anatomyx
Legend
If you don't care about what I have to say in detail, just scroll to the bottom for a TLDR.
I've been a little busy the past couple days so I haven't been around as much as I'd like, but I'd like to talk about a few things we've seen happen in the bracket lately and a little bit about our future too.
First - Arena Night:
I was not able to participate on Wednesday, but I've heard varying opinions on our first Arena Night both from my guild and reading posts on TI. The biggest concern seems to be people running "broken" comps. This seems to be, in a way, just the nature of arena, I don't know. I just find it a little puzzling that most people seem to want to help WSG games a lot, but then when arena rolled around it sounded like it was just a battle of who could play the most OP comp. Overall, the general opinion seems to be "I had fun, but there's only so much of getting trained by melee I can take before I get bored and want to stop", which I think is totally understandable.
It's pretty obvious that 2s isn't the most balanced thing out there but I figured this would be worth a shot to keep activity (somewhat) rolling throughout the week. There's the thought of 3v3 arena as well, but all I can really see by switching to 3v3 is the same problem persisting. It's difficult to deal with OP classes in a bracket where you really only have so few options to play your character, even more so with very few teammates in arena. That being said, I'm unsure at this point what is going to happen. There's a decent chance that I'll drop Arena night, but this brings me to my next topic.
A 2nd Battleground Night:
I'm well aware of concerns from "veteran" players who have seen it all before and have watched brackets die in the span of a few weeks due to rapid expansion. I'm afraid of it just as much of anyone, but I'm also afraid that being too passive in a revival will have the same outcome that we're trying so hard to avoid.
I've said this before, but I think that it's an impossibility for this bracket to survive on one night of BGs per week. I tried to lessen the wait by introducing an Arena night, but as I've mentioned above, there seems to be too many issues involved in something like that. All I can forsee in continuing an Arena night is people getting frustrated. Either way, if we're too scared to try to grow the bracket in terms of what matters most (BGs), we're not going to appeal to anyone outside the players who are already here. People aren't going to come to 39 when they know that all they can expect are a few hours of games on a Saturday night.
Why I think we're almost ready for 2nd night -
The two nights we've had so far have had really high activity. The 2nd night was a vast improvement over the first in terms of numbers and also in gameplay quality. I heard that we had 4 games (3 100% confirmed) going at once earlier in the night. We had a lot of people in the new teamspeak communicating with others during games. We also had a lot of players put in work to balance out games by making new characters, be it on the opposite faction or something not as "OP" so there aren't obvious balancing issues in games.
I think what we've done so far has been successful, and if we keep making an effort to promote the bracket and create a better gameplay experience it's going to appeal to a lot more players with time. There are also several small projects going on behind the scenes that will help us. Boostz is making a 39 promotion video, there's teams forming for premades (possibly even organized "pug" wargames) and there's even a 39 twink cup on the horizon.
I think these things provide us with even more reason to expand the bracket. It shows that this time around, a lot of people really care about the bracket staying alive and are putting a lot of effort into ensuring that it stays active. The only way we can really gain more interest as a whole is to provide more of what twink players want - battlegrounds. That's why the only solution moving forward that I can see is introducing a 2nd BG night.
It's not something we're going to jump into yet, but I think if this Saturday's games are also a success it's something I'm going to put a lot of effort into setting up. I also want to know what everyone else thinks, so if you have an opinion on a 2nd BG night, leave me a post in this thread. Sorry for the long read.
TL;DR - It's time to think about having a 2nd BG Night due to the activity and interest the bracket is getting so far. What are your opinions on a 2nd night?
I've been a little busy the past couple days so I haven't been around as much as I'd like, but I'd like to talk about a few things we've seen happen in the bracket lately and a little bit about our future too.
First - Arena Night:
I was not able to participate on Wednesday, but I've heard varying opinions on our first Arena Night both from my guild and reading posts on TI. The biggest concern seems to be people running "broken" comps. This seems to be, in a way, just the nature of arena, I don't know. I just find it a little puzzling that most people seem to want to help WSG games a lot, but then when arena rolled around it sounded like it was just a battle of who could play the most OP comp. Overall, the general opinion seems to be "I had fun, but there's only so much of getting trained by melee I can take before I get bored and want to stop", which I think is totally understandable.
It's pretty obvious that 2s isn't the most balanced thing out there but I figured this would be worth a shot to keep activity (somewhat) rolling throughout the week. There's the thought of 3v3 arena as well, but all I can really see by switching to 3v3 is the same problem persisting. It's difficult to deal with OP classes in a bracket where you really only have so few options to play your character, even more so with very few teammates in arena. That being said, I'm unsure at this point what is going to happen. There's a decent chance that I'll drop Arena night, but this brings me to my next topic.
A 2nd Battleground Night:
I'm well aware of concerns from "veteran" players who have seen it all before and have watched brackets die in the span of a few weeks due to rapid expansion. I'm afraid of it just as much of anyone, but I'm also afraid that being too passive in a revival will have the same outcome that we're trying so hard to avoid.
I've said this before, but I think that it's an impossibility for this bracket to survive on one night of BGs per week. I tried to lessen the wait by introducing an Arena night, but as I've mentioned above, there seems to be too many issues involved in something like that. All I can forsee in continuing an Arena night is people getting frustrated. Either way, if we're too scared to try to grow the bracket in terms of what matters most (BGs), we're not going to appeal to anyone outside the players who are already here. People aren't going to come to 39 when they know that all they can expect are a few hours of games on a Saturday night.
Why I think we're almost ready for 2nd night -
The two nights we've had so far have had really high activity. The 2nd night was a vast improvement over the first in terms of numbers and also in gameplay quality. I heard that we had 4 games (3 100% confirmed) going at once earlier in the night. We had a lot of people in the new teamspeak communicating with others during games. We also had a lot of players put in work to balance out games by making new characters, be it on the opposite faction or something not as "OP" so there aren't obvious balancing issues in games.
I think what we've done so far has been successful, and if we keep making an effort to promote the bracket and create a better gameplay experience it's going to appeal to a lot more players with time. There are also several small projects going on behind the scenes that will help us. Boostz is making a 39 promotion video, there's teams forming for premades (possibly even organized "pug" wargames) and there's even a 39 twink cup on the horizon.
I think these things provide us with even more reason to expand the bracket. It shows that this time around, a lot of people really care about the bracket staying alive and are putting a lot of effort into ensuring that it stays active. The only way we can really gain more interest as a whole is to provide more of what twink players want - battlegrounds. That's why the only solution moving forward that I can see is introducing a 2nd BG night.
It's not something we're going to jump into yet, but I think if this Saturday's games are also a success it's something I'm going to put a lot of effort into setting up. I also want to know what everyone else thinks, so if you have an opinion on a 2nd BG night, leave me a post in this thread. Sorry for the long read.
TL;DR - It's time to think about having a 2nd BG Night due to the activity and interest the bracket is getting so far. What are your opinions on a 2nd night?
