Just a few heads-up for anyone interested on how good this event is.
The organisation is almost perfect, started on time, teams got balanced very quickly, nothing to say about that. Event also wasn't interrupted mid-way by a change map like its often the case and I believe it helps the event being run as smoothly as possible.
However, there were a few drawbacks which prevented us from really enjoying the event.
- The lag made the event honestly unplayable in melee. We were bewteen 60-70 people on the server, I doubt we even reached 100 and I've been playing event with 200 people and crap server which lagged less than that. I know its not something which you can necesseraly fix on the spot, that's why I didn't really complain much at time, yet that's probably one of the biggest reason we won't come back next week, unless we can have a safe guarantee it won't happen again.
- The map wasn't necesseraly what I would call a 'good' map. Wasn't really bad either but its typicall of the 'no mans land' in the middle, and two big hills in each side of the map. While I would agree LBs are not all about melee but also shooting and manoeuvres, I don't think there is any tactical aspect in running on the biggest hill and sitting on it because its about 'taking advantages of the map'. I'd rather prefer a random step, forest, desert, or snow map with trees, a river or two and small to medium hills in the middle which make the decision you're taking really interesting and game-changing. Also a medium size map (I believe we were playing on a huge one) is way enough for a 2v2 LBs, helps getting tense and quicker engagements instead of wasting everyone's time. Hopefully people didn't really abuse camping and strong positioning too much, which I'm glad of. Going on your server and trying to find a decent map a bit before-hand (10-15min is enough even if you're unlucky with your map finding) usually helps on that.
- Finally, and that's probably the less important point of all, but still worth being noticed ; while I believe the teams were correctly balanced, to my eyes, one of the most interesting point of 2v2 LBS is teamplay bewteen both lines. The Nr5 Line 2 and our line litteraly spent the whole event running from eachothers, barely communicating and when we tried, infos given were most of the time half-correct or wrong. I understand that, would you have put the 85e and 17e in the same team, the Nr5 would have been clearly outclassed in term of raw skill yet that's precisely where communication and internal whispers can help you taking the upper hand on better lines. Just my two cents.
I don't want to be taken for a sore loser because our team lost 5-1, that's just an event, no big deal, but when I lose, I atleast like to have the impression both lines tried their best to play together, otherwise, I'd rather play a 1v1 instead. The negative points I've highlighted are nearly all very easy to fix and I only raised them in order to help your event improving, because that's definetly the kind of events the 85e enjoy playing.
Would you try fixing it, that we'd happily come back and play it on a regular basis. I also suggest anyone to try the event themselves instead of taking my words for true and get an opinion of the event by themselves. Thanks for having us last night Dan, hope it will take no time before we come back, sincerely.