Interesting observation

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Nov 14, 2009
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OK, so at the begening of the CTF contest, many mappers were trying to put a twist on CTF. Maybe an invade, or bring to the middle type of thing. However, as the contest draws to close, we see that in fact, most of these modes are reverting to standard CTF. Why do you guys thing that this is? Dont just say 'hurr durr, normal ctf iz better gaiz'
 

honeymustard

L9: Fashionable Member
Oct 26, 2009
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I think most new players can't grasp the concept, without the map maker explicitly saying so before it starts. There isn't really a good way of explaining it.
 

drp

aa
Oct 25, 2007
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probably a case of 'easier said, than done'
 

Passerby

L2: Junior Member
Mar 27, 2010
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easier said than done like drepper said and that map makers were seeing confused players during playtesting
 

Jakkarra

L4: Comfortable Member
Aug 26, 2009
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It's an unfortunate side-effect of the playerbase, they are used to certain modes and ways of going about them.

It's hard for some people to adapt to new modes and ways of playing said modes. it'd be nice if this werent true, but it is.

Anyway, many of the "Twists" Were a bit gimmicky really, and were fairly needless. Some of them were pretty nice, though.
 

Passerby

L2: Junior Member
Mar 27, 2010
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it is what was nice about the TFC community when it was still strong.

the player base was pretty open to new gametypes.
 

fubarFX

The "raw" in "nodraw"
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Jun 1, 2009
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from what I've seen, invade simply doesn't work.
and its very hard to come out with an other variant.

I believe this contest has been the trickyest... or you stick to the standard ctf that barely works in comp or you try to pull off a variant and fail at it.
 

grazr

Old Man Mutant Ninja Turtle
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Mar 4, 2008
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The "twists" you speak of, as Jakkarra said, have been more gimmicks than anything, and ended up ruining gameplay more than they improved it. (Such is the nature of the gimmick).

most of the modes have been invade, and as far as i can tell, most of the invade modes have stayed invade. The only reason why some have changed is because of a lack of support for that gamemode. A lack of announcer sounds, I/O commands and generally proper "flag" functionailty has put authors of persuing invade as a mode of choice. Opting for a simpler, less ambitious map.
 

Rikka

L5: Dapper Member
Feb 10, 2009
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Invade is the only one of the gimmicks that has stuck, and some of the entries have put it to good use.

And while it a problem with the TF2 community that they don't deal with changes to the base game modes well without big tags in the browser explaining its a modded server, most of the gimmicks weren't really thought out. Just mappers hoping random guesses would fix CTF.
 
Apr 19, 2009
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My thoughts on the CTF contest in general:

To be honest I have always felt the 6v6 stuff was just smoke and mirrors. A left over from the ill fated 5cp contest. Yes I understand that it added at nice level of complexity but at the same time it made this contest very frustrating. I remember at the start we were to have 6v6 gamedays but it never came to be.

Then came the 6v6 impromptus to fill the void. I would like to thank all those who helped set them up but all-lass they were almost more trouble then they were worth when it came to getting a full team together. This lead to many maps being tested on mostly 12v12 environments skewing most of the data and giving false positives. Then thanks to Ravidge (and a big thanks at that) 6v6 gameday finally came to be. I only wish that the mods had stepped forwarded earlier and met their promises.

Another big problem that I have is simply the number of entries in the contest. In the last one we had only 16 maps that made it to the end. This time around we could see 30+ maps. Now lets be honest here only only about 10-12 of these maps are even worth voting on. The rest including mine are not really worth going though the time and effort to rate them all. Now I know that sounds really harsh and I apologize if anyone takes offence to this. Now what should be done about this? Well I say we should have a round of voting were people pick the top 15-20 maps and those map are sent off to final judging. This keeps the number of maps that need to be reviewed down to something a bit more manageable and will take unnecessary fluff out of the contest.

Now I know because I have suggested this before that I will get smacked down with the wait and see card. Thats a BS move and you know it. Now if you already have some kind of plan in place to deal with 30+ entries I would love to hear it because from what I have see you have done nothing to address it. All I am saying if show us your "backup plan" so I and the rest of the mappers there can plan for what is coming next.

Oh one last thing just because you stick the word competitive on the end of it does not make the map type competitive.
Yes this was a copy-paste from another thread but my opinion on this contest still stands!.
 

Rikka

L5: Dapper Member
Feb 10, 2009
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I think 6v6 gamedays got killed by bad timing. We got the competitive servers right when gameday was in a bad slump from too many maps that could have had their flaws identified from a quick compile and run around in TF2 and contestants pumping out alphas nearly daily. At the same time we were all having a raging hard-on for impromptu testing and for the three people using them the competitive testing was going awesome as well. I think everyone assumed that momentum would just keep building up, when really it's simmered down since then.
 
Mar 23, 2010
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what is this "invade" you speak of?
what are the other twists?

i really liked ctf_deliverance. that was fun.
 
Nov 14, 2009
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Invade means taking a flag from the center to the base, the way deliverance is now


Other twists included taking a flag to the center (destroying it)

Taking a flag to another flag

Taking a flag along a cart-path


Those are the only I can think of off the top of my head...
 

grazr

Old Man Mutant Ninja Turtle
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Mar 4, 2008
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Invade is the only one of the gimmicks that has stuck, and some of the entries have put it to good use.

http://forums.tf2maps.net/showthread.php?t=11055

"Invade" isn't a gimmick. The ctf mode was even included/supported in the flag entity options, it's just that a proceeding update broke most of the alternative modes and Valve never got around to fixing it (although some features were added as a result of requests to valve from this community regarding this contest, particularly related to the functionality of "Invade").

As for 6vs6, the community wasn't prepared for what that entailed nor was the competitive scene prepared for the number of entries and thirdly contest operators wern't prepared for the reaction and response of/to this contest from either side (authors and players). Maps havn't got the testing they needed due to a lack of preperation which in turn lead to a lack of player testers, lack of feedback and lack of involvement from the actual competitive scene; which has been eratic and inconsistant at best.
 
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Terr

Cranky Coder
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Jul 31, 2009
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Those are the only I can think of off the top of my head...

I've had enough real-life stuff going on that I haven't been following the contest at all... But what about CTF with a control point that has map side-effects?

I think I had a pretty good proof-of-concept with ctf_spring. About the only rough edge to it is that you have to do a bit of hackery to get the number-of-captures showing in the HUD.
 

Passerby

L2: Junior Member
Mar 27, 2010
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http://forums.tf2maps.net/showthread.php?t=11055

"Invade" isn't a gimmick. The ctf mode was even included/supported in the flag entity options, it's just that a proceeding update broke most of the alternative modes and Valve never got around to fixing it (although some features were added as a result of requests to valve from this community regarding this contest, particularly related to the functionality of "Invade").

As for 6vs6, the community wasn't prepared for what that entailed nor was the competitive scene prepared for the number of entries and thirdly contest operators wern't prepared for the reaction and response of/to this contest from either side (authors and players). Maps havn't got the testing they needed due to a lack of preperation which in turn lead to a lack of player testers, lack of feedback and lack of involvement from the actual competitive scene; which has been eratic and inconsistant at best.

and the invade gametype outdates tf2 there were a ton of qwtf and tfc maps with this style of gameplay.

but i would be really instrested to see how either style security ctf map would work in tf2.

where you have to control a point to get access to the flag or control a point to open additinal routes to the flag.
 

Nutomic

L11: Posh Member
Feb 7, 2009
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I've had enough real-life stuff going on that I haven't been following the contest at all... But what about CTF with a control point that has map side-effects?

I think I had a pretty good proof-of-concept with ctf_spring. About the only rough edge to it is that you have to do a bit of hackery to get the number-of-captures showing in the HUD.

I could imagine the problem being the low player number of only 6, which makes it hard to split that team.
 
Apr 19, 2009
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and the invade gametype outdates tf2 there were a ton of qwtf and tfc maps with this style of gameplay.

but i would be really instrested to see how either style security ctf map would work in tf2.

where you have to control a point to get access to the flag or control a point to open additinal routes to the flag.
I have seen this done before and the problem is that is splits the objectives up too much and its still not hard to get the intel and defend the point and protect your own intel if need be. However, this could have also been due to poor map design.

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