I may be in the minority on this, but I found Basket Brawl to be rather enjoyable (I know, it’s uncool not to complain about everything. Don’t worry, I’ll point out some negatives). There’s a great core to it (obviously, a lot like Keg Brawl), albeit the final product is pretty sloppily done.
If this were a smooth, polished mode, I might ditch the whole PvP season grind and just play basket brawl instead.
Now perhaps I am unfairly advantaged by my familiarity with basketball, but I found the game very easy to pick up and understand, and I was able to get into the flow of it quickly. Heck, running a pick with my asura so my teammate could break to the basket and throw it down was an instant highlight.
It’s in a rough state, and while this may just be a “test,” you’ve got a fickle, prickly test pool that needs BETA in huge letters for them to accept flaws. It needs polish. Make it shine, and it’s a good addition.
1. As everyone has said: Mark the person with the ball. Put an icon over the character, like the Fixation purple blot. Make the ball stand out, too.
2. Fix shooting mechanics. Sometimes I shoot, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I jump and shoot, sometimes I jump and come back down, which is a violation. Shot accuracy seems randomized. Make it a factor of distance/defense/how long you hold the button down (longer = more accurate, greater risk of being defended).
3. Fix passing mechanics. Passing to the nearest person isn’t always ideal. Maybe it’s too much work, but you could make a targeting reticle for bounce passes, where the ball would go to the teammate nearest the target. Pass and shoot animations could use a touch up, too.
4. Fix ball spawning. If nobody picks up the ball after a basket, a new ball will appear at center court. This is good, except the original ball doesn’t despawn. We’ve had 2 (and I think at one point 3) different contests going on at once.
5. Fix colors. In every game, both teams’ team windows were blue. We were blue and scored for red; the other team was blue and scored for blue. Also, everyone’s uniform was green.
6. Add effects. Basketball is a noisy game. Maybe we’re not dribbling and we’re not wearing sneakers, but the ball is still hitting the backboard, hitting the rim, bouncing away after a missed shot, people being elbowed and knock down. How about calling for the ball with the /wave animation/sound? Where’s the crowd? Also, someone doing a Marv Albert impersonation needs to shout things like “He’s on fire!” and “The nail in the coffin!”
7. Let us play as a team. This goes for all sorts of seasonal and other one-off kind of activities. You punish SoloQ PvP, but disallow teams in a mode with even less consequence?
8. Add rewards/achievements if you gotta, I guess, but more importantly, tell people right now that it will happen. They need their shinies.
9. In fact, maybe scrap this Guild Wars 2 thing altogether and focus on Guild Brawls 2: Tyrian Jam. Think about it: different professions have modified abilities; you can wear different jerseys for different attributes; you could have real leaderboards. The tournaments. The prestige. It could work!
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