RE: Grand Battle Planning and General Discussion Thread
06-04-2013, 08:36 PM
Six players does seem like a good idea. My (admittedly uneducated) perspective as I've been slowly consuming these things over the last few months is that eight is a bit too many, and four doesn't quite seem like enough variety.
Even as someone who's not in an "official" battle but would like to be, I feel like opening up the field for people to start more battles at-will might cause more problems than it solves. People already have a hard enough time posting in the ones that exist currently. Being in a battle that you can't do anything in because nobody else posts is not productive. To me, that's more frustrating and less fun than not being in one in the first place.
I don't feel like there's a shadowy cabal from whom battlers need to seek approval, I feel like there's a pathway to earning enough respect in the battling community to be able to do something like host a battle someday. I, as a newcomer, feel like the presence of that pathway is important to the feeling that these "official" battles mean something, and I don't think that's really a bad thing. Also, the official battles are the ones the community was sort of built around. They're the ones I want to be in if I'm going to make a mark. When I'm picking which battle to read next, I generally don't even consider the unofficial ones.
Except the Grand Bachelorette, because that's fucking hilarious.
As for metaplots, they do seem intrinsic to the battle format and I don't want to see them done away with entirely. That said, it's extremely intimidating for me to know that there are plots that could affect any battle I'm in that could come from any other battle ever. In order not to get left behind when someone else addresses those plots, that means I essentially have to read every other battle in their entirety. That's a daunting task. You guys write a lot. So, metaplots being restricted to a per-battle thing would be good. Maybe a per-season thing, at most. I don't mind the idea that we're working towards an all-stars round, either; it would just be nice to see that actually happen once.
tl;dr: 6 contestants sounds good, I would like to keep the official canon seasons, keeping people from starting a flood of new battles sounds like a good idea, keep metaplots in a small enough container that reading all relevant material isn't a chore.
Even as someone who's not in an "official" battle but would like to be, I feel like opening up the field for people to start more battles at-will might cause more problems than it solves. People already have a hard enough time posting in the ones that exist currently. Being in a battle that you can't do anything in because nobody else posts is not productive. To me, that's more frustrating and less fun than not being in one in the first place.
I don't feel like there's a shadowy cabal from whom battlers need to seek approval, I feel like there's a pathway to earning enough respect in the battling community to be able to do something like host a battle someday. I, as a newcomer, feel like the presence of that pathway is important to the feeling that these "official" battles mean something, and I don't think that's really a bad thing. Also, the official battles are the ones the community was sort of built around. They're the ones I want to be in if I'm going to make a mark. When I'm picking which battle to read next, I generally don't even consider the unofficial ones.
Except the Grand Bachelorette, because that's fucking hilarious.
As for metaplots, they do seem intrinsic to the battle format and I don't want to see them done away with entirely. That said, it's extremely intimidating for me to know that there are plots that could affect any battle I'm in that could come from any other battle ever. In order not to get left behind when someone else addresses those plots, that means I essentially have to read every other battle in their entirety. That's a daunting task. You guys write a lot. So, metaplots being restricted to a per-battle thing would be good. Maybe a per-season thing, at most. I don't mind the idea that we're working towards an all-stars round, either; it would just be nice to see that actually happen once.
tl;dr: 6 contestants sounds good, I would like to keep the official canon seasons, keeping people from starting a flood of new battles sounds like a good idea, keep metaplots in a small enough container that reading all relevant material isn't a chore.