2016 Post-Mortem

[Luna Eva]

Been following along quietly. Only hitch I may see or have noticed when tournaments or event duels tend to run on the same night as regular duel nights there is a sizeable conversion of duelists to spectators happening. Nothing wrong with that. Awesome to see people come watch duels, but when a lot of the people spectating are also the duelist normally dueling in regulation duels, it sort of bleeds regulation duels dry on those nights into the special duels going on. Not sure if this is a helpful notation or not, though if there's a lot of team play, more bleed off to root and cheer and not duel during your team mates duel may happen too, whether separate rooms are used or the same room is used.

This is definitely a thing. It's something that has been brought up before, and your comment is another helpful reminder. There are some nights where an event or challenge kills regulation and sometimes that's unavoidable.

When it comes to the cyclical tournaments, it's not always possible or fair to hold the event on the night dedicated to that sport, since those nights are mid-week. So necessarily, sometimes big events like the Talon are held on a Saturday or Sunday so more people can potentially attend, even though it will split regulation that night.

As for the bigger events like IFL---we've discussed in this thread at least one possible way to keep regulation going by combining the locations. And both Madness and Hydra are fought in regulation, so at least the crowd isn't split.

Sometimes there are other reasons why a large crowd does not want to participate in regulation---maybe they just want to cheer the challenge/tourney/whatever fight or maybe they're a little burnt out from their own recent high pressure tourney duel. Whatever the reason, that's a thing that happens, and I'm not sure it's in our control. The best we can do is try not to split the crowd wherever possible.

[Vanion Shadowcast]

I'm a bit of a ghost here, for a number of reasons. Ultimately, I'd boil down the ROH community's challenges into three major areas:

- Both as a game, and as a roleplaying medium, ROH/RDI is antiquated. That's not a bad thing, in and of itself -- I love the format -- but it makes it difficult to attract players who could just as easily play online tabletop on Roll20 and get their roleplaying fix, play more advanced MUDs with more coded support than our chat room, play MMORPGs. We're still using an interface and design that isn't attractive to most potential players, and fixing that in a smart and compelling way would require a large amount of work.

- Leadership. It's a lot of work, it's no money, and a small playerbase causes low leadership energy to sometimes be self-perpetuating. Absolutely -- anyone can run events. But nobody can make top-down changes to make the game more attractive, more marketable, and nobody can do more to officially promote the community's overall branding than the leadership. The Leadership is also best poised to generate events and make rules changes that will promote activity and roleplay and the overall interactions that make the community special and unique (and able to hook new players by providing them something they can't get elsewhere). This is an area we've struggled in for a long time -- sometimes because of burn out, sometimes because of people being ill suited for these positions. There are people, like myself, who need good leadership to feel confident in spending the immense amount of time ROH demands to get the full benefit from it and its blend of game/writing forum/roleplaying campaign world.

- Player-to-player conflict. This has always been our great struggle to remain inclusive and not push away players. ROH can be a very cliquey place, and I'm as much at fault for playing a part to that in the past as anyone else. But online bullying, plots to undermine other players, and an often corrosive OOC environment has maybe cost us as many sustaining players as burn out over time.

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None of this is meant to put anyone on blast -- I'm just providing my view point for whatever it's worth. I think that events, when well run, have shown to bolster ROH's numbers in the past. I also think that events, when poorly run, have proven to force players away in the long-term.

Now, as I'm older and my time is more valuable, I'm most interested in investing my time into the areas of ROH that I believe will be the most well-executed, the most fun, the most compelling (which, for me, includes team-based collaboration and heavy storyline initiatives). For years, DoS was the most compelling sport to me because of the storylines, the interesting challenge-oriented conflict and collaboration, the politics -- all despite the game mechanics of DoS having lost much of their challenge and appeal over the years. That's not the case anymore. Titles no longer seem like they hold much weight (for the most part), Barons are often very inactive, challenges don't generate interesting conflict or storylines as much. The value of the central "end game" for Duel of Swords has been greatly reduced.

That said, I'm very likely to compete in IFL this year, very likely to compete in Duel Madness this year, and very likely to run a Duel of Guns event this year.

[Claire Gallows]

That said, I'm very likely to compete in IFL this year, very likely to compete in Duel Madness this year, and very likely to run a Duel of Guns event this year.

/fangirls

This makes me happy to hear.

[Hope]

That said, I'm very likely to compete in IFL this year, very likely to compete in Duel Madness this year, and very likely to run a Duel of Guns event this year.

[XanthVanBokkelen]

Duel of Guns 3: Fistful of Chaff Ammo or For A Few Rats More

[Munchem]

I would come back for Duel of Guns.

[JewellRavenlock]

I know I mentioned that I wanted to do something like InterGender wars or something this summer. Unfortunately, my real life has been slowly imploding and I may be moving this summer, so I just can't imagine that I can or will make that work.

I'd love to support someone or help make something happen, but I don't think it'd be responsible to spearhead something at this time.

[Andrea Anderson]

Responding with the promised numbers for:

Last year, I could be counted among those who wondered whether IFL was negatively effecting regulation long after it was over. But the period I'm most interested in seeing the effects of IFL's absence is the period we're in right now---after the holidays and into Madness, which is the post-IFL period I was most concerned about last year. Since that's still on-going, I'm comfortable holding my judgment until the next few months are through.

These are the post-IFL numbers spanning the day after the Powerhouse Party to the day before Madness. I've noted the dates, length of time each year, and the percentage increase/decrease.

Jan 23 - Mar 12, 2015 (49 days)

DoS - 41 Duels
DoF - 148 Duels
DoM - 37 Duels
TOTAL - 226 Duels

Jan 21 - Mar 16, 2016 (56 days)

DoS - 77 Duels
DoF - 52 Duels
DoM - 30 Duels
TOTAL - 159 Duels (30% decrease from 2015)

Jan 20 - Mar 15, 2017 (56 days)
Note: Since there was no IFL I used the same timespan as the previous post-season.

DoS - 16
DoF - 49
DoM - 16
TOTAL - 81 Duels (49% decrease from 2016)

[Kalamere]

Interestingly, at least to me and since we're talking IFL which obviously has a DoF focus, the 2016 to 2017 drop in duel counts was much smaller in DoF than it was for DoS or DoM. While DoS dropped almost 80% (!) and DoM about 47%, DoF only went down about 6%. The MUCH larger drop for DoF was the year before, 2015 into 2016, where if fell a massive 61%.

[Harris]

Suffice it to say there are clearly a number of reasons for the sharp decline in regulation this year, but it doesn't appear that IFL's absence had a positive influence.