So.... AI500 2022...
After last years questionable weekend i really thought that some things would have been sorted out... Some of them were, others not so much... Let me start off by saying that there was some really good gameplay from both teams. I was on the green team and despite being outnumbered, most of the team were pushing any trying their best to make the most of a shit situation...
Now... onto the nitty gritty. If you have seen any of the posts regarding last year, there were a few main points that came out of them. They mostly mentioned lack of marshalling, complete lack of chrono, poor organisation and communication and less than ideal bottlenecks. Some of these were addressed to an extent but i don't think any of these issues were truly sorted.
GENERAL BITS
The weekend was off to a questionable start when we realised how many people the other team had compared to us. I think they had over 50 more players after no-shows ect. I really don't know how they can let this happen with an online booking system. Surely they can ask people to move over before the event has started. We were held in our spawn quite a lot over the first day. When asking a marshal on day 2 if they would make anybody move over his response was 'we have'. I kid you not, they got about 5 people over and called it a day ?
We didn't see the second half of the field at all until the second day at 12pm when they finally decided we were getting fucked so hard they would let us start pretty much at their spawn. Well this was great to see that half of the site but it was too little too late unfortunately and we were back in our spawn within about 40 minutes. I have no idea how they could just watch us sit in the spawn for so long and not think about changing things up sooner. We were pissed off as we could make no progress and im sure the tans were fairly bored sitting around doing not much (Im sure some of them enjoyed the £90 interactive shooting range though)
They made a good attempt this year to avoid the bottlenecks of last year and put up some temp barriers and also covered the sports-field in tarp. This made movement much better than last year.
It's worth me mentioning that there was a hole in the floor in one of the buildings. Tape had been put up on either side but nothing was mentioned in the brief including the fact that you cannot shoot down the hallway through the tape (nothing was there to indicate hard cover)
CHRONO
Let's start off by taking a look at the chrono (if you can call it that). I can only assume after some moaning last year about not having one, they thought they should really be doing a chrono this year. Welp, doing a voluntary chrono is certainly not the play they should have made here, they may as-well have not had one. Saying that, at least there were no 8mm BBs flying around like there was last year. Neither did i have blood drawn this year.
THE PYRO SAGA
Right, this one really got me. This carries on from last year but it triggered me again this year. The rules state the below.
'Pyro limited to MK4 anywhere on site. This includes reusable pyro (at the last game TLFX made us some MK5 pyro but with a special bang so they were not as noisy as normal MK5 levels). These will be permitted if anyone has any left or will be sold on site via Ammo Drop. If not bought directly from site though please stick to MK4.'
Now i spoke to TLFX and they have confirmed that no special pyro was ever made for last year. There is no such thing as a Mk4 bang in a Mk5. This year, the onsite shop was selling MK5's from FBS. Apparently these were fine as they had been sound tested. However, the rules still state no MK5s? Why cant i use my own? Why cant they just admit that this is a deal with the onsite shop to get more purchases and is nothing to do with sound levels.
BIO and ammo limits
The rules clearly stated that only BIO ammo was to be used and a max of 600 round per person. Ammo limits were not policed at all, plenty of people running around with box and drum mags from the start. On the topic of BIOs, at the end of Sunday I was emptying my mags with some full auto goodness when a Marshal came up and said 'Just because it's the end of the day, does't mean you need to waste your BB's.' Upon my reply of 'Why? I paid for them' I got a response of 'we have to sweep them all up'... Okay cool, if you're sweeping them, why make me get Bio's then?
Questionable marshalling
A few things here, i really don't think that they had enough Marshal's. The marshals that were there, did not seem to communicate at all and some of them were just rude. There was a few places that we were not able to shoot over due to delicate windows. We seemed to get an absolute bollocking for shooting over these areas but tans could fire over them all day long and have no issues. People were getting shouted at all day for this despite nothing being mentioned in the brief, same goes for the hole in the floor I mentioned earlier, how am i mean to know if i'm not told? Also, when you are telling people, maybe just mention it rather than getting your knickers in a twist. Mentioning it on the brief would mean you don't need to tell every player individually. They were not amazing with policing hit taking although really this falls on the players more than anything.
One marshal was even taking handfuls of MK5s off people as he didn't realise that they were allowed to be corrected by players... None of them just seemed to actually know the rules.
Anyway, i could probably write more, I just don't see the point. They had so much time to make sure that this went better than the last one and even had the weather on their side this time however the organisation was still piss poor, rules may as-well have been non existent and yet despite people not coming back on the Sunday there was no real effort in my opinions to fix the issue (minus one 40 minute bit of gameplay).
Nowhere near worth the £90 in my opinion, 2 days at a local site would have been just as good, if not better as they actually would have equalled out the teams and changed game-modes after seeing such a shitshow. The blatant lying about the MK5's really ticked me off too.
Some serious changes need to be made if they want to get back to how AI used to be.
