...Leluaami, aka The Evil Kid. With three victories in the regular season and an unforgettable performance in the grand final, the young Finn reached the pinnacle of FFA. He's the third FML winner from Finland, following Rain and J33. Hopefully, for FFA and Back2Warcraft viewers, Lelu does not retire.
Thank you to all participants, to rulaZ and Ponty for all the admin work and to all the streamers (Neo, Ghost, ToD, Ponty, etc). All in all, this season went really well. I wish there'd been fewer subs, and in retrospect, we should have been more strict when it came to registrations and no-show disqualifications. It was the first time we took the TBR approach to FML scheduling. From an admin perspective, it was a full success, considering how much work and headache comes with scheduling threads usually. Matches were fun overall and especially the playoffs delivered.
I mentioned before, that I don't enjoy the Discord chat on most days. It's fine to use it as a stress relief valve from time to time, but having non-stop flaming or feuds is tiring. If you don't like other community members, block them, if FFA stresses you too much, take a walk outside or reconsider your mental approach to the game. Also, we saw multiple occasions in the last two months, where players approached admins with requests á la "you can't allow this player to sub", "you must implement this rule", blabla. Very often, decisions aren't as easy as they may seem to the outside. Sometimes, it's not black and white, but a grey area and repercussions must be thought through. Admins do their best and we ask everyone to respect and accept decisions.
Regardless of what I wrote above, this certainly won't be the last FML event I organize. I will go on a hiatus for some time though, to focus on real life duties. It seems that many community members need a bit of a break, but as we know, FFA always returns. RulaZ and Neo will continue their weeklies and hopefully the ladder will remain somewhat alive.
It's time for a regular FML Season, starting on August 24th and concluding in the last week of September. We will try to run it a bit differently this time, to avoid the scheduling mess. As this might be the last FML event for some time, we hope for many sign ups and exciting matches. If you want to participate, please submit the following form:
Season 34 will have four rounds and every player will play one match per round. Every round will last around one week.
The regular FML scoring (20+3/12/12/10) applies and the three players with most points qualify for the grand final. Players ranked 4-7 will play a semi-final for the last grand final slot.
Admins provide a Google form for each round in which all potential game slots are listed. Players submit the form with their availabilities. Admins will seat players on a "first come, first served" basis.
During the regular season, there will be matches with chat and without chat. Players will be assigned in accordance with their preferences, if possible.
Maps will be randomly assigned to each match. The map draw will happen once a week
We made it through five weeks of intense FFA and crowned the Harmless Simps as our Team Battle Royale 7 Champion. Congratulations to the winning team. Your glorious name will be immortalized in our Hall of Fame. Your path was smooth early on, but turned more and more rocky throughout July. After Ravenclaw tied points in match 33, we witnessed four tense tie breaker matches that you had to play with your captain sayso being absent. You kept calm and held together as a team.
Kudos also to Team Ravenclaw, which made an incredible comeback and almost sealed title number five. Thank you to all players and captains for making TBR 7 possible.
Conclusion
While not reflected by the participant count, TBR 7 felt more exciting than the previous TBRs. It might be, because FFA is more popular these days thanks to many streamers, an active W3C ladder and Back2Warcraft. But also the meta seems to have changed and we see a lower share of boring sit and chat fests. Eventually, and I repeat myself, it's up to the players to play FFA in a way that attracts viewers and new rookies. Having that said, the level of drama spiked too unfortunately. I admit that some feuds and emotions are interesting, but it shouldn't cross a line and overshadow the fun. The line can be difficult to draw at times, but some community members like to test it more than others.
Reflection
The three biggest points of criticism were:
1. Player Guessing / Revealing 2. Tie Breaker Format 3. Excessive Toxicity
The player guessing situation felt most annoying to me. No case was like another and they were all facilitated by rule book gaps and the general issue of visible pings on Flo. Uncertainty is a bit of a lose-lose-situation from an admin standpoint and we'll try to avoid it in the future.
The tie breaker format was not ideal, but I also accepted that there is no perfect two-team tie breaker in FFA. The preteam one in TBR 6 was great, but required many players to be available, which was not the case this time. In retrospect, we should have just gone for regular no-chat FFA without the race aspect that allowed teams to know who is who. This was an oversight on my side that shouldn't have happened. Prior to the tie breaker, RulaZ came up with a timer / micro arena / custom map format that I vetoed. I'm not a big fan of custom maps or "1v1 FFA" and was sceptical if we could come up with workable map files on short notice. I felt bad for not liking this idea and think we may want to give it a try in the future, if there is time to prepare and test maps prior.
The toxicity one leaves me a bit clueless. I do think that every few days there are insults in Discord that clearly cross a line. No admin has the capacity to constantly track 3-5k rows of chat per day. Most community members should be mature enough to know when enough is enough. Still, some players have polarizing play styles or character traits that make them a frequent target and in the end, everyone has a different opinion about acceptable insults. We activated the time out feature in our Discord and will make use of it to calm things down.
Outlook
Last year I thought TBR 6 might be my last event, as I expected not to have any spare time after becoming a father. Extending my parental time helped to run TBR 7. While TBR 7 was more exhausting and time consuming than TBR 6, I am willing to run one more FML season, before I have to get back to work. I hope we can feed off the current activity level. However, I do not have the motivation, nor time for endless discord discussions and to moderate each line of chat. If you have a problem with that or can't respect admin decisions, please don't sign up.
Update: Deadline to sign up for TBR is June 25th. We reserve the right to accept additional players until draft night (at some point next week), but won't guarantee it
Hi everyone,
Pleased to see another activity spike in FFA, the mode that never dies. Although parental duties are keeping me busy, I'm willing to organize another Team Battle Royale. TBR 6 was great and while I think it'd also be time for another FML season, I simply can't cope with the scheduling aspect. So I hope everyone is excited for TBR 7 and willing to try hard as always.
What is TBR? It's a team event, where all participating players are being drafted into their teams by four team captains. Throughout the month of July, teams seat their players for the daily FFA games scheduled. While the majority of matches will be regular FFAs, we also include other modes (e.g. random hero, no chat, random spell, team ffa etc.). Every team has access to three shared Battle.net accounts, so matches are played anonymously.
When: July 1 - Jul 30, 2022
Please sign up by posting your name and if you would be willing to be a team captain into this thread. Feel free to add some details about your motivation and availability throughout July! Only known community members that proved to be reliable and know FFA basics will be permitted.
Remarks:
We may not be able to host via W3C due to visible ping in lobby and the map pool.
It's always a bit tricky to maintain "map pool hygene" in TBR. As usual, I will provide the map file subfolders before the event and hope everyone can paste it into their folder pathes.
Congratulations to Team Ravenclaw for winning TBR 6. With their impeccable performance yesterday, Ravenclaw achieved a 66% win rate, not only in tie breakers, but also in TBRs overall. Titles of TBR 1, 3, 5 and 6 all held by the famous Hogwarts house.
I repeat myself, but thanks to all of you who participated, captained, streamed and hosted. TBR used to require so much effort and nerves that it was hard to fully enjoy the matches. TBR 6 was different and after a few too many freewins early on, we witnessed many close endings in the second half of the season.
I'll be on parental hiatus for some time now, but will keep you up-to-date. Really happy to see how the love for FFA brings people together, even in 2022
I got convinced to organize another Team Battle Royale, before going on a parental hiatus. Historically, TBR always required a lot more admin work, compared to FML seasons. For that reason and because the general hosting environment changed since 2020, a few compromises will be necessary, especially when it comes to anon, modes and maps. You find further details below and some parts will have to be worked out in the next few weeks.
What is TBR? It's a team event, where all participating players are being drafted into their teams by four team captains. Throughout the month of September, teams seat their players for the FFA games scheduled.
When: Aug 28 - Sep 30, 2022
Please sign up by posting your name and if you would be willing to be a team captain into this thread. Feel free to add some details about your motivation and availability throughout September! Only known community members that proved to be reliable and know FFA basics will be permitted.
Remarks:
We may not be able to host via W3C due to visible ping in lobby and the map pool
I will try to reactivate our Bnet shared accounts. However, if they still require every single player to be authentificated via email code, we may not use them
Finding subs is a huge pain in TBR. Therefore, we will reject players that missed a lot of matches in the past and reserve the right to cancel matches instead of finding subs.
It's always a bit tricky to create the map pool for TBR and ensure that the correct map files are being hosted. This is even more of an issue since we got zoom triggers. Therefore, we may stick to "regular" maps for the most parts
Congratulations to @qwest for finally winning a long-deserved FML trophy. With four wins in five matches, he's the first (full-time) undead player that takes the title since Tyrant did in 2015. His macro and tactical genious seemed unmatched this season and the final map pick proved to be clever.
Thanks to all the participants and the admin team. After my hiatus, I really enjoyed to see some high-level FFA again and I was positively surprised by the absence of drama. Using Discord for orga and scheduling may have led to a bit more confusion every now and then, but it cut the effort for admins in half, in my opinion. Definitely something we'll do again.
A bit prematurely, I stated some weeks ago that I'd be willing to run a Team Battle Royale this summer. With us approaching the middle of July, I'm not so sure anymore. While I enjoy many things about TBR, it's also way more challenging from an admin perspective. Furthermore, we got some additional hurdles (not all map files with zoom trigger, Blizzard deactivated shared accounts, etc. etc.). As I'm not the only admin, I don't want to rule it out entirely, but my real life obligations prevent me from playing a key role in it. Another FML Season that starts in Q3 seems more realistic.
Last but not least, I don't want to leave unmentioned how much worse the FML Discord Chat has become in my eyes. I stated before that I don't enjoy it and I'm not willing to moderate it anymore. Still, in order for FML to be somewhat welcoming to fun people and new players, I kindly ask you to scale back sexism and toxicity.
Thanks everyone for signing up. We are good to go for round 1, which will last until April 14th. As announced, scheduling will take place in Discord. Therefore, please check your respective scheduling channel in the FML server.
Not gonna lie, it has been a relaxing year without FML. But since I'm getting tired of Legion TD, I guess I need some FFA to observe. Therefore, it's time for FML Season 33 and it'll launch on April 1st. You can sign up by posting your name into this thread until March 31. We'll accept any non-smurfing players that are known to the community or manage to win an inhouse game.
As it is a pain in the ass to manage scheduling and results via this website, I came up with a plan to manage scheduling via separate Discord channels and match result posting via a Google Form. I think it'll work much better for all of us.
With this season being run mostly by me, I kindly ask you to respect my decisions and don't be stupid! I don't have the desire to moderate a freaking Discord kindergarten, but if I see something I don't like, I will not hesitate to ban you. This includes heavy insults, racism and posting real life pics of other people. I spent a lot of time in other communities and not a single one was as lax in terms of rules as this one. Same applies to ingame decisions. In the past, I was willing to discuss and explain everything. It did not prevent people from accusing me of being biased one way or the other. So be prepared for me not responding to your Discord text walls. It's self protection.
Thanks to all of you who signed up for Season 32. Round 1 of four is ready to go. Please schedule your matches and vote for your preferred map. Deadline for round 1 matches to be played is April 25, but maybe postponed.
We will not be able to host via W3Champions in round 1. Therefore, matches will be hosted with EU server on Bnet for now. We will try to get zoom versions where available. Please host from map subfolder: "FML Zoom"
Only streamers, admins and participants are allowed to observe matches. Observers may not leave the game before it's completely over.
If no admin is present, replays must be posted into the Discord replay channel, ideally with the scores as a remark
It's time for FML Season 32. You can sign up from now on, until April 10 in this thread. The first of four rounds is going to take place from April 12 to May 2. The season will have an oldschool structure without fancy gimmicks.
While I will assist mostly in setting up the season, our new admin NoMercy is going to play a key role in managing the event. We will be looking into implementing the zoom trigger into further map files, but no promises.
We hope for numerous sign ups. As usual, admins reserve the right to reject players that lack FFA experience, reliability or manners.
I wanted to take some time to take a look back at this turbulent year 2020 from an FFA perspective.
Reforged and W3Champions
Many of us saw the disaster coming well before the actual release, when Blizzard dropped their Reforged beta around October 2019. Still, there was some hope that what we played on the PTR would not resemble the release version. As we know now, it did. In retrospect, I’m still quite certain that Warcraft 3 wouldn’t be more alive today without Reforged. Sure, we would have preferred a better game and positive buzz, but it is what it is. The FML community was always able to adapt and survive in their niche.
Maybe it was naive of me to think that this niche could blend flawlessly into the broader Warcraft 3 environment. When Pad first created W3Champions I realized that this would be our only chance to ever implement a maintained FFA ladder again. While mostly before my time, so many players embraced FFArena as the gold standard of FFA ladder history. On one hand, the hype around a custom W3Champions ladder was great for Warcraft 3 as a whole, but on the other, FFA not really a priority for the development team at the time.
Around the mid of May, Pad decided to ask by poll again what W3Champions features people would be most interested in. And while FFA sneakily found its way into the poll, I was doubtful if it could make it to the top of the rankings. The following days were proof of the dedication of the FML community and I was very proud that we pulled this through and raised 800 €. And not even a month later, we had what we wanted. After 1vs1 and 2vs2, FFA became the third available mode on W3champions and much more players than I anticipated were willing to give it a try.
Sure, FFA is not for everyone and probably never has been. I was pleased to see the attention for our beloved game mode, but also disappointed how quickly some people made their judgement. What wouldn’t have been an issue a decade ago, was now amplified significantly via Twitch, Reddit and Twitter. Of course, it is much more difficult to take wins on the highest solo level than winning an FFA match with whatever players. But that doesn’t mean every skillful Warcraft 3 player grasps FFA at first glance. Ironically, ToD was referencing the Dunning-Kruger effect on his stream back then, in the context of backseat gaming. I guess we can conclude that FFA does not work for people without a certain level of frustration tolerance to cope with teaming and manip. Also, if you stream for many viewers without a delay, you summon sad stream-sniping creatures that show up and try to ruin your game.
On the flipside, I was disappointed how short-sighted many FML community members behaved in ladder games and on the W3Champions Discord server. Sure, it’s very annoying if new players pretend to know it all and spread bullshit about FFA, but we all started at some point. Who should serve as an ambassador for FFA if not us? To this very day, community members try to get each other banned on a ladder that is already dead. I’m sure that it could have survived longer without being sabotaged from our very own people. I guess we just can’t have nice things.
Events and Outlook
In some ways, the FML year 2020 was a full success. Unlike with some of the seasons before, I had a lot of fun with FML Season 31. Interesting players, exciting games and a much greater reach. In total, our semi-finals and the final got more than 50k views on the Back2warcraft YouTube channel. For a brief moment in time, it felt as if FFA had arrived in the Warcraft 3 mainstream. Not sure if that was ever someone’s goal, but it felt good to see that many more people could appreciate FFA as we do.
While we only had one FML season, there was a smooth Team Battle Royale 5 this summer, the Quarantine Cup, Ugri’s FFA Challenge, a map contest and we are ending the year with the Team Battle Deluxe.
As I learned early in my three years of admining FML, there is no perfect way to run this league. Sometimes there are unsolvable dilemmas, but even if the decision is obvious, endless discussions are always mandatory. I guess that’s predictable of a bunch of players that is willing to play 3- or 4- or even 5-hour matches. It might be annoying, but I never expected to be appreciated or liked for what I do, as long as I felt the necessary respect to run this thing. I still do from most people, but my joy of FFA games has declined. Maybe it’s just a phase, maybe it’s not.
In my eyes, the quality of games always depended on three player-dependent factors. The skill, the level of “tryhardness” and the willingness to invest gold and play aggressively. No one wants to watch or participate in games were all players are only sitting and chatting for two hours. Sure, it’s an easy way to win games, even for good players, if they pretend to be broke with a 20k gold bank. Maybe it’s just a general lack of skill that prevents it from being punished more often. Either way, I wish there were fewer useless chat battles in games, especially from players that are capable to win without them. When I started to play FFA, manip was my best bet to take a win here and there. But I was fortunate to play and watch FFA with enough skilled players to realize that less chat means more fun for everyone. And in a small scene like this, everyone can influence the way FFA is played and perceived.
The same applies to the community in general. There has always been some sort of toxicity and trolling in FFA, but it is almost all there is in our Discord chat nowadays. Not sure if that is a welcoming or interesting environment for anyone but the handful of active chatters. As long as it is no hate speech or racist stuff, I won’t spend my spare time any longer to moderate it.
What will 2021 bring? I don’t know. While I still love FFA, there are private reasons that may prevent me from being overly active, at least in the first half of the year. Time will show who steps up or how active the inhouse scene is going to be during that period of time. I want to thank all of you that participated and supported FML in 2020. Have a good transition to 2021 and good luck, have fun!
While the number of players is a bit lower than expected, this shouldn't prevent us from having a fun TBD throughout December. Four teams, 28 FFAs and 10 points per victory. From Dec 3, 20 CET is FFA time.
The general structure is similar to TBR, but without designated captains and special modes (except random hero). So it's up to each player to be on time and to stick to the rules.
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