*Will change the front message to this as well*
It is with great regret that myself and the rest of the admin team have decided to postpone the NWCBC indefinitely. The decision was taken about a month into the campaign, and I'll list all the reasons below, along with some good things. I don't believe the concept is dead, but I think the way we went about it was fundamentally flawed. None of this is throwing any blame out, it is things that we did foresee, but decided to put a bit of trust in.
The Good- The encouragement and engagement from the community was outstanding. I mean, seriously brilliant. In the end I think we had about 300-400 signups which is unprecedented.
- The number of people throwing themselves into helping with maps, with admining and helping to make the campaign was great.
- The battles were an insane amount of fun. From the few practice battles we did before the campaign started, to the bot battles in empty provinces, to being destroyed by Prussia, every battle was intense, immersive, and best of all - troll free. Not once did we have anyone fuck around, everyone who came was committed and it was brilliant.
- A lot of the concepts were right, but required a lot more admin work than we actually put in.
The Bad- After the initial swathe of signups, we waited to long to begin and people either forgot or lost touch. We initially set a distant start date to get as many signups as we could before starting, as well as deciding properly on rules, commanders etc, but people forgot about it and for the most part, we had no way of informing them other than the forum, which leads me to my next point.
- We had a steam group, but I feel like this wasn't advertised enough. We had 30 people sign up in the end to play as Italy, but in the end, our steam group announcements only managed to bring 4 of them online. As with regiments, joining the steam group should have been mandatory.
- The General system. I still think it's the best way to go, but we were unfortunate. While all the generals did (Up to a week late) get back to me with troop placements in the initial phase, only two countries (+ Rhine, which I was in charge of) actually gave me weekly orders as we had agreed. One country had two generals stand down without doing anything which led to a lot of awkward Steam conversations with their members, one declared an attack in the first week, but never actually got their people online to fight it.
- Events should have been scheduled for every week. The initial idea was to play it like the NWL and let the two countries decide when in the week they would play, but I'm not sure how much if any talking actually went on between the other generals. I had so many people saying "Do i have anything this week" and my reply was always "Speak to your general". I think all the battles should have been done at the same time if possible.
- There were too many countries. We shouldn't have accepted all the people who came in and wanted their own, as all it did was dilute the pool of players and make armies a lot smaller and harder to come by (Were I to do it again, I'd probably say...France(Incl Rhine, Italy, Spain), Britain (Incl Portugal?), Russia, Prussia and Austria.
There are other reasons too, but it's not important. What is important is that we're teaming up with
the North and South team to run an NaSCBC to celebrate the release of 1.0 when it comes out Soon(TM).
Each line features a musician, flag bearer and junior officers, and there will be unique units just for the CBC!
Please check the link below to register your interest and help us learn from our past mistakes!
https://www.fsegames.eu/forum/index.php?topic=24578.0
Poll
