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How to Make QB Practice Better

Qudditch Knight

New Magician
Minecraft IGN: DeanKnight
Honeybadger
#1
How to Make Quabbleball Practice Better

Quabbleball is a minigame beloved by many in the community and has fairly recently received a mode where one can practice the minigame at any time. Simply going to the Quabbleball pitch and talking to Professor Wilson allows you to pick from several roles to get experience in. This tool can be incredibly useful for practicing your shots as a passer, your ability as a bruiser with a friend, or even your seeking. The Quabbleball minigame has received a lot more attention lately. This Quabbleball practice is still new and can be greatly improved by some insightful feedback. I believe with some smart, key decisions we can really revitalize the game into aligning with what I believe its intended purpose was and to make it as easy as possible for players to use and want to use.

Before we start this post as I go into what I believe through my observation, conversations, and hours and hours of experience using this practice tool, needs to be changed. I must say: The practice tool is an amazing step forward and I applaud it. I genuinely think that looking back on it years from now people will say “Why didn’t they add it sooner?”. It makes sense for one of most beloved minigames and the ethos of being a wizarding student. It just feels so cool to be able to finally get to go practice on a broom and imagine that you can actually become one of the greats if you put in enough work. I write this all with love for this practice tool and its future.

1. Make the Ball Throw the Same as in the Game

When you join The Quabbleball Practice Pitch as a passer you start off with a ball that you can use to score into the hoops. You make a score- you get your ball back. Many players have wanted a practice tool that allowed them to work on their aim. oTo aim outside the commotion of the game, without people trying to steal the ball from you or knock you out of the air. To be able to practice is to enjoy Quabbleball even when you’re not playing it, to hone a skill and put value in a great part of this server and its history. By practicing enough you can have an edge in your games. Honing the skill you dedicate it to muscle memory and you can execute much higher skilled plays. There is a serious issue; currently the practice tool’s Quabbleball doesn’t throw the same as in the game!

The current practice tool ball begins to fall with gravity much sooner than in the actual game of Quabbeball. There are several serious problems this creates that could seemingly be fixed rather easily. Let’s go over these problems:
  1. Every single shot ever made in the practice tool will be different in the game proper. Whatever you commit to memory from practice will always need to be adjusted in your head in the chaos of the game. This effectively renders much of your practice as null and void, weaker than it should be, or even possibly dare I say it… stuck with bad shooting habits. This is because you learn one way and then the reality is much different, the reality is if you take the shot as you’ve always taken it in practice, then you’ll miss!

  1. Due to the fact the ‘gravity’ of the ball is heavier in the practice mode it is completely impossible to practice long ranged shots that are completely possible in the game. Long range shots can comprise a large portion of highly effective goals in a competitive game, especially one without defenders.

  1. Players with more in-game experience still have a serious edge on a wizard or witch’s ability to make a goal, even in a situation where being stolen from or being knocked off your broom are not a factor at all. Given that the gravities are different between the practice tool and the game, even a shot at a distance you’ve done a hundred times in the practice tool can be unreliable. Though this player could’ve hypothetically dedicated more time in the practice tool than the second player, the second player can still have an unfair edge given how many hours they put in. I’ve practiced much in the practice tool and in actual games I missed shots I could do in my sleep in the practice tool, again and again.

  1. The apparent difference in the gravity of the ball when thrown can easily dissuade ambitious players with the right heart. Imagine an eager player only wants to genuinely improve and have more fun. That soon these players are put up against the fact that all their efforts will only return a fraction of the results. Fractions of what any practice tool should give. This is not rewarding, and can understandably leave bad taste in the mouths of those who have to deal with this.

If you take a moment and think about all these problems it can begin to seem like it comes from the place of the difference in the expectations and value of the practice tool. It’s not really a stretch for anyone to expect the practice tool to help you build up muscle memory, to let you practice longer ranged shots, to let you reliably make shots you’ve practiced a hundred times. It is also a matter of the tool not providing the value it should, because training with it isn’t nearly as effective as it easily could be if the gravities matched.

The solution? Make the ball throw the same as in the game. Please change the practice tool to use the same gravity as the current game holds. It’d fix so many problems related to the straight up value of the tool by allowing its value to meet expectations. It’d allow players who practice to flourish, it’d allow the expectations and the reality of the practice tool to align while simultaneously ridding it of five major issues.

2. Let Passers pick balls off the ground with their right click.:

This practice tool is new and it’s got some serious utility. I will never forget how many times I wished I could practice shots for scoring before a game so I could reliably get the ball in the goal when I finally got past the defender. We as a community now have a tool to allow for a much more competitive sport in the biggest sport in wizarding history. It still needs some work, but I think it’d be very useful. Specifically the Passer needs to be able to pick the quabbleball off the ground with their right click. It aligns with the actual game, it’d save significant time from the dismount/remounts needed to grab every ball. The amount of time to fly down and go grab the ball each time really adds up quickly. There are more balls in practice than in Quabbleball proper, possibly a good work around is to pick up every ball within range. The reasoning for this is that picking up a single ball at a time would be too slow and inefficient.

3. More time shooting, less recovering:

The current practice tool gives you one ball as you join as a passer and because you cannot currently right click to pick the ball off the ground you must drop off your broom to pick it up. Every. Time.

Even Enthusiastic players can quickly be worn down by this as every missed goal is a huge time penalty because you must go and retrieve your one ball. This is exacerbated by the nature of having to completely dismount to recover your one ball. Now, there is a technique where every five minutes you can toss your ball in the middle of the field, /spawn and re-pick the passer and grab the ball you threw. Now having an extra ball. This is Niche information and slow. This process doesn’t do anything to stop that now every two shots you miss you still have to fly down and pick up your balls before you can do anything again. There must be a fix to a systemic problem such at this that could radically change QB practice.

I suggest perhaps a command such as /KeepBall so that if you threw the ball and didn’t have it land in a goal, or be caught by another player it’ll reappear in your hands. Any intuitive name chosen by the staff for this command will do. Simply use the way the QB ball works over in the overworld, only with the trajectory and gravity the ball has in Quabbleball games. So if the ball in practice hits the ground or a wall while you have the /KeepBall command toggled, it reappears in your hand. Have this toggle command advertised as you pick roles. This allows players to have the time they can shoot drastically increased and gives them the freedom to take and learn riskier shots, shots they want to practice, shots they’d possibly still attempt but when they miss they lose substantial time that adds up.




In summary these changes all have the goal of making this amazing in concept and spirit practice tool much better. They focus on the quality of the practice and efforts to reduce unnecessary time waste for players. This respects the effort and work put into the value of the tool and the time of those who respect it’s utility, future, and in my mind, it’s sprouting potential to become something much, much bigger.
 

Jae ⊹₊ ⋆

Animorphus
Staff
Minecraft IGN: xMye
Auralock Dark Follower Staff Phoenix Serpent Vampire Werewolf Lore Master SPEW Lead Arena Master Lead
#2
Hello @Qudditch Knight !!

We like these suggestions and have made some changes to QB Practice! We have altered the velocity on the practice quabble so that it now mirrors the ball in the actual game. We have also added the ability to right-click to pick up the ball, which we think will make a big change to practice being smoother! We will not be enabling a new command, but hope that introducing the right-click to pick up the ball makes the practice more fluid anyway.

Thank you so much for your suggestions. We truly appreciate the time you took to bring them to us. I hope you have a wonderful day/night:serpent:
 

Qudditch Knight

New Magician
Minecraft IGN: DeanKnight
Honeybadger
#3
Hey Mye I am appreciative of the fact you and others liked the suggestions made. I am incredibly grateful and positively amazed at the speed of the results of my post. We in the Quabbleball community will benefit from throwing the same in both games and practice. The ability to grab the ball off the ground makes a huge difference in recovery and shooting the ball. I know there are many more players excited about these common sense changes. I am especially thankful for the swiftness of their implementation. So again, Thank you.
 

cheddarsoup

Graduate
Minecraft IGN: cheddarsoup
Auralock Phoenix Serpent Werewolf
#4
Hello @Qudditch Knight !!

We like these suggestions and have made some changes to QB Practice! We have altered the velocity on the practice quabble so that it now mirrors the ball in the actual game. We have also added the ability to right-click to pick up the ball, which we think will make a big change to practice being smoother! We will not be enabling a new command, but hope that introducing the right-click to pick up the ball makes the practice more fluid anyway.

Thank you so much for your suggestions. We truly appreciate the time you took to bring them to us. I hope you have a wonderful day/night:serpent:
Hey I know this suggestion was already accepted and implemented but is there any chance the broom speeds in the practice mode can be changed to mirror the actual game as well? I just went into the practice mode to check if the ball speed made a difference and it did, but something still felt very off and I realized it's because the brooms are much slower than they are in the real game
 

Jae ⊹₊ ⋆

Animorphus
Staff
Minecraft IGN: xMye
Auralock Dark Follower Staff Phoenix Serpent Vampire Werewolf Lore Master SPEW Lead Arena Master Lead
#5
Hey I know this suggestion was already accepted and implemented but is there any chance the broom speeds in the practice mode can be changed to mirror the actual game as well? I just went into the practice mode to check if the ball speed made a difference and it did, but something still felt very off and I realized it's because the brooms are much slower than they are in the real game
Hihi @cheddarsoup !!

There is now a broom for seekers which is at the normal speed, which matches the same speed as a regular game!:serpent: