FCF: January 2, 2009

Party Host: Cold Justice
Host Connection: Cable - 16Mbps down/2Mbps up
Match Type: Player (unranked)
Game Modes: All

It’s the first Far Cry Friday of 2009 and we’re going to start the year off with a Players’ Choice Night!

This week, YOU pick the maps we’ll play from the list of maps submitted for FCF since we started this party back up in October.  Just vote for the maps that you want to see played using the voting tool on the right.  You can vote for as many maps as you want, but you can only vote once.

Voting closes just before Midnight CST on December 30th.

We will put the four most popular small maps in the first session and the eight most popular medium-large maps in the second.  Host will decide any ties.  Runners-up will be used if we need to fill in any gaps.

Voting has closed!  Your picks are below.

Got a new map?  We’ll be back to playing new maps on January 9th, so be sure to submit your new maps.  I’ll be reviewing them after the weekend.

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Small Map Session (8 players max.) 7PM - 9PM CST:

This session will be restricted to all private slots. If you aren't on the host's Friends List, you won't be able to get in the room.

Gamertag	Map Name	Modes	Votes
Broken Piggy	Beach Battle	All	5
Cold Justice	Jaynes Oasis	DTU	4
Broken Piggy	Sewer Siege Redux	All	4
Broken Piggy	007 Facility	DT	2
PrisonedBullet	Crossroads	All	2
mambonuts	Junkyard Dog	All	2

Maps in orange text are runners up and will only get played as time permits.

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Large Map Session (16 players max.) 9PM - Midnight CST:

There will be 12 private slots reserved for this session.

Gamertag	Map Name	Modes	Votes
Cold Justice	Roadie Rage Reverb	All	7
mambonuts	Vertigo	All	6
CrazyUncleDave	Spherikill	All	6
Reyule Reborn	Kesselschlact	TCU	5
CrazyUncleDave	Valley Ho	All	5
Cold Justice	Njeve Haki Valley	All	4
SWOFF	twin peaks	All	3
Empires Rage	NECRONOMICON	All	3
Cold Justice	Boot Hill	All	3
PolishFreak8	Djevares Peninsula	All	2
mambonuts	Blood River	All	2
CrazyUncleDave	Pina Coladaburg	All	2
CrazyUncleDave	Keep It Down v2	DTC	2
mambonuts	Shipping Lane Redux	All	2
Broken Piggy	Apocalyptica	D	2
Broken Piggy	Library	All	2
SILO 5 alpha	PRISON BREAK	All	2
Cold Justice	UFLL Uprising	DTU	2
CrazyUncleDave	Fortified	All	2
Reyule Reborn	Leap of Faith	All	2
CrazyUncleDave	Cliffs of Claven v3	All	2

Maps in orange text are runners up and will only get played as time permits.

Trench Notes: December 26, 2008

Most notable event of the night was the never-ending dead heat of a CTD match on Njeve Haki Valley. The match ran for almost 45 minutes and ended in a 0-0 final score. We started out 5 on 5 and ended the match with an almost full room. The number of strategies, from blitzkrieging the enemy base to swimming the diamond back, were countless – and none of them were successful.

Nonetheless, it was a very fun match – despite the lack of a scoring run.

Got a memory from tonight’s match that you’d like to share? Post it in the comments.

Recap: December 26, 2008

Great night all. We played the map list pretty much as list, stopping after
Kesselschlact.

The rooms stayed less than full, as expected, but we all had a great time.

See you next week for Players’ Choice Night!

FCF: December 26, 2008

Party Host: Cold Justice
Host Connection: Cable - 16Mbps down/2Mbps up
Match Type: Player (unranked)
Game Modes: All

Boxing Day? I propose a new holiday: Rifling Day! This will be the last Far Cry Friday of the year, so let’s go out with a BANG!

Due to the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, I will not have the time to review maps, so for the next two weeks we will only be playing on maps from our playlist. Please feel free to submit your new maps – just don’t expect to get a review until after the New Year.

This week it’s Host’s Favorites. I’ll pick my favorite maps as submitted by the mapmakers in our little group. Only maps actually submitted for play in Far Cry Friday will be eligible.

Next week it’s Players’ Choice: Select your favorite maps from the list on the right. I will set the map lists from the top 4 small maps and top 8 medium-to-large maps. VOTE EARLY! The poll ends just before Midnight on December 30th. NOTE: The actual date for the Players' Choice FCF is January 2nd, not New Year's Day. (Some of y'all had already voted before I realized the title error on the poll.)

VOTE FOR ALL THE MAPS YOU ARE INTERESTED IN SEEING PLAYED! You can only vote once, but you can vote for as many maps as you'd like. No limit.

Again, for the Players' Choice sessions, the selections are maps from our group of map-makers. I know there are some great maps out there, but I'm restricting the Jan 2 session to maps from our group. Some time in February we will do a "Maps from Around the World" theme and only play on maps selected from outside our group.

Small Map Session (8 players max.) 7PM - 9PM CST:

This session will be restricted to all private slots. If you aren't on the host's Friends List, you won't be able to get in the room.

Gamertag	Map Name	Status	Size	Modes	Preferred
Broken Piggy	Beach Battle	Old	S	All	CTD
PrisonedBullet	Crossroads	Old	S	D	Deathmatch
Broken Piggy	Apocalyptica	Old	S-M	D	Deathmatch
Cold Justice	Jaynes Oasis	Old	S-M	DTU	Uprising

Large Map Session (16 players max.) 9PM - Midnight CST:

There will be 12 private slots reserved for this session.

Gamertag	Map Name	Status	Size	Modes	Preferred
mambonuts	Junkyard Dog	Old	S-M	All	Team Deathmatch
mambonuts	Vertigo	Old	L	All	Team Deathmatch
Broken Piggy	Beachfront	Old	L	All	Uprising
Cold Justice	Njeve Haki Valley	Old	L	All	CTD
CrazyUncleDave	Spherikill	Old	L	All	Uprising
Cold Justice	Roadie Rage Reverb	Old	M-L	All	Uprising
Reyule Reborn	Kesselschlacht	Old	M	All	Uprising
Cold Justice	Boot Hill	Old	M	All	CTD
SILO 5 alpha	PRISON BREAK	Old	L	All	Uprising
CrazyUncleDave	Purpose Unknown v2	Old	L	All	CTD

Trench Notes: December 19, 2008

It’s almost 4AM CT as I write this and my head is all muzzy… So consider this a placeholder to be filled later when I can think straight.

Even better it’s a scratchpad for the rest of you. If you had a fun, interesting, bizarre experience at FCF this week, share it in the comments.

Recap: December 19, 2008

Well, we got off to something of a slow start, but it was definitely some good times tonight. The session ran from 7PM CT to 3:34AM CT – over 8½ hours!

We played all of the new and updated maps on the map list, plus the unscheduled 3rd iteration of Roadie Rage: Roadie Rage Reverb. Broken Piggy’s Beach Battle made a couple of appearances througout the night and early morning, as did Jaynes Oasis and CrazyUncleDave’s Spherikill. Spherikill lives up to most of the early hype, (I’m still not declaring Dave a “map-making god”), and serves up a fantastic Uprising experience. Not only that, but it is a beautiful constructed map that breaks from the Halo-esque look that we so commonly see in freeform concrete block maps.

We also got a chance to finally see how CTD works on SILO5alpha’s PRISON BREAK. (With a 12 or more people, it works pretty darn well.)

A surprise contender tonight was SWOFF’s “Twin Peaks”, which played better than any of us expected. Congrats!

Also, a few minor refinements and some extra eye candy could find PolishFreak8’s Anarchy map on our regular small map rotation.

FCF: December 19, 2008

Party Host: Cold Justice
Host Connection: Cable - 16Mbps down/2Mbps up
Match Type: Player (unranked)
Game Modes: All

A yuletide edition of Far Cry Friday coming at you this week. Ring in the season with a shiny new MP-5! (Of course, it will be dirty and rusted if your character lives long enough, but a well-placed shot from one of your dearest friends can remedy that…)

Mapmakers: Be sure to get your maps submitted by Midnight (CST) Wednesday. Also, please include the map mode or modes you most wish to see it played on. (This is actually a new submission requirement -- see the revised Map Submission Guide.)

Small Map Session (8 players max.) 7PM - 9PM CST:

This session will be restricted to all private slots. If you aren't on the host's Friends List, you won't be able to get in the room.

Gamertag	Map Name	Status	Size	Modes	Preferred
PolishFreak8	Anarchy	New	S	DT	Deathmatch
Broken Piggy	Sewer Siege Redux	Updated	S-M	All	Uprising/CTD
Broken Piggy	Beach Battle	Old	S	All	CTD
Cold Justice	Jaynes Oasis	Old	S-M	DTU	Uprising
Broken Piggy	Apocalyptica	Old	S-M	D	DM
mambonuts	Junkyard Dog	Old	S-M	All	TDM

Large Map Session (16 players max.) 9PM - Midnight CST:

There will be 12 private slots reserved for this session -- and we will be carefully watching the public population on those 3 remaining slots. The squeaker and mic-less ban hammers will be primed and ready for immediate action.

Gamertag	Map Name	Status	Size	Modes	Preferred
Broken Piggy	Beachfront	Updated	M	DTU	Uprising
CrazyUncleDave	Spherikill	New	M-L	All	Uprising
SWOFF	twin peaks	New	L	All	Uprising/CTD
SWOFF	jungle love	New	L	All	Deathmatch
Broken Piggy	Sand City	Updated	M	All	CTD/Uprising
Broken Piggy	Devils Spine	New	L	All	CTD/Uprising
Mambonuts	Shipping Lane Reload	Old	L	All	TDM
Reyule Reborn	Kesselschlact	Old	S-M	DTU	Uprising
Cold Justice	Njeve Haki Valley	Old	M-L	All	CTD

Trench Notes: December 12, 2008

Looks like the best source of Trench Notes this week came from mambonut’s “Vertigo” map, where gravity seemed to claim the most kills of the night.

• My own experience was standing on the 4th floor behind some crates trying to pick off the other team. I heard an explosion behind me (turns out it was actually above me) and a body just dropped out of the sky onto the crates in front of me.
  
  
• This was also the TDM match that would never end… a match with a 10 minute time limit kept getting extended by votes into a 25 minute match. So much for my promise of an eminent potty break. As mambo put it “I was playing one-handed toward the end [of the match.]”
  
  
• I know there is yet another story about a cadaver rolling down stairs, but I’ll leave the telling to someone who actually witnessed that event.
  

And I’m still smiling a little to myself after running my test map (“UFLL Uprising”) the second time. I asked if we were losing the match because the spawn strategy was unfair, or if it was because the other team was using some nasty strategy to take us down. Broken Piggy said he was afraid it was because the spawn strategy was unfair. Literally two minutes later, our team, which had been losing horribly at Uprising, won the match. So much for an unfair spawn strat… :-)

Got a story from Friday night? Leave it in the comments!

Recap: December 12, 2008

Good times again, guys!

We pretty much played the map list as presented, only substitute “Keep It Down v2” for “Fortified” and “Jaynes Oasis” for “Njeve Haki Valley”.

The only omission of the evening was Broken Piggy’s update to “Beachfront” since he pooped out before we got to it. Next week it will be earlier in the pecking order, bud.

Definite good times. Very little blood on the ban hammer and a reasonably full room until 11:30. Looks like we’ve added a few new players to our little family as well.

See y’all next week.

Trench Notes: Dec. 5, 2008 session

Every once in a while, something so weird happens in an FCF session that it just needs to be memorialized. Last Friday, one of those events occurred.

We had a partially open room and were playing Uprising on Broken Piggy's new Beachfront map. As often happens, the Uprising leader for my team was some random 'Tag, whose name I don't recall. Let's call him Dungforbrains.

When an Uprising match starts, I always call out "Who's the leader?", because people tend to not immediately tell you "Hey, I'm the leader!" like they should. Well, after calling it out several times, I finally saw Dungforbrains in the leader uniform. Okay, great -- we have a leader that is mic-shy. Honestly, I should have banned him. But since we had voting turned off and the other team had no way of banning a silent leader, I figured it would be unfair for me to do it for my team just because I'm the host.

So we went with the handicap. Well, it turns out that Dungforbrains apparently doesn't know how to play Uprising and isn't interested in learning. Instead of heading for the mystical floating letters on the screen, he goes off looking for a good sniping position.

Our entire team is now yelling at Dungforbrains to go take a control point as he meanders off in search of a camping spot. I tell the team to ignore him and just work on keeping the other team from taking points.

We play for a couple of minutes and work our way to the center of the large bunker on the Beachfront map to clear one of the control points. Dungforbrains is with us. He heads right past the smoke-spewing control point that he should be taking, and instead starts aiming his sniper rifle through the bunker windows to do some beach sniping.

I've had enough. I go stand in front of his rifle, blocking his fire, yelling at him the entire time to post his hind-quarters on top of the control point. Somewhere a penny dropped into the slot that activates what's left of Dungforbrains tiny mind and he saunter's over to the control point. "Finally!" I yell. "Now stay there!"

I moved over to the side of the room so that I could cover Dungy from enemy fire while he takes the point -- and this idiot followed me! I start screaming "Get your butt back on that control point! Now! What do you think you are doing?!?"

And then, it happened.

Dungy takes out his machete and starts trying to hack at me! (With friendly fire turned off, he decides to hack his own team-mate, who also happens to be the session host?!?)

What followed was the fastest ban in the history of Far Cry Friday.

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UPDATE: After a little research, consultation and mind-wracking, we've determined that Dungforbrains' real Gamertag is "BenYB0i". (Yeah, I went there.)

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Have a story from last week? Post it in the comments!

FCF: December 12, 2008 @ 7PM CST

Party Host: Cold Justice
Host Connection: Cable - 16Mbps down/2Mbps up
Match Type: Player (unranked)
Game Modes: All

Another night of 360 Love and Rockets... Let's see if we can improve on the stellar party we had last week! I've already got an itchy trigger finger for this week's action.

(My ban finger is a little itchy too, after last week... Hint: if you are 10 years old and joining our session, the first words out of your mouth should not be "Hey, is this a good map?" Definitely don't repeat the question when it is met with silence the first time!)

Mapmakers: Be sure to get your maps submitted by Midnight (CST) Wednesday. Also, please include the map mode or modes you most wish to see it played on. (This is actually a new submission requirement -- see the revised Map Submission Guide.)

Small Map Session (8 players max.) 7PM - 9PM CST:

This session will be restricted to all private slots. If you aren't on the host's Friends List, you won't be able to get in the room.

Gamertag	Map Name	Status	Size	Modes	Preferred
PrisonedBullet	Crossroads	New	S	D	Deathmatch
Broken Piggy	Sewer Siege	New	S-M	All	UC
Broken Piggy	Beach Battle	Old	S	All	CTD
Cold Justice	Jaynes Oasis	Old	S-M	DTU	Uprising
Broken Piggy	Apocalyptica	Old	S-M	D	Deathmatch

Large Map Session (16 players max.) 9PM - Midnight CST:

There will be 12 private slots reserved for this session -- and we will be carefully watching the public population on those 3 remaining slots. The squeaker and mic-less ban hammers will be primed and ready for immediate action.

Gamertag	Map Name	Status	Size	Modes	Preferred
Broken Piggy	Subterranean	New	L	All	UC
PolishFreak8	Djevares Peninsula	New	M-L	TCU	Uprising
mambonuts	Vertigo	New	L	All	Uprising
Cold Justice	UFLL Uprising	New	M-L	TCU	Uprising
PolishFreak8	Redemption	New	M	TCU	Uprising
Broken Piggy	Beachfront	Updated	M	DTU	Uprising
Reyule Reborn	Kesselschlact	Old	S-M	DTU	Uprising
CrazyUncleDave	Fortified	Old	L	All	TDM
Cold Justice	Njeve Haki Valley	Old	M-L	All	CTD

Recap: December 5, 2008

Okay, now we are back to what Far Cry Friday has always been about: A good group, some good maps, and good times. Guys, you made my night. I’m hoping we can continue to have sessions like this one. Now, if we can just get Ubisoft to fix the voice chat issues…

If you have friends who can handle the social atmosphere that we had tonight, please invite them to be a part of our little party. Past experience has shown that if we get a core group of 20-25 people, we can lock it down to a wholly private party and just about always have a full room.

Sorry for schilling Njeve Haki Valley at the end of the night, but it’s still my favorite of my own maps. :-) Ending the night with that map may become a tradition until I find another one of my own that I like better. (Yeah, it’s tradition for me to close the night with one of my own maps, because that’s the kind of cruel dictator host that I am.)

The published map list is pretty much how the night went down – all of the maps listed were played, pretty much in the order listed. Most of the maps got played twice. A couple that need some more work got played once, and Kesselschlact got played 4 times. (That is a FUN Uprising map.) Expect to see Kesselschlact go into our regular stable of repeat maps.

And for those who want to keep score, the following maps are in our line-up of repeatables that I throw in when I need to fill out the map order:

• 007 Facility (Broken Piggy)
• Apocalyptica (Broken Piggy)
• Beach Battle (Broken Piggy)
• Beaver Creek (Broken Piggy)
• Blood River (mambonuts)
• Boot Hill (Cold Justice) – this one may be phased out of the repeatable rotation soon.
• Jayne’s Oasis (Cold Justice)
• Keep It Down v2 (Crazy Uncle Dave)
• Kesselschlact (Reyule Reborn)
• Njeve Haki Valley (Cold Justice)
• Purpose Unknown (CrazyUncleDave)
• Shipping Lane Reload (mambonuts)

These are all maps that have not only played well in the past during our FCF sessions, but have play count histories supporting my personal opinion of how well they play. And for me, that is the proof of the pudding. Not maps that get lots of downloads, but maps that get lots of play. They are all maps that I look forward to playing when I see them come up on our list because they are fun maps. Even better, most of these maps are good-looking as well, and that never hurts.

FCF: December 5, 2008 @ 7PM CST

Party Host: Cold Justice
Host Connection: Cable - 16Mbps down/2Mbps up
Match Type: Player (unranked)
Game Modes: All

Take a break from your Christmas shopping and give a gift that will be long remembered-- a Carl Gustav rocket to the face! We'll be back at it with some new maps, some updated maps and a few past favorites.

Mapmakers: Be sure to get your maps submitted by Midnight (CST) Wednesday. Be aware that I am nudging the quality bar a bit higher beginning this week, so our map acceptance standards will be tighter than before.

Please review the Code of Conduct -- we have made several amendments since last week.

Small Map Session (8 players max.) 7PM - 9PM CST:

This session will be restricted to all private slots. If you aren't on the host's Friends List, you won't be able to get in the room.

Gamertag	Map Name	Status	Size	Modes	Preferred
Cold Justice	Jaynes Oasis	Old	S-M	DTU	Uprising
Broken Piggy	Beach Battle	Old	S	All	CTD
Panyc333	FarCry TACTICS*	New	S-M	DTC	CTD
Reyule Reborn	Kesselschlact*	New	S-M	DTU	Uprising
Broken Piggy	Apocalyptica	Old	S-M	D	DM

*We may delay playing these maps until the large map session to make sure the map makers are in the room when they are played.

Large Map Session (16 players max.) 9PM - Midnight CST:

There will be 12 private slots reserved for this session -- and we will be carefully watching the public population. The squeaker and mic-less ban hammers will be primed and ready for immediate action.

Gamertag	Map Name	Status	Size	Modes	Preferred
CrazyUncleDave	Cliffs of Claven v3	New	L	All	Upr/CTD
Empires Rayge	Army of Darkness	New	M	All	Upr/CTD
CrazyUncleDave	Valley Ho	New	M	All	CTD
Broken Piggy	Beachfront	New	M	DTU	Uprising
Cold Justice	Roadie Rage Remix	New	M-L	DTU	Uprising
Mambonuts	Blood River	Old	M	All	Uprising
Cold Justice	Sundial Gardens	Updated	L	All	Uprising

Recap: Nov. 28 2008

Overall it was an okay session. No LIVE or network hiccoughs to speak of (except for a lockout at the beginning of the second session.)

I do have a few concerns I want to address, though, and they all hover around the issue that I am trying to appeal to a more mature demographic in these sessions:

1. Beginning this week, squeakers will be dumped immediately from the session. I may need help from the room to identify the Gamertag of any child gamer that happens upon our lobby. Please feel free to tell the host "ghost_gigglz is a squeaker!" at your earliest opportunity.
   
   
2. We had some less-than-mature individuals that dominated the lobby with their fascinating discussions of diamond counts, hunting prowess and cheerleading for the muted-player ban hammer. (I take no pleasure in banning people from the room – it’s not a side-show event to be cheered.) Not to mention their attempts to outshout any other conversation that was attempting to go on. I'll address this during the week with the most probable outcome being a thinning of my FL. (UPDATE: This has already occurred.)
   
   
3. Broken/cheap headsets are no longer going to be tolerated. The echo-plex effect we endured much of last week was horrible. I will be updating the Code of Conduct to reflect this.
   

My apologies for not dealing with this stuff as it happened last Friday... I was on cold meds and not feeling so hot, so my tolerance for unacceptable behavior was higher than it normally would be.

It's no fun being the disciplinarian, but I want to keep FCF a high-quality event that the more mature people in the Far Cry community look forward to participating in. The only way I can ensure that is to thin the herds occasionally -- and I have no problem executing that duty if it means we continue to have fun, high-quality sessions.

Note that this is not a ban on mature teens and early twenty-somethings! If you comport yourself well, you are more than welcome to be a part of our weekly shindig. (If you received a message on LIVE from me today directing you to this article, then you are one of the "good guys.")

Also, I want to remind people -- if a map isn't working, tell the host! All I need is two votes to shut down a match and we will be on to the next map. To make it easier -- one of those votes can be my own!

- CJ

PS: The Code of Conduct has been updated. Please review it and post your comments here.

Maps Played Nov-28-2008 (sorted by Gamertag):

Gamertag	Map Name	Status	Size	Mode Played
Broken Piggy	007 Facility	New	S	DM
Broken Piggy	Beach Battle	Updated	S	CTD
Broken Piggy	Beaver Creek	Old	S	TDM
Broken Piggy	Sand City v4	Old	S-M	TDM
Broken Piggy	Apocalyptica	Old	L	DM
Broken Piggy	Library	Old	L	TDM
Cold Justice	Njeve Haki Valley	Old	L	CTD
Cold Justice	Roadie Rage	New	M	Uprising
CrazyUncleDave	Keep It Down v2	Old	L	CTD
Dayton28	Waterworld	New	M	TDM
Luke123Dude	Eyelid Islands	New	M	TDM
Luke123Dude	Beach	New	S	TDM
Luke123Dude	Boomtown	New	S	TDM
Luke123Dude	Shattered	New	S	DM
Mambonuts	Shipping Lane Reload	Old	L	TDM
Mambonuts	Junkyard Dog	Old	S	TDM
pancakeslamma	ghost valley	New	L	Uprising
Reyule Reborn	Deadly Cargo	New	L	Uprising
Reyule Reborn	Blood Money	New	M	CTD
Reyule Reborn	Leap of Faith	New	S	CTD
SILO 5 alpha	PRISON BREAK	New	L	Uprising

New or updated maps that DID NOT get played:

Gamertag	Map Name	Status	Size	Modes
Cold Justice	Sundial Gardens	Updated	L	All
Luke123Dude	Isolation	New	M	DTC