V29, So how did we do? Options

[R4N]

Hey all,

Please use this thread for any questions/comments on V29, good or bad

I sincerely hope you guys had as much fun as I did!

[m0ns00n]

Hey guys!

It was a great LAN as usual and it felt like the best one we've been to. I really think that is because we skipped competing in the Dota 2 tournament this time. Don't get me wrong, playing the Dota 2 tourney is great but you just miss out on so much when you're in Dota 2 all night. Maybe that just comes down to personal preference but playing in some of the smaller comps with lots of different people was great.

Of course, I have to mention our seating arrangement was buggered up because on the excel spreadsheet we had only been assigned 5+5 instead of 6+6 seats and then a group got placed overlapping on one seat we were supposed to have. I know it's something I could have spotted before we rocked up to the LAN but I did not pay enough attention to that small detail. Thank you to Zardoz and the other people who helped move another table in. Especially StoicWilly who relocated at our personal request so he wasn't in the middle of our group.

I wanna mention the CS:GG comp was pretty awful. For starters, the actual mod being used isn't even the standard one that everyone plays online. Rounds instead of deathmatch, collision on and starting with glock instead of awp. The actual running of the comp was pretty horrible too. Sure, there were server issues but that was dealt with well. I'm talking about having someone say over the mic they'll let us know when the servers are live and sometime later the server restarts and a couple of rounds in it is said the servers are now live. You just can't call the servers live if they have been running before any period of time without a restart.

Now that I mention it, I recall being in the UT2K4 IG server with a mic announcement saying that we're gonna go live soon and having that restart a few minutes later without another announcement. If this is the format by how it's going to be run then at the very least the announcements should be more specific so people know what's going on. If it's not possible to sync the announcements up with the live restarting then it should be properly said 'If you are in Game X Server Y then we will be going LIVE after NEXT server restart.'

It didn't make too much of a difference for me personally but I think on principle competitors should be aware of when they're going live. The safe bet would be to treat every server restart like it's live but then you're more likely to miss out on announcements due to concentrating. The big catch with CS:GG was that the mod wasn't the standard gungame we all know and I thought the server restart was an attempt to put the correct mod on which had failed.

I still believe playing in numerous smaller competitions was great fun and I'm gonna try compete in more of them next time. Oh, I really liked the competitions time-thing on the projector screen too but you guys removed a bunch of details that are usually up on there. I do recall you had to give an announcement regarding http://respawn.lan versus this website for the people who didn't know about it! Maybe if it's possible use it for pizza and BBQ as well so people don't miss out on that! I got myself organised properly this but there's nothing worse than hearing 'The payments for X have closed.' That reminds me, I was in a goddamn competition and someone threatened to eat the last meat lovers pizza which had not been claimed yet. I fucking HATE it when people threaten to eat my food. Don't you fucking dare. I had to get one of my mates, who was also in game, but not in a competition to go up and collect it for me. Let's not forget that meat lovers arrived later on, ya know, after the competitions had booted up again.

Alright, I'm done writing stuff. It was a great LAN as usual even with a few hiccups. Hope some of them smooth out for next time.

[R4N]

I wanna mention the CS:GG comp was pretty awful. For starters, the actual mod being used isn't even the standard one that everyone plays online. Rounds instead of deathmatch, collision on and starting with glock instead of awp. The actual running of the comp was pretty horrible too. Sure, there were server issues but that was dealt with well. I'm talking about having someone say over the mic they'll let us know when the servers are live and sometime later the server restarts and a couple of rounds in it is said the servers are now live. You just can't call the servers live if they have been running before any period of time without a restart.

The CS:GG comp was indeed quite awful. We usually play by "Gungame monash" rules. Which are Rounds/starting with AWP/and instant gun promotions. I'm not sure about whether we usually run with collision on. The server was obviously not in this state, so a bit of miscommunication between the comp guys and the server guys i guess. I'll do my best to ensure that does not happen again. Unfortunately for me gungame always seems to end up not working too well on the day, no matter how much work we put towards rectifying the problem. We'll keep working at it!

if it's not possible to sync the announcements up with the live restarting then it should be properly said 'If you are in Game X Server Y then we will be going LIVE after NEXT server restart.'

Point taken, i try to get announcements as close to server restarts as possible. We are working on a more automated platform for server launching/management which should make a lot of these problems much easier for us to solve. Watch this space!

there's nothing worse than hearing 'The payments for X have closed.' That reminds me, I was in a goddamn competition and someone threatened to eat the last meat lovers pizza which had not been claimed yet. I fucking HATE it when people threaten to eat my food. Don't you fucking dare. I had to get one of my mates, who was also in game, but not in a competition to go up and collect it for me. Let's not forget that meat lovers arrived later on, ya know, after the competitions had booted up again.

I'll admit that joke got old about 3 lans ago. I promise to retire it from here on out. (No one would actually eat someone elses pizza... that would just be rude)

[Aulzon]

The LoL was very apalling, single elim with around 6-8 teams.

We were the winners for the previous two and we enjoyed it casue we got to play numberous games competitively.

We had a bad game but would of came back in the bo3 but it wasnt there. we only got to play 1 game and didnt get to prove ourselfs.

The fun isnt in getting the prize. the fun is the adrenlin of having something on the line and fighting for it through numerous games, we want to play against the same team more. We came the respawn for FUN and the EXPERIENCE. and the lol comp was just a joke being single elim.
we left straight after, woulda been happy with 5-6 games and called the event great.

please make it better next time.

[xargon]

Was a great lan guys, best one I have been to so far. The comps seem to have better structure and be organised better than they have been in the past( played ut2k4, gird, cs:gg, flatout). The counter on the main projector indicating when the next comp was starting was fantastic. I agree with all m0ns00n's comments regarding cs:gg except I was relatively aware the server had gone live when it did. That's a pretty easy thing to look past though when one considers how well the rest of the night ran, well done . Look forward to seeing you in April (or perhaps march for some old skool gaming? ).

[xargon]

woops double post

[SaddaM]

The LAN wasn't to bad overall, the atmosphere was great and the people just amazing, it's actually kind of refreshing that since you dropped COD4 as a competition the amount of people screaming for no god damn reason seemed to have died (It's quite possibly I'm a few LANs late, but my god, I appreciate the peace).

The AFK comps were pretty sweet too, Melee was fun, and Cards against humanity is always a barrel of laughs. A suggestion though (even if we brought our own) would be hosting a variety of popular board games such as Monopoly or even Jenga could be a hit.

The main irritation that I had this LAN was the competition organization. It was more indirectly frustrating but, I was apart of the LoL team that came in second place, during the time of running the competition we were told that some competitions we initially signed up will run during the LoL competition, we just said we'd forfeit them (This isn't the irritation as I completely understand else you wouldn't be able to complete all of them by the end of the LAN) however, we were told that the 1v1 LoL Tournament wouldn't start until the 5v5 tournament was finished. Then as we're half way through the 2nd Game of the final the winners for the 1v1 tournament were being given the prizes. I just don't understand why you would host your second league competition while you have 10 people (with a guaranteed 5 from our team) who were keen to play in it already a tournament from that game, besides the fact we cleared it with the organizer who told us it wouldn't start until it was done. Honestly though, I'm not even annoyed we didn't get a supplementary prize for coming in second, even though it has happened with CS/Starcraft in previous LANs as well as this LAN (starcraft anyway) as I heard the reason for not accommodating for runners up, as it wasn't feasible and completely justified. But if I was completely driven by prizes, I would of dropped from my team to play in the 1v1 competition after the 1st game which we lost, just so I could of played in the 1v1 comp. It's just that broken promise that's irritated me.

Besides that, another great LAN :>.

Excuse the horrible formatting too, I haven't slept.

[BlurryBird]

The good

• No power issues during the event
• Prizes were awesome as usual
• Food was awesome as usual
• 90% of problems that arose were dealt with in record time... as usual
• Announcements were better than previous events
• Projector on the back wall was an excellent idea
• Running spreadsheet with a countdown timer for the comps made more people notice they exist - good idea for sure

The bad
Prefaced by saying this is not directed to anyone in particular and not any one person's fault.

• Seat bookings were a bit of a struggle this time
• Projector sheets kept falling down mid-event
• Scorptec left extremely early - far earlier than even their store trading hours for that day
• Announcements were often missed because of noise or talking around us (back corner)
• CS:GG was a bit of an annoyance but nothing too major
• A bit cramped in terms of seating space but that's fairly normal - It was definitely better than previous events and I'm probably just wishfully thinking about a larger venue.

The suggestions

• I'm more than happy to take over seat booking management for the next event if anyone wants me too. As long as the gdocs-fu part of it for the layout and updating image is done already. I'm always on the IRC (Y)
• Investing in some good quality rear projection screens for the annex is a good idea if those projectors are going to be continued
• Scorptec should not leave early and clearly state their trading hours somewhere for the event. I know at least one person who missed out on spending a few hundred their way because of them leaving
• Either develop a voice-based client/server program or use mumble but then make it a requirement to have it installed and running before you are allowed internet access. This allows announcements to be spoken into the mic and somehow relayed back across mumble too? Would be awesome to be able to have them come through my headphones or popup as balloon tip. I know respawn notify exists but I hear that is hard to manage. Excellent idea though and needs to be revived!
• Possibly make the sponsors area more 'center stage' next time so they get more attention, I was honestly thinking I'd prefer more sponsors and then have them all well lit under the annex but that cuts about 50 players and probably isn't the best idea.
• Getting access to the overhead room that already has a video camera in it for the timelapse purposes, I heard this timelapse got knocked and so that would alleviate this issue as well as security and safety of the equipment It would also have a much better view angle.
• Better organisation of the annex/unofficial sleeping area. I know a few friends resorted to sleeping under their table due to no room from people taking up far more room than needed. Not sure how to fix this issue, just that it's a suggestion of something to look into. Also a pile of those gym mats for free use would be nice. They make great single mattresses!

Again these are just a few things I thought of during this event, as usual it was a great weekend and I thoroughly enjoyed every moment (Including pack-up and teardown)! I'm always in the IRC (#respawn on GameSurge.net) so I'm happy to talk about possibly doing the seat bookings or anything else I've wrote here.

There's probably more but I'm still recovering from the weekend and can't think straight, will add it as a new reply if I do

Can't wait for the next one!

[Bangers]

Cons:
-The MOBA tournaments need a bit of work - I played Dota 2, and my team got stomped in the first round in about 15 minutes by the eventual winners - would be great to have a DE bracket for these, because it kind of sucks to only get one competitive Bo1 series to play all night...

A few people have mentioned this and we are happy to take this kind of advice on board. The problem with scheduling a DE bracket is time. Some people come to respawn with a team of 5 and are happy to spend 9+ hours in a LoL or DOTA tournament. Others want to try their luck but do not want their entire LAN experience to be a single game. Depending on team numbers, single elim gives us the ability to strike a good balance between these 2 games. On the other hand it means casual teams get less matches. It is almost a catch 22 in a way, if i went DE someone would complain it went far too long

We usually base this decision on team numbers. If we get an even bracket, or the team count is small, DE is easy. With an odd bracket (say 14 teams) a DE tournament will go all night.

(R4N edit: 2, looks like we can't restore posts. Apologies Bangers )

[Jen]

Hey Guys,

Jen here (yep I'm that strange person who took over from Jeffy LOL), anyway, with regards to LOL and DOTA, I always consult with many people and try to make it as fun as I can. I agree with the comments made by Aulzon about "one game gets really boring". So here is where I was for v29...

When we started considering our brackets, we only had a few teams signed up. Then the wonderful R4N pimped it and we got 8 teams. I think next time I'll consider BO3 for the entirety of the bracket where <10 teams apply. Or possibly even the double elimination. The careful issue I always have to consider, especially with League is that, if you get carefully matchmade games, they can blow out to an hour each without even trying. So if I have a round 1 matched game on BO3, we instantly lose 3 hours of the day without even trying.

So please understand, I want you all to have fun, I want everyone to get a couple or more games with their teams. I just have to be super careful, because the last time I did DE, I had 16 teams and it dragged on until almost 2am Sunday morning. So it's a really careful balance, I think going forward there will be a consultation session with team captains to discuss their wants/needs/concerns etc and then we can put a plan in place. It's all about careful balance, because I know some of you want to play CS:GO, Some wanted to play DOTA2, and others were content with just League.

Hope this gives you a bit of an insight to the constant battle I have when trying to balance the wants of the player to have some awesome games, and the needs of the event not to have something go way over time and drag into the early hours of the morning where everyone is cranky and just wants to give up lol.

Cheers

Jen

[Plasia]

Scorptec left too early. Was going to buy some things but they vanished.

MTG was awesome fun, except for the huge delays.

The support for couchwarriors was top notch, thanks.

My feedback for the melee event I'll give in the smash comp thread.

[RedIon1992]

MTG was awesome fun, except for the huge delays.

I have to apologise for this - I somewhat fell into helping run it (I was the guy handling pairings), and wasn't willing to give up the FlatOut competition, while Zardoz was also needed to host servers for it. If we do run a draft at v30, I suggest that it's done during the day, rather than during prime time for competition.