The BB Community, EVO, Netplay, and the FGC.

[currentlemon]

Sigh...I'm one of those broke college students. I really like playing Blazblue. Calamity Trigger was my first fighting game that I wanted to play competitively. That same game also wanted me to get better and play other fighters competitively. I want to help you guys out, but I'm not sure what I can do. For one, I'm completely broke. I have no job and no money. In fact, I'm saving as much money as I can to buy Extend. Secondly, I can't go to tourneys or do anything else major right now. I have to take a big entrance exam so I can get in a university's education program, so fighting games aren't in my mind. And third, the new semester started, and I want to concentrate on school.

I've entered in one tournament at EXPcon in Jacksonville, Florida. I had fun on my first day there, but when the tournament started the next day, some family "issues" came up in a bad way that caused me to be emotionally "unstable" sort of way. Entered the tournament pissed of that I got upset and angry and took it out on my opponents. Not a good way to start for me. I had money to enter in another big tournament, but choose not to go due to that incident and several personal reasons.

Though that doesn't mean I don't want the community to grow. I want to help as much as I can. I usually plan ahead a week (sometimes two weeks ahead) and I'm usually free on weekends. When Extend comes out I plan on making beginner rooms and teach the basics of Blazblue to the new players. I'm planning to become a teacher so it will help me a little with my speaking and teaching skills. Hopefully, it will get new players get interested to take their play to the next level. I suggest everyone should do it.

[TwilightInZero]

I want to do something to help, too. I'm in Northern Kentucky, which is a 30-40 minute drive away from Arcade Legacy, and thus, a 30-40 minute drive from PowerUp in April. I already visit Arcade Legacy whenever something's going on and I have the time and money. I like to think I get along with them well, even though the scene is primarily Capcom games; one of my closest friends in that scene placed 3rd in Marvel at a small tournament that took place just this weekend. I already planned on going to PowerUp, long before all this willpower sparked up, as an opportunity to witness and be a part of the hype for an EVO qualifier. And now that I know BBCSE will be there as a side event, I'm going to support it to the best of my ability.

But I'm not posting just to say "hay me too", I'm also wondering if there's anything more I can do, like perhaps organizing smaller, more local tournaments? Would that even help? I'm a student at Northern Kentucky University, and we have a really nice game room. I hang out there all the time, and there's a small group of people I play BlazBlue with almost every day that I'm on campus. We recently held a free entry tournament with university-specific prizes, and eight people entered, including myself. Due to our usual TO getting sick that day, I ran the tournament too, and it went smoothly. Me and the group that I usually play with have been talking about a paid tournament for a while, and they want me to run it. Of course, the reason to make it paid would be so that non-NKU students would be able to enter, thus opening up the rest of the Cincinnati area. Would that help, or should I instead focus efforts on getting my friends and I to PowerUp?

[zeech]

Hi, I'm primarily a KOF fan. KOF12 being awful made me give BBCT a try, and I was surprised and pleased by its overall quality (I'm not a competitive player so the problems in that game didnt concern me.)

Through BBCT's netcode, I met members of my local scene and got a little bit more involved. So it's the first time I've ever been even vaguely competitive in FGs despite playing since KOF94 and SF2:WW back in the arcades. (I'm kinda old.) Now that KOF13 is out, I'm probably switching to that game, but I'm still interested in the health of BB.

I have some questions and comments. I'd say my reaction is pretty typical of casual players, so it may or may not be relevant or useful.

- Netplay tournaments and events.

BB is probably the closest an officially-released FG can get to being playable online. (until SG comes out with GGPO I guess.)

But the FGC isnt really used to online. How do Starcraft 2, DoTA, Counterstrike, etc, run successful events online? People who are wanting to run online events might want to investigate what those people do, what equipment they use, how they set up their tournaments etc. These are genres and games that have successful competitive scenes despite players being in entirely different continents. How do they do it?

- Getting casual/new players into the community.

I know everyone here compares BB to GG so it's considered an "easy" game. But the truth is, BB is really complicated. The barrier to entry (competitively) is very high.

If you look at match videos of KOF13, the game mostly revolves around poking, long combos are pretty rare. SF4 is more combo-based and has nasty stuff like tight links, but at the very least, when you learn a combo, you can probably use it in most iterations of the game. Also you can probably get by with knowing 3 or 4 short combos in either game, and feel like you can compete at a beginner/intermediate level.

But BB? Going to DL and trying to do stuff on the combo threads, is incredibly discouraging when you see this massive wall of text, and even if you pick out one or two to try, the combos listed are pretty difficult to even remember, let alone perform. Remember, in other games the longest thing you have to remember is normal > special > ultra or something simple like that.

In the past, some of the character sections here on Dustloop made a pretty structured effort to have newcomer-friendly guides. You'd have combos listed by difficulty, so "Beginner Combos", "Intermediate" etc for the character, which made things much less daunting. They also taught you the building blocks along the way, so you can see how the beginner combos are extended into intermediate ones etc.

This gets us to the other problem with BB - every sequel changes the gameplay for many characters quite significantly. Nothing you remembered works anymore. You have to memorise a whole new list of things, unlearn your old reflexes. Sure, hardcore players might enjoy going through the discovery process again, but to people who are time/effort poor, its just far too much work. If we want to attract as many people as possible to BB, we need to help make this process as painless as possible. (I played Taokaka in CT, so maybe I am especially bitter over this.)

Sadly, the trend is the opposite. Every time a new BB comes out, all the old character guide threads get archived, and are replaced with new threads that are less complete, less well-done, less-beginner friendly. I call it "guide fatigue", I think people who write these guides are just getting sick of updating them or something. If we want to reverse the decline of this game, then the community resources really need to be "rebooted". I hope when BBCS:EX has been released on console for a while and people have had a chance to learn it, we can get excellent guides written that match the best from previous BB games, nicely structured to lead people from beginner to expert.

Another barrier to entry (apart from combos) is the gameplay itself. BB (and I assume GG) have a strong focus on momentum and oki and corner damage. In SF or KOF, even when playing a better opponent, the game is in neutral a lot so I have a chance to press buttons and feel like I'm playing the game. In BB, against better players I am stuck in the corner watching them combo me for tens of seconds. Then they do a mixup as I get up, or punish my tech, and suddenly I'm back to watching combo movie again. (I play Lambda in CS2, so maybe I am especially bitter over this.)

I'm not complaining about the game (even though it sounds like I am), but I notice there's not really a lot of advice or gameplay guides on how to deal with this situation. If you want to bring new players to the competitive scene, they will often face better players, and they will often be stuck in the corner watching themselves get comboed over and over. So any guides written will have to pay special attention to how the game works, how to get out of pressure, when and where to tech, etc. I get the feeling most here just assume it's common knowledge since we have GG veterans and so forth.

Anyways, here I am telling people what to do without helping in any way, so maybe it's not good. If BB was a western-developed game, I would be saying these things in the official forums, trying to get the developers to include proper and good tutorials into their game. But since it's not, the community has to take up the slack, so I guess I'm trying to express the needs and problems casual/new players face when trying to become competitive in BB. Remember, regardless of how awesome the atmosphere of an event is, meeting other players, etc, people won't continue to come if the act of playing the game competitively is frustrating and unfun for them.

Edited January 16, 2012 by zeech

[Star-Demon]

@Sanoshi: Great table!

We do need leaders, but I want to warn against using leaders as an excuse for every member in this community to not examine their attitudes. I said this in the new year's thread - we need to grow up a little, at least at all measures of center.

I'm certainly up for being a leader. I'm pretty good at organizing others and making them feel welcome and involved, and all that leadership stuff I've done in life so far. I've certainly the equipment to do things locally myself, even if I'm rather detached from my local scene (plays mahvel, hates BB, if they play GG they certainly don't want me around)

I'm going to be coming up with ways to bring in NEW people and casuals in my own area. I've been pretty supportive so far, and I'm liking the results I've gotten just for BlazBlue and Guilty Gear, so I'm all for stepping up because I like being involved in the community so far.

That being said, I have no patience for foolishness. I tend to prefer mature gamers, so I don't put up with bullshit. If anyone is in NYC or LI, might want to find me if other people or places are giving you a sour taste.

[CakeWasBannedd]

@Sanoshi: Great table!

We do need leaders, but I want to warn against using leaders as an excuse for every member in this community to not examine their attitudes. I said this in the new year's thread - we need to grow up a little, at least at all measures of center.

I'm certainly up for being a leader. I'm pretty good at organizing others and making them feel welcome and involved, and all that leadership stuff I've done in life so far. I've certainly the equipment to do things locally myself, even if I'm rather detached from my local scene (plays mahvel, hates BB, if they play GG they certainly don't want me around)

I'm going to be coming up with ways to bring in NEW people and casuals in my own area. I've been pretty supportive so far, and I'm liking the results I've gotten just for BlazBlue and Guilty Gear, so I'm all for stepping up because I like being involved in the community so far.

That being said, I have no patience for foolishness. I tend to prefer mature gamers, so I don't put up with bullshit. If anyone is in NYC or LI, might want to find me if other people or places are giving you a sour taste.

i'm sorry for this because i know this is a serious thread and it's not for arguing, but i feel it needs to be addressed:

you say the community in general needs to grow up, then act like you're more "mature" than the NYC and LI scenes? how about instead of alienating yourself and (potentially) other players, you try to talk to the people in those scenes and work out your differences?

the very last thing the fighting game community needs is more segregation. east coast vs west coast, bb vs gg, anime vs...non anime? it's all stupid. this hobby is too niche for people to segregate themselves like this any more, and you're not helping things at all.

[Lucien]

this hobby is too niche for people to segregate themselves like this any more, and you're not helping things at all.

I love you.

[killionaire]

I think I need to start respecting Cake more when he's in serious mode.

[Rhiya]

I think some of the problem is circular. You need to have people want to play with other people, but lots of netplayers probably don't even know what they're missing out on or why they should want it. I know I only got interested in finding people to play offline because I talked to people over IM who did, and were hype for it. It seems like it's common sense that playing with people next to you screaming hype would be more fun than playing with randoms on mics, but you never know.

People need to understand they're missing something before they can want it.

[Arcknight]

There are probably many people out there who have situations similar to mine. I live in western IL, bordering IA(seemingly a dead-zone), and the closest scene would be at least 3 hours away in Chicago. There are no gaming events at all in this area either. After trying to spark interest amongst my friends I am still left with nothing but netplay. Netplay or no play.

I would very much like to have some people to play games with offline, and to travel to big tournaments, but it just is not always feasible due to things people have mentioned previously. I do post quite a few replays up on my YouTube channel to hopefully get some random people interested in the game. I feel like I am the only BlazBlue/Arcana Heart player in my area(although that might not be true).

Also, a lot of these communities seem to be polarized in certain geographical areas(larger populations most likely) and not everyone has the luxury to be live in these places. Even still, we can't give up hope.

Edited January 17, 2012 by Arcknight

[St1ckBuG]

So, the next steps are to try and set up a netplay 'league' and find community leaders. Please don't PM me about this. I'll be contacting people I know from each region individually when I find the time (which will be next month most likely).

Sanoshi's post was damn good...

Even though most of what needed to be discussed has already been posted and the need for this thread is pretty much gone, I'd request that the mods leave it open so that in about a month I can post on the progress that's been made. Between now and then I'd still like for people to come up with ideas to grow our scene and post their ideas here (if they want to).

Just follow these general rules if you plan to post:

1). We don't plan on creating a major anytime in the near future. This requires a lot of time, money, and community involvement. It might be something to pursue in a couple years but as of right now forget about it.

2). Please don't post in here complaining about tournaments that don't exist.

3). Don't post in here bashing Aksys.

4). Don't come in here to argue. Constructive criticism only please. Yes, there is a difference.

Thanks to everyone who posted and wasn't a complete idiot about it. I appreciated all of your input.

[FunkyP]

Well if the feelings towards a netplay league is a pretty strong, then I'll have this to contribute. On Fridays I host local BB gatherings at GaTech, known for their godlike internet. Should we want to hold online tournaments I'd be more than happy to host and stream from there. Our local guys would also provide some solid participation.

Oh and yes, BlazBlue is pretty much guaranteed going to be streamed for a substantial amount for Final Round. Even though majors are tough for most of you to attend, it is the one major for the entire year you must attend for BlazBlue.

[Lucien]

There are probably many people out there who have situations similar to mine. I live in western IL, bordering IA(seemingly a dead-zone), and the closest scene would be at least 3 hours away in Chicago. There are no gaming events at all in this area either. After trying to spark interest amongst my friends I am still left with nothing but netplay. Netplay or no play.

I would very much like to have some people to play games with offline, and to travel to big tournaments, but it just is not always feasible due to things people have mentioned previously. I do post quite a few replays up on my YouTube channel to hopefully get some random people interested in the game. I feel like I am the only BlazBlue/Arcana Heart player in my area(although that might not be true).

Also, a lot of these communities seem to be polarized in certain geographical areas(larger populations most likely) and not everyone has the luxury to be live in these places. Even still, we can't give up hope.

I live in Chicago and play BB, I've found like 3 other people that have the same level of interest in BB around the IL area. We're currently trying to arrange offline sessions, hopefully you might be interested.

[Koopa_Klawz]

Every Wednesday, I go to the University of Toledo to play BB. But, it's been dead recently so if anyone is interested, you can PM me about it.

P.S. Sorry if this post doesn't belong here, but if we're talking about making more local BB scenes I might as well. :p

[zeth07]

So, the next steps are to try and set up a netplay 'league' and find community leaders.

Well if the feelings towards a netplay league is a pretty strong, then I'll have this to contribute. On Fridays I host local BB gatherings at GaTech, known for their godlike internet. Should we want to hold online tournaments I'd be more than happy to host and stream from there. Our local guys would also provide some solid participation.

If netplay is no longer looked at as the bane of the community's existence and a netplay league is something that people want to use to help build the community, I'm definitely going to recommend the danisen league format.

As someone who has used it and organized it a ton, I'll give my reasoning for why I think it would be a good choice if people actually want to support this kind of thing and why I chose to do it before:

-It gives a fairly accurate representation of where someone's skill level is compared to other players, relative to their character strength of course. Due to the way the system works of gaining a point for winning, losing a point for losing, and how the rankings work, you're forced into playing solid to increase your rank or to hold your rank at least or else risk being demoted. So if you're a strong player you'll rank up, but if you're weak you either won't rank up or maybe you'll keep going back and forth between ranks. The more you participate the more accurate it becomes.

-It allows for multiple skill levels to participate. It doesn't matter if you're a tournament level player or a beginner, once the rankings start to fall into place you are always playing people within your skill level. This is obviously skewed in the beginning til people rank up and if people are good with multiple characters, but in the long run it is pretty much true.

-It promotes consistent and solid play while also showing a players progress instead of just being about whoever "has the most wins" just by playing a lot or some random number that gets adjusted depending on who you win or lose against (PSR). This is part of the reason why I went away from the "Ranbat" tournaments, because mid-level players could just build up X amount of points over multiple tournaments without ever "winning" any tournaments or one person might just win 1 tournament and never play again. It just didn't feel right to me.

-It allows for multiple matches to be played by multiple players no matter who wins or loses. Again one of the other reasons I went away from Ranbat tournaments. If you're not that good of a player and you lose your first two matches, that's it, sucks to be you no more playing. While that doesn't matter to the "good" players, in the Danisen league format players can just keep playing no matter what (for the most part.)

The only thing that really holds this format back is if you don't get a good number of people to participate. This isn't really an issue for the most part outside of players possibly not being able to play their highest ranked character due to the other players needing to show up as well. But from when I did it for CS1 (not counting CS2), we had 57 players that were from EST and 45 players from CST,MST, and PST. I guess much like offline tournaments, it all depends on getting people to show up and who shows up.

And this was without any "support" from the Dustloop community itself outside of the netplay forums which meant not everyone even saw the threads to potentially sign-up since not everyone bothers to go into the Online Play section. Now who's to say if it doesn't get a front page entry or maybe an announcement at the top of the forums that it wouldn't get even more people to participate. An example of what I mean is at some point there was a Noel Only tournament I believe in the Noel forums, and a bunch of people signed up that I personally never even seen post in the Online Play section. So there could be more players willing to play, they just might not have bothered to look.

For what it's worth I planned on trying to start it up again once Extend released in the US, but after listening to people that said netplay was hurting the community more than helping I reconsidered for the time being since I didn't want to be part of the problem of holding the community back by organizing netplay stuff. But now if this is something people want to consider, then I'd be willing to help obviously and still try to do it. Or if other people want to do it that's fine as well. Whatever helps.

That's my suggestion if that is really something people want to consider. Tournaments or some other League format could work as well if that's what people want.

[mAc Chaos]

The real issue that comes up in every netplay tourney is connection problems between participants (how to handle those) and people not showing up. Also if it's held all at once or over a span of weeks.

[zeth07]

The real issue that comes up in every netplay tourney is connection problems between participants (how to handle those) and people not showing up. Also if it's held all at once or over a span of weeks.

In my experience:

For the most part connection problems aren't really a big issue. I originally had players separated by EST/CST, then eventually started organizing stuff for PST/MST as well so lag wasn't "terrible". Then because the West group almost always had less players than the East group, I added the CST players into the West group. Beyond that I made some exceptions based upon "Regions" like the "East South Central" players would probably go by CST but because they were more East than West I grouped those individual players in East. Now if you're talking about problems with connecting to the rooms, typically I tried to get the same people to host who I knew hosted before without issues. Because it is more region based, players are less likely to not be able to connect to each other. Beyond that since usually they were in groups of 4 players a room, I would just try to get someone else to host. If THAT didn't work then I would try to reorganize some people til it worked. For the most part it wasn't a huge issue.

As for people not showing up, that obviously happens all the time. Typically the East group almost always had enough players while the West were always cutting it close. Due to players needing to play within certain ranks, some players would be nice enough to use other characters. The other way to get around this would be to expand the range of ranks people can play in, although I tried to stick to just +/- 1 Rank anyway. The other good thing about the league, is for the most part you don't need a large number of people to still be able to get ranking matches in. Then it's just a matter of whether the organizer wants to stick around if they don't meet X number of players. To get around THAT, I thought about allowing players to organize their own League sessions as long as they had 4 or more people. Typically this would only happen if there was a "regular" there that knew how the rankings worked and could keep track.

As for the time, I always did my ranbat tournaments and danisen league battles in 1 night typically in the span of 2 hours. I strongly discourage trying to organize tournaments that are open-ended and letting players try to match-up with each other whenever they are available. I'm sure you've seen that this method usually does not work, but I won't get into that. As for frequency, I was doing it every week but I started to get burned out so I'd probably go with once every two weeks which also gives players more time to get better in between ranking battles. For actual times, I usually did either 6pm EST or 9pm EST for the East group, West group was always 3 hours after that to give myself a break in between but again I got burned out which is part of the reason I stopped doing the league. As for the length of the league season, I guess just through the whole year with a break during the winter holidays til new years, with obvious breaks for other holidays but you know what I mean. Of course it should always not interfere with offline events.

I will say that when I planned to start doing it again I was only going to do it for the East group, because I'm an east coast player myself and I didn't want to get burned out again. If people from other regions like west coast wanted to pick it up for them then of course they could. I wouldn't mind still keeping the rankings updated as long as the information was given to me.

Now if this actually gets a ton of support, I would recommend breaking it down into "Regions", instead of just going by the time zones like I did. But I guess we'll see what people decide to do.

EDIT: As for the obvious lag issue, by at least going by time zones that already helped part of the problem. Then if players from the same region were within the same ranking I would try to put them in a room together at least for the first hour (we would reorganize after the first hour so people can play different players / adjust rooms to the rankings.) Of course lag is always on a person to person basis and some people really do just have shitty connections or still play on wireless which I always discourage. Then it's more of a courtesy decision for them to leave or not.

Oh yea, another good thing about the league format and how I did it at least, is that if players need to leave in between the session it usually isn't as big of an issue as it would be for tournaments. Although again, I always discourage people from leaving early since it is a pain sometimes when people get mad and leave a room RIGHT AFTER I ORGANIZE THEM. But for the most part it's not that bad.

Edited January 18, 2012 by zeth07

[St1ckBuG]

Zeth, don't worry, I was going to contact you since you ran netplay danisen.

Not for a while though... probably sometime in February.

[Moy_X7]

As a regular player in the Danisen league, I support the idea of its return once Extend gets released in NA. From there it's all about trying to get those same netplayers that we're pairing up by region/timezone to play offline if possible. If you see a netplayer that lives in the same city, or even the same state, then get them to come to the local gatherings in your area. Even if it's just two people playing the game (which was the case at my locals) most of the time, if you get a single pair of people to play the game then you've done a good job. If there isn't a place where people normally gather, then set up your own place to gather (your dorm, your parent's house, your apartment, whatever.)

I got a "NOW I'M MOTIVATED" vibe from reading all this stuff. Once I fix my car I promise to do everything in my power to gather those potential BB players in a single place so it's not just me and that one Valkenhayn/Lambda (shoutouts to Kyle) player all the time.

[Lucien]

"NOW I'M MOTIVATED"

*Spiraling death swords*

[Fluck]

Just one thing I'd like everyone who read this topic to know. Generally speaking, this kind of motivation doesn't last for very long. After a few months, people lose their initial hype and then nothing gets done again. St1ckbug can't be making godlike posts every month in order to stoke enthusiasm, after all. Please, if you want to do things, make sure you're in it for the long run, because we will need a lot of time and effort in order to get anything sbustantial done for this game.

[Sophisticat]

^ I don't know about anyone else, but Montreal's been on it since... 2009?

Which is why everyone should experience Montreal. Definitely the best place on earth for everything ever.

[St1ckBuG]

Just one thing I'd like everyone who read this topic to know. Generally speaking, this kind of motivation doesn't last for very long. After a few months, people lose their initial hype and then nothing gets done again. St1ckbug can't be making godlike posts every month in order to stoke enthusiasm, after all. Please, if you want to do things, make sure you're in it for the long run, because we will need a lot of time and effort in order to get anything sbustantial done for this game.

As a follow-up to this, I will be making one large push over the next year and a half until EVO 2013. If there's still no change... I tried.

I (mainly) just want everyone who wants to be at some sort of competitive level on this game to try and travel to 1 major a year. If you already do that, great. If you don't, then start saving up your money and time off. It's not that hard and the people aren't scary. If you've never traveled alone before or driven that far because you're scared something might go wrong you should break out of your shell and try it. Stuff like that builds character.

On my way to SB4, in my '96 Honda Civic with almost 200,000 miles on it, I got a flat tire within the first 45 minutes of an 11 hour adventure. The jack in my car was missing a part so I couldn't change my tire. Alzarath (who had just rode the train down from NYC) was waiting for me at the station to be picked up. From there we were going to get LK in Philly and then head out. I was about to call the whole SB trip off but then I got lucky, and about 15 minutes later an NJDOT service car pulled up and put the donut on my car for free. All those tolls I've paid in the past went to good use, finally. You can't drive for long on a donut so I picked up Alz and then drove around randomly to find a place where I could buy a new tire. I hadn't started to work yet so the $75 to get a new tire put a huge dent in my bank account. After that I had to try and find my way back to a familiar highway and deal with the two hour delay that was given to me. From there it was a long drive with no power steering, no cruise control, and god forbid we hit stop and go traffic because my car was stick.

Another time I rented a car in Manhattan, stayed in Brooklyn overnight, got no sleep, and then drove to Ohio the next morning in the same old run down Civic. Coming back was just as bad: still no sleep and same crappy car stuffed with 4 other people. For anyone that has ever ridden in Old Red... you know how bad that could be and 10 hours of it just makes it worse.

So next time you're going to be within a 10 hour drive of a major and you have enough time to save 200 bucks to your name... just know that it can be done.

Support your local major.

That is all.

[kirbster]

The next few months are impossible for me to attend any major tournament, but once I get a stable income you can bet I'll start saving up for whatever the next big thing for BB is.

It's way too fun to meet all kinds of people who share the same passion as you, and discover all sorts of playstyles you might not be used to... it's definitely an experience every BB player (or any fighting game player in general) should live at least once. And when you do, you'll want to keep going out to more!

[superscience890]

I'm going to see if I can make it to Winter Brawl in February. Unfortunately the week right after Winter Brawl I have two tests so at least for me, I'm going to prepare ahead and (hopefully) study before that weekend so I don't have to cram for my tests.

I agree with kirbster, it's really fun to go out to tournaments to find and meet people who share similar interests as you even if they live really far away. Especially with Blazblue and other "anime" games, meeting other people who actually play the same game as you is awesome and let's you learn about the people in the community and who helps run it (shout outs to Team St1ckBug).

[Crosell]

To be honest the BB community is pretty awful. We kill all the hype for the game. Commentary, people never get excited because I can tell how 90% of the commentary goes for BB. Hell even NEC had the same shit go on. Oh this game sucks, this game is so stupid fills up 90% of the commentary. Look at marvel and street fighter, they get people engaged, thinking and most importantly they get excited. What do we do when something cool happens, oh that character is dumb. Dacid Bro was a welcome addition because he is the only commentator that doesn't do this. How are we suppose to grow as a community and attract potential people when our own commentary spends more time shitting on the game than talking about the intricacies of the match. Its the communities fault its not at Evo. Ever iteration of BB has been better than the last, the game is making great progress into a great game. Stop shitting on it, if you dont like the game get the fuck off the mic and let someone else do the talking.

Also /agree with main post.To give about myself. As a student, when I first got into the BB, I was getting my Registered Nursing license. I had no job just school which was very time consuming. I made it to all the monthlies I could and even made it out to evo for support BB. I've organized a few trips, helped run many a tournaments, and to be honest its very frustrating. And the one thing I've noticed time and time again is the community destroys itself. Start participating, get out of your shell and go places when you can. From my observation is that people want to travel but are too lazy to work logistics. Step up your game and be that leader.