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khwarezm posted:What is it about CTF that makes it so uniquely bad in TF2? Its not like your Quakes, Halos or Unreal Tournaments had this much of a problem with it. Is it just the fact that defensive play in TF2 is so powerful? its this. ctf worked in tfc because of the extreme mobility a bunch of classes had in that game which is lacking in tf2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRrjh8yp5yE i guess demos and soldiers could replicate some of this but take a lot more damage along the way mila kunis fucked around with this message at 01:27 on Aug 31, 2023 |
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Aug 31, 2023 01:24
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mila kunis posted:its this. Heh, I foolishly forgot to list TFC in those examples, wasn't CTF (hey, that's an anagram!) the most popular game mode in Team Fortresses first couple of incarnations? That video does make me wonder if turning speed would be a worthwhile nerf to sentry guns to ever be considered.
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Aug 31, 2023 01:27
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khwarezm posted:Heh, I foolishly forgot to list TFC in those examples, wasn't CTF (hey, that's an anagram!) the most popular game mode in Team Fortresses first couple of incarnations? CTF was popular because that was basically the only game mode available. You can do a bunch of alternate goals with the map scripting system in QWTF and TFC, but mostly anything still boils down to things that happen the instant you touch an entity, or things that happen if you pick up a goal item and bring it somewhere. In TFC, control points are either touch to instant capture, or bring a flag to it and touch to capture. It's not at all like the timed "fill the bucket" capture in TF2. Also I'm pretty sure the legacy of 2fort is that it was literally the one single map included with QWTF.
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Aug 31, 2023 01:34
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khwarezm posted:What is it about CTF that makes it so uniquely bad in TF2? Its not like your Quakes, Halos or Unreal Tournaments had this much of a problem with it. Is it just the fact that defensive play in TF2 is so powerful? the nature of TF2 makes it inherently difficult to make CTF work. Pubs are never going to have good team coordination. For other modes, this doesn't really matter: there's generally only one thing that you're going to be doing at any given time. Koth: fight over the point. Payload or A/D: attack or defend the cart/point, depending on your team. Coordination is beneficial if you want to win, but you don't need to coordinate to make the game work. Sometimes people will complain about 5cp, and the reason for this seems to mainly because it has a lesser version of the payload problem: there's 2 things to be doing. In 5CP, your team has to attack the enemy point and defend your own point. With no coordination, every player is going to see this and pick one of the two essentially at random based on their own preference. This can lead to bad gameplay: the game drags out forever due to ultra-turtling, or one team is winning and then suddenly loses due to backcapping because literally no one stayed to defend. For 5CP this is kind of a self-limiting problem, though, because the two objectives are connected: if you lose your point, you're going to have to go back because you can no longer attack. If you win the next point, you have to move up because there's nothing to defend. And attacking generally requires you to push through the other team, which will mean you contribute to the defence a little bit by killing people while attacking and contribute to the offence a little bit by killing enemies that attack. Other than a few games that last forever because one team decided to infiniturtle and the occasional cheeky rush/backcap that ends the game in 5 seconds, it's not a big problem. 5CP also benefits from a timer, since one team is always winning as soon as mid gets capped for the first time. The losing team has to break their turtle and attack or lose on time(if the settings are right, anyway). In CTF, there are 2 objectives, and they're essentially completely unconnected. The status of one flag has no effect on the other, reaching your opponent's flag can take you on a completely different route from the one your opponent is taking to your flag, etc. There is no limiting factor on the problem. The game relies on the random whims of both teams happening to divide them effectively between attack and defence to function. This means that most matches are either super quick rolls or turtle nightmares. It also does not benefit from a timer, since both teams will be very often be tied and they'll just end in a stalemate, so they don't provide adequate anti-turtle pressure. Add to this the fact that the objective moves at the speed of a player, and CTF maps naturally fall into two categories: tight, turtle-friendly maps with low ceilings and skyboxes, like turbine, and open steamroll fests where a demoman or soldier can grab the intel and then literally just fly back to his own intel room to cap it without interference. Neither of these is conducive to good gameplay, but there's really no way around it.
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Aug 31, 2023 01:37
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I miss Tribes 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2F_fZS2uyPc
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Aug 31, 2023 01:40
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Aren't there some CTF variants where you can only capture if your own flag is at home? That does make the two goals connected, in that you need both a successful attack and a successful defense, at the same time, to score. If you re-introduce touching your own flag to return it, and then design the maps such that grabbing the enemy flag is easy, but bringing it home is hard, I think it might liven it up. Making grabbing easy: For example, a one-way hatch to drop down on the flag, and some mechanism to make it hard/impossible for a teammate to keep it open so you can explosive jump out again. Making bringing it home hard: Need to bring past the enemy spawn, possibly needing your team to push from both sides. The risk there could be that spawncamping becomes literally the strategy.
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Aug 31, 2023 01:46
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Thinking about flag at home just makes me think of the days of playing WSG and like 10 minute long stalemates, and how that was the most miserable poo poo.
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Aug 31, 2023 01:48
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Give anyone holding the flag minicrits. Or if you're going to have touching the flag return it, full crits.
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Aug 31, 2023 02:09
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The Tribes series really nailed the critical CTF rules and map design. You need both flags to score, and a dropped flag will eventually return to its stand unless the opposing team picks it back up. The maps should be defensive in nature, but spawns shouldn’t be directly in the path of the flag carriers.
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Aug 31, 2023 03:09
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Being able to immediately teleport the flag back to the center of the three sentry nests that engineers have been busy rebuilding since the moment you took the flag is not something I'd consider an improvement to TF2's CTF. Half the time I've seen a stalemate situation slightly improve and gain some momentum, it's because one player got the flag halfway out of the base, and then another couple fought their way to where it was sitting on the ground and took it from there. Not that I've played a lot of CTF, mind. But I'm just really confused by the suggestion. If a flag was dropped then later recaptured from that point, that chain of events was neither a standstill or a sudden lopsided victory. Plus guarding or assaulting a flag in a weird location is an interesting change of pace. Why is this something people want to get rid of? Ditocoaf fucked around with this message at 03:25 on Aug 31, 2023 |
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Aug 31, 2023 03:15
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The reason CTF doesn't work in TF2 is that it's a very different game flow to all the other game modes. The modes people enjoy in TF2 are essentially about pushing into and controlling territory. That's what Payload is, that's what attack/defend is, that's what 5CP is. You push into a new area, beat the defenders, and make sure they can't push back and retake it, and then there's some objective which varies a little bit by game mode but is essentially a timer to make sure you can't steamroll too far too fast. CTF is not about doing that. CTF is about punching a temporary hole in the line and not caring about securing it afterwards, because you'll have to punch a new hole next time regardless.
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Aug 31, 2023 03:25
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Ditocoaf posted:Being able to immediately teleport the flag back to the center of the three sentry nests that engineers have been busy rebuilding since the moment you took the flag is not something I'd consider an improvement to TF2's CTF. Half the time I've seen a stalemate situation slightly improve and gain some momentum, it's because one player got the flag halfway out of the base, and then another couple fought their way to where it was sitting on the ground and took it from there. Not that I've played a lot of CTF, mind. mostly because of the "scout flies out of spawn, touches the intel and is immediately vaporized but the timer is reset so now you have to stand there for another full minute" phenomenon. The drop timer is so long that someone can easily die, drop the intel, respawn, run back to the intel and pick it up again before it expires. Picking up the intel only requires you to just barely touch it, and the timer is fully reset even if you die 1 frame later. This makes defending the intel unbelievably frustrating as a committed player can death relay it to the goal one excruciating inch at a time and there's very little you can do about it.
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Aug 31, 2023 04:18
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cock hero flux posted:mostly because of the "scout flies out of spawn, touches the intel and is immediately vaporized but the timer is reset so now you have to stand there for another full minute" phenomenon. The drop timer is so long that someone can easily die, drop the intel, respawn, run back to the intel and pick it up again before it expires. Picking up the intel only requires you to just barely touch it, and the timer is fully reset even if you die 1 frame later. This makes defending the intel unbelievably frustrating as a committed player can death relay it to the goal one excruciating inch at a time and there's very little you can do about it. Yes, which is objectively the correct thing to do. The game mode should favor completing the objective so as to avoid extended 0-0 stalemates.
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Aug 31, 2023 04:20
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Touching the intel and dying is an intended and desirable part of extracting it from outside the enemy spawn room so you don't have to go all the way back to their honeycomb hideout to grab it again.
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Aug 31, 2023 04:26
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Honestly I wish you could toss instead of drop the intel like you could in QWTF and TFC (or pass time). It might change the dynamic where you could potentially get it out of some of the pesky chokes easier. Speaking of passtime, I didn’t realize how there’s a sub community for it for all the old ctf_bball2 players. https://youtube.com/watch?v=TWgW6XIqeas&si=YJZ-PIY_5d26fPNw
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Aug 31, 2023 04:37
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cock hero flux posted:mostly because of the "scout flies out of spawn, touches the intel and is immediately vaporized but the timer is reset so now you have to stand there for another full minute" phenomenon. The drop timer is so long that someone can easily die, drop the intel, respawn, run back to the intel and pick it up again before it expires. Picking up the intel only requires you to just barely touch it, and the timer is fully reset even if you die 1 frame later. This makes defending the intel unbelievably frustrating as a committed player can death relay it to the goal one excruciating inch at a time and there's very little you can do about it. I mean, the thing you can do about it is kill them before they pick the flag back up. If they're repeatedly making it back to touch the flag (which is still deep in your base!), that success is rewarded by their progress not resetting, and they're still only accumulating as much progress as they do before you killed them. And I guess I don't really get why standing around to guard the intel two feet out of the flag room is more annoying than standing there to guard it in the original spot. It's a change of scenery at least. Ditocoaf fucked around with this message at 04:40 on Aug 31, 2023 |
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Aug 31, 2023 04:37
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the holy poopacy posted:Yes, which is objectively the correct thing to do. The game mode should favor completing the objective so as to avoid extended 0-0 stalemates. it is the right thing to do, yes, but the fact that it is the right thing to do is bad because it not fun or interesting for either team scout: exit spawn, hold W, ignore everything, touch intel, die, repeat other team: wait for scout, delete scout, repeat this lasts for an extremely long period of time until either scout fails to touch the intel before evaporating or manages to get clear afterwards and score. At no point during this process does anything enjoyable happen for either party. Both sides are doing the right thing, and neither of them are having fun. This is bad game design. Proposed attempts to fix this are also bad, though, I've played custom maps with both of them at least once. If touching the intel returns it, the game draws out into an infinite stalemate because the intel is immediately sent back to fort knox the instant the person carrying it dies. If you can't cap the intel when the other team has your intel, then both teams exchange intel and then infinitely turtle with it next to their own spawns so that it's impossible for them to lose it. I can't think of a way to make CTF actually work in TF2, myself. Reducing the timer so that the same guy couldn't stall the intel forever would help with this problem but it'd also make capping a lot harder to do.
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Aug 31, 2023 04:45
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Scouts drink bonk and stand on the intel. Even if they get instagibbed when it wears off it's enough to reset the timer. The only counter to this is Pyro air blast or explosive juggling. Smart ones will time it so that they don't draw attention to themselves until the invulnerability wears off exactly when they are on the intel.
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Aug 31, 2023 04:47
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Ditocoaf posted:I mean, the thing you can do about it is kill them before they pick the flag back up. If they're repeatedly making it back to touch the flag (which is still deep in your base!), that success is rewarded by their progress not resetting, and they're still only accumulating as much progress as they do before you killed them. it's not more annoying 2 feet away from the flag spot, but that's not usually where it is. If it's there, the other team usually won't be able to stall it forever because it's hard to get to. It's also not a problem when it gets dropped after you get back to your own base, since then it's almost impossible for the other team to hold it for any length of time The problem situation is: guy gets intel, jukes defenders, gets about 30%-50% of the way back to his base and then dies. Imagine like, the 2fort bridge or the turbine central room or whatever. The intel gets dropped here a lot, because RED, for example, is gonna have people defending their intel and attacking the BLU intel, and when the guys attacking the BLU intel hear that someone is stealing their intel, they're gonna turn around and shoot him in this spot. This is where the terrible scenario starts. This is really easy for RED to hold, since it's in their territory, and really easy for BLU to stall, since it's pretty close to their territory and they just need to jump out of their own territory and touch it for a split second.
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Aug 31, 2023 04:52
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Make the return timer for the flag depend on how long it was carried. Like ramping up from 10 to 60 seconds of return timer, during carrying for 0 to 30 seconds. Maybe with a minimum of however much was left on the timer when it was picked up.
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Aug 31, 2023 04:52
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I think my suggestion earlier of speeding up the return time with friendly players hanging around the Intel would be a good compromise
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Aug 31, 2023 05:18
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If touching the intel just to reset the clock is a problem, then my idea is to (very subtly!!!) make the time to pick up the intel inversely proportional to the return timer. 1 tick as normal when recently dropped, to under a second when it's about to expire.
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Aug 31, 2023 05:26
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Not really sure how a slow, grinding flag capture is substantially different from a slow, grinding payload capture. I suppose payload does have somewhat better dynamics in that defense gets easier as the offense gets closer to the point, where guarding the flag gets progressively harder as it inches away from your intel room. But that just gets back to the central sin of ctf's spawn room placement. Building on nielsm's brainstorm, I wonder if you could make CTF work better by having the map be essentially a one-way circle. Give each team a strictly one-way route that drops them behind the enemy intel, which you have to push forward through the rest of the enemy base, past the enemy spawn and through the enemy shortcut into your own base where you can capture.
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Aug 31, 2023 05:48
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Somewhere I heard the idea of having the flag on a track on which it slowly walks itself out to the entrance of the base, and resets when someone gets a capture. Make it a miniature payload cart and tf2 players would love it.
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Aug 31, 2023 05:52
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If you wanted to do a similar test to sniper on payload, I feel like you'd see far more results banning or limiting engineer on CTF by virtue of how much it slows the game down without a competent demo/soldier and medic pair often.
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Aug 31, 2023 06:15
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The problem with CTF where it's easy to get in and hard to get out, is that carrying the flag home becomes easier the further you get. Then you'd want to make reverse CTF instead, where you need to bring a flag in. And then it's just proto-payload.
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Aug 31, 2023 07:52
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the holy poopacy posted:Not really sure how a slow, grinding flag capture is substantially different from a slow, grinding payload capture. you can prevent them from pushing the payload by standing near it and it doesn't teleport back to the start of the map if it doesn't get touched for a while, so pushing or defending the payload properly involves actually playing the game and shooting the bad guys and trying not to die, etc. the flag version is that you fling yourself onto the intel and are immediately evaporated but in the process you move the flag 1 inch closer to the goal. the other team can't reasonably stop you from touching the intel but they can instantly kill you afterwards. so moving or defending the flag does not involve playing the game, it involves either running to the same spot and dying immediately or shooting the same guy over and over again while not moving like you're grinding stranges on tr_walkway or something
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Aug 31, 2023 07:54
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My simple fix to ctf would be to have the intelligence teleport between set locations around a teams base at fixed intervals. So for example on 2fort it could do something like rotate between the current room, the courtyard, and the sewer room. This would help break up ultra-turtling engineers at least
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Aug 31, 2023 07:55
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cock hero flux posted:you can prevent them from pushing the payload by standing near it and it doesn't teleport back to the start of the map if it doesn't get touched for a while, so pushing or defending the payload properly involves actually playing the game and shooting the bad guys and trying not to die, etc. I just don't see what teleporting the flag back to base sooner does to improve this situation. You want mechanics to be biased away from returning to the initial game state. Consider an opposite proposal as an example: What if the flag never teleported back to base, except after being scored. Touching the flag and moving it 1 inch doesn't reset the timer, because there is no timer. You're just making slow, almost negligible progress. The other team can slow that progress (called "defending") even more by killing you before you touch the flag (which I don't think is as impossible as you keep saying). But to make faster progress, you'd need a concerted push from your team. If one team manages that, they'll capture the flag sooner than the team with a single suiciding scout, and win. Still not a great game mode, of course, but overall functions as well as the real one does, with probably fewer stalemates. Except: the actual problem would be, the flag might get stuck in some useless corner. And I really think the reset timer only exists to resolve that situation. Ditocoaf fucked around with this message at 08:31 on Aug 31, 2023 |
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Aug 31, 2023 08:19
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Make it like the bomb in MvM, it can only be pushed back to the start by blasting the robot carrying it into a pit.
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Aug 31, 2023 08:51
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Ditocoaf posted:(which I don't think is as impossible as you keep saying) The thing about your hypothetical no-resetting version is that the game functionally already plays like that. Most of the time, the flag only gets reset when it's only been moved a few feet. Once the guy has gotten clear of the flag room and its associated defenses, the flag will be in a position where it will be stalled out indefinitely.
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Aug 31, 2023 09:03
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cock hero flux posted:The thing about your hypothetical no-resetting version is that the game functionally already plays like that. Yeah, that was more or less my point (outside of the parenthetical you quoted). I think the flag going back to base only exists as a failsafe, and that it's fine to preserve what little progress gets made. I don't think the game mode is good, but I don't see what would be improved by undoing progress more aggressively. I think you've been so frustrated by bonk scouts preventing you from moving your flag back home, that you forgot that the objective isn't to do that. It's to get your opponent's flag faster than they get yours. Ditocoaf fucked around with this message at 09:15 on Aug 31, 2023 |
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Aug 31, 2023 09:13
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Make it so CTF is instead A&D, one team attempts to cap as many times as they can, then the sides switch and the other team tries to do the same. Whichever team has the most caps after those 2 rounds wins. You'd just take all CTF maps and cut 1 half off and make a blue staging zone instead ala any other A&D map. Teams have a clear 12 defence, vs 12 attack. Maps may need a spawn/size rejig, but still, the team roles are clear and can't be weirdly biased by having to decide whether they want to A or D. Or give intel carriers crits lol. Fishbus fucked around with this message at 10:51 on Aug 31, 2023 |
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Aug 31, 2023 10:49
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nielsm posted:The problem with CTF where it's easy to get in and hard to get out, is that carrying the flag home becomes easier the further you get. Then you'd want to make reverse CTF instead, where you need to bring a flag in. And then it's just proto-payload. Or the VIP mode from TF2C which unfortunately is a very flawed mode
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Aug 31, 2023 10:58
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Ditocoaf posted:Yeah, that was more or less my point (outside of the parenthetical you quoted). I think the flag going back to base only exists as a failsafe, and that it's fine to preserve what little progress gets made. I don't think the game mode is good, but I don't see what would be improved by undoing progress more aggressively. To defeat the bonk scout who moves the flag two inches before being pasted by two demomen and a sentry, you must become the bonk scout who moves the flag two inches before being pasted by two demomen and a sentry.
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Aug 31, 2023 12:18
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Ditocoaf posted:Being able to immediately teleport the flag back to the center of the three sentry nests that engineers have been busy rebuilding since the moment you took the flag is not something I'd consider an improvement to TF2's CTF. Half the time I've seen a stalemate situation slightly improve and gain some momentum, it's because one player got the flag halfway out of the base, and then another couple fought their way to where it was sitting on the ground and took it from there. Not that I've played a lot of CTF, mind. Typically in Tribes you’d often prefer to defend the flag in the field rather than on the stand, because you could move the flag around by shooting it with projectiles and put it into a really difficult spot during the timeout. But part of that is the difference in map design - while the flag stands were surrounded by sentries and guards, they weren’t right next to spawn points. As a result, an offense could appreciably weaken the static defense rather than just death-matching. Bringing those ideas to TF2, my suggestion would be to limit direct access to the flag area from spawns, to help split up defenders. And allow cappers to bypass spawn areas entirely while moving between flags. Defeating the three engineers is less of a problem than needing to kill the rest of the team multiple times while doing so. If the Sentries really end up being a problem with Tribes CTF rule set, then adopt another one of their rules and give turrets no-build auras.
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Aug 31, 2023 15:47
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Idea for a hybrid game mode: Each team has a capture point inside their base. The enemy needs to capture that point. This unlocks a flag nearby the capture point, which you then have to bring to somewhere else inside the enemy base, while keeping the point secure. The enemy can not capture your point if their own is taken, but re-capping your own point is faster than the enemy capping it. The flag carrier gets a debuff and might require an escort to deliver the flag. If the enemy recaps their point while you have their flag, the flag instantly is dropped and returns. This should reasonably focus the teams' efforts in one location at a time, and give a progression of gradually more difficult push. A possible stylization could be sabotaging a nuclear reactor, with the capture point being releasing the safety mechanisms and the flag being something that will make it go critical. The main thing that makes this different from 4CP or 5CP is the escort mission part, which can maybe prevent some backcap situations. I'm not sure if that's good or bad.
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Aug 31, 2023 16:02
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cock hero flux posted:it pretty much is. As someone else said, you can literally BONK onto it if you need to, but even without that it's nigh impossible to kill someone before they can just run to a specific spot. People in TF2 take a while to kill. This is why every other objective in the game can be blocked by a defender standing near it: killing the enemy before they manage to touch it is unreasonably difficult. If you're willing to die in the attempt, you can touch an objective and the other team almost certainly can't kill you fast enough to stop you. If a scout appears from around a corner and beelines for the objective, you're gonna have time to fire off one shot before he touches it, and even if it hits it's not going to kill him. A sentry will take a split second to lock on, shots will take a split second to connect, etc. He's gonna be able to touch it most of the time. In most game modes this doesn't accomplish very much, although if the enemy isn't standing on it you can sometimes cap a point or push a payload about 1% of the way, which very very rarely turns out to be enough to win. With the intel, doing this adds a full minute to the timer and will continue to do so every single time you do it. It also takes at most about 30 seconds for a scout to respawn and run to that spot, which means you usually have 2 tries to touch it before it resets. i have trouble believing that you can't position a sentry such that it shoots someone going for the intel before they actually touch the intel
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Aug 31, 2023 16:17
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cock hero flux posted:it is the right thing to do, yes, but the fact that it is the right thing to do is bad because it not fun or interesting for either team if you're not enjoying sitting around waiting for enemies to touch the intel, then go on offense if your team is capping the intel, then the enemy team isn't actually accomplishing much by dragging the intel forward six inches at a time. that conga line of bonk scouts who evaporate after touching the intel for a fraction of a second are wasting their own time more than they're wasting yours unlike other objectives, your goal in CTF is not to prevent your flag from ever moving. it's to cap the enemy's flag faster and more frequently than they cap yours
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Aug 31, 2023 16:40
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i believe "if the enemy gets the flag a reasonable distance out of your flag room, there is now steady progress towards a point" is a desirable outcome your failure was letting them get it out of the room in the first place. ctf is unique in being the game mode where it's hardest to reverse progress, but also once that is achieved you 100% completely reset progress all the way back to the flag capture room. so yeah no poo poo keeping it in place is a lot easier. you can view the flag as a payload progressively making its way towards the enemy capture room in a playload-race scenario, more or less ninjewtsu fucked around with this message at 16:49 on Aug 31, 2023 |
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Aug 31, 2023 16:43
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