Hello everyone, get your thinking caps on, the POLL OF 2014 opens early in the New Year. What were your most and least favourite new formats? Can you even name more than five? Tell us… SOON.
Finally a reminder that the Bother’s Bar Mario Kart 8 tournament is TONIGHT:
(Edit: sorry I stuffed this up – setting it to four matches only – first time doing it. So if you’re around a bit later…)
Name: Bother’s Bar Late
Entry code: 3999-4328-8448
Date and time: 28th December, 9:30-11 GMT (that’s 4:30pm EST, for those in the the US)
DLC required.
Open to everyone who wants to and can play. Good luck!
for the next 4 episodes, Paolo Bonolis and Gerry Scotti will host AUA! toghether, then Gerry will take over.
but first, a Christmas special blooper reel: “The secrets of AUA!”
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2dgma7_i-segreti-di-avanti-un-altro-26-dicembre-2014_fun
Did Two Tribes happen this year? If so that’s definitely in with a shot.
Yes it did.
Reminder that the list of new shows this year is at http://ukgameshows.com/ukgs/New_Shows (which will of course be linked in the Poll itself, but for those who are already thinking about it)
ALRIGHT, so for posterity:
Bother’s Bar
1 – Zeus 60 (and that was with the steering wheel, amazingly)
2 – Michael 46
3 – Kamen Duck 45
4 – Terry 42
5 – … 39
6 – Mika 34
7 – BrigBother 31
8 – Scott 27
9 – bubbobz 24
10 – Alex 15
Bother’s Bar LATE
1 – Terry 285
2 – Mika 248
3 – Michael 244
4 – superlumin
5 – Lewis
6 – BrigBother
7 – bubbobz 85
8 – Scott 73
9 – Alex 42
10 – zach 34
Alright, thanks for coming everybody. Some notes:
* DLC tracks – This was the default and it was probably a bit of a dick move not to change it to make everyone have them so they can play as I usually prefer my barrier to entry to be as low as possible. I actually had no idea what would happen if you tried playing without having downloaded them first.
* I stuffed up the first tournament (which is why the top score is only 60) by limiting everyone to four races during the 90 minute period. This certainly wasn’t the intention.
* Grouping and swapping. This caused some costernation – if there are less than 12 people playing you all want to race together – of course. The two options I have on the “mix groups” option are “never” and “every four races” – My fear with picking “never” is that if you join late or get a comms error (which happened to most people) you might forever be waiting for someone else to join your time frame. What I was hoping for with picking “every four matches” is that every fourth game IF there were enough of us to warrant a split it would shake it up a bit, but I wasn’t expecting that to mean “every fourth game personal to you”. I *think* it’s the lesser of two evils, especially if we have more than twelve people playing, even if that means occasionally you’ll have a game with only a few humans and sometimes lots. I don’t know, I suspect the tournament mode is meant for larger groups of people than ours where this would be less of an issue.
Ideally this would work with every race starting on the dot of every fourth minute (say).
* I’m pretty happy with Easy CPU to make up racer numbers. I would certainly listen to people if they wanted to drop to 100cc for future events.
* The other alternative is that everyone becomes a friend of mine and I invite people into a personal room. This would have the mic on between games and it would certainly limit the game size to twelve – we had about 13-14 people across the two tournaments with some no shows from people who said they wanted to come along. I certainly don’t have a problem with having you all as friends and chatting between games, I’m a bit less happy about limiting the game size of a community event.
So not an unqualified success, but certainly fun enough that I’ll probably be doing it again sometime in the future. Will be interested in your thoughts on how to improve the experience.
I’d prefer DLC, but I’m only saying that cause Link’s my main. (Plus, if someone is still playing MK8, and DOESN’T have the DLC… um… why…? :P)
Good of having Easy CPU. They never really felt like part of the race. I’d say keep it at 150cc, but 100’s fine.
There were some issues with that room resetting. Maybe set it to “never”? I always found if it swapped, I was stuck with an empty room, but if I quit and rejoined, I was always put back with the main group (even spectated a match right from the starting line).
Maybe a shorter time, next time, though? 90 minutes felt like a lot, I’d kinda had my fill at the hour mark.
Was still good fun.
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And in other news, apparently I missed the entire season 2 of Quebec Fort Boyard. I was expecting it to be a January launch again, but they’d started it in September. Oh well.
I’ve got to keep an eye out for applications – would give my eye teeth to be on.
Wanted to apply with a French-speaking friend of mine, but I’m in Ontario, he’s in Alberta. >_< Almost convinced him to at least give it a go. Also meant to apply for Amazing Race with him, but lost track of time.
I basically concur with everything Mika says. I was happy with 90 minutes as it gave me time to catch up, but 60’d be fine.
I’d normally agree on the barrier to entry thing, but does anyone who’d be bothered joining in not have the DLC? It’d be a shame to lose Mute City, Hyrule Castle, and Wario’s Mine Thing.
150cc’s good, and the Easy CPU did a good job of filling out numbers whilst largely staying out of the way.
And I think it’d be worth a go selecting “never” for the groups thing, although I see your point if the worry is 14 people play and two are stuck on their own. The swapping thing just seemed odd, though, and we can always do some sort of honour system of a few people dropping out and rejoining if the 12:2 thing happens. As for the private room thing, sounds grand, whatever works best.
Pretty sure you can still use DLC characters and karts – it’s just the courses that aren’t allowed 🙂
Just checked and it looks like DLC gear is ok but courses aren’t.
http://www.gameranx.com/updates/id/25061/article/mario-kart-8-nintendo-explains-how-online-multiplayer-will-work-with-dlc/
I’m ok with this as long as we don’t have races with four Links again. That’s just confusing!
I’ll be repping the Lakitu Brotherhood tonight anyway.
I’ve literally only had the game for like 24 hours by the time this happened so it was a ton of fun to play. Hope to play again soon.
So tempted by this though not sure I’d make the 1st. Are you likely to run this again?
Yes almost certainly. In fact this might be the start of an irregular thing.
Couldn’t make it the first time, and I can’t make it on New Year’s, but if you do this again in the future I’ll be interested.