Hey guys,

Thanks for another LAN. We all really enjoyed ourselves, and we hope you did too.

We appreciate your feedback on how we can improve, so we ask for a brief summary on your thoughts on how we can achieve a better LAN.

We will be conducting an online survey in the coming weeks, and this will also have the door prize attached to it, but in the mean time, let your thoughts flow.

Thanks, and see you on October 9-10!
-the Respawn Team

Does anyone else feel that the atmosphere isn't present anymore..?

This respawn was my first lan party in Melbourne and I know that I enjoyed myself.

Could have done without the cold air-con at times but other than that it was good.

Nothing wrong for me, except the competitions being delayed and such. :/

I also feel like this respawn went way too quick.

the comps are always goin to be hard to get goin on time. there is issues that cant always be forseen and there isnt enough time on the weekend to allow for that. I think the lan was good a lot more ppl stayed up later this time round which was good to see and i only saw a couple of kids in tears so who can complain

Was a great LAN, network was good, power was good. Food and drinks were well priced as usual.

I do have one complaint though. I got repeated threats of booked seat loss if not checked in by 2pm. I had the guy with the iPad come around twice saying if my friends arent here by 2pm then we are going to lose the seats. Both times I told him that they were all on their way (we all live about an hours drive away). Yet, 3 seats away from me there was 4 seats where not a single representative of the group was even there. For the record, they never showed.

When my friends arrived (just before 2) THEY got threatened at the door saying "WE WERE ABOUT TO GIVE YOUR SEAT TO THE NEXT PERSON THAT WALKED IN THE DOOR"

I understand the need for this considering the turn out from the last LAN (the one a few months ago). It wasnt even so much what was being said, it was the attitude about it, it was in the "threat zone" rather than "just for your information zone".
I recommend that you give up the seats of booked groups who dont have any representative there first.

Hey Knuckles,

I apologise for the confusion. Respawn's seat booking policy is that a pre-paid and booked seat is booked for the entire LAN.

Reserved seats for players who have not prepaid are forfeited at 2PM, and I dare say this is where the confusion arose - this was the first time we have implemented a prepay and seat reservation system.

-SirSquidness

can we get lights off at like 10pm people wana sleep and i get glare

^ I think lights off at 10pm is too early.

Anyway, my thoughts on v17... are 'boring'.
All I saw people playing was CoD, CS, TF2 and Blur. Yawn.
I asked a couple times on DC if anyone wanted to play some ARMA II: Operation Arrowhead, but never got a response. It seems the kiddies are too busy playing MSN group conversation to play games.

The CoD comp sucked... getting knocked out by two pro teams straight up is shit.
I wonder, in future, if there should be a serious CoD comp for the pro teams (with prizes) and a simultaneous CoD 'fun' comp for less serious, less experienced teams (with no, or a very minor prize)

So the lower teams can still have some fun without getting obliterated 13-0.
Otherwise, to be honest, there's no real point in the lesser teams even playing in the comp.

I had no interest in any of the funcomps that were run, either.
All boring and/or shit games (subjective, I know).

And the Quake 3 comp is WAY too late. A friend I go with wanted to play in it, but didn't want to sit around 'til 10am just to play. What happened to the original midnight slot for it?

I also had half a row of fuckwits behind me, constantly yelling at each other, yelling shit out to people making announcements, etc. If getting removed from the LAN wasn't a reality, at least one of them would probably be quite injured right now. I was getting quite angry. Though it was amusing joining the CoD server he was in and teamkilling him and hearing him yell, OH WHAT THE HELL THAT SAME GUY KILLED ME AGAIN!!!

As soon as we got there and started setting up, I knew they'd be an issue just from the way they were acting (coupled with half-standing in our way at the time).

Also, with the lower player count, I thought maybe there'd be more spacing down the aisles, but found this wasn't the case. There's still people squeezing through... and I had zero room to set up my steering wheel without blocking the aisle almost entirely to play some decent racing games that aren't that arcade rubbish everyone else was playing... so it was left in the car.

I think that's about all I can think of.

Would you like milk and cookies with that?

On a more serious note, we will look into the best time to do this. Unfortunately some of the competitions (eg, AFK) require venue lighting to actually happen.

10pm is pretty early for sleeping

If it was up to me i'd set 2am-10am as a time for sleeping, with no PA ect during that time

How can we make the event more 'interesting'? We can probably do an announcement over the mic if we want to get any ARMA II games together but I don't know how many other players play it - but we're happy to help organise games.

What would you prefer we play for the shorter games? Blur is a fairly new game, hardly 'yawn'.

That or organise the comp so that less experienced teams get matched together.

In regards to funcomps, we are always open to suggestions, but they should be really common or free to distribute.

Some different games, I feel would be nice.
Like I said, I mentioned ARMA II in DC and nobody responded... though it's a fairly complex, time-consuming game and I guess I didn't really expect a response.

Though ARMA II: Operation Arrowhead is better (it's a standalone expansion), imo.

Some other games I think might be good to play just to change/spice things up a little (not neccessarily for comps or funcomps);
AvP (2010) Infestation.
DiRT 2 - Rally or Trailblazer.
Splinter Cell Chaos Theory Versus (Can be played without installing the single player game so Starforce isn't an issue) - though it's fairly deep and I'm not sure how many people would 'get it'.
Left 4 Dead (does LAN work in this? I don't remember) - the versus type mode.

I dunno, I can't think of anything else.

As for Blur, it's extremely yawn... new or not.
I don't like arcade racers, such as GRID/Blur/Split Second and so on... the only arcade-ish racing game I enjoy is DiRT 2... the rest are all sim racers, like iRacing, GTR2, RBR etc.

I'd mention playing some sim racers, but I sort of already did in my racing games thread... I can't imagine enough players have steering wheels to play them (as on full simulation settings, no driving assists... keyboard and mouse is impossible).

Am I the only person that's sick of playing the same old shit at Respawn? Or are there others? Maybe they're too lazy to post.

I don't know.

Anyway... opinions voiced!
(And make the Q3 comp earlier! )

i here what your saying, unfortunatly most people at lans want games that are simple and easy to get into.

L4D2 scavange could be an option, however lack of time on saturday means ill need to push through some comps into sunday morning.

ill keep people informed

-Dead_Man

Im enjoying my Tt Keyboard, and was a good lan.

Players also should ban the vuvuzella imo, 2am isnt the time nor the place.

Lan was good, speeds were good.
Didn't appreciate the attitude of some admins.
Also, since when are lans over run by 9 year olds?? Got a bit sick of kiddies constantly bumping into mine and my friends seats around me.

i managed to u get a few random games going by asking on dc. L4d for example was one that we played for a while. i also found even walking around seeing what ppl are playing then joining in with that works just gotta get out there.

Everything went well. The games running over time were annoying but that cant really be helped. The steam issued were quite annoying aswell but thats more valves fault, thankfully Sando saved me .


Other than that, twas fun

was a really good lan, apart from steam not working no real issues here. thx guys.

With Double Elim this should not have been the case.... all the good teams win the first round and are in the winners bracket, so you dont have to verse them till they loose a game which should only be semi finals maybe 1/4 finals.

Quake would be very good if we ran it earlier and double elim for the same reason the CoD comp is. It was fun to have the as well as the Duels i think if i run it again same type of thing jsut at a time where 20 people will want to play Start 12pm and run till its done just in between all the other stuff? because it is a game where you can just play a 10 min match then do what ever for a while till the other guy wants to play easy with 1 v 1 stuff

1 of the best respawns so far , i really like how you tackled the issue of people leaning in there seats by increasing the space between tables even if it was just in my area it was nic. but on a sad note there were alot of little kids which were an irrataion but what can you do there is no age restriction.

Should not have been, but seemingly was for my team.

SRsly, whats with the unco people who cant walk down the isles without walking into chairs. my isle was pretty wide and the people behind me left saturday night, and on sunday people were still walking into my chair.

I enjoyed the lan :>

Still thought the competitions have issues but that is something that cannot be helped delays and such, everyone knows it is going to happen. Best thing is for everyone to stop complaining about it and try and make sure their shit is together so it runs as smoothly as possible.

Big issue for me is that i missed ALOT of announcements. I missed the GRiD comp and a few others, not to mention poker. With competitions that you are down on the intranet for the respawn notifier didn't work for me in that sense. I only received two notes on that which were general ones sent out to everyone.

As for I.esus, you setting up your racing wheel is your perogative but don't get cut over it. Honestly that's just selfish of you, you can play them with your wheel. You pay for your spot and to be honest i would rather the rows as they are now then more space and less players. Next time try to reserve a spot in the annex which has more space

I also don't understand your hatred of GRiD lol, I assume it's because you're bad at it? As you should be aware GRiD and DiRT2 are both made by the same studio (codemasters) and have the same engine, physics and interface. Only difference is the STYLE of racing. DiRT is made to be a rally game (just in case you missed that) and that is almost the only form of racing GRiD does not feature for obvious reasons since rally games are fairly popular standalone.

Credit to the eats of tank, food and drink were well priced as usual. I missed the bacon, pancakes and baconcakes at the morning bbq

As for the whole seating arrangment issue, i feel this needs to be sorted out better for next respawn i understand that this was a trial. I feel that the prepay system is good for respawn to ensure they get the money they need to run the event. Lets face it, they need money to run a great event which it normally is.

Respawn has always worked on a first come first served system for registration. While this is not a perfect system IMO it is the best. So keep the prepay system but PLEASE only make the prepay option to the top 400 or whatever the player cap is. It is unfair on those who get bumped down because someone in the waiting list prepays. IF you want to come to respawn you should pay attention as to when the registration opens. If you are unable to register at that time for some reason, either use your phone which most people can nowadays or get a friend to do it for you. This is probably the topic which annoyed me the most because you werent guaranteed a seats unless you were in the top 200 when registration was opened.

Besides that great event guys, and i look forward to attending again

P.S have fun at reloaded guys

while this may sound biased coming from a tf2 player, have you considered moving tf2 to a more prime time spot?

this month i noticed MORE teams registered for tf2 than for css (17 for tf2 as compared to 14 for css), yet the competition was packed with drop outs due to the time slot being in the impossible hours of the morning due to (yet again) other games getting delayed and thus tf2 being delayed

css is a VERY staple game for the lan, and im not implying that it is un-important or should be shafted, im just saying that maybe the priority of the general players of this lan has tf2 at a higher spot than css, but people play css due to the fact its at a good time for them


reguardless otherwise everything was great, we came so late but there was still ample space due to numbers being lowered, pre-paid system worked a charm, saw the soccer and played plenty of smash with friends

the more you make tf2 accessible, the more it will grow!, and css is far from growing (right now at least if you look at teams/month the past few months)

not my decision to make, maybe have a vote or something before v18

I am aware GRID and DiRT 2 are made by the same guys, and that they use the same engine... but they do not use the same physics. Actually, some big name rally guys helped out on DiRT 2 to help tweak the car physics to improve the feel over the really bad car physics that DiRT 1 had.

It's quite different, though I feel the cars still don't slide enough, but it's fun for an arcadey game.


Oh, and I am fine at GRID when using a controller or keyboard... but the car physics still suck, and I do not generally like arcade racing games. DiRT2 is about the only exception.

As for setting up the wheel, what's selfish about keeping the player count at 400 and spacing out the aisles a bit more, to give more walking room for everybody, as well as a little extra general room for people in a position such as my own, who may want to set up a wheel, but currently can't due to space issues?

Either way, it was merely a suggestion... but if it is not taken into consideration I will book seats on the side with the huge walkway next time so I have space to race.

TF2 at 9am Sunday I reckon (or whenever admins wake up). Means more people stay on Sunday, and there shouldn't be much of a clash with starcraft players.

Except for me and I am bad at Starcraft

The problem was last lan we had the poorest turnout for TF2 ever, it was moved to an earlier slot and only had 5 teams register and even with delaying trying to get more teams involved only 3 ended up showing.

moving to an earlier slot was actually counter productive, I believe running it earlier on sunday may show different results as evident by games such as starcraft and Q3 @ V16.

After last lan I wasnt even sure i wanted to waste my time with TF2 but this time showed me different, saying that I just dont have the time or the resources to run TF2 during the day on saturday. I am however looking at moving it onto sunday morning along with a few other comp's aswell, for multiple reasons.

its become my firm belief that I need to spread the comps out more and let people sleep/rest during the night so they are ready to game more in the morning

if there are any issues please let me know

-Dead_Man

This might be an idea. Have an admin or a gopher wander around and report on what people are playing over Notify or the PA.

There's always the option too for people to start a server (or request an admin to start a server) and ask over PA if anyone else wants to play.




Start in offline mode, and try to get online later on in the evening when no-one else is trying. Too many people trying to authenticate at the same time.

I had a great time in the Starcraft comp but my only issue is that there was only 9 people that actually played. I know there's not much you can do considering it's a 12 year old game, but hopefully the SC2 release gets more people interested.

Having it at 9am is fine if you actually sleep 'early', but moving other comps to the same slot as Starcraft could drop the numbers for it even lower, which detracts from the whole competition thing, the same way it did for TF2.

That was my vuvuzela. It was only to be played after one of my friends won a competition / in the Germany vs Argentina match. I was asleep when the "disruption" happened.

My biggest annoince this lan wasn't our fault, it was Valve's, it took me the better part of 5 hours to get mine and 2 of my friends TF2 running, and even then, one of theirs wasn't working by the time the comp came around...

Another point, notifier, it is there but I rarely see updates. Am I wasting what little resources it uses or should it be used more?

Personal experiences:
* Lights were on way too late - 2am is a resonable time to kill them as all comps are suppose to have finished according to the website I read.
* Announcements weren't made for the later comps for when they started, I noticed this especially for poker. Suggestion is for a global announcement for every competition to be made though the notification system as well as the speaker system
* Check-in, I arrived 30 min late with almost no queue to get in. Pre-Paid line was easy and simple. Though I do agree with a option for the players in the top 400 for example for a 400 person lan to be able to pre-pay. This ensures fairness as well as allows people who want to pay to be able to do so.
* Sell nerf guns and bullets at the venue - makes for more fun to shoot the vuvuzella blowers, although I don't think the vuvuzella will show it's face again as it was a world cup thing
* Admins were awesome and to me very helpful, kudos to you for running an awesome event

Very much enjoyed v17!

For what it's worth, I'm strongly opposed to pushing TF2 forward to a Sunday morning timeslot and I equally strongly doubt it will have a positive impact on the amount of participation. In fact, while I can appreciate the need to hold some things on Sunday, I think it's time to accept the reality that 9 AM Sunday is no time for any serious competition because the majority of players either don't sleep or get a very small amount of sleep at Respawn and are in no condition to play competently by then, let alone feeling rested. I would love to participate in a Quake duel tournament and Starcraft, but I don't bother because I'm a zombie in the morning. I definitely wouldn't appreciate it if I had to play my primary competition at such an hour.

Not exactly the solution to the issue a lot of people were having.
Steam was asking many people to log in (even though previously, before coming to Respawn, passwords were saved it was all updated and working fine), so they couldn't even get to starting it in offline mode.

Personally, I had to hook up my N900 to my PC and use it as a modem so I could log in to Steam and set it to Offline mode from there...

Other people used Sando's 3G internets, from what I hear.

Aparently: dont quote me on this but

if you pull the network cable out
log out
log back in again
Start steam

it wants to start in offline mode anyway so?

Just what a friend told me

You know how hard it is to get nerf guns, right? (fyi; it's HARD )

thanks very much everyone

That's only if the login name and password are previously saved.
Though for many, it HAD been previously saved (such as myself), but Steam had wiped it somehow, for some reason. So it asked for the password to log in instead.

So it's impossible to get to offline mode without having logged in online first, for said issue.

It seemed, at least to me, that after running the update, it cleared all saved login information.

5 hours for steam to come on line was really annoying. Not Respawn's fault, just annoying, yes I tried all the snake oil methods.

There were several good things about this LAN compared to the last one.

The reduced number of gamers was welcomed, as there was more room between tables for movement up and down the hall. I think that hall isn't big enuf to safely host a 500 player event.

As I was able to attend on Friday and help set up, I'd like to know who's decision it was to change the max number of gamers from 400 to 450 on Friday night after the tables, power and network had been set up. Sure, we only got 402 overall, but if the extra 50 had showed, there would not have been enuf room for everyone, and still have space for AFK comps.

The pre-pay option was excellent. But I do need to agree with other posts, that the prepay option should've only been available to those in the top 400 registrations. Didn't make it fair to those who got in and registered early.

The decision to limit the number of prepays to 200 is a good decision as well. Allows those without access to electronic payments to still b able to attend the event.

I'm not going to complain about the comps running late, because we all know that there were network issues. I know that gamestah was running his commentary to his site, but I think it was also being multicasted across the entire network. Could this been one of the things causing network issues, or were there other factors involved?

That's all I can think of for the moment, may have more later.

Same as every time I've been there. Great LAN, but fukn hell.. Deoderant people!!!! Do it faggots! I almost dry reached when some bloke came past smelling like a garbage truck after stopping past maccas.

Maybe make it a requirement? lol

tl:dr - V17 was gg but too many smelly peeps

With such late notice, very few of the extra people will ever show up. It's been done before quite a few times. We were almost spot on with our predictions. \o/



Nope. GameStah weren't broadcasting over the network. They were recording and uploading to their website.




On behalf of everyone, I would like to reiterate this.

Even if they were, they would be UDP casting, and we had protection measures in place that meant you only saw that data if you asked for it. (The same went for the VLC Soccer stream oohms so kindly casted for all to see if that was your interest. (R4N, Zardoz and Miniwalks made sure the Cisco gear was configured to ensure this happened).

This was my 4th Respawn and the worst not because of the organizers (they do a great job) but all the little babies yelling crap at the top of their voices.

I'm 32 years old so perhaps i'm getting too old but honestly i can remember being 18 and never being that much of a tool. My four friends and I were on the verge of boiling point in regards to the pointless screaming etc. I understand the intensity of gaming and excitement of killing / defeating your opposition and I’ve been known to yell a thing or two myself but I am now (have always been) aware and considerate of the people surrounding me.

I went home around 2am with a splitting headache. and I can say the turkey's sitting around the back corner in the isle / corridor away from the main area you were "THIS CLOSE" to having you keyboards wrapped around your necks. The only reason i didn't was because i "might consider" coming to respawn again and beating 6 little nerds to a pulp would perhaps see me barred from the event.

Just to make it clear who I was the 4th tall fit older guy from the wall in the corner. We warned you or your mates a few times again about yelling "p3n1s" and other shi1t out nothing at all to do with comps nothing to do with gaming nothing to do with anything except lack of maturity and consideration for others.

The overweight chick with the pink or orange dress and awful tatts you repulse me on every level you have the most vulgar and awful tone to your voice, no vocabulary and your were 98.689% responsible for my headache and early departure. You came and sat next to me as your CSS was not working (just to be clear on who you are) If you want to yell penis over and over again stay home....I had brand new headphones on, with the sound up full with Pantera on in the background and you still managed to penetrate and completely pierce my ear drums. Seriously grow up or at the very least make an attempt to consider others.

The guy with the 46" Sony who decided to play Band Hero... your mates were nice guys and you're probably an OK guy overall but honestly try to have some consideration for others, the noise was impossible to block from our headphones and having 3 of you standing with your Bum's against my friends back (for them) was nothing short of annoying again they were very close to boiling point.

Apart from that and some steam related issue's that my friends had I personally had an OK time.

Just some general advice to others...... I have allot of experience in living at festivals, raves, bush doofs and lots of Hiking and camping in remote area’s with small medium and large groups of people etc and the common thread between these events that "Work" and the events that don't work is people not considering their surrounding environment and more importantly people not considering the people around them.

An occasional in game “scream” no worries, after all we are there to play, but keep the volume reasonable.... but the jokers yelling penis for the sake of it stay home.

We are not at school, this is a fun event there is no teacher or for that matter no real security that i could see.... so consider where you are, who is around you and what "cause and effect" will result in your next action....

If they are using speakers, grab one of the admins from the front desk and they'll investigate it 9Tank would be the best person. or R4n or Zardoz if she is busy).

Have a look in the gaming thread, I've written a small post on how to try to combat the issue the best we can


Actually, whilst they are not visibly present with laminated numbers. One of the admin's and a close friend of the admin team are both registered and appropriately licensed security personnel who can step in and act as security if the need rises. This hasn't happened in the years I've attended events there and in the 5 Respawn events I've helped run. But its there IF its needed.

Serpentine, you sound like the kind of guy I could get along with.

I'm 27, half way to 28, and I hate all the things you mentioned in your post (and like Pantera ).
I was getting real angry at the guys behind me, as I stated in this thread already, yelling stupid shit out to the people making announcements, and yelling at each other, even though they were 1-2 seats away from each other.

Most of that stuff is completely unneccesary... and really made me hate where I was sitting.