Whatever Happened to Respect and Co-operation?

[wildcard]

Originally Posted by Scarecrow

To speak to Brian's original topic, from my perspective, airsoft in Ontario at least has fragmented at the hosting level. Hosts don't know one another as well anymore and are serving subgroups of players. We used to be much more homogenous when it was underground and retailing wasnt rampant. It used to be you had to be of community to play, or host within it. Now its possible to go buy an AEG and go play somewhere without first establishing yourself within the community.

It was inevitable. We cannot have our cake and eat it too. We want Airsoft to be legal, accepted and conventionally available to widen the player base and venues creating choice and competition. But those thing bring negatives like lower accountability, community fragmentation, etc.

Brian, you and I are old men in this sport. Most of those who played 10 years ago are. Different times. We can pine for them, or we can shape our future by leading by example and not getting sucked into being nostalgic about the old days. As I recall it wasnt ever all peaches and cream between hosts. I got sucked into some wicked politics here and within the venues I hosted at (Deadlands/Wolfpack Primary/The Plantation).

We are a growing sport and as such we are falling under the same issues as airsoft years ago it's a problem I witnessed twice now since I started playing in 89, we are growing too fast, I believe your Op center software are going to tackle most of the issue however some you can't and until all of us as a community start agreeing on policing basic simple rules and courtesy we are heading the same path as paintball during it's growing years.

[Renegade)]

All points are valid, but lets not ignore that it all still exists in fragments! I give full Kudos to Finch who had asked me to attend his game last weekend, but it was on the same day as Colins FR game that I was already committed too... Without missing a beat, he facepalmed, realized he hadnt seen that game, and rescheduled his skirmish game to Sunday. Both games went off without a hitch, for 2 full days of airsoft.

[Scarecrow]

Actually, thats a good point - we should put some game date conflict detection into Ops-Center.... let me look into that...

[slink182]

Originally Posted by Scarecrow

Actually, thats a good point - we should put some game date conflict detection into Ops-Center.... let me look into that...

I haven't seen the Ops-Centre (don't even have a link to look at it), so apologies if the following have already been considered.

- A visual calendar displaying events would be helpful. Sometimes people don't connect overlapping dates when they appear in a list, but can recognize those conflicts when presented in calendar format.

- Game filtering by province (and possibly general regions within the province) would be helpful. Filters could be further refined by game type (skirmish, milsim, game length, etc.), which could easily be set-up by the host/venue as checkboxes or tags.

- Venues and hosts could have a metacritic-like rating system - this will quickly filter out the "bad" venues/hosts from those that are "good". I realize that this is subjective, so raters would likely have to go through a vetting process to assess if they make good raters (e.g., not spammers, no retaliations, objective ratings, etc.). A rating system would also help others determine the "honesty" of the venues/hosts - someone who puts up a "milsim" game (to entice the milsim crowd), but runs mainly skirms, would quickly be called out. Same if they run with a lot of kidiots.

Just some thoughts.

[Eeyore]

OP Center sounds like a great tool to help manage venues. But I think the main ingredient needed is communication between hosts. I'm not sure if it already has the that function, but a great feature for Ops center would be a host only section. People need to be willing to speak to one another about issues and concerns. Also it will be very difficult to get for profit hosts to agree to not host games on certain dates.

[R1ghty]

How is the age verification going to work if it's facebook authenticated?

[ShelledPants]

Originally Posted by R1ghty

How is the age verification going to work if it's facebook authenticated?

Age verification is an ASC tool to prevent the sales of guns to minors through the website. Events should be checking ID when registering players.

[Scarecrow]

OPS-center is not a discussion board, thats being handled nicely by regional and national d-boards. Its also not going to be used to enforce age related social controls other than within an event. The ASC age verification system is unique to us in Canada and is pretty contraversial when the rest of the world looks at it. I would keep it within ASC.

It doesn't use a calendar per se, what it does use is a geo-filter based on your home pin. Events, members, fields and vendors are presented geographically, not through a temporal view. I'm not against the idea, it just only occured to me how to integrate that. We're pretty much frozen on features at 1.0 right now and just debugging it for release and wider use. I can see 1.5 having some sort of temporal view.

Its also not just about what is being held on a particular day or weekend, but about where as well.

Facebook login is just one option, you can do a separate login. Its more for convenience.

Hosts aren't necessarily communicating with one another because they don't want to, it that there are a lot more games happening outside of social circles - hosts are not one entity anymore but many people. Some don't want/care to interact or coordinate with others. Many have their own boards and social circles that don't overlap with ASC. Many have firewalled themselves on purpose.

OPS-Center is a hosting and player tool, but socializing games through moderated discussion boards is still the primary way people socialize a game.

[Scarecrow]

Originally Posted by slink182

I haven't seen the Ops-Centre (don't even have a link to look at it), so apologies if the following have already been considered.

www.ops-center.net

feel free to poke about.

June 1 the database gets reset to go live, so you'll have to re-reg, but let us know what you think.

[slink182]

Thanks. I'll take a poke about and provide some usability feedback.

[Janus]

We simply do not get the problem out here on the island that you guys deal with in the dense population areas. But, judging by the growth that the clubs here have been experiencing it seems to be a glimpse of what the future could hold sooner than we think.

Therefore, you can count on both NAA and SIR to put their event info and support towards this. If we can get standardization accomplished on a national level then we can effectively raise the quality of Airsoft and increase the availability of games and events to more people.

[Scarecrow]

OPS-Center is more about making the communications around airsoft events easier to manage, and is not so much about control. The kneejerk reaction in the past, which is particularly Canadian, is to try and control or regulate it. I think, and so does Brent, that by this design, simply taking some of the more time consuming online tasks of communications around an event might lift some of the friction and lead to better player and host experiences. I'm not interested in creating a regulation site, but I am sure we all could use a few hours of our airsoft time better - as a host, online game management is akin to dental surgery. Waiting to be put on or taken off a roster or finding game details,can be a similarly unsatisfying experience as a player. We aim to minimize it those pain points.

[slink182]

Scarecrow - PM inbound.