CTF Feedback

[SwitchViewz]

Hey there everyone, now that the CTF Event has concluded I would like to gather everyone's feedback about the event and know what we can do better next time. As for the next Fundraiser, we are planning to do another sometime in Q4 2015 and whether or not it will be CTF is up in the air so if you have any gametype suggestions please feel free to toss them in.

We Raised: $3667.84

[MasterCommaThe]

Thank you for another wonderful, fun CTF. Might not have been what you were expecting with the teams, but I think we all had a lot of fun united and opposed.

To start off some ideas, for the future CTF, I'd love to see some use of nerfing a team that get's too much of a point spread.

 

As for other mass games I'd be interested in a "last man standing wins" type of game (with teams). Think Starship Troopers where mobs get progressively more intense till no one is left.

In addition I'd love to see the use of mob-player plug-in to make a game (possibly CTF with additional features) similar to L4D, where players who die become the monsters (permanently or just for a night). 

I'm really interested to see what other games players would like.

[Difficult1]

CTF was amazing! Best one we have had in a while! <3

 

 

Beacons used as forward spawns, people can place beacons as forward spawn points and the beam gives its position away so it needs to be defended.

 

make the strength buff strength 1 only, too OP otherwise.

 

Next map i would like to see a river that flows directly red base from blue base. With some difficult terrain to make combat focused near the river.

 

Maybe one long round with auto balance every 12 hours?

 

Set up period. 1-3 hour of set up before fighting begins. Maybe even spawn players without walls around them? Time to get defenses rolling without having to focus on attacking.

 

Harder to break blocks - maybe make player placed blocks take much longer to break then normal. It would encourage coordinated attacks and long lasting offensives. 

 

Maximum CTF. For the 3 or so days CTF runs, have the CTF portion online during a mainstream time to prevent night capping. Makes the game fair for people who are not insomniacs like me and zburdsal. When CTF is down for the night, mini games. *also to keep people entertained throw in some player made games for fun (no prizes)

 

Higher XP plump and Higher wool output from sheep 

 

TNT - tnt is enabled but with one difference. It cannot be placed within 10 blocks of the flag or base. It must be LAUNCHED at a distance with the use of cannons. Possible make the effect on wool less damaging then normal so it takes longer to crack away at defended areas.

 

 

This map for CTF was the best map ever. but maybe next time 1/4th smaller :D

Edited June 8, 2015 by Difficult1

[c45y]

I've broken my feedback into categories to make it a bit easier, as you are no doubt aware I have been very critical of parts of the process leading up to this event, so I won't include that feedback here ( although I hope there are improvements made in future )

 

Communication:

• Give a lot more notice than we did, both to players and staff
• Advertise leading up to the event
• Make better use of the mcpublic twitter ( Tweet final team scores per match? )
• Make sure information such as an event description, server location and time converter are in the post announcement details, don't rely on previous knowledge
• When we needed to take the server down for changes give plenty of notice. I feel like this was handled well, a massive thanks to Dumbo for being so active and effective :)

Planning / Preparation 

• Train multiple people in the use/administration of specific plugins ( including our tech team )
• Encourage a lot more staff to participate in planning/design phase ( More notice helps with this )
• Soft launch new events to staff members before a full launch, gives valuable time to test plugins and process and find things that might be broken ( block breaking in enemy bases lol )
• Use todo lists with assigned jobs to members, always set an due by date ( time/project management principles ), the current planning thread was a mess

During the event

• Have a solid plan, are we running for 3 days straight? Do we have plans if we need to reset early? etc
• Engage users for feedback during the event, is strength OP? do we need to nerf it? feedback these results into potential reset plans

CTF specific

• Strength was OP as balls, tone it down in future ( my bad, sorry )
• Simplify base walls, no inner overhang so users can build up until the wall protection
• Extend the per team build area to encompass the walls ( let them build a new gate if they want to )
• Hunger regeneration seemed really popular, maybe enable it ( toned down ) in future. It makes the initial first few hours before a base is fully established much smoother without 30 people screaming for food
• Provide a way for members of the staff team to talk to specific team channels
• Outer walls may help defenders in future revisions of this event, review base/terrain placement to make this possible

 

All that being said I think this CTF was a great success and we should all be proud to have produced something our players enjoyed, we will only get better at this with practice!

[Silversunset01]

The biggest problem I had was lag. I sort of wish the fast-grow and wool plumping we normally have were available so we didn't have to have so many sheep bogging things down.

[SwitchViewz]

The biggest problem I had was lag. I sort of wish the fast-grow and wool plumping we normally have were available so we didn't have to have so many sheep bogging things down.

Could you expand on this a bit or give some more details? TPS was constantly at 20 and lowest I saw it go was 19.4, and I checked it every hour or so. Memory usage good high when lots of players came on but we bumped that up as time went on. Any details to help clarify here is much appreciated.

[Silversunset01]

Could you expand on this a bit or give some more details? TPS was constantly at 20 and lowest I saw it go was 19.4, and I checked it every hour or so. Memory usage good high when lots of players came on but we bumped that up as time went on. Any details to help clarify here is much appreciated.

Every time I went into the sheep pen to farm is lag so bad I could barely move (Fps dropped to 6-7). And when totemo was dumping water on the sky-limit lava at red flag I was breaking blue wool. I climbed up the ladder and tried to kill him but it didn't register. Next thing I knew I was rubber banded back to the bottom of the ladder. This happened three times. I relogged to try to refresh the lag (sometimes this helps me) and when I logged back in I was at the top of the water/lava and totemo had killed me before I was even able to move.

Needless to say, this resulted in a rage quit.

Edit: I know the lava/water combo can be quite laggy. But the sheep thing is manageable (that's why moblimiter exists). Not sure how to help the other.

[buzzie71]

I'm with Master on his point about balancing the teams, though maybe buff the badly losing team to encourage closing a massive point gap (I thought Strength 2 and Regen 2 would be useful there, or some other cool special ability to make survivability and flag stealing easier ), at least until the point gap closes back to within a certain range.

 

The other alternative I can think of is active autobalancing, which will probably not be too well received ._..

[Forever_A_Steve]

 

In addition I'd love to see the use of mob-player plug-in to make a game (possibly CTF with additional features) similar to L4D, where players who die become the monsters (permanently or just for a night). 

 

 

 

this

[SirTacoface]

What everyone else has said was pretty much the feedback I was going to state. I also wanted to add to Difficult1s idea about the next map.

 

If you've ever played World of Warcraft, there's a really cool PvP map (forgot the name) where each side has a fortress and in the middle runs a large-ish river dividing each side. You either have to swim or jump on debris to cross the river, or dare to cross the middle bridge where its horribly dangerous. Theres also several structures in between to weave through and some hard-to-navigate terrain in the sides, making the players focus on battling in the Danger Zone (ziiiing); the battle-heavy section. Most of the fighting either happens on the gate bridges of the fortresses with water around it, or at the large river, which would call for some really intense scenarios!

 

In addition I'd love to see the use of mob-player plug-in to make a game (possibly CTF with additional features) similar to L4D, where players who die become the monsters (permanently or just for a night). 

 

Also this, so much yes. Maybe as a special game-mode for a round or have it be a Search and Destroy thing at the end of each round? Like a "breakout" to settle the scores?

[TornadoHorse]

Having 3 different rounds was very disappointing. Poor solution to a very 1 sided event, more should have been done to even it out - disabling strength and regen buffs as was suggested numerous times during the first round, having a deathstreak buff etc.

 

Apart from the surprisingly large amount that was donated, I think we've always done better in the past. Take a look at these posts that previous admins had made in the lead up to and after the event. The information post beforehand has already been mentioned, but I used to love the wrap-up posts that concluded the events and stated the winners. I don't think we even have a post anywhere saying who even won the event, and for a lot of players part of the fun of this is the competition. Not having one makes the event seem a lot less special and not a big deal, which it really was, or at least should have been.

[kittypuppet]

We should get a spectator mode for CTF

 

though we'd need some sort of method to prevent leaks

[SwitchViewz]

Having 3 different rounds was very disappointing. Poor solution to a very 1 sided event, more should have been done to even it out - disabling strength and regen buffs as was suggested numerous times during the first round, having a deathstreak buff etc.

 

Apart from the surprisingly large amount that was donated, I think we've always done better in the past. Take a look at these posts that previous admins had made in the lead up to and after the event. The information post beforehand has already been mentioned, but I used to love the wrap-up posts that concluded the events and stated the winners. I don't think we even have a post anywhere saying who even won the event, and for a lot of players part of the fun of this is the competition. Not having one makes the event seem a lot less special and not a big deal, which it really was, or at least should have been.

There is only so much that we can do during a live event and we decided that rounds was the best solution at the time. It is obvious now it wasnt and we will need to come up with solutions for the future, thats the point of this thread.

As for a wrap up post, I have one ready to post but I am waiting on the heads for some finacisl info before I post it.

[JKayani]

CTF was an amazing by far. Something additionally I would like to see is a deathban system. Killing a red team at their own base really doesn't mean much as they can resupply and come out to fight me. If we deathban like other faction servers for an hour max, killing a red player could possibly weaken their entire team. Same with blue team etc. 

[Guest Former Staff]

We should get a spectator mode for CTF

 

though we'd need some sort of method to prevent leaks

 

Possibly some twitch streams? (from individuals participating)

[MasterCommaThe]

Based on Difficul1's suggestion: Maybe have several planned "build the defenses" time periods where PVP & flags are disabled to prevent "nightcapping". Possibly have admins protect a region with an unbreakable wall between the teams during this time.

Another map idea. Most games devolve at some point into skybridge attacks. We either should play to this element or find a way to prevent it as it seems to be a source of early domination by one team. The "Wool Mountains" map in the past was one solution to this issue, obstructing most skybridges while making them necessary in the center of the map. Future maps could either have white wool "clouds" and "fog" across the center of the map, with wool blocks made more difficult to break, to discourage skybridging in favor of tunneling and other land based attacks.

An exotic CTF map idea would be to plump the resources for "piston trains/planes", and otherwise make land attack difficult, and have a game where "skyship" attacks are the norm. I imagine this map looking something like the sky levels in Super Mario Bros. 3 in my head. The use of piston sky transport was mentioned by someone else during the CTF, and I unfortunately don't remember who it was to credit them, but I will own up to this only being partly my own idea.

Also, I'd be interested if we could possibly use the mob-player plugin to simply make a player appear as a mob of their choice, possibly as a mini-game award or something. This would allow for a certain amount of espionage from players who are not highly functional at PVP itself. "A horse walks into red base..."(great start to a joke btw)"...he eats all the wheat". 

 

I noticed that the physical "inner walls" of the base weren't even necessary given the protections within the region. They were elaborate and well constructed for actual PVP defense, but served no practical defense purpose because of their location. A small fully protected defense wall around each flag could have served a really strong purpose to deter easy capture. We decided not to have complete outer walls around the base due to terrain and time constraints, and I feel that was a fine decision.

 

I really liked the earlier idea that teams should be able to place some "defense" blocks that the other team has difficulty breaking (possibly another good minigame reward!). My feelings are that each team needs an area only large enough to store resources (including animals) that are protected from the opposing team so that production cannot be easily disrupted (nerfing an entire team). Allowing all resource production within that area isn't strictly necessary. To that end I would like a much smaller "spawn" with only player starting area with protected chests and rules, and a barn that supplies a modest continual amount of animal resources. One might also consider supplies of modest weapons (arrows!) and armor to further even the playing field between players just joining and ones in full enchanted diamond.

Last thought for the moment: It wasn't quite clear in which regions players/blocks were protected from damage. Perhap a greeting message at the gate to the base could say "Blue Team is protected from damage within these walls, Reds beware", or something else with more flavor.

[MasterCommaThe]

New game type ideas:

Invade the castle - Both teams join, are supplied with finite amounts of weapons and armor (including buckets of water), and have but one life in Adventure mode (I assume you can place water in adventure mode). Each team gets a castle and attempts to defend from entry to the throne room.

[TornadoHorse]

Based on Difficul1's suggestion: Maybe have several planned "build the defenses" time periods where PVP & flags are disabled to prevent "nightcapping". Possibly have admins protect a region with an unbreakable wall between the teams during this time.

Another map idea. Most games devolve at some point into skybridge attacks. We either should play to this element or find a way to prevent it as it seems to be a source of early domination by one team. The "Wool Mountains" map in the past was one solution to this issue, obstructing most skybridges while making them necessary in the center of the map. Future maps could either have white wool "clouds" and "fog" across the center of the map, with wool blocks made more difficult to break, to discourage skybridging in favor of tunneling and other land based attacks.

 

The admins don't need to get involved with this. The other team is capable of fighting against it, and they should learn to do so if they don't want to lose. If the other team is attacking via skybridge, tear down the skybridge. There's nothing wrong with either of those tactics that you listed. If the teams are very unbalanced then the admins could switch some players over, however that shouldn't really be needed. You should be able to PvP and capture the flag whenever, allowing that only to certain timezones is an awful idea.

[Silversunset01]

I sort of like the third round best, where you had to locate the flags before defending.

Maybe something like "everyone spawns in the same place and you have to locate your base and your flags" type of CTF.

[Silversunset01]

The admins don't need to get involved with this. The other team is capable of fighting against it, and they should learn to do so if they don't want to lose. If the other team is attacking via skybridge, tear down the skybridge. There's nothing wrong with either of those tactics that you listed. If the teams are very unbalanced then the admins could switch some players over, however that shouldn't really be needed. You should be able to PvP and capture the flag whenever, allowing that only to certain timezones is an awful idea.

I think they are trying more to find ways to make the game more fun for everyone - once one team starts winning by a landslide both teams suffer. Yes, people should learn how to defend their flag, but not everyone is as good at it as others which can potentially make for a very one sided game.

[tobylane]

If the reason why the teams are unbalanced is still causing unbalance (which is to be assumed with skybridges and possibly tunnels) then keeping it available for further use just means you'll need to balance more people in the future. This is definitely demotivating.

[MasterCommaThe]

The admins don't need to get involved with this. The other team is capable of fighting against it, and they should learn to do so if they don't want to lose. If the other team is attacking via skybridge, tear down the skybridge. There's nothing wrong with either of those tactics that you listed. If the teams are very unbalanced then the admins could switch some players over, however that shouldn't really be needed. 

I appreciate your opposing opinion. History proves we can't depend on all players to perform equally (I don't think I have a single kill on record despite many attempts), so some sort of balancing seems to be necessary. Moving players as you mention is a valid option, but I did worry that that itself might be disruptive to them and was trying to avoid it as the solution. Got any other ideas? This was good.

 

 

 You should be able to PvP and capture the flag whenever, allowing that only to certain timezones is an awful idea.

I would love to maintain PvP & capture all the time, and if we can I will try to work primarily toward a solution that keeps that given your opinion.

 

I still feel something needs to be done to alter how the game mechanics work when timezones cause one team to have 7 players while the other has 15 (1 v 5 is even worse). This happened to me twice in the last CTF. Ideally teams need balance in numbers and skill, but at least numbers. I think I saw 7 players vs. 2 take out the entire built defenses of red base and score over 30 points in 2 hours. Attempting to defend was a fruitless effort. The tactic of the game in that case becomes simply waiting for the other team to log off. Ideally I'd like it so that it is feasible for 2 players to defend against 10. Maybe a safe protected tower above the flag with an unlimited arrow supply (leaving the tower would clear your inventory?) where a sniper has a chance to defend the flag on their own.  Alternatively perhaps uneven numbers should confer a buff to the smaller team, up to the point that a large enough difference in points or players grants invulnerability. Maybe they can't make any progress, but they shouldn't have to eat through the entire teams resources and die constantly in order to mount a valid defense, it's highly demotivational.

 

Alternative ideas (not really good ideas yet) include perhaps we could have dedicated builders, invulnerable but also harmless?

 

Keep the ideas coming please. 

[Wozdaka]

Shorter and fixed Length Rounds:

 

So define a match start and end time. And I would keep this at maybe 6-12 hours max. A few things this will resolve.

 

* It allows for more rounds in a weekend. So it mixes up the teams a lot more.

* It gives define start and end for a match which can keep motivation. If you are down 80-30 and no idea when the round will end you do ultimately give up and ignore the objective of CTF.

* It prevents time-zone population imbalances. Red had a strong show in round 2. Blue stopped playing CTF. They did not have the numbers or will to play. Red was camping Blue's base very hard. Red team logged to sleep. Blue team then had a surge of over night population that allowed them to run flags un-defended. The next morning blue has a 3 to 1 population advantage and a good over-night of free flag caps because the game went too long and red could not compete against 3:1 population and saw all their effort gone because they needed sleep. Smaller round times would prevent this as you would clearly call round 2 to red then start a new round which would evenly split up the population that would want to play over the night in North American time to compete against each other instead of just stomping on Red team who was asleep.

 

Remove Str 2 and Regen buff

 

It was over powered and it became the real objective of the match. Whomever had these buffs (I believe from the center) was always the advantage. At one point you could see a bunch of blue team members inside red base. They cannot attack but they couldn't be killed because of the regen buff. There was no threat. The moment you stepped out of the base you were dead because of str2 was always an advantage over any gear you could possibly have or made at that point. This killed motivation in Round 2 and 3 where the winning teams had a monopoly on the middle buff.

 

Make buffs environment

 

Night vision, water breathing, speed, mining haste would be enough. It gives those teams an advantage of movement and gaining some resources but it does not give a fighting advantage.

 

Underdog / underpopulation relief

 

When you are outnumbered 3:1 or you are way behind you have no motive to play. Easy enough for the team in the lead to make bold statements like "Step it up" "be a team" or "Play better" but ultimately if you are facing too many hurdles you just choose not to bother. 3:1 ratio cannot be fixed with playing better. You are playing against 3 times your numbers. Also if you are behind with a score like 50 to 30 you have to make 20 captures. If you need  5 minutes to travel and 5 minutes back that is 10 minutes per a capture at the best so to get 20 more you need to capture both flags 10 times. That's 100 minutes of work. Assuming you have no resistance. But doing that with a 3:1 ratio and a team motivated to seek out and camp your base for kills. Good luck with that. Some relief is needed to the underdog team. Perhaps flag carriers of the underdog team has the regen buff. Perhaps the underdog team in population by a 2:1 or worse ratio gets the str2 buff. Anything to help them push back the odds a bit keeps them motivated to even try.

 

Turn in for Wool

 

You can have 1000s of sheep and get wool from it. But you also have some resources going unused. Redstone/Bluestone/Quartz/Gold are almost useless in the game. Have a turn in system to trade in these resources for wool to be used.

So the only source of wool is  not just creating a lag fest of too many sheep but you can get it from mass mining as well.

 

Lessen Gaps between islands

 

The island design was very cool. The problem with it was using horses was pointless as you needed to build lots of bridges and the spans were wide enough the time/effort was just a bit much. It was just easier to go full navy and make mass boats. If you lessen the gaps between islands you encourage the building and counter-building of bridges and you would also get more use out of horses. 

 

Flags not by base

Round 3 with the flags near the base but not on the same island was a good idea. Again with the above "lessen gaps" you allow teams to have to build some bridges to get to the flags easier to defend as part of their plan. This also keeps

the objective about supporting these 2 remote bases without your main base being camped.

 

Spawners made so they cannot be killed

 

Protect spawners from being killed. Once they are killed it removes map objectives to check on. Teams can still disable these spawners by preventing mobs from easily being killed. Likewise teams can spend effort to repair them. You see will see a struggle over these vs just killing the spawner and removing it from play.

Edited June 10, 2015 by Wozdaka

[Difficult1]

 

Flags not by base

Round 3 with the flags near the base but not on the same island was a good idea. Again with the above "lessen gaps" you allow teams to have to build some bridges to get to the flags easier to defend as part of their plan. This also keeps

the objective about supporting these 2 remote bases without your main base being camped.

 

 

Only issue with this is it ruins the defense aspect, making it more of a race then encouraging coordinated assaults.

[CROCKODUCK]

Having 3 different rounds was very disappointing. Poor solution to a very 1 sided event, more should have been done to even it out - disabling strength and regen buffs as was suggested numerous times during the first round, having a deathstreak buff etc.

 

Apart from the surprisingly large amount that was donated, I think we've always done better in the past. Take a look at these posts that previous admins had made in the lead up to and after the event. The information post beforehand has already been mentioned, but I used to love the wrap-up posts that concluded the events and stated the winners. I don't think we even have a post anywhere saying who even won the event, and for a lot of players part of the fun of this is the competition. Not having one makes the event seem a lot less special and not a big deal, which it really was, or at least should have been.

A huge portion of abuse of choosing sides was players using lots of alts to get on the team of their choice. I think we should take the time to go above IP locking and lock alt accounts with all known IP's previously used to try to prevent this issue in the future. Something of that nature wouldn't be too difficult to just keep a large record of alt connections or possibly some other strategy to ensure one team isn't stacked with a huge amount of active players while the other is filled with offline alt accounts and so on.