Hey everyone!

well, i really hoped you enjoyed v14!

The team really thrive on knowing what we did well, and it's important for us to also seek feedback about what you thought didn't happen so well!

So this is the official thread for all your thoughts, comments, criticism, questions, etcetc!

Please keep all posts civil and if detail is needed, please go right ahead

thanks very much everyone!

xoTank

Awesome event, streaming of the footy was a great idea. Loved playing tron, such a cool game.
Great prices on drinks up the front, though I must have spent about 10 bucks on orange jucie towards the end lol.

Had a great time guys, cheers for the awesome.
Would've liked to see more fun comps but we got our game on anyways.
Didn't get any delicious BBQ foods - seems someone stole our sausages before we got there. The downsides of playing in the TF2 comp I guess.

One suggestion that we recently had to introduce at LAN'asplode - admins are exempt from winning prizes. Comps can be entered and played in but prizes cannot be won. We learnt the hard way after the admins walked away with all the prizes at our last event!

Looking forward to the next one if I have time/money!

how crafty of you guys to organize the hl2dm comp while i was busy with TF2 :)

I thought it was a bit disturbing having the admins staring at me every time I went to the toilets.

I found it disturbing when someone put redbull on the 3 phase, the admin's concern was it's ability to kill at least 5-6 computers. I think your example was disgusting, it could have hurt people who gives a flying fuck if a computer gets fried.

lol the toilets are on the other end of the hall to where the admins are

unless of course you were using the admin toilet


edit: LOL i didn't know they put up pics above the urinals

Yes agreed. There could have been injury, just as much as there would have been damaged computers. Your point is valid. I'm sure Miniwalks who runs the power network has built/chosen distribution boxes that have safety features so should a liquid (ie: Red Bull) get into the box, it cuts the power safely so nobody gets hurt and touch wood, no surge damages your gear. Because he's quite proud of his power grid (and you'll note its only ever gone down when say someone brings a kettle).

I disagree, if my tertiary education has taught me anything, its that the massive amount of energy in 3 Phase power running through a Red Bull medium, could only result in some sort of superpower and/or mutation.

The TF2 competition has to be run MUCH earlier, the second round didn't start till about 2am, and many teams forfeited because they were just too tired

I suggest it gets swapped with the CSS tournament

This lan, TF2 had about 9 teams, CSS a mere 6. CSS is loosing it's popularity (thank god) and as such, should no longer get the prime time comp spot

not sure where you pulled that number from?

i had 10 teams for CS:S, 11 for COD4 and 12 for TF2 this event

im looking at redoing the schedule again but when i had is setup for this LAN i was banking on 10 CS, 8 tf2 and 18 odd cod4 teams.

at this stage times may change but will probley be similar to this event.

i dont think midnight was to late to run the comp seeing as COD4 and CSS didnt finish until then (3 hours ahead of normal woo)

since CS:S took ONLY 11hours this time, should i run that until 9AM sunday morning?

I do agree with this one... I don't think it's looks professional or fair to be honest. But that's not up to us is it now

As a member of the Respawn team who never wins prizes (thus isn't biased in this comment), for a LAN the size of Resapwn, if I were to win a prize in a competition, I think it's only fair I get the prize. There's enough players that it's the fault of the players if there's no one to beat me, and generally there's enough competition to make me earn the prize. The competitions are picked by what is in high demand, and the rules are made up based on professional league rules.

I'd likewise expect that if I were to be caught cheating, I'd get the same (if not worse) consequences as a normal player.

For a LAN the size of Asplode, where the admin team makes up 1/8th of the LAN (technically speaking), we are almost guaranteed to walk away from it since we pick comps we like to play. They're completely different scenarios.

You can get superpowers? Can you test this and report the outcome?

Yeah, but it doesn't help that the team members choose Maps/Tracks that are being played in the comps. But it doesn't bother me, I just think it looks unfair from other players perspective

i picked the maps/tracks for flatout. maybe we should vote on it next time

While both of these arguments have merit, i would like to add that i have been thinking about how to handle such a situation for a while now. I do see major issues with admins having the opportunity to win prizes, it shouldn't be an admins aim to win a prize that is supplied for lan they run.

However, i also understand that respawn admins do alot of work and deserve some time to enjoy competitions. I tend to play in funcomps, and have a damn good time playing them.

So i shall discuss it with the rest of the Competition team and post a poll on this forum.

Thanks

Gotta admit the random massive applause was god dam hilarious.
i bet none of the admins knew who started it or why it happened.

I speak entirely for myself here, but when I run the TF2 competition, I use the CEVO ruleset and let players request maps to be used during the competition. Apart from those, there aren't really any other variables I could change to my advantage.

This isn't an argument for or against the topic at hand, I'm just clarifying my own position. =)

i believe it was some sort of can stacking or such.

was not as hilarious when one is trying to sleep

I sorry, tank but it was pritty epic how i started a huge round of applause for a can tower falling over.
Also i started the clap the people who had the cans fall down was someone else.
i was pritty impressed i had so many people to clap along for cans falling over.

That is the first and last time i enter the male toilets, unless its to add more posters. I even ran into the female toilets to wash my hands, vigorously!

lol yes i found it weird watching r4n watching me take a piss

I saw the posters too.

It was a pretty good LAN. Didn't really seem all that busy but I dunno I had a good time where I was sitting and such.

i know due 2 the random clapping. then also watching the footy match. i was sitting to techl at this respawn.
that chair isn't coming to next respawn im saving up and buying a camping chair or a new stretcher. that strecher was comfy as to sit on, and sleep on of couse.

The clapping was annoying. You've mentioned it about 8 times across 5 different thread now.

and uve been an ass over 15 diffrent threads now need i complain about that.

Guys, Tank warned you to keep it civil. if you cant she or R4N will need to take further action.

You're right, this dynamic is getting extremely tiring. I'm going to chill out from the forums until the next Respawn, but just be warned - without me holding him back, within a week, 94% of posts will be GIARUS or GIARUS-related spam. Don't come crying to me when your forum is the equivalent of a battered rape victim sobbing in a dark alley, covered in GIARUS' e-jizz.
Cause I'm playing RE5 co-op.

D:

firstly i'd like to say thank you to Tank for doing the vege stuff first, it's really nice to know that my food wasn't contaminated with animal guts and such even though it was a hassle for her.
i have a criticism/comment regarding that though; don't yell at Tank if she hasn't been told til AFTER she's cooked everybody's food that the hall has been filled with sausage smoke. Maybe instead just turn the fans or whatever off, you know, use some common sense.

also, just wondering when the P.A system will be set up in the annex? didn't hear much of anything, and couldn't see the projector (coz, you know, i can't see through walls).

maybe create some sort of... restraining... thing for giarus? i hear duct tape works wonders... (har har, it's a joke)

more contests not to do with computers maybe? iron gut looked fun but disgusting.

i was also looking forward to seeing glow in the dark things. disappointed when there were none.

one more thing... PLEASE never, EVER play that stupid screaming youtube video again, ever. i wasn't sleeping, but i'm pretty sure the people that were wanted to imitate the video.

The bbq smoke I was quite aware of and trying to get rid of before we had a visit from the Fire Brigade unnecessarily. As it turns out, the vent was right next to the BBQ (which I never knew until Zardoz mentioned it to me when I spoke to him about it). In future events, we'll try to cool / vent the venue prior to cooking so it can remain in the OFF position until the BBQ has finished to stop this from reoccuring as it sucked in the BBQ smoke, along with that sweet smell of food at 1am which appeased most.


I think that might be the slightly more difficult to accomplish without LaTrobe redesigning the sound system (as I think the annex was sort of there as a "tag on" hall. I'm not sure if the projection loop we had running can be streamed into the venue via VLC (like the footy was) or not I just dont know, I'm sure we'll find a way to get you the info you need.

great event guys, really enjoyed it and awesome work getting the footy on stream as well!

Great LAN!

Pros:
- Drinks were good price (love the Dr Pepper)
- Footy stream!!! Great Idea!
- Loves the prizes as always

Cons:
- No Call of Duty: World at War (5) server
- Need more players to turn up


Cant wait for the next one!

Cheers

VLC stream didn't work with 3G internet. (An admin kindly explained all of this aswell.)

One thing that annoyed me was the heat of the venue at times and the power board problem.

Nearly cooked my i7

Stop posting crap. It's agitating.

Stay on topic, and KEEP IT CIVIL.

Tank edit: now that wasn't very civil was it......

Loved the Lan

Poker is a must from now on

Great organising Miniwalks, except for the prize

Stupid me coming second, after going all in on a stupid hand

i wanted to enter in that poker touranment but didn't find out about it until it statred

Great event guys and girls! This was my first Respawn LAN. Me and 2 other mates road tripped from Warrnambool were i (along with about 6 others run a LAN here called MorB (Move or Bleed)). When i saw the event on a friends computer and looked at how many the past events had, i was quite impressed and excited, the huge amount of gamers and varities were fantastic and the venue was awesome.

What i liked about the event:

- Big player range, alot of competitors and different types of people, from people that raged when sound was played in game to people that did not care what the out come was, all they wanted was some hardcore gaming.

- Hourly comps FTW! But i missed all of them as i did not hear but the idea and the comps were great

- Ping's was so awesome to have next door! Did you guys organise a deal with them at all?

- A very nice layout of equipment and power was distributed effiently, only one power outage from what i knew and it only affected 6 - 8 players? and was back and up in no time!

- BBQ was a Brilliant idea and i did not see to much smoke, great BBQ from the sounds of it, i missed out lol.

- Football game cast was a fantastic idea!

Things i was not use to/not impressed by:

- Activity of the admins, from what i saw, not many admins were activly walking around looking at gamers and making sure nothing bad is going down, or even to just chat and encourage the players.

- I was not aware that an Admin won a comp. From my experiance as being an Admin, you are there to enjoy the LAN out of passion for games and networking. We let admins in the games and such but they will never win an event as if they wanted a prize, they would be a player, not an Admin. Your here because you want to let people come, and conquer. Who wants to come to a LAN to be beat by the people who run it? No one! Does not encourage people at all.. Though i can see your idea in the person having enough skills to win is a point, it does not make it right. If you want to prove you are th best, fine, i would to, but dont win the prize..

- As i mentioned, the Game coverage was fantastic, but in way a bit to good, there were so many comps that people signed up for multiple and that delayed the other comps.. would have been great to have a focus game so that there would be one big prize and a big ladder system in which players keep challenging other teams for a certain time length and then tally the points.. Thats one of the ways we do it and it ends up with a full 6 hour comp with everyone playing.. We even force teams to play rather than sit on DC.

- After walking 3 KMs lol, for a ATM i found out there is an ATM just arounf the corner from Pings.. The lady working there showed me. >.<

Overall i liked the venue, it was a bigger experiance and the road trip was fun! The LAN was fun and the people made it very interesting.

I would like to see some Respawn Admins at one of our events www.morblans.com

glad you liked it, i thought it was fairly funny at one point seeing a guy rage in CS:S while eating a pizza



these have always been a great success when run. so much fun to be had.


dont think so. if you mean the cafe down the stairs i dont think theyre normally open on weekends


thats Miniwalks and his team handywork, they do an awsome job!!


the BBQ is something that respawn has run since i started going as a player back in V4. Tank does an awsome job with that

the TV stream was a first at this event, we will look into having it run more often
Things i was not use to/not impressed by:



admins were walking around occasionally, however with an event this size most of us are far to busy from 10AM onwards to get a chance to walk around much, but i know for a fact Zardoz does this fairly often.

please realise, not everyone that sits up the front is an admin, we have a fair few people that just wish to help where they can.



that was me, and after complaints from players probley wont happen again. we had some complaints from players just for us entering the comps aswell.



with an event this size thats near impossible to accomplish, moving to a points based system takes out some of the fun imo,

i dont see why the admins cant be treated the same as everyone else, like theyre there to have fun just like everyone else, not spend their entire weekend on making sure things run (while they do that too)

like the admins deserve to win just as much as any other player, the best player deserves to win, and if that happens to be an admin so be it, either you skill up and beat them, or get over it

the admins are there to play games and have fun too in the end, they can do what they want

i prefer that the admins sit down and play too, makes it feel like theyre a part of us, not some higher up crew that have nothing to do with the rest of us.

and i prefer the admins to be at least semi-decent at their own game too, it shows they have an idea about whats going on and are at least qualified to oversee a tournament based on their games



well other than that, nice to see the tf2 tourney run with less issues than usual, servers were ace, things started on time, played more games this time just sucked to play a finals at like 5am, maybe start the tournament earlier if plausible, hard to fit everything in though

also maybe dont run really similar funcomps/tournaments at the same time, missed out on hl2dm due to tf2 being on at the same time, but earlier had nothing to play due to it being all racing games at the time or such, maybe mix up the genres or something

would like to see some new games brought into the lineup for whats being played each respawn, but i guess theres nothing much thats new and good

yeah. I agree that admins should be allowed to participate in games and win prizes. The only caveat is that they have no more advantage (except skill) than other players. From what I understand, this is the case. Nothing wrong with the best player winning! We're all there to have fun and competing for prizes makes things a lot more competitive and fun!

Door prizes are different, and admins shouldn't be entering that as it doesn't look good that something that's meant to encourage people to come for the whole event goes to an admin - not sure if they do or not.

dont think an admin has ever won a door prize, atleast not since iv been there

id also agree with that statement, the only comps that the admins come close to ever winning is probley flatout2, (oohms isnt an admin) GRiD (iv won this once, tofuboi won last time but he isnt an admin) and maybe sirquidness in TF2.

next lan with flatout im going to make a multipoll for flatout so ppl can vote on the 4 maps that they want in the comp, this way i cannot be accused of rigging the comp

Tank came over and talked to us?

Again i am merley just pointing out some observations that i am use to. I am not saying that Admins do not deserve anything, as we are the body of the LAN and it is because of us it all works. The small fun comps i can understand them and have admins winning them, it is just the big highlighted prizes which we figure the sponsors would like to see there stuff going to gamers, as the Admins should/would be buying there stuff off them if they were a sponsor. But then again, Admins at the ones we run have leet pc's and the gamers range from better than us to DOS.. So we figure all prizes go to them so they can play stuff.

I was loving walking around and seeing half the games run were up full quality lol

We have had MorB vs the LAN. Admins vs whoever. always fun stuff

But there are alot of things here which we have tried but never succesfully worked as our numbers are not the same.

Guys again, great work and will be back next time.

My opinion of admins entering comps and winning prizes: Players are always going to be whiney if they don't win. My personal opinion, let the admins enter comps, and if they win, then they deserve the prize. I don't go to lans for prizes, I go for the fun.

Well that was my first Respawn and I quite enjoyed it

The only thing that really pissed me off was travelling a 450km round trip to this LAN for someone to steal my COH manual (cd-key). I won't be attending again without properly locking shit down as unfortunately with an event of this size, there is always some little fucker that completely disregards how hard we work to buy our stuff, if you're reading this you little fucker, kindly eat shit and die.

Other than that the LAN seemed very organised, I really enjoyed it in fact

The use of the projector was really good for the footy, info and HLTV - as for youtube video's I think the admins should consider that what they might find funny, 300 other people might not.

As for the HDD throwing contest, well it goes to show that a bunch of geeks have the hand eye co-ordination to frag someone into oblivion - yet most couldn't hit a target 5-10 metres away! (I was quite happy that I hit that case at the max distance throwing it PROPERLY lol

Anyway, looking forward to the next one. Might need another 1tb hdd for those linux distro's though

EDIT

Also - I should mention that the admins put together a bloody good network/powergrid. Seriously good pings, very stable power grid. Nothing like seeing a LAN hosting more computers than your large corportate office going up and down for a weekend relatively without a hitch (given some stupid fool doesn't break the rules anyway )

TANK - Awesome food, truly You have inspired me in your pancake and bacon ways

And 255 player BF2?! good effort, putting in a request for it next LAN!

Dean it's Joel here.

What's your email dude I have a party this weekend i want you to come too.

ill point one thing out, one of the admins actually borrows a machine coz there laptop doesnt run much else