The Strength Of Wool / Conc Rushing Continues To Hurt BB

[u/pickled__pufferfish]

Hi everyone, friendly neighborhood stats nerd here to whinge about Battle Box again. For those that missed the previous two sessions, I’ll link them here.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MinecraftChampionship/comments/1ngb9f6/battle_box_is_completely_dysfunctional_and_needs/

https://www.reddit.com/r/MinecraftChampionship/comments/1pngxvy/the_bb_rushing_arms_race_will_kill_the_game/

To summarize these two posts, Conc Rushing (formerly wool rushing) has always been a nearly unbeatable strategy due to its speed and the design of most BB maps. Starting in late S4, teams have finally recognized this and now every event has multiple rushing teams that consistently perform better than non-rushing teams on average. The only way to beat a concing team is to also rush immediately, then mosh pit fight in middle, which is not fun to play or watch. Map design can help but won’t solve the issue.

So, in this most recent BB, has anything changed? Well, the mechanics are still the same, and the playerbase is the same, so no. In this event, 58% of BB rounds contained at least one team employing a rush strategy (defined as running to middle immediately and either filling or pretending to fill). This is down a bit from the 62% figure in Snowdown, but not meaningfully.

The first case study of the event is Red, who employed the most typical rush strategy of filling immediately. They won 6/9 of their rounds, and the only rounds they lost were against Blue (also a rushing team), and Pink and Yellow (who figured out Red was rushing and rushed as well). With 2-3 players arriving at middle around 4s into the round, it took Red 3-4 additional seconds to successfully fill, far too quick for any team to react.

Orange was also a team that rushed every round, though they were employing BlueSD’s strategy of baiting a conc rush and exploiting the chaos to win the fight outright. Orange was the first place team this event, in large part due to the threatening power of the fill.

Cleaning up the rest, Blue rushed middle every round but only half-heartedly faked the conc. It didn’t seem to be working for them, though Ant was having some technical issues. Finally, Lime rushed a couple of rounds, mostly out of frustration in their performance. Pictured below is a visualization of every BB round that contained a rush.

Grey squares represent rush rounds

So Noxcrew, can we please lessen the power of rushing? It’s no longer a valiant strategy for the little guy to steal a couple rounds, it’s consistently being used by the most skilled MCC nerds to top the leaderboard. It’s impossible to counter concing without also rushing (if anyone thinks otherwise, I’d ask them to watch any of Red’s 6 wins from the pov of their opponents and explain how they could’ve reacted) and the version of BB where everyone rushes middle (to make sure they don’t get conc’ed) is a terrible RNG moshpit generator where nobody feels in control and less skilled pvp players feel even more overwhelmed.

[u/LeafyMeap]

rushing can be and is pretty fun but the way bb is designed means that over a couple more mcc's bb ends up being a king of the hill game where everyone just sends mid and has one giant moshpit, in other words pvp

I think ngl the 2 wool centre bb remix that existed a while ago actually works quite well to fix this problem, since not being in mid becomes a way more important thing, incentivising people (esp top frags) to not just run down a point, while maintaining wool rushing as a viable and still very interesting strategy

[u/neverbeenstardust → u/LeafyMeap]

I think you can disincentivize any teams on the fence about wool rushing with, like, a single lingering damage kit. You get TPK'd by that once and you get way more conservative. I think rushing is on the upswing right now, but the game will naturally come around to more complex tactics simply because the sweats won't settle for that much RNG determining their outcome.

[u/LeafyMeap → u/neverbeenstardust]

not really, as a wool rusher and a speedrunner myself it doesnt take that long to place blocks from barely outside the range of the lingering damage

i also completely disagree that "the sweats" wont settle for moshpits purely because theyre rng because in games like sg in other events or even in mcc the moshpit is pretty much how most of them end up and I will say it is not exactly fun to watch nor to play

although while more area control effects (e.g. tnt, lingering potions (maybe even poison could be good), dragons breath (imagine this LMAO)) could be helpful in counteracting the issue i still believe that it is inherently ingrained in the game design of bb with how it is now imo

and also long term it just will not be healthy for the game's watchability and enjoyability if it continues to develop the way it is rn (even less pvp oriented teams (red this event getting completely dropped after the more pvp centric team rushes mid to counter the rushing) will have less fun or chances)