It's not news that our minigames are not as popular as they used to be, but it does go beyond our lower playercount. I wanted to adress that in this topic.
Good and bad design
First off, I should explain the terms I use. Simply put, a minigame should have a clear objective that will win or lose you the match. People should be rewarded for playing towards that objective. If it is present, it's good design. If it is absent, it's bad design.
Knowing that, let's take a look at our minigames.
Castle wars
It does have a clear objective, which is carrying 5 of the opposing team's flags before they do. It is a big improvement from the past, when we had 10 minutes to carry as many flags as we could. It might be an interesting idea to lower it to one flag, which would make the game more fast paced and puts a lot more pressure on both teams. This idea does come with it's flaws though, I'd say the objective is fine as is.
There is very little reward to actually playing the objective, however. Killing an enemy holding a flag only results in 1/5th of an extra ticket, exactly the same as you would get for killing someone not holding a flag. Any efforts made to stall or delay the enemy team just waste everyone's time, the defending team doesn't get rewarded for it. Successfully carrying a flag only gives you one extra ticket. This lack of reward for playing the objective is a driving factor behind all the people that afk at CW.
Pest control
You either kill all the portals to win, or your knight dies and you lose. It's a pretty clear objective.
The rewards however, don't line up with it at all. The amount of tickets you recieve is a base amount and an amount based on the damage you dealt in total. Given the fact that this damage can be to just about anything, it encourages farming for damage. There is a cap to the amount of damage you get tickets for, but this does not help at all. Farmers are often frustrated at people playing the minigame as it is intended to be played and it usually ends up with a flame war, this is the core negative aspect of farming. Defending the knight isn't rewarded, doing damage to the portals isn't rewarded, so people farm the load of creatures that spawn but don't actually threaten anything.
Rewards
Something both minigames lack is a reward you can turn into cash quite easily. Since edgeville teleports are kind of in demand, why not put them in the shops? (and make them tradable via GE too)