(LETS TALK!) The Fall of Bridges... Will it ever come-back?

There used to be a time where Bridges games were quicker to find, had many people and were genuinely fun to play, whether it was in Skylands or Volcanic Islands, you would usually have a good amount of players playing in the same matches. That of course, was late 2015 to early 2016, before the rise of hackers.

Now, finding a Bridges game can take a while, the most I've tried to wait is 15 minutes, showing how empty and un-interested the majority of the community has become towards this particular gamemode, with Cake-Wars and UHC being the most preferred as of current. Even while writing this, I've been in a queue going for 11 minutes. So, why has the community lost interest in this game-mode? That is the question.

Personally, I think the lack of an interesting update (aside for fixes and new maps) has dealt a big blow to this game-mode as it can get quite repetitive within the game. Collect resources, Bridges drop, kill players and either win or lose. There are not enough interesting variables to spice it up... What if there were special random events that can vary within the games? Such as falling meteors... the water level slowly rising or even adding a dragon or two in! It would spice up the game-play and make it more interesting and engaging for players to fight and come up with new strategies to overcome these obstacles!

There are many other reasons that could have possibly impacted the player count in Bridges, aka, hackers, the low player count etc. So, what do you think about the state of The Bridges? Will it ever get better? What could they do to improve it? Let's talk. :D

edit: it has currently been 18+ minutes of waiting in the queue... with 5 players waiting.

 

Hello!

In my opinion, the reason why Bridges is dying is due to parties of very skilled players, fully coordinated on a Discord call, facing players who are uncoordinated and while some of them might be skilled, they won't stand up to that party. It isn't fun to spend 10 minutes gathering resources to only be killed immediately after. That is why many players enjoy sky-basing, as it prolongs their life-span and gives the opportunity to actually get some kills. Unlike games like Cake Wars where parties are also an issue, you don't have to spend several minutes of gathering resources. The decreased amount of lobbies further highlights this issue as basically every lobby has a party, unlike Cake Wars where every couple of lobbies, you can face players only on your skill level. The only solution I see to dampen this problem is for Bridges to gain more players, which is highly unlikely through a Bridges update of sorts. If Mineplex's overall playercount can increase, this will probably help the most.

 

Yes, a team of friends playing a team game is the reason the game is dying, great analysis!

It's 10 minutes, and surely if you gather enough of the correct resources for your team your team should be able to at least put up a fight should they actually stay together, but majority of the time people just split in the game lol

The aim of skybasing, from what I can tell, isn't to try and win the game, it's to stop anyone else from winning the game. Skybasers don't care if they lose, and most of the time end up making the game time out anyway..

You still need to gather resources in Cake Wars, just for slightly less time. Players playing with their friends is not an issue, it's a team game for a reason.

 

I mean, considering many players have quit bridges as a result of getting ganked by parties (myself and apparently Paladise included), I think it definitely is worth mentioning. That's not to say there is much that should or could be done about it, but I know for a fact I quit because it's not fun to mine for 10 minutes and then get immediately thrashed and eliminated by 5+ beserkers.

 

I agree that The Bridges needs more content, however I don't think adding events is the way to go. I think a simple solution, is to add more kits. If we keep adding new kits, more people will play The Bridges, and issues like long queue times, and pub stomping will fade away. We've had the same kits in the Bridges long as I can remember, so adding some more will really help it.

 

As stated above, there are many problems associated with the mini-game of bridges. However, for some of them, there is nothing that Mineplex can do to fix them. Bridges is a team game, so parties are a given. It is an unavoidable occurrence. To combat this, you can form or join a party of your own or just avoid lobbies with large parties. For your 2nd point, I acknowledge and completely agree with your point about bridges needing a unique and exciting update. More kits, different objectives, extra interesting features, fun abilities etc.

As a fellow Mineplex player that has played bridges since 2015, I understand that the lack of players joining the queqe for bridges can be very frustrating. There used to be a consistent demand for bridges games, but over the years, the interest in the game has diminished considerably. To this day, there are only one to three games running at the same time.

To improve the current state of bridges, I believe that the solutions to this problems come down to two methods: an update or promoting the server. As Paladise has already mentioned, the more players on the server, the greater interest in the mini-game.

[QUOTE="Paladise, post: 537974, member: If Mineplex's overall playercount can increase, this will probably help the most.[/QUOTE]

If anyone has any other suggestions on how bridges can be revived, I'm all ears.

 

Adding onto everyone's interesting answers, you all make valid points with this, the PVP community change, lack of players, more promotions for the server, updating the game, adding new kits etc. Honestly, I really hope they make a really big update to Bridges with new maps, tinkering with and adding new kits as well as your suggestions!

To me, The Bridges hasn't really blossomed fully like it should have done. Personally, I think it would be very cool for new settings in The Bridges with the maps. For example, a map could be set in space! Teams spawn on 4 planets, moons, whatever! It could be very interesting! Or, make it apocalyptic like the Fallout map from Survival Games (as a general setting.)...

 

Mining can get kind of repetitive, especially if you see full diamond enemies which you need to face.
Combat is also lackluster, there is not really a way to make items or outsmart your oponent by dumping water on them or by building. I see a lot of people just spam block placing over water and annihilate eachother.

I can take on quite a few, but the bridges just seems like something only veterans play, the overly skilled ones... and with my long hiatus, that just creates a big gap (also for all other people in general).

take a look at sky wars; you can knock people off, place lava, blow them up, pearl to people, go under the map even (useful for an achievement) and resources are also given out fairly in cake wars, making it a bit of an economy systtem with different decisions and playstyles (boy i love those games where you can build all around the map full geared with all cakes down after 3 mins)

 

This is an interesting take which I do agree with. There could be so many more things to do in Bridges, for example, Gold is absolutely worthless, you can't even make any gapples with it to regen, only normal health regen or mushroom stew. Not even armour is good for it. As someone else put it, you get destroyed by a team of berserkers and can do nothing about it. There's only a few strategies you can do, sky base, hold mid with the team or rush other islands with no in-between.

 

This is a really thought out answer which I like to see, I agree with both your points but what's most interesting about what you said is the change in the PVP community. Bridges is certainly a slow-paced game, where-as games like Cake Wars, Sky Wars and even Micro Battles is favoured due to the fast action pacing in the games. And yeah, the ore drops are quite bad, especially in maps such as Skylands. If the bridges dropped in 5 minutes compared to 6, well, that'd certainly be interesting as there would be more chaos and less time for people to prepare, perhaps some sort of teamwork would actually work here apart from the "every man for himself value" I see in some games. It would allow for every second to count and possible better strategies to come up.

Also, the maps. What would happen if the formulaic version of "The Bridges" was changed, adding in new versions such as, 2 teams of 10... or 20? Different map sizes, environments that you can use to your advantage? Recreating maps from popular franchises? As well as mining, what if there were some ore chests around the islands? I'm just riffing right now but it's very interesting thinking about these things.

 

The parties of players isn't necessarily a large issue. If you are good enough you can pick them out one by one. If anything, being the underdog and overcoming obscene circumstances is what made The Bridges so fun for me back when I sucked at PVP in 2014-2015. I can remember camping on Shroomlands (I think the map may have been changed to a different name) and throwing TNT and bowing enemies with friends. I think The Bridges became less fun when it was too easy to win. Having this 1v8 situation (although there are never these many players anymore) makes the Bridges truly a test of skill and makes it a contest of strategy and not who can click faster.

If so many people here want the Bridges to have more players, how come we can't get it doesn't have players at all? That sounds redundant but I hope that makes sense.

 

Welcome to the club of your favourite game dying.
The CS community sends its regards.

 

it is a part of the reason tho, casual players just get one shot by people who cheat and tryhard so they get sick of the game, which part of this is wrong? yes its a team game but there's a difference between a balkan teammate with 1000 yearly wins and a level 10 player who barely managed to join the game, wouldnt u get sick of a game if u liked it but u were bad at it or had a bad team and hence couldnt win a single game?
also the uhc and halloween havoc updates dont help bridges' playerbase; same way uhc died because of halloween havoc in a way.

 

The issue here isn't the friends that are playing together, it's the Balkans that seem to love cheating to the point where no one can even touch them when they're in a fight, which is what makes it so annoying to fight these teams. If there was more in place to combat these specific cheaters and closet cheaters got dealt with quicker than they currently are, which I'm not saying is easy, the problem would be reduced a tonne.

Part of the game is playing to get better, and those that do play more and practice will inevitably be better than those that don't. Unfortunately, the cheaters that you've mentioned prevent those newer players from practising and getting better.

I wasn't dismissing the issue completely, but the way that he was describing it was incorrect. The issue is not that players are playing together as a group in a call, it's that these teams are dominated by players that are cheating, meaning that players find it hard to beat them regardless of whether they know the game well or not.

The UHC and Halloween Havoc updates didn't help any games playerbase to be honest, a lot of games died as a result of the hype around these games, but wait for Halloween Havoc to be removed after Halloween and the playerbase in most of these games should go back to normal. UHC has died off since there are so many cheaters and people aren't interested in playing it anymore, so that shouldn't cause an issue.

 

as most pvp games on mineplex , it got filled with tryhards and now normal players dont want to play it because its just not fun