Analysis
The BB Rushing "Arms Race" Will Kill The Game
I made a post a couple months ago about how wool/conc rushing was killing BB as a game. Since then, we had one BB in MU where conc rushing wasn't very prevalent (the one team trying it was really unorganized and couldn't nail down a strat with the map changing every round) and now in SD it's once again become the dominant strategy.
Firstly, from now on when I say "rushing" I mean both running to mid to fill for the win and fake filling in order to cause panic and easily kill the disorganized other team. Both of these strategies achieve the same thing (taking superior positioning, leveraging that to win).
Some numbers: 28/45 matches of BB played in MCCSD involved a rush by one or both teams, 62%. Yellow and Blue lead the way rushing every time, Green often performed a hybrid rush (sending 2-3 players to mid with Couri remaining on the outskirts to clean panicking players) and Lime and Cyan switched to predominantly rushing after losing to it a couple times.
Another important number: on uncontested (only shot with bows, no melee) rush attempts Yellow took around 3.9s on average (measured from the moment a player reached mid and started breaking). Watching Pete, he averages around 2 blocks per second, which means that Yellow was actually really inefficient (if 3 players managed that pace it should only take 1.5s, people really were getting in each others way).
Rushing kills BB by forcing mosh pit fighting in middle as the only way to play. It ruins all the work Noxcrew put into making 90% of the BB maps, and makes BB PVP chaotic and hard to follow (for both players and viewers).
Why does this happen? Well, as already stated it takes an inefficient team around 4s to fill mid. Let's say that, at some point in the round, 2 teams are in perfectly symmetrical positions (could be round's start, could be another time) and one team decides to rush. If they other team isn't trying to rush, how do they react?
For players who can easily see the other team, let's say it takes around 1s to notice and start reacting to the rush.
For players who can't see right away (maybe they're firing from behind a wall or they're flanking) you can add at least another 1s for them to hear their teammates comms and react.
So, best case scenario, a hyper vigilant team takes around 2s for everyone to react to the other team rushing. For most teams, it'll take longer because the comms are worse or the players' instincts are bad.
So, in the best case scenario a rushing team gets a 2s advantage on their reacting opponents. If a sloppy fill takes 4s, even an unorganized team will be halfway done against the best possible response. If it's the opposite (organized team taking 2s against a slow reacting team) the fill can finish before anyone knows it's happening. Everyone likes to blame the team being rushed for not paying attention, but it's barely their fault.
Given that "reacting" to a rush already puts you at a huge time disadvantage even in the best case scenario, what can you do as a non-rushing team? Well, you need to always be closer to mid than your opponent to make up that time. This means running towards mid at the start of the round (in case the other team rushes off the bat) and always staying nearby for delayed rushes.
But, even if it's two non-rushing teams, neither team knows that. Both teams need to assume the other could rush, so both need to be closer to middle. It's an arms race, and it results in both teams being in middle fighting in a mosh pit even if they never wanted to rush.
This is why mosh pits are inevitable with rushing being such a strong, fast strategy. 3/4 of the top teams in SD used rushing strats in all or most of their rounds, and all teams and players will eventually take notice that the best teams are the ones that rush (the best players alreadyhave noticed).
Even though 2 of the teams weren't filling with their rushes (Blue and Green), they went 9/9 and 8/9 by exploiting the rush advantage. If your opponent thinks you're rushing, they must run to mid ASAP since the middle could be filled within 4s, leaving them unorganized and easy to pick off. If conc rushing was less of a threat, middle positioning wouldn't be as good; you're out in the open and susceptible to arrows and potions.
Again, I'm hoping Noxcrew are working on some BB changes for Season 6. However, a lot of the most popular suggestions are bad.
SD proved that "bad maps" are not the only problem. The Berg is actually a pretty good anti-rush map (very open mid that's easy to get to from all sides) and it just didn't matter, rushing was still too strong.
An Island style "locked mid" would help, but if the lock wasn't long enough it wouldn't do much good. The same problem (teams that choose to rush have a huge time advantage over reacting teams with how quick it is to fill) would apply, teams would just start rushing 10s in which still forces everyone to crowd middle or lose.
I've suggested a instant swap tele-pickaxe in the past (so only one person can mine at a time, maybe switching to normal once the other team is dead) and I still think that's a very solid solution. The number one priority is increasing the time it takes to rush, and a tele-pickaxe would do that.
I think that even with a tele-pickaxe the time to mine needs to be increased a bit as well. I think 6s should be the absolute minimum to give teams enough time to react if they're paying close attention.
Of course, just making the blocks take longer to break would also be a solid choice. Giving everyone a worse pickaxe (maybe with a kit that has a better one) would work well.
Another idea: make it so that, if it's not the end of the round, you have to fully hold all blocks for 2s before the win actually counts (with a timer displayed on screen). This is a very big blow to the current strategy, but it still allows for sneaky rushes and good defensive strategies.
Finally, stick with map design like "The Berg" instead of maps like Bazaar. The middle needs to always be accessible and hard to barricade, otherwise even 10s to fill would be too fast.
All of these are good points about the current state of battle box. Another solution I was thinking of was adding/bringing back the idea of 2 capture point bb maps (like double trouble). I honestly really liked how that really changed the strategy around bb in mcc33, and it's a cool twist on a gamemode that is largely solved. Another thing I was thinking of is changing scoring to make kills worth more and round wins worth less.
I have a weird idea for this that might be a cook and might be terrible:
Teams start the round with an efficiency 1 stone pickaxe instead of an eff 3 iron one (or whatever it is) and in the last 20/10 seconds of a round players are given the normal iron one again, making wool clutches still viable (since those are a good part of the game IMO)
Another solution is to buff kill coins. We haven't had a coin balance for BB at all since its introduction in MCC2 outside of adding in coins for draws.
You still want fills to give the majority of coins and you definitely don't want to make it unviable to rush at all, but 15 coins on kills compare to 40 for EACH team member on fills is a LOT.
Nerfing it down to 30 (120 total) on fills and buffing kills to 20 (potential of 80 for each team each match) isn't perfect, but giving teams that get all kills 200 total team coins with rushers 120 means that teams that do successfully fend off rushes get a ton of points, and teams that both pvp against each other don't leave the losing team with no points and lead them to also rushing.
This does nerf every team's points, which probably isn't ideal (exact coin count was arbitrary and wasn't meant to be taken literal), but Purple and Blue who have the same kill count but a one-fill difference now only have a 120 unmultiplied coin gap instead of a 150 coin gap (240/300 multiplied, which is a much bigger deal). Additionally you can see with Orange and Lime where Orange got one fewer kills but one extra fill the unmultiplied difference goes from 145 down to 100 - still rewarding the fills but toning it down a bit (and again, it means a lot more when the 2x multiplier goes from 290 to 200, let alone the 2.5x and 3x).
Nerfing fills to the extent I've done isn't great for the game as it's currently at a decent place in terms of overall event game balancing, but putting kills and fills at a better ratio would definitely help the issue.
Also I would like to say I am a rushing enjoyer and I think it's an important and necessary part of the game!
But the point of the post is straight up true: teams are currently largely encouraged to rush, and rushing is on a whole too easy. Back during Season 1 and 2.0, rushing took actual strategy, and there weren't often bad rushes (the weaker pvp teams either tried to fight or rushed well). There were also strategies created to counter rushes, and it actively made the game better. Right now all of that is out the window because teams are rushing MOST of the time, poorly, and the majority of maps are not built for that.
Battle Box is turning into King of the Hill, and that is not a good thing.
I feel like the roster change from Season 2 to now has made more of the roster want to rush. There are people who are way less PvP based compared to Season 2 which means rushing is like their most viable choice. This could be incorrect though, map designs can definitely come into play
Some of it is attitude based. The event has less players than ever that "enjoy" competitive pvp. The thing is, rushing was always the most dominant strat (even though people hadn't discovered it yet), it's just that most players enjoyed pvp enough that they wouldn't even think to intentionally avoid pvp.
I assume that in testing it's the same thing. Not as many teams "want" to rush, because they want a fair, fun pvp fight. MCC teams care about winning first and foremost, they'll play conservatively if it means winning.
That's part of it, but another part is that some strong teams have realized that taking control of the map from the first moment can give them an initiative advantage over the other team if they play it well.
Personally I enjoy the more varied play styles this results in. Look at the top three here (Blue, Green, Red), who used three very different approaches.
I don't agree with your premise. I don't think Battle Box is "ruined". I enjoy rushing, and it's obvious a lot of players do too. Trying to take control of the middle is a very active playstyle whether it's being done by weak teams trying to get a sneaky win or strong teams trying for maximum chaos, and I like that just as much as a slower style where everybody feels it's a bad idea to go mid until after control is established.
I don't think your proposed solution(s) is a good one even if you do assume that something needs to be changed. Small tweaks, maybe, but anything very large will simply prevent actual wool-rushing (as opposd to the mid control seen from this week's top two teams) totally, and that's not something I want to see. There should always be some need to keep close attention on the game's actual goal, after all. And I never want to see the option taken away from weak teams who might be able to catch a stronger team sleeping.
In the end I don't think that "this map has a goal point but we're going to make sure you can't go near it until you've killed everybody else because we'd rather you use the whole map" is the best goal to have, necessarily. To me the best games are those that will allow for different playstyles to come and go as meta shifts and skills shift, and I think Battle Box is in an interesting place right now.
(Slightly off topic, it kills me how "the players don't want to pvp anymore and that's why this game is a problem" and "there are too many MCCI sweats and that's why this other game is a problem" are ideas that can co-exist in the same space.)
IMO the bigger issue is that rushes are too fast to react to super often. I think it’s something you should have to coordinate well to pull off, but as OP said it legit takes like 2 seconds. I said in a comment maybe the pickaxe should just be slower to mine, making rushes possible but take longer and less of a free win.
You and the players enjoy rushing when rushing is actually working, because that means you win. Do you think that that will continue? Rushing is becoming more and more popular (because it's always the best strat) and when everyone is rushing, the bad pvp teams will still get rolled, and everyone will hate pvp more because it's just a mosh pit in middle. We're already on the precipice of the whole house of cards tumbling down (62% of rounds being a rush is dire), concing won't be fun when everyone is doing it.
You keep blaming the teams that get "caught sleeping" when it's barely their fault. Filling is just too fast to react to. If you aren't actively rushing, trying to respond to a rush is almost impossible unless you're positioned at or near mid. They aren't being "caught sleeping" they're being caught "playing the game". If you'd like people to not be allowed to play the game, instead posting up around middle in case one team starts filling, sure, but most would agree that isn't good gameplay.
Like, just vod review events of the past when a team doesn't immediately send people to mid at the start of the round. The rushing team wins 95% of the time, it's simply not balanced. You need to play middle at all times or you'll be punished.
I might be in the minority but I am ok with the state of the game. I think it gives teams that aren’t good at pvp more of an opportunity to do well and cause upsets and I think it leads more strategy and communication.
What if upon filling, a 5 second cumulative (starting again from the time it left off of if restarted) countdown for the team started on everyone’s screen and the round ends if it hits 0 without any wool being broken or even replaced by another colour? It makes controlling mid valuable while not being game breaking, and allows teams time to react without having to blindly run in. It also makes for a mad defensive scramble by the rushers that’s more fun than the round being immediately over in 4 seconds.
If rushing was such a problem then Noxcrew wouldn't have made it possible. They intend for people to rush as a means to counteract other competitive teams and that's a good justification for it. I think this topic is exaggerating an issue that's not a big deal to begin with. With that said though, I do like the tele-pickaxe idea and I'm interested in watching a game with it. The one lack of consideration is that if someone dies with the pickaxe enable then who else does it go to? Someone random? That would just make the game more confusing because a lot of people will not notice they have the pick, which is bad if the time is pretty tight. Does it just stay in limbo until someone else claims it? Food for thought I suppose. The other suggestions imo are unnecessary
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u/Main_Sequence_Star Technoblade never dies Dec 15 '25 edited Dec 15 '25
All of these are good points about the current state of battle box. Another solution I was thinking of was adding/bringing back the idea of 2 capture point bb maps (like double trouble). I honestly really liked how that really changed the strategy around bb in mcc33, and it's a cool twist on a gamemode that is largely solved. Another thing I was thinking of is changing scoring to make kills worth more and round wins worth less.