R A N T

Spoiler: Preamble

Preamble
Yes, this is a rant. Yes, I am salty. No, this - as a whole - isn’t a joke (yet it should still be entertaining to read at some points). Yes, I exaggerate some things (although actually… I don’t. It’s more selective evidence so to speak).

I will try not to call out specific community members (I honestly would, maybe in some cases, because I’m too lazy to comply with the forum rules), but it’d be pointless anyway, the whole community gets their fair share here.
I don’t rage at community members. I rage at the community.

There could be mistakes in this, I’m certainly not trying to convince you that everything in here is the full truth and shouldn’t be questioned at all. The way language works makes it impossible for me to bring my thoughts to paper, or well, to your screen, just the way I thought them.

also, sorry for the text wall, but I really like text walls.

Also, if you find any hint(s) in here which may link to some German literature… just… be entertained a little more.

You’re welcome.

This post is merely a stream of thoughts.

Here, you won’t read anything you didn’t read before.

Here, you won’t see anything you didn’t see before.

Here, you’ll see nothing of what you’ve always seen. Here, you’ll read nothing of what you have always read before.

You’ll read what you have seen elsewhere

You’ll read what you haven’t read elsewhere.

You won’t read a rant.

Your lust for sensation won’t be satisfied.

You won’t see someone raging.

Nobody will be raging here.

You expected something.

Maybe you expected something else.

Maybe you didn’t expect these lines after this title.​

Anyway, you’re all here, online, on a forum, you all have something in common, you’re in some kind of unity. Your thoughts are free, still.

A server, a Minecraft server, a community. We’re all here, you and me. We’re both here on the forums. We all started playing CTF because of different reasons. Still we’re in some kind of unity. We all stayed around, maybe quit for a while, but we’re all reading this, many may have made a thread before, some may have even made a rant thread or something alike before.

Some absolute geniuses probably studying law or something think it’s worth making a forum post and putting a disclaimer with the first amendment or something like that before so their ‘freedom of speech’ doesn’t get violated because they fully know that the thread they made probably doesn’t comply with the forum rules. As I’m not an American citizen I apparently don’t have this right, and since brawl is totally the government and thus has to respect my freedom of speech which I don’t have since I’m not an American citizen… I’ll just move on.

Spoiler: Things you probably don't care about

I assume you didn’t come here to read my entire story of how I got into CTF and whatever useless stuff I was doing here within more than 6 years, although that’s probably what many posts of this length do. But I can’t get around it and have to at least mention one thing: After getting involved a lot more in the beginning of 2014, I also had a lot of thoughts and wrote… a lot, also a paper similar to this, only in german titled something like “what’s wrong with eu ctf” (most thoughts went into it late 2014) of which I extracted some thoughts which still apply (showed the paper to only two people btw). I also applied for mod once on mcpvp (January 2015), the hell was I thinking. Both things are quite valuable for me now, since I can see what I thought three years ago. Also I started writing this at the start of this year, so sorry for possibly outdated stuff. I like to procrastinate.

I’ve done a lot of stuff I shouldn’t have done, I’ve probably done most of the stuff I’m calling out here myself. I’m still doing some things I’m calling out. I’m a hypocrite. At least to a certain extent.

Classes

Spoiler: Ninja (Caps)

To start by calling myself a hypocrite, yes, nice idea. I almost fully supported ninja caps in 2014 (yes, two pearls, instacaps). Although ninja was nerfed, I pretty much oppose ninja caps now. Yes, they’re justified, sometimes you can’t get around a defense and cap without it. People using ninja there is fine. But…Not only recently, more than just a few times I found myself in a game where there was absolutely no need to ninja cap, but still…not one or two out of 5 caps with ninja, but 3 out of 5 caps with ninja… 5 out of 5 caps with ninja. It’s quite frustrating. Not only when you’re not even defending but think you could help recovery shortly, but especially while you’re defending. Yes, any class can trial and error to come into the flagroom and steal. But which class can do this the most times in any game? Pyro was nerfed because it could pretty much defend against an entire army by itself, neglecting teamwork. A Ninja can cap against almost an entire army by itself. Chemist alone? Buffed Heavy alone? Every other good capping class usually requires a medic to cap against this army, it requires teamwork. If you’re not watching the flag for two or three seconds and any other class than ninja steals, you’re at a slight disadvantage. If a ninja steals and you don’t immediately know which route is taken and you’re not at a reasonable health as ninja… Well, good luck. Depending on the map, a respawn might help. But still, the chances are low if the other ninja knows what he’s doing. The only guaranteed spot any ninja will turn up is the flagroom. Well, good luck turning up there before him, and still, if you do, remember, ninjas can still pearl to the flagpost on some maps. I just want to stress that it isn’t the occasional ninja caps which are frustrating me a lot. It’s some players trying 10 times as ninja and succeeding once because they got lucky (I hope it’s clear what the difference between a lucky ninja and a lucky heavy in this context is), it’s games where more than 50% of the caps are ninja caps.

Spoiler: Engis

Do I really have to write something here?

I’ll keep it short:
Turrets ruining recoveries since they were introduced by only standing there.
Being afk while getting kills and blocking passages.
If this seems ok to you, you’re probably maining engineer.

Spoiler: Necro

CTF, a game which isn’t really supposed to be about kills, but about recoveries and caps, defending something, has necro. A class which powers up with killstreaks. With minions so stupid yet so annoying, not even exclusively for the other team… Other than that, well, ok. Just straight up annoying.

Spoiler: Archer

Are there still people defending archer as the OP piece of excrement it is?

Yes, absolutely necessary as of this moment since on some maps, recovering without it is almost impossible. Other than that… Yeah, I’m pretty much against insta kills, but heck, you can’t even block archer’s instakill (yeah hello there smart-buttocks, elf and dwarf [still?] are one, well, because you’re smart-buttocks, TWO hella good exceptions. No need to argue that the shield is just as good as your sword when blocking assassins as any other class, so, highly dependant on whether you’re aware of it and/or can even shield that very moment. Which is already a problem with assassin but hey, let’s just make it unblockable)

Some random rather minor things
Yes, most of them are quite minor, but some are just getting on my nerves. A lot.

Spoiler: Joining Full Servers

Yes, ranks are useful and stuff and it’s totally fine that they can join full servers. It doesn’t happen that often, but sometimes one server is full but the other two are almost totally empty. Yes, this is a problem which can’t be solved so easily. Still, if there are like two people on the other server, an ingame notification for the players of the full server would be kinda nice. Maybe no really big games anymore, but nothing’s totally wrong with two 14v14s. Anyway, difficult to solve…

Other stuff though, there are some people who go afk on ctf for quite a while, nothing wrong with that. But you really should’ve seen my face when I somehow managed to join while the player count was at 49 and the first thing I saw at spawn were 5 players being afk. Sure, brawl probably won’t specifically implement an afk kick after 3 minutes if the playercount is above 45. I mean, if only one person purchases VIP because of that… It’d probably help brawl a lot more than these few who were satisfied they could join.

Spoiler: People liking bad maps

Please, please tell me you’re only liking beaver creek for the lols. Seriously, this map can be played by 3 classes: archers, soldiers, pyros. Occasionally you might want a medic, ninja or assassin, but that’s pretty much it. A map so terribly soldier and archer OP… heck idek how you could like that. Also these funny as heck players “vote yes for free ninja!” or whatever, yeah, I get it, ok, ok. I’ve been in a game quite recently where there was a map played which isn’t currently in rotation as far as I know (idek why that happened, or did I miss a mini map wave?) and it got far more likes than dislikes. Tbh the map was terrible in every single way of gameplay (Distances between spawns= distances from flag to flag=spawn to own flag), but, nice aesthetics, gotta admit. It getting likes, ok, one thing, but other, quite ok maps, which sure aren’t without flaws, but far better gameplay-wise being played afterwards and getting more dislikes than likes… I’m actually not even surprised anymore that beaver creek’s still in.

Spoiler: Troll skins

I don’t know, people using heavy skins etc. Changing your skin to get more out of, let’s say, assassin. Are these four extra kills you get each day because someone realised too late that it wasn’t armour worth it? I mean if that’s the only way you can get more kills… it’d speak for itself. Still, pretty annoying.

Spoiler: 'Friendly' players

I know, in the meantime when I wrote all that there's been a PSA, sorry for the redundance.
Like, common, I know, I totally get it, you’re blocking, you’re trying to be ‘fwndly’. It’s ok, I won’t attack you. But please, don’t constantly complain because someone else did, after all it’s still a pvp gamemode and there’s absolutely no reason why another player should not attack you. If you’re here to be friendly and just stay around in the enemy flagroom, maybe ask yourself what else you could do. If you’re procrastinating by playing CTF, getting caught up in the game and stuff, I get it. What the heck do you get out of standing in a corner though? And why do you feel the need to complain that you got killed “bawt im just fwndly”. Yes, minor stuff. Also minor stuff, but a bit more annoying: People being friendly, blocking, staying still. Letting them obviously go and them stealing and trying to cap 20 seconds after. I really hope you guys doing this do not try this in real life too and see how that works out. Closely related: medics being friendly but then still healing their flagcarrier. If you’re ever getting married (yes, there’s still hope for you and everyone of us nerds) I really hope your partner doesn’t cheat on you so that you don’t have to experience such a thing.

Spoiler: people getting or not getting medics

happens rarely, but there are these really skilled medics who think healing everyone but the flagcarrier is really an excellent idea. But ok, such things happen, mostly with new players. Ok, now onto the regulars playing medic. Yes, obviously I’m guilty of it to some extent too. I don’t just heal everyone while playing medic. I try, but sometimes it’s worthless or I just don’t feel like going to this archer and wasting 20 seconds so he doesn’t lose his killstreak. It’s not exactly that to be honest which is bothering me a lot. It’s another thing. When you’re teaming up with someone to steal the flag or something else, I don’t care, really, but if you prioritise your team mate instead of the flag carrier (yes, the order: first heal the friend, then the flagcarrier), please, look up what this game’s about again. Especially if the flagcarrier dies and your mate picks it up afterwards and caps. Whatever is going on in your head, I don’t want any of it in mine. Same goes for people going medic to heal their friends not wanting to lose the killstreak, although they’re actually not in a hurry, switching back to the previous class and ignoring the flagcarrier, probably a lesser known name, just because… well who cares about the flagcarrier, it’s not like he’s going to win us the game?

Spoiler: Not-so-friendly players on official teams

I’m not talking about those grumpy ones who just aren’t the nicest persons to be around, I’m talking about the opposite of the normal nice ones. Yes, there are some not-too-friendly players on every team, nobody has to be fake friendly 24/7. But people being ‘mean’ persons, maybe skilled ingame, but, as a person kind of a disaster regarding being nice and stuff… Dear teams, please realise that accepting these people might lead to you winning matches, but also possibly destroying the atmosphere. Whether you realise it or not, and although many of you may say that what I claim is total bullexcrement (and I kind of agree, it shouldn’t be, but having seen some examples…), players on a roster of a team often serve as role models. Some newer players may look up to them, not the same way they may look up to mods, but still they might aspire to be like them. Now, which message does it send if teams solely accept players because of their skill level? Nobody has to be a saint or anything, and sure, skill may matter, but a certain maturity should indeed be required.
There are/were people on teams which literally go/went around telling people to kill themselves in pms. There are some regulars that tend to do that. Start trashtalking and harassing in pms. Because they’re probably too afraid to do so in global chat.
This is comparable to such players being accepted within the community, but this isn’t as clearly defined as being on a team, that’s why this served as a much better example.
Always bear in mind that there are certainly good examples of teams showing the opposite, that the personality matters more, as there are certainly always good opposite examples of (almost) any point mentioned here (e.g. medics who heal absolutely everyone), but you read the title and decided to read it anyway, despite knowing well that most of this would be quite negative.

Spoiler: People complaining about arrow-spamming archers

Yep, it is indeed annoying, but why make such a big deal out of it? Most of the times I got called out for ‘arrow spam’ on close distance I hit more than 75% of the shots. If assassin mains can get away on every thread on the forums which discusses assassin’s instakill by just saying “lol lmao u bad learn to block”, I should be able to get away with saying, “not my fault you can’t dodge”. Regardless: Remove punch entirely and make it not deal triple damage to chemists.

Spoiler: XY vs. YX

Just a case of a “not so friendly player on a team/in the community”, only taken to the extreme.

Someone who played a lot, was involved with the community, played on a team… is quite an unpleasant person to be around if you ever kill him ingame. Receiving pms and rarely global chat messages from him like “get a life retard” was not that rare. I’ll just presume that mods knew about that, maybe not specifically detailed, but they probably knew. So far, so bad. Even if they didn’t know, the next thing which followed should make my criticism clear: One day, another player decides to post these pms he got all together in a picture. The only source material he used was stuff the other, insulting player, provided, either it was public or sent in pms. The picture got taken down quite soon. People were worried about the mental health of the person who insulted almost everyone. While this is very understandable, how did this person even get friends, a team and got ‘accepted’ within the community? Also why were so many people standing up for him saying “YX” shouldn’t do such a thing but when their friend misbehaved, nobody bat an eye? Such a thing is absolutely ridiculous. It just shows that ‘acceptance within the community’ is a joke.

Spoiler: Hackers

I’d just like to imagine a world without ghost clients. That’s all. Also I’d like the person who first invented ghost clients to rot in hell even though I don’t believe in hell nor heaven.

Spoiler: E-Girls haha

Stop. Seriously. Just stop.

No, I don’t mean that you shouldn’t edate, I don’t care about that.
I just don’t like getting shoved sexual stuff right in my face ingame or on discord.
Well, ooook personally I don’t mind that as much but for a server full of kids who possibly read this… uhh it’s just not the right thing.

Also the players harassing girls (or boys, didn’t hear of that on ctf before though)… Just stop.
Those who do probably know themselves. As said, I won’t call out names, but maybe you don’t need to ask girls for pictures only because you’re as “horny as neighour’s dog” (spitz wie Nachbars [redacted])

Spoiler: Targeting

Yep, we all get targeted by ‘randies’ sometimes. I don’t really mind it that much. But if there are these regulars who sometimes even team up to target someone although there’s no obvious reason… You really make everyone you target feel right at home.

Spoiler: Bugs

pls fix. kthx.

Mod Criticism

Spoiler: Mod Criticism

Yes. Yes. Yes. This is indeed a point here. But what is written here? Is it just mod-bashing?

No. It isn’t. It’s more a criticism of how mods are criticised, while still criticising how mods handle certain criticism (and some slight bashing of the mod application system).

The critic mods have to face seems often to be something which Trump does too. Just blame Obama. Whether he had an impact or not, what does it matter. (Disagreeing with the statement about Trump? Whether he is or is not a good president by pulling attention to himself and making him the target of absolutely everything is out of question for now. It’s only about certain people blaming other people for things they can’t be held accountable.) Blaming Brawl is, while often right, mainly used as a common phrase people just keep saying no matter what, and nobody takes it 100% serious anyway. Blaming mods for everything though… Just…stop. It takes attention away from the real issues which matter. Don’t make a huge deal out of everything and blame it on the mods.

There could be such well-worded criticism directed at mods (and there is, just not enough of it), but all some people decide to do is some poorly worded stuff on discord (it’s easier to do so, gotta admit).

Obviously there’s this middle-ground… people who word their criticism in… well, special ways.

Someone who does this a lot is [redacted]. He often tries to take rules a little bit too literally and kinda disregards the always added ‘common sense’ rule. While he does take rules quite literally, he doesn’t really follow all of them always (sometimes following one but not following another), mainly because he is questioning the rules in place, and often for a good reason. While the criticism he provides may not be ideal, mods could still extract the essential things he’s saying and try to improve. But often, that doesn’t happen. Often it’s just being dismissed as… “oh, that’s just [redacted] being [redacted], no big deal”. No matter what the actual point behind all of this person’s actions actually were… Is it because you are too lazy to think? But I’m sticking a little bit too long on [redacted]’s way of criticism.

Criticism should be such a huge plus for everyone. Criticism can be negative, positive or neutral. Everything is needed for things to improve. If you’ve ever been in any position where you had some responsibility and most mistakes were directly exposed as yours, you’ll probably know what I’m talking about. Nobody notices you did things well until something goes wrong. If the only thing you get is negative criticism for minor things, you get incredibly frustrated quite fast. (If you’re doing it for money, well, ok, you get something back in return… but it’s still not nice. Everyone in retail or any position in which you have to deal with customers knows it still isn’t worth getting shouted at even if you get paid for it.) Our mods don’t get paid for their job. Mods are theoretically required to be online for one hour a day, seven days a week, for every week of a year (yeah ok vacation and stuff excluded). As they should be active on the forums, discord and whatever they use to communicate with the community and/or amongst themselves etc. we can safely add a few extra hours. Let’s say that will be 10 hours a week. That’s 25% of a full-time job. I’ll just let that sink in. As mods have much pressure on them, I don’t really mind them doing mistakes from time to time, as long as they are able to realise what they did wrong, learn from it, maybe prevent it from happening again and obviously being able to restore the situation before the mistake if possible.

So, now on to criticising the mods, or better said, mod applications, themselves: Two players which are now brawl staff [both not anymore as of right now] insulting each other in a very immature, useless way back on mcpvp. Maybe these two players remember, maybe they don’t. Sadly I lost my screenshots. While both matured, one of them still accumulated quite a lot of mutes/warnings on brawl before the wipe/before he got mod. Yes, most of us are teenagers, most change quite a lot within a short period of time. Within three years, a lot can happen. Still, it was quite an extreme case, and I can’t really explain to myself why certain players are still banned from taking part in matches while this person was able to get mod with probably a lot more rule violations since joining brawl. Anyway, mod applications are somewhat weird, writing an enthusiastic thread in which you try to show the real best of yourself. Can speak 5 sentences in Russian? Write it down! But also write that you doubt that this will be useful! Application templates can be easily filled out ‘the right way’. Any chimpanzee could do that. What’s missing then? Activity ingame, activity on the forums and maturity. Activity ingame? Just no-life. Activity on the forums? Just post some helpful stuff and/or give feedback to ideas. If someone has already given feedback and you agree, don’t ever use the agree rating but just write another post to get that forum rating up. Because certain people don’t care if you just read and rate. They want you to write stuff too. Should be easy to follow so far, but now, the big big question: Are you mature enough? It’s ridiculous how superficial and subjective maturity is seen by brawl. It’s defined ex negativo by brawl. Is there any recent warning, mute or other not so pleasant record? No? Good, let’s respond to the application “you’re very [...] and mature, +1”. Don’t really like the applicant but there’s no real big recent negative history you could bring up? “Although you have matured a lot, I don’t believe you’re ready just yet”. “There’s one warning two months ago for ‘flame’, care to explain?”, “You recently said XY, would you…”. Also, don’t EVER assume that it’s easy to set up a fake maturity behaviour for a few months.

Hypocrisy
Also, dear community, please stop supporting the hypocrits.

As an example people complaining about bowspam and doing it themselves.
Or saying they wouldn’t be good mods and know they wouldn’t get accepted, yet applying some time later.

Or posting hypocritical threads.

Spoiler: TL;DR

Spoiler: Haha did you really think I'd do such a thing

Spoiler: No for real, there isn't a TL;DR

Spoiler: I told you there isn't

Spoiler: *vsauce* or is there?

Spoiler: no, there really isn't

Spoiler: why did you even make it this far

Spoiler: okok I give up

Spoiler: if you made it this far you deserve a TL;DR:

Spoiler: here it is:

Spoiler: TL;DR

Spoiler: Yes I like bad jokes

Spoiler: still around?

Spoiler: that can only mean you have even less of a life than I do!

Spoiler: congratulations!

Spoiler: so now for the TL;DR

**** you

 

Frick you. This post is getting reported now.
Also WHITE THEME CANCER.

If you don't change that to "one of the best" or "the best" I'll report your post for blasphemy. WATCH OUT.

 

I think you're a bit naive then.

I don't know and I seriously don't want to know.