I'll be watching!

excellent rail to the face

excellent!

Can't stand slasher's drones =[

Should be good as always.

oh that was slasher last week, I thought wheat had a sore throat and was using microsoft sam.

I really enjoyed watching the show last week, so I'm looking forward to it tonight.

No mention of the FD issue from last week.

not on now in an hour it is


" vedic there was

slasher is boring. also hunting up esports news does not make one a "competitive gaming guru".

and u are?

If you could res more easily in WoW arena, matches would last forever.

LOL @ Hoens "CTF is broke because it's broke in Quake"

Hoens was on again? What the fuck is wrong with them...

this ep was rather boring compared to the others, no real tourough discussions about modes which could have been very interesting and way to much sideranting going on because of the streetfighter 4 challange and result :8

Love everything djwheat!
You should try and get syncerror and/or marty on there :)

i turned it off, cause they wouldn't stop talking to boring people and about boring games

i agree did the same ^^

yeah the first hour was counter-strike and WoW, but we get into general news/Quake Live/QuakeCon/Starcraft stuff later on, the VOD will be posted shortly.

oh ok good to know, gonna check that out then, thanks

i felt like 90% of the show was cs & wow :/

well, I mean, the show -was- centered around the ESL finals, which is CS and WoW, so it's expected =p.

Maybe we need a Quake only show

how about something that contrasts similar or same gametypes in different (fps) games and discuss the future of those gametypes. Something definitely on everyones mind as we go into a new year with some new titles expected (ie- DNF)

quake & sc only show please! :P

I work in Hannover and I think it is very important that I hereby announce that I will in fact not be watching those events.

Excellent. I love listening to Wheat and Slasher.

dj2x sux

CTF is a decent gametype but it is actually isn't very good for spectators (Contrary to what was said).

By just following the flags (And I guess the attackers) you miss out on so much of the gametype the teamplay, defence, flag recovery, powerup play and you can only really focus the point of view around one player at a time so you're going to miss out on a lot of interactions and important events.

A long with the overview of the game being hard to capture in FPS games effectively due to the 3D nature of the maps the problem is the two flags. In Football/Ruby/Hockey/Basketball the focus of the game is on the ball and the taking it past the opponent to score points (I can't think of any popular sports that play like CTF) this allows the games to have a real focus from both the playing and spectating perspective.

This makes all the teamplay, defence, offence, recovery et cetera more evident as it mostly revolves around the single item. That's why they're so good to watch and why so many people can enjoy them easily. CTF is chaos.

I have yet to see CTF as a gameplay work. The nature of games say that any particular game should support multiple modes (1v1/tdm/ctf are the norm), and trying to balance each of those concerns is a lose-lose proposition. You're either going to sacrifice in the 1v1 or tdm area to make ctf good.

You're point about speccing is exactly what I though of after hanging up (contrary to popular belief everything I talk about on the show is off the top of my head with no scripting before the show takes place, so I miss out on a lot of what I think of later). Soccer/football/hockey/whatever sport you watch is not watched from 1st person view. There's always a 3rd person camera view, usually from above, with the commentators casting the action. As you said, this works great for 2D playing surfaces, but once you get more complex like games deliver, the ability to use such angles is diminished.

If you have any suggestions about a good ctf game, let me know. VQ3/CPM/Halo (from the little I've played)/UT (from the little I've seen) are just boring games where newbs tend to congregate.

I can only see a "One Flag" type CTF being able to (successfully) work where you cap at the enemy base in some manner and the map re-sets upon a capture.

That way it's just like the above sports with a dynamically shifting battlefront etc. I can see it being very difficult to get right though with a whole host of obvious problems.

Keep calling, without you it would end up with just cs/wow people calling in :(

I think the best example of "one flag" that works is the objective based games like counter strike and rtcw, with rtcw obviously being the best game ever. Floating cams actually worked relatively well (if you had a good cameraman camming), and there were some really good shoutcasters able to explain what was going on. This doesn't work so well in 2 flag as we've already said.

Well as long as there's one person who doesn't resort to flaming me, and djWheat answers the phone when I call, I will :D

It is also the case that unlike the other dm modes, in CTF frags are actually mostly pointless and in fact its more the case that the damage you do is the important factor most of the time. However as damage itself is not visually represented this is a worthless aspect for spectators and hard to appreciate. What's more, unlike TDM and Duel as the focus is not on kills you are required (if you want to achieve the main goal i.e. capture a flag) not to partake in most of the combat or you will not be strong enough to enter a base full of defenders take the flag then run it all the way back to your own base before getting killed.

While on the surface it seems a simple concept it is in fact much more complex and subtle. While TDM is about clear control of defined areas (often by physical architecture and visible items) as well as having a main focus on just killing. The entertaining and unique moments of CTF are generally how the attackers approach the base avoiding contact, stealing items and timing their attack. All these moments are 99% of the time missed by the spectator and when viewed would have to be explained to the inexperienced.

CTF is also played generally with more players then the other modes and in VQ3 especially with newbie friendly settings such as low gun spawn times and higher ammo and damage on spawn weapons. All these settings promote are mindless spam and when you add the ridiculous spawning on flag carrier epidemic, it begins to just look like an FFA from a spectators point of view.

So while CTF seems simple enough on the surface, if anything it is more complex to understand then other modes and if it ever wanted to develop into a true sport it would need to change the way it is spectated totally.

so tdm is less chaotic than ctf?

additionally, ctf cant be compared to 1v1 because one of them is team-based.

you're going to miss out on SOMETHING whether you watch ctf games from a third-person view or by switching first-person views. if you watch from third-person, you'll be missing out on all of the sick shots, actual health/armor statuses, and the incredibly fast pace. however, if you watch from first-person, you can certainly be confused on the whole picture, but i think that will only happen with non-gamers who're trying to watch and figure out what's going on. a few minutes of explanation before the match by the announcer about the rules and the hud layout should fix any of those problems, though.

saying that you have to focus on "two things" (those two things being both flags) in a ctf game is incorrect. that situation only presents itself in the case that both flags are taken at the same time, but the tradeoff for the increase in excitement levels at that time is worth it. otherwise, for the majority of the game, you're only focusing on one flag at a time (when it's taken).

however you look at it, we all have biased opinions on what's "easier" to follow because we all understand video games and their basic structure, whereas an outsider might not, and those are the people to be concerned about if you're talking about expanding the viewing audience.

the crowd at qcon last year seemed to be clinging to every frag in the ctf final, and i was on-stage playing, so it must've been pretty loud/intense for me to notice...

So you as an apparent top level CTF gamer believe CTF is a good game type to view for non gamers, and your opinion is validated by the crowd at Quakecon (a major event for gamers) and their reaction to ‘every frag’ in a CTF game. A game that you were focused on playing in as it was an important final, probably the exciting highlight of the CTF year.

I understand that QCON was mostly gamers, so it's not a reasonable platform to judge how the game is followed by regular spectators. I was just mentioning how exciting it seemed to be for people who DID understand the game. As far as the other things you said, I'm not sure where you're going.

I didn't refer to TDM or Duel as I was looking at CTF in isolation from other game types, so the fact TDM can be chaoctic is irrelevant.

The thing is, while the shots and frags are obviously important to the game the focus of any team game should be on the team work and strategy. I imagine the "best" way to spectate Team games such as CTF is to have one first person POV running with a map overlay/radar type thing showing the other players position.

The problem I was talking about isn't about cross steals or the flags specifically but the two battlefronts that the flags create (Red attack on Blue & Blue attack on Red).

Imagine a game Soccer but with an extra ball, each team has the possesion of one of the balls at a time. I doubt you could really watch this game effectively and be able to appreciate everything that happens as the addition of a new focus point has created two fronts of attack to pay attention to and created chaos for the viewer.

I still don't buy into your comparison with other actual sports, but I do like your suggestion of watching one player's (or even two players') points of view while also having a third-person view of the entire map or where most of the action is. I think this is definitely an option and possibility. Even at QCON last year, they had two big screens, each with a different POV, so essentially one of them could be first-person and the other third-person.

However, I guess I still don't understand what argument you're making. It seems as tho you're saying CTF isn't spectator-friendly in its current state, but at the same time, you aren't suggesting something else is.

I'm suggesting that Football, Rugby, Hockey, Basketball et cetera are examples of sports which are spectator-friendly and that CTF isn't.

The comparison is about how successful team games are structured so that they work for playing and spectating. Which at the moment CTF doesn't.

Can you think of any successful team game that works in a similar way to CTF?