On: Instant Kills

'ey. There's a lot here and I want to respond to it. Lemme grab a laptop so I'm not wordwalling on my phone.

Also first.

 

Another refutation is the fact that most Instakills are defensive, they only make dying fast paced which isn't a good thing. Slow gameplay and quick death makes a game unsatisfactory whilst improving CTF to make all classes fast paced but die less often would allow fast paced gameplay with medium paced death.

Every time somebody argues in favor of instakills I see a large crutch on it affecting other classes and slowing the game down, which means that you are assuming other classes do not get changes and the instakills are completely removed with no replacement.

Just because instakills should be removed doesn't mean people would die much slower, it'd just not be instant.

Nom also admitted his poll was poorly made, as the options were essentially preference and not logical thinking since the outcome would be the same "complete balance" (as well as a majority of players being uneducated in the issue).

I've also lost hope on the issue though, it seems that the fight for change at all is stagnating as too many people are "okay" with a broken game as is. Even if people were to agree on mass change we'd never reach balance, as no player wants to see massive changes for the sake of a better game.

Bawsss555sss (I dont know how to do your IGN) put this in the best terms in my opinion.

 

I like your arguments and writing style. As long balance and fun ensue, I don't mind whether or not instakills are removed.

You claim that instakills would be unnecessary if the game's other broken aspects are corrected, which is true, but it'll take a lot of work for those substandard non-instakill classes to be fixed up to par. Similar to what Bawss5 stated, classes were designed to counter existing classes, and all will need to be overhauled simultaneously to have a chance at balance. A part of me is afraid that Brawl won't be up for that. MCPVP wasn't, and all of its half-arsed attempts at a solution resulted in a more broken game.

In any case, I'm interested and looking forward to what the rest of the community has to say.

 

tl;dr

 

L3@V£ ÇT€ @10ñ£ 1tš2öp4ü

 

I can't seem to articulate my point right now, so I'll just move on a bit.

Since I'm the one who originally said it, let me answer this question.

First off, you selectively quoted that. It's not 'relatively limited time' as in it's going to die, it's 'relatively limited time to truely thrive'. The server moved to brawl over a month ago, so we can safely assume that the brawl boom is over. Everyone who was interested in CTF from brawl has tried it at this point, made an opinion, and stayed or left based on that. maybe there's a few new joiners occasionally, but it's likely negligible.

Now, what's the total number of players brawl has on at any time, across all game modes? Let's say about 1000. That's 1000 players... across all gamemodes. Of that 1000 potential CTF players, only one server at a time is ever truly full, and of the other three, one is usually about half full, and the other two have a few players. So, rounding up, that's about 100 players of CTF on average. AFTER THE BRAWL BOOM. After we were presented to a server full of prospective new players, we can barely manage to fill up one and a half 60 player servers on a regular day.

Now, keep in mind that CTF classes can only be bought once per player, and with each class costing 2.50 a piece, and being generous in assuming that all of the 100 average players will purchase every class, nor have they purchased any classes from MCPVP that were transferred. That's 3250 dollars profit for CTF on an average game. Total. That's not that much. No matter how you slice it, CTF is not a profitable gamemode without a constant influx of new players.

Add on top of all this the fact that the classes are unbalanced to the point where new players are just likely to ragequit as they are to stay at all, and you've got a CTF that's only really going to survive on the strength of its own playerbase and their constant support.

So, how many players of CTF do you think will move on to new games within a year or two? Probably quite a few, and while there will obviously be new players joining the veteran community, with the age and staleness of CTF, there's very likely going to be 2 or 3 leaving for every new joiner from here on out.

If you take all of this into account, the point I made becomes clear. CTF's time to thrive, to generate profit and as such allow for brawl to justify spending considerable time fixing it, is only going to run out. Maybe it will live for years to come. However, unless there's a massive update that revitalizes the entire gamemode's playability, CTF will only continue to be a hollow shell of the life it once had.

You got it right Teenshoitsocks, don't worry.

 

Hey I got tagged!

I agree with everything on here, noice thread. I also dun believe CTF is a game that insta-kills belong in. While I admit insta-kills can be balanced in other games, I don't believe they can be balanced here. We should shift toward non-insta-kills instead of just making more counters. We also have to remember that insta-kills are not the only thing wrong with the gamemode. There are other things that need to be fixed along-side insta-kills, such as chemist, dwarf, necro, and soldier. Minor tweaks here and there to get CTF away from being balanced around insta-kills.

 

Okay my take on instakill attacks. Im gonna call a balance card on this there are players on CTF that are genuinely nearly impossible to kill under normal combat conditions. Imma give a good example "people that have mastered chemist"". A chemist alone noob or not is a challenging target to the average player to deal with. Now what about a chemist that has had alot of time to hone pot pvp skills? That one player his combat worth now suddenly equals just as much as a small team of players. If the player in question has teammates that are focused on protecting him he is nearly impossible to eliminate short of overwhelming numbers or without an extremely well played strategy to assist him. Instakills greatly level the playing field in this regard. Without instakills like the archer (as much as i hate it personally) It gives players with no special combat attributes a somewhat more elevated chance of actually removing a threat from action. Without it players who master OP classes can basically run amok with little fear of having themselves checked. Though most people in response to this would cue rework ideas or something along those lines im not optimistic many reworks will be made in the near future. Instakills are a semi effective way to check OP classes and more especially players that have played them enough to make themselves nearly invincible on that battlefield.

 

You made the point I tried to make but couldn't. Instakills really do level the playing field. The point is, instantkills are only the most annoying thing right now. Take them down, and you've got skilled chemists ruling the game. Balance them out, and Heavies become the biggest menace, and so on and so on. It's turtles all the way down, and focusing on removing instant kills is only really scratching the surface on how broken CTF really is.

 

My final point on the matter i should have added this to my main post. 1 and im gonna stress this 1 op player with a well honed skill set can easily dominate a team if the cards are played correctly. When a Op class is thrown against a team of relatively new player the eam of relatively new players suddenly become far less effective at defending themselves. Uncoordinated teams of players can easily get overwhelmed before they can regroup and properly defend themselves when faced with a major threat. Instakills are by far the best way to offset this vulnerability. Now if you have a decent pyro or assassin with a modicum of ambush skill the team can still be effective at repelling threats even if the target chops their way through their main ranks and get to the flag.

 

I cannot add anything more to this discussion as I basically said everything I could in the post you quoted from me. Also I agree with cactus that it'll be hard to tweak all the classes when instakills are removed completely. It would be easier to add new or better counters to them.

The only thing I am and have been wondering about since it was released: Noms poll was admittedly poorly worded, so why was it posted in the first place? It was created at a time where instakills were heavily discussed, he should have known the outcome of it would represent an up to date mindset of the community. Now that there is a result, the outcome shouldn't be diminished just because the poll was "poorly worded".

Props to this very long and in depth analysis, btw! =)

 

Adding new or better counters is only a bandage to try and save a severely broken game. Fixing the core would be much more efficient and would benefit the servers much better.

The poll wont be disregarded, but it is also irrelevant to the real debate on instakills. Assuming that Instakills could be utilized into perfect balance means that its just a sense of personal preference. But the reality is that instakills are only balances to a game that is broken at heart and wouldn't be needed if people were willing to accept a overhaul of the system to make gameplay much more fair.

 

The problem with the poll isn't necessarily that it was poorly worded, but that it was inherently biased. People using the poll as an argument to support instakills aren't really considering the reason why the poll results weighed so heavily in instakills' favour. Who were the only people who had access to voting on this poll? The current community. Anybody who would have been against instakills never joined the community, or have already left, ergo, they didn't get to vote. The only players left who could have voted on the poll either enjoy playing with instakills, don't care about them, or find them a compelling enough challenge to keep playing, but aren't necessarily a fan of them. None of these groups are adamantly against instakills. Of the players who don't care/find them a challenge, most of them will vote in favour of "balanced instakills" since they're used to them being in the game. The few players who have stayed in spite of their dislike for instakills are the only ones likely to have voted for their removal, but as demonstrated players of that nature are few in number, despite what you might think because of their being a very vocal minority.

Those who use the results of the poll to argue in favour of instakills are thinking about the community we currently have, and not considering the community we might have. I think that if it were possible for the poll to be unbiased, and have votes from those people who haven't played yet, and those who played and left, we would have seen results opposite to those we actually saw. I'm not going to say that players who use the poll to argue for instakills are intentionally being selfish, but that they misconstrued the meaning of the poll. The poll merely showed that the people who play the game right now don't mind the instakills, which as I've explained was inevitable. But look at the number of players who voted, a little over 200. Think about how many players we once had (if you were around back then). The number of players we have right now is only going to continue going down if we don't do anything. They might just start going back up if we stop trying to appeal to the niche community we have right now and think about the new players.

 

Wow... That was a lot of words. o.o

I bet you could make a small book covering all of CTF's controversial topics.

 

Okay time to rant So, as you read on, you'll probably pick up on my opinion for instakills. So one of the main arguments against them is that it takes away from 'skill.' First of all, skill is an extremely subjective term in the Minecraft World. Sure, some people are better at PvP than others, but what's the point of having skill in a game like CTF? I mean, people often complain that a class like assassin takes no skill. Okay? What's so bad about that? After all it's a game where the main point is to use teamwork and strategy to win ,not just raw skill. Also, if you still argue skill is important, you can have skill with a certain class, not just melee PvP. I feel like saying instakills take no skill are Heavy mains trying to explain that they are mlg pr0 unlike them pairo randi3s. That's how certain archers can be better than others.

The other argument is that instakills aren't noob friendly. This completely contradicts the last argument. If you want to raise the skill cap to soup hg level be my guest. The noobies sure won't like when they loose every fight, though. Ez kills also keep noobs playing.

Another argument is it takes away from teamwork. I don't see how taking out a high-priority target by yourself, while your allies cap and defend is anti-teamwork. Nonetheless , if you're the only competent person on your team, recovering by yourself without instakills can feel pretty overwhelming.

Now on to the main reason I think we need to keep instakills. Refer what to bob said above, the instakills stop high mobility and tank classes from steam-rolling over the flag room. I've made this point in other posts as well. As it currently stands, we need instakills to balance to game out. After all, what's so wrong about getting instakilled? You get sent straight back to your spawn to try again.

Overall, I feel like the arguments for instakills are more valid. Not everyone that wants them are ignorant, as it is implied by some above.

NOTE: This post is not a personal attack on anyone, simply what I think. I respect all your opinions. Happy capturing!