Message from the Fist

Hello Gamers! Welcome to a slightly early report from your Fist of the Brotherhood! I’m going to cover a few things here, including some old games with new support, new games with potential support, and of course, THE WAR!

War

We are eleven days out from the Thirteenth Great Jedi War, and we’re all excited for our exploration of the new Faction, the Severian Principate. But would a War be a War without a few brackets?

With that, we will be running two Tournament Brackets: Jedi Academy and Heroes of the Storm. If you wish to participate in either of those Brackets, Sign Up Here. I will be accepting sign-ups until the end of July 19th at bot reset. Once the new day has started, as announced by FistBot, sign-ups will be closed, with ZERO exceptions. I will set the bracket and then it will go live with the launch of the War.

Round One matches will be subject to a scheduling deadline: they must be completed by the end of the day on July 27th. If you fail to start your match by that deadline, you will be DQ’d. Subsequent rounds may have deadlines imposed if we start feeling a time crunch. Make sure your communication with your opponent starts as soon as you know who your opponent is.

Support Updates

Capital Supremacy in Battlefront 2 (2017) is a multi-objective multiplayer mode that pits two opposing factions struggling to destroy the other’s capital ship. First is the Command Post phase, in which players are tasked with capturing and maintaining controlling of five command posts. Whoever has at least three command posts will start amassing reinforcements.

Once a team has collected enough reinforcements to begin their attack, they will board landing craft and launch an attack on their opponent’s capital ship. There, they will attempt to open the bay doors and destroy key targets within the ship. If they run out of reinforcements before completing their objective, both teams return to the ground and begin the Command Post phase again. Progress on the ships will carry over, but both teams start from zero reinforcements every time the Command Post phase restarts.

This mode is now supported. Screenshots MUST include the Capital Supremacy search and travel prompt that appears below the score screen. Galactic Assault will not require that, and if you catch the screenshot for Capital Supremacy too early, you can still submit it for Galactic Assault to receive credit.

Speaking of supported games, Dauntless passed the poll easily and will move on to the Game Test phase. Immediately upon the conclusion of the war, there will begin a month long Game Test of Dauntless, and there may or may not be something to wet your palate in the coming weeks.

Rites of Combat Update

Bubba, Junazee, and I got together early in my term to talk about bringing the Rites of Combat up-to-date. Some of the Rites were still from the IRC era and don’t have any bearing on how gaming is conducted in the Telegram era. A huge shout-out to Turel and Blade for highlighting some of these and helping along the way.

There isn’t going to be a massive re-write (ie. the Covenant), just reorganizing and making it easier to follow and understand for some of our newer members. The War will operate entirely under the current iteration of the RoC, but expect a shiny version of it post-War.

#AskTheFist

Hilgrif asks: What is your favorite game?

That I'm currently playing, Overwatch. Of all time, Shadow of the Colossus. I also absolutely LOVE the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time Trilogy.

Turel asks: What role do you see the fist office playing in encouraging more consistent participation from a larger selection of clans?

This is ultimately a major component of the Fist's responsibility to the Brotherhood. Simply making decisions of what is and isn't allowed becomes more a policing job than a policy job. My primary goal for my term is to ensure that gaming is as accessible to everyone as possible while also promoting the more competitive nature of our largest activity.

Seeing members from more Clans gaming is part of that accessibility and encouragement and there are some things in the pipeline that will offer incentives.

Turel asks: How do you view the current process of getting a game approved? Too easy? Too difficult? Too slow moving? Which is more important in approved games, wider adoption or longevity?

I believe that the pace it's offered at right now is healthy. A game has to show considerable activity or potential activity to be considered. If a game has a mass amount of interest on day one of launch, we might have 35 people say that they're going to play it. Come Day 30, that number may have easily dwindled to 10 or less. Those specific numbers aren't enough for a game to lose support, but every game has a honeymoon period and then after which people either lose interest in it or we see sustainability.

HotS and Overwatch, for example, showed amazing promise off the get go and have both flourished to be our most popular supported games. They survived the initial push and are sustainable. Apex was the Next Big Thing, and interest in that has waned that we haven't seen any submissions from it since its first week of support.

If a game can't maintain its interest for longer than 2 months without awarding clusters it's not going to survive even when it does award clusters.

Between wider adoption and longevity, the wider adoption is more important. Wider adoption can lead to longevity.

Hilgrif asks: I am curious of two things. Could you give an example of what type of comp we will see in the war and will there be any flash games comps?

This being my first foray into hosting Gaming competitions during a Brotherhood-wide Vendetta, I drew a lot on what I've seen succeed in the past, so you can expect flash games, bracket tournaments, PvP ladders, and some single-player gaming, but I'm throwing in a twist later on based on a competition I saw when I was but a Journeyman that I'm really excited for.

Turel asks: Who's your OW main and when will you play with me?

I'm an off-Tank Main. I have coming up on 200 hours on DVa, and I've spent the last eight months working on my Zarya, and I’ll bring out my Roadhog on the Ilios well from time to time.

And I'm ALWAYS game for Overwatch on PS4!

Scudi asks: War: what is it good for?

Novae and other shinies.

Gaming Activity Update

Top Platforms for month of June:

No. 1 - Heroes of the Storm with 24 Activities.

No. 2 - Diablo 3 and Overwatch with 22 Activities.

No. 3 - Battlefront (pre-2015) with 7 Activities. (Great to see this old-timey gaming!)

Weekly and Saturday PoBs

In any case in which PoBs are worth more than one week, there were weeks in which there were not enough participants.

• 14 April - 3 May 2019: Justinios and Alaisy
• 5 May - 21 June 2019: Aurora
• 23 June - 5 July 2019: Amira Lux

In any case in which there are omitted Saturdays, no games were played on that day.

• 29 June 2019: Amira Lux
• 6 July 2019: Hilgrif
  

Admin and Policy Reminders

If you haven’t joined the ranks of the GMRG, head on over to the GMRG-History course and pass the exam within the Shadow Academy. Get an opportunity to gain exclusive items, compete on the leaderboard to choose a Dark Council member to protect! (Get their accessory!)

All current Gaming and Fist Policies can be found on the Gaming Information page. I suggest that all members read this page as it has some great info. I will make sure this page stays updated to reflect all current office policies. I do not want to confuse anyone, especially with what is and is not allowed in the DB Gaming Telegram room.

Other items of note:

• The staff has 24 hours from the time you submit gaming activity to approve it. If your submission has been sitting for longer than that, there is a problem. If it hasn’t, there is no problem. The staff do their best to process gaming submissions as quickly as possible, but they are real people with real lives. I do not expect them to sit behind a computer processing gaming submissions all day, and neither should any of you.

• Solo submissions are never acceptable for Clusters of Earth/Fire. My staff and I will reject any that come in. You must play with at least one other DB member, no exceptions. This is not changing any time in the near (or far) future, or ever.

• Pendants of Blood are not acceptable for submission to cluster-counting competitions. If we see them, we will remand the request.

• Reminder: Feel free to run Gaming competitions DB wide. Gaming is a slightly different community, and is one of the few that consistently brings club members together outside of the competitive environment. Most of the people I currently game are all in different clans. By opening up your event DB-wide, you increase the pool of possible participants, which could allow for a crescent upgrade!

• Reminder: While I sincerely appreciate having proposals/great ideas sent to me via telegram, please email the staff list (email is at the bottom of this report). I ask that your House and Clan leadership take a look at your proposals before you send them up. This isn’t to add a layer of bureaucracy, it’s because I’m sure they’d like to know how you are trying to help the club improve...helps with award and promotion recommendations and all that. Feel free to cc them on your email to me and my staff.

Helpful Links

• [DB Gaming on Telegram - Log in to view join link] on Telegram. Come be part of the discussion in the one and only official gaming channel of the Dark Jedi Brotherhood!

• Send us an email at [Log in to view e-mail addresses]

If you have any other questions about the Fist’s Office or Gaming in general, don’t hesitate to fire me an e-mail: [Log in to view e-mail addresses].

Thanks everyone, and enjoy the war!

I have the honour to be your obedient servant,

A (dot) Jinn