2016

[Strazio Rockwell]

So first of all I have to say for this being my first DA I'm very happy with how it turned out. It was crazy fun and the anticipation of each F2F and EE had me on the edge of my seat. Every fight was well thought out and was very fun to read so from a flavor standpoint this competition was the tits more or less. There were a few things mechanically that didn't feel write, but they were few and far between. So I'm just going to dump out some of my thoughts here for now in hopes that it'll spur some dialogue and thinking amongst the community.

Alliances

So this was a big one that people talked about a lot. Between the supergroups like MESH and NBC and Ambrosia or even the smaller clusters of friendos like the marines and the RnR Connection it felt like almost everyone was in an alliance at some point. And who can really blame anyone? OOC we're all great friends and cohorts and IC it just makes sense that a pack would survive better than a loner. Hell even though I ran solo for 90 percent of the event I was still coordinating on others in Skype to avoid unsavory F2Fs. The only real detterent to allying is the threat of the banishment serum, which was used but out of 40+ combatants the odds of you even seeing the player with the serum is low. So perhaps some more banckstabby items would remedy the situation as a whole? Maybe things that aren't as destructive as the serum but still a major drawback. That way we don't feel so bad OOC for backstabbing and it also makes us more nervous about alliances because the odds of someone having a a backstab item is greatly increased. Maybe even have special backstab PM events like "do you want to strangle this bastard in his/her sleep?"

The furby event did a good job of splitting people up, but with skype communication it wasn't as effective as it should've been. A no skype rule would be impossible to enforce and rather I suggest more mini-events like that. Perhaps a group gets seperated during a F2F at night? Maybe they stumble upon a random obstacle designed to split people up (like a trap door that whisks one person away to another part of the island or hell even a hidden teleporter)

A hard set in stone rule stopping alliances from getting too large would work, but it also feels like it would be kind of hammed up in terms of IC justification. Maybe if we had some kind of doubles event? Like you get randomly assigned a partner and you can't ally with anyone else but them. Perhaps even going so far as to having the collar injure you if your ally is killed, which would force even IC enemies to try and work together.

The Map

Overall I think the map was solid, it had diverse locations that provided plenty of RP fodder. Some things I would like to see are more randomly placed hazards and neat things. Maybe a telescope on top of one of the buildings in the town, letting you see surrounding squares? Or even like a teleporter that lets you take a trip to another square on the island. This could add more random dynamics to the game and even potentially help people that got screwed over in the beginning with shitty weapons or going against rough opponents. Overall the map was solid, but I think it could've been more than RP fodder and a grid.

Weapons

All the weapons were really cool and interesting. The only gripe I have with them is that a lot of them seem one-dimesional. The pokeball and some of the utility items felt really cool, but most of the items fell simply into a tier list of power. Maybe having some more niche items or items that are completely worthless expept in certain situations? This is definently the smallest suggestion I have, because after all the contest isn't about the weapons its about roleplaying.




At any rate its like twelve here and I'm getting tired so I'll edit this later in the week with more suggestions.