Novint Contest - Falcon vs Mouse Revisited

Pi Mu Rho

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Hey All, this is tomnovint, Novint's CEO.[br]
With the official release of Falcon support in Left 4 Dead (Novint put a lot of effort integrating Falcon support into L4D specifically), we wanted to have another community event - another contest - this time involving both the Left 4 Dead community and the Team Fortress 2 community. Left 4 Dead has been one of our most anticipated games to support the Falcon, and has easily been one of our beta testers favorites. Team Fortress 2 is a blast with the Falcon. I've been playing a lot recently myself.[br]
We had quickly thrown together a contest a month ago for Team Fortress 2, in which we gave away a bunch of Falcons, and there was a lot of interest. It was a lot of fun. I've gotten many emails and PM's since then asking about when we would do another contest, but we were waiting for the L4D release.[br]
This time, we're going to take a little more time, and make it a little more formal. We're also going to be giving away a lot more free Falcons for this contest, so it's going to be a bigger event this time around!![br]
You can find more information about the Falcon here (including a video). There's a two week special going on given the Left 4 Dead release, which you might check out in the link. You can get a Falcon bundle (including pistol grip and software) for as low as $139 ($174 plus a 20% discount if you use the Halflife2.net referral code, HL2NET. This is definitely one of the best Falcon deals we've done yet this year for the Steam community, so it's worth checking out.[br]
The point of this post is to get feedback on the contest, and listen to what people think about how we should do it. Here is some of what we were initially thinking on the contest...[br]
  • We'll be giving away thousands of dollars worth of Falcons. We'll decide on the exact amount depending on interest in the competition (i.e. how many people sign up). People entering the contest will play with a mouse versus a Falcon based team, in order to win a Falcon. The Falcon based team will just be players from our community - they are not pros, so it will be possible to beat them.[br]
  • If you buy a Novint Falcon now and you also win one in the contest, we'll refund your money and you can keep your Falcon, or you can have a second one <span><span>;) </span></span>[br]
  • We'll have two pools of Falcons to give away, one for L4D and one for TF2[br]
  • We'll post an official rule set this time[br]
  • We'll have another thread that we'll draw participants from (we'll have parallel threads in Halflife2.net, edgegamers.org, Steam's forums, and Novint's message boards). There will be set match times this time. You can only post in each thread once.[br]
  • Before the matches start, we'll describe how many Falcons we're giving away. Only winning teams can win a Falcon. If we have fewer or equal winners than Falcons we're giving away, then every winner will get a Falcon. If we have more winners than Falcons, we'll have a drawing to see who ultimately gets one.[br]
  • Teams will be randomly drawn from the entry threads (there's no preference to posting in the thread early this time, so you don't have to spend hours hitting F5). We're thinking 6v6 for TF2 and 4v4 for L4D. Everyone on the team, if they win, will be in the running for a Falcon.[br]
  • Every entry needs a steam account with at least 5 hours of play on it.[br]
  • We'll do some of the coordination of the contest by email (i.e. when your match will be)[br]
  • We'll have a few other fun giveaways while we get the contest up and running, and we'll have some other fun things to get people into the contest itself too.[br]
  • We'll decide and announce the maps at gametime.[br]
  • no special unlocked weapons - just vanilla gameplay.[br]
  • We'll be hosting the TF2 portion of the contest on Edge Gamer servers - they're a very cool group with lots of members playing online games. They will host the servers and help moderate the contest. You probably will recognize them from their servers which have the "=(eGO)=" name.[br]
  • winners will need to cover shipping charges (paypal or credit card will work).[br]
  • we'll of course reserve the right to modify how we run the contest.[br]
  • we'll expect to hold the contest later in September[br]
  • International players are allowed. The ping will just be what it is. We are looking at doing some contests hosted in Europe as well, for the future.[br]
  • we'll post results on the forums
[br]
I'll update this first post with answers to questions/comments as they come in. Let us know thoughts and details about how you'd like to see the contest run.[br]
thanks all, tomnovint.
 
Thanks for posting that Pi Mu Rho. Everyone, please let me know any questions you have on the contest. I'd also like people's thoughts on how to run both the TF2 and L4D portions.

thx, tomnovint, novint's ceo
 
can't wait for this, one question does it come with pistol grip?

Just check steam thread and it does thanks :D
 
Ah I can't wait for this as I really want to win a falcon :D
 
probably will open the sign up threads in a week or two, then give people at least a week to sign up, so people don't miss out. thx, tomnovint

is novint actually based in Albuquerque? I'm just an hour's drive south of there.
 
I'm definately interested in L4D.

Will we be able to choose our teams or will they be randomly assigned?
 
I'm in for L4D. I also want to know whether we get randomly thrown into teams. Can we make preferences?
 
Is this going to be a HL2.net exclusive?
 
I'm definately interested in L4D.

Will we be able to choose our teams or will they be randomly assigned?

it will be randomly assigned. We're trying to make it more available to the average public players - that's what we're targeting, and that's who will be playing on the Falcon side too - we're not bringing in a bunch of hard core pros for this contest as the Falcon players. This will be a fun community event, and I want everyone to be able to join and have a good chance (even people who mainly just play pubs, and don't have a team in advance)

For those of you have have a good team, we will look into future contests that are competitive, where we will bring in some Falcon ringers, and have a go with some real competitive teams.

thx, tomnovint
 
Wait... TF2 with no unlockable weapons? Not even Blut+Ubersaw for the Medic?
 
This sounds rather fun.

Can Australian players enter?
 
yep, no unlocks. We're trying to make it accessible to everyone, and keep things fair so everyone will have the same vanilla setup.

Samon, if you enter, are chosen and win ;)

zephos, yes, australians can enter. we'll look to have some times that work for international players.

thx, tomnovint
 
I can't, I'm staff! Even if it's not an exclusive, I couldn't possibly enter.
 
Hey Samon - didn't see that at first ;). You could post on some of the other threads outside of halflife2.net for the contest as a thought. I don't see any issue with that myself, but your call. I'll noodle it and talk with Pi Mu Rho too.

thx, tomnovint
 
By sending my spies out I noticed tom also posted this over with our friends at SPUF here - http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=948653

So you could enter via that alternative! There are a couple questions about Novint and the falcon in the other thread tom, which some people are itching to know the answers to if you get a chance.

edit: oh ignore me you already did...too fast for me.
 
2:00 PM PST is a good time for international meetings, it's a bit late for the UK people and no sleeping-in for the Aussies, but it tends to work fairly well.

Either way, its always good to see Novint spreading the news, I've yet to try the controller but I'm pretty excited to see it someday.
 
the last contest we did, the latency didn't end up being too bad a problem. It is still a relatively casual contest in the scheme of things, and the Falcon side isn't pros - just some members from our community. thx, tomnovint
 
assuming you're open tomorrow (friday) a couple of friends and I were thinking of coming up in the afternoon :)
 
assuming you're open tomorrow (friday) a couple of friends and I were thinking of coming up in the afternoon :)

Hey Hazar, please email customersupport [at] novint [dot] com, and ask them to forward to me, and we can set something up.

thx, tomnovint
 
I'm interested in this, despite having already bought a Falcon using the referral code given here. I'd be especially interested in the L4D competition. Also, have you considered a CSS competition?
 
Thanks for your note CombineHarvester. Welcome to the Falcon Family! Let me know if there's anything I can do to make your experience a good one. If you enter the contest and win a Falcon, you can keep your Falcon and we'll refund your purchase price (or you can have a 2nd one if you prefer).

We just launched CSS, so it is hot off the press. I do imagine we'll do a CSS contest, but we need to let our Falcon players get up to speed on it.

thx, tomnovint
 
If you do, I'm in for CSS too. If I'd have to pick between L4D and CSS, it would be CSS.
 
Hey The Brick, sounds good. I'm sure we'll do one in the future at some point. lmao on your Andy Pandy quote. That's some funny stuff.
 
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