Capture The Flag Revive

[*16]

The latest months there has been less and less teams entering Brawls. But not only Brawl noticed a downside, the world of public ctf isn't popular neither.

That might be because there are no more public ctf-servers. There are some brawl servers but that's all. I (and Nanu) hoped someone would be able to set up a public ctf server again. It would be nice if we could get some daily ctf running.

If any server owner who notices he has some server which he isn't really using anymore, it would be awesome if we could get a public ctf server.

Thanks in advance.

[Lowkey]

give me settings

[theo]

• I'll be happy to host a CTF server. What's wrong with brawl settings? Only the auth? What about a server with brawl settings and no auth required to play?
• I think CTF should be added to the pickup modes. Right now people trying to start a ctf match have to spam arma servers and irc chans. It takes times and annoys everyone. A more formal !add would be an improvement IMHO.
• We really need CTF matchs between brawls. I tried a couple of brawls (or more) and it just sucked. I don't feel like adding 4 days before the event, and make sure I'll be available and have a reliable Internet connexion near me if I know I'll face a team of pro that will end the match in 5 minutes (and in the meanwhile I'm being yelled at by my own team, cause I obviously lack training). That just too much commitment for very little fun.

[*16]

• I'll be happy to host a CTF server. What's wrong with brawl settings? Only the auth? What about a server with brawl settings and no auth required to play?
• I think CTF should be added to the pickup modes. Right now people trying to start a ctf match have to spam arma servers and irc chans. It takes times and annoys everyone. A more formal !add would be an improvement IMHO.
• We really need CTF matchs between brawls. I tried a couple of brawls (or more) and it just sucked. I don't feel like adding 4 days before the event, and make sure I'll be available and have a reliable Internet connexion near me if I know I'll face a team of pro that will end the match in 5 minutes (and in the meanwhile I'm being yelled at by my own team, cause I obviously lack training). That just too much commitment for very little fun.

Brawl settings would be just fine, but I wanted to edit the auth needed to play indeed. But I can't download the file from brawl30, link doesn't work for me.

I think indeed ctf4 would be nice, it was once added. I don't why it got removed. I hope espy reads this and gives it a thought.

I'm trying to start some ctf these days and I notice some people are intrested in playing, they just need motivation to start playing.

[theo]

Brawl settings would be just fine, but I wanted to edit the auth needed to play indeed. But I can't download the file from brawl30, link doesn't work for me.

There is a backup in any brawl server.

http://pastealacon.com/34390

I think indeed ctf4 would be nice, it was once added. I don't why it got removed.

 It was never officially added. During few days, epy's ger server had troubles. So all ger1 servers were down. Amrapickupbot too. pathetique and myself hosted replacement bots on our own servers in the meanwhile, to allow pickup to still work. I once added ctf4. I think it lasted one day before the real bot got back. I'm not even sure a ctf match started.

I hope espy reads this and gives it a thought.

Lot of people do.

[*16]

theo, I mean a lot earlier (like in 2011) ctf was added by espy to the real bot.

I think these setting should do:

RINCLUDE ctfpublic1.cfg(http://phoenix-clan.org/resource/brawl/ctfpublic1.cfg)

[theo]

Server is up.


fr2.ctf.phx.be:4541 (the url will change I'll drop phx.be at some point).

It's in the public server.


I'm sick of getting dozens of server with "theo" in their name. I put a temporary name. If you got a better idea, let me know.

[Soul]

I'd like to see a ctf pickup as well. I really have a hard time getting into ctf because I don't ever really have the opportunity to play a competitive match other than once a month for the brawl.

I suppose it'd just be a matter of getting a pickup server for it and epsy adding it to the armapickupbot.

[Monkey]

For CTF to become popular I believe it needs to have fort/sumo physics and be played on a fort sized grid. This has kind of been tried in the past and it does work, if I remember correctly.

[Tre]

No.
Just, no.
I know a certain ctf'er should wouldnt play in ctwctf
ONLY because it didn't have ctf physics.
Ctf on that size grid would be boring, because of all the back and forth
I say good job to the people doing this tho, I've seen people in CTF servers quite often now.
+1 for ctf pickup

Whatever, my nub opinions.

[Nanu Nanu]

For CTF to become popular I believe it needs to have fort/sumo physics and be played on a fort sized grid. This has kind of been tried in the past and it does work, if I remember correctly.

CTF physics as is are kind of what makes the game mode so enjoyable. It may become more popular with fort physics, but then it's not the CTF we know and love at all.

With Ww servers being gone, it's great to have another reliable public CTF server! Pickup CTF would also be awesome, I'm just not sure who has any idea about how it might be implemented.
The problem with CTF seems to be bigger than just not having the servers, many people just don't seem to like it. Maybe we could think of some annoying things about CTF that potentially drive players away, and perhaps think of some solutions as well?

• .4 client crash after every round (Extremely annoying problem for Brawl right now and has only gotten worse)
• Rounds lasting a very long time with one player with a flag being chased by 4 enemies for 5 minutes until DZ.
• Having your flag zone completely controlled by the other team in a flag run. Less experienced teams can get destroyed very quickly if a better team does this. I can't think of any other game mode where a less skilled team can be destroyed in a round or two. In other modes, no matter how nooby your team is, matches can still last a decent amount of time.
• Lack of seriousness in non-tournament play. There are no norms like in fortress when a server only has a few people in it. There's no generally agreed upon unwritten rule to play something like winner attacks in CTF when there's less than 8 players. It's kind of sad that when we actually wanted to play we had to start a "srs". Why could we have not been serious when the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th players came into the server? We'd spend 20 minutes trying to get what was essentially a poorly organized pickup without rules together that many people would leave and we wouldn't really be playing.
• Size of the teams? Maybe allow more players?
• Scoring is something that always kinda bothered me, especially with flag running. All it takes is 10 flags to win a match, and this can be done pretty quickly. Maybe more emphasis should be put into points for kills? We could add some points to kills, and take off some from flags. If there was a basecamp up, you would have to sacrifice more points if you wanted to hole to get your flag in (since no point holing in CTF is pretty rare and hard to pull off). Same with holing to get a flag. If anything it could make people play a bit safer. Since you only give up two points to the other team and are respawned pretty quickly, it doesn't weigh too heavily on your team if you do something stupid and die.

[Overrated]

For CTF to become popular I believe it needs to have fort/sumo physics and be played on a fort sized grid. This has kind of been tried in the past and it does work, if I remember correctly.

CTF physics as is are kind of what makes the game mode so enjoyable. It may become more popular with fort physics, but then it's not the CTF we know and love at all.

All that needs to be said; from a person who actually hardly played ctf (aside from ctfs when it was popular) until joining R.

With Ww servers being gone, it's great to have another reliable public CTF server! Pickup CTF would also be awesome, I'm just not sure who has any idea about how it might be implemented.

Believe there are a few willing to do this, just need to give them the settings.

.4 client crash after every round (Extremely annoying problem for Brawl right now and has only gotten worse)

If someone knew why this was an issue, we could figure it out shortly I imagine.

Rounds lasting a very long time with one player with a flag being chased by 4 enemies for 5 minutes until DZ.

I imagine it's the different mentality between CTF and Fortress. In CTF, you often have multiple lives so you play more risky in certain situations, especially attack. Fortress; you have one opportunity a round and you need to try and make it count.

Having your flag zone completely controlled by the other team in a flag run. Less experienced teams can get destroyed very quickly if a better team does this. I can't think of any other game mode where a less skilled team can be destroyed in a round or two. In other modes, no matter how nooby your team is, matches can still last a decent amount of time.

Experience, that's what pickup/public server can provide. I know some people use custom grids where it shows the flag spawn points; this would be nice for everyone if you leave it for them. I don't since I really don't see the overall need, but I can see where it would be helpful for newer players.

Points could factor into fixing this (will address later on).

Lack of seriousness in non-tournament play. There are no norms like in fortress when a server only has a few people in it. There's no generally agreed upon unwritten rule to play something like winner attacks in CTF when there's less than 8 players. It's kind of sad that when we actually wanted to play we had to start a "srs". Why could we have not been serious when the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th players came into the server? We'd spend 20 minutes trying to get what was essentially a poorly organized pickup without rules together that many people would leave and we wouldn't really be playing.

Isn't that what fort pickup is now? Most games that I play in take at least 10-15 minutes to set up teams between picking, server, and every one to show up. That's really the overall price it appears to be to have a "srs" game. Unfortunately, at least for me, pickup doesn't feel very serious to me since it takes so much time to organize everything. In the time it takes to set up the game, you can have 10+ minutes of casual fort to practice.

And, again, I think it's a mentality. I don't like having non-serious matches since it doesn't drive me any more, but that's just me; I don't know about everyone else.

Size of the teams? Maybe allow more players?

no. Just no. 5v5 was awful, lag-wise. Also making the teams larger would change the way ctf is played completely unless you were to change all the other physics and size as well. Not to mention you would probably pit your weakest player to be designated spawner. Just no fun in that. Would rather find a way to limit base camps more, maybe shorter tails?

Scoring is something that always kinda bothered me, especially with flag running. All it takes is 10 flags to win a match, and this can be done pretty quickly. Maybe more emphasis should be put into points for kills? We could add some points to kills, and take off some from flags. If there was a basecamp up, you would have to sacrifice more points if you wanted to hole to get your flag in (since no point holing in CTF is pretty rare and hard to pull off). Same with holing to get a flag. If anything it could make people play a bit safer. Since you only give up two points to the other team and are respawned pretty quickly, it doesn't weigh too heavily on your team if you do something stupid and die.

I think we went through constant debate about this. Should kills be 1, 2, 4 points? Are flags 4, 6, 8, 10? We had lots of debate and I think we settled that flags took more skill to obtain at the time and so they should be rewarded (this also went along with the round win points). I think the fact that rounds and matches can be so short or long with flags being so intricate partially ruin the game. This also means teams with inexperienced defenders are destined to be destroyed quickly.

With the way CTF has changed recently, we need to change the score of flags and kills to hopefully promote the game more and allow people to learn and play more intense matches. We could change the overall score, to 150 or something instead of 100, but I don't think that will help the game.

My best suggestion is lower flag score back to 4 (maybe 6 so it's not completely obsolete), and keep kills the same. The problem I see is if you make kills 3, then it messes with the "get to 100" factor. And I am also hesitant to lower the flag score too much. Since the whole point of the game is to "capture the flag," you would think that getting the flag should have more of an impact. So I think three times the kill score would be a decent place to start?

[*16]

With Ww servers being gone, it's great to have another reliable public CTF server! Pickup CTF would also be awesome, I'm just not sure who has any idea about how it might be implemented.

Believe there are a few willing to do this, just need to give them the settings.

I asked around about this. Epsy answered me something I didn't completely understood but it comes down to the thing that something with the ctf and the servers wouldn't work for warmup mode and referees. You wouldn't be able to get a referee, so you would have to draw an admin to set the access levels etc.

I asked if it would be possible to have like a standard list of referees in those ctf pickup servers, like we have in brawl servers too but I just got ignored.

.4 client crash after every round (Extremely annoying problem for Brawl right now and has only gotten worse)

If someone knew why this was an issue, we could figure it out shortly I imagine.

The problem is no one cares about ctf and no one doesn't even take a look at this.

Lack of seriousness in non-tournament play. There are no norms like in fortress when a server only has a few people in it. There's no generally agreed upon unwritten rule to play something like winner attacks in CTF when there's less than 8 players. It's kind of sad that when we actually wanted to play we had to start a "srs". Why could we have not been serious when the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th players came into the server? We'd spend 20 minutes trying to get what was essentially a poorly organized pickup without rules together that many people would leave and we wouldn't really be playing.

Isn't that what fort pickup is now? Most games that I play in take at least 10-15 minutes to set up teams between picking, server, and every one to show up. That's really the overall price it appears to be to have a "srs" game. Unfortunately, at least for me, pickup doesn't feel very serious to me since it takes so much time to organize everything. In the time it takes to set up the game, you can have 10+ minutes of casual fort to practice.

And, again, I think it's a mentality. I don't like having non-serious matches since it doesn't drive me any more, but that's just me; I don't know about everyone else.

It's just that mostly when having 3 or 5 in a ctf server one is mostly no doing anything and starts to talk and that's where it just get normal. It's more fun to do a 3vs3 (or more) then a 2vs2. If one dies the other can't res him so the round is over for that team.

Size of the teams? Maybe allow more players?

no. Just no. 5v5 was awful, lag-wise. Also making the teams larger would change the way ctf is played completely unless you were to change all the other physics and size as well. Not to mention you would probably pit your weakest player to be designated spawner. Just no fun in that. Would rather find a way to limit base camps more, maybe shorter tails?

I wouldn't change the team size for Brawl, but we could make it 5vs5 on the public server. Altho the server is theo's and that's crashing a lot for some clients.

Scoring is something that always kinda bothered me, especially with flag running. All it takes is 10 flags to win a match, and this can be done pretty quickly. Maybe more emphasis should be put into points for kills? We could add some points to kills, and take off some from flags. If there was a basecamp up, you would have to sacrifice more points if you wanted to hole to get your flag in (since no point holing in CTF is pretty rare and hard to pull off). Same with holing to get a flag. If anything it could make people play a bit safer. Since you only give up two points to the other team and are respawned pretty quickly, it doesn't weigh too heavily on your team if you do something stupid and die.

I think we went through constant debate about this. Should kills be 1, 2, 4 points? Are flags 4, 6, 8, 10? We had lots of debate and I think we settled that flags took more skill to obtain at the time and so they should be rewarded (this also went along with the round win points). I think the fact that rounds and matches can be so short or long with flags being so intricate partially ruin the game. This also means teams with inexperienced defenders are destined to be destroyed quickly.

With the way CTF has changed recently, we need to change the score of flags and kills to hopefully promote the game more and allow people to learn and play more intense matches. We could change the overall score, to 150 or something instead of 100, but I don't think that will help the game.

My best suggestion is lower flag score back to 4 (maybe 6 so it's not completely obsolete), and keep kills the same. The problem I see is if you make kills 3, then it messes with the "get to 100" factor. And I am also hesitant to lower the flag score too much. Since the whole point of the game is to "capture the flag," you would think that getting the flag should have more of an impact. So I think three times the kill score would be a decent place to start?

I think 6 for the flag should do, we could try that.

[sinewav]

Disclaimer: I haven't actually read any of the above posts. Well, skimmed. A little.

First, you don't need !add ctf in the pickup channel. In fact, this would make things worse for CTF. We have all seen discussions on how pickup creates a barrier for new players and limits growth. Here is a history lesson from an oldie: long before the pickup channel, when Fort servers were empty someone in #armagetron would type "anyone want to fort?" and people would just start playing in Fortress Cafe. Eventually more people would trickle in and hours of Fortress fun was had by all. So my advice to you is do the same. When you want to play, just ask someone, then go play. The rigmarole of #pickup is a buzzkill.

Second, there is boundless room for innovation in CTF. Some of the best hackers in this game love CTF yet there is no equivalent of Crazy Tronner's Wild Fortress. Years ago, there was a CT Wild CTF, but it was Fort physics and the maps were pretty lame. The CTF community should get together and experiment. Try different maps. Try different physics just for fun. Like the CTF physics just the way they are? Fine! Adjust everything else. (scores, zone sizes, create obstacles, rim acceleration, death zones, longer/shorter trails) It could be a cool community-building exercise and spark new life into a mode that I think fits quite naturally in Armagetron. The best map/settings might become the "new" CTF (and might not look too different from the current one, but you'll never know until you try).

Now, go forth and make the most awesomest random mind-bending CTF server ever.

[bilbo baggins]

i remember a while ago prema set up an alternative ctf server with almost a "baselike" setup, i dont know whether he still has the map, but sine is right, the ww server almost always had at least 2 players in when it was up, the emphasis should be on improving public ctf, before we start to improve brawl.