Community Summer War

[isoaker]

Side question: what game type(s) are you guys hoping to play? Team One-Hit-Scoring, Free-for-All Survivor, Capture the Flag, etc.? Since pulling this sort of event off would already be a great accomplishment, I'm curious about what would be the preferred game for the community summer war participants!

[SEAL]

I was thinking OHK, CTF, and maybe a few other less-known games, like my Hold the Line (HTL?) game. We can decide on all that after we agree on a location.

By the way, today is my account's creation day! I've been a member here for a year now.

[DX]

I personally prefer to play for score, but I think an event like this would be a great opportunity to test all kinds of game types, especially newer or more obscure ones that most players don't have a chance to try.

[isoaker]

I personally prefer to play for score, but I think an event like this would be a great opportunity to test all kinds of game types, especially newer or more obscure ones that most players don't have a chance to try.

An event like this would be a great chance to test a bunch of things, but there's the simple limit of time; can only play to many games within the time that participants are able to play. Definitely looking forward to seeing how well this works out and reading reports, seeing pics, etc. from the event!

[HBWW]

I constantly have to drum up a mix of game varieties for my own wars; playing the same hit based game the whole time has gotten to be a stale idea, so I'm gaining experience with handing this and could come up with something for the community war. Of course, time and location aside, we still need to agree on weather; if it's too cold, some players (me for example) will get sick. If it's too windy, no one will be able to hit others with any sort of predictability. If it's thunderstorming, it could be dangerous, etc. For time limits, many would exhaust out quickly playing in the type of environments that DX and perhaps M4 plays (a mile stretch of woods for 4v4), so perhaps we should scale down. For my own wars, I can play for 4-6 hours but most who attend are tired of it after 3. We need spawn rules (if we use them) that demand as little movement as possible.

Now for games, we could string together games that are everything from a mix of what everybody plays individually, to the experimental fringes of all groups. Games can have many rules or few. Perhaps each group/individual that attends can weigh in with a game of their choice.

[SEAL]

Yes, weather is definitely something we need to take into account. Around here, it does get pretty windy sometimes, though not so much in the summer. Rain isn't too big a deal for me unless it's coming down really hard, in which case it can sometimes be hard to tell if you got hit or not. Obviously, thunderstorms are out of the question. As far as temperature goes, the coldest it gets around here in the summer is maybe 55-60 degrees (Fahrenheit.), but that's pretty rare. My temperature limit would probably be the mid-50s.

Like I said before, we should probably go with a standard OHK game, and me and my brothers have been wanting to play CTF for a while (We could never get enough people.), and I also want to try out my "Hold the Line" game. Anything else is open to suggestion. I'd rather not have a Free-For-All, since we have so many people, but I'll leave that to popular vote.

Another thing, we probably should try to get to the event as early as possible, so we can get the most out of the day. The problem is, some people have to drive from far away, and would have to drive overnight to get to the event in the morning. We could of course have it over multiple days, but that's only possible for me if we hold it in my area. Any suggestions?

By the way, what exactly is everyone's age range? Ours is 12-16, so we might be some of the younger ones there.

[HBWW]

I'm fine with almost any amount of rain and even light background thunder. Temperatures for me are at least 70°F on a sunny day and 75° if raining or cloudy. I may be willing to step down to 65° if we avoid hoses, soakfests, and other forms of heavy soaking. Either way, I have little tolerance for cold and I've been that way my whole life.

What exactly is a standard one hit game? For us, we always used elimination as the standard, but it got quite stale long ago for wars so we use it sparingly now. Still not sure what rules DX used (can't remember), but I remember them being adapted for large playing fields. Not sure how complicated we can stack up the rules, but I think anything short of bomb/target based assault should work fine. Hold the Line is essentially a version of Soakn' Destroy/Team Conquest (depending on which definition you use; I never solidified their definitions for whatever reason), and with a few adjustments it could work out.

Anyway, I don't want to do elimination at all, at least not for more than 5 short rounds. I'll play CTF and Hold the Line though, given some modifications to it to ensure more interesting balance between assault/defense teams.

My definition of "standard CTF": hit-based game with infinite lives and pre-designated spawn points, flag points, and flag delivery points, all of whose locations are agreed upon by both teams before the match begins. Capture requires flag at home to score. Team may pick up their own flag strictly for the purpose of returning it, but may still be hit and may still attack while doing so. Obviously, anyone hit while carrying a flag must drop it. Upon capture, the round ends so that teams may reset flags, refill, etc. before beginning a new round

Fairly close to iSoaker's own definition, but there may be some differences.

Other rules: We need to decide rules on shields, WBL's, and high-powered homemades (i.e. SuperCannon II). I'm not going to cram such equipment into the RV so I won't be bringing them. We need to find a balance here because most people will have trouble bringing in heavy/large equipment into their cars on such road trips, particularly since they also have to bring enough to arm their team. This is the main rationale behind prohibiting such equipment, but it may be better to allow them if they can be distributed fairly evenly between teams or otherwise used creatively. In particular, if we find a hose we can fire, we may want to play Infection (my version) which a shield is very useful for.

Age range for me/my group is about 18-20 or so.

[DX]

If this summer is anything like last, low temperature shouldn't be a concern. I saw more days over 100 degrees than at any time I can remember in my life. Then again, I was in DC, but still, it was hitting the upper 90s even here within the eastern LI Sound micro-climate, where anything above 85 is uncommon. The coldest I could see it going is the upper 50s, which is the temp right now, and it feels glorious.

I don't care what the weather is really. Water warfare is quite possible in the rain, just use common sense in a thunderstorm (call a lunch break or take shelter or something).

Wind is expected and the results it can produce are often fun or at least, funny. Water guns are better-equipped to deal with wind than any other type of gun since you can drag the stream.

Ridgewood teams gave up OHK in 2004 because it was boring for the people who had been eliminated. We made the OHS gametype to allow those players to keep going while still acknowledging that they'd been hit. When you are hit, the other team gets a point and you are out for an amount of time. Clearing back in is very similar to the rules in Nerf where you have to move to an area near your remaining teammates, but out of any direct fighting. This allows respawning players to get right back into the action when the count is up and no time is wasted in transit. Time was the major weakness of spawn points, which we never even attempted given the amount of time it could potentially have taken (upwards of 30 minutes walking at the Goffle Brook).

Shields suck. Blocking a shot with your gun is legit, though.

A "mortar" restriction could work for WBLs, angled shots only. I don't really care, but younger players might not want to get hit directly by a launcher.

I can probably tolerate more than 24 hours of continuous fighting, so I'm not concerned about time limits. That kind of thing depends on what kind of people show up, what the weather is like, and the such. Regional Nerf wars tend to start between 9 and 10:30 AM. Nerfers tend to be quite liberal about providing places to crash for out of town players, but that kind of thing is very established in that community. Ours seems to be a lot less...trusting. One thing I've really noticed is that people here are afraid to give even the town they live in, while personal info flies all over the place at the Haven. I have a contact list of people I could spend a night or two with from Mass to Virginia, no questions asked. It's kind of sad that water warriors are so much less open. Then again, we don't have historically-established traveling wars and the sheer numbers that Nerf does, so I dunno.

I'm 22. Anyone I bring would be in the teens to twenties range.

[marauder]

War types I play:

V1 - V3 soakfest
V4 1hk capture the flag
V5 & V9 1hk but with respawn points and capture the flag
V6, V7, V8, V10, V11 & DW2 1hk

The most fun was elimination with respawn and capture the flag. The only problem was that in both Vermin Wars 5 and 9 people were cheating on the respawn. This occured more in 9, where we had about 30 something people than it did in 5, which was up to 25 people on the biggest day. I prefer respawn points that are far apart. Otherwise there isn't much of a point to it as people can be back in the action very soon.

There's also the option of adding a jail (like in capture the flag the camp game) to the game. If you get hit, you go to the other team's jail. If you hit something or take something at the other team's base (can't remember what we did) those people at the jail go free. Also, eliminated people can always use cameras to document the battle.

I would love to try other games, but I would prefer the bulk of our battles to be some form of elimination.

I'm 23, and if we play in August there is a good chance none of my friends can go. It's right on the edge of when school starts up again in the south. If I bring people the age range would be between 13 (my cousin) and 25. Probably it will just be me.

[HBWW]

Spawn points aren't a strict concept; they can be applied in very dynamic ways. Teams can be given objects for representing portable/mobile spawn points for example, and rules can be set on where players can spawn with regard to objectives, i.e. if one's flag is away in CTF, they may be ruled to spawn elsewhere. Plus, anyone who's played the Battlefield series knows how they handle spawns; via objective capture points. Of course, the deal with video games is that you don't have to walk all the way back to the spawn, which is a substantial limit of spawn points in water warfare as well as airsoft and other games.

Pure 1HS is difficult; I don't think most people will be able to count their own kills and memorize it in the heat of action and I know that method would not work at all for my own wars. My best way of counting wars was to have counters at each spawn point, but that hasn't worked out yet as those who play in my wars don't like rules. Perhaps if we work out some physical mechanism of counting kills, it may work out. (i.e. if everyone has a water resistant watch they may be able to keep it to set-timer mode and increment the number as they get kills, provided the watch won't automatically revert to the default mode.) However, DX does seem to have a good method for respawning, but seems to lack specifics to prevent abuse.

Not sure if jails are a good idea for CTF. The way I'd handle them is to have teammates able to free their own team members by hand-tagging, like in the traditional CTF game which adds a dimension of tactics where the team must defend their hostages.

Shields seem to be a contentious issue here. I think they're great fun for soakfest games, but from experience, they seem to contribute to hit ambiguity in hit based games; I've had an opponent (from Evangel's team when we warred in 2008) use a shield blaster of some sort and not call the hit when I shot him in the foot. For this reason, I would agree that shields, tarps, etc. should be removed from all hit based games, but should be allowed for any kind of soakfest/invulnerable player based games. Last water war after we broke off into a soakfest, I had to hide behind a very large piece of bubble wrapping (kind of like a tarp) while continuously getting shot up with a hose. It was quite intense and that sort of thing doesn't happen in hit based games.

We need to find out how much time we're going to spend water warring, which should ideally be at least 6-8 hours total. If my friends tire out, they can sleep in the RV or something. Once we have a time block set out, we can allocate time to different games accordingly.

[marauder]

You have some good ideas. I agree with you on shields, and I think the mobile respawn idea sounds fun.

I don't see how kills are difficult to keep track of in 1hk games. I wanted to find my scoresheets for the Vermin Wars and upload them to demonstrate, but I will have to wait til I'm at school to do that. We often had up to 15 vs 15 games or maybe higher, and we didn't have a problem keeping score. Most people aren't going to eliminate 8 people in one game. I don't think, off the top of my head, that I have ever eliminated 8 people in a single game. It's not like in video games were you go around blasting everybody. Many people won't even have a single elimination in some games. I think I averaged around 3 in V5.

[HBWW]

They're not difficult at all, so long as each player gives the slightest damn about doing so. I can't get anyone in my water wars to, though the particular group I'm going on the trip with have never attended my wars so there may be a chance for them. (Not sure how they'd handle jumping head first into a core water warfare game as opposed to something simpler, but I could probably work something out.) I'm not talking about elimination scoring either, I mean for infinite-lives based games. If each team is limited to one spawn point (static or dynamic regardless), it is easy to get an aggregate scores by having players mark some counter when they spawn. When players get a kill, they can also mark counters (or increment the watch timer or whatever) they're carrying to count their kills for them. Players could also count manually during their life and then update a score sheet when they respawn, which is a bit trickier.

Either way, there are lots of ways to do it, but it all depends on casual players' attention spans.

[wetmonkey442]

I like the idea of infinite lives. When you force eliminations on people who are only casual players they tend to get frustrated and not have as much fun.

I've always enjoyed some form of base defense with lopsided teams. If you have a centralized objective with cover and obstacles leading to it, it makes for a dynamic game; the defenders have high ground, stable cover, maybe WBL etc., but they have to cover a lot of possible routes of attack.

[HBWW]

^ Elimination also seems to provide incentive to cheat, even if it isn't completely intentional.

I haven't played enough assault/defense based games, and they do require a time limit, score limit, or some method of elimination. Hold the Line would be a good one to try, though the S&D I play is almost the same thing w/o the elimination of defense players. Weapon tiering will make Hold the Line more interesting; exchange the elimination of defensive players for much better weapons. (i.e. defense gets two hoses, CPS's, while offense only gets, say, nothing more powerful than a FF.)

Does anyone want to try out Invasion? It will be difficult to setup and will require some equipment, but I think it's do-able. It'll be difficult getting some weapon tiers in, but there are ways to work that around. Also, perhaps the Magic Flag would be good to try.

[marauder]

I like the idea of infinite lives. When you force eliminations on people who are only casual players they tend to get frustrated and not have as much fun.

I thought the whole point of this was that we were going to get a bunch of people together who weren't casual players...

I'm with DX, I have no problem fighting in the woods, playing elimination style. As he said, maybe it's just where I'm at in life, early 20s, etc... but then again I've been fighting this way since I was 12. But, I'll honestly be happy with anything.

[HBWW]

^ Well, everyone else I'm coming with probably have never handled a water gun before or don't war regularly, so they could be considered casual and while elimination in a large area of woods with many players is bad for many players (i.e. having to wait out so long), it is far worse for those who haven't played. We should limit elimination games to smaller areas to force engagements to happen more often, and be careful with how we divide elimination versus infinite lives and soakfest. I'm sure everyone coming is in good enough health to play in large areas for a long time, but the issue is whether they will be able to last that long without getting bored of it. Games that generate more action and intense combat instead of encouraging camping, camo, and stealth over an area without any solid cover will be better received. Camo is questionable for us since not everyone will have it, and I'll have to camo my blasters as well. Because of this, I'd like to avoid demanding games in the woods where the only way to avoid being seen is to go prone due to lack of solid cover. (However, you'll be seen anyway without a camoed blaster and what not.)

[wetmonkey442]

I thought the whole point of this was that we were going to get a bunch of people together who weren't casual players...

Older members like you, DX, and myself would have no problem with elimination games. However, I doubt the majority of players who show up will feel the same way.

I have to say, I think locking down the rules and gametypes right now is a waste of time. We will be able to quickly sort out what we are doing when we have a better idea of how many people can come and where we will be meeting.

[HBWW]

We're not necessarily locking down, just gathering ideas and seeing what we can/should do.

[marauder]

We're not necessarily locking down, just gathering ideas and seeing what we can/should do.

This.

And, when I mention elimination and 1hk games, I also am talking about games where you have to respawn, or games where you have a certain number of lives.

[HBWW]

I go by 3 groups: Soakfest (as any game with invulnerability), infinite-lives, and elimination. Elimination technically includes limited lives as that's still elimination; I consider it any game where players can be removed. Soafest/hit-based hybrids may need to be classed separately.