Elitism ruining the game

[Bomber]

What do you guys think? Pub players keep games alive, and companies keeping up to date with games like cs course, and tf2.

Seems being a pub player now in this game is look down upon like you are half retarded and suck. This really shouldn't happen and makes new players run away when they get talked to in a disrespectful manner.

Treat others as you would like to be treated yourself God tells us, and I believe more players here should abide by the Lords commands.

This game has the potential to blow up with new players when the next patch comes out and if we don't have kind and accepting current players they will all leave pretty soon after they start playing.

[reaper18]

Originally Posted by Bomber

This game has the potential to blow up with new players when the next patch comes out and if we don't have kind and accepting current players they will all leave pretty soon after they start playing.

Hopefully there will be an influx of new players, but i doubt the elitist mindset of those players won't change.

[Iggy]

Hopefully those new players will run into people like me, who are willing to help show them the ropes.

[Bridget]

The failures of Fortress Forever come from all different directions. The game has to compete with a handful of other Team Fortress games with the major competition coming from one of the most popular online games to date. The second is the development team. While I respect the work they do, I don't think they do it efficient enough, which is understandable to a degree because the development team isn't static. People have come and gone. However, they are here and there in their focus. They are mindlessly wandering about the game trying to figure out what needs to be fixed. This is all because they lack good enough feedback to know what needs to be fixed. In some cases, what needs to be fixed is obvious, but the dev's seemingly ignore the demand. Take the Engineer for example. The community overwhelmingly agrees that its Sentry is generally weak. What does the dev team do when I or anyone else reveals this fact? We get smart ass responses or sarcastic one-liners or promises that will never be kept. It's pretty sad.

This could all be resolved if another problem were fixed: The lack of communication between the development of the modification and its public members. When your front page has lacked change since the beginning of the year, people assume it's dead. TF2 makes sure to update their blog weekly. As a fan, I look forward to their blog posts. Even if they don't reveal some huge update plan, it's nice to know they're still there. It's keeps me interested. Even a blog post about scrapped mechanics was enough to excite me. The game feels dead from this side of the fence even if it's somewhat lively on the other. As I've been saying a thousand times before, the development team needs some sort of development blog. I don't mean the minuscule and rarely updated Twitter feed. I mean something with some actual content. I know the flow of development isn't enough to justify a weekly announcement, maybe not even a biweekly announcement, but surely enough work could get done in a month to encourage a post?

Another problem with this game is its community. As I have said before, it's as if all the ex-hackers and dickheads from TFC got filtered here while all the kind and considerate players went to Team Fortress 2. Don't get me wrong, this community has a lot of great people, and I would almost think they're the only reason I stick around, but they almost always get overridden by the assholes. The pickup community is a joke. Not everyone is to blame, but most seem to be worthy of blame. This would usually mean nothing, as players could continue enjoying the game while ignoring them, but here's where the big fuck-up comes into play. The development team has persistently made appeals to the pickup community. In fact, at one time, the devs even mentioned remodeling the game to fit a more streamline and competitive nature. That's great! You're going to force beginners to integrate with the most sociopathic bunch this game has? Sounds like it'll work out. (that's sarcasm)

The game is a fucking bore-fest for public players. Capture the flag is a nightmare. You can't actually win capture the flag. It's a gamemode of persistence. Who is persistent enough to capture the flag constantly until the twenty minute timelimit is exhausted? Who is persistent enough to do a repeated action over and over with no real reward except some screen text and a number increment. If you could actually win the fucking game then it wouldn't be such a snooze-fest. If all it took was capturing 10 flags before the enemy to win, then people would be motivated to play the game. Instead, there's no incentive and no reward. People deathmatch. Do we blame the developers? Who have neglected the idea of making public capture the flag more appealing? After all, they don't need something that organizes gameplay for them when they just slip into the ffpickup niche and agree to some arbitrary rules and play with the same five people. That agreement will never come about in a public environment except in rare circumstances.

That's why AVD has always been appealing to public players. It has a structured gamemode. You can actually win! You can actively sway the game in your favor by either pushing the flag backwards on defense or capturing on offense. What reward do you get for capturing? You get moved closer to the capture point you can capture to actually score a victory (instead of having time trickle down.) That's great! The public players have a structured gamemode! Oh wait, the game is balanced toward offense. AVD and IVD isn't balanced at all. The defense gets absolutely steamrolled. The last saving grace for public play isn't even balanced. Chilledsanity has been pointing this out for fucking ever. At first, I thought it was a minor issue. In fact, I partcipated in the routine criticism of his points during beta tests before coming to realize his point. Hey, CTF sucks, so people naturally move toward AVD. Oh, but wait! AVD sucks too. What left is there for the public? Deathmatch CTF! Oh but, it's the players' fault they deathmatch. Not the neglect of the developers to provide the public with any structure for CTF or balance for AVD and IVD. Those stupid players!

It's one big mess. People just partake in ad-hominem and self-delusion. Many people just figuratively shove their fingers into their ears and "La la la" themselves dead. The development team and everyone riding their coat-tails has this smug attitude of self-superiority. They act as if they can do no wrong. They act as if they have everything in control. To them, the public is incompetent. The players know nothing. I have had discussions with development team members who, when I bring up the point that the community might have some good advice for the development of this mod, simply resort to denigration. Everyone participating in the development of the mod with this mindset would have been a great asset to Soviet Russia. Up until it's inevitable collapse, of course.

wall-o-text'd
in before people proving my point

[reaper18]

lol bridget i havent really agreed with a lot of the things you say, but right there is a wall o text from you that was actually worth reading.
I agree 100% sir.

[Bomber]

Bridget this game is pretty much like TFC, capturing the flag is not about persistence, it depends on who is on defense and if you can pull it out. You can be very persistente and never capture it if you have some skilled defenders.

Also some of the people may be labeled hackers in TFC, but many of them were clean players who decided to hack at the down fall of TFC because it got so boring to them and I believe there was a hack that let you bunny hop to the limit and stay there without being slowed down so a lot of people liked that too. They weren't your typical hackers.

I am just saying we need a more open and more public server centric player base that is friendly to new comers.

[Bridget]

You missed my point. Imagine someone comes up to you and says "Hey, let's play some basketball. Which would you rather do? We play for two hours and whoever has the most baskets after the time is up wins or we play now and whoever reaches twenty baskets wins." You will probably pick the latter variation because it isn't two hours long. This would make it absolutely exhausting and boring after awhile. The twenty baskets is a quick challenge. It would probably get your adrenaline going. It would be fun to play. The good thing about the latter is that if at any point you become bored, you can actually "win" by making the twenty baskets, ending the challenge in your favor.

Now imagine the former. You both give up thirty minutes in due to exhaustion and/or boredom. You might decide then and there to call it quits and give the win to the other person, but in Fortress Forever, you can't really do that. You play the game vigorously for ten minutes, then you either leave (which makes the victory that comes around in ten more minutes pointless for the winners because the losers were not there to observe it, even though you don't get rewarded anything but a scoreboard) or the other person leaves, making your victory pointless without them there to observe it.

The problem could be solved if the time limit were cut. Maybe the time limit could go down to ten minutes. However, this is still pretty boring. I think most people would enjoy a capture limit. First team to x captures wins. This creates a more exciting 'struggle to win' than having to outlast your opponent. Why so? Again, because you can encourage the win on. If you want to win, you step up your play, and you get those caps in. What the hell can you do with an outlast-the-enemy scenario? Stare at the time-limit and hope it magically hits 0 so you win? You have no choice but to continuously grind throughout the entire ten minutes trying to stay above your opponent. Shit's not fun. Grinding should only be for close matches at the last few minutes, not constitute the entire match.

Also, let's imagine one team absolutely destroys the other. Five minutes in, the score is 50 captures to 1. Assuming the team with 50 captures keeps going, the team with the 1 capture will never be able to catch up, which means there's fifteen minutes remaining in which the "shut out team" will become bored, exhausted, and resort to death-match out of defeat. Now let's imagine the game automatically was won at 20 captures. This wouldn't happen. The match would be over by now, and the point where boredom and exhaustion sets in would have never even been reached.

Hell, this happened in pickups. My team would get absolutely smacked, so we would just dick around for the remainder of the match. Or, of course, vice versa. We would be so far ahead of the enemy team that we would just joke around and try to melee them or something.

[Dexter]

This seems a fairly common issue in games with very small player bases. I've personally seen the same thing in games like FF, CPMA and Warsow. New players get trolled a bit by the usual small crowd of elitist long-time players and have no interest in sticking around. The easiest fix is more new players together of course. Or a server of helpful people. Certain gametypes help too. I really dont see too many douchefaces pubbing lately, but maybe because that was because I hopped in OT and most are banned from there

[Iggy]

I believe that is basicly up to the mappers, but I could be wrong. I wouldn't mind seeing a variable available for a specific number of caps, but I don't think it should be hard coded.

[Dexter]

Originally Posted by Bridget

Also, let's imagine one team absolutely destroys the other. Five minutes in, the score is 50 captures to 1. Assuming the team with 50 captures keeps going, the team with the 1 capture will never be able to catch up, which means there's fifteen minutes remaining in which the "shut out team" will become bored, exhausted, and resort to death-match out of defeat. Now let's imagine the game automatically was won at 20 captures. This wouldn't happen. The match would be over by now, and the point where boredom and exhaustion sets in would have never even been reached.

So what you're saying is some sort of ratio rule, where if one team shits all over the other capping, it could just change the time limit to 0 and and have it move on? Could do a shuffle or something instead too

[Dexter]

[Dexter]

Originally Posted by Bridget

I have had discussions with development team members who, when I bring up the point that the community might have some good advice for the development of this mod, simply resort to denigration.

thats me

[Ricey]

Originally Posted by Dexter

LOOK it's your penis, bent like a candy cane!

ZING BITCH!

[Bomber]

Originally Posted by Bridget

You missed my point. Imagine someone comes up to you and says "Hey, let's play some basketball. Which would you rather do? We play for two hours and whoever has the most baskets after the time is up wins or we play now and whoever reaches twenty baskets wins." You will probably pick the latter variation because it isn't two hours long. This would make it absolutely exhausting and boring after awhile. The twenty baskets is a quick challenge. It would probably get your adrenaline going. It would be fun to play. The good thing about the latter is that if at any point you become bored, you can actually "win" by making the twenty baskets, ending the challenge in your favor.

Now imagine the former. You both give up thirty minutes in due to exhaustion and/or boredom. You might decide then and there to call it quits and give the win to the other person, but in Fortress Forever, you can't really do that. You play the game vigorously for ten minutes, then you either leave (which makes the victory that comes around in ten more minutes pointless for the winners because the losers were not there to observe it, even though you don't get rewarded anything but a scoreboard) or the other person leaves, making your victory pointless without them there to observe it.

The problem could be solved if the time limit were cut. Maybe the time limit could go down to ten minutes. However, this is still pretty boring. I think most people would enjoy a capture limit. First team to x captures wins. This creates a more exciting 'struggle to win' than having to outlast your opponent. Why so? Again, because you can encourage the win on. If you want to win, you step up your play, and you get those caps in. What the hell can you do with an outlast-the-enemy scenario? Stare at the time-limit and hope it magically hits 0 so you win? You have no choice but to continuously grind throughout the entire ten minutes trying to stay above your opponent. Shit's not fun. Grinding should only be for close matches at the last few minutes, not constitute the entire match.

Also, let's imagine one team absolutely destroys the other. Five minutes in, the score is 50 captures to 1. Assuming the team with 50 captures keeps going, the team with the 1 capture will never be able to catch up, which means there's fifteen minutes remaining in which the "shut out team" will become bored, exhausted, and resort to death-match out of defeat. Now let's imagine the game automatically was won at 20 captures. This wouldn't happen. The match would be over by now, and the point where boredom and exhaustion sets in would have never even been reached.

Hell, this happened in pickups. My team would get absolutely smacked, so we would just dick around for the remainder of the match. Or, of course, vice versa. We would be so far ahead of the enemy team that we would just joke around and try to melee them or something.

With most CTF servers that I know of there is a 30 minute time limit, so whomever captures the most in 30 minutes or whatever the time limit wins the round.

If one team is destroying the other some people can switch to even teams out, if they don't it is fun to try and get out of your respawn and fight back sometimes with sgs and stuff outside it.

[JackBauer]

Originally Posted by Bridget

The problem could be solved if the time limit were cut. Maybe the time limit could go down to ten minutes. However, this is still pretty boring. I think most people would enjoy a capture limit. First team to x captures wins. This creates a more exciting 'struggle to win' than having to outlast your opponent.

I pretty like your idea. on pub servers either both teams defend or just one or two scouts attack and get bored after a while and quit. sometimes when 4 O play 4 D some lamers join the D-team and go O and cap till the map is over. always a pleasure to see how much they enjoy capping when there is no defence. uninteresting stuff like that and similar things happen a lot.

let's say a capture limit of 5 on pub servers (or map change after 15 mins, if no team manages 5 caps) would end the map. that way the time on each map will be shorter and hopefully filled with more action. you get to see more and different maps = variety and might as well more fun.

if my memory serves me correctly, in TFC when dustbowl was on and the attackers caped, peeps switched the sides and the other team had to attack. if they were succesful, the map ended.

what I don't like in FF is the fact, maps don't get automatically changed when both teams manage to cap. you are stuck on the map and the teams keep switching till the time runs out. sometimes you get to attack ksour about 6-7 times, and let's be honest, after one round of attacking and one round of defending, you have seen it all. an auto map change like in TFC on dustbowl would be awesome.

[GenghisTron]

Bridget wins.

Also, dexter, the Talos server is dedicated to helping new people, and we even had the TBC which was started by Bridget, but never really took off 'cuz fags killed the game before it could. I've also played in zE's server, and he is nothing but helpful to noobies as well. The two big-name servers minus ye who shall go unnamed, will bend over backwards to help anyone with questions or techniques, but that doesn't do any good when you have a very small, but dedicated group of players who insist on being faggots to pass the time between pickups, and then when they get banned suddenly they were high on PCP and forgot their manners. Oh, and this happens every day.



Also, I've seen many players who some people think are 'jerks' (Not pickup players, generally decently skilled pug regulars who have a somewhat shitty attitude) sit there and take time to teach new players bunnyhopping, conc jumping, whatever. To deny that the good elements of this community aren't helpful and welcoming would be a bold-faced lie.

[chilledsanity]

Originally Posted by Bridget

Chilledsanity has been pointing this out for fucking ever. At first, I thought it was a minor issue. In fact, I partcipated in the routine criticism of his points during beta tests before coming to realize his point. Hey, CTF sucks, so people naturally move toward AVD. Oh, but wait! AVD sucks too.

I can't remember if you've said that you've played FF 1.0 or TFC, but if so, the difference was like night and day to what we have now. The reason I've been so unrelenting is it's not just that the balance sucks, it's that it USED to be almost decent, then the new devs came in and actively made it WORSE. I tried to make them aware of this the best I could, but from my perspective it was like seeing an endless campaign of denial that the problems even existed.

In retrospect, it's possible elitism may have been a reason for this, I don't know. Bomber mentioned that pub players are looked down upon and considered half-retarded. That impression's never even occurred to me, but if that's considered common knowledge by the developing team and influential players, then elitism has really strangled the mod. If being a pub player is some sort of stigma and thus all my posts and feedback from pub players in general were regarded in that light, then I guess that would explain some things.

Outside of the casual crowd, I think in TFC there were two general "factions" of serious players. There were serious CTF players who joined clans, partook in league games, perfected conc jumping etc. On the flipside, there were people who primarily played AvD and I/D because CTF was boring. You wouldn't have had over a dozen dustbowl-only servers on TFC if this wasn't a real percentage of people. I was obviously in the latter group, played hundreds of dustbowl, warpath, and some avanti games, only very sparingly did CTF. My guess is the CTF crowd was the opposite, only playing AvD games every now and then.

I wasn't even AWARE the "other half" of competitive CTF players existed in any real numbers before playing FF, but I quickly realized it after seeing the demographic of its players. I've always thought there should be compromises to try and satisfy both sides as much as possible, but over the years it's basically been a straight up appeasement to one side over the other. If that was the intent, then it's elitism. If that was an accident, then it's incompetence.

It's a shame too, because TF2 came along and scooped up most of the AvD crowd. I've never cared for it due to its slow pace, which is why I've tried to stick to FF so much, but it's been a losing battle. If others from the AvD crowd decided they didn't like TF2 either and tried to come to FF, they might find it even worse now. It's really been a combo punch. TF2 stealing players from the outside, balance sabotage from within.

As for having a cap limit on CTF, it's ironic that if this had been implemented from the get-go, all the broken balance might never have happened, because then CTF would have a taste of what it's been like for AvD for the past 2 years and made changes because then the problem wouldn't have been considered so "minor" anymore.

"Wow, that game of congestus was over in 4 fucking minutes! That's the 10th time today! Maybe we should rethink O/D balance some more!"

Originally Posted by JackBauer

if my memory serves me correctly, in TFC when dustbowl was on and the attackers caped, peeps switched the sides and the other team had to attack. if they were succesful, the map ended.

Memory does not serve you correctly (unless it was a custom server), Dustbowl has always been a one shot deal. I wouldn't mind seeing this formula applied to I/D maps however, it would give them more significance than the endless sideswapping. Wouldn't help balance any, but would bring the issue more to the forefront.

[JackBauer]

Originally Posted by chilledsanity

Memory does not serve you correctly (unless it was a custom server), Dustbowl has always been a one shot deal. I wouldn't mind seeing this formula applied to I/D maps however, it would give them more significance than the endless sideswapping. Wouldn't help balance any, but would bring the issue more to the forefront.

my bad, you are right of course. like you, I'd prefer that over endless sideswapping.

hopefully the next patch(es) manage to solve some balance issues too.

[Gwarsbane]

If we go all the way back to version 1 I think one of the biggest things to hurt FF was all the maggot idiots that went to every server blocking doors, screaming over the mic and driving people away. It took a bit for a fix for them to come along and no matter what server you went to there was always maggot idiots ruining peoples fun.

And yes I know I'm not spelling it right, they are maggots, nothing more.

Then there is Elitism. Some people don't try to help and go out of their way to insult people because they play in pubs and only in pubs. You need to balance things for pubs because as I have said before, without people in pubs you will not get anyone to join clans/leagues.

Then there is the racism. As much as a few people here try to argue against it, racist crap on the servers and forums drive people off and it will drive off far more people then it will attract. There is a reason why OT is one of the few servers left that regularly have players on it and fill up to the point that no one can get on. Helpful people, rules that are enforced, no racist crap, and basically nice people.

Then there is in some cases the really radical changes done with patches. Many times when all that was needed was just a small adjustment one way or the other there was a major change done instead that really messed with how things were done. Pub players kept complaining about stuff, but seem to get brushed off because clan/league players wanted it some other way and they had more pull with the devs. You can see this with the scout. The scout kept getting faster and faster and there was less things standing in its way while the pub players keep asking for ways to slow them down or give them time to setup a defense. And most of the time it was simple stuff like, instead of starting off with 3 concs just start them off with 1. Or move them a little further away. Or increase the turn rate of the sgs a little, or up the air push of the sgs a little. Or increase the detection range of the sgs a little or a little of all 3 ideas for the sg.

[Born_In_Xixax]

Elitism happens. It's perfectly natural, and earning the chops and respect to become one of the 1337 is arguably one of the strongest long-term draws of the game.

However, especially with a small player base, the elitist attitude can be over strong to the point of toxicity for newcomers. IMHO the only way to address this within the framework of the current game is to segregate the pros from the beginners. To some extent FF has naturally gravitated to this setup in the US, with 2 servers - OT and Talos - one oriented more towards public friendly casual fun and the other aimed more at 'league-style pub' play. TFC also had this dynamic, between Drippy's-style and Odin's-style servers.

My hope is that this necessity can be more formally recognized, and servers organized to make this spectrum of skill clear to the players and easy to understand and manage for server operators.

- Servers names can include a skill level in the title, e.g. Drippy's Pub for Beginners, Odins PRO Graveyard.
- Server MOTD can give notice of the expected experience level and playstyle, along with relevant rules (everything goes, yard D, O v D, etc.)
- With enough servers, the PRO servers can be invite only and password protected
- Server-side mods could keep track of player success and make recommendations to change servers 'You seem to be owning these newbs! How about trying your skills at PRO server XXX' or 'Getting your teeth kicked in? How about friendly match with fellow newbs at Beginner server YYY'

If we're down to only one server, though, well...SOL