Before i post the "official" event thread, i wanted to ask you all some questions about the organization.


tl;dr: ohb,2hb,4hb or major battle for this? when should i host the xhb every day? pls discuss


First of all, for the new people: whats the botb advent calendar?
well, its an event hosted and organized by me since 2018. every day from dec 1 to dec 24, i will host one battle in a different format with different bit packs (most of them are kinda christmas-related tho).

the previous two events were hosted as ohbs but a lot of people (especially non-european people) had issues with the hosting time (which was 10pm UTC iirc), especially because there was only an hour to make an entry)

there was discussion about moving the starting time every day to allow more US people to enter ((but it didnt happen))
i also thought about asking puke if its a good idea to make it a major battle with changing format every day.


BUT!!! theres a new solution, because we have 4HBs now! a 4-hour-timeframe would probably allow more people to enter the battles (except australia/japan/korea? ... sorry..)


there are still pros and cons for everything, so thats why i created this thread...

lets discuss! what would be the best solution for everyone most people?

possible options(if you have more, pls share)
1) still hosting OHBs but vary the starting time every day
+ people from different timezones are able to enter
+ boonsave for me in most cases
- you automatically exclude people from other timezones, like it was done in the previous years and less people in total are able to join the battle

2) hosting 2hbs, maybe with slightly different starting times every day
+ higher chance of getting people from different timezones involved
+ more time for everyone
- higher risk of boonloss
- still not a big timeframe, is it even making a difference..??

3) hosting 4hbs, always starting at 10pm UTC
+ would allow people from both europe and america to join i guess
+ you can choose if you wanna use all the 4 hours or just 1 or 2 of them
- i will lose all my boons (not the BIGGEST deal, but still something thats kinda annoying, especially because i would have to get them back until next year for the next event! over b2000 for every boonloss 4hb)
- rip australia, japan and korea

4) making it a major battles, format changes every day, the entry period would be 24 hours for every format
+ everyone should be able to join if they want, no matter which timezone they live in
+ cool trohpy on ur profile afterwards if u did good
+ all entries will be ranked in the scope of one big battle AND seperated in their format
- its up to puke and he'll probably say no
- bit pack management would be hell and annoying and i would scrap bit packs altogether... and then we would just had a "do whatever u want"-major battle with short entry periods... not sure if thats what we/i really want

if option 4 is actually possible then yeah, but it does require some back-end work for sure. I wonder if it would be possible to have one advent battle and the formats get "unlocked" and "locked" for each day, which seems cool but it would be hard to implement. for major battle bitpacks... couldn't you just write the bitpack in the battle info page? that's generally how it works if it's a specific theme.

I also want to share the idea of potentially having a mix of ohbs/2hbs/4hbs, depending on the format and time in the week. for instance it would make more sense to designate 4hb fomats for common ones, i.e. allgear, wildchips, remix etc. and also host them over the weekend. I know you already had the idea of hosting rarer formats during weekdays and for those you could do 2hb or ohb (either depending on the popularity or context for the format, say if you wanted to host html it would be nicer to have some extra time greater than 1hr).

as someone in a europe timezone I am happy with 9pm CEST or somewhere near-abouts but yeah you should probably also listen to people from other timezones.

apart from the fact, that option 4 isnt approved by the baron so far, the current battle engine would work for this battle idea, i'd just have to add and remove the formats manually every day (which doesnt affects previously submitted entries in any way (i probably checked and tested that when i hosted f major) (i could re-add all the formats to the battle info as soon as the entry period is over for a complete list))

my fear about the "put bit packs into the battle info tab" is: does this mean, we only have one theme for all the entries/days? or should i add to the info tab every day? will people check the tab before they do the entry? how do i share samplepacks? major battles have a bitpack-option, but i would have to replace it with a new zip later on during the battle...?
i guess THAT part would require some code work, and i dont wanna load more work on puke tbh


a mix of different xhbs is a possibility, although im not sure how to determine which length to use for what format (except for using 4hbs for wildchip/visuall/allgear obviously)

for determining xhb length for different formats I think it's just best to do so when planning the formats that are going to go into the advent battle either by asking everyone or predicting the possible number of entrants. if you really wanted to be scientific about it you could map 4hb/2hb/ohb to the total number of entries for that format submitted to the whole site though I think the former is probably better for the whole "circumstance" thing with formats like html or tic80 where more time would be nice.

one over-arching theme for an advent major doesn't give much variety so I think that should probably be avoided if possible but yeah I know where you're coming from that people might not check the infos every day. one thing you could probably do is tell people beforehand and hope for the best. or have loads of major battles, but that doesn't really sound like the best thing.

though as major entries go, you can pretty much see everyone's entries as they come in so that's actually a kinda completely different feel to xhbs. whether that's something that we want, not sure. I'm okay either way but yeah there are pretty big differences and expectations there.

just do a ohb every day same time

consistency is queen, people can deal

same, as funny as 24 consecutive 4hbs would be i'd rather deal with ohbs since they're easier to manage and historically that's what you've gone with in the past

don't worry tho next year >:3c

I was about to ask if you even have the budget to host 4hbs everyday but then I remembered it's kleeder I'm talking about. Of course you do.

Option 4 seems complicated, people may do error, etc, I think this is not the best. OHB seem cool, but doing 2HB or 4HB depending of the format is also something that can be considered.
I am not sure 4HB everyday is necessary, especially around christmas where some people will be busy with familly!
The most tricky part is probably the timezone issue, I would personally choose a different moment in the day for Saturday and Sunday, to allow everybody to join one day or another. During the week, well, less important I guess and probably less common formats!

Option 4 would be the best, much in the same way it would be the best if someone made a functional MMO pokemon game where you can visit every region and get any pokemon that exists