LAN #1 (1-3 October 2010) Feedback Thread

[GigaFuzz]

Here's a thread for you all to post any comments you may have (both positive and negative) regarding the first PC LAN of this year.

Feel free to discuss timetable and scheduling (we've tried various formats over the last few years, trying to find the one that works best), game selection, organisation and any other general points about the LAN.

[brialzebub]

Great people. Some great games. Not enough organised RTS games in my opinion, though there was a wondrous selection of FPS as always ;)

I think (and I know we've tried similar things before) that having a great big list there on the night whether that be projected on the wall or just on plain paper showing suggested games to be played at suggested times would be a great motivator to actually get people playing those games at those times. A good mix of genres on that schedule would probably be a good thing. We should have that at the next one, and then see if people ignore it as usual. :P

You need more drivers, or more incentive for drivers to miss hours of gaming and/or real life running people hither and thither.

[Squall]

Like I already said: Best Lan for me so far - no it wasnt my first one.
I would like to have some kind of Lan Chat to make it easier to speak to people who are just playing around while waiting for the next interesting game for them. Or a tiny program where you could enter a game name and people could click on it if they would like to play it soon. Therefore you wouldn't have to run around and disturb everyone if they want to play an eventually lame game and those people wouldnt have to think of some excuse not to play it without saying it's shit go away :D. (I know some won't have a problem with that but some do so...)
A game timetable would be nice if it's for games that not everyone has. Because if I buy a game just for the lan and it is not even played than I might not like that ;) I don't think that a strict plan is necessary or doable though.

[Korin]

I did consider scheduling games, but wasn't sure how well that would work out. In hindsight, though we always had something going on, I think for future events, we'll draft up a general timetable for games, which folk can feel free to follow or ignore as they see fit.

It may even be worth having two different games running, for people who don't have certain ones. Whilst I don't mind trawling Reddit whilst everyone else plays L4D2, it'd be cool to have some alternative which others are playing. ;)

Brian: All in favour of different games, or at least alternating between FPSes and other games. I know, everyone's said it a thousand times, that the majority love FPSes, but we had folk playing Warcraft 3, Split Second, Plain Sight, Gang Garrison, Worms.. almost got a round of Red Alert 2 going. It should be fairly easy to split up and stagger games so that there is almost always an FPS going, but something else for folk who are tired of pew-pew-pewing the marine corps. ;)

Anyway. I'll try and get Michael to write down instructions for Courtney to set up our internet access, so we don't end up internet-free on the Friday night. It is a joke that a LAN needs internet access to play LAN games, but that's the way things are nowadays. Hopefully if we can get internet access from 8pm on Friday, that should set us up for the next 48 hours.

Finally, I'm glad to see everyone there having a great time. We had about 30 people, and a bunch of new folk enjoying themselves. Cheers ears. :)

[To0]

Korin, I know you are new to the gig but read through the previous fresher lan feedback threads. Your issues are the issues of the ages. Worst case speak to a previous president.

[Hex]

Highlights: Big games of TF2 (think we had 20 players on this at one point!) and BF2. Plain Sight proved pretty good fun though Lewis kinda owned everyone at it. Practise will be required...

Lowlights: Lack of scheduling/organisation led to quite a few games getting missed (WiC and Crysis Wars spring to mind). I think as mentioned for next time we'll try and schedule things a bit better.

My only other complaint would be that Minecraft sucked up quite a bit of LAN time but that's very subjective since I don't like the game (clearly others do).

[saladin]

Pause Gaming is now GUMS (Glasgow University Minecraft Society).

[To0]

Minecraft is not a lan game yet, there aren't even mobs in the multiplayer. WTF is the committee playing at! Next they'll let you play wow or some shit.

[Hex]

Ultimately people play what they want to play Peter, we can schedule/organise games but if people want to play something else they can and will.

[ChaosSmurf]

Good games, good times, good people. Streamline it and it'd be rad. I wouldn't mind playing a few more RTS games either, but it's simply not as pick up and play as a server FPS.

I dunno if it'd be possible, but the layout of the room was a little unsocialable. A square or circle of computers would be better for communication, but I doubt it's feasible. It's a minor gripe at most.

[GigaFuzz]

Good games, good times, good people. Streamline it and it'd be rad. I wouldn't mind playing a few more RTS games either, but it's simply not as pick up and play as a server FPS.

I dunno if it'd be possible, but the layout of the room was a little unsocialable. A square or circle of computers would be better for communication, but I doubt it's feasible. It's a minor gripe at most.

We've been using a square layout for most of the recent LANs, and is indeed a lot better, but I'm not sure we could have fit a big enough square for all the people into the space we had (the middle of that end of the Food Factory has to be kept clear due to the fire escape). We'll strongly consider it for the next one, however.

[Octavion]

Minecraft was great fun and the highlight of the LAN for me. Lots of people got involved and created something really awesome. I'll post up the screen shots when I get home. I think it was the perfect Sunday morning/early afternoon game when people wanted to chill out and not be competitive.

Leaving the server as a persistent world across the entire years worth of LANs should result in an interesting evolution of the environment. I know, for one, that Sally and I have some pretty grand plans of multiple watch towers linked to our main tower by glass sky bridges, an under water tram way and water falls flowing down the side of our castle. Also, minecraft is the perfect game to drop into while you're waiting for another game to get going as you can leave at any time with no consequences.

Anyway, enough about Minecraft. The only criticism I have has already been mentioned; more big organised games. The best method for this is to stand on a chair and shout at people to get in a certain game. You can couple the shouting method with a projector with a "now playing" slide for a super effective combo.

[ChaosSmurf]

You can couple the shouting method with a projector with a "now playing" slide for a super effective combo.
A projector just in general would be amazing and awesome, though I'm unsure where we'd put it. Additionally, when we're playing certain games someone could be a spectator and throw up various views on the projector (for example TF2 everyone could see Seemples kicking ass and taking names or CS:S everyone could see Strings being a camping douchebag etc.)

[GigaFuzz]

A projector just in general would be amazing and awesome, though I'm unsure where we'd put it. Additionally, when we're playing certain games someone could be a spectator and throw up various views on the projector (for example TF2 everyone could see Seemples kicking ass and taking names or CS:S everyone could see Strings being a camping douchebag etc.)

Yeah, we've used projectors in the past to good effect. We just had a hitch in getting a screen for this LAN. Hopefully all the new committee teething problems will be ironed out and the next LAN will be a lot smoother.

[To0]

camping

Oh, you are one of those.

[Seemples]

A projector just in general would be amazing and awesome, though I'm unsure where we'd put it. Additionally, when we're playing certain games someone could be a spectator and throw up various views on the projector (for example TF2 everyone could see Seemples kicking ass and taking names or CS:S everyone could see Strings being a camping douchebag etc.)

Would rather see your frickin insane sniper skills, they made me go O.O

As for feedback, I agree with like a schedule where at x time we all hop on to y game because everyone being on Team Fortress was awesome.
Also, if we could get more non-FPS games. The majority of the LAN was fps, so organising some other genres would be sweet, although there is the problem where other genres aren't as drop-in as FPS as someone already said. Peeeeeeeeeeeerhaps, toblo??? :P

Aside from variation/schedule, weekend was awesome, had a blast. Hope to see all at the next one ^^

[Nancymaker]

Pros: Fun, no elitist remarks made about skills, no raging, reasonable variety of games played.

Cons: I was ill and couldn't take part in the Minecraft Build-a-Thon. >_>

Highly anticipating the next LAN or meet, whatever comes first!

[sazzlepops]

I thought it was super funsies. Would be nice not to play so many fps games, cause i'm shite at them (except tf2), although when people weren't playing something i wanted to or didn't have i was quite happy to just play some other game on my own, but i guess that defeats the purpose of a lan. Maybe some diablo clones (titan quest etc.) might be good? Also on here (http://www.tigsource.com/category/multiplayer/), looking through these and some of them seem pretty fun, plus they're free so you don't have to break your bank balance.

[brialzebub]

Good games, good times, good people. Streamline it and it'd be rad. I wouldn't mind playing a few more RTS games either, but it's simply not as pick up and play as a server FPS.

I dunno if it'd be possible, but the layout of the room was a little unsocialable. A square or circle of computers would be better for communication, but I doubt it's feasible. It's a minor gripe at most.

circular tables are shit.

However, with a smaller number of people making everyone face inwards to a square would be nicer. Then you can shout abuse at everyone evenly :)

[Sage]

Had a lot of fun, looking forward to #2. Managed to jump into the Minecraft group screenshot while doing barely any of the work too. ;-)

I suppose I'll be the token devil's advocate and say I quite liked the layout. It actually encouraged (read: forced) people to get out of their seat and go talk to other people to find out which games they wanted to play. It certainly didn't seem to impede anything, going by the Starcraft II games I watched from opposite sides of the room.

It did make team communication in BF2 a little hard though, and I wouldn't mind if you pushed everyone to bring a mic and get on vent for the sake of that (as well as text chat on downtime between games).

[GingerPrinz]

You can get totally serviceable mics for £1 at the little compter shop under the 'hielanman's umbrella' of central station (the green tunnel between union st and hope st)

[Octavion]

It might be worth Pause buying a bunch of cheap mics to lend/sell to people at the LANs. I remember that being quite successful in the past.

[GigaFuzz]

It might be worth Pause buying a bunch of cheap mics to lend/sell to people at the LANs. I remember that being quite successful in the past.

Good call.

[Fil2eFly]

A job lot of mics is a great idea especialy for bf2 n shite like that. Perhaps talk to Graeme @ Kustom perhaps he could get a box cheap or something? Dont ask, Dont get.

[To0]

It might be worth Pause buying a bunch of cheap mics to lend/sell to people at the LANs. I remember that being quite successful in the past.

Your memory of the event is terrible. We got a job lot of cheap mics and they didn't work.

[Korin]

Pro. I'll get on to him this week and see whether he's still interested in coming along. Wonder whether he'd be interested in actually joining in at some of them.. seems a long way to travel for little benefit.

[DAve]

Like I already said: Best Lan for me so far - no it wasnt my first one.
I would like to have some kind of Lan Chat to make it easier to speak to people who are just playing around while waiting for the next interesting game for them. Or a tiny program where you could enter a game name and people could click on it if they would like to play it soon. Therefore you wouldn't have to run around and disturb everyone if they want to play an eventually lame game and those people wouldnt have to think of some excuse not to play it without saying it's shit go away :D. (I know some won't have a problem with that but some do so...)
A game timetable would be nice if it's for games that not everyone has. Because if I buy a game just for the lan and it is not even played than I might not like that ;) I don't think that a strict plan is necessary or doable though.
Those are very good points, and ones that have worked quite well in the past.

I think we had Ventrillo as a Team Speak / chat program in the past, but there's no reason why Pause IRC or something similar can't be used.

I would like to think that we are friendly enough that you can go around and chat to other folk and see what's happening, see other people and ask if you can join games. I was quite shy when I started, so it's not always easy to do!
Which is why a (flexible) schedule can work well if it has games people want to play, of course.

I did consider scheduling games, but wasn't sure how well that would work out. In hindsight, though we always had something going on, I think for future events, we'll draft up a general timetable for games, which folk can feel free to follow or ignore as they see fit.

It may even be worth having two different games running, for people who don't have certain ones. Whilst I don't mind trawling Reddit whilst everyone else plays L4D2, it'd be cool to have some alternative which others are playing. ;)

...

Finally, I'm glad to see everyone there having a great time. We had about 30 people, and a bunch of new folk enjoying themselves. Cheers ears. :)

I felt it was really well organised, and really well attended. A great lan.

That's a good point about two games running at once, not everyone has $game installed, patched or bought.

As for the schedule, you can choose what works and what feels right. There's been previous attempts to do that, but it's something that the committee should probably talk about if they feel it's needed.

Key points for me:

It was a great lan, lots of people and lots of great games
committee members/long-time members occasionally wandering round the lan, and asking new members if they're in games is very useful. It's easy to ignore your fellow gamers if you're in game and having fun.
turning to the chap next to you and introducing yourself is always good. Again, I'm quite shy, but the little things make the difference between a good lan and a great lan.
making sure that new members have games installed ahead of time (and this is where a rough schedule comes in handy too). Helping them with patches/finding servers/getting in a game. They're not n00bs, but probably aren't psychic.
dinner plans - would be great to get somewhere that everyone can eat & chat. Maybe pre-booking somewhere and asking if new members would like to come along too?
Overall, that was one of the most successful first lans, congratulations to the new committee, and hope to see you at the next lan :)


PS. I forgot to pay lan fees. I'll try to paypal, but if I forget, please mug me for double fees at the next lan.

[GingerPrinz]

Pause still has Ventrilo btw DAve. The server details are in the Steam group.

[saladin]

Lewis, Brian and I were rocking a LAN Mumble server at one stage. Unfortunately, the loudness of people playing other games kinda makes it difficult to use.

To be honest, our LANs aren't really big enough to necessitate a voice comms set up - if you can just wander over and talk to the person, or shout, voice comms is a waste of time.

[neogramps]

To be honest, our LANs aren't really big enough to necessitate a voice comms set up - if you can just wander over and talk to the person, or shout, voice comms is a waste of time.

Red1: HEY SNEAK UP BEHIND THEM!
Blue1: I've got a funny feeling they're going to sneak up from behind...

[GigaFuzz]

Voice comms would certainly be useful for games which don't have decent built-in voice comms, like BF2 and CoD4 etc. Source games tend to be ok in that regard though.

The problem is that the newer versions of Vent only support 8 people with their free dedi server, so we're left with the following options:

Older version of Vent, which messes with settings and doesn't support some features like extra mouse buttons.
Mumble - free and actually quite good, but requires people to install and use a program they've probably never seen before
Use the Pause internet Vent server. LAAAAAG.

[brialzebub]

My first time using mumble was at the last lan. I found it intuitive and just as easy to use as vent, once I was told the correct settings.

[Gunder]

Yeah, I think Mumble would be the best solution. It's not exactly rocket science to use.