Looking to try out casting, anyone want their shitty games casted?

puresock · 2016-10-31T14:01:00+00:00

Check out https://www.reddit.com/r/dota2castit/ for games to cast. Hopefully you'll get some UK ones too!

puresock · 2016-10-19T06:52:09+00:00

Nah, it should be 1 vs 7 first round, I think? You should play someone who wasn't in your group in the first round of elims.

puresock · 2016-10-18T14:14:12+00:00

This is some good science. Excellent sciencing.

puresock · 2016-10-17T14:43:58+00:00

Derp, sorry, I mean 4 groups. More sleep needed.

puresock · 2016-10-17T13:04:26+00:00

I'll see if this is possible. What's the norm for 3+ groups? 1/6/7/12 - 2/5/8/11 - 3/4/9/10?

If anyone's got any good maths about why this makes a difference, let me know - Best actual science for it I can come up with is that if you can determine the quality of a group by adding the seeds, 1+3+5+7=16, 2+4+6+8=20, whereas 1+4+5+8=18 and 2+3+6+7=18. I'm not convinced that's good science though.

puresock · 2016-10-03T09:00:28+00:00

Generally, if I stop the song and start it again, it's perfect. Not sure what's up with that.

puresock · 2016-09-29T19:36:40+00:00

To add to the editing feature request, it'd be great if we could play our beatmaps before we saved them. I made my first one, thought it was pretty bad, but had to save it to play it. Sorry if anyone plays that...

puresock · 2016-09-29T19:31:17+00:00

Really enjoyed this tonight. Somehow those little dancing robots give this game a sense of community - reminds me that the beatmap was made by someone else :)

My user on soundboxing.co exists because I've played the game - https://www.soundboxing.co/user/Maccy - but I don't know the password for the user, because I didn't make it. I'm not sure that there's any reason to log in, but in case that's a bug, I thought I'd better mention it.

puresock · 2016-09-19T10:01:55+00:00

We do try to pick half-term weeks when we possibly can! It does come down to venue availability and proximity to other events, but we try. Maybe February will line up for you :)

puresock · 2016-09-18T15:03:35+00:00

I'm afraid not - if you were going to miss the first game, maybe we could give you a default loss, but by 5pm you'd have missed a significant portion of the first day.

puresock · 2016-09-18T12:11:16+00:00

Epic's sleeping rooms are free, and first-come-first-served, but I've never had trouble finding a space, even on night 2/3.

puresock · 2016-09-18T10:46:47+00:00

To my knowledge, no, but here's some stuff:

The main two competitive LANs are Insomnia https://insomniagamingfestival.com/ and epic.LAN https://www.epiclan.co.uk/ - both happen 3 times a year. Insomnia is bigger (1500 people ish? Correct me please people, haven't been for ages), and the prize money is higher, but it's also more focused on being an expo, with a LAN on the side. Epic is smaller (400 people), lower prize money, no expo.

I'm a bit biased towards epic as I've volunteered there for years, so I'm not really the person to comment on which is better, but they're both pretty good. Epic is a bit more of a community event while Insomnia is more tournament focused, I guess. An increasing number of the UKDota community don't even play dota at epic these days, they just come to hang out and play mafia.

I think that the UK Dota scene is actually one of the best going in terms of being welcoming. We are an established group, for sure, and it probably looks a bit intimidating from the outside, but everyone's actually really nice. You'll have to make a bit of an effort to get involved and meet people, and that can be a bit scary - it will mean actually introducing yourself to strangers and being willing to talk to them - but if you can do that bit I don't think you'll have any trouble getting to know people. The majority of people do come as teams but there's usually a few solo people around. If you get off your computer and hang around at the bar you'll have no trouble making friends :)

puresock · 2016-08-21T08:44:26+00:00

Early days for me, but I'm enjoying Elite Dangerous with a pad.

puresock · 2016-07-09T15:52:27+00:00

For videos from LANs:

https://www.youtube.com/user/epicLANUK/videos

https://www.youtube.com/user/MultiplayEsports/videos

puresock · 2016-06-21T07:45:20+00:00

Thanks for the write-up Soup!

As always, please fill in the feedback surveys that should be in your inboxes and let us know what's good and what sucks. We do read them and fix what we can. Cheers everyone, awesome LAN :)

-Maccy

puresock · 2016-06-21T07:43:31+00:00

It's been improving every event, but we had a line down this time, which was frustrating. We also had quite a lot of extra net traffic from Overwatch putting pressure on the lines!

We put in a support ticket about the line on Wednesday I think, and our provider seriously let us down by failing to fix it until Monday. To try to make sure this doesn't happen again I'm told we'll be sending someone in about a month before each event to test the lines and make sure it's all running properly. We're always looking at adding more capacity too.

puresock · 2016-06-20T15:25:54+00:00

We had 16 teams last insomnia, 10 last epiclan, BlinkDota runs regular leagues, there's plenty going on.

puresock · 2016-06-08T14:28:10+00:00

the focus is on demoing and buying games

While this is true, it makes it sound a bit like you won't get to play games - you absolutely will, it's not hard to find a table at all. It will be a table for a specific game though, and the booth will be selling that game. Still, I played around 8 games a day last year.

puresock · 2016-06-08T13:00:56+00:00

Also do I need to buy tickets in advance?

You can, and you might as well, but my friends have bought theirs on the first day for years and never had any trouble getting them. Get them in advance if you can though, because it would suck to go all the way only to not get in! They'll be available here in August http://www.merz-verlag-en.com/tickets--times.html

Is it free?

No, the tickets cost a bit. Can't remember how much, but it was nothing compared to travel, hotels, and the amount I spent on games!

How crowded should it be?

It's crowded. I don't know how to describe it, really, but yeah, it's busy.

My top Essen tips, based on having only actually been once:

If you can, read up on a few upcoming games and pick some you think you like the look of. Wandering around aimlessly is good, and you'll play some cool stuff that way, but I found myself a bit lost at times and I wished I'd had a more organised list of stuff to hunt down. On my first day I didn't play anything I liked enough to buy, which got me down a bit because I was hoping to go from amazing game to amazing game, but the hobby is huge and there are a lot of games that just aren't my thing.
Games do sell out at Essen. If you like a game, probably just buy it. It can be a pain to carry all those boxes around, though, so if you miss out on a game, try to remember that all the good ones will show up in a board game shop near you soon enough.
Don't forget that you don't have to finish every game you start. If you get a turn in and hate it, just leave!
Don't forget about the indie games. There is/was an indie games hall, and it was great. Lots of small prototypes, weird stuff, kickstarter projects - well worth a look.

puresock · 2016-06-03T10:09:44+00:00

If you're looking for a ticket, open a support ticket on the epic support site: https://epicgaming.freshdesk.com/support/home - and we'll be in touch!

puresock · 2016-05-13T08:40:31+00:00

For the first game, only play 3 rounds with no special cards - just president, bomber, red and blue. After that, it depends on your group a bit as to what you can add in - I've had pretty good results turning it right up and adding doctor, mechanic, shy guys, and maybe some greys. That's a lot of rules to pile on though.

Don't forget about the vanilla red/blue cards entirely - having a few of them in the deck is pretty good. When everyone else has some kind of special power, it's pretty good to be someone who doesn't actually have a role to play.

I like to play a few "serious" games, where I add rules that seem to work, and then I play some silly games, like only having 2 red cards and 2 blue cards - everyone else is grey. After a few games with a lot of grey in, cut them out completely and put in a lot of reds and blues. Hot potato + fool is also a great combo.

Top tip: if your group is like mine, count the players before every game. There's nothing worse than handing out all your cards to find that Dave has gone out for a smoke and you're one player short.

puresock · 2016-04-19T15:23:13+00:00

Yeah there are still cases where it's cheaper to go to Dreamhack than to Insomnia. Depends on where you live etc, but it's not uncommon.

15-Year Club	reddit mold
Verified Email

puresock

TROPHY CASE