I've noticed that fewer and fewer players are participating in the Training Lobby competition since we brought it back a few months ago.
What do you think is the cause for this decline, and what can we do to improve activity in gold heart games in Training?
deletedover 10 years
I don't have a specific problem with the system but it's simply a grown lack of interest. I stopped playing ranked quite a while ago and simply can't find a way back in. I like playing the comped setups in an unranked mode simply due to my drop in performance and time constraints.
Others blame it on imbalance but I believe it's more on players having less incentive to play or just seeing no improvement.
If the mechs were fixed and it was less townsided, it wouldn't be an issue. There are too many weird mechs to make it work in ranked play.
I want to encourage everyone to read strats to new setups or even make them so other people can learn them. The best way to learn is to read a setup and play them, even if you're unsure of what to do.
I played each on of the comped setups this round once and each has it's quirks to it. unfortunate all anyone wanted to play was gai becuase it was safe. A few guides onthe other setups would of helped alot i think.
also about the jailor vs gator setup It was a fantastic setup maf just needs something other than traitor so they have a second meeting maf because if spy died at anytime it became auto for town. that was the only real issue i saw with it
They also have very few plays. Anything with under 200 plays really shouldn't be viewed on the same level as something with a couple of thousand. Setups take time to balance out as strategies develop.
This round just had a lot of new and odd setups, unfortunately.
It's also about balance - if a player (generally) tries a setup a couple of times and finds the same alignment wins every time, they'll stop playing because the fear of flipping the alignment that 'always loses' isn't worth playing it.
Balanced setups. None of this 3/4 plays crap. None of this 66% town win crap.
I'd call a setup good if its 49/51 after 3K plays. And it doesn't solely depend on bomb CCs D1. If the GF is good they can carry the game all the way through.
I haven't read any comments, but I have to say, I did lol hard when I saw the majority of comped setups this round have between 1-4 plays each.
Can we comp setups with more plays? I've not taken a detailed look, but with 1-4 plays per comped setup, I doubt there are many/decent guides, and TRAINING players might be dissuaded from playing them.
Also, Jan 2.0 instead of 3.0, FJ2, VDLI, Cry n Oh/Spy etc. Tysm.
Lol no it isn't. It all depends on your day 1 lynch, which is simply not good for a 10 person game.
deletedover 10 years
Although I didn't read all of the comments, I can say this:
If I were to justify the lack of popularity in training comp, I'd use 3 points: 1) Uninteresting/bad comped setups. 2) Merging experienced players with completely new players, thus increasing the chance of pointless reports, and 3) The backlash good players get for trophying (i.e accusations of cheating). Those are all enough reasons not to bother participating in most training rounds; however if you ask me why I haven't participated in any competitive round it's because I can't give EM my full attention. I'd gladly like to find a way to fix the lack of activity though.
I understand that and I agree completely, however if it is obvious GT, as some of my games were (i.e. hammering uncc'd cop, or letting mafia say he is the BG even though there is a report that he double visited from uncc'd tracker) then it should be refunded imho, even if they are just given a warning and told don't do that again, the heart should be refunded.
As for the setups That is also true, however the list they can choose from sucks. If you bother to look through it the majority of those setups are extremely unbalanced and should be fixed and not allowed.
Comp is much stricter because Comp has a point requirement and people there are more serious. Training Lobby is lenient because there are a lot of new players in gold heart games and the idea is to prime players to move into Comp with it by giving them exposure to comp lobby setups.
As far as the setups, winners get freedom of choice, sometimes you end up with a round where the setups picked aren't exactly great, unfortunately.
Honestly I wanted to give up on my run this round because of the lack of game modding. I've had 6 or 7 games Thrown against me and only got one heart back because training lobby is too lenient.
Also, I feel like the list of comp setups needs to be fixed. Every setup picked this round was pretty terrible and not really balanced.
Yeah, Connor's remake of LOBL is very cool, but kinda daunting if you're unsure. Maybe we can get him to write up a strat for it just to help people out who aren't familiar. LOBL itself is a pretty challenging setup to master.
Problem is with that is that people can farm trophies in other lobbies, and trophies also impact how players play games. Ex. Hammering the player with a trophy in 3way because he would've been fearkilled, etc. It makes sense he removed it.
Do you guys think full strategy guides would help improve involvement in the round if there's thorough reading materials on how to play different setups?
True. I don't understand why Lucid made the trophies "invisible" when he enabled rounds in the other lobbies.
I guess there was a reason. But if you want people to get more involved with rounds, showing them there's people playing around who got a "crown" or a "gold" (or anything), will make people willing to run for it... re-enable visibility of trophies, imho.
I've seen that, Bronto, and I don't know why we don't get to see that anymore :(
I think it might give people some motivation if other people can see the accomplishments they made, like making the medals visible in game or something.
They used to put trophies next to all people who won trophies in Comp that'd display in game, but Lucid removed the feature when he enabled rounds in the other lobbies.
As far as not knowing how to play the setups, almost all the popular comp setups have pretty solid strategy guides written for them in the setup. The mentoring team has been working on making comprehensive guides for every single one, not sure what the progress is on that because I haven't had a chance to really work on it since becoming an admin.
In addition, the best way to learn a setup is to play it, read about it, and be willing to make mistakes. The first round I ever ran I had a terrible record, but I got a lot better at the game and understood the new setups a lot better.
Maybe that round winner can have a crown next to there avi in all their games while they are reigning champ too? I expect some one seeing that would want to know why and how they can get it. I know the only reason I started playing gold hearts was when I ran out of red hearts. I'm supprised giving tokens for winning rounds didn't have much affect tbh I liked that idea.but yeah in general just make the round more in your face to get ppl to want to progress on to it. I think gist is referencing the login screen putting stuff there does not really help IMO because ppl spend all of 5 seconds there while they log in. I think prominently displaying winners on. The lobby screen where ppl spend most of there time would have a better affect.
Ofc the other way to get more users is to promote the site more. I don't what lucid is already doing but I'm sure if lucid or a mod did ama post on reddit they would love it. This game is right up their street free and addictive. We could get the em community to upvote the thread as soon as its made to help make sure it gets more visibility too.
