Weekly Kickball Thread

[hp]

Illustration courtesy of daniel/xhiggy

 

 

Official Weekly Kickball (Indomitable server)

 

Days: Saturday and Wednesday

 

Time: 9pm EST

 

Location: Pocket D

 

Alpha Incarnate only and no TK

 

 

 

 

 

For those that are unclear on what exactly kickball is, it's a casual PvP arena experience where players of any skill level and ability are welcome, whether you've never PvPed before or maybe you're considered a seasoned PvPer. Based on how many people show up typically there will be 2 teams, 1 captain each and they select players one at a time for a 10 minute timed match where the team with the most kills at the end of the timer wins. If we have more than 16 people we'll either make more than 2 teams or have two separate events going at a time depending on the amount of people that show up. I would appreciate if the more veteran players ensure teams aren't heavily stacked in one teams favor and keep support players even on both sides.

 

This is a more casual PvP experience but communication is a important aspect to City of Heroes PvP, even if you don't have a mic I would still highly suggest downloading Discord and joining the official PvP discord here. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

[M3z]

If someone hasn't done a kickball before, this probably some of the most fun you can have in this game.

[nojiyo]

What are the rules on incarnates? Of course it's an honor system but we doing no incarns? t1s?

[Waypoint]

I would opt for T4 Alpha Incarnate only. Anything more than that gets annoying (read: Destiny / Barrier).

[hp]

All Incarnates are allowed this first run, depending on how people feel about it after this weekend we'll make changes if necessary. I know me personally I know how unenjoyable it is to play against full incarnates but there are some people that think it isn't an issue. We'll see what the consensus is after this weekend. 

[Smoke Signal]

Soon as I'm done leveling and kitting out more toons, Power Glove will be there to heal. Good to be home.

[Banana Man]

GGs! Sick turnout, multiple simultaneous 8v8s for most of the night. Praise Dan Petro.

[Corruption]

I'll have to get in on this once I'm leveled up. Just found out about this game being back, what a nice surprise.

[Void]

Special shout out to all the people that played support these last few days. Your timely buffs, clutch heals, and evasions skills did not go unnoticed.

[M3z]

GGs to everyone! Except if you killed me then you can go to hell  8)

[hp]

GG's everyone. Really solid turnout. Appreciate all those who came out and participated. See you all and hopefully some new faces this weekend for some more Kickball action.

[SirJeal]

Mmmm, I've been looking for some PvP. Currently only level 36 as a Demon/Pain MM, but I'll be joining possibly. I'm not rushing my leveling up though, so I'd probably put my team at a disadvantage currently until I gain some more levels. XD

[hp]

So we've had two weeks of kickballs and the turnout has been pretty good so far, I want to thank all of those who have come out, been patient and participated. I also just wanted to take the time to address a few things.

 

First, is after this upcoming weekend (June 1st and 2nd) we're going to be changing the days of kickball from Saturday and Sunday to Saturday and Wednesday. Start time on Saturday will be 7pm EST and Wednesday will be at 9pm EST. I felt like back to back days of 3-4 hours of kickball is little much.

 

Secondly, I'm going to be implementing some rules to give players that don't get selected more chances to play. We'll continue you with having people that didn't get picked in the first match to join the next match on the black team so we know who didn't get picked and those players will have to be selected before anybody else. Also it's going to be requested that if you're selected for two games in a row to sit out the next match.

 

Thirdly, in regards to support players or more specifically Healers (Emps, Pains), if you've been playing in these kickballs it's pretty apparent there is a lack of them. I made a comment I believe on the first weekend about this but I guess I need to address it again. If a team only has one healer, you should not be targetting them, that goes for spikes and debuffing (poisons, colds, TA's, etc.) this isn't going to be enforced because obviously I can't control what you do at the end of the day but I would appreciate it if you all could comply with that. The reason being we all know how the damage is in the current state of the game to where healers are forced to use their big heal to give players some chance of surviving spikes that give them self heal suppression where they can't heal themselves. Also being harassed while being the solo healer isn't an enjoyable experience and the few healers we do get to show up to kickball are at the point where they'd rather play something else. So unless we just want to do damage vs damage teams in Kickball with no healers I would probably not target solo healers if at all possible.

 

Thanks for reading and see you all this weekend.

[hp]

Quick update regarding Kickball. So we're going back to 9pm EST for Saturdays, the earlier start really wasn't working out at all.

 

Also from here on out Kickballs will be Alpha Incarnate only. Also am requesting no use of Telekinesis.

 

So from here on out Kickball will be Saturday and Wednesday 9pm EST, Alpha incarnates only and no TK is requested.

 

 

[xhiggy]

Hey all, typed up some info for new players interested in kickball. Might be a useful read If you've seen some videos/streams and would like to learn more or have showed up once or twice and had questions about the format.

 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-kJ0klKlgG3TrXNKGmVgbKEYRcHXUHTH2K5byrYYbvQ/edit?usp=sharing

[Glacier Peak]

9 hours ago, xhiggy said:

Hey all, typed up some info for new players interested in kickball. Might be a useful read If you've seen some videos/streams and would like to learn more or have showed up once or twice and had questions about the format.

 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-kJ0klKlgG3TrXNKGmVgbKEYRcHXUHTH2K5byrYYbvQ/edit?usp=sharing

Xhiggy, thank you for this. It looks like a lot of effort was put in to it, I appreciate it. It really shows how much you and other players are interested in making PvP more friendly to new folks. 

 

I really liked the links to all the streamers at the end - I had no idea there were that many. I also liked the details about emps (or pains) like what to expect, how to be an asset to your team, survivability, etc. All very useful information across the board in a convenient location. I think it should be stickied. 

[xhiggy]

Thanks Glacier, I'm glad you found it useful. Arena PvP's always had a bit of an accessibility issue coming from PvE and the current PvP system is pretty fast paced which makes it harder to get into.

 

Kickball is probably the best intro for someone interested in team arena PvP, but it's still pretty daunting for someone new.

[xhiggy]

Hey all, based on some discussion that’s been going on we’re gonna add a few restrictions to kickball matches:

• No Electrified Net Arrow on /TA blasters, remove if from your tray if needed. This is blasters only - no restrictions on web grenades, /TA corrs and controllers, or TA/ defenders.
• No IO mez procs. Just gonna put a blanket restriction on all of them as a bunch of them are doing broken durations; same thinking as the existing mez bans.
• When there are less than 4 emps in the pool team sizes are limited to 6.

I’ll try to remind people about these changes during kickball, but if you notice someone using a banned power just (politely) let them know about the rule change. As always discuss changes or things you’d like to see here  or on the PVP discord.
 

[Smoke Signal]

I haven't been able to play nearly as much as I'd like. But, I finally got my emp to 50 and I'm starting to slot it. I'll be there soon!

[Siphonic]

I just found out the game is back – currently working on getting my toons ready, but can't wait to join this. I still remember CoH kickballs fondly, and can't wait for it to be a regular thing again!

[xhiggy]

FYI for anyone that missed the last few weeks, we're doing an emp draft phase prior to black team draft now. More info and discussion in the #arena channel in discord.

[Neuronia]

Just got in my first of these since re-launch.
It was fun. Lab was a little crazy, lol, but it was good to see everyone again.

Looking forward to next Wednesday, for sure.
Thanks to everyone who showed up.
P.S. The "Black Team Rule" is nice to cycle through people.

P.P.S. The "Loserball" FFA with my grav/ta, a Dom and a Scrapper with webnades was peak awesome.

 

 

[xhiggy]

Good feedback and discussion in the discord yesterday. Reading through and talking I got the feel for a couple points that seem to be the general consensus so we’ll make changes to the KB rules based on these.

• Solo emping in 8v8 sucks for both the emp and and their team, and the solo emp rule doesn’t to do enough to make the matches more fun for either team 
• Matches actually with healers are more fun than those without, but there have been fewer people playing emps recently despite kb attendance still being high 
• Running a match with a 1-emp team vs a 2-emp team usually results in imbalanced games (doubly so with the solo emp rule)

 

So we’ll run with the following kickball format changes tonight (and probably moving forward):

• There’s no more "don’t target the solo emp rule"
• If there’s less than 4 healers limit match size 5v5. If there’s a large pool of people not picked they can run a ‘thunderdome’ at the same time,  no black team afterwards

 

Hopefully these should result in fun matches more often and incentivize people to switch/try out emping. Remember the mez changes are not on live yet so those rules are still in place. Some other points came up that might be worth further discussion here and on discord if you have thoughts, but no changes to kickball on for these yet.

• Allowing incan use on healers could partially address how high damage is right now as well as make it so they can be healed through 1 AP
• Only run the black team draft for part of kickball nights (e.g. only the first 2 hours on 1 night of kickball). This would keep KB inclusive for most of the night while also enabling some more competitive matches later on and be good incentive for people to looking improve their PvP.

Edited October 26, 2019 by xhiggy
'no black team after 5v5s' changed to only if there's enough sitting out where black team wouldn't work

[CoHSlothbear4]

The Lack of black Team Draft Seems Pretty Harsh There should be something done for these players in order to help them improve in order to keep this event inclusive and increase competitiveness it will be hard to improve at kickball without being able to play it. 

[M3z]

49 minutes ago, CoHSlothbear4 said:

The Lack of black Team Draft Seems Pretty Harsh There should be something done for these players in order to help them improve in order to keep this event inclusive and increase competitiveness it will be hard to improve at kickball without being able to play it. 

Make a thunderdome or start emping. These rules are there to incentivize bringing emps. There's been an alarming lack of emps lately.