Current State of CTF (From my perspective)

Team stacking leads to targeting, targeting leads to trucing.

Team stacking is a direct result of having a free-lance kitpvp-esque server - people want all the kills they can get as efficiently as possible.
Targeting is a result of team stacking because eventually, the players get way too cocky and think they can fight anyone and everyone. They then learn that this is not always the case, so they resort to targeting those who are worse at pvp.
Trucing occurs when the targeters encounter people who are equal to or better than them, so they decide to leave each other alone to maximize efficiency for kill farming.

Take away the trucing and all the regs begin to thin each other out on the pvp spectrum.
Take away the targeting and the regs no longer have a reason to be so aggressive.
Take away the team stacking and the server is fi-

Ah, but wait, now it's boring.

A gamemode that sees the same 100 people every week is practically designed to thrive in an anarchy environment.
If there is no team stacking, what's the point in playing a team game?
If there is no targeting, what's the point in building up skills to be an efficient killer?
If there is no trucing, what's the point in going against the same people every week?

The answer is simple: Servers like this can only survive with a constant rotation of players that are not always in the same game with each other. Other servers may not have a better CTF, but if they can manage 1000 or even 500 players a week while keeping game sizes normal, everything in the original post ceases to exist almost entirely. A famous anarchy server called 2B2T functions almost exactly like Brawl CTF does when you set aside the gamemode objectives. If you want any hope of "curing" this server, you need to up the player count to a point where you are never guaranteed to be in the same match with the same player twice - which isn't that far away. If we can get 50 (or preferably 100) more players regularly playing CTF, these issues will subside immediately; I'm not saying they'll disappear, but there will be a vast difference, just from splitting the games up a little. The more players you have, the better the situation becomes. Of course, with more players you would need more staff to keep track of everyone - which is why I was so adamant about increasing staff size & productivity in earlier posts.

The bottom line is that the existing issues of CTF can not be solved with the current staff or player count. Both need to increase for any positive effect on the server.

 

I think a big issue is the underlying tone of what is and isn't targeting. A lot of people have issues with dealing with dying. There's an inherent inner thought process for most regulars about needing to get "even" with people they die to. To me, this "getting even" is the base of what targeting is and is an issue; and it only builds up from there avalanching into bigger targeting issues. Another issue is the subjectivity of what targeting is/is not. I think this last issue falls on staff for not having such a prevalent issue have more of a concrete definition. Is it targeting to kill an enemy archer holding a choke point? Or the pyro defender who is stopping caps? These things, and other things like it, are hard to pin point as targeting.

As for trucing, I personally hate when medics just chill on our side of the map and act like they aren't doing anything but then proceed to heal enemy offenders or people I'm fighting. These same people, (won't bother with tagging because you know who you are) will get upset if I start to attack them as if it's not painfully obvious they are indeed not "truced."

Team stacking both is okay and not okay; depending on motive. I don't see much of team targeting anymore but I do see team stacking ending competitive games quite fast; making them a bit un-fun to play. We play the game to play with friends, which typically are on the same teams. You can't tell people to stop playing with friends.

I wish I saw more threads like this, I think these issues can be addressed/solved more from the player base agreeing to "try" and halt these sorts of practices; but I would also like to see staff intervene and actually do something about it.

 

So what you're basically saying is that the CTF community is made up of *insert choice swear word here*. Seems legit


Na fr all the problems you've mentioned are easy enough to deal with with a tad more commitment from the staff team but eh

 

THIS. Exactly this. I think that no matter how hard mods try, no matter how many mods there are and how focused they are on trying to crack down on such things, it really seems to me that with support from the community within, it's much easier and maybe even the only possible way to resolve it properly.

Little throwback (little meaning 1.5years oops) to my R A N T thread which touched some of these topics.
feel free to skip it, I just wanted to link it to show how much of this already 'existed' a 'long' time ago.
I also don't know if people genuinly didn't get that I was really mainly blaming the community itself (not even solely) in the subtext there.
People who I saw doing much of these things I pointed out liked/agreed on the thread which... surprised me a bit

Spoiler: some extracts from the thread

"I don’t rage at community members. I rage at the community."

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: 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.

I'm sorry but I think I have to disagree here. Sure staff can implement proper/stricter rules against stuff like basically spawn camping randoms/newbies, but how to ensure that these are followed through? I know you're in favour of far more active staff then they currently are, but there's no way that there'll be staff monitoring 24/7. And in my experience, most of these incidents happen when there's not that many players on (so usually also no staff).
We know how it already works out for staff if they gather loads of evidence and accuse a regular of cheating. (btw I'm not here to say that it's justified/unjustified/whatever, I'm in no position to make a judgement about that and honestly obviously not really experienced in that field).
The point is: staff gather loads of evidence, make a right/false claim, and get backlash regardless if the claim was right or false. It's because regulars are usually well established in the whole (team) scene.
Some staff members are probably quite afraid to make further claims, have no energy/motivation to move on if there's a good bit of the community which doesn't support them at all anymore. If they started cracking down on regulars doing ****ty stuff like targeting/spawn camping more severly, the same would happen there. Now say we've got mods willing to get all the backlash again, you'd need regulars reporting such incidents. Yes, I personally shouldn't be afraid to do such a thing, but still, even as a player, you fear backlash from the community.
There's people going spawnkilling in smaller games with support of a medic. They let you leave spawn since you're a regular but once you kill them (because they literally ruin the game for every non-regular on your team) you'll get killed three times in a row by them. And yes, these are people which are sometimes widely accepted within the community, are on teams and everything.
You'd need the community to change. If mods try to force that change upon the community, it'll most definitely not work.
So as to not healing people who only go spawnkill randoms, not supporting them in any way in doing the thing which ruins the game for newcomers. But if only a handful of people do that, and the rest of the community remains silent/even still supports these people, good luck.

The skill curve of CTF can already be steep enough for newer players, we don't need certain aspects like regulars spawnkilling randoms making it even more difficult for newer players to get into it.

(I know the term spawnkilling might not be the most precise, I just used it for the ease of use now, usually the people who do that attack any 'randoms' usually in an area between enemy spawn and enemy flag or in other well frequented areas of a map)

 

Again, change my mind but it's basically the CTF community being full of just awful people lol

 

won't try to change your mind on that lol (although I'd argue that there's many many good people in this community, some bad toxic people and just a ****load of people who don't give a **** if others are toxic/spawnkill/etc.).
I just meant that saying 'staff can fix this with a tad more effort' is wrong.

 

a lot of these problems would go away if the Brawl bourgeois (crooked Roke & co.) would just PAY staff members a living wage. how yall do this for anything less than $15 an hour is wild to me

On a more serious note...

As someone who plays on a monthly basis, and by monthly I mean once every 3 months to see if Necro is still, in fact, a class, what I heard is that the hackers and ghost clienters are a big problem. Not sure how you're ever going to begin to fix that without a screenshare protocol which (correct me if I'm wrong) Brawl doesn't have. I've argued against that in the past because I'm dumb as f*ck. Brawl is a business, you hack on the server it's the same thing as ****ting on the floor in a diner. You're out the moment we clean that sh*t up. Concerns about privacy are pushed by a combination of hackers, dumbasses (me), and associated idiots. If you're irresponsible enough to download hacks well swiggity swoogity we're coming for that booty. Implement a screenshare protocol and nail the people who are actually insecure enough to download a ghost client (James etc.). Then again I'm about as dumb as the Clorox President soooo could be wrong and if I am, by all means, correct me.

I don't have the brainpower to point out all the awesome sh*t in Simon's post (that's who you are right @TTD3?) other than he's basically CTF's Dad and needs SMOD already. Listen to him, he will father a nation one day

 

yes that's me

erm, do I have a hard time catching your sarcasm today?

erm what. how come? I'd argue that I'm partly CTF's child mentally but ok.

no. I just need mods n smods to not be exploited by the capitalist system.

Why do I feel if I reply with "Don't listen to me!", something like that will happen?

ok in all seriousness now: lol. thxbye.

 

the current state of CTF is ****e.

I also severely dislike teaming. Unless it's 2am. Then I don't really give a ****.

also ima install vape and target you for making this thread mnky. jktm

 

its funny how people think they can argue against this when theyre scared to speak to women over the age of 16 ZZzzzzz

 

also its actually funny how many people in the team scene are closet cheaters. imagine being in such a deep hole that you cheat on a minecraft server to boost your ego and get more egirls

 

CTF is **** as long pyro can't instakill #fact

 

I don't feel like there is a huge problem with hackers/GCs atm (Not saying there's none, just that I haven't spotted any), it's just that the skill gap on CTF is so big between 'good' players and 'mediocre' players - And also ninja being OP af. The problem with that is that all of the mediocre (and some of the 'good' toxic) players end up hackusating everyone who can get a 3+ hit combo; An issue which is amplified by the fact that a lot of those mediocre players are staff members, which consequently leads to even staff members hackusating regulars in public and private calls.

But yes a screenshare protocol would clean up the 'hacker' issue in both preventing hackers and additionally stopping hackusations in the process. Pretty sure everyone i've spoken to has been in favour of SS, but it definitely wouldn't work with the current staff team.

 

Yeah true about the self destructing clients. Like sure you can't catch every hacker and it's totally unreasonable to expect staff to actually be able to do it. SoCool/Tom pointed this out in one of these stupid debates a while back and its a completely legit point. That said, if we implemented the ****in protocol we'd have a few less gc'ers ruining everyone's day and that's only a good thing. We'd also get drama and honestly, that's the real benefit here.

See a drama thread and make like the 45th president and get those ratingssss

Could be right. The thing with ghost clients is yknow, they're like ghosts. Can't see that sh*t coming yo, which makes it difficult to differentiate between 'skill' and 'hacks' especially in uber experienced players like James (fck James). So we don't know the extent of the problem and at the very least a screenshare protocol would help in determining this

I mean if you're being hackusated by a jmod who gives a sh*t they exist to censor the no no words and reply to staff applications lol. Like we have the hack test for a reason. Regarding a mod or smod it's a different thing and is likely more probable because they have some expertise in detecting hacks.

Why not?

 

Implementing screen share won't change the minds of people who already think the mods can't be trusted to detect hacks. As we have seen, the real difficulty is often not the banning itself, but having to deal with all the drama after the ban. Then people wonder why brawl doesn't clean up all the hackers!

 

CTf just needs a few staff members who are not at all known as CTF regulars but have immense PvP/hack detection experience or people who don't give a damn about flame/hate and can deal with it. As I see it most CTF staff members are extraordinarily biased and will often block or water down evidence against friends or teammates lol