 for a server idea. That's less than 1% of your threads that are dedicated to server ideas. I don't just know that by looking at your "created threads". I know that because, a few weeks ago, I went through all 40-something pages of the CTF ideas section and saved five dozen ideas that seemed to have a lot of community support. I can show you the list if you'd like. I have it on Google Docs. It's amazing how many ideas the a community can come up with.

Maybe you've noticed. Maybe you haven't. It's hard to tell because you don't even comment much on server ideas, if you do. To your credit I saw several recent posts in the section but I had to go back 5 more pages in your comment history to find another (and it wasn't even relevant to the idea). For the record I went back another 3(?) pages and found a comment by you on something that was an idea, although it was also related to teams (not bashing you for that. It's incredible how dedicated you are to the team scene). If I can't fine more than a few posts by you in the ideas section, over a period of two years, you probably haven't been very active there.

Hell, you have more CTF J-mod applications (2) than you do idea threads (1).

Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to flame you. All I'm saying is that maybe you should be more appreciative of the people who have taken out a big chunk of their time to look at, evaluate, suggest, and discuss the (over 1,000) ideas for Making CTF Great Again instead of going on a rant about how we should "stop bickering and... [make] a post on how to FIX" various ideas rather than complaining. Take @Xelia_, @Proterozoic, @GalaThundR, @misterslime, and @SoCool21 for example. They've offered so many comments and suggestions in the server ideas section its difficult for me to count. That said, I agree the bowspam, eggspam, and other spam threads are annoying and don't really do anything but antagonize people (I should know, I've posted so many of them) however your post isn't doing anything different. Why?

You're not going to get people to take you seriously when you don't practice what you preach.

Good for you. You're the human Magic 8 ball.

Agreed. That's both an issue with map design and classes.

Summary of what you have said in this thread:

1) CTF needs & should get a coder
2) CTF has dropped in player-count
3) Fix boring/bad classes
4) Add more classes
5) I predict things
6) Capturing should be harder than recovery
7) I am right
8) I keep telling people that I'm right but they just won't see how right I am

I don't get the point of this thread. Staff play CTF too, I'm pretty sure they're aware of its problems as you are. But nothing's going to be done without a consistently active dev, which is a money allocating decision that's largely out of the committee's (or staff's) hands. I don't think anyone seriously disagrees with you either (yes, you are right). I should spend more time looking at and providing feedback for ideas instead of meme'ing. Capturing should definitely be harder than recovery, since its a game that revolves around capturing the flag. And classes certainly need reworks before any new stuff gets added (although that's a separate conversation).

But yeah, don't really see the point of the thread since its mostly a rehash of already-discussed stuff (as @CoasterHamza said). Also, why is this in Teams section instead of CTF Discussion where more people will be likely to read it?

What enemies?

 

The CTF committee are focusing on exactly what they can do. Unfortunately getting a new developer for CTF isn't in the hands of the CTF moderators, it lies instead with the admins and more likely putty himself. They are trying their best to keep the gamemode relevant and fun for the players - it's why they've recently allowed necro in matches, come up with ideas for a changed elf, revamped the mmr. There are clearly more examples than this I could talk about as well. The problem with all of this is that it's limited to whether or not you have an active coder, and whether or not the admins approve the ideas being sent to them. There's only so much you can do, and despite trying very hard to push things through fast, I've come to realise going that fast only really ends up with bad and poorly tested ideas getting through, or worse others being totally forgotten about. It's all very well saying we need things to happen now, but in reality unless things happen soon, mistakes get made.

@Admiral_Munson put this very well. It's all very well you saying that we need a developer asap, but I think the time frames of asap between the two parties here are very different. Brawl is looking on a timeframe closer to months rather than days due to all of the reasons admiral has already pointed out. Not to mention with the way CTF is coded, the dev that does want to take that on then has to learn how the code works, which will further waste time. I wouldn't get your hopes up about getting a developer any time soon, even with a thread like this.

I agree that classes shouldn't just be nerfed. No one wants to hop on and learn to play a class that's extremely difficult to grasp as a new player. It's really difficult. Even with the classes you can now hop on and learn to play quickly, say archer or soldier, the regulars of the gamemode will outclass you to the point where you're still going to be at a massive disadvantage. Better to have an accessible gamemode than one only based on skill. With that said, what you're saying is wrong. With that said, the staff DO read what happens on the forums. They might not always respond on the thread itself (or indeed much at all) but what you do say doesn't go to waste. They use the information and community feel in ways to improve the gamemode in the future. This really goes back to one of the questions I asked on my survey, being which staff member do you feel is doing the best job. It was about what they were seen to be doing, not what they truly were. Some of those staff members do a lot of work behind the scenes, and were voted lower because nobody saw that. You might be fed up of not getting a response, and maybe that's where the staff could improve, but that doesn't mean that they don't listen to what you have to say. Also with the whole coder thing it means even if your ideas were accepted it would still have a time delay until they could get it implemented.

How does this attitude get us anywhere? When people believe a place will die, they'll give up on it. It's a defeatist attitude and a self reinforcing cycle. As long as CTF has players that care about it, and it's still running then it isn't dead @5ive_Head. You might have also given up on it, but a lot of others haven't and still enjoy this gamemode for what it is. The gamemode clearly isn't as popular as it once was, both on mcpvp and on brawl. Part of that is the lack of a developer, part of that is the nerfs, part of that is people just moving on. That means that you have to cater and try to grab a new audience, and brawl is not yet doing that. What it doesn't mean, is that CTF is dead. It's still the second most popular gamemode on brawl, it still has a dedicated playerbase, albeit smaller than before, and it's still got the hope. Changing something like this is not going to happen overnight (which by your impatient attitude earlier in this post I can see that's what you want to happen) but it can be done, and I'd rather hope and work towards that goal rather than just giving up, because that's all your statement is going to do for the debate.

I'm going to quote @Ducksfan101 here and say "we don't need new classes, fix the ones we already have". I wouldn't go quite as far as agreeing that we never need new classes, but why are we focusing on those when we could fix the classes we already have so that they're more fun and exciting to play. Nobody would really want to run around with dwarf (not that you could anyway) getting minor hits outside of the flagroom, which partially explains why so few use the thing in a match. Changing something like that to be more mobile but still fit with the theme would be effectively a new class by reworking the old one. You can do a whole lot with a rework instead of focusing your time on brand new rubbish, especially when some of the code might already be there.

This is just plain wrong. The mods are working, they're not being selfish or lazy about it. Just the other day they introduced necro to matches. Sure it's not a massive change but it's one they can do without a coder. They're organising events (look at @Miskey) and they're trying to keep the game fun for everyone. There is a real difference between not wanting to help and not being able to in some regards, and to say these mods aren't trying really is borderline insulting to them.

Constructive criticism will always be more useful than the alternative. Sometimes you don't need to make potentially great ideas even better because you either don't need to, or end up making it worse in the process. Finding a developer doesn't mean brawl will accept them. As for the rest of that, same as above.

Not everyone is like you @5ive_Head. Some people like stats (*cough flying_drone). People like to farm go all out, and capturing one difficult flag doesn't mean anything more than capturing an easy one. Making it difficult to capture the flag would slow down the pace of the game instead of speeding it up. With that said yes offense is too easy at the moment. The nerf of pyro did ultimately change the damage output in the flagroom, combined with dwarf and other classes it has meant offense gets out and captures much more easily. Probably also partly explains the number of archers, they haven't been nerfed yet (although soon to be). Either buff the weakened classes or weaken the offensive classes that have stayed the same. It's the only real way to get to a stage where this is more balanced.

I'd like to see how you correlate numbers of players on offense to the difficulty of offense. If anything surely new players would want to play offensive more often because they're more likely to capture? Sure it might stop pro players from doing it because they find it boring, but that doesn't apply to new players that have never joined the server before. I don't see why they would find it immediately boring to cap, and it certainly won't be as easy for them as it is for you.

This caters to you and not everyone in the community. Sure, I think capturing is a bit too easy right now, but equally this doesn't mean it should be this hard to cap. We need to go forwards, not backwards.

This is exactly what I'm talking about. You want the good ol' times back for CTF. You want classes to be broken, you want the maps to be back to where it was, flag capturing to be fantastic and games to take forever. We moved on from that for a reason- because people didn't enjoy it as much and were complaining (as pretty much you have been doing in this thread) about it. They were changed from what they were because people were getting fed up. Going backwards is not the solution, it will just bring back the problems we had before. I'm not saying elements of the old game shouldn't brough back, but going the whole hog won't get us anywhere. You feel comfortable playing there, some of our regulars feel comfortable playing there, but new players won't. New players never got used to that, they know CTF as what it is currently, and like it or not, they're the ones we have to retain to keep the gamemode going. Make progress, don't backtrack.

The staff aren't ignoring you. I'm not ignoring you. The players reading this thread aren't ignoring you. You're warning them about something everyone knows could happen. The reason they're not taking you seriously is because they've either given up, or they see your message and think it's either irrelevant or pointless information. I tend to go with the latter, mainly because everything you have just said has been said about a thousand times already, including from myself, but also from a great many others in this community. The very fact you say that you're ranting is the point here. You yourself say that we need to bring up ideas rather than complaining about them, yet you're doing exactly that here. As for the some of the very common ideas you have brought up here, well surely can't you find a way to 1-up them. Instead of telling the staff to find a developer, why don't you help! This thread is a cry for attention from the staff more than it is a way to suggest and actually get things done. If you want this gamemode to survive, get stuck in, don't waste time complaining about not being listened to.

Something we can agree on, changes do take time. The problem is you want things to happen in an impossibly short timeframe.

 

1. Do you think they aren't doing this? They can't just say: YOU ARE NOW OUR DEVELOPER. They've made a thread on (I think) the spigot site telling the developers they are searching for people to do it on brawl. Though the replies I've seen mostly said they wouldn't earn enough, and that is currently not fixable for Brawl.

2. ...Yeah, ofcourse they'd do that with a dev. Duh. Right before we had no dev anymore new necro came out, what do you think they were planning?

3. No, no, no. This idea I do not agree with, it would become a lot harder to make everything balanced, and like you said before, you want that too! I would say make ctf balanced to start with, get new maps, etc. But don't get new classes.

Making it harder btw doesn't make it so more people join, you might enjoy it but if new people join and they try to capture (which is already hard for them with this kind of difficulty) they would just log off because it would be impossible for them. This would just make it so ctf will lose even more players.

 

Then go find a dev

 

lots of words

 

Can I just point out something

Kit brawl gets regular updates, has only 2 mods and a community that is probably an eighth the size of ctf or even less
And here we are blessed with several mods in the ctf committee with a community equally large in popularity and yet updates come along once every holiday

You'd think that even small updates should be possible with so many players

Also I think you put this unintentionally in the wrong section, don't see anything related to teams here

 

Mods aren't devs.

 

I don't think you quite got my meaning. It's not that they don't want to find a coder, it's the fact they're not able to find one. @Admiral_Munson has already stated the reasons as to why finding a coder for a server like brawl can be difficult, and even if one is willing, they may not fit the requirements needed to adequately perform the job. Chickenputty has put out several notices for brawl wanting a coder, and I'm sure you can talk to the staff about where that has been done. If they haven't accepted somebody, it's because they don't fit the requirements or there aren't applicants. The way CTF is coded means that they'd have to learn the code once they are put into that position. It's not just as simple as "get a coder, fix the class".

Nom is irrelevant because he no longer works for brawl. Anything he does do is of his own accord and he's not being paid for it. If you want to ask him about that then by all means go for it, it seems like a complicated situation. Nevertheless, no he does not work for brawl. They haven't done much other than bug fixing because brawl's developers are busy with other gamemodes and we don't have a CTF coder. Simple really.

Yes, I did completely understand what you're saying, I think it's you who misunderstand. A capfarmer doesn't care how hard it is to cap, they just want as many caps as possible. Making it more difficult to capfarm just makes it harder for them to have high numbers. This goes back to what I was saying, maybe you find a more difficult offense fun, but other people have different points of view, and different perceptions of changes.

No, I've not been going to direct insults to back up an argument. My argument has consisted of:
-Change has been slow because we don't have a developer
-Getting a developer isn't as easy as just hiring, they have to fill the requirements and then learn the CTF code. They also have to be willing to work for the small paycheck brawl will provide
-The staff are trying to do what they can without a coder to keep the game interesting. That means small bufixes, mmr changes. It's what we can do and it's what they're doing
-Just because staff don't literally respond to your posts doesn't mean they don't listen. I and several other people listen and offer criticism on posts as well
-Nerfing isn't always the correct solution, I agree. With that said going back to the old CTF isn't right either because we moved on for a reason. The community changed, people wanted different things. We progressed, and going back to the way it was before would not be a sensible plan.
and more as well as the potentially insulting arguments that:

-Maybe your impatience and the lack of staff response to your suggestions has coloured your opinion slightly of how the mods are performing. Additionally the defeatist attitude may have played some part, and has stemmed from this particular view
-The changes you are suggesting wouldn't be quite as welcome in the current community as you would like to believe. I get you're trying to help everyone, but you're missing some people out, and that's not what we want (in addition to the fact we would be backtracking and not progressing).

If you still find this argument insulting, this isn't meant offensively. I say what I see, and right now what I see is someone with good intentions making a thread about a topic that everyone already knows about, and little to no new content. There's a time and place to review something (like say, with a survey where we can get an accurate representation of these feelings) but this really brings little to the debate (whilst being potentially insulting to the mods, you are saying they are lazy after all).

https://www.brawl.com/threads/66603/
https://www.brawl.com/threads/65380/
https://www.brawl.com/threads/65458/
Just a couple of the things that have been going on in the past couple months. If the staff didn't care, these wouldn't exist. Furthermore, if the players didn't care, they wouldn't take the time to respond to your thread. Maybe we're not fixing CTF in the right way, but we're not killing it because we don't care. Another example of the defeatist attitude I'm trying to show you.

Because the game was played by youtubers, was brand new and exciting. It's not a new gamemode, it's been around for over half a decade. Yes, it needs updating, and no it probably won't reach it's former glory. With a coder, some updates and some advertising we could up the numbers, but it'll never reach 2000 again. You're living in the past if you think that's possible. As for the last statement, we all knows these issues exist. The real question is what can be done about them without a coder. The answer to that, as you already know is very little, and even fewer if you're not a high ranked staff member. Another question for you, even if we were to get a coder, and advertise, how do we pay for that? Brawl might be financially stable, but it's not making all that much money.

@L0GIQ true, real question is can the other devs on brawl understand the CTF code?

 

No, but nevertheless kits updates required a dev

Im pretty sure a decent dev can get the hang of ctf code pretty quickly, if they code for the rest of the game modes understanding simple instructions on what to code shouldn't be too difficult as 5ive mentioned.

 

Kit brawl is a simpler gamemode and the smaller crowd means the devs have less people to please; it's just easier to work on.

 

CTF would do a lot better if it was bought by a much larger Minecraft server (i.e. a server the size of Hypixel or Mineplex). Brawl just doesn't have the resources to make CTF great again, especially since its not a big moneymaker after the EULA.

This would be on McPVP?

Neither am I lol.

Sure.

I wasn't talking about the stuff you posted on McPVP. I was saying that in the last 2 years you have made more J-mod apps than idea threads, which is true.

It's a big club

Ok /shrug

@THECOMMANDER5643's new class thread where the large majority of people voted for a free recovery class. Most recent discussion of what you're talking about.

 

Just tacking onto this, that's not to say that it couldn't be a moneymaker. It's still the second most popular server on brawl. It's still got the code there that drew thousands of players at any one time, and with the right products and subsequent investment, it could still be very profitable. We're in a rut, but there are definitely options.

 

This is why i went into a corner and cried for a few days when i learned that brawl was going to buy CTF (and not a bigger server)

 

I understand you want more players. I do too.

However, it's not just Brawl that's dying.
Minecraft itself is dying.

The new players we get will not stay. It's no longer a game meant for everyone but now geared towards young players. There are many reasons for this, of which I will list two.
1. There are new, more advanced games out there such as No Man's Sky, Overwatch, etc. that would and have knocked Minecraft out of the spotlight.
2. It is now widely known as a children's game and not one that is talked about in anything past elementary school, really.
They will not stay because they would be frustrated with constant deaths, not being able to use premium classes (which is why there are more people on Fridays), the experienced players being too good, etc. etc. A server like Hypixel is more geared for them, or SMPs.
If they do stay, they are most likely children or young teenagers who would not spend money on a server.

On the topic of Hypixel, that is dying too. I don't know the exact numbers, but everything on there is definitely dying (Speed UHC being one of them ).

When people on other servers ask what "CTF" is and why I talk about it so much, I tell them what it is, and specifically mention "if you're new to the gamemode, it's not fun at all". All but one (out of like 10) have agreed, and that one person was amazing at pvp.

My suggestion is to change what the dedicated community wants, not what would get new players. The changes that would balance the game get those playing to stay, and might get a handful of new players.

Your proposal of slowing down the rate of captures would turn it more into a grind game of who can kill more people. It's already the case on maps such as Dragon Valley I and Clocktower. If it were to happen I would just suggest making flag rooms more enclosed.

Okay, I'm going to assume I'm a decent player. 4 games to capture once against a decent defence? Are you kidding me? I wouldn't cap at all, and I'm sure so will many others, therefore reducing the amount of offensive players even more.

Accomplishing the name of the game should be harder, but not as hard as you want it as new players who cannot do such a thing without support (and we all know nobody supports randies including me) will not play the game. There are so many better places to play team deathmatch.

All of this is assuming we do get a dev, of course.

 

Bookmarking for later, will reply when I get time.

 

lmao you talk about attracting a player base but then go on to stay to say "make it harder to capture the flag". What difference does it make if it's shorter or longer? The more difficult it is for the player, the less likely they will return.