Royale (my unsolicited thoughts)

In THG, you have your handful of Career tributes who are massive threats. They are bloodthirsty and want to fight and kill at every opportunity, and will win nearly all fights. They team up with each other early on to easily pick off the weaker links, then turn on each other towards the end. Most non-Careers don't stand a chance against them. Because of this, the other tributes resort to sneakier or more strategic tactics to try and outlast the Careers. Think, Katniss sawing off the hornet nest to attack the Careers and even kill one. Foxface was incredibly stealthy and resourceful and was constantly evading the threats. However, in order to keep things interesting the Gamemakers would initiate their little twists to spice things up and FORCE action from all the tributes. Make them get out of hiding, or split up the Careers, mess with the environment, mess with food/water supplies, whatever it may be... the game was never sedentary for long. My point is, there needs to be a balance to these types of games. The Hunger/Royale concept has SO much potential and can be really fun when executed well. Early on, Hunger on TG was super fast paced and action packed, with everyone fighting constantly and games ending quickly. Over time though, it transformed into a long drawn-out game. Everyone would join, one or two major players would get shot out for 30th/29th, then a majority alliance would just sit in the Corn for days collecting arrows and slowly killing off the people not in their alliance then eventually just fighting each other, or even having their own predetermined boot order in the endgame. It was stale and uninteresting once this meta was created. Players should absolutely be able to use strong social and strategic gameplay to navigate to the end, but at the same time, being a physical threat should offer some kind of reward in a battle royale themed game. After all, the intention is to kill everyone and be the last one standing! When almost everyone in the game is sitting around just collecting resources and never fighting (because it is the optimal play) then the whole concept of the game is not being met. With me not actually being in the game I can't necessarily offer exact suggestions or ideas to implement, just kinda my two cents on the game mode as a concept. This is not intended to be a negative blog at all, I fully understand this is a beta version of the game and ultimately I think it will be a lot of fun for everyone with some tweaks. :)