Extreme Fusion Gaming

An insight into the new "Moderator" role

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 22:26:00 +0000

Over the last week or so some of you may have noticed a new role appear in several areas of our clan called a "Moderator". This role has essentially evolved from the "Admin" role which had been implemented in various aspects of clan life such as game servers and TeamSpeak, but in a rather unstructured and messy way.

We have attempted emulating democracy within a clan envrionment and failed, and have as a result never really implemented a proper leadership structure, or supportive structure. I, personally, have failed to properly distribute tasks to members which has left some aspects of clan life such as new members rather fragile and susceptible to failure a little too often.

Our goal with Moderators is to build a small group of members who commit to performing certain tasks in their capacity in order to better distribute the administrative tasks of top-level leaders in the clan. We plan to have regular meetings with these members in which we will outline important goals over the coming weeks and distribute important tasks.

On the ground this translates to Moderators helping new members feel welcome in the clan, encouraging new members to get involved with clan activities, acting as eyes and ears throughout clan activities for the Leadership Team, collecting and passing on feedback from members to the Leadership Team, and implementing clan policy (i.e. rules and social ethics).

It is important that I mention the role of a Moderator is not an attempt to subvert member involvement in clan policy. We strongly believe in every member, regardless of rank, having an equal say in clan policy, and we will never surrender this ideal in favour of having top-heavy policy direction. In all serious matters pertaining to clan policy we will always speak directly to every member for their opinion, and will only use the Moderators group as a secondary importance in that sense.

In regards to how we select Moderators, we will be opting to take a slow but steady pace. Moderators will often be long-standing members who have proven themselves to be level-headed and strong believers in the policies we attempt to implement and the way we go about playing games. We will also be rather tame in the amount of Moderators we select, as to avoid overpopulating the role; not all long-standing members will become Moderators as that would saturate the role's value.

If you are interested in becoming a Moderator, feel free to get in touch with me. However, do be aware that the role of Moderator is usually dependent on you being fairly active; if you are busy with work, I'd advise you to not involve responsibilities in what is probably your free time. Having said that, the nature of the Moderator role is rather laid-back, but still has clear responsibilities.

In conclusion I feel we are really able to turn a page here and work on building a far more organized clan envrionment in which everything runs a lot more smoothly with less confusion on the part of leadership as well as the member base. Drama will always exist, but with this system in place we will hopefully find ourselves far better equipped when the next crisis rears its ugly head.

If there are any concerns you have, please don't hesitate to contact me in private.

Promotions - 14.04.12

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 11:47:00 +0000

Greetings everyone,

I have just gone through the list of Initiates and promoted those who are long overdue for being promoted. It's been a pleasure gaming with you guys, and I look forward to many more such experiences in the future.

Those who were promoted were Tinfoil Hat, SmokerBro, Ghosty, Noremac, G.N.I.L.F, Flind and DJMurreV.

Nothing new comes with the title of Member, other than the bragging rights of the title itself. Hope you enjoy it guys.

Congrats,

Bluecewe

Call to... Fund?

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 17:00:00 +0000

Hey guys,

It has been sometime since we last made an open request for donations from our members, but sadly our Battlefield 3 servers will be reaching the end of their 6-month subscription on the 4th of April.

The cost of running our two Battlefield 3 servers for 6 months is just under £300, being just over £150 for 3 months, and around £50 per month. We usually try to pay for several months in one go, as doing so grants us a 15% or 10% discount for a 6 or 3 month subscription. We do this because when we are dealing with costs of hundreds of pounds, a discount helps.

Concerning the length of our subscription in April, we will be going with a 3-month subscription as DICE may take certain decisions in the coming months which make it impractical for us to continue operating a server.

For those interested in knowing, our clan site hosting is paid by myself (Bluecewe, Xterea), and our Procon layers and TeamSpeak 3 server are paid for by the clan, but are pretty cheap - around £20 per year for each service - so our core and supporting services are secure.

I have setup a thread in our forum - found here - in which I hope to hear people's opinions concerning our two current Battlefield 3 servers.

As always, if you have any spare money over the next few months we would be greatly appreciative if you were to support our clan's presence in the Battlefield 3 community, and in other game communities in the future which we may wish to take part in. You can donate to the clan through this page on our site.

Thanks for your time,

Bluecewe

Moving Forward

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 23:00:00 +0000

Launch

A few months ago we made a blog post outlining our plans for the next few months, and more specifically than that; what we were hoping to achieve in relation to Battlefield 3.

But we are here now, it's October 25th - Battlefield 3's launch date in North America - and we have managed to achieve the goals we set out to accomplish. Our game server is running and we are now patiently waiting (or at least some of us are) for the European release.

So, what now?

Well, over the next few weeks we hope to as a clan get back to how we were when we were actively playing Bad Company 2; getting back to some sort of "normality". If you haven't heard yet, Battlefield 3 will become our new primary game, replacing Bad Company 2. This also means that we will be aiming to increase recruitment as we now have a game to play as a clan which everyone (hopefully) will have.

Regarding recruitment, there is not much you as members can contribute. However, if you happen to know any friends in real life or people on Steam and whatnot who are interested in playing Battlefield 3, feel welcome to direct them to our site, or better yet have them play a few rounds with us in TeamSpeak.

Another area where your input will be useful over the next few weeks and probably months will be concerning our server settings. Although we wont be setting up accurate polls, we will be attempting to gain some form of consensus as to what our clan wants our server to be. We are starting off with a few settings which we have discussed over previous weeks in the Server Settings Debate over in our forums. None of these settings are by any means set in stone and we will most probably be adjusting some variables on the server to better suit our gameplay style. It all depends on how the next few weeks and months go.

We will continue to use the Server Settings Debate thread to discuss adjustment of server variables if needed over the next few weeks. Please try to keep your comments constructive, as you have all done so far very well.

Administration

I'll also take a short moment to make a statement regarding in-game administration. As usual myself and Duneti will be administrating our servers at the top-level. However, seeing as we are running a 64 player server, we will be looking to "grant" a few appropriate members some admin powers such as killing and kicking, as well as access to the remote administration program we use; Procon.

If you are interested in the idea of being a low-level admin with a few powers to keep our servers clean, please get in contact with me (Bluecewe/Xterea).

See you in the field

Before I finish off this blog post, I'd like to thank all of you who contributed to getting our Battlefield 3 server for 6 months. Although we would have liked to see a few more people helping out with our funding as a clan, we were very happy to reach the goal we were aiming for. If you have any spare money over the next few months, we'd be grateful for the extra funding which we will eventually need anyway in a few months time. You can donate here.

Thanks again for all your assistance and for being part of this clan, and I look forward to fighting alongside you in the field later this week. Good luck!

Looking Forward

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000

Greetings

I have been meaning to write this blog post for many weeks now, but it has taken a while to get everything written down. In this post I'll be covering everything from Brink, Red Orchestra 2, and Battlefield 3, to My Company and promotions.

Essentially, I'll be spelling out what our plans are for the next few months, and more specifically describing how it will effect you and your gameplay experience. Hopefully in a positive way though!

I have added several handy headers above each topic of this article, so you can find what is important to you if some of the topics aren't of interest, but please try to read over most of the topics in order to be most informed.

Brink

To start off with, I would like to clear up the situation regarding Brink.

Back in May, a fair number of us purchased Brink. We hoped that it would be a dynamic new gaming experience that would give us a bit of variety alongside our regular Bad Company 2 experiences. We also hoped that we would be able to welcome an array of new members to our clan, and I am pleased to say that surprisingly over half of those who joined us for Brink are still gaming with us, and I would like to take a moment to thank you guys for sticking with us, I hope that we have made you feel welcome here.

However, it saddens me to have had to make the decision to drop offical support for Brink as our secondary shooter. The reason for this is because Brink suffers from one major flaw that makes all it's good parts irrelevant; repetition. Specifically, Brink becomes very boring very quickly, as there is an extremely strong narrative that sits behind each and every map. The combat is shaped around this idea, and thus it is very hard to play the game without having the feeling that you are really doing the same thing all over again, without any difference at all. Conversly, in a game like Bad Company 2, there are near endless methods of attack, and an equal amount of methods to counter-attack, which allows Bad Company 2 to be played essentially forever on a casual basis.

Unless I am sadly mistaken, I have spoken to all members that joined via Brink who are still in contact with us, and I have explained what I have said above in some form or other. Sadly I think that we can all agree now that Brink was a novel idea, but it didn't live up to expectations or present itself in a real-world, practical fashion.

Battlefield 3

Now, onto the subject matter that I am sure every member is interested in; Battlefield 3.

On October 28th Battlefield 3 will be released in Europe, by which point we hope to have generated enough contributions from clan members to enable us to host a 64-slot server for 6-months.

We are currently hoping to be able to setup the server as we used to setup our Bad Company 2 server; a modified server with Friendly Fire on, and Killcam off, enabling us all to have a more challenging, fair and tactical experience. Regarding our map rotation, we cannot be sure about how we will setup the rotation until the game is released. Our current hope is that DICE will present players with a large selection of maps to pick from, meaning that we should ideally be able to have 5 or more jet-focused Conquest maps on our server, providing variety but sticking to the theme of vehicle warfare which the Battlefield series is so renowned for. The maps that we choose should still have great infantry aspects, as long as the map designers haven't been lazy.

Related to the core settings and maps that sit behind our server are the rules that we employ. For Battlefield 3, we are looking to keep our spawn rules. However, we are expecting to be adjusting our RPG versus infantry rule to make it more focused on repeated primary use of such weapons, rather than singular use in heat-of-the-moment situations or in environments where destruction of structures is needed to progress the combat.

In terms of the practical logistics of obtaining a server for the clan, come September 1^st we will be launching a Funding Plan that will intend to gather enough contributions that will enable us to acquire a 64-slot Battlefield 3 server. We are aiming to be able to host the server for 6-months, which will set our contributions goal at around £300.

In terms of the practical logistics regarding obtaining a server, come September 1st, we will be kick-starting a new Funding Plan that will intend to gather enough contributions for us to acquire a 64-slot Battlefield 3 server. Our current estimates for a worst case scenario indicate that we will be aiming to reach £300 worth of contributions. Contributing a donation is not mandatory, but we really do hope that a large number of you guys will be able to help us out with getting this server, as it would be a great achievement for the clan and would also benefit us over the next 6 months greatly in both gameplay experience and public awareness. If you have spare money at any point between now and Battlefield 3's release, feel free to contribute to the clan here. The average contribution is around £12-£20, or however much you feel we are worth.

Star Wars: The Old Republic

I'd also like to take a moment to make a short statement regarding Star Wars: The Old Republic in order to clear up any confusion that people may currently be having or in the future when it gets closer to the release date.

Personally I am looking forward to the release of The Old Republic which is anticipated to be released in the late winter of this year (November-December). I am not alone in the clan in being interested in the game's release, however I wanted to make it clear that I have no intention at this time to pull our clan into an MMORPG. Admittedly, I will be spending a fair amount of time playing the game, but I will be trying my up-most to minimize impact on clan business to an absolute minimum.

I doubt that I am alone in being interested in this game's launch, however I wanted to make it clear that I have no intention at this time to pull our clan into an MMORPG. Admittedly, I will be spending a fair amount of time playing the game, but I will be trying my up-most to minimize impact on clan business to an absolute minimum.

Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad

For over half a year now or more now we have been hoping to play Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad together, however as time has progressed it has become increasingly apparent that the space between Red Orchestra 2 and Battlefield 3's releases are going to be incredibly close, and thus both practically and financially it is unwise for us to push for members to play Red Orchestra 2 when we are so close to Battlefield 3.

This does not mean that we are banning people from playing Red Orchestra 2, quite the opposite, however we will be putting back trying out the game on a "large" scale for sometime.

My Company

As many of you may well already be aware, our clan has long had the goal of producing a Battlefield machinima series, however we have yet to establish a functional storyline to sit behind such a series. Over the past few weeks and the coming months, we have and will be making full plans for My Company, which we are currently hoping will culminate in a regular production schedule of episodes following the release of Battlefield 3.

If you have any ideas for our My Company miniseries, then please feel free to express your ideas at the Creativity Corner.

Promotions

We haven't had any promotions for a very long time now, but seeing as we are planning for the future, we thought that it might be a good time to promote several initiates, many of whom have been waiting for an agonizingly long time. So, the list of promotions is:

Darknote
Dvd
Funkimonki
Petytza

For those of you who have not been mentioned here, we will be aiming to have another set of promotions in either September or October. So, if you want to be included in those promotions, please try to be online a bit more often and try to get involved in more of what goes on in the clan on a daily basis. If you would like some help with becoming more involved in the clan, please do feel free to contact me privately, I'll be happy to help.

Signing off

So, we've come to the end of my massive block of text. Thanks for surviving through it!

But before you go, I'd like to take a moment to thank all of you for being part of this clan. I hope that you have been able to enjoy the gaming environment that we constantly endeavour to improve and make more exciting and fun for all involved, and hope that you are able to respect us in return.

Statement of Expansion - Brink

Mon, 09 May 2011 23:00:00 +0000

Greetings everyone,

As of 10.05.10, Extreme Fusion Gaming has officially expanded it's assets and scope to fully support Brink. Brink will be acting as the clan's secondary shooter behind Battlefield: Bad Company 2.

As part of our expansion into Brink, we are utilizing the ability to provide our members and the gaming community with a 16-slot dedicated game server which will ensure that all members and contacts have a mature environment in which to play Brink with teamwork-oriented players and a great background social environment on the forums, on TeamSpeak and in-game.

Specific details regarding our expansion into Brink will be announced in more realtime communication channels that the clan uses such as the forum, the shoutbox and other services. Our Brink server should be implemented into our servers page at or around launch day.

See you in the field,
Bluecewe, Clan Leader

Forum 2.0

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 22:05:00 +0000

Greetings everyone,

The next time that you visit our forums you may notice a change of setting. To be more specific, in line with the redesign of the core site theme and page infastructure and the establishment of the Clan Parliament, the forums have now been cleaned up.

You will notice that several forums are now missing; Inactivity Forum, Conference Reports, Training Night Reports and Creativity Corner. We have removed these forums because the topics discussed under them can be categorised as underneath other forums.

More specifically speaking for the Inactivity Forum, we recently added a new page and form to the site called a "Statement of Inactivity" - basiclly it makes the process of reporting your inactivity much more efficient. If you still wish to make a forum post about being inactive to talk about what you are doing while you are inactive, feel free to make a new thread in the General Discussion forum.

Conference Reports will now appear in the Office of Communication forum, and Training Night Reports will be posted in the Tactical Discussion forum.

Apart from those forums being merged, we have also added an array of new forums that are mostly based around the Clan Parliament. Each Power has been given an appropriate forum that will be used to discuss matters once the parliament is fully established and launched.

It has been discovered over time that the way that our website registration has been designed makes the proccess of communication between new applicants and members very hard and often results in an application being made, but no further developments beyond that point.

To resolve this issue, users can now register on our website without having to fill out any forms such as the Clan Application or the Contact Application. These users will now also have direct access to post in our forums in a new forum called "Newcomers". People wanting to express their interest in joining our clan or learning more about it can now access a communication platform with ease.

The Clan Application and Contact Application forms have also been updated to make them more efficient and more easy to manage with the relevant information being more clearly requested.

The parliamentary forums are not accessible by any users at the current time as the Clan Parliament has yet to be intiated as it is not quite ready to be launched. Once it is ready, we will let you guys know about it.

Changes Coming Soon

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 21:15:00 +0000

Greetings everyone,

Over the next few weeks our clan will be undergoing some major changes in several areas, most prominently being our leadership structure and our website structure.

We are implementing these changes not because what we are currently doing is bad or is causing us trouble, but instead simply because we believe that we have developed to a point where we can now look back at what we have achieved as far, and now move forward with a brand new set of ideas to push into this year of gaming.

Myself and Duneti are still discussing specifics regarding the leadership structure, as well as the website structure. We will also be avidly listening in to your opinions over the next few weeks regarding both specific and general topics. We would like to hear from virtually every member regarding things that they would like to see in the new site design as well as in our new leadership structure.

If you don't have any comments to make, try to think about how you could benifit the clan or ideas that you may want to implement when our new leadership structure gets underway.

View the current scheme of the Powers, here.

Thanks,
Xterea

Voice Communications Backup

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 20:07:00 +0000

Over the past few days our TeamSpeak 3 server has been lagging a lot and crashing on what appears to be a regular occurrence now. We have no intention of moving away from TeamSpeak 3 or changing server IP/location.

However, for the current situation and for problems in the future, we do have a backup server. This server is not TeamSpeak 3, but instead an Open Source program called Mumble. (http://mumble.sourceforge.net/)

To be prepared for future downage, we are strongly reccomending that all members and contacts download Mumble in case we need to use the server in the event of TeamSpeak going down.

Server Details:

Address: eu2.voice.enjin.com
Port: 64331

If you encounter any problems with getting Mumble setup, please let me know.

Thanks,
Xterea

Battlefield 3 - Welcome to the Battlefield

Fri, 04 Feb 2011 15:25:00 +0000

Greetings everyone,

With today comes the first real confirmed facts regarding Battlefield 3 and a teaster trailer. You can skip ahead and read the official blog post.

Important Facts

With this we are able to assume several key facts regarding Battlefield 3 and as a result we can begin to plan what we will be doing once this game is released.

A major fact that was stated in the official blog post was that there will be jets in the game. Having jets in a game shows that the maps for the game in question will be on average very large compared to what we have come to expect from playing Battlefield: Bad Company 2. To fly a jet, you need a huge amount of space, and for every map in Battlefield: Bad Company 2, a jet woulden't be able to turn round without hitting the fog of war.

Another fact supports this assumption of large maps; 64-players. Current Battlefield: Bad Company 2 maps are chaotic on 32-slot servers, even on 24-slots and sometimes on 16-slots. Maps will have to be much larger to even allow for 64-players to properly play in a large envrionment such as that.

Battlefield 3 and Extreme Fusion Gaming

Battlefield 3 presents our clan with a huge oppotunity to both expand our organization and make our gaming experience far more exciting and vibrant. In terms of actual facts and figures; exact information, our current plan come the Battlefield 3 release day will be to close down one of our Battlefield: Bad Company 2 servers in order to save money and remove naturally because it will not be used as much with people playing Battlefield 3. Though we will not be leaving Bad Company 2 behind, be assured of that.

It is a very large goal but we will be setting a consistent goal over the next few months to prepare enough as a clan to run a 64-player server in Battlefield 3 by training more server admins, better establishing server guidlines and systems and also ensuring that server experieinces are enjoyable by all players.

We will also be ensuring that all current members will be able to purchase Battlefield 3 upon release. This game is what this clan has been waiting for, lets not let the chance slip us by.

Vietnam is Coming!

Fri, 03 Dec 2010 21:08:00 +0000

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 - Vietnam is due to be released on 21.12.10, or 18.12.10 for a few shops that are selling the game 3 days in advance as a preorder deal.

To start off with, we'll go through what will be happening with our clan surrounding the expansions release, more specifically what will be happening with our servers.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 - Vietnam is due to be released on 21.12.10, or 18.12.10 for a few shops that are selling the game 3 days in advance as a preorder deal.

To start off with, we'll go through what will be happening with our clan surrounding the expansions release, more specifically what will be happening with our servers. See below:

Tiny Training will remain as a training server, one that we can use for clan matches, internal matches and general training/events. We may soon turn Tiny Training into a private server to reduce it's costs, however this will be based on the general clan's feelings on the matter.
Ground Combat will remain as a 16-slot Standard Rush server for the most popular Bad Company 2 Rush maps, not including those in Vietnam.
A new server, currently being named Burning Grounds will be opened up. This will be a 16-slot Standard Conquest Vietnam server, meaning that we will run all popular Vietnam Conquest maps. Keep an eye out for a poll regarding the name of the server over the coming days/weeks.

In terms of Vietnam in general, we are strongly encouraging all members to purchase this expansion pack. The expansion brings a major collection of changes which are ground breaking and not to be missed. If, for whatever reason you cannot purchase the expansion pack, please contact Xterea/Bluecewe in person so that it can be discussed.

If you require further information regarding Vietnam, where you should buy it or how it will work, please contact Xterea/Bluecewe and i'll be happy to give you a hand.

So to finish of with, i'd like to leave you with this parting message. Enjoy.

Team Barcode Clan Match - 04.12.10

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 17:42:15 +0000

Greetings everyone,

We will be hosting a clan match taking place on 04.12.10 at 19:00 GMT (UK Time, Clan Time). This will be taking place on the EFG - Mature Gaming - War Server, the password can be found on the event page that will be linked below.

We would like to see every member attend this event, even if they do not want to take part in a clan match. We need to ensure that we have enough manpower.

Visit the event page here.

Tears for Tarnor - Chapter 1 - Series Fully Released

Sat, 13 Nov 2010 09:54:36 +0000

Greetings everyone,

I thought that it would be a good idea to mentune that the whole of the Tears for Tarnor - Chapter 1 series is now uploaded onto YouTube and set into a playlist. You can get to the playlist from here, enjoy.

Ground Combat gets Revamped

Sun, 07 Nov 2010 11:57:14 +0000

Greetings everyone,

After successfully refielding Rush on Ground Combat for a period of time, we have now taken the choice of upgrading the server to 16-slots. We were planning to do this for Vietnam anyway, but seeing as Rush appeared to be quite fun when we did play it with the 8-slots, we thought that we might as well upgrade it and see how it goes at 16-slots.

However, I must reinforce the fact that upon the release of Vietnam, Ground Combat will remain/upgrade to 16-slots and will run a rotation of all Conquest Vietnam maps. We will not be playing Rush in Vietnam on this server, probably not at all, it depends on the clan reaction to the expansion pack.

Regular Global Clan Conferences

Thu, 21 Oct 2010 22:02:54 +0000

Greetings everyone,

It has come to the attention of the Admin Team that more regular Clan Conferences need to take palce as the clan is expanding at such a fast pace, more structured debate is neded and people need to be aware of what is exactlly going on, rather than just through word of mouth.

Please check this link for the event page displaying specific details.

The Company Revealed

Fri, 24 Sep 2010 20:27:46 +0000

Greetings everyone,

Starting today, we have began to roll out our "The Company" miniseries. To start off with, we have revealed our miniseries to the Battlefield community by publishing the opening video. In the coming months we will be releasing more short videos which will create a collection of short episodes that make up a big storyline.

The video embed appears to be bugged at the current time, you can find a link to the video here.

Dropbox Changes

Sun, 12 Sep 2010 00:12:43 +0000

Greetings everyone, after a successful first period of time using the new dropbox FTP service, i have made some changes to the system we currently use.

The major changes include:

Public - We now have a "Public" FTP folder, this still works on the same system that it used to but the large amount of FTP files will be located within our "Production Team" folder. This means that people can still sync their Dropbox programs with the folder but avoid having to keep all the Production Team files on their computer
Production Team - We now have a "Production Team" FTP folder for the Production Team who need access to the large amount of multimedia files we have started to accumulate over our lifetime. This folder is only accessible by a very small amount of people and thus increases it's security from accidental deletion of files or even rogue members
Restrictions have been added, as you can see above, which prevent most members from accessing the most important and vital files

I hope that these new changes will help you guys better use Dropbox without causing you too much pain on your side and your computer. Have fun!

State of the Clan and Donations Goal Reached

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 20:41:31 +0000

Greetings everyone!

There has been a lot of conversation as of late, we have discussed and discussed but now winter is upon us. In the next few days, we will be starting our trip into the first winter that our clan has expereinced. I doubt it will be plain sailing but with the progress we have had so far, it will be hard to fail.

We have gained our donations goal today and with it i have posted my first State of the Clan notice. Please read it here and pass on the message to everyone else.

Alien Swarm - Tears for Tarnor - Blind Walkthrough - Part 2

Sat, 21 Aug 2010 17:59:10 +0000

Greetings once again everyone,

Today we have uploaded our second, and final (untill the last mission is released) part of our Tears for Tarnor Lets Play mini-series. See below for the video and don't forget to view our other productions if you have not done so already!

Alien Swarm - Tears for Tarnor - Blind Walkthrough - Part 1

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 17:51:08 +0000

Greetings again everyone!

We have now created our second clan production; an Alien Swarm Tears for Tarnor mod blind walkthrough. This was compiled by KoeWaffle once again and we thank him for his work.