Player Base

I agree with you on this completely. It's daunting for new players to try and ease into a server when it feels like everyone else is ahead of them in terms of experience and materials. I'm assuming this is why Party tends to have a lot of players; there's no kits/classes in the game that gives certain individuals advantages over others, and besides the occasional perks players can redeem from the shop using coins (although the Party shop hasn't worked in awhile), the only thing needed to succeed in Party is a burning desire to win. It's apparent that Brawl's ability to attract newcomers hasn't exactly been above par recently, so hearing other's input on this thread might have the chance to change this. I'm hopeful that together the server can solve this.

 

Disagree, you said the difference between skill level is very high when currently, it's at the lowest it has been ever imo.

 

A lot of big servers like Badlion/Kohi have leagues/rankings for all the players. The more wins you have, the higher up a league you will play in. This means randees can play with eachother and pros can play with themselves. They also have practice servers too where everybody can play. This idea is great for a large player base, but the only problem is CTF too small. I would suggest a system similar to this but instead, you are not completely seperated. Some sort automation and coding will make it so pros can play against randees, but it is always preferred for randees to play against eachother.

 

You literally stated the issue in this idea yet you continued with the idea. The community will split, you will have smaller games which are more boring and will lead to players quitting.

 

It will split, but the games will be the same size. There is not a complete seperation between the experienced players and noobs. It's just preferred that the noobies would play against eachother. This means that noobs can still play against pros when all the other servers are full or there are not any other options.

 

I don't think there is an exact solution for this. Eventually players will dominate the gamemode of a server as regulars and the only people that have a fair chance at competing are people that come from PVP servers in the case of CTF. The other obvious issue is that the PC platform of minecraft is slowly dying (other platforms such as Pocket Edition, on the other hand, are growing, making Minecraft overall still grow in popularity). That being said, the only way that randees will be more dedicated into the game is if classes were more noob friendly (hence the emphasis on buffing more than nerfing). A class that's way more destructive and effective from the start(old pyro) is more fun to pickup and play and get better at than playing something which requires an excessive amount of skill from what it originally was (chemist)

I'd care to disagree to that statement. In the past, it was harder to differentiate randees between regulars, in a time when they were more or less the same thing (more or less during the MCPVP era of 2012-2014), when the popular classes like ninja and pyro werent reworked.

 

Everyone is a noob. In order to stop being a noob, you need to a, practice and b, read the instructions. It's not that hard. I died constantly, and once I figured out what to do, I got better.

 

You are inevitably pointing out the elephant in the room, but yes, one of the major problems CTF has to deal with is the veteran playerbase.

Same problem is happening on HG, and it's one of the big reasons why the staff are thinking it would be a good idea to remove soup, to try and lower the skill gap. Same thing applies here, the regular players on CTF are now so much higher skilled than new players that it's almost impossible to compete without months of practise (and constant dying). The new players for the most part can't keep up.

It's so high if it does happen, it's usually down to luck or support rather than actual skill or learning something. As a result they never manage to learn, and can't repeat what they accidentally pulled off, which must be even more frustrating.

yeah, and it wouldn't solve any skill gap problems

Making the classes more accessible and playable for new players so they at least stand a chance. Be willing to help them out if they ask a question. Don't act like a 4 year old towards them and make them want to leave even more. It's one of the few things we can do.

Part of what I said about being nice to them (futile attempt but hey, I tried).

ROTATING ROSTERS DO NOT HELP THIS

Players, knowledge of the existence of the team scene

 

The skill level between new players and oldies is very high, a lot higher than it was back in 2012.

 

Remember when CTF had a book that explained key components to playing(i.e. blocking, steaking, etc)? I never understood why they got rid of that.. it didn't seem to do any harm to have it. Plenty of people have mentioned a tutorial kind of thing when you first log onto a CTF server. I know on MCPVP Saixos wanted to make that happen but yeah, I thought that was a good idea. However, that idea fails for the same reason most things on this gamemode seem to fail, no coder. Theoretically, that book or a tutorial could help with the cluelessness though.

Spoiler: Optional Food For Thought?

Also, this is debatable I guess.. but I find that CTF isn't in a rare situation as far as skill ceilings go. I think every server has players that are amazing at the game and people hate to compete against those highly skilled players, that's just how it is. Players have to be dedicated to get better, there is no escaping that imo. But, thinking back to when Minecraft PVP was first introduced until like.. 2013 maybe? Back then, no one was really good at PVP, the way everyone seemed to approach PVP then was 'click as much as you can'. Then when people started all this next level sh*t(i.e. w-tapping, jitterclicking, the list goes on), for me at least, it started getting annoying to play. Obviously, it isn't the same for everyone else, but I loved when PVP had simplicity. The way I see it is, back in those earlier years people came on Minecraft expecting simplicity, cause its a sandbox game it kinda gives that vibe to a good amount of people. I wouldn't think someone would check out Minecraft PVP with no knowledge of it and expect to have to learn how to obtain carpal tunnel to succeed, yknow? Something else to note is,[imo] what made CTF so unique and cool is the strategic element. The matter of not needing to be great at PVP, being strategic and succeeding that way instead was something that made CTF fun to me. But as classes got nerfed and other classes got buffed/broken, and players found these new ways to be better at PVP, the PVP skill seems to have gotten more necessary. For a lot of people that isn't a bad thing, tons of people love the idea of advancing, I get that.. this is just my two cents.

 

Definitely agree.

I say one way to have people dedicated to CTF improve their skills is for the good players to teach them how to- well -be good. I'm sure if CTF had people who actually show new players and regs who aren't very good how to be good at the game, the playerbase would increase quite a bit. But, of course, this requires that the regs have a friendly and generous t attitude towards newbies.

 

I guess I exceed expectations.
Thanks.

 

I remember when I first joined. I loved CTF, but I absolutely hated it. I loved the game but hated how everyone was so good at it. I was discouraged and stopped playing for a while, but came back a month or so later because I wanted to play again and get better.

I'd love to see a tutorial for the classes/gameplay added, or the help book explaining just about everything a new player would need to know in order to survive on CTF.

 

I mean I kind of agree but also disagree... When I first started CTF on mcpvp, it took me all of about 5 games to know exactly how to play. After 10 I knew all the classes. After 100, I was as good at capping as I am today (good or bad, you decide). Things might be a little different now as the years have accumulated a ton of great players, but the point is, it's just practice, good players can't hold you back at practicing, in fact they should make you better. Sure you might die a few times but if you quit at every hurdle would you ever be good at anything?

Overall, while I must agree that the reason new players quit is because a lot of players are OP, in my opinion that's the fault of their own rather than ours. It's their decision to leave at the end of the day. There's going to be a skill curve in everything you pursue, it's your dedication to it that counts.

A tutorial book like the one on mcpvp would be a helpful addition and also more advertisement of official CTF teams in-game to get new players more involved and better motivated. We as a community can also be more helpful by answering any questions a new player may have (I believe you'd be lying if you said they aren't ignored) or teaching them how to play a certain class.

 

Funny how back then on MCPVP when it was popular everyone was pretty bad at this game. I agree, there is a huge difference in skill between newcomers and oldies. The fact that classes are getting nerfed doesn't help that, as it makes them harder to play for newcomers.

I also never really liked how selective the team system MCPVP and Brawl had/have, because no one chooses the unknown players. I remember when the Open Players list came out (the list of players who wanted to join a team) on the forums, I would sometimes notice a few people apply for the list whomst I did not recognize, and was hoping that someone would be kind enough to let them on, and of course their name stayed there until the list was refreshed a while back.

The league/rank system Cload mentioned the other servers had actually sounds pretty cool and looks like it would work really well (if the player base was bigger), but I honestly don't know how well the semi-segregated idea would play out.

This kinda sucks. The way I see it, CTF can't have a fair-ish system without a big playerbase, but the fact that games "aren't fair" (skill aint the same and teams are all for those with greater skill) helps keep Brawl from growing (these obviously aren't the only reasons).

I wish someone would just post the games (not just team matches) they play onto YouTube and get famous and bring in some other people. I've never actually seen anyone who has ever frequently done this.

 

I do like what you pointed out here because although this can split the community as @GoToBed said which is very true. But it may be the best solution for the new players because it gives them a chance at the game and help them understand what classes they may be good at and not always trying to take on a veteran with their preferred class and be demolished (Most of the time). Once they enjoy and master the ability of their class, they can just simply move to a "Higher ranking" Ctf server with players of higher skill level. But as for Veterans going down the ladder, I think they should be allowed to but be encouraged not to.

Edit:
But even so, we were all bad once and we always had to fight the skilled ones, maybe since many Youtubers played on MCPVP, it helped the server gain players and those players explored the server and into CTF. Unfortunately, we don't see those Youtubers on brawl anymore simply because of the term that "brawl is dead". Of course their are other factors to but that is just once to point out. As brawl pushes for more renovations and innovative ideas, hopefully we can gain more players attention and expand our community from there. Getting back on topic, this is certainly a debate but maybe it is best we just keep the community the way it is and we veterans keep in mind that we should let others have a chance.

 

It's almost like the game... isn't designed very well *shocked but not surprised gasp*