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CTF  /  4 Mar 2012, 19:46
CTF in modern Quakeworld
This blog refers to this thread. You maybe should read it before you continue here. Do not worry. I wait for you.
As there are always discussions about playing 4on4 instead of 3on3, to turn off the runes, and especially the No-Hook-Rule, which lead to time consumung arguments and delays on the server I thought it was the best to write down the reasons behind the different specifications.

3on3
Often people want to play 4on4 (I guess they are sued to it from TDM) and refuse to ready up until we have 4 players in each time. It might be a odd number for a team game but it has several advantages. Firstly the existing QW community is not that big. It is already difficult to get normal 4 on 4s going. By reducing the members necessary the possibility the a game will happen will be increased. Secondly it will be much easier for newcomers to form a team, because finding 2 more people to play together with is much easier then finding 3 more (pretty obvious). Furthermore, it makes teamplay much easier if you do not have to coordinate too many other team members, but you still have a certain flexibility for different playstyles (totally defensive with all 3 in homebase, defensive with 2 in homebase and 1 attacking, balanced with 1 in homebase, 1 attacking and 1 supporting or aggressive with 1 in homebase and 2 attacking, and probably several other scenarios).

Timelimit: 15
I just find it to be a good mean value between the game lengths of 2on2 and 4on4. It is long enough to make a comeback but short enough to play a quick game

Teamoverlay On
It is just a feature people are used from other games like Q3/QL. It facilitates the coordination of the team and makes it easier for 1on1 players who are not used to read too many teambindings to play some casual games

Nohook
I am aware that QW CTF had a big scene in the past and that this kind of CTF was played with runes and hooks. But, if you look at the situation from an objective point of view the hook only serves a nostalgic purpose and has only disadvantages in the current situation. Given the size and the activity of our community the (re)introduction of a mod that differs so fundamentally in its movement and physics can only be detrimental to the health of the scene as it would take away players from the already played mods (1on1, 4on4). More likely though, it would just fail. There are still servers running with the old maps and the old CTF and nobody plays on them

When you go through the sign-ups for the Thunderdome tournament, you will see that 55 of the 114 players (roughly 50 %) are in one of the two rookie division. This means those players have a lot of catching up to do be it in 1on1 and especially in 4on4. On the other hand side, you have the players who almost exclusively play 1on1 and 4on4, because that are the 2 main game types we have in QW at the moment.This means, you have players at the bottom who are focused on improving to catch up and players who are focused to stay on top. If you now start CTF with hook, the CTF games they will play will almost have no learning value. They will not improve their movement, quite the opposite, their movement for 1on1 and 4on4 will even get worse, as they will have to use a total different style. They will have to start to aim out of situations and angles that will not happen in DM. This will hinder most DM players to casually play a round or two because they would not able transfer the skills they learned in DM. They would need to almost learn a complete new game, that would slow them down in their development as DM players.But to allow and encourage people to casually play CTF is a big part of what this is all about.

Runes on
The runes are a feature which make CTF in QW unique, but do not alter the gameplay of it in a way that it is too different from “normal” QW, unlike the hook (exception is the Haste rune, but it is only 1 out of 4 runes and it does not change the gameplay itselfs it just accelerate movement and rate of fire of some weapons). Furthermore they add some depth to the game, as the runes are not only modifiers, they can also have a tactical purpose: denying the opponent access to them, swapping them with team members, playing the role which is most appropriate for your rune.

Friendly Fire on
This setting also led to some discussions as it is turned off in QL/Q3. They reason I want it to be turned off is that people who come from other games and start with CTF does not take on a habit of running into the line of fire and develop tactics that would be absolutely terrible in 4on4. I am not totally set on this part. If Friendly Fire Off would lead to an improved gaming experience, this rule could be changed.

DMM3
It just fits better to the overall game type. There would be just to much rape games with DMM1 and the resource management would slow the games down.


Some final words
The CTF as it was played few years ago does not exist anymore. If you want to play it like it was, nobody is stopping you from gather few players and play CTF with hooks. But this is not what we want to do. We want to establish CTF as a living part of the QW community. We want it to be a gateway mod for players who come from entirely different games. You cannot start QW with 4on4, 1on1 can be really frustrating, but CTF always offers some satisfying moments. Even if you are new to the game. If you know the basics you can play defender. You will once in a while frag an attacker or help another defender. But this potential is lost, when a) they one has to learn a complete unique playstyle, not known from any other game (there goes your easy access to QW), and b) when playing this mod will almost do nothing for a player in terms of improving in QW in general.

Again, you players who complain and want to play QW CTF the old way you had years to try to revive CTF and you did not. Nobody is forcing you to play with us. But this is the way we have decided to try it. We also do not want to discuss about, that playing without hook is not real or to q3-ish. We do not want to try it out, we already have. The suggestion that those who want to play with the hook should be allowed to and those who does not should just not use it is also invalid. The primary reason we meet on the server is to test maps if they are suitable for what I suggested.

I hope this clears some things up.

Thanks for reading

n|x
Comments
2012-03-04, 21:15
The best thing you could do is to get even one server running CTF i matchless mode so it also gets a more casual status, i.e. instead of dropping into xs4all and gib away in some mindless FFA game just to pass time with some music in the ears, people could just as well play 20 min CTF without worrying too much about the result.

I also think it's fucked up that QWCTF counts frags instead of the caps.

Nice initiative though, i hope to take part in it once i get my connection settled in my new apartment.
2012-03-04, 21:20
...and for such a matchless CTF server i'd suggest a cap-/fraglimit instead of timelimit.
2012-03-05, 10:14
First I was skeptical about this kind of CTF in qw, I've played competitive Q3/QL CTF at the highest level for many years and to me the gameplay is so much different that this just couldn't work.

But after trying a few maps, although the game mode doesn't fit equally great as with Q3/QL it is amazingly fun to play.

Hopefully this gets some wind in the sails and will create a new casual public environment for players. After that the only thing that is missing is a small tournament. Would probably encourage a more casual environment with "fun teams". And also rapes doesn't really suck as much with DMM3 and flags (there could also be a caplimit like in QL)
2012-03-05, 10:23
@riosatiy
We are still in the very early testing phase, where we have to find suitable maps, test and improve locs and configs and develop tactics and strategies.

If this is accomplished, we will enter the second phase. When we are there, we will talk about tournaments. At the moment it is just too early.
2012-03-05, 10:29
@nix Yes of course it's too early. That's why I said _after_ it had gained some public gaming popularity But nice to hear that it's been thought about.
2012-03-05, 10:34
See you on #qwctf 8-)
And I'll agree that CTF should only count caps, it helped alot in TF when frags went off, no more stupid gameplay but more focus on caps.
2012-03-05, 10:49
@PEKTOPAHKY
We have changed channels as #qwctf does not belong to us. We just used it temporarly. The new channel is #capture33
2012-03-05, 11:23
Is counting caps instead of frags even possible or would it need modding? What's your opinion on counting frags vs caps, nix?
2012-03-05, 11:38
We just discussed that. We are not sure if you can set a cap limit atm or if it needs a KTX update.

If we use a cap limit I would add it to counting frags, because in the current system defenders also add to the score, by getting some extra points for defending the base or defending the flag carrier. So they really contribute not only gamewise but also score wise. I like this.

On the other hand, you can't win with a shitty defense. I think this should definitely be tested, but as i said, I am not sure if it can be done with the current KTX.
2012-03-05, 12:03
You can never win with a shitty defense since then the opponent will get a lot of caps.
I generally don't like soccer to e-sport analogies. But here it's really the same thing (if you have cap scores only) The whole team matters and need to work together in order to bring home the most caps, defense to mid to attackers.

An argument can be made for 'frags matters' is that people in public can play defense and still top score. Otherwise it seems to lean towards everyone wanting to attack all the time.
2012-03-05, 13:48
Have yet not tried this, but gonna do it, sounds real fun.
Good work.
2012-03-06, 17:57
As someone who has played vs the best QW CTFers I can tell you straight up runes ruin CTF. The combo of resist+RA+quad+LG is unstoppable. All the best players try to do is get resist since it allows such an advantage. With hook enabled it's even worse since RL becomes so much harder to hit anyone with. The only other rune worth anything is strength especially if you have quad+LG but regen and haste pretty much suck and any CTF player who knows what they are doing would rather have resist or strength. If you want to use runes they need to be rebalanced or more added, etc.

I agree strongly with 3v3 and I feel that's the most dynamic mode to play CTF in and still have a smaller team. Nohook I can agree with as well but honestly I love the hook since it's so fun. The problem with the hook is it makes nearly every weapon except LG much weaker or useless. If QW maps were better suited hook would be more usable in that you should have more chokepoints or spammable options or traps or whatever to limit hook a bit. Instead most QW CTF maps are wide open and you can fly unabated. I would also love to see CTF style stats instead of the old outdated use of frags. Most modern CTF games support stats for captures, assists, defends, etc.

So my only real change would be to remove runes. I'd also love to see new maps. I'm sure there are a few maps which would work in this new CTF setup but most maps are not designed with it in mind and not that great for it. This type of CTF is what is popular in Q3/QL and ZDaemon (Doom 2). Personally I think it's more newbie friendly than CA or TDM as a teamplay mode. It is much easier to understand and grasp the concepts of defense, middle or offensive and each position is more playable with less skills. Defense you just need to spam and watch the flag, no great movement or awareness skills required. Middle you need to move around a lot and need good all around skills. Offense you'd need great bunnying, rocket jumping skills more than anything else as speed beats fighting for captures.
2012-03-07, 09:29
How do you think about flags being returnable? One of the best things in Teamfortress was that you couldn't return flags, but you had to defend them where ever for 60 secs or so untill flag respawned. This affected gameplay HUGELY and in a really good way, it added lots of tactical stuff. In CTF where you can return flag its basicly running to enemy base all the time. Especially without runes. I suppose runes are OK in 3vs3, where 1 defender with a powerfull rune can defend by himself.

But yeah, I think there's a lot of work to get CTF playable, ie. if server is running 3vs3 there should be 6 player slots so that there wouldn't be to many players on the server.
2012-03-07, 10:54
Yeah I have seen videos of TF based CTF games. I admit that it seems to be an interesting concept, but a) it must be coded into ktx and b) it would make the CTF mode to different from CTF in other games.
2012-03-07, 15:47
I don't think non-returnable flags works in a 3v3 with small maps. TF was usually 6v6 or more? on huge maps. I really think that's both for larger maps and more players per team.
2012-03-08, 07:08
I disagree with pg here on some things, not all ...

pg : "As someone who has played vs the best QW CTFers I can tell you straight up runes ruin CTF."

So If you lose big and got ruined, runes ruin ctf ?
A 'better' CTF team against a 'lesser' CTF team wins at the end of the map, if they play well, even if the 'lesser' team got all the ruines at start.
When two 'better' ctf teams played each other, the end score was always very close, and the game very tense.

The runes itself have nothing to do with it. So the runes itself do not ruin ctf.

pg : "All the best players try to do is get resist since it allows such an advantage."
Here you focus on attackers only, because only an attacker wants to have the resist rune all the time. A 'better' ctf team does not contain only attackers.

You talk about using strength with quad, only attackers thinking only about their own glory would think of that, any teamplayer would drop the strength for its own base defense and not use it to attack (all the time). Few days ago such an attacker in a 'reviving ctf try-out game' did exactly that, he got away with it once, the second time he lost it in the enemy base. [Where another new-to-ctf took the rune and attacked with it ;p]

If your team does'nt have any rune and there is no quad on the map to be used to get them, your team can switch to a more defense oriented play style for the time being, to win time, to do damage control, and more oft then not the runes are coming towards you. There are many things you can think of to turn things around, its not that you do not have heavy-weapons and teammates. You can also do a continues synchronised flood attack on the rune-powered enemy defense, take some beatings some time, struggle, at one point your team will have some runes ... come back time

Regen and haste pretty much suck ??? Well in that case, at least these runes can not ruine the game.
The Regen is very powerfull if used as a team-rune and not an individual-rune.
The haste is even usefull if you can pump more buckshot then normal in an enemy, to name a thing. And if is not usefull, why worry about the enemy having it.

Just like TDM, and most certain even more, CTF is a Team game. If a individual high skilled star can't play for the team, he should go play duel... because if he cant drop
or share a rune for his teammates, he must go play duel because there are no teammates there, If not he will be kicked out the team anyway due to lack of skill

It's the same with the attackers with the hook, they are to fast ? ... well I can share some things how to deal with them but I wont because this is about hook-less CTF
2012-03-09, 01:22
SLU99ISH have you played high level QW CTF? I have played many games vs the guys who beat the EU teams with 100+ms playing from NA. I've beaten and outscored them on numerous occasions with or without runes. These experiences are what I draw my conclusions about runes from.

Blood Dog is probably the best QW CTFer left even admitted to me resist is imbalanced. Think about it for a second, resist is the best rune and there only exists one per game, how is that not imbalanced? It's comparable to a powerup like quad except it stays with you always, doesn't run out, and no one can contest it at the next spawn. Playing defensive vs resist doesn't work because he'll just go get quad+RA+lg+megahealth then come rape you. I like STR because it's good on D not attack, you seem to think exactly the opposite of how I actually play. :-P STR is the one rune which can stand up to resist in a 1v1 fight however.
2012-03-18, 11:37
I can setup a CTF server in a few months when I move to a new internet connection..
2012-04-03, 13:52
Hello!

How about to start a managed game with pre-signup for a weekend day like a touney.
or maybe start directly a tourney and force every tdm team to form a 3 (or even 4) player ctf team! maybe some dayevent to statup ctf so that is get played like 2v2's those days.
Greetings!
2012-04-03, 17:54
Hey HellTiger,

This is all in planning, we just wait for a capture limit to be implanted into KTX and then we are good to go.
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