Ai500 Big Games. Anyone Been to One?

[Groot]

Hello all,

A post popped up today about a game Ai500 is going to be running at a prison site in Dover. 

Looks like a super site but it's going to be capped at 400 people. With the hunger of airsoft this year, I expect it will make it. 

This to me looking at the site size and realistically, what is going to be actual playing area. Seems to be way too many but this isn't apparently their first large game.

Looking at the image, it looks big. But the actual playing area for safety, is going to be a lot smaller.
Sheer drops into the moat are going to kill off a lot of the green mounds. 
Lots of wire fencing, which being a prison is going to channel game play. 
Lots of builds with limited entry point ( its a prison ) and with easy to control corridors and lots of small single entry rooms. 

I have played games at CHD and seen the site locked down with half that number of people. 

But open to experience. Has anyone done any previous events? 

Good / Bad / Clusterfuck?

 

Edited April 13, 2021 by Groot

[ak2m4]

I was surprised they got the go-ahead for this.  Friend of mine used to work there as a prison guard, 400 players does sound quite a lot, difficult to judge though.  Only 5 mins from me.

[Tackle]

Not played the site but prisons generally aren't known for space, more the lack of, so yeah 400 is probably optimistic, plus the ai500 has been run quite a few times, sometimes great & sometimes shit, this one has the potential to be a total clusterfuck.

Shame as it's not far from me either .

[Lozart]

11 hours ago, Groot said:

Hello all,

A post popped up today about a game Ai500 is going to be running at a prison site in Dover. 

Looks like a super site but it's going to be capped at 400 people. With the hunger of airsoft this year, I expect it will make it. 

This to me looking at the site size and realistically, what is going to be actual playing area. Seems to be way too many but this isn't apparently their first large game.

Looking at the image, it looks big. But the actual playing area for safety, is going to be a lot smaller.
Sheer drops into the moat are going to kill off a lot of the green mounds. 
Lots of wire fencing, which being a prison is going to channel game play. 
Lots of builds with limited entry point ( its a prison ) and with easy to control corridors and lots of small single entry rooms. 

I have played games at CHD and seen the site locked down with half that number of people. 

But open to experience. Has anyone done any previous events? 

Good / Bad / Clusterfuck?

 

 

Playable area is outlined on their FB post 

https://www.facebook.com/Ai500-148728415210679/

 

[Groot]

22 minutes ago, Lozart said:

 

Playable area is outlined on their FB post 

https://www.facebook.com/Ai500-148728415210679/

 

What it says and the reality, is going to be very very different. 
That to me looks like just the total boundaries.

The drops from the green sides into the moat looks around 2 stories. Sunset October is around 7pm. So that's unlikely to be usable. 
The chunk to the right is going to be parking and camping. 
You remove the open grass areas, which well are gonna be just that.
Leaves you with about 20 very easy to lock down controlled buildings, that are designed to funnel people. 
Oh and a single bridge across of the bottom left part of the site is going to be so easy to lock down. For the first 20-30 or so people who get over it.
No idea how accessible the higher ground is from the moat. So that might change things but this is going to feel a heck of a lot smaller with 200 people shooting you with hicaps. 

We went to the Gloucester prison and locked down that site with about 50 per site. I mean we have locked down woodlands sites with not many more. 

That site with 150 would be pretty epic but 400 from my experience of large games, its just going to be a cluster fuck of camping and ammo spamming. That after the first 20mins of any story will fall apart in to a skirmish.

Maybe if they limit it to 400 rounds but that they have stated its not going to be milsim. 

Perhaps I am just jaded but large games usually tend to be pretty terrible mess after a couple of hours of marshalls trying to herd cats. Giving up, just standing back and lobbing the odd pyro for effect. 

[Encore]

Prison's are designed to be able to be secure with a few guards as possible, they intentionally employ choke points, funnelling designs and are essentially inverse castles (designed to keep people in versus keep people out). I just don't think this is a good site for a large number of people. 

 

I think for prisons you need to design the event around the site. It needs to be asymmetric in terms of teams a few people as the guards who can lock down buildings etc and the rest as inmates trying to escape. That or you need to have far fewer players so they can't just lock everything down.

 

My vote with 400 players on site is clusterfuck.

[TheFull9]

Even 200 would make for a crowded game in my estimation (take that for whatever you deem it to be worth).

 

Having no idea what the rental for the location and other costs are I couldn't possibly comment on whether this all makes sense, but not for me.  At 100-150 it'd be something I'd strongly consider, but certainly not 400.  Never attended the NAE/F for the same sort of reasons.

 

They did one at disused theme park years ago which did look good, don't think it had nearly as many people in attendance (iirc) and I'd reckon the usable safe area would've been a fair bit bigger.  Wish I'd done it tbh.  Credit for securing a really awesome site to play, probably very hard to do.

[Tackle]

Thing is, given that they've had mixed reviews at previous ai500's, not entirely sure why they would contemplate another event with the potential to be such a monumental screw up, the fallout will screw with their future client base massively.

We can all see it, why can't they ?

[Groot]

3 hours ago, Tackle said:

 

why can't they ?

[Tackle]

Lol, yeah the cynical side of me assumed that from the off, they'd better put it away for a rainy day, reckon even if the event goes ahead, threads like this (which I'm sure there'll be more elsewhere) are gonna make people think twice, this event & stuff in the future.

25 minutes ago, Groot said:

 

[00kingi]

Just got back from this event, I'm not sure if any of you went but what a shit show, totally unsafe.

No chrono.

About 10 toilets to the 450 people

About 6 marshals 

We had fights, fires, the weather to contend with,

No propperly trained medical staff.

Eye Pro got shot off and broken (reputable brands so probably hot guns).

They creamed the money and gave nothing back. It was a disorgansed mess. Way way to many people all building up on the chock points. It was beyond a joke tbh. 

[TheFull9]

Certainly not something I relish in saying, but not unexpected by any means unfortunately.  Be interesting to see any further feedback/pictures/video that come out of this.

 

It's a shame that large events basically can't seem to be done in the UK.  I'm sure there's the odd exception to the rule but anything I've ever heard of that's had more than around 100-150 or so has been pretty universally panned to the point I do not feel like even the safety would be to an acceptable standard attending any of them, let alone getting an actually fun game.

[Impulse]

The issue with large events is that a sour apple spoils the bunch. A perfect example was where I lit up an entire row of tans with the m21 when they pushed forward. Looking through the scope, I tagged them all, working my way up the line and beyond. Of the 9 or so people I shot, 8 called the hit, but 1 continued playing and then shot me while hiding among the dead players.

 

I think chronoing 400 players is always going to be an issue. It can be done, but would require time and organisation that I don't think the AI team have. At the end of the day, they're magazine editors, not site owners. There were definitely hot guns though, as while I didn't experience any of them since I was on DMR role outside the buildings, one guy on my team was absolutely covered in welts and blood by the end of the Sunday. My main gripes were the amount of pyro being hurled by the tans, which basically meant there were no gun fights, it was just an artillery barrage of grenades, and also the forward respawn on the Sunday. That was a really, really dumb idea that basically meant green team couldn't get out of our spawn for half a day, since the tan spawn was about 200m away from ours. Sapped the fun out of it, especially since we were outnumbered 4 to 1 at that point because so many greens either didn't show up or left early.

 

That being said, the second half of Sunday was an absolute blast.

[hitmanNo2]

3 hours ago, TheFull9 said:

Certainly not something I relish in saying, but not unexpected by any means unfortunately.  Be interesting to see any further feedback/pictures/video that come out of this.

 

It's a shame that large events basically can't seem to be done in the UK.  I'm sure there's the odd exception to the rule but anything I've ever heard of that's had more than around 100-150 or so has been pretty universally panned to the point I do not feel like even the safety would be to an acceptable standard attending any of them, let alone getting an actually fun game.

Gangsta City is one of those exceptions 130+ (I think) at the last one and was excellent.

[lokkers]

I had fun (tan team), but I'd agree - 400 people was too many, and it descended almost immediately into a large skirmish.  I don't think the weather helped, as there was naturally a desire to get into the buildings and out of the wind and rain; trouble is that meant lots of congestion.  I think it could have been improved with smaller numbers and some additional outside cover (fake barricades, that sort of thing). This would have benefitted both sides, and wouldn't have looked out of place given the scenario.

 

There was definitely a lack of hit taking on both sides, especially when pyro was concerned (it's amazing how many people don't know how far 5 meters is 🙄), and they needed way more marshalls than they had to police that. Hard agree on the lack of chrono though - we found that pretty shocking, as Imperium (Faversham) regularly chronos 200 players each game day. With a little organisation, it can't be that difficult can it...

 

Interesting to hear you complain about the tans "forward respawn on the Sunday" @Impulse, because you enjoyed Sunday afternoon when I believe you had a forward respawn and we couldn't get past Vipers Nest 😂

 

Hopefully they'll take on board any feedback (although I won't hold my breath), and given it's 20 minutes from me I'll almost certainly give it another go on the next one in 2022.

[Impulse]

7 minutes ago, lokkers said:

Interesting to hear you complain about the tans "forward respawn on the Sunday" @Impulse, because you enjoyed Sunday afternoon when I believe you had a forward respawn and we couldn't get past Vipers Nest 😂

 

Reason they did that was to cut down how much of the site was in play, since there were only about 50 greens left at that point.

[lokkers]

1 hour ago, Impulse said:

 

Reason they did that was to cut down how much of the site was in play, since there were only about 50 greens left at that point.

 

Yeah I figured as much

[Groot]

7 hours ago, 00kingi said:

Just got back from this event, I'm not sure if any of you went but what a shit show, totally unsafe.

No chrono.

About 10 toilets to the 450 people

About 6 marshals 

We had fights, fires, the weather to contend with,

No propperly trained medical staff.

Eye Pro got shot off and broken (reputable brands so probably hot guns).

They creamed the money and gave nothing back. It was a disorgansed mess. Way way to many people all building up on the chock points. It was beyond a joke tbh. 

 

Sorry to hear this.

The shit game play and chock points was obvious to me from the layout of the site.

The lack of chrono and dangerous play is unforgivable. 

[Impulse]

Apparently there are a bunch of tunnels underneath it too. If they opened that up for gameplay, as well as expanded the boundary a little more, it'd be great for 400 players. The area we played was not enough and it just devolved into line battles around choke points, with dozens of players stacking up at each.

 

I think they probably should've opened earlier on the Friday and had a dedicated couple of hours to chrono everyone's guns. Seeing some of the hits my team took, there were definitely hot guns.

 

They needed more marshalls. 6 for 400 players is nowhere near enough. At Worthing, we typically have 3 marshalls on a skirmish day, but that's for like... 60 players. I'm not saying they should have 20 marshalls, but 6 wasn't enough to keep it going.

 

Some of the rules were ambiguous or confusing. The rules said 600 BBs per weapon per life, but this was clarified as just 600 per life. Then I was told it was 600 for primary and then a pistol and some mags. Then DMRs were 300 BBs, but was that 300BBs for the DMR, then 300 for secondary for a total of 600, or was it 300 total? What about "DMRs" that were operating at normal limits like my m21?Realistically, who's going to check ammo limits, as long as you're not taking the piss. Then there was the whole "support guns only fired from fixed positions" which I thought was silly anyway, but where were these fixed positions? How were they marked, as I was told there were specific positions they had to be used from? Also, I had a guy swing a corner with a minigun and light up the air over my head. I didn't care that much (might've if he hit me, but that's neither here nor there ), but that wasn't a fixed position for sure. I also thought allowing DMRs, but not bolt actions was a bit weird, especially considering just how long a lot of the outdoor sight lines were. Having my VSR would've been incredibly useful, so I'm probably biased there.

 

More dynamic objectives were needed for sure. Something like "oh, this cartel leader is about and you need to take him out and take some documents off him" would've worked, then they make sure to give that particular commander some documents back at CP and ensure they don't just camp by their spawn. As cartel, I lost count of how many extractions we did, but it never felt that impactful. It was a bit like "why are we doing this?"

 

Similarly, the Viper's Nest should've been the middle building (you know, the big U shaped one). I heard there was a bunch of gear in the Viper's Nest, but never laid eyes on it as the only people from our team who touched it all Saturday were a bunch of speedyboi speedsofters who got there at the start of Saturday, but were promptly pushed back from it as there were only 3 of them; nobody on cartel saw that building for the rest of the day. It was too close to the tan spawn and too far from the cartel spawn.

 

I'll be heading to the next one. We've given a lot of feedback, so fingers crossed they listen to it.

Edited October 4, 2021 by Impulse

[Groot]

7 minutes ago, Impulse said:

Apparently there are a bunch of tunnels underneath it too. If they opened that up for gameplay, as well as expanded the boundary a little more, it'd be great for 400 players. The area we played was not enough and it just devolved into line battles around choke points, with dozens of players stacking up at each.

 

I think they probably should've opened earlier on the Friday and had a dedicated couple of hours to chrono everyone's guns. Seeing some of the hits my team took, there were definitely hot guns.

 

They needed more marshalls. 6 for 400 players is nowhere near enough. At Worthing, we typically have 3 marshalls on a skirmish day, but that's for like... 60 players. I'm not saying they should have 20 marshalls, but 6 wasn't enough to keep it going.

 

Some of the rules were ambiguous or confusing. The rules said 600 BBs per weapon per life, but this was clarified as just 600 per life. Then I was told it was 600 for primary and then a pistol and some mags. Then DMRs were 300 BBs, but was that 300BBs for the DMR, then 300 for secondary for a total of 600, or was it 300 total? What about "DMRs" that were operating at normal limits like my m21?Realistically, who's going to check ammo limits, as long as you're not taking the piss. Then there was the whole "support guns only fired from fixed positions" which I thought was silly anyway, but where were these fixed positions? How were they marked, as I was told there were specific positions they had to be used from? Also, I had a guy swing a corner with a minigun and light up the air over my head. I didn't care that much (might've if he hit me, but that's neither here nor there ), but that wasn't a fixed position for sure. I also thought allowing DMRs, but not bolt actions was a bit weird, especially considering just how long a lot of the outdoor sight lines were. Having my VSR would've been incredibly useful, so I'm probably biased there.

 

More dynamic objectives were needed for sure. Something like "oh, this cartel leader is about and you need to take him out and take some documents off him" would've worked, then they make sure to give that particular commander some documents back at CP and ensure they don't just camp by their spawn. As cartel, I lost count of how many extractions we did, but it never felt that impactful. It was a bit like "why are we doing this?"

 

Similarly, the Viper's Nest should've been the middle building (you know, the big U shaped one). I heard there was a bunch of gear in the Viper's Nest, but never laid eyes on it as the only people from our team who touched it all Saturday were a bunch of speedyboi speedsofters who got there at the start of Saturday, but were promptly pushed back from it as there were only 3 of them; nobody on cartel saw that building for the rest of the day. It was too close to the tan spawn and too far from the cartel spawn.

 

I'll be heading to the next one. We've given a lot of feedback, so fingers crossed they listen to it.

 

You are a very forgiving person. 

 

[Impulse]

2 minutes ago, Groot said:

 

You are a very forgiving person. 

 

 

Haha, maybe, but also because most of the guys I went with have been going to AI500 for over a decade and said it's usually better than this one. So, forgiving and optimistic, perhaps foolish 

 

Plus, I still had a lot of fun with my friends (there was a big group of us on cartel side. I think we were about 21 players, so almost half a syndicate), but my way of playing is less impacted by a lot of the issues. I mostly crept around the outside of the buildings and picked people off with the m21.

Edited October 4, 2021 by Impulse

[PureSilver]

On 04/10/2021 at 07:47, 00kingi said:

No chrono. [...] Eye Pro got shot off and broken (reputable brands so probably hot guns).

 

I find it insane that any insurer is crazy enough to offer cover to airsoft events that don't use a mandatory chronograph. Broken eyepro levels of hot gun is just crazy.

 

On 04/10/2021 at 07:47, 00kingi said:

We had fights, fires

 

Tell me more about these fights and fires, sounds thrilling.

[Rogerborg]

19 hours ago, Impulse said:

I think they probably should've opened earlier on the Friday and had a dedicated couple of hours to chrono everyone's guns.

 

Usual opinion on that: pre-game chrono is theatre.  It confirms that honest players are honest, or will punish them for being inadvertently a bit hot (but honest enough to show up).

 

Rogues - and we seem sure they were in evidence - will simply cheat or avoid it.  They'll even get a thrill out of that.

 

The "holiday rules" aspect of an expensive event like that is also going to lead to it, and if they pre-announced that there was going to be no chrono, they practically invited it.

 

You either catch rogues in game, or not at all.  No warnings, no excuses, no "I'll put it in the car", they're off the site.

 

Given the paucity of marshals, that was clearly never going to happen.

 

 

19 hours ago, Impulse said:

I'll be heading to the next one. We've given a lot of feedback, so fingers crossed they listen to it.

 

Shouldn't your support (and money) be conditional on their behaviour changing?  If not, why would they bother?

 

 

1 hour ago, PureSilver said:

I find it insane that any insurer is crazy enough to offer cover to airsoft events that don't use a mandatory chronograph. Broken eyepro levels of hot gun is just crazy.

 

That's assuming that they'd been honest in their disclosure.  Actually, it's assuming that they were insured at all.  Given the likely cost of cover for a one-off event, they might have decided to just chance their arm.

 

And I say "they", but if you'd lost an eye, who exactly would you sue?  An individual? A limited company?  A limited company with no assets set up just to run these events?

 

And on what grounds?  Having eye-pro shot off or through doesn't automatically mean a hot gun, and accidents don't always mean liability.  Eye pro can be insecure or insufficient.  As I keep noting, EN166-F glasses are not and can not be rated for airsoft energies, and yet many folk wear them.

 

The only case I can think of is one where a rental lad got blinded by being shot in the eye, in a safe zone, point blank, and claimed that the site had said nothing about removing mags, hadn't checked them, and hadn't prevented dry-firing.  You'd think that would be open and shut, but even at that, the site argued the toss on liability and I don't know how or if it was resolved.

[Tackle]

We're talking about AI here, if they can't be arsed to spellcheck their magazine, what chance have you got that they'll properly organise a big event, they've always traded on their "name", in the hope that people will put their trust (& money) in them as a longstanding publication. 

I've personally played alongside & against the AI editorial team in the past, only to find that they seem to think the game rules dont apply to them, so when I hear criticism of how they run events, I'm not surprised in the least. 

[Albiscuit]

21 hours ago, Impulse said:

 

 

They needed more marshalls. 6 for 400 players is nowhere near enough. At Worthing, we typically have 3 marshalls on a skirmish day, but that's for like... 60 players. I'm not saying they should have 20 marshalls, but 6 wasn't enough to keep it going.

 

 

Why not?

 

If your going to have 400 players you NEED a decent marshal to player ratio. The more the better, you cant cut corners on safety to cut costs, well clearly you can but its not acceptable.

6 would be needed in the safe zone to keep order and things working whilst people are playing, 6 wouldnt cover the parking if there were 200 odd cars.