HOG

Discussion of past, present, and future water war events.
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Re: HOG

Post by marauder » Mon Jul 02, 2018 8:50 am

Yeah, I am really sorry, but I just can't do a multi day event right now unless it is here in NC. The problem with it being in NY is that is 2 days of driving and being away from the baby. Tiffany is ok with me being gone a day. We actually brainstormed how to get to NY and stay for multiple days together, with her and the baby staying in the city and hanging out or doing things, but there were a plethora of reasons why that plan can't work. I can help contribute funds towards a rental car so you can take Tony and Danny. They really want to go, but there's no way I can be gone for 3 (probably 4) days at this point.

There is a certain level of pragmatism that we are just going to have to go with to make things happen. I think with these wars we should just make them happen when we have the most potential people available and not wait for the perfect combination. If one or two members who typically make it can't but you have other people who can just go ahead and host the event. That applies for all events this year IMHO. The more things get delayed the less likely events like this actually are able to happen.

Rob, you are pretty close to this event and we are a community of friends. Someone should volunteer to give Rob a ride. I can throw some money in the pot to help.
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SEAL wrote:If you ain't bloody and muddy by the end of the day, you went to a Nerf war.

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Re: HOG

Post by scottthewaterwarrior » Mon Jul 02, 2018 2:05 pm

I am working at a summer camp, it is only a temp position, hence no time off. I am an Inclusion Counselor too, so I work one on one with the same special needs kid every day, making it difficult for them to find a qualified sub.
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Van: "What happened?" SEAL: "Scott Happened"
Alex: "But the stream is cold." Me: "It's fine, my feet really hurt, now they're numb!"

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Re: HOG

Post by SEAL » Mon Jul 02, 2018 3:41 pm

DX wrote:I don't know yet. Multi-day events are fairly expensive and my event fund is literally empty. I was planning on taking all of July off in order to fill it up for August stuff. That combined with the terrible heat and my lack of ability to drive very far in it has really killed my enthusiasm for doing as much this year.
There should be next to no expenses for this one. Lodging is free, and I don't know about gas, but it's only like two hours and Alfatrooper did offer to drive you. Dunno if he told you yet or not. It shouldn't be that hot in NY either. Nothing like the brutality of down here, anyway.

As stated, the war needs to be at least 5v5, else it won't really play out well and it would be a waste to hold it. It is also highly preferable to have at least one veteran player who's a good leader on the WWN side. If we have another repeat of the season opener where a team quits halfway through, then all the planning and hard work setting this up will have been for nothing. Not to mention a massive disappointment to everyone who comes expecting to complete the battle. Plus a huge waste of time and money for those who come from far away, etc. I could go on. But that is mainly why we're picky on attendance, and why the war is set at 18+. There's always the chance that something goes wrong, but we want to minimize those chances as much as possible.

Any questions, don't hesitate to contact either me or Keith (Chief on here).
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Re: HOG

Post by scottthewaterwarrior » Wed Jul 04, 2018 1:33 pm

So are we shuttling people in because there is nowhere to park at this place? Who's doing the shuttling and how far a walk is it from the drop off?
"If you are wet at the end of a water war, you are doing it wrong"
Van: "What happened?" SEAL: "Scott Happened"
Alex: "But the stream is cold." Me: "It's fine, my feet really hurt, now they're numb!"

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Re: HOG

Post by SEAL » Wed Jul 04, 2018 7:38 pm

The shuttling is more or less so that the battlefield location stays secret. The whole point of this war is to experience going into a battlefield blind with no idea of what to expect. We think this will make for a more intense and exciting experience, and others are welcome to host the same kind of war.

So basically once we're a week out, I'll post directions to a meeting place that is on the way to the battlefield, but still some distance away. The idea is for everyone to meet there, and once everyone is accounted for, we all drive to the location. Your parking lot is big enough for everyone, so you'll just have to follow us, and you can park your car near the entrance to the field. The walk is literally only a minute or two. Once you guys are all settled, we'll take our cars and go to the other side of the field and wait for morning. Scott, if you're arriving later, one of us will have to drive out to the rendezvous point to meet you and escort you to your parking lot.
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Re: HOG

Post by DX » Mon Jul 09, 2018 8:15 pm

Something came up that I didn't know about before - the lead editor for Planet Earth is flying into NYC from Italy on the 21st. That moves "Deadline Day" up from August 1st to the July 21st weekend (I don't know how long he will be in the city). If he wants me to be there for things, I must be there for things. That might also be an intense week of work leading up to the deadline.

I'll know more details as that gets closer.
marauder wrote:You have to explain things in terms that kids will understand, like videogames^ That's how I got Sam to stop using piston pumpers

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Re: HOG

Post by marauder » Tue Jul 10, 2018 7:01 am

So, for July 21st at HOG you would have -

SEAL, Chief + friends vs Anthony, Area 51 ... maybe Atvan Scott & David?
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Re: HOG

Post by scottthewaterwarrior » Wed Jul 11, 2018 6:07 pm

David still doesn't have a phone, so I have no way of contacting him right now. I assume he needs a ride if he is going to come, but I can't coordinate with him!
"If you are wet at the end of a water war, you are doing it wrong"
Van: "What happened?" SEAL: "Scott Happened"
Alex: "But the stream is cold." Me: "It's fine, my feet really hurt, now they're numb!"

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Re: HOG

Post by HBWW » Fri Jul 13, 2018 10:15 am

Some plans came up, so I won't be able to make it anymore. Very curious to see how this game plays out though!
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Re: HOG

Post by DX » Fri Jul 13, 2018 12:59 pm

David is daily active on FB, you need to use that in order to reach him.
marauder wrote:You have to explain things in terms that kids will understand, like videogames^ That's how I got Sam to stop using piston pumpers

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Re: HOG

Post by SEAL » Fri Jul 13, 2018 8:36 pm

Yeah Scott, I usually just reach out to David on Facebook. Making an account is easy; you can literally just use it to keep in touch with your friends. That's what I do. I'll post the odd picture or joke now and then, but I stay away from all the drama and political bullcrap. You don't have to give a ton of personal information either.

HBWW: That's too bad; I think you'd like this war. Just pretend to be sick. :p

DX: What's your status? Any updates?
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We probably won't be back, but the legacy lives on.

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Re: HOG

Post by scottthewaterwarrior » Sun Jul 15, 2018 6:48 pm

Can someone just tell David to ether come on here or join Discord to talk? I'm really busy right now and don't want to worry about another social media thing.
"If you are wet at the end of a water war, you are doing it wrong"
Van: "What happened?" SEAL: "Scott Happened"
Alex: "But the stream is cold." Me: "It's fine, my feet really hurt, now they're numb!"

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Re: HOG

Post by SEAL » Sun Jul 15, 2018 7:36 pm

So I just had a discussion with my brother last night and unfortunately we will be suspending this event until further notice. As it currently stands, the community is not ready for an event of this magnitude. Until we have higher levels of interest, this project will be put on hold. If anyone wishes to host something in its place, by all means go ahead. There are still two League games left in the 2018 season. Any volunteers? I will probably be taking a break from water warfare for a while. It's a great hobby, but I don't get the same enjoyment out of it as I used to. I need to focus on other things for the time being. I won't completely disappear, but I'll be on the sidelines for a while.
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Re: HOG

Post by scottthewaterwarrior » Sun Jul 15, 2018 8:26 pm

I assume the postponement is because of reasons other than just me not wanting to make a Facebook to contact David, right? Because if that's the problem I'll gladly take one for the team and do that.

I've actually been more into water guns as of late. I've been working on fixing blasters, exploring battlefields, and had several low key water wars with my cousins.
I now know CPS 2000s don't work very well for soakfests! Though because I still wasn't very wet, for the final round I let my cousins use the 2000s and I had a NSS Thunderstorm, lol!
"If you are wet at the end of a water war, you are doing it wrong"
Van: "What happened?" SEAL: "Scott Happened"
Alex: "But the stream is cold." Me: "It's fine, my feet really hurt, now they're numb!"

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Re: HOG

Post by marauder » Mon Jul 16, 2018 8:14 am

It's a shame to see this not work out.

I think this is a good reminder that sometimes perfect is the opposite of good. I would rather have more frequent fights with lower expectations than to set up big expectations that won't work out. I'm not saying this wasn't a good idea. It's actually a great idea, but look - Ben T, myself, the boys, multiple people were available for a simple fight this coming weekend on the 21st. We could have planned something easy like that and all saw each other. We just need to focus on simple things like that for the time being to be honest. It's fun just getting together.
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Re: HOG

Post by SEAL » Mon Jul 16, 2018 5:59 pm

scottthewaterwarrior wrote:I assume the postponement is because of reasons other than just me not wanting to make a Facebook to contact David, right? Because if that's the problem I'll gladly take one for the team and do that.
Haha, no of course not. I won't post huge chunks of text explaining all of our reasoning behind making that decision, but it had nothing to do with that. I would have been the one to reach out to David about it. That said, if you have to keep bugging people about coming, that tells me that the enthusiasm isn't there, and it needs to be for something this ambitious to be a success. Certain members have chosen nerf wars over the HOG. Freaking nerf wars. The most boring war game there is. If you would rather run around an open field all day, then you are not a dedicated member. If we get more dedicated members in the future, then this event will re-open and of course I will help host it.

But anyway, if you want more frequent fights, then post about them. Maybe marauder is right that simpler events are more attractive to most people. So go ahead and organize something. You don't need me.
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Re: HOG

Post by marauder » Tue Jul 17, 2018 7:28 am

Tony and Danny were very enthusiastic about HOG and were even recruiting people from school to come. One of Danny's friends from track actually got permission to go. It sounds like Scott was very excited too, and knowing our other members I'm sure they wanted to go. I would have held HOG at your original date. I understand that you wanted either Rob or myself there to lead the WWN team, but you had 4 or 5 members who could have shown up for a war with 8 to 10 people. I get that you were concerned about people's endurance to be able to push through the event, but you could have modified it as that would have been better than no war at all. At a later date you could then have a more full fledged event. I will say this repeatedly, getting together and having a watergun fight is much better than not getting together at all.

Now, from SEAL's perspective. I can understand how it would be frustrating to see other members dedicate their time and money to Nerf events which are far more common, than to water wars. I will never tell someone else that their hobbies are dumb/not fun, etc. when they are clearly enjoying them, and I certainly see the appeal to Nerf. But, again, we have few members here and fewer opportunities to soak than many of you have to Nerf.

Nobody take this personal, but do understand that we want to get together more often. If the heat is the issue then we can arrange for a night war or we could host an event at a lake and take a break during the middle of the day to go swimming. In ROTC we would sometimes practice night land navigation where we would start in the evening and work our way through sunrise. It doesn't have to be that intense, but the point is that we can always come up with fun new things to get around any issues that we might have. If money is the issue, I can help out some. If you don't like camping out, we can make other arrangements for lodging or we can do 1 day events. If your job is the issue, well... can't help you there!

We also have to understand that some of our members are in difficult situations. It sounds like David doesn't have a phone. Sam lives super far away from everyone else. I cannot be gone for 3-4 days at a time anymore because I have a newborn son. Not everyone has to show up to every event and we don't need to be getting our feelings hurt. We just need to be more flexible and figure out how to best help each other out.
SEAL wrote:So go ahead and organize something. You don't need me.
Well, actually, we kind of do. We can't be accusing other people of not wanting to show up and then do the same things ourselves. You are a valuable member here and I enjoy hanging out with you. Also, I am right there with you with wanting to do hardcore wars. Maybe we could get Keith to come down and we could even do a 3 v 3 all through the night? But on the flip side of that we had a lot of fun together, last month, when we went to the lake and had a soakfest/took the kayaks out/shot random kids. We can easily do more of those events and we can even bring more people next time.

Let's just remember that at the core of this we are all friends who enjoy getting together and soaking people. The fact that we are doing this in 2018 is a win.

Now, if anyone wants to plan a single day event hit me up and we will do it. Let's go soak someone.
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Re: HOG

Post by DX » Wed Jul 18, 2018 12:40 am

FWIW, I misread the original date and had it wrong in my head. Otherwise, I would have noticed that it conflicted with Endwar and told you much sooner. I've been very, very busy most of the late spring and summer, I make mistakes when trying to plan things in advance under those conditions. Even now if the online edit doesn't happen on Saturday, it still would not have been a good idea for me to do a long war under this level of sleep-deprivation.

Endwar was a 3 day event with 800 players in another part of the country, that's not "just a nerf war", I couldn't just back out of that.

I still love water wars, but they're difficult to swing under these circumstances. We're a far-flung hobby with a wild range of income stability and availability.
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Re: HOG

Post by Alfatrooper » Sat Jul 21, 2018 2:30 pm

I was also ready to fight this weekend, but I am not disappointed that the war was canceled. It would have been fun to fight an all day intense war, but getting to the site without carpooling and preparing the tent would have been difficult for me.

I signed up for this event because I knew that it would be really fun and that I could meet new people. I was looking forward to having a new experience without the excessive amount of downtime that most wars have.

Even still, I was not entirely certain of this war. The idea of two camp sites and solid meeting time was a little uncomfortable. Also because I don't own a blaster, the idea of having to figure out what I was using the morning of the fight created more uncertainty. Nothing I can't handle though.

Seal, I know that you and the admin team have put in lots of time into planning this war to make it perfect. And I know that this would be in the top 2 most memorable events of mine (including nerf) if the event followed your outline. Could there be a way to de-intensify the event? Would it be possible to have one camp site on the battlefield? Everyone could follow the honors rule to not scout or spy on the other team's meeting. I think this would be much more social, inviting, fun. These events have a social aspect as much as a water fighting focus. At what point does something become not intense enough? How can intensity be created on a round level instead of creating an event?

Nerf wars are a hard to compete with factor. Endwar is special because it has so many players and is so different from other HVZ. There is a fear of missing out too. Or maybe, people would rather go to that war instead of a water war. There are too many wars and priorities should be made.

Marauder, I have always wanted to go to your wars in NC. I have heard amazing stories and read the threads, but it is too far away. The furthest I have ever traveled for an event is 3.5 hours. I hope to someday meet you and attend one of your events, but for now I can't. I think it is unrealistic to have people arrive early for a sleepover war. I remember having people stay at my house before wars and rarely did they come early. Sometimes very late, like after I went to bed. We need to be convent for people and expect that they will be very late, need lots of food and help and not go to bed until hours after arriving. Wars should be adjusted to be easy to attend (not easy to fight in, but easy to get there if distance is not an issue).

What was the best past legal location to sleep, fight, and get to? Can we superplan to get maximum attendance? Can people learn to move and get ready faster? ha ha.

HOG is special and I hope it will happen soon. Thank you Seal for creating this event for us.

The best water wars are the ones that happen. We always want great attendance, but sometimes good is better than no event. If people missed out then hopefully they won't in the future! Seal, this isn't targeted at you, just some general thoughts. Maybe we could all do facetime or something to plan events.

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Re: HOG

Post by SEAL » Sat Jul 21, 2018 10:06 pm

There's a lot to be addressed. First of all, I do feel bad about those who really wanted to come, but as I've said this war wouldn't be what it was meant to be with only a small handful of members. Neither Keith nor myself are interested in hosting a scaled-down version of this event either. I don't live anywhere near the location anymore, so it would not be worth it to travel 1,400 miles round trip for a mediocre, run-of-the-mill war. I don't do mediocre, hence my signature. But that doesn't mean there doesn't have to be a war; someone else can easily volunteer to host something. But nobody does, and that goes back to my point about low member enthusiasm/involvement. If marauder and I haven't been posting about wars, we probably wouldn't have had one in like two years.

I for one am tired of putting all this effort into such a sleepy community, which is one of the reasons why I'm taking a break. Of course I'm still down to hang out and what not, but for whatever reason my interest in water warfare has waned in these past few years. And this is despite the fact that the quality of community wars keep getting better. My top five wars are all recent ones except for Downpour '11, yet I feel like I had more fun at earlier wars in spite of the lower quality of fighting. The HOG was an attempt to shake things up and try something completely different, but there needs to be enough interest from everyone else too. There were people who were enthusiastic about it, but not enough. You can't play baseball without at least 9 players on each team; the same concept applies here.

As far as nerf goes, if that's what you like to do, I won't judge you for it, but I still don't get it. Literally the only thing that hobby has on this one is numbers, which is a huge mystery to me because nerf wars are so much more boring than water wars. Believe me, 'cause I've done it. I tried to get into it, but I don't see the fun in running around the same puny little section of park all day. Plus a lot of nerfers are immature, and not in a fun way either. I guess most of the frustration comes from the fact that so many people flock to nerf when water warfare is so much more dynamic.

Alfatrooper:
Even still, I was not entirely certain of this war. The idea of two camp sites and solid meeting time was a little uncomfortable. Also because I don't own a blaster, the idea of having to figure out what I was using the morning of the fight created more uncertainty. Nothing I can't handle though.
Not sure what the problem with that is. You'd be camping out with everyone on your team; they could easily help you set up the tent and loan you a blaster. And for what it's worth, we are flexible with the meeting time; we were ready to make accommodations for Scott, after all. I always try to sound strict with the meeting times to hopefully scare people into showing up on time, but in reality I have built-in tolerances. i.e. if I say show up at 7, I actually plan for everyone to be there at 8. Uh-oh, maybe I shouldn't have said that... Seriously though, why are people so damn slow? Most of you wouldn't last a week at my job. They fired a guy just because he kept showing up a few minutes late.
Seal, I know that you and the admin team have put in lots of time into planning this war to make it perfect. And I know that this would be in the top 2 most memorable events of mine (including nerf) if the event followed your outline. Could there be a way to de-intensify the event? Would it be possible to have one camp site on the battlefield? Everyone could follow the honors rule to not scout or spy on the other team's meeting. I think this would be much more social, inviting, fun. These events have a social aspect as much as a water fighting focus. At what point does something become not intense enough? How can intensity be created on a round level instead of creating an event?
As I explained before, de-intensifying the event is not an option. It's the HOG. It's either done right, or not at all. Having one campsite goes against the entire concept of the war. The idea is that you're making your way into unknown territory to put a stop to a mysterious organization. There's a whole storyline and everything. You don't just come for the battle, you come for the whole experience. That's more or less what this event was all about. And no, we didn't forget the social aspect either. After the battle we were going to rent a pavilion, set up my brother's huge speakers, and serve everyone BBQ and liquor.
Marauder, I have always wanted to go to your wars in NC. I have heard amazing stories and read the threads, but it is too far away. The furthest I have ever traveled for an event is 3.5 hours. I hope to someday meet you and attend one of your events, but for now I can't.
Just fly. It can be pricey, but it literally takes like two hours, and it probably wouldn't be much more than paying for gas anyway. I'm sure someone can pick you up from the airport.
What was the best past legal location to sleep, fight, and get to? Can we superplan to get maximum attendance? Can people learn to move and get ready faster? ha ha
My favorite past location is probably Little Creek, but you gotta be careful not to overuse a location otherwise people get bored of it. Heck, even the portables started to get old after the third time fighting there. I don't know what you mean by "superplan", but if (nearly) everyone made a point to try and attend the HOG at all costs, then I'd re-open that sucker right now. And no, certain people will never learn to move faster. However this war would kind of negate slow folks because they'd already be on the battlefield when the battle starts.
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