Music is something we will never win at. Not because we suck at choosing music, but because there are 400 different people with 400 different tastes in music. We have tried a variety of different styles at Respawn; the only constant is that people always complain that the music was horrible. The difference this LAN was that there were a few (not many, just a few) people who said they liked the music.

With this in mind, we tend to keep the music at a quiet background noise level - was it too loud? The PA volume is forever getting changed for announcements and such, so regulating the music level is occasionally forgotten.

We also picked the music this LAN because it is generic. It wasn't a niche genre (dubstep, classical, etc). It lacked, for the most part, vocals, which makes it less distracting. It was part of a large compilation of background music, put together for this sort of environment.

That being said, you're welcome to suggest alternative approaches to the problem (this goes for any issues ), just keep in mind that just because you like the music does not guarantee everyone will like it.

tl;dr: 400 people, 400 music tastes, we can't please everyone.

There are a number of admins who handle the lights/heating/etc and for a while all of them were unexpectedly absent or incapable of doing that job for one reason or another. This was just sheer bad luck and unless people like having the lights on probably won't happen again.

This is the polar opposite the behaviour we expect at Respawn. If there is legitimate threats or if any violence occurs, where the admin team is made aware of it, people will be ejected from Respawn. Violence is a 0 tolerance issue.

Thought it would've been obvious but that's exactly right. You CAN'T please everyone. So turn the music off altogether and use it for announcements only.

What kind of music are people expecting to be played at a lan?

we have done that before and get complaints there isnt any background music

Complaints about technoloop.mp3 outnumber complaints about lack of technoloop.mp3 =D

My suggestion is that if music is a must compile a collection of soundtracks from games commonly played and play that.

But I'd rather sit in silence than have a loop playing.

Surely people play their own music anyway?

I got a few things to add, before i do. Harden the FUCK UP. I did not have a wink of sleep, you are going to a LAN, harden up, your grown men. Sleep is for the weak.

Firstly RE: Music. Pop music is called that because it is the only commonly listened to music.. because it is popular. Perhaps that is a better way to go.. or just go via games we like as suggested

Secondly: Fights or close fights. The first fight was early in the night when a girl who was known by the admins and had only turned up to chat it looked like started calling 3 patrons playing WOW with each other, faggets and started insulting them. I for one think this person should no longer be invited back, that is not cool. While i may agree with her statement, i have played the games b4, they can be fun and the people came to leach and play games with mates, they were doing that, good on them. Also, these 3 people LEFT respawn after that point and i DOUBT they will be returning, thanks to someone who DIDN't Pay.

The second fight was early in the morning. One person wanted to take it out side, the other didn't. That person in question had been the target of attacks on "That which shall not be named". While he may have deserved some of those attacks, i think they got to him, considering he was there alone.

Thirdly: Competitions - I have to agree with everyone else. We did get the poker running which i was happy with but i did not hear the announcement of Tron comps etc. Perhaps these fun events can be SCHEDULED?! So we have time to prep with the games etc.

Fourth: Schedule. I am unaware if this was posted but i could not find it the day before hand, only found a thread asking for it and an admin saying not made yet or something? I turned up late for CS comp and missed (my own fault) but i would have made the effort to get there for it if i knew =/ *Update* - http://respawn.com.au/forums/index.php?showtopic=2095


Fifth: Door prize or random prizes during the night. Calling out people from the crowd and introducing them with like a 3-5 question (funny) questionaire on the mic would be fun. We get to know knew people, their name on 'that which shall not be named' and hear what they play and just general answers to 3 fun questions like 'if you could sleep with anyone right now who would it be..' Obviously cant really ask all girls that but yeah Also didn't see anyone doing Stacking competitions this time. Disappointing!

Those are the Bad

Now to focus on the Good

Admins were very helpful and whenever i wanted to purchase something, i was served faster than Maccas drive through, which is a plus.

Pizza delivery on time, i lost my items and the admins were helpful enough to find my order and get it processed very fast! Me love foood!

DR PEPPPPPPER <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

Lots of attractive female gamers. Not that there isn't always, it was nice to not enter a sausage sizzle.. you know?

The racks. Enough said! Not referring to above comment.

The price. I spend more going to the movies.

Sando. My asian luver <3.

Toilets - Lots of toilet rolls this time

Hope this is construstive and helps.
Cheers
Drew

Maybe mysterious, distorted hammering beat and fuzzy vibe with something that also has a dance beat while still maintaining the central theme.

oh...

This

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-erhDSJXgQ

x 16 hours, please.

But really music was fine. It's not my first choice to listen to everyday, but made for a good background noise.
Also, do people not have headphones and their own music, or do the admins have to hold their hand 100% of the time and force the music down their throats? I have mine on for most of the LAN, works a treat at blocking out most everything.

I put my own music on 5% of the time, I'm surrounded by friends and we arn't all on the same games so we talk to each other etc but if you have music you can't do any of that.

teamspeak.respawn.lan

I forgot to mention i have really really bad hearing and when i listen to music, its 100% awesome volume or nothing

Hey guys,

Thanks to all of you so far who have provided honest feedback. I am part of the overall team but not an admin. Providing your honest feedback helps us make the event more awesome. We want you to love it as much as we do!

Did you sit with friends who haven't seen this? Get them to come and tell us more, we love the feedback!

Thank you all to those who have responded! <3 you!

Cheers

Jeffy

Did a bit of trolling in the chat myself, must admit it was fun but could see it might have been getting to some. Though I think if it is affecting you it would be easy enough to ignore.

If its outside of chat e.g, going up to someone and insulting them, then that's out of line.

Had a fun little flame war with Troll_face but we both knew it was nothing serious, even had a chat to him later on. Also had a guy behind me throwing stuff, but it wasn't serious and if it had annoyed me I'm sure if I told him to stop he would have.

Thanks to soullink for providing pizza, was awesome and if your at the next one I plan on ordering again lol.

Gotta say the 'pro' gamers (hardly) who yell all the time are quite annoying. Would be nice to get there comps out of the way earlier so they cam go home.

hehehe, but the respawn teamspeak server reached it limit, alioth ... We were going to start the cs comp when it went to begin and it was full so we had to move to mumble.

Pros:
- The comps WERE held regardless of Steam's problems.

- The amount of door prizes was better than recent LANs i've attended... I encourage more of this as 1 prize between 400 people isn't something for most of us to get hyped up about.

- Sitting near friendly people who are all up for a chat

- Making new LAN friends, due to the reason above.

- Playing quake3 for the first time... Pity my pc decided to freeze when the actual comp started, but it was pretty fun

- Admins were helpful and nice, as always Thanks, Sando for the fixing of a teammates Steam, Deadman for the organising of the cs comp, and Sirsquid for the changing of server settings for me and my team :3 You guys were awesome <3

- Catching up with peeps from online

Cons:
- The comps were later than originally planned, however luckily for me, they didnt overlap/clash with another event that i might have wanted to play.

- Definately not my taste in music. Keeping both sides of the argument in mind, I agree, it would be pretty quiet and not the same atmosphere if there wasn't music, and I agree that its hard to choose appropriate music for 400 people, BUT choosing techno music is a very specific genre which people will and will not like. Personally, I was getting totally annoyed by the music after the first few hours cause it all sounded the same. Perhaps music pulled from some games? I disagree with the comment about "pop music" above, cause well personally it'd probably make me actually get up and leave,.... I can't stand listening to it for more than an hour straight.... Its a very hard thing to choose music for, and I'm not entirely sure on this topic.

- The arguments, things that ruin the mood. Although, somewhat funny to start with, they are also pretty sad. Sure, I do sorta laugh when I see someone on WoW at a lan... but still, at least they're playing games, unlike those who actually show up to purely leech and not even open a game (I saw a few of these at the lan and was pretty annoyed). Had both the aforementioned arguments crop up behind me at the LAN so its not easy to ignore. PROPS TO SANDO FOR BREAKING IT UP .

- As said above, those who come to purely leech. Should be recorded and refused to future events in preference to the actual gamers. (Would be nice to have, however I know how futile this idea is)

- Lack of hotdogs? I was told they didnt have any left >:( so I settled with a Steak & Cheese Pie (<3)

- THE very bad man WHO THREW A JAM DONUT IN THE MORNING.... IT WENT ALL OVER THE TABLE, MASSIVE BLOB OF JAM ON MY MOUSE PAD (IT SOAKED IN) AND SOMEHOW MANAGED TO MISS THE REST OF MY SETUP (SPLATTER LANDED ON THE EXACT OPPOSITE SIDE OF MY CASE AND SOMEHOW MY OTHER STUFF WAS CLEAN) REGARDLESS, IT WENT ALL OVER MY TOP WHICH I HAD PUT DOWN LIKE 2 MINUTES BEFORE HAND ON MY CHAIR. NOT HAPPY WITH THIS AT ALL! (Excuse the caps + swearing, but this was truely an act committed by a selfish loser who doesn't give a shit about anybody else)
Edited out naughty words - Jeffy

- The first sausage sizzle.... I like the concept, but I spoke to probably 5 different people, who all confirmed my suspicions that they weren't cooked properly. Everybody I asked (with the exception of the 6th one) said they had gotten a stomach ache, and that they HAD eatten a sausage. The 6th person HADN'T eatten a sausage and didnt get a stomach ache.

- The loudness of the music. I know it was meant to be background music, but I could hear it pretty well. More so, it seemed ever present when I was actually ingame trying to listen to footsteps, lol.

~EDIT
OH, forgot these ones:

Pros:
- Having the chance to see these so called "Pro-gamers" play if its relevant to the games I play.

Cons:
- Having poloshirt wearing teams playing and yelling so loud at the event, and then sticking to themselves and not participating with the LAN in anyway possible. As someone said above.
I totally think they should go into the Odeon or whatever it's called if they want to scream constantly like that. Sure, if they did it even now and then it'd be ok,.... but literally after every round was annoying. Can't you guys say to the people who approach you asking if they can hold the event at respawn, "Yes, you can hold it here, on the conditions that; a) you bring enough prizes for at least 2 competitions / door prizes and the teams who participate will be warned to keep the yelling to a minimum." Sure, you're talking to a big company and all, and it isnt really something they can control, but its something that wouldn't hurt to say because its funny how they're ready to sponsor their events, but they wont contribute a heap to the actual event (how much was on offer as prizes to those two pro teams? A vast amount more than what they contributed, I can tell ya that, especially when what they contributed was offset by the participating teams yelling). The pro players should have tried actually talking to people. I walked past a few times to see like 6/7 guys with iM shirts on in a wide circle just talking amongst themselves before they left. They came across as pretty up-themselves . Regardless, I'd still appreciate these contests a heap more if they wouldnt yell all the time and the like.

I didn't see R4N at the lan... :S

Sausages were good, Opium den music was not.

was a bit over the "alpaca" and "come at me bro" comeback...
haha

Last time I was at a Respawn (perhaps v15), I left very early on after someone had tipped a can of lemonade down my computer damaging the Motherboard and Video Card (To cut a long story short, I only realised why my PC was crashing at Respawn when I got home and pulled apart the computer only to find a sugary sticky residue on both the video card, motherboard and fan vent... soon to be confirmed by another person at the LAN who did actually see it happen...). But that aside, it was much more pleasant this time around - perhaps due to what seemed like less people and less complete "idiots".

Pros...

- Network was fantastic compared to my last experience, kudos to the team for setting up a decent, proper network with average speeds between 60-100Mbps.

- Much less use of the microphone (although, I did hear one of the admins on coolaid make 2 absurd announcements "This is an announcement" followed by "This is another announcement"). All in all, it was much better than the screaming down the microphone (pay for your f***ing pizza or else...).

- Car parking arrangements have definitely improved substantially - to those revving their car's in the car park in their family-sedan XR6's and the like, you have no idea how much of an idiot you guys look. I get you're excited, but revving your cars? Just silly >.<

- Gaming! There was actual gaming! Admittedly I did prepare a TF2 ctf server that I believe got used... annoyed I couldn't connect to Steam in the end - so I played some other games like AoE 2, Flatout 2 etc...

- FTP with game backups was quite fast. I guess no one really reads instructions on the net. Suggestion: Perhaps as part of the entry it'd be a good idea to have an A5 printout with some instructions on it for where to find things? I know there's a projector, but it'd be good to get an idea of where things are. I'm sure it'd relieve a few "silly" questions.

- The lack of random "dicks" and "vagina" screamed out every three seconds was a welcome addition Sure, there was heaps of noise from the guys in the Annex and some of the competition gamers behind us, but at least it was contained to a small period.

- Admins appeared to be working on the steam issue. Was good to see someone actively working on it, and in the end managed to get most people on steam to do the competitions.

- Fans early on... the place didn't smell like a boys sports locker room. Extra bonus points for my nose not wanting to depart within 5 minutes of arriving. I guess the various public service announcements for copious amounts of deoderant has paid off.

- Queue - 10 minutes to get everyone processed and through the door was great! Beats the used-to-be 30 minutes!

Cons...

- Last LAN's I have been to, we used to always set up in the annex away from the speakers. This LAN, unfortunately it was entirely reserved (and a speaker shoved in there anyway!!!). I get that "some" people think it's a ghost town without the music, but the problem with background music that a large portion of people hate - you can't get away from it!!! Drove me nuts by about 5PM.

- The abuse in the chat to the dude trying to sell his OCZ 50GB Revodrive was completely uncool. I can't vouch for it's authenticity, but no need to openly abuse the guy!

- Seating Layout - I'm of average build / weight and even I still found it extremely difficult to walk up the aisles. The sheer rudeness of some individuals (you know who you are!) who have the audacity to whinge and moan about having to pull their chair in was utterly appalling.