Playing Offense in Casual

This may seem like just another rant, and while it is to some extent, this is also a small guide for the current situation players face when playing offense in casual.

Map Diversity​

I thought I'd bring this up first because it plays a much larger role than most realize. The simple truth is that with every map wave, we get several reworks and/or continued version maps (II, III, IV, etc.); this isn't always a bad thing, but too much of it can cause problems. With general exceptions like Blackout and Lowrise, the community has been very vocal for some time about maps getting overused or brought back from the dead. This trend has been going on since I started playing here 6 years ago, but anyone who's played this server for even a year will tell you that they get tired of specific maps constantly being put back into rotation. My point is that basically every casual reg knows most (if not all) of these maps by heart, which means that we get bored of doing the same push strats over and over again, even with varying server sizes - which brings me to the next subject.

Empty & Flooded Servers​

How do big servers function so well with staff teams that aren't much larger than Brawl's? Automation. Not just any kind of automation - full circle automation. On Hypixel, a bedwars 4s game needs 14 players to start, with varying timer count downs when the server has 14, 15, or 16 players. And what does that result in? Mostly balanced games. Yes I know "ur a ****ing retard for comparing ctf to bedwars" but the method itself is what needs attention. How do you expect games to be balanced with a 44 player interval between the server being too small and full? It's madness. The chances of finding a game where defense isn't overpowered or nonexistent are too low to even comprehend, and never mind the player skill gaps & cheaters.

Class Limits and the Community​

PPMs and Team Matches utilize this, so why shouldn't casual? Because casual is a place for people to learn - whether it be maps, classes, or just pvp in general. Now, keeping in mind what I said in the last paragraph, how the hell do you expect any new players to figure **** out when the games are so lopsided? Play casual for 1 week and you'll have several games with literally 5+ archers and heavies sprintless walking into enemy spawns. Constantly. The majority of the community is so toxic that these new players either get farmed to the point of quitting or eternally ignored and trash talked to - and those who aren't toxic are just sitting around talking most of the time. If you put class limits to reduce these normal class counts in the average game, there will absolutely be regs ready to hop into those slots and not give them up. Everyone is so absorbed in the team scene that they expect casual to function like an actual match, and they make ends meet even if it means killing off hundreds of new players for good.

Cooperation and Communication​

One of the main reasons PPMs have a very high success rate is that there are clearly set rules. You know what you're supposed to do, and you're expected to work fluidly with your team to achieve maximum efficiency in capturing the enemy's flag or defending your own. So, what happens when players are left to do as they please? Chaos. Your only guaranteed chance of having support for a push is by being in a call with someone - everything else can mean literally nothing to the rest of the team in a casual server. Whether it be chems refusing to buff, medics refusing to heal (or just use the class), or even scouts intentionally swapping enemy carriers away from recovery, people will always find ways to make your attempts at offending a living hell. Throwing in casual has roughly the same level of meaning as leaving a water bottle out in the sun - whoever does it is doing it just to be a dickhead, and there's 0 consequence.

Conclusion​

All I can say is that CTF is in a pretty **** spot right now. The effort to organize things has been almost completely shifted away from casual, and I would not be surprised if PPMs became the only method of playing CTF in the near future. The thread has been thinning for years now, and the snap is long overdue. I'm not quite sure if it's even possible for this server to break out of the grave it's been sitting in.

 

Having fun on casual AND playing objectively is about as rare as two 50/50 servers during October. I agree that the freedom allows people to do what they want to a larger extent, but 99% of the time it means they are at least ignoring part of the game objective. It used to just be the stat *****s, but with achievements being a thing that actually "pays" you for being an objective sweat, you're lucky to join a game where someone isn't 3/0ing the game in 2 minutes or rallying up MMR-busting defenses that kill anything near the flag room.

Because the "community" is the same ~100 players that have been here since mcpvp. You have to understand that the vast majority of CTFers that are online regularly have been here for years - it's pretty much a factions server on the inside at this point. New players probably don't even hold a full percentile in the voting diversity when it comes to maps, and so you get whatever these ~100 like, which half the time is the same **** over and over. I'm not saying to completely disregard this concept, but it absolutely plays a part in making rotations so dull.

You call my comparison flawed and then go on about a gamemode that isn't even mildly similar to CTF? I used bedwars as an example because it has the same general playstyle: You either offend or defend, and the objective is to defeat an enemy team. Bed Wars can get 14 players to start each game because that's what Hypixel designed it to be like - the 10,000 players just ensures that the same players aren't constantly doing the same thing over and over, which is exactly what Brawl CTF has become. The popularity of a gamemode depends on what the players find enjoyable about it; if CTF were an "enjoyable" gamemode, why do you think the same ~200 people account for 90% of the online player count every year? The simple truth is that this community is sweats and people who just want to chill and talk, with very little in between.



Shoutout to diamondgirl25 for being literally the only new player I've seen stick around in the last year of CTF.