CTF ELO Impact

Devlog – Support Class Spawn Bug & CTF ELO Impact

Build Status: Investigating / Fix in Progress Mode Affected: Capture the Flag (CTF) Class Affected: Support Severity: High (Match outcome & ELO integrity)

Overview

We want to acknowledge and clearly document an issue that has been affecting Capture the Flag matches over the last builds. Some players have reported — and we have now confirmed — a bug where players fail to properly spawn as the Support class, even when the class is selected before match start.

This issue has had a direct and negative impact on match balance and ELO calculations, especially in competitive CTF environments.

What’s Going Wrong

• Players queue or spawn intending to play Support
• The game either:
  • Spawns them as an unintended fallback class, or
  • Fails to initialize Support abilities/loadouts correctly
• As a result:
  • No healing, shielding, resupply, or objective sustain is available
  • Teams enter CTF matches without their intended Support role

CTF is role-dependent by design, and missing Support dramatically affects flag runs, defenses, and recovery plays.

Why This Affects ELO (Badly)

Because ELO is currently calculated based on match outcome and performance metrics, the absence of a functional Support player creates a cascade of issues:

• Teams lose matches due to missing core mechanics
• Players are penalized in ELO for losses they had little control over
• Support mains are disproportionately affected, since their role never properly activates
• Match data becomes skewed, creating false negatives in skill assessment

In short: broken spawns = broken results = bad ELO data.

Temporary Mitigations

Until the fix is live:

• Ranked CTF ELO gains/losses are being reviewed internally
• We are logging all Support spawn failures server-side
• Matches with detected Support initialization failures may be excluded from future ELO recalculations

We strongly recommend players report any instance where Support fails to spawn correctly, including:

• Match ID
• Team
• Selected class
• What you spawned as vs. what you selected

What We’re Fixing

The upcoming fix targets:

• Class initialization order at spawn time
• Authority validation between server and client
• Loadout replication for Support-specific abilities
• Spawn fallback logic incorrectly overriding Support

This is not a balance change — this is a core class integrity fix.

Final Notes

We take competitive integrity seriously. If you lost ELO due to this issue: you’re not crazy, and it’s not your fault. Support is a foundational role in CTF, and the game should never allow a match to proceed without it functioning correctly.

Thanks for sticking with us, reporting bugs, and helping stabilize the competitive ecosystem. More updates soon.

— Dev Team