Fist Fiction!

Props to Wally for writing this fiction update.

Iron Navy Command Ship

Arx Space

Dracaryis stepped out of the refresher of the captain's quarters with a towel wrapped around his waist and a pair of soft slippers. He had done some serious thinking in the shower, but he could not figure out a solution to one of the recurring thorns in the side of his plans.

“How do I reach these kids?” he murmured to himself.

The Fist of the Brotherhood was lean and muscular, but without his tailored robes looked like any other man. He dabbed at his wet hair with a second dry towel before discarding it haphazardly onto the floor. He had people that would clean it up for him later. Sometimes, he purposely left things a mess just to get the satisfaction of knowing that when he returned to his quarters later, everything would be reset and perfect. He sighed contently as he walked into the lounge area but froze in place at what was waiting for him.

The table had been set only moments before his arrival. The smell of fresh baked pastries was nearly intoxicating—both inviting and tantalizing at the same time. It was almost too perfect, though. Vibrant fruits touching each gradient of a rainbow were arrayed around shiny silver platters. Among the sea of color, a single tray seemed to draw the spotlight of the room's overhead luminescence. Carved pieces of fluffy, crisp quick bread were stacked like a symmetrical pyramid bound for the heavens. The circular tray was littered with flakes that could only come from delicate dough baked to perfection. They looked like biscuits, but the shape was different.

Scones. Beautiful, perfect, scones.

It’s a trap.

Read the rest here!

Message from the Fist

Hello all. Welcome to my 5th report as Fist of the Brotherhood. Lots of behind the scenes work going on in preparation for the upcoming Great Jedi War. I’m looking forward to providing some new ways for you all to test your mettle against other members of the club and earn glory for your clans!

It’s been a busy month for the office. We are still running our Titanfall 2 and Star Wars: Force Arena test events, and I hope to see more submissions to both of those before they close out on February 15th. Links to all competitions are below. Additionally, there are plenty of other DB-wide gaming events for you to take part in. One of the best parts of our competition system is the ability for all members to offer some kind of activity to the club at large. So get out there and earn some crescents!

Plenty to go over this month. Yes, the nerf hammer came out. Take a deep breath, everything is going to be OK.

Let’s get to it.

January Cluster Clan Bragging Rights

Thanks to Andrelious for keeping track of the daily Cluster winners for January. While this is really just a function to validate that the site is properly rolling up Clusters for James, it is cool to provide some bragging rights to the clans. He did this on his own as kind of a side project, and I sincerely appreciate it!

On Telegram

As of now, the Fist office manages nine Telegram chat rooms. Eight of those are game-specific rooms, of which only three see regular activity. From my standpoint, this format has two massive faults: It fractures the gaming community and it creates a management nightmare for me and my staff. I don’t see any benefit to this club in having that many chat rooms, and frankly I don’t want to have my staff monitoring rooms that haven’t seen activity in months. These rooms were initially established to remove game-specific chat out of the DB Gaming room. I don’t have an issue with that at all. I want the gaming community to be in the same room, sharing their discussions about our supported platforms and discussing upcoming games they are interested in.

Effective immediately, the only official gaming-related chat is the DB Gaming room. I will be leaving all of the sub-chats and will no longer field any questions or comments from them. Only DB Gaming will be monitored by myself and my staff. Don’t be surprised when you see me and my staff leave those chats.

No, we didn’t get fired. Yes, everything is OK.

How Games Get Supported

I want to address the methodology for supporting new games, as it is the most frequently asked question I get. Adding a game to our library of supported platforms is a critical aspect of how this club grows as a gaming community. Gaming in this club is primarily social; I want members of this club to game together playing the games they enjoy. The process is relatively simple, and focuses on three pillars: Needs of the Club, Overall Interest, and Feasibility of Support.

• Needs of the Club: This is generally the first gate a game has to pass through before we will consider it for support. Exceptions are made for new Star Wars games, which will always take priority over anything else. This is a Star Wars club, after all. What genre is the new game? What gap does it fill? What is the overall benefit to the club? How will this game factor into brotherhood-wide events? Can it be used in a GJW? If a game doesn’t fill a need (and it isn’t a Star Wars game), this is where the process either stops or continues into the interest/testing phase. Ideally all supported games should be an option for our PC, PS4, and Xbox One players. I’m certain there will be exceptions that goal, but for the most part if it’s only available on one platform, I’m probably not going to put it forward for testing.

• Overall Interest: My staff and I so our best to monitor new games for overall interest across the club. We are always open to member feedback if there is a game we aren’t looking at. If there is enough interest in a specific game (usually 10 or more people actively playing the game or planning to purchase the game), we then look to consider the game’s feasibility.

• Feasibility of Support: When looking at a game’s feasibility, I am specifically looking at the definable metrics that meet our requirements for support. How long do match times or multiplayer events take? How many people can play together at a time? What are the major level milestones? What do the event/match completion screenshots look like, if they exist? If supported, how will we validate a submission? In order to check these things, my office runs competitions, like our current Titanfall 2 and Star Wars: Force Arena competitions. We take in multiple screenshots, member feedback on match/event times, and of course, overall interest. If only five people submit to the competition, then it is pretty obvious there isn’t a large enough player base to warrant support. Conversely, if 20 members submit to the event, the game has an EXTREMELY good chance of support.Based off the results of the competition, we’ll either support the game or we won’t. And if we decide to not support a game after testing, we will always provide metrics and reasons why.

After all of this is complete, I draft up a support request and submit it to the GM and DGM for their review. Once I have their approval on the platform, the modes and cluster values are added to the site, and the game goes live for full support.

While we monitor upcoming new releases for potential options for DJB gaming, we rely heavily on the community to bring potential platforms to our attention. Overwatch is a prime example of a game that had a lot of community support prior to its addition. It was feasible, filled a need, and is extremely popular with the member base.

There are rare occasions where a game will gain full support only to be removed. This happened with The Division. Initially, the game supported multiple modes and even provided Pendants of Blood for specific milestones. After a few weeks of full support, we realized that the screenshots were nearly impossible to validate. Additionally, member support for the game died off rapidly, to the point that there was absolutely no reason to continue supporting it. As such, the game was removed from our supported platforms list.

That said, not everything meets the requirements for full support. In those cases, we generally turn to our competition system to afford an opportunity to play something outside the normal confines of our supported platforms.

Hopefully this helps clear everything up for you all. I will always look to find new platforms to support, and as long as they meet the three pillars for support as outlined above, we will work diligently to add those games into our library. As always, if you have any comments, questions, or recommendations for new games, feel free to email me, my staff, or use our “Ask the Fist” google form!

Gaming Related Updates

Destiny Changes

It is no secret that I play a lot of Destiny. With more and more people approaching max level, I am noticing that Strike completion times are generally in the 9-12 minute frame. As discussed in prior reports, cluster values generally stick to the 1 Cluster per 5 minutes of play. Right now, every strike has its own unique cluster value, and I firmly believe that some of these strikes have seriously inflated values.

Therefore, effective immediately, all Destiny Strikes will award 2 CEs per completion. This simplifies gaming submissions for all of you (you may now submit multiple Strikes in a single submission, rather than individual submissions for each one), and brings Destiny CE values back into balance. The Nightfall modifier will remain in place, and the Raids, Prison of the Elders and Challenge of the Elders events remain unchanged for now.

I will be reviewing Raid, PoE, and CoE completion times over the next month to see if any adjustments need to be made. (Yes, Crota...I’m looking at you.)

Overwatch Changes

Effective immediately, a modifier is in place for Overwatch competitive mode. When submitting activities, you now have the ability to choose normal quickplay or competitive mode which will be worth two CFs per match. Quickplay and Competitive mode screenshots must be submitted separately, as this modifier may only be used for Competitive mode matches.

Galaxy of Heroes Changes

There is simply no way around Galaxy of Heroes’ pay to win model. As such, I have concerns that each week awards 1st level crescents to essentially the same people. I will allow the current quarter’s competitions to play out, because those events are in essence a contract I made with all of you to provide rewards for playing the game.

Moving forward in Q2, all GoH competitions will award CEs only, with the competition providing ONLY participation credit. With crescents and clusters providing credit payouts for possessions, I have to think about the balance not only in the gaming rewards area, but in terms of possessions as well.

Sorry, Strat.

FIST Sponsored Gaming Competitions

[FIST]1st Annual Flash Gaming

[FIST] 2nd Annual Mobile Gaming

[FIST] GMRG Gorefest 2017

[FIST] Quarterly Gaming Challenge Q1 2017

[FIST] Galaxy of Heroes Quarterly Squad Arena

FIST - Star Wars Force Arena - Test Run

FIST - Titanfall 2 - Test Run

January Weekly and Saturday Pendant of Blood Awardees

Congratulations to the following individuals on earning Pendants of Blood for the highest overall PvP score for the weeks/Saturdays listed!

Weekly PoBs

• 1 -6 Jan: Reiyden

• 8-13 Jan: Blade

• 15 - 20 Jan: Blade

• 22 - 27 Jan: Blade

Saturday PoBs

• 7 Jan: No matches played.

• 14 Jan: Evelynn Wyrm

• 21 Jan: Blade

• 28 Jan: Blade

Ask the Fist

Most questions are still coming from telegram (and that’s ok). Don’t forget we have a form where you can ask a question at any time! Some of you got answers on Telegram. Some of you asked some pretty detailed questions that warranted report inclusion. So...here we go!

Q: Wally asks: Do you think that reading is a valuable skill for members of the DB to invest in pursuing alongside their love of SW and Gaming?

A: Absolutely. I recommend anything by Chuck Wendig. Phenomenal author. But in all seriousness, reading is important. Staring at a video game or a TV all day can be fun, but nothing works the ol’ brain out like a good book.

Q: Wally Asks: Do you have any plans of updating Drac’s CS to reflect recent developments? What is your favorite item in possessions so far?

A: I don’t know. Maybe. Fiction makes my mind hurt. But then again, going to my favorite item in possessions...I could totally put together a loadout comprised of nothing but Pazaak cards.

Q: Atty Asks: is there any particular aspect of the club's gaming culture you are particularly proud of? is there any aspect of gaming in the club you would like to change by the time you're through? culture, perception, methodology, etc?

A: Leave it to Atty to ask a super serious and multi-part question. Personally, I’m a big fan of the community-focus that our club provides. The way gaming has progressed from the standard One on one N00b pwning of the early to mid 2000s has in my opinion brought more people in to the world of online gaming. While I’m not personally a fan of the game, Overwatch is a key example of everything that is good in terms of cooperative team play.

One of the things I would like to see change is for some of the gamers in this club to remember that everyone has different tastes in the type of games they like to play. Just because you don’t like Minecraft and Pokemon doesn’t mean they suck. And it doesn’t mean the person that plays them is an idiot. Play what you like, like what you play, and remember rule #1: Don’t be a d--k.

Q: Atty Asks: What is your favorite breakfast pastry?

A: Scones, my dear. Scones.

Q: Tahiri asks: If you had to choose one game to earn CFs/CEs, what would you choose? If you could only play a free game to earn CFs/CEs what would it be?

A: I’m a huge proponent of playing games that you enjoy/like vs. playing strictly for clusters. That said, I will likely always fall back to Destiny for my CE/CF earning. It’s one of the only games we currently support that I truly enjoy, and it gives me lots of options in terms of how I can play.

In terms of FREE games, I actually like Star Conflict a lot. I’m limited on how much I can play it simply because I do mostly console gaming, but frankly, the controls are easy to learn, there’s just as many game-mode options as Destiny (did I mention I like Destiny?) and for a free game, the graphics are pretty awesome. Plus, I own a mac, so any games that we support that I can play are kind of a bonus.

Ask the Fist the Google Form edition is live! Post a question here anytime, day or night, and either I or a member of my staff will try to answer it for you. The best questions each month will be featured in my report!

TL;DR

1) DB Gaming is now the only official chat. Join the conversation there.

2) How a game gets supported

3) Destiny Changes. Easier to submit, slightly lower reward for Strikes.

4) Overwatch Competitive mode added. 2 CEs per match. You’re welcome.

5) No more crescents for GoH at the end of current competition. CEs will still be available.

6) Plenty of competitions. Go do the things.

Thanks for gaming. I’ll have the results of the Titanfall and Force Arena tests out sometime around the middle of the month!

-Drac