Hello all, this is my first post, I hope some good discussion can get going from it! There has been a murmur going around for a while now with the general idea of "sporty gametypes in FPS competition are stale." While I would like to disagree, when looking at popular games that and comparing their various gametypes, the information seems accurate. For example, Call of Duty 2 has a CTF gametype and a Search and Destroy gametype. In every instance that you see a league setup for CTF, they have a similar (if not exact parallel) setup for SnD. If you were to compare the team sizes in these leagues, SnD always has more teams active in it. A few examples: (Active team numbers taken from leagues) CoD 2 NA 4v4 CTF Ladder has 79 teams. CoD 2 NA 4v4 SnD Rifles Only Ladder has 142 teams. CoD 2 NA 5v5 CTF (Stock) Ladder has 24 teams. CoD 2 NA 5v5 Search and Destroy Ladder has 199 teams. While the huge disparity in the second example may be partially due to the "Stock" nature of the CTF ladder, given the huge number of active teams in the 5v5 SnD ladder in comparison to the CTF ladder, I think it would be safe to say that competitive gamers prefer SnD over CTF. It seems like even in instances when comparing CTF to Team Death Match (TDM) in games like UT2k4, Quake 4, and FEAR, all while keeping the competitive team sizes the same (5v5, 4v4, or 6v6), Team Death Match or other objective based games still win out. If you noticed, Battlefield 1942 had CTF in it. Battlefield 2 left CTF out on this one. I haven't heard many gamers crying. My question is why does it appear that the CTF or 'sporty' gametype is becoming stale to most competitive gamers? I ask this for several reasons. One being it's important to me as a developer (and im curious as to others opinions), second, i'm curious as a gamer who enjyos sporty gametypes more than the 'conventional' gametypes. I have a few personal thoughts on it myself which I have researched, involving CTF tactical complexity, team size requirements, and so forth. However, I would like to know some other peoples opinion on this matter. [Edited by - PyroGuNx on July 23, 2006 12:34:42 AM]

Sorry if this sounds naive, but what exactly is a "sporty" gametype? I don't play many FPS games multiplayer these days so I'm not sure exactly what that means.

If I assume you mean more team based gameplay modes, such as Capture the Flag or controlling checkpoints, my hunch is that those gameplay modes are most fun if you have two (or more) solid teams. If one team consists of mostly "lone wolf" types trying to be the hero, or worse spoiler types who ruin it for the team, then the whole game falls apart. The deathmatch type modes (including team deathmatches) are more tolerant of that kind of behaviour.

Of course though, I've never been big into online multiplayer so I'm pretty clueless on their dynamics.

A 'sporty' gametype is similar as to how you described. It's a lot about teamwork and seemingly less about individual heroics (however, if you have a lonewolf or star and the team uses him, he can definitely lift the team). CTF is the primary example of a sporty gametype. Halo 2 (whose competition has dwindled quickly compared to other games) consisted of almost all sporty gametypes. They had 1 Flag CTF (steal the bacon), a bomb gametype similar to that, etc.

I couldn't imagine the spoiler time or hero time could be the sole or significant factor. BF2 while not highly sporty, is very oriented towards teamplay. All it takes is one guy to take your helo and not know how to use it and he's become a spoiler. Or some genius who takes the jeep and just drives off without picking up people. Still, BF2 has been pretty popular. It's done all right in the competitive gaming world, but hasn't taken off and has yet to get into any big name tourneys.

No worries about not playing multiplayer games much, sometimes answers are brought to light by such cases because you have a specialized 'outside the box' view.