descentchampions.org

Season 6 is in the books! Grats to Jediluke for taking his fifth title, and for Phyrex for his first runner-up.

I don't really have a long list of things I thought went wrong this season. We had fortunes reverse with melvin finally getting a home game against Jediluke. We had home levels changing fairly frequently throughout the season. We had 36-34. (!!) We didn't have a 6 1/2 hour finals tournament. We had a wildcard anarchy with enough primaries for everyone. I thought this season was pretty good!

For Season 7, I am going to be looking into updating Retro to include shield counts for observers. I know Drakona's been wanting to do it for ages, and unless she's like really close, it's just time to get it done. Be on the lookout for testing sessions on a Rangers Mumble channel near you this holiday season.

Also, I want to get feedback on the lengths of the finals tournament games. I am STRONGLY leaning towards making both the quarterfinals AND the semifinals to 15. 10 was just too short, and although I don't feel either quarterfinal was decided by the shorter length, I can't just look at "15-9" and "18-16" and be satisfied, especially when portions of both matches were back and forth at one point or another.

Season 7 will start in 3 weeks, Saturday, January 6th, at the normal start time of 5 PM Eastern.

15 sounds good

I am going to repeat my usual blah about also preferring how this season's wildcard game turned out: top two go through. Would like that to be a regular thing rather than a once-off because there happened to be a tie for 5th.
Also, 15 is probably OK... Wildcards games.

Looking forward to the shield thing, that will only help add to the tension and you'll be able to tell when a pilot is thinking "I can't take even one hit here" versus just "I'm low". And laugh when that fusion hit leaves someone with exactly zero shields but they survive anyway while their opponent is thinking "HUH?"

Agreed on games to 15 for quarters, 10 was nice and quick but something like a string of bad spawns has a huge impact in games that short.
If you can get the shield counts in that would be awesome, I feel like it will provide some much needed context to some decisions that might seems weird if you don't know shield levels. When I watch commentaries on matches I played there are often times when I'm like "well I didn't push into those l1 lasers because my shields were very low at the time".

Re: Sirius's suggestion, do you guys think we should have a minimum of 2 spots up for grabs in the Wildcard Anarchy? It certainly is doable.

Yes

I'd like to see levels in stock form only next season with a minimum of 3 different weapons in the level. Watching people get slaughtered in Xs in a game they don't understand isn't particularly interesting. 3 weapons minimum would prevent some fusion angling by someone like say Code (not saying he did that or planned to, but in theory).

This reduces the angling a bit, creating more compelling contests. I think as an audience, there is most interest in the games that are close and that the viewer understands.

how many ppl played with Xs?