We need more teams

brb let me make an entire team out of my alts gg @north join me bb

 

Uh, kinda stated the obvious but you can't make people join or make teams or have matches or do any of this stuff. And a lot of ppl don't even like CTF they are just here for the frwendz

 

You do explain most (if not all) of the problems within the CTF Teams system right now, but I'm not sure if these solutions will revive the team system. If anything, it will only prolong it for a bit longer.

The first issue is with the forming of new teams. You do hit the major points that most new teams are made of new / inactive players, resulting in them losing a lot and ultimately disbanding. You also make a good point about how the talent average among teams is rising, and any new team not made up of regulars is well below the skill curve.

However, should we advertise CTF Teams to new players, how many new players would we get out of our already small playerbase? I'd guess about 20-30 players, if we're that lucky. Here's what happens next:

• New players apply to older teams
  • Most new players are instantly denied, except for the one or two skilled CTFers that have never been recruited to CTF Teams (which is very rare)
• New players apply to newer teams
  • Some of the half decent players are accepted
  • However, only about 5-6 players will be accepted, seeing as there are very few new teams with a bunch of open spots
• After being denied by most teams, a few of the players would give up on Teams entirely
  • Probably around 2-3 players
• Left with no new teams to join, a few players out of the remaining 15-20 decide to start their own CTF Teams
  • This would suck up the remaining players who were denied by the majority of CTF Teams
  • However, each team would probably only gain 4-5 players, if lucky
    • This leaves those teams in a perpetual state of [Recruiting]
    • Most new teams would disband in about a month of being in that state

• Best case scenario - Only one team is made and takes up all the remaining players and all of its members are active enough to play in matches and they have good leadership and all of the members are able to have access to skype and/or discord
  • New Team becomes [Official]
  • New Team tries to fight other teams
  • New Team is easily defeated by every other team
  • New Team disbands shortly after or becomes inactive from players not wanting to play matches they know they will lose

This is what would most likely happen should we advertise CTF Teams across the servers, and with a very generous estimate of 20-30 players that would even bother trying to join and going through the forums process.

If this was to be a solution, we would need a very large playerbase with more players willing to join CTF Teams. We would require an entirely new section of new teams to play eachother so both sides would have an equal skill level. This would also form a rift in the CTF Teams community. Our community is very closed and welcomes very few new players.

This leads into your fourth problem, which is true. Most new players would be completely uneducated in how to run / form an organized team. It would require an experienced team leader to hold the hand of the new team leader throughout most of the process. However, strong leadership is not the only cornerstone of a good team. A good team also requires a large playerpool of consistent and active players.

The new players are completely inexperienced in CTF Matches and often will either forget about upcoming matches or will not have enough of an open schedule to actively participate. This means that the new teams will have a hard time organizing players for Official matches, and they will heavily rely on mercs for Unofficial matches.

This also leads to organizing within a CTF Match itself. Problems within this would include new players not understanding:

• How to give out roles
• How to organize defense / offense
• The necessity of an organized defense / offense
• MMR
• How to utilize match servers

This would be on top of the current communication issues they would be experiencing.

See, since most new players are introduced into already experienced teams, they don't have to worry about this, seeing as they are surrounded by experienced competitive players who can teach and instruct the new players. They have the Team Leaders who have knowledge in giving out roles and discussing strategies to the new players. Their hands are held throughout the majority of the beginning of their time on a CTF Team, making the entire transition easier for the new player to comprehend. If they forget about a CTF Match, the team has a ton of other players who can usually fill in. The CTF Team they joined already has an internal family and relies on those tested bonds of trust and companionship in and out of matches, and the new players are able to rely on that stability.

However, since this team would be made completely out of new players, they would have to deal with all of the problems listed above, along with forming those bonds of trust and companionship with everyone which only come from experience. They'd have to form a family out of nothing, and for a majority of the beginning, they would have nothing to rely on.

Even if the team was able to be helped out by older players, there is nothing we can do about their skill level, which would be considerably lower than all the other teams, since that is something they have to improve by themselves.

"A chain is only as strong as its weakest link"

There is so much we experienced players took for granted when we joined our first CTF Team.

Now, you may ask, what about the first CTF Teams that had no experience? Simply put, we had a much larger playerbase, so even if some players weren't able to integrate with CTF Teams, there was nearly always another more active player who could take his or her place. Eventually, this sifted though the playerbase, and we were left with the remaining players who would then form the CTF Teams system as we know it today. Our playerbase is limited, so if one player is not able to conform to the team, it's a major problem.

I do agree that the amount of officials required by teams should be raised to increase activity of teams.

So in conclusion, you did hit on many of the major errors in the team system. However, even in the best case scenario that:

• We were able to get enough players interested in CTF Teams from our already small playerbase
• They were able to all join one team
• The team had good leadership
• The team had a multitude of active players and was helped out a ton by experienced players
• The team was able to actively hold matches

That team would easily be defeated by every other team, eventually leading to it disbanding or the players simply giving up. There's simply so much to learn about CTF Teams that most new teams would be crawling from match to match. Our best case scenario is not a very good scenario for that team (this is under the assumption that we would only gain 20-30 players). I'm not saying that we shouldn't advertise, but we should be prepared for how the the events of that team fold out.

I've racked my brains for a solution to these problems, but I can't think of a solution that would "revive" the team system. The only reason why none of this would work, put simply, is because we have a very small playerbase compared to what we used to have on MCPVP's MCCTF.

 

I think what @kevshadowslayer is saying is completely right. In the first instance CTF is a lot less popular than it once was. The playerbase is undoubtedly smaller, a lot of regular players have left over the past year or so and realistically there hasn't been enough of an input of newer players to make up the numbers. I think that's partially down to the problems we face on ctf in general (which I've made a thread about so go check that out if you haven't already, all of this meshes together). I think this relative lack of input of new players was inevitably going to lead to a lack of input of new players into the team system. That's especially given that the ability of some of the regular players around nowadays is crazy. It's pretty damn difficult for a new player playing ctf to be able to catch up to that kinda skill (even if they're skilled at some of the other gamemodes). I think inevitably to partially address the problem with teams we have to address the problems ctf has right now. It's a gamemode rapidly losing popularity from stagnation, lack of advertisement, and to a much lesser extent the bugs in the coding. Inevitably you have to innovate and market to become popular, and so ctf ultimately has to do this in order gain more players, and so that we'd have more coming into the team system. That would solve the initial problem with ctf teams. The main aim of the system is to have fun playing with some friends. In that respect, whether they'd win or lose, then as long as they had fun the team system would be doing it's job. It doesn't solve the long term issue of skill disparities though.

Ultimately, people find games more fun if you win them. Inevitably if new players were to enter the system they'd lose to all of the incumbent ctf teams. It's now gotten to the stage where some of the regular players on ctf are now so good that they can be quite easily mistaken for hackers (regulars get called out for hacks all the time in game). I'd say it would be pretty hard at this point to tell between some of the people playing genuinely, and others hacking. New players are constantly going to be playing catch up to the people who've got a tonne more experience behind it, and ultimately they're gonna lose to every single ctf team with regulars in for the games because they're just in way over their head. As kev's already said, they'd get bored of losing, become demotivated and disband. It's a real problem that I'm not sure has any real solution to it. You can't just get rid of the old team system and make an entirely new one because a lot of the regulars wouldn't stay, and teams would just reform anyway with the close knit community. Alternatively you can't just intersplice any new players with the old for the exact same reason. The close knit community accepts very few new players (combined with the stigma that a lot of the brawl players are bad which doesn't help things much) meaning they'd all be forced into one team and lose. Truth be told, I don't really think there is an answer to that disparity, unless of course the regular players all spread themselves out among new teams with new players so that each team had a similar skill level. Given the close knit community again, I don't think that would happen any time soon.

edit: it's good to see that there's now a message on the server advertising teams. What really needs to happen now is to begin fixing ctf as soon as possible so that the gamemode becomes popular and there are people to see the message!

 

The one thing i'm against here is the 2nd so called problem you have. I'll use DF as an example. Lately we've been struggling to get more than one match, in fact we were lucky to even get one match in a few weeks. With maybe only one team that is consistently willing to have a match with us, that would still be only one match as you said, but what needs to be considered is what of teams that are relatively active but not many teams are willing to face them? It usually applies for higher tiered teams, but it is not the team's fault, especially if it is active. 1 match per month is sufficient to show that a team is still relatively active.

 

Regarding problem three, ctf teams have been being advertised on ctf in game. (Via a message in chat every couple of minutes)

 

Why don't we take CTF, and push it somewhere else?????