The Nature of Capture the Flag

What do you mean by "meaningful conflicts?" And there is absolutely no way of changing those 2 things about the gamemode because the game centers around capping the flag. Those are literally the only 2 ways to do it. What you described is a very specific instance of defending (camping yur flag), and trying to cap (rushing). There's no avoiding that.

 

That is pretty much impossible, because of respawning. And conflicts in the center do affect the game, I dun know where you're pulling that from, I've been denied recovery because of those conflicts. The middle of the map is more dangerous, but it's also a lot faster then going around the sides, yet the sides are longer but safer. It's a tradeoff, but the trend is the side. Does this mean the middle is useless? No.

And besides, the whole point is too avoid people when you have the flag. Even if the middle had more "meaningful conflict" it wouldn't matter.

 

As if anything done in this game could be meaningful when all your efforts are reset at the beginning of each new game and all your previous efforts become some numbers.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, you take guys CTF too seriously.

 

I personally, with my fantasizing side, would love to see ctf like this (edited and designed properly of course) but there are two obvious problems:
1: Changing the community, because ctfers are used to this ctf as a whole and how it plays.
2: This game could change in a perfect world, however changing something that big such as the metagame and everything under it will be too much.

 

How is it a problem? It's the whole point, and it's not that easy.

 

@logicalpencils
(Edit: holy crap I realized how long this is after posting it. Buuuuuttt you can still read it all if you care. c: )

Okay, so I've read every word of the thread before formulating a response, as I do with almost every thread which I choose to participate in the discussion of, and as I believe many should do as demonstrated by the great number of those who are calling you out on solely addressing ninja (which you are clearly not).

Firstly, I must say I respect you for being able to defend your argument perfectly well thus far. I say this with my belief that defending an argument has nothing to do with winning a debate; it is merely consistently presenting arguments and counter-arguments which your opponents must overcome, which I believe you have done, regardless of whether we all agree with your arguments. The point is you've established a point and have not been shaken from it with good reason.

Now with the formal stuff out of the way, allow me to address a few points that I wish to use in my own response. I've put tl;dr's in a few of the sections for those of you who it kills to read every argument in the thread.

The sad truth about a game which involves long-ranged instant kills. In discouraging the idea of "going around" the fight, you pool the players into one large battlefield, into which any archer with a vantage point (and a ridiculous store of 128 arrows, each one with the potential to instakill a target) can fire away and rack up kills, while upsetting the players who wish to carry out the objective of the game, which is capturing flags. Indeed, one may argue that the sole objective of archer--neither a core flag defense nor a capturing class--is to kill as many people as possible, both to ease the flow of people who make it to the flag room so that the defense will have a less harsh time defending, and to kill those who could potentially help an enemy flag carrier make it across the map. But many do not see it this way. There is a good number of "random killers" who primarily play archer, and they shoot at everything that moves for the wrong reasons; it's being killed for the wrong reason, I believe, is the true cause of people being upset by being killed multiple times by archers.

tl;dr: both what the quote says, and that there is something of a moral issue with creating a "meaningful conflict" in the middle of a map with the abilities of archer and other classes.

Sorry Gav, I'm going to use you as one example of how more than half of the people in this thread think it's all about ninja capping.

With that said, Gavalar is right about the reason for what you wish to call a broken mechanic of the game (paraphrasing). However, I believe this is one aspect of Capture the Flag which cannot be fixed; "fixing" it will only destroy almost every other aspect of the game, ranging from very increased encouragement of random-killing to near impossibility to capture a flag. I trust that you realize, but I ask you to reconsider the fact that a player travels across a map twice in order to capture a flag. (A thought that just popped into my head, though: this would definitely propose a spike in engineer population). Take a heavy, for example: maximum armor, high damage output, but three steaks. In the game's current state, this class can often make it across a map and to the flag room with relative ease, but is then harshly countered by a pyro and often a well-skilled assassin (the assassin's skill is based on the assumption that the heavy knows how to block). If you then begin crowding many people into the middle of the map, making fighting to get across the map inevitable, the heavy now has diminished health from crossing the map once, has the same difficulty getting in and out of the flag room alive, and now must cross the map once again, with the addition of a recovery team chasing it and flag poisoning taking effect. This makes for a near impossible capture.

tl;dr: emphasizing Gav's point, it is necessary to evade fighting and save health when going to steal a flag and returning to your own base because the toll of recovery teams and flag poison is already enough to drain health significantly; with the success of every recovery ever, it is evidently enough to kill you.

There are indeed times when the battles in the center of the map are enough to affect the outcome of a capture attempt, whether it be in Obi's cases of failed recoveries (rip) or in the perspective of the flag carrier who already has enough to deal with, with the instakill abilities of archers and assassins who are actually doing their jobs on recovery and otherwise the damage it takes from ninjas, chemists, and soldiers, and elves! (I mean, really, elf is a fairly lethal class if you can use it well; it's not solely to damage you and leave you to die for someone else.)

And finally, I believe it was @YourAverageRandy who noted "roaming defense" while having a horrible cold. I think that term applies to defense that goes up to about a quarter of the way across the map, killing every possible incoming player and acting as a first-line recovery team, so I'll also extend roaming defense to midfield. Midfielders are those who keep the fight alive in the middle of the map by taking out important targets like medics and engineers, as well as supporting friendly flag carriers and killing enemy ones. Random-killers confuse the term midfield with "kill everything in sight," but even so, even they contribute to the front-line battle which cappers must make their way through (or, as you said, even go around).

---

Though a little off-topic, I'd also like to address a new point. Regardless of how a map is played or the abilities that current classes have, I truly believe that the core classes of CTF (or at least what I consider to be the essential classes)--heavy, medic, soldier, archer, ninja, and pyro--were all designed for the purpose of smaller games. I wasn't around for the birth of CTF, so I'm not sure which of those are original classes, but I'm sure that the first CTF classes were created without the expectation of the game exploding into what it was at its peak. For example, archer is considered to be one of the kill-farming classes, though it's great for taking out an enemy flag carrier when the rest of the defense and recovery team have failed. It only makes sense that it was for the latter reason that the class was created; the original creators were not idiots enough to create a class purely for kill-farming.

CTF in its current state, and I believe in the state it will always be (I have yet to find the time to sit down and read Musnon's CTF 2.0, but every game has its flaws), works best in small matches with right intentions and skilled players. This is what I enjoy about playing in official team matches. Every class, every person in their role, does their job how it's supposed to be done, and does it very well, presenting a challenging game. The overpowered nature of classes like chemist and pyro are balanced out by what many claim to be a false argument: skill. Of course, in a massive fifty-player game, skill does not do much against five pyros and seven dwarves. But in small matches, the combination of a ninja and a soldier can defeat a pyro. When a chemist tries to capture and makes it out of the flag room, skilled archers and ninjas on the recovery team can successfully kill it and earn the recovery.

tl;dr: CTF was made for and works best in small games. Perhaps classes are still somewhat unbalanced even in small matches, but the primary reason people call the game "broken" is because of the capabilities of individual people in large games.

 

I like how you think. Except I'd disagree with the steak changing, I think it's fine how it is.

 

???
This would all make recovering the flag harder

 

The whole point of steak is adding an extra level of skill to the game. People who can't steak well or don't know how are at a massive disadvantage compared to the ones who can. You have to manage your steak and tie it into yur fighting as well. Without it, CTF just becomes easier, and wats the point of that?

 

Back in what is known as the "Golden Age" of CTF, the game of CTF was in its best state possible. People weren't overly concerned about the meta of the game, people weren't concerned about nerfing every class into oblivion, only changes that absolutely 100% needed to occur, and people just played the game to have fun.

They did this by doing the exact opposite of what pencils said and what occurs today. Today, everybody either takes the side routes and avoids major conflict, or plays defense. Back in the "Golden Age" the only path was straight into the center of the map where about 80% of each team (At that time, teams averaged about 35 players per team) was having a giant battle to see who could kill the most people. Only a few people played defense in the flag room, and plenty of people tried to capture the flag and kill every other defender. Nobody complained about the state of the classes, the game, or anything too much. It was overall the funnest time to play CTF.

If this CTF could get back to the style of those days, CTF would be so much more fun for everybody to play.

 

Aye, the unfortunate thing about "golden ages" is that they only happen once. But a "silver age" would be nice.

I think I was around in those times, but I was far less involved in the game itself, let alone the community, so I didn't get the chance to appreciate it for what it was. ;-;

Interesting. I think it would encourage medics to heal people more often, seeing something under 100% on people's name tag display even after small fights. Maybe it could even encourage friendly chemists to splash health pots on random people from time to time. However as @obikenobi21 said, steak does involve some degree of skill, even if it is small, and does give the upper hand in fights if used right.

Also, about the amount of health drained while steaking: it seems to me that you're either exaggerating or speaking from the perspective of an archer being attacked by a ninja. And I know the experience fully well: an elf is rendered useless in close-quarters combat because of the constant need to steak (like, no time to even get a shot off, and the sword is useless for dealing damage). But in most other scenarios, I don't think health is consumed that quickly.

 

If you think about it as if it was cough a game played in real life cough, wouldn't returning be much harder due to the pretty much instant lock on from literally everyone else on the enemy team once they see you have their cough flag? It's kinda the whole point of CTF, you get the flag, you're going to have a cough cough cough, excuse me, a pretty hard time getting past the whole mob of people who are both in front of you, and chasing you, assuming cough they actually notice that you have their flag. Getting to the flag isn't that hard since the defense doesn't always pay too much attention to you as that would mean splitting the defense up weakening cough the whole defensive line, but returning should be much harder since it's similar to a do or die situation where if they do not get the cough flag back, the other team is one capture closer to winning the game, thus forcing the entire defense to chase after the flag carrier. As it stands, I cough think the whole capping after stealing thing is pretty good right now, the only thing I would change is making it so you can actually break webs with a on hit system, perhaps making it so that 5 hits on any opposing teams web would destroy cough it, making it simpler for defense to break through webs and pursue, rather than cough a medic simply gumming up a whole passage cough with some spray and pray webbing.
I would prefer steak be kept the same, but thats just because I enjoy bursting cough down archers who don't know how to use steak . And if we did end up changing it so that there was no cough steak, what the heck would we do with chemist? Keep it the same or give it a cough million(exaggerated I know) bonus hearts?(so salty about health pool)

Apologies for the cough coughing, I apparently am once again, struck by holiday sickness. Mine just happens to be around Thanksgiving, anyone else? cough cough.

 

@Plautius

I can see where you're coming from but a good CTF map should be a balance of both fighting and capturing.

Let's take a game of DoTA. The objective is to destroy the enemy's Ancient, but it's difficult to reach the Ancient without farming and dealing with enemy minions, champions, and towers.

Although there is a main goal, map control is very important, pushing your opponents back so you can take out the Ancient with ease.

Actually, let's take a better example: TF2. The CTF gamemode is still fairly unbalanced, but it features a struggle between offense, defense, and stealth. As a general rule, it's ideal to have your team push up so you can push into the flag room and pick up their flag.

However, the Scout and Spy are good at back capping. Even though there's a big fight going on, these guys can sneak past enemy forces and get to the flag. However, getting out is an issue. One sentry in a flag room will stop any aspiring Scout in his tracks, and a Spy won't be able to disguise or turn invisible with the flag. Another great TF2 mode is Control Point, where each team owns 2 points with an empty point in the middle. The two teams fight over the middle point, with the winner advancing to take the loser's second point, while the losers take back the middle. Again, a Spy or Scout can try to sneak by the fight and capture a point while no one's defending. But they're still very easy to get rid of if you have just a bit of defense.

So while Scouts and Spies can take advantage of an opening in the enemy's defenses to capture an objective, they can't just rush into a room full of people and expect to get out.

In MCCTF it's a different question. With the exception of instant kills, killing a Ninja can be quite difficult unless the Ninja tries to actually fight you, in which case it's a toss up of it he caught you off guard and how many Steaks or Healing potions you have. A Ninja can run through a room with a Sentry, Heavy, and Pyro and probably escape alive. Part of this issue is because there aren't many classes that can deal reliable ranged damage, and even then it's still quite difficult. Bows are pretty hard to aim at a moving target who's smart, especially a Ninja. And in the case that you do hit, the knockback may cause the Ninja to fly even further! There's the Mage, who can actually deal with Ninjas fairly well, but Mages themselves are a class that's quite annoying to deal with.

So while part of the objective in CTF is to watch out for sneaky Ninja captures, the Ninjas in question shouldn't be able to teleport into a room, steal the flag, and let their speed bonus take care of the rest.

A possible way to make Ninja caps less prevalent is to remove their speed buff while holding a flag. And also disable the use of invisibility and ender pearls when carrying, but I'm pretty sure that's already disabled. Another interesting feature would be to disable knockback (unless a weapon is supposed to knock back, like the Archer Bow). This would prevent you from chasing a player and hitting them, causing them to fly away and make them even harder to kill.

The game shouldn't have so much reliance on a single class. Using the less mobile classes makes you actually feel a little irrelevant. You can play Heavy, Pyro, or Archer for example and try to defend and push against the enemy force, but in the end it doesn't matter because the real fight is between the Ninjas and whoever camps the flags.

Camping is not a fun aspect of a game. Defense can be fun, but sitting in a room and waiting for the enemy is not. While a game should give you the ability to take advantage of an ambush where you wait for an enemy, you shouldn't be standing in the same room for the entire game.

 

The thing is about real CTF games, killing people is unacceptable (I'd hope xD). Unless you're playing paintball/airsoft or something of the sort, there usually isn't a way to take out enemy defenders in order to infiltrate their "base." (This is assuming you're playing a kind of zone-based CTF.) This makes for a wall of opponents who can defeat you in your attempt to capture their flag, which accords to your type of metagame. However in MCCTF, not only can you kill defenders, but you can slip by many of them with ease due to visibility and field of vision being much more restricted than in real life. (Sorry if this doesn't make much sense in some places, I really need to go to bed. )

Hence the concept of offense, and the possibility of midfield recovery.