Idea CTF Training Area

Bring back kit for CTF class 1v1s

 

so there was an idea that I had and wanted to get implemented but it was about having mini team fights.
1 heavy, chem, and medic for example or
1 soldier, 2 chem, 1 medic.
Like mini team fights to get used to how other classes can work together against others

 

So, some of you may (heavily) disagree with me here, but I personally believe CTF in general is way too complicated for a Minecraft server. Although a training would help retain a few more players I don't think it will significantly change player retention. Minecraft is a game where mostly children play and is also not really a game you play to really get into a new game and start learning a lot. I'll get in to why I think that is the case later on. But first my points on why I think any sort of tutorial (even though I suggested something similar at first) wouldn't work too great.

A lot of the players that join are children, and even a tutorial can be overwhelming and hard to understand, especially with a game mode like CTF where there's a lot of spells, aspects, abilities, etc. A decent amount of people don't speak English properly enough to be able to understand the tutorial or speak any English at all. But most importantly people don't want to have to go through a tutorial first, it's a big alarm bell which instantly tells the player the game is hard to get into and to learn / understand. This will most likely already make a lot of people leave.

So getting back in to why learning a game like CTF the state it is on Brawl will be very hard to get working. Taking the examples posted in this thread but also taking another example: Call of Duty Warzone, Valorant, Overwatch. All those games you either buy/ or get for free, but incredibily important, you know what you're getting in to. You heard it from a friend, or perhaps saw some videos about. Before hand the player knows that the game is going to be hard to learn but they have commited to that so they know what they're getting in to.

Now for Brawl, with all due respect I highly doubt a lot of people are surfing online and come by a CTF video of Brawl and get interested that way or that someone is deliberately looking for a CTF gamemode on a Minecraft server. The only way I see people get introduced to CTF directly is by friends which is a very small amount.
The other problem is Brawl doesn't have a great player count, so there is no room for noobs to be in a server and learn the game together and that way climb up the ladder. Games like Valorant, COD and overwatch, can offer this due to their higher player count.

When you play Minecraft you generally expect to quickly hop in a game that's quick to understand. Skywars is/was incredibly succesful, it's a simple game you hop in fight other players without all sorts of weird abilities, and whenever servers tried adding these abilities and spells, etc. You would see that it would be significantly less popular. Another example is Mini games, SkyBlock, Prison. All simple games you can hop in and quickly start off. CTF simply can't offer this and thus is why I feel like it doesn't really grow.

I also feel like the low player count is really demovating when you get into a gamemode like that, when you get good in COD you have millions of other players to beat, but it may seem like a waste of time to learn a game mode that only has players online at certain times of the day and not reaching much above the 50 count.

I personally feel like another "problem" is why it keeps getting worse and worse is because from what I can tell the majority of the players are people that have been around for years. And they know the gamemode through and through. And when you know the game fully and know every aspect, you want more abilities, "new things". So a new update comes out with more abilities more spells, more classes perhaps. Making the game mode even more difficult and eventually making lesser and lesser new players stick around. Problem is, how do you fix that?

The only way I would know to fix that is to simplify the gamemode again, make the gamemode super simple like the 4 main classes, Heavy Soldier Medic and Archer perhaps. but for example keep ppm's to have all the classes. Or like I have seen suggested before, a simpler casual mode (problem again here is that the player count doesn't support this as much)

Putting it back to simple can be a new refreshing start. And from there on you can start to add new things, updates etc. But this time trying to keep the updates simpler, don't add overcomplicated classes, etc. Does this guarantee 100% succes? Definitely not. But how it is right now the player count will slowly decline more and more. I personally believe a training or tutorial could do something but my guess is that it will never do enough to really grow CTF again, as soon as the gamemode is big and holds a big playercount like 400+ and videos are being made about it left and right, then is when you can complicate it slightly more and add tutorials, because then you will have new players joining in after videos dedicated to learning and getting in to the game.

This is my view of CTF after playing it for 20 hours and looking through the Discord etc. I could be saying some weird things here as I'm quite new but this is how I view it and what I think is the problem as of now with CTF.

 

I think this a pretty solid idea. When newer players are getting into things it can be very confusing for them. I think a training arena would offer a more chill way to practice, without getting spawn-killed by regulars or just obliterated by people who know the ins and outs of every mechanic in the game. It would also offer the opportunity for new players to practice premium classes they don’t own, without having to wait for Friday. Solid idea!

When I started playing on CTF, back in like 2012 or so, I was allured by the mechanics of the game mode. Basically every class was overpowered and the player base was a lot larger. I think what was so good about the game back then, was the classes were relatively easy to learn, just because of how powerful they were. You didn’t need to actually be good at the game in casual, because any class you played was already powerful enough and didn’t need as much skill. Ninja eggs caused blindness, there was no cool down for 414, you had 10 pearls and could insta-cap, etc. Although I’m happy with how most of the classes are now, it’s just not as beginner friendly as it was before, and the updates usually cater to the regulars.

 

People play for KDR too much in casual as well, which sometimes even discourages playing objectively.

 

The very low average player count has almost become the meta of CTF at this point. New players are often not prioritized in the equation when the game is edited, because this server has thrived mainly off of the same 300 people for the last 5 years. You are right, trying to accumulate a 4 or 5 digit player base with how complex CTF is is almost nonsensical, but similarly, the low player count is what allows CTF to be so dynamic. The reason other games thrive so much is because of their simplicity: Bedwars is basically bridging and pvp, Skywars is somewhat the same, etc., while other games like UHC and Skyblock have a very exaggerated skill ceiling because they incorporate dozens of concepts that drown out the fundamentals. Personally, I believe there is room to extend the player pool further without changing CTF, but eventually there would be a point where simplification is necessary to retain those players. It doesn't help that Brawl has been in a very dusty corner of the server scene to say the least, so a great deal of publicity would be required to even reach any of those points.

As a remedy to all of that, I think the idea of a "Casual Lite" is the best that can be done at the moment. Ideally, if players are able to learn the fundamentals of CTF (and pvp in some cases) before stepping into an unregulated 25v25, they would handle it well enough to keep trying - but we don't know how well that will work. However, Brawl is going to be in a tight spot financially in the coming months with the new game(s) they're releasing, so justifying another CTF server would be difficult seeing as it's a miracle to see 2 of them active at once these days.

It also prevents new players from learning what playing objectively even means. If you log on and immediately get farmed by a sweat to the point where you just can't do anything, you can't really learn what the game is supposed to be like. I've been saying for a while now that there is too much freedom in casual, and one major ramification is that there will always be people itching to target randoms to their hearts' desires as long as they don't get in trouble for it.



The bottom line is that there will need to be serious collaboration throughout the entire CTF staff team to assess what's feasible, what's right & wrong, and everything in between. They will be the ones putting it into action, so it should be the community's responsibility to make as many educated & concise points as possible to ensure that things don't get distorted through the grape vine.

 

On the subject of keeping new players interested, I think reducing game size would be great for everyone. Instead of 25v25s have 15v15s or something. There are three CTF servers and only 1 is ever in use. And yes I think something to familiarize new players with the kits would be a great idea

 

Exactly, one huge game is basically unplayable. If we want casual ctf to be more enjoyable for newer players reducing game sizes is the way to go. It’ll allow them to work on the objectives of the game without being overwhelmed.

 

I fully agree with that. As much as I would hate to admit it. Kit FFA just isn't popular on here. So I would think a practice / duels part with some decent flat maps for certain kind of kits on there like soup again for the raid players, then modified arenas with some stuff to hide in and behind for guns, and finally maybe some parts of ctf maps copied and made into a small arena for ctf class 1v1s.
Another thing that could maybe be considered is adding a Best of 3? Which could come in handy for say archer duels or people not wanting to just send another duel but rather go right back into it. Have a long kinda decent map for archer as well to make it better for an archer duel. I'd say you could learn a bit on how to contest an archer there if anything.

Ctf classes having the options of BO3 or BO5 could be potentially used for it and ofc a singular 1v1
Maps: parts of ctf maps
Some basic arenas fit to be used to fights in ctf

Also consider adding a mini team vs ctf duel system having limits of 1 chem, 1 heavy, 1 medic and so forth vs each other and the teams discuss who becomes which and have 2m to pick their classes and if they wanna switch they can swap after round 1 if they pick B03 or B05

Soup / other old ones that could be brought back would be standard 1v1 or B03

Guns BO3 or BO5 cause with the guns needing to be more warZ sided like previously, would be best

 

I think this is a pretty cool idea, I think maybe a practice server, the server would be dedicated to practice games, I'd make this so it doesn't effect you're stats, you can't earn credits, it's purely for practice.

 

Rhose are some pretty solid ideas