Quake 4 CTF; What YOU Wanted...

[dzjepp]

Are the stock Q4 ctf maps even that big? Are any of them TA in size? If not, then scout will be a bit sucky. On smaller maps, what's gonna stop a player from making 5 second flag runs (as opposed to say 20 on large TA maps with scout).

[DooMer]

Standard CTF is what it's all about. Respawning powerups that teams can control owns runes any day, and grapple is for people who cant straffle. Any questions?

[Foo]

Where's the bathroom?

[Pext]

this "questions?" stupid question - joke is getting old.

[dzjepp]

I just want OSP CTF (and OSP 1v1 and TDM). I wonder if they are gonna make it.

[R00k]

Yea OSP CTF with some 3wave maps have been my favorite combination in Q3 CTF, so I hope osp releases the same for Q4.

At the same time, I love the idea of a TA-style CTF built into the game, and can't wait to see how they implemented it. Hopefully the kamikaze made it in too.

[^misantropia^]

if you ask me TAs powerup system worked pretty fucking good.

You can't be serious. The Guard and the Doubler outclassed all other powerups, making for a very unbalanced game. And an entirely random one at that since getting your hands on a PU completely depended on where you spawned (and if all powerups were taken, you'd just be mere cannon fodder). TA's class system sucked donkey balls, excusez-le-mot.

[^misantropia^]

Standard CTF is what it's all about. Respawning powerups that teams can control owns runes any day, and grapple is for people who cant straffle. Any questions?

Wise words.

[R00k]

if you ask me TAs powerup system worked pretty fucking good.

You can't be serious. The Guard and the Doubler outclassed all other powerups, making for a very unbalanced game. And an entirely random one at that since getting your hands on a PU completely depended on where you spawned (and if all powerups were taken, you'd just be mere cannon fodder). TA's class system sucked donkey balls, excusez-le-mot.

You never played on a well-organized team then. Everything had a use, and there were counter-balances for every powerup if your team had a good strategy.

[^misantropia^]

Somewhere in 2003, arQon posted an article about his thoughts on TA's class system (and class systems in general). I'll take the liberty to quote it here because it quite closely reflects my opinion.

As a sort-of continuation my last column, let's look at the "baby steps" design of a class-based game. With basically NO "working" games in that genre, we have to be Holmesian about it and start by eliminating paths that lead to failure.

Comment #6 by Onslaught on 04:05, Saturday, 18 January 2003
You can not have one single interface for several classes if you want them all to be viable and unique. Giving the classes different multiples on the same set of attributes does not do the trick. Each class must be able to pull off unique moves.

This is probably the most common case, because it's so easy to implement. Prime example: Team Arena.

TA got *everything* wrong that it was humanly possible to. As such, it's an excellent starting point because it lets us kill off a whole bunch dead ends in one fell swoop. (Aside to anyone who doesn't think it was THAT bad: it was an *id game* that was STILL too shitty for anyone to tolerate, even the fanboys. That's a whole new level of bad).
Let's take a look at why...

Flaw: Random Classing
Rather than being able to choose your class, it's determined by an item pickup, which effectively makes it a random assignment based on initial spawns. So you have no potential to develop yourself "as" a particular class because you'll be lucky to play the same type two games in a row. In fact, you'll be lucky to play the same type for two MINUTES in a row during any given game.

Compounding Factors: Since each "class item" is generally unique on the map, if "yours" is gone then that's it. You have to either camp its respawn and wait for the current owner to die, which basically takes you out of the game; or play without it, which means you're not PLAYING a class-based game and has even worse side-effects as well (see the next section).

Conclusion: Setting classes by dice roll is absurd, as it removes the key motivator for PLAYING a class-based game in the first place: that of matching your class to your skills and personality, and improving your ability in that role over time.

Flaw: Chronic Class Imbalance
Of the TA PUs, only two have any value: TANKME and KILLTHEM, the Guard and Doubler. The others are not only useless at best, but the Scout is actually WORSE than a normal player. No armour AT ALL, in a game with a 100dmg hitscan weapon. On maps with at least 50 yards between the flag and the nearest cover. gg.

Compounding Factors: Again, class uniqueness aggravates this problem to absurd levels. In TF, the imbalance leads to 100% Soldiering. TA though is much worse, because if you don't have one of those two PUs the game isn't even remotely fun: you're instantly outclassed by anyone who does, even if you're literally twice as good a player as they are. In the case of TA where teams are frequently expected to be 6v6 or so, 4v4 of those players are actually just playing standard Q3CTF. Which is exactly what happened, of course, since that also meant they had a much less buggy mod to play it in and didn't have to pay extra for it either.

Conclusion: "God class(es)" make class-based play either meaningless (TF) or pointless (TA). Perpetually-inferior classes might as well not exist, and FORCING someone to play as one means they simply won't play.

Flaw: Class Impersonation
(Roughly Onslaught's point). TA has THE most half-assed "class" scheme in history. It modifies only 1 or 2 player attributes, and in-game ones at that (rather than at-spawn elements, which are more like "properties" of the player). Other than those effects, every player is still exactly alike. Everyone has the same movement; uses the same weapons; etc etc. You're essentially still just playing VQ3, except that if you luck your way into one of the God PU's you get to play VQ3 with cheats enabled.
wrt Ion's comment: "I can't think of an inherent flaw in the idea of classes...except maybe in the "light", "medium", "heavy" basics that are ALWAYS used...even there, though, it might be less a bad idea as a bad implementation", even the WORST implementation of that would still be superior to TA, because it emphasises properties over attributes. Even those basic classes take you from TA's "fast guy with no armour" and "tank guy" to "fast guy with no armour" and "SLOW tank guy". Throw in "spawnweapons only" as well and you have "fast light peashooter guy" and "slow tank RL guy". At that point, you DO have genuine classes beginning to emerge and as such they each begin to have VALUE. Light Guy will never be able to take Tank Guy in a melee, but in return Tank Guy can never catch him on a flagrun. Sniper Guy can provide rail coverage across midfield, but he can't spam grenades into it as well, and every other class can kick his arse if they get up close.

Compounding Factors: All subsumed. This is THE most primal and important element of class-based design.

Conclusion: Classes need to BE classes. If they are not genuinely distinct enough from each other and one class can effectively mimic or parallel another, the game is not truly class-based. The key related issue here is avoiding Chronic Imbalance when creating the classes. There is a good analogue to traditional RPG play here, and having x points to divide among your character's skills: Thrug the Barbarian may be pretty good with an axe and have the constitution of an elephant, but his Magic Level of 0 means he'll never be able to cast a spell.

Those are the basics, in my eyes. Call them the "Golden Rules" of class-based design. They seem almost blatantly obvious to me, but clearly aren't to other people or we'd HAVE some class-based games worth playing by now. While adhering to those certainly won't magically turn a bad game into a good one (because they don't attempt to address the underlying gameplay), I WILL go so far as to claim that a game which violates any of them is unconditionally doomed to fail as a class-based game.
I'd be extremely interested to hear people's takes on past games and how closely they adhered to those 3 rules; and any examples that disprove my claim even more than the many that support it. Comment away.

[Qr7]

i wonder if this will bring some of the TA peeps back out of the woodwork. there was a pretty high level of skill amongst the TA community.

is that so.... :icon29:

[Hannibal]

I read that arQon snippet before and I have to agree. It puts a nice little technical justification behind why I've always preferred standard q3 CTF to TA or Alliance. Played plenty of quake and q2 CTF...enjoyed it, but after playing the basic (no runes) CTF of q3 I'd never want to go back. It just feels like a more straightforward competition of skill vs skill, which generally means the game has more replay value for me. You can have that with a robust class system too, but the q2 or TA runes don't fall into that category.

[mjrpes]

I'll put in another vote for plain old q3 ctf.

[7zark7]

getto ctf.

2 bases.2 flags.

[MKJ]

if you ask me TAs powerup system worked pretty fucking good. and i'd love to see the return of the kamikaze.

TA just needed a drop powerup and/or dropflag function, IMO

[Oeloe]

Somewhere in 2003, arQon posted an article about his thoughts on TA's class system (and class systems in general). I'll take the liberty to quote it here because it quite closely reflects my opinion.

[...]

Ownage, as usual.

A rail or rocket of a player even without any PU can take out a scout... It's funny though that in CPMA's class based mode NTF, scouts owned all. NTF is still 'under construction' afaik.

[spookmineer]

In EF (a Q3 engined game by Raven ) the powerups are as in Q3 with the addition of Forcefield (your team can walk through it but the other team can't - lasts about 20 seconds but can be taken down by shooting at it) and a Detpack which is a holdable item which you can place at any time and detonate later, giving splash damage in a certain radius. Can also be used for a huge rocketjump.

[The other standard items are: quad, regen, medkit (holdable health) ofcourse armour, holdable teleporter (if you use it while carrying the enemy flag, the flag will return to their base) and haste.
Not used in many maps are battlesuit, fly pack and invisibility.]

EF is near to death and I think I will miss it

[YoDaddy3vL]

Ahhh... I was hoping Quake 4 might incite a reunion of some sort. I recognized a few names in the forums like Grandpa Stu for example. Any others from that era? Other 3vLers? Good times good times.

[Fender]

wow, old school
Puff is still around and a few other TA folks

[R00k]

Yea, Puff, zark occasionally, I played with Stu and Zark on the quake4world server the other night.

Haven't really seen anybody else - I did play with somebody named papa the other night, but don't think it was Cap.

[Grandpa Stu]

i had a run in with cap a month ago or so on a q3 server but havn't seen him on q4 yet. otherwise there's a few peeps here and there.

[YoDaddy3vL]

Ya I figured it was time to come out of hiding. I've been out of games since Quake 3 then all of a sudden I got the urge to play the classics like Q3, Brood War, and Counterstrike again. Q4 is next on my list if I get the time.

[hammy]

Quake 4 CTF; What YOU Wanted

Similar to or a combo of OSP and CPMA, offhand hook like ACTF...maps like those available in 3wave, actf and xmaps maps maps maps of all sizes...LOL you can never have enough maps anyhow There are alot of great CTF map makers out there!

I suppose I am hopeful that whomeverZ works on a CTF mod, takes the time to look at all the "finest points" of various Q3 ctf mods and can attempt to carry "some of the best points" over to Q4...the time spent doing that, could certainly produce a winner of a mod

hamstang

[FragZilla!]

Lfire or LMctf Quake2 CTF mode.

Please take the following into consideration:

4 techs. 1 offhand grapple. No dropping and then picking up the same tech until another player picks up the dropped tech and then drops/loses it. (prevents hoarding of techs!)

Unused techs respawn somewhere else every 30 seconds. (this is another anti-hoarding and balancing feature)

Player does not lose a tech when switching to the losing team. (This feature encourages people to move techs to the losing team when the number of players is unbalanced).

Switching to losing team does not count against any limit on the number of team changes. (This is very important for encouraging team balancing!)

No speed tech! It severely unbalances games all too often.

Lfire CTF for Quake2 is still played quite a bit even though it's very old. It has passed the test of time.

Match mode setting is a must. A setting that forces all signifigant server parameters to default setting. ie: Gravity, friction, grapple pull speed, blah blah blah

Also, techs must have a disable setting. This is for the hardcore no tech/armor/health players. The last 6 months my Q2CTF server was running, it didn't allow techs, power-shield, armor, or health. It was extremely popular and there is still an active server running in that mode at 66.36.243.128:27920.

That would be perfect!!!

[MidnightQ4]

Relics are only good for pub games imo, it is a diversion from having to worry about playing "right" and means it is time to just jack around. Competitive ctf with relics is ridiculous, it takes most of the balance of skill away from the game and puts winning squarely in the hands of the relics.

imo the better players tend to not want relics, while the weaker players think they are great because it allows them to play better than their skill level, for brief moments anyway. Basically it just institutes unbalanced gameplay and waters down the skill of the game.