My Problems with Brawlhalla, In and Out of Game

Hi everyone, bit of a spontaneous post but also something that's been on my mind for a very long time. Brawlhalla is a great game with a fantastic Dev team and a (mostly) great community but there are a lot of little things that really pile together and seriously hold back the game and its future. There's no particular order to this post, I'm just gonna write as it comes to mind.



Before I start, I am incredibly grateful to everyone who is a part of the Brawlhalla team for everything Brawlhalla has been for me and for people I care about. It is because of my gratitude and appreciation that I don't want to keep sitting by and leaving these things unsaid - I want Brawlhalla to be the best it can be. These points are all purely from my point of view and I can almost guarantee that I will be ignorant about at least one thing. If I am, please do correct me (mostly looking at Brawlhalla Devs).



First thing is how unfinished or forgotten a lot of content and additions feel, the most recent case of this being the WWE Crossover event. While the announcement was hype, the game mode was loved (I think? I didn't play it myself but I saw it in a lot of streams) and the skins are great, the thing EVERYONE pointed out was that there were no taunts added. The famous 'You Can't See Me' was something EVERYONE anticipated the instant the crossovers were revealed. However, instead of being a 120 MC purchase, it was kept exclusive to John Cena's Spear DSig. I can see the reasoning behind this - it's John Cena's signature move so it makes sense for it to be part of his Signature kit. The Sig looks amazing, but doing it this way I'm sure would have significantly reduced profits and incite huge disappointment among the playerbase. I haven't been a wrestling fan since I was a kid but surely there's something BMG could have taken from each WWE star and made into a taunt, sidekick, or even avatars. The skins themselves are excellent and the event was great but it just felt so unfinished.



And the WWE event wasn't the only offender. Adventure Time was huge too, the skins are great, the map is pretty, but there were no new avatars, no new sidekicks (in this case it's Lady Rainicorn instead of You Can't See Me, or even Beemo, which is what I expected AND he was in the trailer). Hellboy brought a great map, nice skins (although Teros was a little robbed), an awesome game mode AND an avatar. Hellboy, which was definitely the most overlooked event in terms of the community, has seemed like the most complete addition to Brawlhalla in a long time.



Outside of Crossovers, things like Mallhalla and even the official website are forgotten. Thor came out 6.5 months ago but he and his skins are STILL marked as 'New'. Admittedly, BMG has massively stepped up their game with this (I have a tweet from when items nearly 3 years old were labelled as 'New'), and I suppose you could still argue that Thor, Hellboy, etc. are new since there's not much else after them, but it still feels messy to me. In terms of the website, we have been waiting since mid-2016 to have Ranked 2v2 searching available. The Cash rankings on the website are extremely outdated (the highest is still Boomie with $59,706) and the Power Rankings is not consistent with the in-game PR, OR the official esports Discord server. It's such small things that get overlooked but it makes the game look incomplete and messy.



Clans still have very little meaning (which isn't exactly BMG's fault - the game doesn't need to have a built-in clan battle system or similar for people to do stuff with them) and although it's not big, it would be cool to see something done about it.



Second(?) thing is kinda more about the competitive side of the game and how long it takes for changes to be made. Until Thundergard was replaced by Apocalypse, the last change to either maps or the map pool was March 2018, when Small Brawlhaven was added, and before that was January 2018, when Miami Dome was added. A constant stage list is good but there are some stages (Thundergard and Twilight being the biggest offenders) which have inherent flaws or are super not favoured by the competitive scene (Boomie has been quite vocal lately about Twilight in particular) but it's taken more than 3 years for something to be done about one of them. The Thundergard change would have been based off data (can't find link but Thundergard was almost never played in tournament) but BMG has admitted that they're not happy with Twilight and have put it through numerous Experimental changes, so I don't know if they've given up or if they've changed their minds or what.



Competitive practice is also a huge issue. We have a Ranked game mode which didn't actually reflect competitive play at all until recently (gadget bans + tourney maps only). It took a crazy amount of time for those two changes to be made and although Ranked has improved, it's still very flawed. Being a Bo1 means that skill isn't *ranked* as accurately as it could be. Yes, being consistent and adaptable enough to achieve very high winrates in Bo1 is a skill itself, but Bo3 is better practice, more enjoyable, a more accurate test of overall skill, and it would incentivise players more than put them off, because chances are that if someone isn't happy to play a Bo3, they wouldn't have queued again anyway. Brawlhalla games are very short too so at most in a Bo3 you'll have to commit less than half an hour to a Ranked queue which just about everyone can manage, and if they can't, they've got casual queues there.



Another thing which has been requested for more than 3 years: new ranks or ranked rewards. After you hit Diamond, there is absolutely NO incentive to play Ranked unless you think you're good enough to hit Rank 1 for glory (not the currency) or you want to queue into specific people. You can't lose your rank, you can't get any higher, and there's nothing to gain from continuing unless it's your only option for practice. So many different ideas have been proposed over the years - avatars, colours, skins, sidekicks, a cooler rank - yet none of them have been introduced or even considered much from what I can tell. From what I understand, BMG doesn't want to add a new rank so people aren't discouraged if they can't achieve it, which I think is an absolutely ridiculous reason. I've spent 7+ years in several games and irl events trying to achieve things (Silver/Gold/Diamond/Challenger in League, top 8 at LANs, maths competitions, arts contests, etc.) and yeah it sucks if you don't reach it, but humans are made tougher than that. The only time the new rank would significantly affect a player is if they have mental struggles outside of the game or if they hit the rank and feel accomplished.



Third(?), content/Creator support. BMG has been doing bits and pieces with the #BrawlhallaArt tag, community hosting after Dev streams, Twitch/Twitter links on the leaderboards, etc. but there's so much more that could be done. A Partner program like in League, PUBG, CSGO (I think), Paladins, etc. would be AMAZING for both BMG and for the content creators who really put in the work to give the game viewership and popularity. At the moment, all we've got are CCs which honestly are hurting creators and the game more than helping them (more on that later). Everyone loves nice colour schemes, so why not make some general Creator colour schemes which can be unlocked by having a certain amount of Brawlhalla watchtime on the Twitch account linked to your Brawlhalla account (y'know, since that's already a thing). Or better yet, bigger Content Creators like Shwerpy, Cosolix, Boomie, eggsoup, Lucien's Sword, etc. could get their own unique colour schemes or avatars or SOMETHING which can be bought for standard price in Mallhalla, and a percentage of profits goes to those Creators? These people work hard every day to bring in thousands upon thousands of viewers for Brawlhalla, yet they don't get much return. Age issues? They have guardians. Branding issues? That can be figured out. Legality issues? I don't think there would be any but I'm not an expert in that area so I could be wrong.



Fourth, Sponsors. This kind of links to the previous point, because unless things have changed in the past few months, unless their player/Creator is one of the absolute best or biggest in the world, Esports Orgs don't really have any incentive to come into the Brawlhalla scene. In-game purchases or points systems for sponsor avatars, sponsor colours, sidekicks, weapon skins, taunts, would be a MASSIVE selling point AND would increase tournament viewership as more people would know and be interested. Again, tons of profit and exposure which is being left behind.



Fifth, Sig balance. Weapon/stat balance is generally pretty good for this game, but Sigs are the complete opposite. Some characters have potential to be amazing but in reality are absolute ass because of their Sig kits, while other characters which you would expect to be mediocre/weak are hard boosted by their incredible Sigs. Prime examples are Jiro and Cassidy.



Jiro - Scythe and Sword. Great weapon combo. 5 Strength, 7 Dex, 3 Defence, 7 Speed. Excellent stats. So why don't we see this seemingly-amazing character in competitive play? He's almost never picked in tournament (shoutouts to Atrophius and Phazon) and he's the 8th-least-played Legend in the entire game at Diamond rank. It's because, even though his build is top tier and he looks awesome, his Sigs simply aren't that great or fun to use. They don't have great setups, they don't have great damage, they don't have great force, they don't have great priority, they're just not that good. They're completely usable, don't get me wrong, but they're just not comparable to someone like Jhala, Cassidy or Diana.



Cassidy - Hammer and Blasters. Kinda meh weapon combo, has potential. 6 strength, 8 Dex, 4 Defence, 4 Speed. Not the best Stats but not too bad either. Yet, she has more than double Jiro's playrate in Diamond rank and it's because her Sig kit is absolutely insane. Her Hammer NSig and SSig are among the fastest in the game, have excellent combos, coverage and setups, crazy kill power, and are safe to throw out even if you miss. Her Blasters NSig is just a better Blasters Rec with higher damage and force and much, much better hitboxing. Her Blasters SSig isn't amazing but it's definitely not bad either, with crazy damage, good force and hitboxes and decent speed.



Diana - I'll add her here just to make a point. Everyone knows Diana has some of the best Sigs in the entire game, with not a single one in the entire kit being bad. What a lot of people don't realise is that these Sigs, with their great speed, coverage, wonky hitboxes, force, etc. all do close to 30 damage or more, which is far above almost every other character. This character is extremely overloaded and makes worse characters like Caspian look like literal poo.



Aside from those three, there's also plenty of characters who seem to be changed at random while other characters who do the same job but better are left untouched (see Bodvar nerfs back at the start of the year, meanwhile Ember still has 2015 hitboxing).



Finally, CCs. I seriously, truly despise these now. I remember how excited I was when I first won them, back in the first AUS tournament ever where I placed 2nd. I was ecstatic because of how desperately I wanted them and how hard I worked for them. Now, all they are is an irritation. Almost every YouTube video, every stream, tournaments, Discords, etc. are full of people just begging for CC codes. I understand that they're meant to be something special for the *community* and not everyone can have them, but man it is fucking annoying seeing so many messages every single day about them, and then it turns depressing when amazing tournaments or announcements or updates are being streamed or shared and the same thing still happens. It's partly because the community is 90% kids and partly because Dev streams in particular have almost been built around feeding the hungry Twitch chat who are clawing their way for a chance at a CC code. I've stayed away from doing giveaways (excluding the WWE one I'm running) because this is exactly what I don't want happening to the content that I work so hard on or the tournaments that I used to work so hard to run.



I sincerely hope that at least most of these topics are at least considered in the BMG office, and there's still plenty that I haven't even gone over. I love this game, I love the community, I love the Dev team, I love that I've been given the opportunity to do something great, and it really sucks seeing it waste away for so long. If you've read this long then thank you for your time and I hope you can see where I'm coming from.







No, there's no TL;DR. Scroll back up.

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