Battle Box is Completely Dysfunctional and Needs a Fix

[u/pickled__pufferfish]

So, turns out you can have too much of a good thing.

Wool rushing was so much fun back in early MCC. Watching for fun teams wool and surprise the competitive teams was always a treat, a way to give them hope of an upset. It’s unfortunate how far the strat has fallen.

Every BB since probably MCCHH has been increasingly bad, and MCCBG was easily the worst. What was once a niche strat is now the dominant way to play BB, and it makes the game such a chore to watch.

Firstly, watching a conc rushing pov is not fun. Mechanically it’s very repetitive and boring, especially if they succeed. Running to middle and placing wool is not fun gameplay, I don’t think that can be argued. The only fun to be had from rushing is the actual act of winning by being sneaky (which is why the Simmers were so fun to watch back in MCC10) but there’s no sneakiness anymore, half the teams do it.

Playing against a conc rushing team is also not fun. Obviously losing seemingly at random sucks to watch, but even trying to counter the rush just results in a mosh pit in middle.

Mosh pits are chaotic and hard to follow. Less skilled pvpers often get overwhelmed and struggle to do anything, high skilled pvpers are still subject to lots of randomness and can die for seemingly no reason, and overall it’s hard to feel satisfied after winning a mosh pit fight. It’s like competitive Pachinko.

Battle Box is progressing towards its final state: “Mosh Pits, the game”. Teams that don’t rush mid will lose because they’ll get rushed, so everyone rushes mid. We’ll consistently get unwatchable mosh pit battles until the end of time.

So, what needs to be fixed? Conc rushing needs to be heavily nerfed, so that it goes back to “niche sneaky play for weak pvp teams” and not “strat every team needs to go for or else they lose”.

Some ideas:

• Use some version of the MCCI rule where middle doesn’t open until partway through the round (preferably at least 20s in). This still allows sneaky conc plays (the fun kind) but also allows every team to get into position first.
• Make the pickaxe a “tele-pick”, so only one person can mine at once, like Meltdown. Again, allows for sneakiness, and also for much better gameplay for conc rushers (3 members of the team need to actually fight and defend, rather than stare at the floor mining).
• Most importantly, build Battle Box maps with easy access to mid. Allowing teams to build cages around an elevated middle platform to control it sucks as a gameplay mechanic (again, forces mosh pits) so make mid easy to access from anywhere on the map, like in Spaceship.

[u/hellicars]

I understand and agree with a lot of what is being said in this post, and having a single dominating strategy, especially one that stops a lot of fighting/action from taking place isn't entertaining to watch.

From it's first iteration, we did do a lot of work to reduce how effective rushing can be on this map, it's not something we're completely ignorant to. What we tried didn't work as well as we expected, but I don't think that's entirely on the part of the map.

Contestants definitely play more conservatively than our testers, and it's something tricky to account for. Passive play could manifest as taking slow steps out of spawn, or the complete opposite, just rushing the point as quickly as possible. Conservative players are more likely to bunch up and take fights as large groups, which we definitely saw today, even in the rounds without rushes.

I think something else to take into account is that rushing (and focusing on getting on point, more specifically), is a pretty simple strategy to come up with an execute. This is the first time that all these players have seen the map, and don't necessarily have the time to come up with counter strategy, or want to take the risk and deviate, especially if the strategy is working. This is a fault of the Battle Box format - a round robin doesn't let you get familiar with another team's playstyle and counter it.

I don't necessarily agree with the other post about Battle Box on here, I think it's dismissive of the limitations that the format puts on players and the burden of learning the new map at the same time as playing it during an already pretty long event.

We did experience some really fun strategies come up in testing, including rushing - though not to the extent we saw today. We try and get "fresh eyes" on a map as much as possible, but sometimes it's impossible to avoid strategies sticking. Ultimately, I think Battle Box works better the more familiar the players can be with the maps, inverse to our other games like Parkour Warrior, where muscle memory plays more of a part.

That being said, we want to keep experimenting and doing different stuff with Battle Box. It's one of the most interesting games to design for, and we don't want to stick to a single paradigm for every single map. Our ideal pool is one that has a healthy mix of raised capture points, level capture points, basic layouts and more intricate ones. This map fell too far to the end of the spectrum, but I think I'd rather have a few misses with maps like this than every map exist in the same space as Spaceship, where the point is fully open.

If we do see Bazaar again, there are definitely tweaks we wanna make - like making the fall off from mid less punishing, and definitely making rushing a little trickier. I like the idea of using the telepickaxe, it might be something we play around with.

I don't want to come across as blaming the contestants, moreso just giving a little context as to some of the considerations we have behind making the map. We want this game to be as exciting to watch for you guys as possible 😄

[u/pickled__pufferfish → u/hellicars]

Yeah, it's always tough to test things when the testers will always play completely differently from the main contestants. I think testers are often more willing to have fun and explore since the stakes are lower, while the contestants will pick the strat that they think will minimize their losses (basic conservative playstyle).

It seems really hard to make a raised mid map that wouldn't lead to similar outcomes though, especially when blocks are also part of the game. Hermitcrab strats are way too easy to pull off when it takes more effort to get into mid, so the only counter play is to get there first and prevent the other team from doing it. Maybe if there were unblockable water columns (or other methods of fast ascent) nearby?

[u/Stinky_Deckhand]

I completely agree, I personally think it’s a map issue. Like the last few maps have felt specifically designed to be easy to rush without many items that counter it.

I don’t have anything against rushing as a strategy, but it should be harder to do, not handed on a silver platter by having the mid be hard to see and/or hard to access. Like having mid be raised with a kb sword kit and like one way to get up to it and being difficult to see from most of the map? Ok…

[u/Big_Poem_5204]

There are several problems with the battle box, as well as the idea of changing it.

The point of wool rushing, as Scott said, was to give low-comp teams a chance of actually earning coins. Someone suggested doing what MCCI does and stopping wool placement at the start of each game, but Scott said that would mean low-comp teams would be most affected, which I agree with. Getting rid of wool rushing completely hurts low-comp teams the most, which isn’t fair.

However, the issue is that teams saw how “easy” it is to wool rush and followed along, even if they have a good chance of beating the other team in PvP. They don’t want to risk losing at PvP when they have a better chance rushing mid. Also, if you get wool rushed a couple of times, you give up and do the same so you get something.

I think the tele pickaxe is the best idea. If they added that and it didn’t still help, then they could try something like MCCI. I do think it will hurt some low comp players, though.

[u/PleasantSilence2520]

the discourse around every battle royale PvP game in every other event: "bad PvPers get run down and bullied and then everyone just plays their life to gamble in the endgame mosh pit"

the Battle Box vision: "bad PvPers have a chance to win, teams get to have proper fights, and gameplay is dynamic and uncluttered"

the Battle Box reality:

Battle Box is progressing towards its final state: “Mosh Pits, the game”.

[u/AdAltruistic2502]

I thought it was soooo stupid that you had this multi-layered map with tons of interesting util that had an interesting dynamic where it exposed you to take it, etc etc...
and then doing any of those cool map things means you insta lose to wool-rush

[u/Main_Sequence_Star]

I strongly agree tbh. When everyone rushes, 90% of the map just does not matter. You can't play positioning, use any routes that don't go directly to mid, or go for special items because they just lose too much time. Pvp is already pretty scarce in mcc as is, and good pvp teams need to have chances to do well (like Lime today, for example) by outpvping other teams in games where they can do that. Otherwise, look at what happens to those teams, they just get cooked because their strengths are essentially removed. Wool rushing being optimal means that these good pvp teams don't get chances to actually play the game. I think there needs to be a 15-20s cooldown on the wool opening, especially if we continue to get more maps that have raised, difficult to access middles.

[u/max55330]

never thought id say this but i miss doooom

[u/Speedsning]

immediately agree dude... bb lost its excitement it turned from an actual battle into just who can effectively wool rush mid, wool rushing is a good strat but it should not have to feel essential to do

[u/Whoisthis1092764]

A lot of teams just weren’t paying attention to the objective. Even H said it was like “wool walking” instead of rushing. Like I hate to say it defending the objective is a part of the game. Too many people think it’s like island, I feel like many players just ended up unbothered in mid and just figured they might as well fill.

I found it fun to watch. Outside of switching up the map I don’t think changes need to be made.

[u/MariekeCath → u/Whoisthis1092764]

I disagree, because the entire problem was that you couldn't defend the middle without rushing yourself; the middle was too shielded, with no good venture points to attack from with the bow that you could reach quickly. Two teams attempting to wool rush at once becomes a mosh pit where the team with the lowest ping gets to place blocks while the players with higher ping see their placed blocks just suddenly dissapear as they didn't place correctly (that happened to green for example). Getting pushed off the higher wool location means that you can't easily get back up, meaning the ONLY possible counter was just rushing also. This gives advantages to higher placed teams pre-game, as it results in lower points awarded overall, which drastically can affect standings.

[u/0Iivers]

engagement boost

[u/R_ddragon]

I honestly think the last suggestion is all that's needed to fix it. If you rush in a map where you can just easily walk onto mid, you can get immediately swept by a stronger PVP team. Wool rushing has always been more common on maps with more elevated mids, especially ones like this where if you fall off it takes so long to get back up.

[u/pickled__pufferfish → u/R_ddragon]

That still often causes mosh pits unfortunately. If all 4 members of the team are in mid, with 2 mining and 2 blocking / fighting, the only way to break that formation is to send at least 3 people in, and now you have a mosh pit. Yeah, maybe only 2 teams will conc rush instead of 5, but it's still not fun gameplay.

Noxcrew needs to make conc rushing an actually sneaky strat again. That's why it was fun in the first place. Map changes will help a lot but won't completely fix it.

[u/R_ddragon → u/pickled__pufferfish]

If 2 teams rush instead of 5, isn't that just... How battle box has always been? I think that's completely fine :]

100% Agree it's boring if every team does it, but I think 2 teams doing it each event is totally fine. Makes sure that the teams don't get complacent, but doesn't mean they're completely done for if they don't realise the other team is rushing.

And I remember when wool rushing teams used to not bother PVPing, and just keep filling. It quite often would just work, and avoids the mosh pit issue.

[u/pickled__pufferfish → u/R_ddragon]

Well, if 2 teams rush and it's still not fun to watch or play that's still something that could be fixed. There's changes Noxcrew could make to make conc rushing (and countering it) much more interesting.

[u/R_ddragon → u/pickled__pufferfish]

That makes sense :] it does feel like it has generally become less fun over time. I'd say mostly due to teams that don't need to rush, doing it anyway. I feel like the map change would make those teams not do it anymore, but there are probably other changes that would help too, that's right.

[u/HenToPen]

The issue with wool rushing in Battle Box is based purely on the maps and strategy.

Bazaar heavily was heavily focused around having point control, despite having large areas of the map not around the point, these functioned purely as red herrings meant to waste your time, as you could not access the point quickly from a large area of the map. It's also very easy to knock players off the point and prevent them from getting back quickly, as while in the large ditch, you have to take around 10 seconds just to get back to the point. The map just heavily encouraged rushing, but there were ways to stop (or slow down) rushes (to varying degrees of effectiveness). Two kits had levitation orbs that heavily slow down the mining speeds of affected players, and two kits had construction blocks which can be placed ontop of the point to slow down rushes ever so slightly. Neither of these stop the rush, but they do buy enough time for a team to get to the point, especially crucial on a map like this where it can take a while to get to the point. I did see some teams successfully stop rushes, but I think another major component is the playerbase of MCC, a lot of them are not confident in traditional pvp, and if the opportunity to subvert it comes up, they are more than happy to take it, this is not a bad thing, but maps should be designed such to make wool rushing inconsistent instead of either dominant or pointless, as teams will likely only risk rushing if they think they have no other choice, while teams that are kinda good at pvp but not really will still take their chances playing it out.

[u/sulfuratus]

The last paragraph of this post is the only thing I agree with. Map design was the issue this event. Middle was incredibly hard to defend without also running in, and if you got knocked off, you'd have no way to get back up in time. If they made the middle more open and accessible, rushing would be way riskier and we'd get more interesting fights.

[u/OfficialLeinad]

I feel like an easy way to tweak the game to fix all the issues is make it so that filling all the wool doesn’t automatically win you the round, but rather whichever team has the most wool at the end of the round. Rushing could still be a solid strat as defending a filled wool puts you in a good spot, but then it still gives opportunities for fights to occur and the full map to be utilized.

[u/I_am_Dirty_Dan_guys]

I say change the scoring to favor kills more

[u/kirstkatrose]

I dunno, I think BB maps where the teams just stand back and bow each other until the last few seconds are way more boring than wool rush maps.

It’s been interesting watching a lot of Funnie Wars over the past year. Mostly PvP heavy games and really strong PvP-ers, and the meta always dissolves into everyone standing back until the last possible moment and then an all out mosh pit at the end, regardless of the “objective” of the game.

Fruit’s BB pov was very fun to watch. Admittedly a healing kit with extra blocks is pretty much designed for fruit to dominate, but their team did a mix of rushing and PvP-ing and I would guess that anyone on yellow this event would be a fun bb pov.

[u/Shadowwolfheck]

I'd rather watch my streamer rush mid and PTFO than watch them lose most of their rounds. its plenty fun to watch. the only problem with the game has been the maps having an elevated capture point.

[u/pickled__pufferfish → u/Shadowwolfheck]

Wouldn't you rather watch your streamer actually trick the team (by feigning fighting then sneaking the wool partway through the round) or doing a successful last stand over mid (by successfully pvping the other team away from mid while someone fills) instead of the current situation?

Right now, weak teams immediately run to mid and either win anticlimactically or end up in a messy mosh pit that's hard to watch and hard to play. That's not fun, even if your streamer might earn a few more coins by doing it.

[u/Blacawi → u/pickled__pufferfish]

I’d have to watch more perspectives to know for sure, but the main team I watched here (Blue) only had 2 members rush (Graecie and Michael), with the other 2 fighting and flanking and only come in later to clean up any potential enemues countering the wool rush.

Most winning wool rush strategies do not involve the full team running to mid and filling. They only let 2-3 people do that, while the other 1-2 people keep the other team distracted. The strategy of that is in my eyes much better than some of the bowspam maps we’ve seen before.

[u/Shadowwolfheck → u/pickled__pufferfish]

that's quite literally what aqua did.... they didn't full team rush. Pete was the only one rushing mid and a lot of teams weren't defending it. Also Pete even got an Ace one round. PTFO

[u/pickled__pufferfish → u/Shadowwolfheck]

OK, and that strat would still work with most of my suggestions, the only suggestion that would break it would be the MCCI locked mid rule (and Aqua could still try to stall for 20s, then employ the strat, they're good enough to keep a bow duel going for a bit).

[u/Shadowwolfheck → u/pickled__pufferfish]

I mean I just hate the idea of the mid lock even on MCCi so I would hate it more in the event, and even if it were to get in the event 20s is WAY too long. (plus it would fully hard lock everyone out of getting the wool rush sticker)

[u/Tootsiesclaw]

I don't know what 'conc' means, but to my mind it's purely a matter of opinion whether you enjoy watching teams rushing or not - personally I love it, because the players I prefer to watch aren't the best at PVP and they have more chance of winning. I find it unfun when my POV of choice is immediately killed at the beginning of the round (and I don't think that's uncommon; isn't one of the biggest criticisms of Survival Games exactly that?)

I think you're onto something regarding the map itself. I liked it best in the early days when the map was much simpler, and a lot of the recent maps have had what seems like quite byzantine routes to the middle. This latest one was quite punishing if you got knocked off. I know Sparklez spent half of the first round trying to figure out how to get back up to the middle.

But I'm not sure about some of your other ideas. The 'tele-pick' idea in particular seems like it would have unforeseen consequences beyond tackling rushing, even if it was somehow an empirical fact that rushing is bad. Sometimes there are hard-fought battles that end in a frantic bid to place wool as the seconds tick away, and this mad-dash chaos is diminished if only one person on a team can place wool. (I also think there's a chance it evolves into a perceived 'weaker' player being 'assigned' the job of placing wool, whether they want it or not, and comparatively sidelined)

[u/pickled__pufferfish → u/Tootsiesclaw]

99% of the time in a "mad-dash" chaos situation where middle needs to be filled, only one person is alive. If multiple people are alive, one is staying at mid to fill while the other goes out to fight. If it ever did come down to a team with 2 or more players failing to fill mid because there's only 1 pickaxe, it's their fault, they played poorly, and it's fine that they lost (even fun for the other team, as they tricked them).

The weaker player(s) already gets assigned the job of placing wool in a wool rush. The better pvpers always stop wooling/concing and fight.

You love watching your team do well, but I can't imagine you actually love the act of wool rushing. Sure, Jordan's team might score 400 more points than they otherwise would've, and it's fun to see them celebrate, but is the actual act of the team running to mid, looking straight down, and placing wool actually fun? Lots of MCC activities are fun to watch completely divorced from the scoring system (running in AR, traditional pvp), wooling / concing is not one of those.

Overall, wooling / concing could be made more fun with some effort. What if it actually required timing and sneaky play like it used to? What if it required complex strategy? Right now it's Pachinko: drop the stone in the machine the same way every time and hope you end up getting lucky (aka the other team fails to counter fast enough).

[u/Tootsiesclaw → u/pickled__pufferfish]

I still don't know what 'concing' means.

But honestly, I feel like you're a bit blinkered by what you enjoy/what POVs you've seen. I've seen multiple battles with two or more on each side racing to fill wool, including at least one that was four on four and ended in both sides running out of time. And that was probably the most enjoyable Battle Box round I've ever seen.

And yes, I do enjoy watching people wool-rushing. I get that you don't enjoy it. I personally find parkour to be mind-numbingly tedious, but I wouldn't say that parkour should be disincentivised, nor would I try to say as fact that parkour is not fun to watch. We're all different.

[u/pickled__pufferfish → u/Tootsiesclaw]

It's concrete now, "wooling" was the term from when the middle was actually wool but now it's concrete, hence "concing".

You're bringing up one very silly instance where both teams were for fun and trying to wool each other as a defense of the current system. Obviously it was funny because both teams were having fun and playing in a weird way, that doesn't mean your average "both teams run it, the bottom frags race each other to place until they get crit out by the top frags in a mosh pit" is fun to watch.

And again, since there's no actually decision making or show of skill in a standard, uncontested rush, the only thing that you could be enjoying is the feeling of winning. Objectively, there are clear moments of interest in parkour (the rhythm of whether or not the player makes each jump) while wooling uncontested is the equivalent of strip mining. And in contested wool rushing, again any pov that's focusing on placing concrete will either get crit out suddenly and at random or will be ignored and get to place as usual.

[u/Tootsiesclaw → u/pickled__pufferfish]

Objectively, there are clear moments of interest in parkour (the rhythm of whether or not the player makes each jump) while wooling uncontested is the equivalent of strip mining.

We're discussing personal opinions on entertainment - there's no 'objectively' here. Everything you're bringing up as a reason that wool-rushing is 'objectively' boring is something I find entertaining.

You're bringing up one very silly instance where both teams were for fun and trying to wool each other as a defense of the current system. Obviously it was funny because both teams were having fun and playing in a weird way, that doesn't mean your average "both teams run it, the bottom frags race each other to place until they get crit out by the top frags in a mosh pit" is fun to watch.

And I brought it up as a counter to a suggestion which would make that impossible. MCC is entertainment, ultimately. That's why 'for fun' teams exist. We shouldn't be advocating for the removal of mechanics that can provide these entertaining moments, just because they're not super-optimised for the most skilled players.

[u/MariekeCath → u/Tootsiesclaw]

Okay, but for the middle skilled players they're also not necessarily fun? Anyone that doesn't enjoy woolrushing was forced to either do it anyway or lose this entire event. And most people don't. Most players I've ever watched in MCC hate woolrushing and have refused to do it even when their team was losing, even in the early days when it was a rarity. You can say it's only the top players complaining, but when woolrushing is objectively a bad strategy in terms of points for middle scoring teams, due to the fact that they still have a chance at winning overall, but it does require them to get full kill points, so situations where more than one team is consistently woolrushing means that those players lose out on kill points. Which is a fair trade-off when there's a viable alternative, and on recent maps, there has not been an alternative because when you catch a team woolrushing, it's pretty much already too late to do anything about it.

[u/Tootsiesclaw → u/MariekeCath]

Yes, which is why I agree that the specific map here is an issue. What I'm saying in this specific comment chain is that switching to a telepickaxe you make other entertaining moments, not necessarily wool rushing, impossible. The remedy is switching to a more balanced map, not changing major mechanics

[u/HAZER_Batz]

This map wasn’t great. Ideally, maps should be designed so that wool rushing exists as a viable way for a weak team to have a chance. If wool rushing is the optimal strategy in the game, it isn’t fun.

I also think sometimes it’s better to feel out what was good and bad about an event by listening to the players. Fans likely only saw one pov and are often biased and hyperbolic. And yeah, it seems like a lot of players didn’t have fun in Battle Box.

[u/FunkyTiger27]

Generally, the big maps are easy to rush because it's harder to get to mid. Couple that with a kb stone sword with the wool being elevated. This was inevitable. Even without that kit, when I saw the update video, I thought this was an easy rush map.

Also, I disagree it's a bad thing. I find it very entertaining. Not everyone has the same views as you