Q&A follow up thread, questions to you

1 No opinion on this (don’t vote)
2 It was great! I like the addition of a new class to spice things up a bit. (Still think new engi should be its own class though)
3 No opinion on this
4 Thank you for being more transparent in the spring update! Keep up the good work.
5 Demoman
6 Being able to buy nametags/stat tracking things with credits would be nice, but unlikely
7 Good! Enjoy having something different on saturday. Wish it was a bit longer like this weekend was.
8 No opinion on this
9 Server players should take it more seriously but thats not your fault.
10 No.

 

The combat features for 1.9+ (ability to actually block incoming damage including arrows, the slower combat) as well as ugly textures.

 

What if we didn't give you shields, combat was normal, and you would use a texture pack?

 

How would that work with assassins without a full rework?

I’d need to see indepth plans for how you would handle a lot of the major and minor issues/new features etc before I’d say yes.

 

1)
2) It's kinda boring, coulda fixed more stuff that matters like you did with Engineer, rather than add new stuff to be problematic like Scout, but we kinda needed a new class. But a few reworks that fixed stuff woulda sufficed.
3) No **** that, you used to have to buy classes, then there was a credits system and if you owned all classes and didn't care about cosmetics or whatever you would have no use for credits, then you make it so you have to purchase scout with real money before you can use it for a while? It's out now but that was lame. Also not putting it in matches is really dumb cuz "dur just play it in ppms" but all the ppm hosts ban it. Actually regarded
4) You've been really good recently, nice
5) Just revert elf ngl, but not all issues with the game are with classes, other big issues that have been long standing could be dealt with, like stalemates
6)
7) idk what that even is ngl
8) You should try harder to do events.
9)
10) no

 

1) Not too sure about this one.
2) This was one of the best ones in a long time and brought a ton of new aspects to the game. A step in the right direction.
3) Yes, this style worked out very well and kept things controllable in game (in terms of how many people were playing Scout).
4) I believe there is enough communication, but there could possibly be in-game announcements as well for players who are not in the community discord.
5) Achievements (both overall and class specific); other than that the game seems to be in a decent place until I can think of something else.
6) Name tags exclusively purchasable with a certain number of credits, kill effects (such as particles, but only if they will not cause a ton of lag), sprays?
7) The format is nice, but I believe having 2 times for testing throughout the Saturday could have better showing and more comments / feedback overall.
8) For sure, the events are very good to keep up activity. I have a list I will retrieve and append to this later on.
9) I don't know enough about voting to answer this.
10) I would not mind this if we were capable of making the leap after months of preparation; it would attract more players but staying on 1.8 will be better in my opinion if gameplay becomes notably worse with the supposed jump (we'll lose more players than we gain).

 

Elf - 915 wind idea, Sharpness II, Water element cooldown decrease, Water element increase (Regen III etc). Easiest way to buff elf to make it more enjoyable. Ninja's die easier with Sharpness II so overall the class will generally be better with gameplay.

 

We're working on Elf changes currently. Expect a thread coming out soon in regards to Elf.

 

After watching the Q&A, I felt like it was a very smart thing to do and so I wrote down notes throughout the video. I basically compiled them into different categories depending on the questions listed above.

1) What more beneficial rewards do you have in mind for voting?
Currently, I’m pretty sure voting for one link gives you 1 token, and with less than 5 links a day, I think that is pretty insufficient. Personally, I get more tokens with the daily reward than I do for voting (which I never do). Maybe have voting rewards give more tokens and have voting milestones that offer rewards, like cosmetics, if you reach a certain vote milestone.

2) How did you like the Spring 2019 update?
I feel like the spring update was a very good step to implement more ideas and it presented the opportunity to give feedback. In my opinion, I feel like the more frequent the updates are, the better it is for the development of Brawl, no matter how small the changes are. It’ll give more incentive for players to play every so often.

3) Do you like the style and pacing of the update process (LFF testing then MVP/ELITE testing etc.)?
The main objective for the staggering effect of availability with scout was to gain money. This result ultimately added more suspense and limited the amount of cancer in a CTF game.
What staff did with scout’s release was decent and I don’t feel any argument for the decisions.

4) Are we communicative and transparent enough (more forum threads etc.)?
I think so, it’s just if people are active on forums, click links and actually read the thread that makes the difference.

5) We are currently looking at tweaking Necro, Elf, Dwarf. What else would you like to see in CTF?

1. Scout Death Tag - If we were to rework the death tag, an idea that I had is to maybe decrease a class’s cooldown on certain things. In my opinion, death tag is very powerful because its sword deals a little more damage than a heavy and with the 1.5x damage from other classes, a ninja can 3/4 shot specific capping classes like Soldier who has been death tagged. The death tag can even be reworked and instead of applying it to someone for extra damage, it will “backstab” them like rogue’s ability in HCF, dealing a certain amount of true damage to it, or even poisoning the carrier. Anything that will cripple the carrier’s duration that it will take during its journey back to their flag. However, nothing can be concrete without substantial playtime with Scout in matches, which is currently trying to be done.
2. Ranged Healing Class - I liked what Scape said in the video about having a double jump ability. In my opinion, I don’t think scout would have the need to be able to double jump as it already has Speed I and swapper, making it mobile. This is why double jump is a good idea to be implemented into a new healing class. Being able to have a splash projectile similar to mage will make it easier to heal teammates while in the air. Even potentially restoring teammates from the skies. Maybe give it a bow/wand that can be charged and activated in the air in the middle of a double jump. It will give the class more mobility and be a good addition to the class selector. It is still a gray area so ideas are still open.

With the necro rework, like what was said in the Q&A, we can work with the ability to have 3 interchangeable roles within necro, similar to the idea of the Pokémon Trainer role in SSBU. The roles could differ that each has their unique trait that would be able to do many different things. Maybe have it defense, recovery, and offense. We could even morph the current dwarf into necro’s defense role. A unique trait it could have is that you don’t need to respawn in order to change your abilities. Another good idea I came up with is that instead of having the role of this new “necro” class is that the abilities change depending on the state of the flag is in. If the flag is stolen, idle, or even in a stalemate position, then the abilities would reflect off of that.
Going back, I like Drag’s idea of reducing the time of stalemates by buffing both teams with Speed I and Strength I. It will add color to matches make matches more fast-paced.
6) Any ideas for what else you would like to spend credits on?
We could spend credits on certain cosmetics. Right now, it is fairly easy to farm credits if you try hard enough. Hopefully, something else will be added soon in regards to a "credits shop".
7) How is the Spotlight Saturday format?
I actually think it was a good idea. With the thread, I was able to find the map ID’s and explore the maps via the Build server. Spotlight Saturday was a good idea to give insight on incoming maps.
Also, I would like to introduce a perspective on maps, or in other words, the term “map dependency” (as stated in the Q&A). For example, some maps are really high in the sky, so if you fall in the void, it’ll take longer to die than compared to other maps that have a low y-level.
Even in bed wars, the map layouts are all typically the same, with starting islands surrounding the middle island. With CTF maps, however, they are all different in terms of layout. Some maps are diagonally reflected (rotated 180°; blackout) while others being vertical reflected (flipped; quintet falls). There are even maps that don’t even match sides, while some maps have their spawn in front of the flag room, making respawn abuse viable and making it almost impossible to capture the flag. This can cause unfair advantages to a specific team depending on the map. Not all maps exactly match in terms of layout, and so some maps will ruin the synergy between classes. Therefore, balancing classes completely would be difficult unless all the maps are generally the same. (This is only a perspective and the maps are totally up to the map creators.)
The thing about balance is that different classes may or may not work better together depending on the map. This issue between the relationship that classes have solely depends on the map. Therefore, no matter even if something small changes, it is going to alter the meta. And again, the meta will be impacted by a certain amount, depending on the map.
8) Should we do events? Do you have any more ideas for events?
Yes, we should do more events. What I was thinking was that every (few) month(s), we could host matches that are open to all. Being able to spread the word of PPM’s to beginners is a good idea to keep players and to increase the activeness of the team scene. This “draft” would consist of announcements being announced in-game, allowing inexperienced players to sign up, like PPM’s, and the regulars can spectate and even recruit the players and teaching them some more. After writing this, I realized I said a similar idea which was already implemented on Mineplex. The host, BM5, conducted this “draft” which can be viewed here. As said in the Q&A, “We have enough players joining, it’s just a matter of getting them to stay” (something like that), then players can actually experience the full side of CTF. With more opportunities for the community to be transparent about the competitive side of CTF, then new players will join and can increase the likelihood of attracting even more attention.
9) Are you happy with the voting mediums (in-game, forum/Google forms and Discord)? Which ones do you respond to?
If this means by like voting on a certain rework, then here's my response: Personally, I’m active on all platforms so I don’t mind specific formats. However, I’m more available on discord/forums because sometimes I’m not able to log on, but with the newcomers, it’ll be better to have the formats in-game. Since they’re new, they probably won’t be in the discord, so being able to communicate with the players in-game would be valuable.
10) Would you generally like to see Brawl update to Minecraft 1.14 instead of providing compatibility for higher versions?
Personally, I’m not very educated with the new 1.14 update so correct me if I’m wrong. The 1.14 version doesn’t have the blocking ability for some reason, so I don’t really know how that would work with Assassin and its counterparts. The PVP would be different but I think it could be coded around that. However, if Brawl would update to 1.14, then everyone would have to play in Minecraft 1.14, making it very inconvenient. Players that use Badlion Client wouldn’t be able to use it anymore as Badlion Client only offers 1.8 and 1.12.

If you feel the need to comment about anything I said, feel free to do so! tHanKs FoR rEaDinG. hApPy CtFiNg.

 

1) What more beneficial rewards do you have in mind for voting?
As it stands, it seems like the token-vote ratio is designed to encourage voting so that we might have more players; and the more players we have, the more effect voting will have. However, there seems to be very little incentive to vote, and as it is, the player base is too small to have the desired effect. Part of the problem is it doesn't seem like it's worth it. I'm unaware of the actual data on the matter, but say the average time to build up to 15,000 credits is (hypothetically) 3 months. If that time is cut to 1.5 to 2 months by voting, it's worth it. Of course, some players can get new classes by spending 24 hours a day 7 days a week farming captures and recoveries because they have that time and that skill. There is by no means a requirement to help players get classes—I want Brawl to make some money, after all. But if the aim of voting is to provide an incentive for making Brawl more popular, then the incentive needs to be worth something that isn't entirely forgettable. It gets to the point where the exchange of tokens is not worth (to me) anything like spending that short amount of time in a game.
TL;DR: Change voting so that I feel like my few minutes spent on voting might actually be worth the same or more time I could've spent in-game. No one likes stopping to vote, and the reward we get hardly justifies doing so. Either make it easier to vote or make voting give us something substantial.
2) How did you like the Spring 2019 update?
I love everything about it. Elaboration is below. Skip if you want.
First of all, I remember when we were told when MCPvP moved to Brawl that we weren't getting new classes, or if we did, it'd be a while. Well, it's been a while. I'm glad I stuck around (albeit on an alt). Scout has a lot of potential in terms of stalemate recovery and burst damage. The teamplay of the class is astounding! I frenzied a carrier off of a switch a few days ago, too. I'm not concerned with the balance of the class, so I won't really discuss it.
Engineer has had slow steady changes for a while. But I don't think those changes ever got around the feeling that engineer was uninteractive to play as or play against. Now, even though people still think the grenades are brain-dead, they at least require human input to use. Major +1 for effort alone, and the idea itself isn't poorly designed, despite its slight lack of polish (which is understandable in its own right).
Other class changes:
Chemist is now a viable class to use in any scenario other than in front of spawn. Thanks.
Pyro (mostly) doesn't get shredded by the other team deciding to have a ninja. Thanks.
Ninja is now slightly easier to deal with. I understand that better players could have always reacted to eggs with blindness, but I think that the ability for newer or less skilled players to deal with ninja is very important, considering how many ninjas there are in a casual game.
Mage got a quality of life change in terms of consistency. An objectively positive thing that doesn't really affect anyone else.
The quality of life changes that came with the /defaultclass command and the /options menu are very welcome. They have no bearing on someone who has already decided how to play, or who has no one preferred class, but they are welcome nonetheless.
TL;DR: Good stuff. Thanks.
3) Do you like the style and pacing of the update process (LFF testing then MVP/ELITE testing etc.)?
I believe that the pacing itself was very very nice. However, it feels kind of off-putting to have testing occur before the final product is released, and then to tell us that the final product is worth 150,000 credits in spring. While I have no problem with the pacing or pricing itself, I do believe that there is a less disappointing outcome: just tell us the class will be released in December, but if we want to pay extra for it (or have MVP/ELITE), we can get it X months early, starting in spring.
On the topic of the testing, I don't believe we had the chance to effectively test the class changes. This is because at the time of a class change, very many people will be playing the class (or the new one, in scout's case), even if they don't plan to play it in the future. The best we got was having restricted testing for MVPs/ELITEs on scout. While I'm not in favor or restricting things, I also recognize the value of being able to see that "scout is balanced" might not necessarily apply if everyone on the server is playing scout. I also realize that it is very difficult to restrict testing for existing classes. My proposal is this: have each player on a game cycle, where they can play the tested class every X number of games/maps (whichever is better). Theoretically, if a player can play /engineer2 every 4 maps, each map should have around 25% engineers, with expected deviation.
4) Are we communicative and transparent enough (more forum threads etc.)?
I believe so. I understand the need for discrepancy when it comes to giving the community information, especially if some of that information may change at some point. I also understand that some new decisions may have been released to us later on because time was running out to make the decision.
5) We are currently looking at tweaking Necro, Elf, Dwarf. What else would you like to see in CTF?
I really like the idea of each of these classes. They are undeniably oozing with flavor. I have a few in-depth ideas but I'll give you the TL;DR treatment.
Necro:
A necromancer is someone who gives life to the dead. This doesn't necessarily mean summoning undead mobs, as is currently the case. I believe that a necro should be able to summon a mob every time they get a kill. This can go in many directions, but one I am very partial to is allowing the necro to right click a weapon (similar to frenzy) and if they get a kill within a certain time frame (2 seconds maybe), a weaker version of the class they killed is summoned. To prevent snowballing, necro should also lose a set amount of health (in health total, not damage) per every mob alive: "To create a life, you cannot go without taking another."
I plan to make a forum post about this, so I was brief.
Elf:
An elf is nimble, and is able to easily traverse landscapes not accessible to humans. An elf is also in tune with natural forces more-so than humans. As is currently the case, elf can use wind element to bound across the map with ease (assuming you know how to do it), and the various elemental bows give it a very nice touch. I believe that of the three classes mentioned, elf needs very little in terms of flavor. However, elf as a class is a little polarizing. I feel like elf is very fun while also not being entirely too effective for how much effort I put into having that much fun. Many of the mechanics have learning curves to be able to be utilized successfully, which isn't necessarily bad, but when soldier is easier to learn, easier to play, and often objectively better for a situation, it really cuts down on how much I can play elf successfully.
Dwarf:
This is the big one. Dwarf has gone unchanged for a long time, and while this is not necessarily anyone's fault, I don't believe dwarf should have been conceived the way it exists and has existed. Dwarves are master craftsmen and craftswomen, in tune with the earth, with metal, and with minerals. Stemming from my Lord of the Rings database, named @Paddy__M, I choose to interpret dwarves as short, stout, and not very nimble. That isn't to say that dwarves are slow (which is something I believe should change, mostly seeing as it cripples the class's balance in any sense, as it is both very vulnerable to projectiles and mobility while also needing to be very powerful close-range to make up for that weakness), but they lack the ability to cross great gaps, but make due with ingenuity and craftiness. The key feature of a dwarf is its ability to add value to material or already existing armor and weapons. It is here where many ideas arise. Mainly, I see dwarf as a support class that increases the value of a teammate's armor or weapon. Perhaps you slowly gain experience points, and a single level apiece can be used to "patch up" the armor of an ally, giving them a heart or two of absorption. Maybe you can use a level or two to use a whetstone to sharpen an ally's sword, making it more effective when attacking, but less effective when blocking? This is by no means as concrete as my idea for necro, but it's something.
TL;DR: Necro needs to get a flavor overhaul, elf is fine where it's at in terms of flavor, but it needs work to be more balanced, and dwarf has issues with flavor and balance.
6) Any ideas for what else you would like to spend credits on?
I love cosmetics. I'm currently working my way towards getting all the classes on this account, so that'll preoccupy me for a while. But spending a large amount of credits on something like a map request would give many people the ability to spend credits they're never going to use.
7) How is the Spotlight Saturday format?
This is easily the best thing that's ever happened to CTF. If you need a TL;DR, there it is.
This is the perfect opportunity for map makers to see what's wrong with maps (no hate, but Petra is beautiful, and the map is still too big, too archer OP, too soldier OP, etc.). While we didn't have a ton of time before the wave deadline this time around, I understand that this can be made earlier before another wave starts, and the fact that Spotlight Saturday exists at all is enough to be thankful for.
8) Should we do events? Do you have any more ideas for events?
Events are always nice. They keep me active. They keep me involved in the community. But we have so few of them and there's always such a huge leadup that I always feel like it's a bigger deal than it is, and then I feel bad for missing out. I want to make more events, so increasing their frequency would help. If we do events, a very cool idea is to give something for free to players (at random) that has to do with the event. For Valentine's Day, receiving a random "Cutie" tag on February 14 would be very nice.
9) Are you happy with the voting mediums (ingame, forum/Google forms and Discord)? Which ones do you respond to?
It's been a while since I've been on, but I do believe that the most convenient way for me to remember to vote is to see a reminder in-game.
10) Would you generally like to see Brawl update to Minecraft 1.14 instead of providing compatibility for higher versions?
This is an absolute no for me. I cannot stand waiting to swing. I do believe that 1.9+ PvP evens the playing field among players with higher or lower CPS rates, but I really can't stand how slow-paced the PvP itself is. I don't mind losing to someone clicking at 15 CPS if I get to respawn and kill a ninja as a chemist in under a second.

 

But does @Signatured have a keyboard?