First, thanks for having me at your forum.
As a long time TF player and once upon a time TF mod project lead I’ve never been satisfied with the way CTF (capture the flag) plays out in TF2. Even in prior fortress games CTF has always suffered from some drawbacks in public play.
Current CTF issues:
That’s where you guys come in .
Anyway I really appreciate any feedback or help on this. I’m hoping there’s some TF vets out there with an interest in this idea. It basically mirrors the OvD format that became common in TFC for pickup games in later years.
Tl;DR version: Idea is to implement a modified CTF version which is played offense vs defense for 15 mins, then alternating rounds, adding up the offensive captures at the end to determine the winner. Trying to nail down the proper game logic/ determine if this is feasible using current entities.
As a long time TF player and once upon a time TF mod project lead I’ve never been satisfied with the way CTF (capture the flag) plays out in TF2. Even in prior fortress games CTF has always suffered from some drawbacks in public play.
Current CTF issues:
- Lack of clarity for roles:
With dual goals of protecting your flag while also needing to get the enemy’s flag a typical public game will devolve into 2 or 3 people going for the enemy flag (or none at all), with the remaining either defending the base or wandering aimlessly. An individual player’s role is undefined, and so they often play “undefined”.
- Spawn and travel times:
Players going for the enemy intelligence already have to cope with significant travel time just to reach the enemy base, while defenders have spawn’s a few steps away from key defensive areas. In prior games the increased movement and concussion grenades could negate much of the defense’s proximity advantages. TF2 lacking concussion grenades and with increased spawn times shared between offense players and defenders tilts the game even farther against “offense”. Noone wants to wait 15 seconds to respawn only to have to travel 15 seconds to reach the enemy base against 10 defenders, die by yourself and repeat the process. Together with the lack of “Rambo” capability for most classes this results in a lot more frustration for the few players trying to work against a 10+ man defense.
- Clarify roles:
Similar to gravelpit, one team should be offense, one team should be defense at a time. Every player on each team is aligned to the same goal for the round. Offense cap as many flags as possible, defense protect the flag at all costs. At the end of a 15 minute round teams would switch sides. Winner would be the team with the most captures after both 15 minute rounds.
- Adjust spawn times and locations:
With roles defined per team you can tweak offensive spawns (blue) and defensive spawns (red) individually. Offensive spawn times should be near instant, defensive spawn times could be slightly longer depending on spawn locations. This can improve balance and increase the pace of action. You also remove the need for mirrored maps, saving on map sizes and resource budgets. Existing CTF maps could be modified to work with this mode with minimal pain (I hope).
That’s where you guys come in .
- Game Logic:
I’ve been diving into the logic system and it seems like there a few hurdles to overcome. (With my limited understanding, anyway)
The CTF game mode entity defaults to 3 captures per round and for whatever reason valve hasn’t included a way to adjust that per map without sending a server command (potentially messing up any subsequent maps in the rotation). So as of now I only know that you could set tf_flag_caps_per_round 0 to turn off the auto win on X caps.
Second would be to add team_round_timer and game_round_win? I haven’t figured out exactly how to set it up yet to properly trigger the switch after the time ends and preserve the caps.
Finally the victor would need to be based on the total captures from each team at the end of the round. Seems like this gets to be a problem when you factor in the teamswitch, but I’m not sure.
Anyway I really appreciate any feedback or help on this. I’m hoping there’s some TF vets out there with an interest in this idea. It basically mirrors the OvD format that became common in TFC for pickup games in later years.
Tl;DR version: Idea is to implement a modified CTF version which is played offense vs defense for 15 mins, then alternating rounds, adding up the offensive captures at the end to determine the winner. Trying to nail down the proper game logic/ determine if this is feasible using current entities.