Clan night tonight. 8pm PT. Left 4 Dead 2.

Hope everyone had a spoiled Christmas and got lots of fun toys.  I sure did.  =D  Zombies this week as it seems like everyone is in town.  Due to popular demand, I'll try to host one zombie clan night a month, targeting the last Tuesday of each month.  Remember that we use an XBL Chat Party with zombies so that we can talk to each other.  If you've forgotten, review some of the old clan posts:

• Parties, Parties, Parties
• L4D2 Weapons and Items
• First Come, First Served
• Clan Night Waiting List
• L4D Etiquette
• L4D n00b Q&A
• L4D Party Management

Weekly Challenge: This Is How We Do It

This week, Bungie is offering 10,000 cR for finishing 9 Campaign levels on Heroic.  If you haven't finished the Campaign yet, 9 levels is exactly how many it takes to play the whole game through, so this week would be a good time to do so.  If you've been paying attention to the blog, you'll already know the easiest way to get this done.  I finished in about 30 minutes.

Clan night tonight. 8pm PT. Halo Reach.

Still with a few absences and BeerMonkeee wants his confetti, so Halo again this week.

Jerk Rating

Anybody who has spent any time within Halo Reach is intimately with Assassinations, sweet-ass animations that you can trigger if you are able to get behind somebody and hit the kill button.  They are fun as hell when you are delivering them, and extra embarrassing when you are the recipient.  The animation is a reward and celebration of sorts because assassinations can be pretty hard to come by.  A key component of the assassination is that both players are vulnerable to fire during the animation, which means either killer or killee may be killed before the animation completes, effectively stealing the kill.  If your teammate is assassinating somebody and you kill their victim before they finish, it is called a Yoink and Bungie awards a special medal for that.  As funny as it is sometimes, it's totally a dick move.  If you save your teammate by killing an opponent who is in the midst of assassinating them, it is called a Showstopper and Bungie awards a special medal for that as well.  Showstoppers are hard to get and awarded for exceptional teamwork on the battlefield.

Given these two stats, I have developed a "Jerk Rating" to see who Yoinks and Showstoppers the most in our clan:

As you can see from the table, FragginURdoodz is clearly the biggest Jerk in the clan with a 6.9 Jerk Rating, highest Yoinks Per Game ratio, and only 1 career Showstopper to balance it out.  OmniscientDeath and darknorpo come in a close second.  OD claiming the clan high of 21 Yoinks and norpo logging a surprising 0 Showstoppers.  MEAN MR MONKEY is amongst the nicest team players when it comes to Jerk Rating.

Headsets

Please make sure that you have a working and reliable headset for playing clan games.  The expectation is that you can reliably hear people talking, people can reliably hear you talking, you don't consistently create an echo and that you don't generate excessive noise on the line (like static or whistling).  Having a working headset is NOT OPTIONAL for clan night and clan games.  It is absolutely imperative that we can talk to you, or at a minimum, get confirmation that you can hear us.  If your headset breaks on clan night and you can't get it replaced in time, it's ok to send me an Xbox Live text message to reply to questions, but that's really tedious long term.

I fully understand that the standard Xbox headset sucks and breaks often, but they are cheap to replace, so please get it fixed.  PlayItNow has replacement headsets for less than $8 including shipping via Amazon.  I do NOT recommend the wireless headset because they are plagued with really annoying noise/whistling problems that affect everybody else more than you.  The Turtle Beach headphones with integrated mics do a decent job, but they do exhibit wonky behavior as their batteries start to die.  The Plantronics Halo 2 special edition is still the best and most reliable headset I've ever used, but requires an adapter for the Xbox 360 controller.  Mine is still working well today, something like six years later.  The new Plantronics Gamecom X30 is a piece of garbage, and I would NOT recommend buying it.

If you think you have a problem with your headset, try recording a voice message and playing it back to yourself.  Other people generally have a better idea than you do if you have a problem.  It's often very obvious which person in the party is causing the problems because their speaker icon lights up with the noise, or they're the only ones not talking.

Please Be a Team Player

Occasionally, I will ask the clan to work together and leverage our advantage in numbers to do stuff.  This is typically centered around achievements, but may also be for in-game challenges or other entertaining tasks.  I try to make it as fair as possible so that people don't get bored and so that everybody who wants to get the achievement or challenge has the opportunity to do so.  I ask you to please be patient, participate, and be a team player, or excuse yourself from the party until we are done.  Most of us learned in Kindergarten that sometimes we have to play a game that somebody else chooses, even if it's not our first choice.  Please remember that lesson.

• Achievements: There are a handful of achievements in each game that are a lot easier if you have friends to help you boost for them.  When those opportunities present themselves, I will generally coordinate the clan to help.  If you know we are boosting for achievements, please help, or at a minimum, don't hinder the progress.  As an example, an achievement will often require a special kind of kill, so we'll have dummies line up in a configuration to make that a lot easier and have other folks setup to get the easy kill.  Unless it's your turn to get the achievement, don't kill the dummies.  Definitely don't kill the people trying to get the achievement.  If we have enough people, you don't always have to be a dummy if you'd rather do something else, but don't ruin it for others.
• Wins for the Clan: Based on the blog poll, when we have 5-6 folks on-line, people would prefer to be split up into separate 4v4 teams rather than play on the same team in Invasion.  If there is a daily challenge requiring a certain number of wins, I will ask those on the other team (1-2 players) to sandbag so that the 4-player clan team can log a win.  Because of the skill disparity within the clan, we will typically be matched against random players at a higher skill level than many of the folks playing on clan night, so this is the most efficient way to log wins for the most people.  It can be boring to sandbag, and you don't want to get booted for obvious griefing or betrayals, so the standard rule is to allow assassinations only when you're on the other team.  This basically makes it a 4v3 or 4v2 game so that the clan team has the best chance of winning, and also gives the sandbagging players something incredibly entertaining to do while they wait.  I think we can all agree that it's hilarious to assassinate your friends and then laugh in party chat while you abuse their body.  It REALLY sucks if the sandbaggers don't play nice.  If AT ANY POINT the 4-player clan team is losing, or winning by less than 10 kills, I will take exception to any sandbaggers that aren't playing nice.  That includes:
• Getting kills with guns or grenades
• Punching people in the face
• Working on "assists" (unless there's a challenge, in which case I may allow this on a case-by-case basis)

If you're worried about your K/D ratio, you can go hide in a corner.  Getting kills with guns or grenades means you're explicitly not following the clan rules.  Punching people in the face is fine if you're following somebody and they turn around at the last second, but don't punch them again in the face for the kill.  The proper thing to do is to run away if you can't get behind them -- if you die, you're helping the clan. Assassinations are hard to get.  THAT'S THE POINT.  When available, I will try to pick games like Slayer Pro where there's no radar to help folks get their assassinations.

Boosting and sandbagging are things we do for the greater good.  If we are on different teams, it just makes sense to help the 4 people log a win, at the cost of 1 or 2 people logging a loss.  Matchmaking does a decent job at shuffling folks around so you're not always the odd man out.  If it's problematic, I will take us into different playlists so people aren't stuck.

As I said above, you always have the option to exclude yourself from the party if you think boosting or sandbagging is lame.  Moving forward, if I have to continually remind somebody to play nicely, I will go ahead and boot/exclude you from the party myself so that you can play a few games on your own.  I want this to be a fun environment for everyone.

Parties, Parties, Parties

With the introduction of Halo Reach, the term "party" has gotten a little confusing on Xbox Live.  I know it can be a little tricky to figure out sometimes, but please bear with us as we work around the technology because it IS useful.  There are two kinds of parties:

1. Xbox Live "chat" party: This is via the Xbox Live interface itself, is title-agnostic, is persistent irrespective of what the game is doing, and people can join from separate games or apps within Xbox Live.  The party system here supports up to 8 people at one time and is for chatting only.  Because it is a chat feature, the chatting is mutually-exclusive with game chat, you can only be chatting in one system or the other.  The implication is that if you are in an XBL chat party, you can't chat with anybody not in the party, even if they're on your team.  In Halo, you'll see the "speaker" icon next to somebody's name turn into a "chat bubble" icon if they're in a separate Xbox Live "chat" party.  You'll see us use this kind of party when we have 8 people or less, and are playing in game types on separate teams.  It's entertaining to be able to chat with everyone in the clan even though we're on separate teams (like in zombies, or 4v4 Halo games).
2. Halo Reach party: This is a mechanic within the Halo game, is title-specific, only applies within Halo Reach, and is how we stay together through matchmaking and other playlists.  The party system here supports up to 16 people at one time, supports chatting as well as keeping friends together from game to game.  In the matchmaking lobby, everybody (up to all 16 people) can chat together.  Once a game starts however, chat is ONLY enabled for the people on your team in that specific game.  This means that if we get split into separate teams, you will not be able to chat with folks on the other team.  That makes it less fun because you miss out on the smack talk, but also makes it much harder to coordinate things like achievement boosting.

People seem to "get" the  Halo Reach party system pretty well and seem to understand how to use the active roster to queue up if you join late.  Most of the confusion stems from around starting and stopping XBL chat parties.  I'll often start these and leave these running, but when we have more than 8 people (like last night), I have to drop out of it so that we can hear our 9th person.  The video below does a good job of showing how to start and join XBL chat parties.  Note that at 1:44 it shows how you can join a chat party without an invite.  This is important because it takes the system several seconds to send each invite and sometimes the invites get lost in the ether.  As a result, I'll send invites to everyone but you may be left by yourself as the only person not in chat if you're actually waiting for the invite to arrive.  Instead, you can join the party proactively and instantly as soon as you see my "speaker" icon change into the "chat bubble."  The video also show you how to start XBL chat parties.  For those of you higher-ranked Halo Reach veterans, you can expect me to promote you to party leader if I need to step away, so you should know how to start and manage chat parties, and when to use them or quit out of them.

As an aside, the active roster is the preferred way for you to join the Halo Reach game party if you're the odd one out.  We occasionally have folks who are having internet problems and need to restart or whatever.  When possible, I will try to take the clan into a custom game where we can fool around while we wait.  The big advantage of this is that you can join a custom game on the fly even if we've already started.  You don't need an invite, just find my name in either the Halo Reach menu or the Xbox Live menu and choose "Join Party" (Halo Reach) or "Join Game" (XBL).

Clan Night Postmortem

Halo Charts has a new Game Aggregator tool that produces some pretty interesting data.  Thought I would share some highlights from clan night last night.  Below is some key stats from our Slayer games (objective games excluded).  Numbers will obviously be tilted slightly for people who were helping the clan while on the other team...

Clan night tonight. 8:30pm PT. Halo Reach.

Several of our zombie regulars are out this week, so I've decided to postpone our zombie action and stick with Halo this week.  Note that I'm also pushing it back to 8:30pm, which seems closer to when we actually get enough people to play.  Expect to see lots of 4v4 Team Slayer, 4v4 Team Objective, and 8v8 Big Team Battle in this weeks' playlists.

For those interested, 2 of 2 people voted for Left for Dead 2.  So I'll plan to schedule that for next week.  If you <3 zombies and will be out, please let me know a better time to schedule zombies.

Iron With Friends

Today features another "Iron With Friends" challenging you to finish a campaign mission on co-op with the Iron skull turned on.  I just discovered that you can actually do this yourself in split-screen with a guest on the second controller.  If you sprint through Winter Contingency, the guest will just teleport forward as you make progress so you never have to touch the second controller.  The only place you have to move player 2 is after the Falcon drops you off by the blast doors, where you'll have to move player 2 out of fire.  I moved both players to the stairs, and then moved one at a time into the blast door area.  For those who can't figure this out, I'll likely be on at 11pm tonight to work on the multiplayer challenges.

Clan night feedback

Last night was the first night that I started picking playlists based on the poll results.  It was somewhat of a unique clan night because we had four people on split screen at my house.  The split screen prevents us from playing Big Team Battle (limited to 2 local players) and also locks in teams - Reach matchmaking does not appear to break up split screens anymore, so all 4 local players were always on the same team.  This won't really ever be an issue in the future, so we'll get to play BTB and teams will shuffle more when we're in 4v4 playlists.  We did however play much less straight Slayer and Invasion than we do on a normal clan night:

• 4v4 Team Slayer - 7 games (35%) wins pretty evenly split 4 and3
• 4v4 Team Objective - 7 games (35%) wins split 5 and 2
• 6v6 Invasion - 3 games (15%) with 2 out of 3 wins/ties
• 3v5 Living Dead - 2 games (10%)
• 4v4 Team Snipers - 1 game (5%) wins split 0 and 1

Despite knowing that Invasion causes strife, I chose the playlist a couple times so that we could all play on the same team.  In the future, we'll have BTB as an option instead and can avoid Invasion more.  It felt a little monotonous to always have gt, OD, BeerMonkeee and doodz vs everyone else, so was trying to break it up.  Party chat seemed to make games more humorous, and assassinations were the highlights of the night.

The feedback is great, I'm interested if you have more thoughts.  Remember to vote in the poll on the blog, and be ready for zombies next week!

Clan night tonight. 8pm PT. Halo Reach.

The poll has closed and the winning results are (in order):

1. Big Team Battle
2. Team Slayer
3. Team Objective

Custom games were rejected handily, so I'll be happy to not spend anymore time trying to find fun games for n00bz to play.  Since my family is gone, a few of us will be playing split-screen at my house tonight and getting drunk.  Unfortunately for the vote, BTB only supports a max of 2 local players, so we may not be able to play much of that tonight.  I'll bring us into plenty of Team Slayer and Team Objective games though, while avoiding Invasion, which people seem really uncomfortable with.

I've also posted a new poll.  Many people have asked for zombie night to break up the Halo monotony.  I'll try to schedule one zombie night a month to see how that works out.  Please vote in the poll on your preference of L4D1 or L4D2.

HR: UNSC Weapons - Propipe Display

I just updated the entry on the UNSC Grenade Launcher - aka Propipe.  An interesting thread bubbled up to the top of the interwebz today that revealed the display on the Propipe actually tells you how many entities are within the kill radius of the grenade that you recently launched.  This is extremely useful for timing when to release the trigger and kill bad guys.

Challenge Etymology

Reach Daily Challenges (another daily challenge blog) posted the origins to some of the daily challenge names. I think some of these are just his best guess, but an interesting read nevertheless.

DLC: Tempest Overview

The Noble Map Pack dropped yesterday with three brand new maps. I honestly didn't get a chance to play Tempest, but it should be another BIG ASS map designed for Big Team Battle.  From what I hear, it's a lot more vehicle-friendly, so that should hopefully be fun.  See below for an overview of the map.

DLC: Breakpoint Overview

The Noble Map Pack dropped yesterday with three brand new maps. Breakpoint is a BIG ASS outdoor map played in the snow.  There's tons of vehicles around, but the driving lanes are pretty constrained an exposed to fire from all sides.  So far, it seems like the Banshee does well.  Otherwise, Rockets, Laser, n00b Tube, Pro Pipe and 2 Snipers on the map negate the rest of the vehicles pretty quickly.  I guess this will support Invasion in the future, but we didn't see it any voting options yesterday.  See below for an overview of the whole map.

DLC: Anchor 9 Overview

The Noble Map Pack dropped yesterday with three brand new maps.  Anchor 9 is an interesting multi-level hangar with shield doors leading to outerspace.  The space area on Anchor 9 is much more interesting than on Zealot.  Besides the obvious fact that you are actually allowed to stay out there, you can mess with people by going in/out of the shield doors, and the jumps in space there actually lead you somewhere.  Here is an overview of the whole map.  Note the Rockets and Shotgun.