Feedback DBLWP

[MateoTheBold!]

A big round of applause to:

-Mark for suggesting an idea that became this event
-Daryl, Mark and Otaru for their hardwork as captains
-Checkm8 and Flash for helping admin the event
-The players and the alternates

You guys made for a great event!

Onto a bit of a post-mortem, what worked and what didn't? There were a couple of new ideas for this event, so anything you guys can tell us for what worked and what didn't is appreciated.

Length of actual matches: For dustbowl, we ran the risk of some very short matches if we did ABBA instead of ABBA BAAB (each team attacking once instead of twice). During TVC some of the stopwatch matches were over in 15 minutes, and we didn't want to shortchange dustbowl. A lot of the matches made it to stage 3 both times, which is good (but that leads to long matches) Were the matches too long?

Length of event: Three days over two weekends. Should this event of been shorter? Just right?

Forums: Were steam groups sufficient for coordinating?

Shared alternate pool: This is the first time we have done this. What are your guys' thoughts?

Flexibility: I tried to remain flexible in pushing back signup times, changing dates etc. to accomdate as many people as possible but I wonder if maybe I went too far in bumping back cut off dates/rescheduling matches. Thoughts?

In the end I hope you guys had fun, made some new friends and will be up to playing some matches away from your home server from time to time!

[Crusty Juggler]

Length of matches: Good. There were some crazy last minute pushes that made every match interesting. Plus, it's a Dustbowl and Warpath event, those are maps that take a while. I enjoyed the ABABABA whatever format.

Length of event: 3 days was fine. Not too long.

Forums: Steam groups worked well. They actually have some use now.

Alt. Pool: My team preferred the alt pool.

Flexibility: My experience with theses events is that we always get a surge of late sign-ups. Prolly shouldn't have scheduled an Easter match to begin with, but the reshuffling worked well.

[bluntspoon]

Thanks to everyone involved in organizing the event, had tons of fun as usual.

The only thing I would say is the potential of playing a 3rd match in a row is not something I was looking forward to, at all. It was over 2 1/2 hours for the 2 matches. I'm competitive and I like to win, but I was relieved that the 3rd match was a no go.

[DDYzErO]

Great times. Thanks again for putting together this event.

[XxOtaruxX]

I thought it all worked out pretty well. I don't know that I was prepared for being a captain, but I tried. It was my first time doing a ville event in any form, so it was a new experience for me.

The matches were fair in length, although I believe we only played Warpath for 40 minute matches when I thought they were supposed to be an hour?

I think one of the biggest problems we had was random drops/crashes at inopportune times.. It wasn't so much a problem with the event itself, it was just frustrating.

The alternate pool was good. I know we had a problem with people unavailable on nights, so having the shared pool was helpful for us, seeing as how we did use it 3/4 nights.

I think one thing I may suggest is pre-scheduled scrim nights? Schedule the scrims for a certain night during the week. It seems like a lot of people are available, they just need to be told when the teams want to scrim. But then again, maybe I'm just too lazy to organize something

[black_and_blue]

Length of actual matches
Dustbowl is a really tough one (as would any 3-stage attack/defend map be). If we had a longest possible scenario of every round going to the final seconds of stage three for two dustbowl matches plus one warpath match on the same night, it could have been past midnight Ville time on a Sunday night. Given that some Villuns are Eastern time, that could be problamatic.

I'm inclined to think for long, multi-stage maps, it would be better to just do one single attack for each team if there are multiple matches scheduled for the same day (while recognising that this could cause the opposite problem, and result in very short matches if teams fail to complete the first stage)

Length of event
Was just fine for this event. I wouldn't want to see a more high-profile event like the Ville Cup be this short though.

Forums
The steam groups were sufficient for coordinating, but I still think that team forums would have been preferable. Not sure how much work it is to set up the team forums, if it's a lot of work, then the steam groups are fine for a small event.

Shared alternate pool
As someone who was not in the alternate pool, it was useful to have the alternate pool because it allowed us to field a full team when we didn't have enough players available.

However, I do have some concerns that maybe some of the alternates might not have gotten to play as much as they would like, and they also would have missed out on the team dynamic between events. We might need feedback from some alternates on this.

Flexibility
I think you were exactly the right amount flexible.

Overall Comments
This was a very fun event, and I very much enjoyed being a part of it. Thank you very much for organising it, Matao!

[The Domer]

My only regret is not being able to be a part of this event. Thanks to all who participated to make it happen though!

[kkpyro]

Thanks for putting together this fun event!
Great idea

The Alt Pool is a good idea. I heard it mentioned many times during the Ville Cup as a
possibility and I'm glad it worked so well.
I think during a longer event, such as the Ville Cup, more alternates will be able to
participate.

Good games to all the teams, as always, it's fun to meet new ppl and burn them...er...
I mean play together.

[SchruteFarms]

As an alternate, this worked out for me. I knew I couldn't make at least 1 day, and maybe two, but I still wanted to participate. During the final dustbowl match, Mateo messaged me and told me to go on blue... so I did, and helped SOBAD push for the win! It was the most intense 7 minutes of game-play I've had in a long time.

That was fun, and I should be able to be on a team during TheVille Cup. I do like the alternate pool, I think its fair and gives lots of people a chance to get in!

Well done organizers, captains and everyone else!

[Crusty Juggler]

I have never seen stage 1 Dustbowl defended so well- by all teams. Except that time we got rolled by SOBAD.

Trying to uber through the tunnel with HWs, Demos, kkpyros or whatever on Warpath is ridiculous.

Given all the players that dropped or no-showed, I think we did a great job of subbing people in. I'm sad that Mateo didn't cheat and give me Domer like I asked when I needed a sub.

And uhh...good work Tungsten!

[cam]

Length of actual matches:
I'd love to see more dustbowl action in future events, but it definitely takes a very long time. I would include it only if the teams are playing one map each day so that we aren't burning people out. If a team has to play more than one match a day, definitely make it so Dustbowl isn't played both matches.

Length of event:
PERFECT! Just right for this event. It was a blast to watch!

Forums:
May or may not be relevant, but our UGC team uses a steam group as a discussion board and it has been just peachy for it.

Shared alternate pool:
Full teams every game. I'd definitely say that this was a triumph. Maybe a HUGE success?

Flexibility:
I love flexibility in every aspect of my life.


Some other thoughts I had:
SourceTV on the event server was very stutter-y. I really enjoyed watching it and was very appreciative that it was provided but it would be great if we could get someone to check out the issue.
I think the class restrictions should have been tighter (something like no more than 2 to a class) but I understand why it was the way it was.
MORE DUSTBOWL PLZ.

[Crusty Juggler]

I had a damn good time!

[darklin0]

Length of actual matches:
Length was alright. With the abababaaaaaa format there was a risk of the matches being too long but they played just fine due to how well each team played.

Length of event:
Great! Long enough to feel invested short enough that it still let me have a life.

Forums:
It was good, the notifications helped getting in games on time.

Shared alternate pool:
Worked out fine. It allowed teams to have full rosters and never risked having people down.

Flexibility:
Goooooooooooooood



It was fun!

[ADevilishPotato]

Correct me if I'm wrong (since I wasn't an alt) but it seemed to me that we had a rather large pool of alts for this event that might not have gotten any playing time at all (or not as much as they might have wanted). While I understand that is a consequence of not being a player, I wonder if it was necessary to have 16 folks per team as opposed to 4 teams of 12. That way alts could have gotten some more playing time. Either way, I think that having a pool like that worked out very well.

As for the other stuff, folks have covered it.

[Inner]

Fun stuff, thanks to everyone!

1. Steam groups sufficent, but much prefer fourms. Fourms also help non-regular posters get into posting.
2. Flexiblity was great actually. Sometimes things like "oh yeah, Easter" come up and it was the right thing to reschedule or at least offer to.
3. Alt pool is fantastic! I would prefer to have enough players per team to just fill the roster and then pull from Alts if needed. That way nobody on a team is required to sit out and it makes captaining a bit easier.
4. Overall length was fine.
5. Mateo is great.