Dude, v20 LAN appeared to be kinder unorganised. The competitions I did not hear or where not presented as well as they should. People were also getting up all over the place receiving prizes? Still had a fantastic time.

The competitions were unorganized because steam decided to update the most commonly played games on the day, as well as the client itself which pretty much everyone at the venue had.

Not to mention they had staff running around attempting to fix the issues as fast as they could.

Was a good spawn.

No sc1 comp?

Hey Yall,

By now your back at home, looking at that pile of gear you took going "i really cbf putting that back on my desk, i'll deal with it in 3-6 months" (i know i am, and deliberately ignoring the pile of junk in my boot also).

So you lanned, you played some games, tried to win a comp and then nommed on food/drink.

Tell us what you think? Both the good and the bad. Tell us the "10-4 of the event" from your eyes.
Don't go breaking our hearts <3 we're gentle people with feelings too

Do you have a super awesome idea that would make Respawn more awesome?

Tell us all right down below! (press reply)!

Thank you!

Jeffy

Oh my GOD!

The music! What was with the 3 second long technoloop.mp3 playing for the ENTIRE LAN?

Drove me mental. I'd rather listen to Rebecca Black on repeat.

My ears need to be soaped out.

Other than that, very good experience.

Competitions seemed a little unorganised this time around. How many 'fun comps' were there exactly? The only one I remember is the MS Paint one. If there wasn't much, maybe there should be more?

Other than that I had a good amount of fun as usual.

It was my first but it was pretty awesome. I plan on going again.

All three regular fun comp organisers were absent this LAN. Attempts were made to organise contingency plans without putting an unreasonable extra load on our already busy team, but unfortunately there was very little interest in helping out.

Steam was a slut and again that is not the fault of the Admin team it is valves.


Unfortunately all the comps got delayed but i assumed this would be the case as it most always is. I ended up playing in COD4 and had no clue as it was the first time ive ever played COD4 Competitive, still came 3rd >:). One thing i wasnt impressed about was the fact that there was no lights out..... it was fucking 4am and still no lights out, wtf!!

steam made the comps very unstable. after getting it working though.. i was surprised how fast it ran afterwards, so props to mrt and deadman for coordinating it after (:

winning the source comp was fun (: very happy with the new headphones

I don't remember them ever turning off the lights...

I enjoyed having the lights on the whole event. Though I did sleep for about 4 hours. Loudest snoring from a female ever up there to btw. Network was good as usual, great job to the guys who set it up every time.

Dominated Tron, had some great battles though. Admins were definitely stressed out so cant blame them for any short comings. As always I had a great time and im already looking forward to the next.

Everything was amazingly awesome, the admin team did a great job as per usual.

sando did a great job at attempting to get the net back up. good job sando.

My personal thanks go out to Jeffy, who tried really hard to get the TF2 comp running as soon as he could. It was greatly appreciated.

I found this to be a most underwhelming respawn lan. If this event is any indication it is quickley going the way of shafted. Bit of a shame. The polaristation of the 4 groups at the lan was not a good sign.

Admins: Just seemed to do there thing and help who was in trouble.

Pro Gamers: Not a real fan of these polo shirt types at a lan if i see more showing up it will be the death of respawn.

Casual Gamer: They looked like they were enjoying a wide range of games. Did not see to many comps run for them bit of a shame as they are the majority type for the lan. I saw Flatout tron and UT run for them Sat night and quake3 run sun morning with like 8 people. If these ppl are not looked after I wonder how long the lan will last.

Leechers: Well we leeched and had a good time network was fast and stable. Not much of a incentive for us to play any of the casual games. Might be a good idea to give prizes away at random for the Casual Comps and not simply for first place to try and get us to play some games.

Just out of curiousity, was every seat filled at v20, or was there some empty spaces (not including prepaid seats). I was all set to attend, but a death in the family put a dampener on that.

Just wondering what needs to happen to entice more people to come along.

Absolutely what about us gamers (you know, the majority of Respawn) who game for fun and not competitively? Sorry, I don't play CoD 24/7 so I can "pwn n00bs".

The pro team came, made a fuckload of noise, and left when they got their money. No input to Respawn whatsoever.

The biggest problem was of course at 3am the lights were on and all anyone could hear was UNST UNST UNST UNST UNST from the looped 3 second music clip.

Music was rubbish, people clearly did not like it so why was it kept going?

The whole event i had to keep one eye on the fools with those nerf guns so i did not cop one in the eye.

Average event.

I came at 6PM after I finished work with my brother, and I had to wait about 15 minutes before I could get 2 adjacent seats, there was only maybe 3-4 single seats left in the venue at that time. Thanks to the girl that left when she did sitting next to priorax, you saved the LAN for my brother and I lol

It's a shame about the steam issues.. valve like to be inconvenient pricks don't they with regards to respawn heh, aside from that there were no issues in getting any games going, the SC2 was nice on Sunday afternoon - I'm hoping next time if people want to play SC2 that they bring their 3G sticks beforehand and something can be organised earlier (or the unthinkable happens and blizzard implement lan mode hah)

I may be alone or in the minority in this but a "no bloody screaming out loud at the top of your voice after 3am" rule would be nice, trying to get a few hours of shuteye above the lan was a little difficult thanks to a select few, maybe next time I'll just bring earplugs

The BBQ was excellent as usual, starting up at just the right times, thank you guys

This is nothing on the running of the event but just a personal observation on the respawn crowd - the chat in the file program that shalt not be named was (unsurprisingly?) infantile and ridiculous, but with people getting riled up about it was really, really stupid imo. I have never seen this at any other lans I've been to in 8 years, although its been close to 18 months since I've been to a respawn- people actually threatening eachother with violence and even acting on it, can't you guys treat each other with a bit more respect and a bit less animosity? (hint to the server runner: implement some wordfilters or something :/) (real admins: don't take this criticism to heart)

Power and network were top notch as usual
I may or may not add to this later but these are my thoughts on this weekends lan, thanks for the well run event

file server chat is the best thing about Respawn.

Polo shirt professionals are definate mood dampeners too. They remind me of the bad guys in a sporting movie.

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.

So sorry precious, some people actually have work on the weekends and would like to keep a sleeping pattern, or at least be awake enough that they don't fall asleep at the wheel on their drive home? Please be considerate of the people around you before mouthing off like a retard

Like I said, next time I'll just bring a pair of earplugs

'the file sharing program' had to be the highlight of the LAN.
Cheers to everyone that participated in the chat.

Was upset at seeing the Quake 3 1v1 comp not go underway, though I think only Ultimate and I wanted to play.

Some comps ran way too long which is probably why we had some people crying over the Call of Duty 4 players, I believe the finals were at 5am? Sorry that it takes more skill than the snake-esque game with a bike that you lot were playing.

A lot of awesome stuff being shared and hilarious when some guy rage quitted 'the file sharing program' after being called out for sharing CP.

Was suprised an admin actually came up to me to tell me to stop trolling yet they said nothing to the man death threatening me. Never seen such a biased monstrosity in my life.

Massive thank you to Lelouche for the nuggets and the guy behind me with the pseudonym starting with V that saved me from dehydration, sorry for being a beggar peasent but it doesn't help when the guy that asked you to play for his CoD4 team didn't end up buying you food or water like he said he would.

If you must know, after 3am i was very very considerate to everyone around me. Also, i was probably one of probably 10 who stayed awake the whole time. I was actually only joking, i slept at the previous respawn but as i snore, went to the back seat of my car to be considerate.

this is the first time iv had people complain about having a speaker in the annex, for some reason people love sitting in there and then complain that cannot hear the announcement. im guessing i should make some rules regarding people competeing in major comps and sitting in the annex

Ambient noise in the Annex:

UNST UNST UNST UNST (techno music)
"YES HEADSHOT! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
UNST UNST UNST UNST
"YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Go to step 1.

Next time I bags the seat further-est away from the arrogant smug "pros" as I possibly can.

oO. I had no idea that any music was playing xD. Must have been hearing "Fuck you! You can't Frag me, You can't frag me, you can't frag me!" so much.

Some of it was me, sorry

I'm OK with the announcements... I think most people would be to be honest (as long as it's not the ridiculous "oh look at me, I have a microphone" style announcements).

Am not saying it wasn't funny but after the 26 million-th time of people screaming at the top of there lungs at 2am had gotten to it's "i am going to kill you" stage.

I did at one stage tried to talk to some of the Admins about an error happening on my computer but where told to go away because they did not know. I understand they where trying to fix the steam and other errors happening all over the event but not one of them had asked me about the error. The problem continued all night that the lan games where impossible to play because of disconnections. The "fun" competitions and the chat did make the night some what amusing.
Over all i had much fun and so cannot wait for the next respawn lan. Just hoping that my computer will not experience the same/any problems.

With this whole music situation, we should go back to what we had back in v14. Really bad 90s/early 00's pop.
The main thing I can remember from that LAN (and it was my first), was my sudden love for Cartoon Heroes - Aqua.