Feedback over all

Feedback and debriefings from Berget 12
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Re: Feedback over all

Post by M.Svensson » 10 Jul 2014, 14:14

As written above, without the LARP elements it would just be a big weekend battle seeing as you've already stated clearly it's not a MILSIM. And I believe berget would loose more than gaining on doing that.
And to the people larping: You guys are awesome!
I don't really think that LARPing should be decreased at berget but rather increased since it brings so much to the game now to the people saying they don't like LARPers being around, you don't have to LARP with them if you tell them you don't want to LARP they will respect that.
And as a MILSIMer I just gotta state that I really hope that more LARPers will come into MILSIM/airsoft games for LARPing, I love the depth that civilians are bringing to the game.
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Re: Feedback over all

Post by Coffe » 10 Jul 2014, 14:57

Tiger_1 wrote:Ok, seems time to add a few points. I have played Berget since B5, and played with multiple factions, two main factions and at all levels of command. I can say that with out a doubt, two main forces fighting each other is most fun for me.

Berget for me is the chance to move out with large units to fight other large units of airsofters, and as a commander, I would like to be able to decide how I move those units out to solve what missions.

Berget, you really must stop scripting as much as you do. Some of you in Berget crew might have seen that I no longer wish to command a unit at Berget, reason being, stupid Berget scripted end of B10 with a truck that I was given the mission to protect that moved on it's own, refusing to stop or follow any orders from the troops tasked with protecting it, big surprise, the other side believe they won (and although I don't really care about winning or losing, it would be nice that I lost to the enemy's good defending, not Berget being silly)

Moving on to B12, ambush of the PMC force on Thursday night. Scripted so bad that I walked away from the "fight" with a real bitter tast in my mouth (even sent a buddy of mine playing PMC, a text apologising for Berget behaviour). From what I am reading, this was not the only scripted things in B12.

Airsoft needs good commanders that are given freedom to be commanders. Berget should provide the storyline, overall commanders intent, and mission objectives. Then leave it up to commanders to solve missions as he sees best. Also, good commanders will not play many games run like B10/11/12, as now might be the case with raven command, and that is Berget losing good commanders for a dumb reason! Also, give a few general missions that will last for the entire game, so you never really run out of missions.

And I know I am treading on all the larp guys, but I belive I am talking for a lot of airsofters, when I say, please move on to a different event, or at least stay in you small camp and pretend to be who ever you want there, so people that want to have something to do with you can go there, and you can leave the rest of us alone to play airsoft.
This year I had a commander who was so in to his pretend to be someone talk about something make belive, that he forgot the mission he him self stood and briefed us on one hour before. Next day, he took 30 airsofters with him to stand around and watch him make belive for an hour more..

Trouble, as I have mentioned you above, I will say that nothing personal about you, you seemed like a nice guy. You also did a good job with updates on the storyline (but a 20 min missions brief should not contain 15 min of "this cool shit happend" and 5 min "do you guys feel like going down this road and do this") I am "new" to airsoft mec, and one of your guys told me about your past history with airsoft mec, that made me think "ok, let's see how this workes out". Short answer, it did not. You have little to no plan, and you lack any tactical insight. I know commanders are hard to come by, but consider not being one next time, you might learn a thing or two. All that said, when we did cool stuff it was fun rolling with the guys of Orlov mec.

POW treatment has been covered, but I belive Berget needs to get some rules in place for that.

Did not see any cheating, and the up's and downs of bavs is always fun ;)

For now I plan to come back for B13, and I hope Berget will adjust back to more focus on letting people shoot bb's at each other in company sice elements and solving tactical missions. Please reduce the civilian and larp element to a minimum and make sure you give commanders the freedom and respect they need to provide a good game to their players.

Thanks to all players, you make the game, just wish we could play airsoft.....

Panther 1, 2 and 3, great rolling with you :)
I agree with the scripting part. In fact, I think BE should ditch "mission control" altogether and use a better approach to interactive storytelling. Namely, rather than designing missions they should design "situations" which they just drop in the lap of HQ of the fighting factions and let them decide exactly how they want to handle it.

When I write scenarios for pen and paper role playing games, I've adopted the termonology of a swedish RPG called Noir. These situations/intrigues are called "bombs", and you prepare a few bombs that you throw at the players and then basically improvise from how the players react to a bomb.

Each bomb should preferably have it's rewards benefits if completed successfully (depending on the nature of it), and also certain drawbacks if the players fail to adress it.

The idea with this approach is to keep the events of the story and the conclusion open ended, so as to make sure that players don't feel that everything is scripted and that they are being "railroaded" along the story.

I do not agee with your points about larping however. It doesn't matter if you or that vague group of airsofters that you speak of "just want to play airsoft". Berget is not a milsim or pure airsoft scenario and has never been advertised as such. If you want ketchup, you don't go and buy a bottle of mustard expecting it to contain ketchup and get pissed when mustard comes out of the bottle do you?

Also, you claim you want some kind of military experience. Civilians are a part of military missions everywhere across the globe. Civilians live and work right smack in the middle of warzones, and soldiers are expected to handle them in accordance with their orders.

Whining about the prescence of larpers posing as civilians contradicts your wishes for that military experience.

I'll agree however that commanders of fighting factions shouldn't stand around larping and make their troops watch the whole thing for an hour. The fighting factions should keep their larp-behavior mostly to orders and missions, not "meaningless fluff".

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Re: Feedback over all

Post by Coffe » 10 Jul 2014, 16:56

matte_wo wrote:Coffee, If I understand it correctly, after reading trough all the feedback, one of your major concerns is that GMs told you how many men you could send and where... How many times exactly did this happen?

When it comes to AWOL:
As part of berget mission controll, my sole purpose is to be part of creating a game that is fun and fair for ALL players: MILSIMers, LARPers, Speedballers, young people, older people, from the lowest of grunts to the highest in command, for new players and for the veterans, from many different countries. I do not want the game to be scripted, but I want it to follow some sort of storyline, to create a cool experience, an interactive adventure that can end in several ways. I want to create a story in which commanders are free to create their own missions, along side the ones that we hand out to carry the story forward. Missions could fail or be a success, and that alters how the game ends.

If you leave the game early in anger, I will take that as clear sign that I have failed MY mission. Every year I see players leave early, and every year it saddens me to see those people leave because I have faild in my attempts to create a good game for them, and it has always made me wonder: "What can I and we do better next year?". On the other hand, if you go AWOL, I will just think that you are an A-hole, not caring for nobody than yourself, not giving a crap about chain of command, missions and other airsofters. What if, at precisely that point that you decide to go AWOL, maybe an important event is scheduled to take place, or you just shoot the wrong person, and the whole storyline and game balance is destroyed? That AWOL action does not just ruin the game as we have planned it, but it also ruins the game for every other person. "The wings of a buttefly" someone have written in the feedback...

So please, keep giving us this feedback that we need to create this awsome experience that is Berget, but yet again please, coffee, do not encourage bad behaviour that makes the game fun for you and your friends, and ruins the game for others. Before leaving in anger, and deffenitly before going AWOL, talk to us. Tell us your concern and we will try to adjust things, even though we risk the "scripting" that many of you seem to disslike.

Thank you.
To be frank, we always leave early. Not so much because of the GM behaviour but more because of player behaviour. I don't know why but it seems like the last game day, players get more obsessed about "winning" or "getting more frags". This means that the taking of hits and sportsmanship reach an all time low compared to the rest of the game days.

I don't know, maybe people build up these expectations of huge, action-packed firefights and warhero-moments, and when the game is reaching it's end and most players haven't had these moments, they go berserk. It's crazy but we've seen it happen enough times to see the pattern.

As to my intel about scripting, just read Rythm's review of the game. He pretty much covered it all.

But now onto more constructive points, if you haven't read this, I strongly recommend you to pick up this piece of litteratue:

http://www.sfbok.se/asp/artikel.asp?VolumeID=63790

It's the rulebook of the pen and paper rpg I mentioned in an earlier post. I don't have the exact chapters of interest in my head right now, but I can look it up as soon as I get home. Basically these chapters contain a lot of principles and theory about interactive storytelling in general that can be applied to basically any game or larp (including Berget-style events), with a lot of focus on player choices and a player driven story.

This of course necessitates that gamemasters trust in the ability of players to come up with and create fun and interesting events themselves (which we can, trust me! Our awol-experiences are quite the testament to that, and I doubt that the opponents we ran into got bored because of it either). The principles basically outline a plan of action where the game master acts more as a facilitator and creator of interesting and dramatic situations and encounters, rather than a "director" of events.

Heck I'll even spring for the roughly 400 SEK price for the book out of my own pocket and send you a copy if you just give me an adress to send it to, if that's what it takes. (that's how much I believe in it :) )

It's sort of a "Sun Tzu's The Art of War" for interactive story telling, that anyone can benefit from, regardless if they just want to host a pen and paper scenario around the kitchen table at home, or a huge interactive event like Berget.

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Re: Feedback over all

Post by spin_t » 10 Jul 2014, 22:29

Looks like we are all thinking pretty much the same about this year event,so B.Crew for next year keep it simple :

- the area
- 2-3 factions clearly differentiated by uniforms
- way less vehicles
- tactical points with strong impact over game development
- and let us play !

After all you have 12 years of doing this so i'm asking like Clarkson from Top Gear : "How hard can it be ? " :))
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Re: Feedback over all

Post by Tiger_1 » 10 Jul 2014, 22:49

Like I said, feel free to larp, just don't use 30+ guys to escort one man so he can stand around larp'ing for an hour. Don't make progress in the game dependent on people's ability to larp. Because even if we can not agree about Berget not being Milsim, or larp, one thing we can agree on, it is an AIRSOFT event. So I kind of expect airsoft and it's part to play the main role in the event, not larp. I am sure there is major larp events around the world people can travel for that.
I would love to live close to a field that has weekend games with company elements manoeuvre and go at each other over a large area for major objectives, but unlike some of you, I don't, so maybe I am just a simple airsofter, but big unit action is what I want from Berget. And of course, people can want other things, but as long as it says AIRSOFT event, please let me play airsoft!

Did I say anything about military experience? An ability to lead, plan and some basic knowledge of tactics is required for airsoft leadership, nothing more (usually a military approach will not work, as most airsofters are not military, and don't respond well to a military leadership style)

As for handling civilians, sure, not a problem really, because regular civilians tend to hid when men with guns turn up, a few men might stay to hear what is going on, but they usually leave also when the guys with guns tell them, because that is what a sane unarmed civilian does.
On a game note there, I am sure the reduced nr of factions with clear goals at game start, will solve a lot of the larp problem. Simply by the fact that you will not have 90% of civilians being under cover for one faction or other.
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Re: Feedback over all

Post by Mr Black » 11 Jul 2014, 00:01

What you said earlier Tiger_1 sounded to me more like "I don't mind larpers as long as they don't interact with airsofters. They can wait in the village until some bored airsofters pay them a visit."
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Re: Feedback over all

Post by diamid » 11 Jul 2014, 01:03

I sounded that way Mr Black...

And If so.. I personally totally disagree.
LARP is what makes this game go the extra mile of awesomeness in my mind. To have a part (that should not be 75% secret enemy forces, and 25% civis. But at least 85% pure civilian LARP'ers) to interact with for the story line is awesome.

I am personally not a good LARP'er but when ever I encounter someone for the civis or person that wants to LARP I do my best. (to make it fun for both of us) For me, it makes the game sooo much more that a usual Sunday game.

I really enjoy and take my hat of for those you use 4 days of their holiday to make my game so much more fun.
With out them, we could just make it a large Blue vs Red Speedball game. And I will never use 8 days of my holiday to go to a huge basic red vs blue game. NEVER EVER! And I would say, giving in for some MilSim structure and orders, would maybe make your big fire fight clash more fun, and memorable.

PS: For me, some of the missions where I have walked half the map, stealth, close to the enemy and not fired one single BB, has been some of the most memorable I have had.

Back to the MILSIM etc etc part. In each team description its marked game style. For example GCT had game style 100% MILSIM this year. If you then have choosen to play as GCT, then I feel you should accept it being MILSIM runned.

But people are different. For me Berget is one thing, MILSIM, and I go to play that way.
For me (personally) RED vs BLUE, with a huge gang of trigger happy soldiers, and no goal or tactics clashing together is a total waste. I cant personally understand why anyone would like to put a lot of money attending this game, just to give a F*uck all to the story and missions of your team just to get a huge fire fight. (I am not saying Tiger_1 is one of these. But I have encountered them)

PS: To Mr Black and other Civis and LARP'ers. THANK YOU, for making my game more awesome. I try to tell people that when I meet them after a game. But sadly, cant reach all.
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Re: Feedback over all

Post by grasulas » 11 Jul 2014, 03:10

Tiger what if that person you and other 30+ players had to protect is some one else target, sorry mission ? Do you prefer to protect a cardboard with a picture for 1hour or one real person who can react, and interact with other players.

For me the roleplay in Berget games is very important, I will be very disappointed if the next game will not have a civilian faction.
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Re: Feedback over all

Post by Tiger_1 » 11 Jul 2014, 08:11

Like I said in my first post, we spent a lot of our missions driving to a spot so someone could larp. And then back to wait for our next run for someone to larp. Yes, my faction might have been unlucky with our part of the action (to many faction effect) but as people that know me are fully aware, larp has never been something I enjoy, or se much point in during airsoft games, probably because larp in airsoft is usually some guy in civilian gear waiting to kill someone.

And please guys, the fact that I don't enjoy, or see much point in larp does not mean I hate the guys who do, or don't laught when I see a dude on a lawnmower tractor drive past our column, doing what ever he is doing.

Someone said you did not want to be a movie prob for airsofters, well, be careful you don't digg your head so deep in the sand that you don't see that most of the guys with guns are extras filling out your fantasy, it's still an AIRSOFT game!

I can live with spending Berget solving military tactical missions with little to no civilian interaction, so the guys that want to larp need to make sure they see that also, if not they are becoming part of the problem, not the solution.

But I think we all agree on less factions, "more" civilians that are, and act like real civilians, and a game that evolves as commanders make right or wrong decision.
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Re: Feedback over all

Post by Lazt » 11 Jul 2014, 11:12

There were indeed too many escort and wait for larp to finish missions during friday. I love the larping, but should it hold up the whole mech while two guys stand and :wank: for an hour and over and over again? Not so sure. On the other hand, if we would have been attacked sometime atleast maybe it would have been worth it.
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Re: Feedback over all

Post by Tasgeir » 11 Jul 2014, 15:57

My two main problem with the civilians in airsoft is:
-Like others have said that they most of the time are not. There is to big a tendency of them having a hidden agenda or they are undercover what not. The reason for this I believe is the fact that most players who attend as civilians are not LARP'er but airsofters who have seen to many spy and/or undercover agent movies and want to play that part. Sloving this is easy, BE crew must "control" how many civilians that do this type of larping. And on that note, why do every one, even the ones that are pure civilians have guns?

- The other big problem, or the biggest maybe, is that most civilians dont do a were good job playing what they are in real life. Just a normal man/woman who would never move as close to military activity as the ones in a airsoft game do. If I saw a battalion lining up on a road to a border crossing that I know there have been fighting over the last days, I would not drive my lawn mower in to the column and drive a long. If you were drunk or crazy you just would not. "Civilians" that do stuff like that are the ones that makes the larp element bad for me, this is just one of the many examples from this years game.

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Re: Feedback over all

Post by Mr Black » 11 Jul 2014, 16:29

Tasgeir wrote:I would not drive my lawn mower in to the column and drive a long. If you were drunk or crazy you just would not. "Civilians" that do stuff like that are the ones that makes the larp element bad for me, this is just one of the many examples from this years game.
If you have problems with that you need to ask your commander to not pay us to be there and heal you guys when you get shot.

Mudwater's main income was bootlegging. That's why we crossed the border often. If I understand you correctly you don't want to be interacted with by larpers. I'm sorry if you at some point felt forced to interact with me.

FYI the only weapon we had was a big spanner. Therefore EVERY civilian did not have a gun.
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Re: Feedback over all

Post by M.Svensson » 11 Jul 2014, 16:35

It's not really weird that a civilian has a pistol in a war-zone though. Something that would be weird however would be if a civilian were comming with a machinegun, RPGs and grenade launchers.
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Re: Feedback over all

Post by diamid » 11 Jul 2014, 23:25

Tasgeir wrote:If I saw a battalion lining up on a road to a border crossing that I know there have been fighting over the last days, I would not drive my lawn mower in to the column and drive a long. If you were drunk or crazy you just would not. "Civilians" that do stuff like that are the ones that makes the larp element bad for me, this is just one of the many examples from this years game.
There was enough kids chasing Allied Forces/Patrols in Afghanistan that wanted candy and other stuff. Even if the treat of enemy fire was high. Just searching "Civilians and Soldiers in Afghanistan" on Google, I found pictures of civilians standing watching a US soldier ready to fire. There are even videos on YouTube of Civilians driving directly into an fire fight, that had to be stopped and defended by NATO forces.

There is situation in a warzone, like for example Afghanistan where the inhabitants do not have anywhere ells to go. And are so used to the situation that there normal life continues regardless of that large Battalion driving around.
For last years and this years scenario, it would be normal that there would be some civilians stuck in the middle of the conflict. (since the civilian camp was the capitol.) Life goes on.

Last year civilians was caught in the middle of the battle for the boarder station on the first night. And had to be handle in a normal way, meaning forcing them to leave and walk away. For their own good and our safety.

But agree, that there should be made more work in securing that there are at least a 85% pure Civilian LARPs in the Civilian Faction. From what I was told, the amount of Secret Enemies among the civilians was huge, and the amount of assassination attempts high. I still remember the awesome City at Berget 7. Where you had like the Casino etc., and it was a small town full of normal town life, just hampered by the on-going conflict. And when arriving there, meet civilians asking questions and wanting stuff, as in real life.
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Re: Feedback over all

Post by Genocide » 12 Jul 2014, 22:52

Like mr Black said.

The lawnmowerdriver and copilot was paid...By me:) to heal all of our asses during that fight. Including repairing cars.

So that was my call and im glad i did it. Healed a couple our guys and repaired cars.
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