Idea Casual Limits & Class Costs

Casual CTF's State​

I've played casual for quite some time, and up until recently I was taking a break from it due to outside things; However, after returning with a new influx of experience from comp, it's become more apparent than ever that there is no such thing as balance in casual - and the extremes are far more frequent than you'd think. Here are some of the most common match scenarios that happen due to this imbalance:
• Size is so large that defense is beefed to a point where nothing escapes the fr
• (Any size) Majority of the players are either chill or downloaded the game 4 minutes ago, leaving a few people on each team as much time as they want to farm stats or force cap to end the map
• Size is so small that only solo cappers try to steal, allowing defense to infinitely grind them unless the skill gap is significant
Why is this so common? Because freedom has its consequences, and letting everyone play any class they own at any volume obviously leads to big ones. I wasn't joking in the past when I've mentioned 5 archers on each team or triple pyro in the flag room; These are almost normal lineups in casual teams, and are rarely ever scaled down by the size of said teams. With the only real limit being ownership of a class, you're left with anarchy, which is obviously not the same as what goes on in any other form of CTF.

The Impact of Nuke/Oneshot Classes​

Archer:
• It should be quite obvious to see that there's a reason only 1 Archer is allowed per team all the way up to 14s in comp: It's the easiest oneshot class in the game.
• It has been specifically balanced for a limit of 1 in comp, so allowing an infinite number of them elsewhere is just ridiculous.
Assassin:
• By far the least guilty offender on this list, but it's still a problem due to the infinite limit.
• Strength II after kills works wonders, especially when a carrier has 0 support, or the guy you're fighting doesn't know how to sprint yet.
Ninja:
• What do you get when you give Speed II and invis to a guy surrounded by trackpad users? I like to call it the boklin Complex: If I have the means to kill you, no matter how scummy or cheap the plays are, I'll spend as much time as I have to making sure I get you.
• When the only offense is a solo Chemist/Elf and you have 3-5 Ninjas chasing them, you kinda uh get the recov every time... hopefully.
Pyro:
• Half the time you see one on casual, they're programmed to just frenzy the first thing they can get close enough to. Simple as that.
• Having literally 3+ in the same flag room makes it just a wee bit difficult for offense to steal, let alone make it out with any amount of steak/pots.

Changing Class Costs​

Anarchy was bad enough, but what happens when the commies step in too? Everybody has a recruit mode pathway to their first 2 classes, which can be anything they like. Simply put, that is pure stupidity. All it takes is 17k credits for someone to immediately become a systematically annoying user of all the above classes. Therefore, I believe the current system of universal freedom & cost increase should be abolished, and replaced with the following:
• Heavy, Medic, and Soldier remain free. These classes are vital to the basics of normal gameplay, and don't have any broken abilities other than Medic's pocket healing, which ideally should be changed soon.
• Dwarf, Engineer, and Scout are set to cost 5k credits. These classes have the potential to have an impact on certain situations, but ultimately oppose little threat to an experienced player.
• Chemist, Elf, Mage, Necro, and Ninja are set to cost 10k credits. These classes require skill and game sense to be played effectively, and should only belong in the hands of someone with enough credits to show for that experience.
• Archer, Assassin, and Pyro are set to cost 15k credits. These classes (basically) can all oneshot; Such power should be at the top of the shelf in the class market. The fact that Archer is free still amazes me, so at the very least Archer needs to be removed as a free class.

Limits in Casual​

Infinite Fashionista, Heavy, Soldier:
• These classes are completely dependent upon pvp skill with the minor exception of Soldier, and are the least likely to cause havoc in large numbers.
1x Dwarf:
• Aside from the fact that almost nobody plays it seriously anymore, it can be quite powerful at level 10, and I know from experience what happens when they rally up in numbers. If Dwarf does receive a rework, then obviously this limit could be changed.
2x Archer, Assassin, Pyro:
• While this would balance things quite a bit, it could also encourage the players that would originally be glued to these classes to actually learn how to play normally, instead of relying purely on the overpowered abilities.
3x Chemist, Elf, Engineer, Mage, Medic, Necro, Ninja, Scout:
• Not as imposing as the above classes, but beyond this limit, it just becomes pointless to try and resist them unless you're a oneshot class or buffed bulk.





Critique this to your heart's desire below please

 

New player retention rates are a direct side effect of the current limits & costs system. It also has to be noted that, 99% of the time, said new players are either brand new to Minecraft or brand new to multiplayer, which exponentially increases their desire for an easy way of being "successful" in the gamemode. If I download a game and decide I want to try out a 7 year old server, I'm going to be lightyears behind in terms of general experience and skill; The easiest option then would be to find the most broken mechanics of the game and utilize them in every way I can. If the mechanic is broken enough, I never have to learn how to play normally, so the skill gap remains almost exactly the same.

This is the curse of hosting such a small gamemode: There are 400 people who have been doing this for years and know what they're doing, while you might get 5 or 10 new players a day that log on and experience first hand how massive of a gap they need to close just to play normally. The problem with "letting people have fun" is that their definition of fun typically includes playstyles that disrupt objective gameplay in several ways. And what happens when they do try to play normally? They get hit with the immediate brick wall of regs who will almost always outplay them, so they give up. The growth of the team scene is so stagnated because almost all candidates are greeted with a toxic and imbalanced environment the moment they put one foot in the door, which only strengthens the separation of regs and new players. Trust me, I'd love to see new players joining teams, but the hard truth is that a lot of people don't. Do you think any well-grounded team has any desire for fresh pickups? If a hand isn't reached out to the new players, then they see no reason to persist in trying to reach that goal.

Competitive CTF is very well balanced - not perfect, but good enough for most of us. Casual is an alien lifeform in comparison, and far from consistent at that, which makes it nearly impossible to balance a class for one without disrupting the other; This is why I've been trying to suggest changes for the server itself far more than class tweaks (Lower server sizes, higher start limits, map management, etc.). It's clear that, in the right setting, the current classes function well enough that most of them don't need changes, so the most logical option would be to correct the actual problems, yes? If I own a guitar store, and my employees intentionally go around and smash them against the walls each day, would it make more sense for me to order stronger guitars, or to fire my employees? I hope you see where I'm going.

Casual is in shambles, not because of the classes themselves, but because of the way those classes are controlled externally. Yes, it would mean new players have to actually put effort into the game; That's the most effective way to get them interested in anything beyond Casual. I'm not saying the changes in my original post have to be exact, but the concept should be seriously considered if we want any hope of the gamemode surviving beyond people who have been here for half a decade.

 

I mean anarchy in the sense that the only thing getting in the way of doing whatever you want is the anticheat or staff that are online, and "whatever you want" typically throws the game or heavily offsets the balance between teams.

I excluded Mage and Necro because you need an IQ above 10 to get kills with them, whereas the latter 3 can quite literally be effectively used by people that don't know how to walk and click at the same time.

I think I'm quoting myself here, but Casual is literally too casual to a point where people either hate the disorder and only play comp or love doing the latter and contribute to the problems that force new players off the gamemode. It's a vicious cycle that would be very difficult to break without regulating things heavily and upsetting a few people.

 

competitive CTF is fine where it is. minor improvements are made as time passes, and that's been working fairly smoothly for years. the last thing we need to do is disrupt the portion of CTF that's actually working properly.

as much as rebalancing casual classes would assist in some form, it still has its own set of flaws. firstly, this rebalance would require the addition of a far more strict game size system that i believe i mentioned many months ago - something to the effect of a minimum of 8v8 and a max of 20v20 iirc. with the current 44 player gap between having enough and being full, any changes would only flip the balance of certain sizes. secondly, i believe most of the community still wants casual to be as cohesive with comp as possible so that transitioning new players don't have to learn an entire other meta and potentially lose interest. quite frankly, just implementing the game size change would be a much more stable experiment than what i've originally posted here; not sure what happened with that the first time i brought it up, but better late than never.

randy archers in casual are only effective for two reasons: 1) there are usually 5+ of them on each team in higher sizes, and 2) their playstyles are incredibly foreign compared to the regs, which catches them off guard. this is where the concept of balancing archer in casual specifically becomes so nightmarish; if we limit archer, then the skill gap you mentioned appears, and we can't just filter worse players from better ones automatically. i hate to say it with how much i've been trying to fix casual, but there aren't really any concrete solutions to fix casual as it stands without essentially turning it all into comp, which would indicate that the only logical move to take would be to remove casual. i've said it countless times, but the lack of regulation has and will always bite everyone in the ass when we consider what has proven to be effective (aka the current comp meta). it's a really jumbled mess, and anything we do to try to fix it will never be enough unless one of the two aforementioned routes are taken.

 

first part is exactly the point i've been trying to make for a while

CTF has been around for 8 years. this server has been quite lucky with having so many players stick around for so long, as well as being able to maintain a stable enough size to continue functioning (in comp at least). it isn't a pretty thought, but CTF is well due for its retirement when you look at the lifespan of other servers/gamemodes. i'm not saying i want that for the server, but the fact of the matter is that people are going to start moving away faster and faster; a lot of us are in high school and uni/college, starting or already living life as adults, and this community has developed in almost total isolation since 2016, meaning recruitment is hardly viable. CTF only stays alive as long as the regs stick around.

The skill gap has and will always be monumental for new players, especially people who are new to the game entirely. as i've said before, this is the problem with having too little regulation in a strategic gamemode: the skill gaps become exponentially higher as stronger players unite and weaker players become their victims at a staggering rate. however, there is a small chance that a balance can eventually be found where enough regs are gone as well as new players joining, where those players have a chance to close the gap, eventually leading to a new age of regs with a few leftovers from the last 4 years... very similar to what happened after the MCPVP migration. this is only one of three outcomes; the other two being 2) the regs stay long enough that relatively 0 new players join and the server just dies with time, or 3) administration eventually concludes that there is no remedy, and the server is shut down by choice. as much as some of us want the former, it isn't guaranteed, and that's something that has to be considered when looking into the future of CTF as a whole. try as we may, this server is just so old that we might not be able to do enough in the future. i will always push for the survival of CTF, but this all should still be known.

 

Which is why I'm concerned about how long it's going to survive. Eventually everyone is going to get tired of the same imbalanced chaos 24/7 and they'll just quit - then the people who are causing the imbalance will have no reason to keep playing since a vast majority of them have stuck to the exact same role since day 1 and don't have the patience to learn actual gameplay. I'm not saying we need to implement the same regulations as comp, but there has to be some level of control to sustain casual beyond anything more than kill*****s and stat farmers.