Well that would be where you come in Zigs... ;-P

Heh, but yeah, we'd have to devise some sort of plan if someone decides to destroy a hot tub or ruin a pool table... Maybe the deposit can hold all of the cabins, but once we are there, someone has to take financial responsibility for each cabin and put it on their credit card (reimbursed by the tournament for the cost of the rental). That way each cabin has someone in it fiscal responsible for its well-being...

I also think that on a whole, we are getting -slightly- more responsible as a group, noting that the police we *not* called in this year. :-P

---

-Jabber

+1

---

-Aztec
aka: "Nate"

But I like the bouncey walls. heh.

+1337

Pack strengths were inconsistent, IR was WAY off and inconsistent, they just werent properly teched zone packs.

ah gotcha .. now that the problems are known maybe they can be fixed? judging from you guys posts then you really love lazer kraze heh heh.

The scorecard screwup really wasn't that bad, as I pointed out to Assassin they just had the hits for/against the wrong way around on one of the sensors... its a scorecard only error, the actual score calculated correctly based on the hit data. That doesn't tell you if a hit you made got as far as the scorecard of course....

Things felt off all over the place there, no range was the worst because you could ignore some people in a position but not others. I could stand in the open not getting shot by someone obviously hitting me, but the same was true for me trying to hit them. It led to crazy situations where players just wouldn't go down...

I did enjoy the site though, the owners were friendly. I'm not sure I agree with needing a different site due to base layout though, while I understand it is a USA Zone thing, it isn't globally like that, most locations in the UK have really odd bases. Having many entrances and exits changes things, but I don't think stops a good player from controlling the base.

This is correct. The laser values on the scorecards were backwards, though your actual score was correct in that regard. The bases however were not scoring properly. Add up a scorecard and tell me how much they were worth.



When was the last UK National Tournament held? I don't think anyone's posted on the Megazone forums in about 8 years at this point. We also emailed and called just about every UK site about worlds and not one person got back to us or showed up. It has nothing to do with exclusively US zone. You should see some of the arguments/debates/discussions the australians have about arena design and changes. lol. I'll run the louisville base blue print and pictures by whitefolks at Nats in a few weeks to get a swedish perspective for you.

+1 (again) LOL, thank you Pete, you explained it far better than I was able to. I say again, are you not incredibly happy that the plan for NATs fell through!?!




No, not really. I mean like most anything they "could" but the fact that they existed at all clearly demonstrated that the willingness to do what is necessary to fix them is not present, as had it been, then the problems would not have existed in the first place.



Specifically as discussed by these other people:



*The range issue is due to the site using stock IR emitters. The ones zone has suck, and burn out rapidly (especially if you use rapid fire in your public settings like that site does), thus they need to be replaced often and wear in dramatically different patterns dependent upon usage. Leading to vast gaps between packs on range, with some shooting the length of an entire arena and others shooting barely 5 feet (this is the same problem we had in a2008 at the PA Nexus site) this was the only problem we expected/knew about going in to the site, however were hoping for it to be less noticeable than normal sites, being this is the Zone beta site and supposedly is far more often teched, and teched better than any other site. We were mistaken about that.

*The IR aim being off is a well known Nexus issue. The laser and IR are not even remotely aligned. There is not even an attempt made by zone to do so, nor physical means available int he gun mold and equipment to do so. According to Zone they both are just mounted facing forward. So alignment means they both happen to face the generally same direction. This is generally one issue that is sort of going to be a fixed factor at Nexus, and one of the aspects that innate system experience should play off an advantage so to speak. However when coupled with the rapidly burned out IR emitters, the issue became massively problematic.

*The IR spread/repeat rate/strength seemed off or random, and was a complete surprise. This issue was separate from the IR emitter and aim issues. Some phasers were shotguns covering a wider arc than normal (nearly approaching qzar in the IR spread), while others had a far narrower beam than is normal for Zone Nexus. With some capable of bouncing off of the walls farther distances or more effectively than others, irrespective of the range issue of that particular pack. For example I had a pack with a range of about 40 feet, the beam was narrower in spread than normal, yet it would not bounce off of walls. Another gun had a range of about 20 feet and a massive shotgun spread, and it seemed to bounce off of walls and still fire the full 20 feet it would in a straight shot.

*Radio dead spots were a surprise, and to me the single largest factor in why I felt that the system should have been discounted. Apparently the site had a single radio modem, located int he tech room aside the vesting room on the first floor in the front of the arena. This was woefully insufficient both in coverage and location, leading to some massive issues along the back side of the arena, the second floor and around blue base (top and bottom). Players were tagging and getting tagged, but entire sides of battles went unrecorded by the computer and scored no points. Thus one player camped in a dead spot would get tagged but their attacker gained no score, yet the tags the camper fired back scored fully normal. I know in one game I personally witnessed over a dozen tags on a player that never showed up on a scoreboard, in another a player was denied the base three times, yet the denial player was shown as having never tagged the base attacker, etc etc.

*The firmware issue was rather a big surprise, though in hindsight we should have suspected it given the nature of the location being the beta site for zone, and what that means in terms of equipment upgrades. Personally I feel this is the second greatest reason for why the system/site should have been dropped, as literally different packs were essentially operating like different systems/versions of zone. Since zone launched Nexus they have tweaked and refined it, creating multiple different versions of the firmware to improve on the system and fix problems discovered along the way. In terms of tournament play this has a created a known issue, wherein no two Nexus locations play exactly alike (in terms of equipment playability). Teams and players have to get a feel for how the system works at a site and design plans and playstyle around that reality, then the next tournament they have to start all over and change/adapt that playstyle to the new reality of that location. However that is when all the packs at a given site possess the SAME firmware. At this location they likely were receiving constant stream of updated packs with the latest firmware leading to a hodgepodge of versions. So at one site you have the full gambit of zone Nexus firmware all sharing the same vesting room. This lead to a whole host of the other noted issues:

--Timing problems, different packs had internal clocks running faster or slower than each other. This is why at game start some packs seemed to come on several seconds before/after others, and during play some packs deactivated for less/more time than others, and some packs shot faster/slower than others. Though the settings were the same for each pack the speed of the clocks were not. During one game figaro and I held our phaser LCD screens up to compare and in the same 7 second time period one pack counted down 8 seconds, while the other counted down 6 seconds.

--Related to the above timing problems, tags on packs resulted in some large variances, wherein some packs could be stunned, then stunned again right away (with apparently no invulnerable period, due to the sped up clock speed), while others seemingly had to wait several shots before they could restun a player (this as a result of a sped up shot speed). In addition this dramatically affected the timing on the up-shot (when a player is able to fire on reactivation) with seemingly every pack running on a different timing.

--Hit locations on some packs were crossed or malfunctioning. At least one pack we confirmed would take hits on the chest and score as a chest hit, but NOT deactivate the pack, but instead cause a stun. Likewise several packs would not properly register back tags or phaser tags. With at least on of those randomly deciding that phaser tags should sometimes equate to an instant deactivation. I reffed at least one game wherein a player who would have tagged base, was denied because of such a situation 9 a tag on their phaser registered as a deactivation, forcing them to evac, a base that was and remained empty).

--For unknown reasons, at least two or three packs would if stunned a second time, immediately reactivate and allow the player to fire, instead of resetting the stun like they should. Thus the pack could not be stun-stun-deac'ed. In addition and related to this, many packs seemed incapable of taking chest hits while stunned (they could and would take hits when active normally, but once ins tun, the chest seemed to stop functioning) yet could be tagged on the back for a deac. Extending from this at least one pack was registering hits on the back as hits on the shoulders and extending the stun, but ONLY if tagged on the back while stunned. Lastly in relation to all this, many packs would not/could not accept additional stuns. So much like infusion once stunned they were effectively shielded.

--Some packs were affected by shot cancellation while others were not, oddly enough not always interacting with just each other. Exactly how or why this occurred is a mystery.

--Wake-up order on the packs varied from pack to pack. With some packs able to fire before they could be tagged and others able to be tagged before they could fire. With lights and sound seemingly thrown random in to the mix, there were probably at least a half dozen different wake-up orders going on at that location. Coupled with the internal clocks being different this means that a standard-timing specific and centric system such as Zone Nexus, did not have standardized timing.

*The settings are the foremost principle based reason that I felt the system should have not been played. The tournament settings were workable, ready, and promised, and then reneged on without warning the day of the event by the site and Zone corporate. The night before at the force location not one word of warning or preparation about this was mentioned, never once was it discussed with us. Those settings while unable to fix all the problems we encountered, specifically lead to more stability in the system than we had, and at the least correct scoring. What we got had reversed scoring on phaser tags, a base denial system that did not score denial points, and base tag deductions that did not count the destroying tag. In addition the stock settings do not allow for the reliable 4 second stuns, thus we were given the headache inducing three second variants.

The injustice of denying us the official and correct (not to mention more stable and better working) tournament settings was equivalent to showing up a site and being told that we are only allowed to field 4 players per team, or three teams will play at a time no exceptions, because the owner/company wants it that way (which incidentally is exactly the reason why we were denied the settings and is equally invalid a reason in both cases). If that ever happened we would call BS and walk out, that is EXACTLY what we should have done at this site, and should do if this ever happens again in the future!

---

-Aztec
aka: "Nate"

I don't remember having this conversation before. I thought i played at Fort Wayne Indiana and i recall it having stairs. My memory could be faulty though.

I remember playing at a Zone in Indiana while i was on tour with a musican theatre company in 2001. It was the first time i'd played on Zone infusion, having played regularly on system-Z v5 (RIP) at the Richmond and Sterling VA locations. I distinctly remember there being stairs on the arena, but that may have been another Indiana Zone arena other then Fort Wayne.



You're misinterrepting what i said. I agree with you that the lazerblaze Nexus gear sucked this year. I'm not at all suggesting that we play again on equipment that crappy.

Do you consider Nexus the equivilant of worlds of wonder gear? Is there such a thing as tournament-worthy Nexus equipment?

You have a lot of hatred toward this site because they screwed up your home system. That sucks. I'm sorry you had a miserable time.

Should Armageddon just boycott Nexus and only play on Infusion?

-Zigs