Shouldn't at least a few of them want to? Torch passing is part of XHB longevity after all, no? We're more than halfway through 2023 and I can think of only 1 person from this year who has ever hosted a battle.

Most don't have the minimal badge requirement either, though maybe this has something to do with a lot of them being more into majors.

A few suggestions that occur to me are: have any badge progress achievements displayed along with points whenever someone scored well enough in a battle "BotBr, you earned 30 XHB, 30 Mixist points, 1/7 allgear badge progress"; include the message "now, you can host your own OHBs in this format!" whenever someone achieves 7/7 badge progress and; give 750 boons automatically to anyone who earned their very first badge (although, it could be said that boon asking/giving is still the preferred method if it helps show who is minimally communicative to host battles).

But I totally understand it that not every XHBists wants to host battles at all, for reasons that may (or may not) include being too shy to be communicative for the task. There's that too and that's fine.

By the way, if you're one of those people and are reading this, let it be known that you are appreciated for who you are. A lot of our battles wouldn't have been a success without you.

i like the idea of displaying badge progress with points! gets kinda verbose after big majors maybe but worth it prolly

edit: actually the more i think about this the more i like it, cause the whole notion of 'badge progress' is somewhat invisible unless you know where to look. although the process of "onboarding" new people is already a challenge here bc the site has a learning curve, i think having 'badge progress' info given to you prominently up top along with points would immediately get people curious/interested/excited (and hopefully not any more confused lol)

während ich die ideen bzgl der verbesserten sichtbarkeit von hosting-optionen (zB via alerts) sinnvoll finde, halte ich es für anmaßend, neuen usern zu unterstellen, sie müssten ein interesse am hosten haben.

the botb community is always changing and people come and go. and some people stay for years.
we wont end up with no hostists around. and JUST IN CASE we will experience a heavy drop in hosting activity due to the lack of botbrs with badges, there is always the option to ask admins for a battle, if you dont feel like hosting yourself (or cant because of the lack of badges and boons)

i agree but new hosts will come with time. if you make a thread to pressure people to host more, it may only deter them, or act as a nagger to act contrary toward; the assumption that recent people should host can cripple any new hosts. if we leave alone the culture to run without large mention like this, someone new will try host of theirn own heart, out of enjoyment and love for battle, and eventually keep doing so. let them grow themselfs naturally.

I DIDN'T SEE YOU GUYS AT BABY!!!!!!!

Oh, no. I missed baby ;_;

Also, I'm not pressuring anyone. Thought I already made it clear in my original post that people do what they want.

peopl;e should not do what they want, nobody has free will except me, do what i say or else

I'll gladly host as I collect badges, but I don't have one yet. I've been here about 8 months (since Winter Chip, at any rate), but progress is slow even as someone who fairly regularly participates.

I don't know that anything has to change; I just think the wheels churn more slowly than it seems?

Yeah, no rush. Let's enjoy the ride.

My suggestions are about encouragement without pressure. They're merely meant to make the act of hosting more clear and inviting.

one thing worth mentioning: don't be shy about asking for battles in formats youre interested in! particularly if they're also formats you're interested in hosting (but true regardless!). many folks here like myself would be happy to set that up for you. more able-bodied hostists is always good :D

speaking for myself here, i've generally felt too busy with other music to do ohbs this summer, but i would definitely still host them whether or not i was able to join, if there was impetus for doing so.

which is to say - what formats should we be hosting so that badgening may occur? :B

I'm not sure how many boons you need to deposit to host, but I know it's more than I have right now lol

I should've overstated in my first post that I certainly didn't take any offense from the original message. Just explaining how, on my end at least, I haven't quite gotten that far yet. Text can be misleading, so just wanted to add that.

I'm close to allgear and remix, which pop up enough on their own, but feel free to ping me any time somebody hosts anything FM-based, Renoise, s3xmodit, and hmmmm, well, I can start there and I'll be trying to hop in on some new formats along the way.

2023ers are killing the XHB industry.

Dami: I'm waiting for the first BespokeSynth battle.

@Abraxas86: you need 750 boons and a badge in the format you wanna host. We can give you the boons if you so desire.

@haberchuck: ya, everything is cool. Honest.

@Tex - It kinda sucks you need a badge in the format. I suck at a lot of the formats that I really love lol. Guess I gotta hunker down git gud lol

Which formats do you really love?

Speaking for myself here: as long as your entries are made in good faith with the bitpacks, they should score well enough. I'd hope other voters would agree.

ANSI and any of the tracker-based chiptune formats. I stand *some* chance at ANSI but as I've said before (probably not on here, though) tracker software is so weird and foreign to me. The battles on here might be enough for me to finally try to figure them out, though.

I did some stuff like 15-20 years ago that kinda worked using BoyScout (GBA tracker).

the motivation of getting better in a format to get a badge and be able to host is one of the coolest things about botb, so i wont upvote you just because you tried, i will upvote you because you do good stuff.
this is a battleground and not a kindergarten.

if it was different and my stuff in 2018 wldve been upvoted just because i submitted something which followed the rules, i wldve never tried to become a better composer.
i always liked botb because of honest results rather than getting treated with velvet gloves

@Abraxas86: Oh, I actually enjoyed ANSI when I tried it once. So, we can make it happen! Let me know when would work best for you.

Edit: I used to think like kleeder. However, I was DMed by an admin once after I gave 1 to an entry that was in good faith with the bitpack. They told me to be nicer with my votes in the future (despite the fact that the voting scale is a grey area) to make sure people's feelings aren't hurt.

Also, a 4 isn't enough of a score that can be called an upvote imo. But it's enough of a score for an honest submission.

if ur feelings are hurt over a botb vote maybe botb isn't for you heh.. but ya that's not the point I'm trying to make. all I'm saying is you shld earn the right to host by sharpening ur skills as an artist. and the best way to do this on botb is to aim for higher scores.

that reminds me.
in 2018, it took me over a month of battling to get my first badge and half a year to get my 7th.
and I didn't start on Jan 1.
so just because we don't see as much new-peepz-hosting yet, it doesn't mean it won't happen naturally. there's no rush. and not every year is the same or comparable to the year before. people might just be busier with life and it's not botbs fault at all!

I wouldn't trust scores to sharpen my skills, personally. They tell you a voter's tastes and their voting styles. But at the end of the day, they're just numbers. Valuable feedback is what is productive for personal growth.

The entry comments are still exceedingly positive though. I don't remember anyone going "hey man, the baseline SUCKS".

Feedback in comments is where botb as a community shines too imo.
I'm just saying that the special feature of the site is ranking and voting, so it wld be weird to just ignore this completely and treat it like a random music sharing site.
one vote and one score never tell u much. it's more like a trend. do I score mostly at the bottom of the field? in the middle? at the top? I can definitely see a trend in my personal development on here, and getting there was motivated by badge progress and hosting abilities c:

ofcourse, all I say is my personal point of view. and it's the mix of everything that counts

@Max Chaplin: which brings us to my next thread here

i liderally cant T_T

re: bespoke synth @ Max Chaplin, that's a format i want to try my hand at too, so i'd like to host something like an introductory 4HB some weekend soon-ish where anyone interested can try and feel it out. then we can go from there, depending on how that goes! i should probably pick a time that's pretty early in the day American time, yeah, if your israeli flag is accurate?

i've been saying this for ages: just let people host whatever they want - without having to go through customs

there should already be enough punishment to discourage bad hosts - no deposit refund, no medals, parasite ailment (when's the last time an admin gave an ailment??)

i think it was like yesterday coincidentally but i agree its not very often

i think batols are hosted frequently enough, but i do kinda miss 2021 when they were more commonplace (and i had more time to be on the site which is probably related too)

in any case i'm fairly sure if anyone wants to host something but don't have badge/boons and no admins around theres probably someone usually around willing to host for said format/badge or able to loan some boons

nobody is ready to join in my timezone :( that's why am I not hosting

but technically I am a 2022er

Dami: That's cool, you can go ahead without waiting for me. I have no access to my computer until the end of the month.

i can wait til then 🫡 i'll have more time next month anyway!

i just remembered the most legendary botb account: if people actually want to host battles but hav no boons or badges, they can just use the public toilet

we need to get PT its seventh badge so it can host any format... only one mod4k and two spcs required. wait those are my formats. is this my job

i'd love to do more ohbs but the fear of boonloss coupled with burnout intimidates me

as they always say... with no risk, there is no fun

@Kot: Boonloss can be an unpleasant experience, so I understand you. But if this is of any consolation: it happened to a lot of us, too; you're not alone.

One way to avoid that is making your bitpacks really short and easy to understand.

Edit: and another way is not making people seek things that may be unknown or too specific for them to have access to at the moment of the battle. They should be able to make their entries with things more broadly associated with the format.

Personally, I really would like to get into participating in and hosting XHBs, I just haven't gotten around to being very active here to to personal life shit :( This site seems really fun and I desperately want to become a part of it!!

Man, I hear you with the "personal life shit" @Zaxolotl. Not sure your situation nor is it my business - but if it's a case of shitty life shit over just "not enough free time" shit, I hope things get better for you.


Hell, even if it is a free time thing, I hope you're able to get more of that soon.

As I've just acquired an allgear badge, I'll attempt to fill up the 2023 XHB drought (far less than what I saw back in 2022), if people wish for more XHBs.

I'd also love to become a part of the site, but sometimes I have to press buttons to keep the lights on, and other times I have to be online for people that I know in real life to press buttons with and make zombies go away and all that stuff.

When I get time to press buttons to make music happen I don't realise that I've got time to press buttons to make music happen until the time to press buttons and make music happen is almost over. So I fail to press buttons and make music happen. Then no music happens.

I'd also be more likely to do the above for anything other than the odd major if the other battles happened when I wasn't in bed dreaming of pressing buttons. Or eating food to get energy to press buttons. Or pressing buttons to keep the lights on. Unfortunately with my timezone that tends to happen a lot.

I wish I could press all of the buttons all of the time. I tried it once and sounded like a poor impersonation of Atari Teenage Riot with a hangover.

2013ers also dont host battles

^^^^^ This (but only cuz my one decade anniversary here is during the most trying year of my life)

i read the message below me and i was like "haha bgo u amateur, theres nothing even above you" and then i realised everyone else has "oldest post on top" like the psychos that they are

"Shouldn't at least a few of them want to? Torch passing is part of XHB longevity after all, no? We're more than halfway through 2023 and I can think of only 1 pers-"

It's It's... BAH BITS'N'BOONS! IT'S A 2023er WITH A STEEL CHAIR PLAINTEXT OHB!