Membership Has Its Benefits

Although I'm not entirely certain how the member points are even calculated, I am pleased to say that as of around 4:30 yesterday afternoon I was the number one ranking member at Laser Quest of Rochester.  

OK, now to backup and recap what got me to that point. The night before I was running the sound equipment for an event in Corning and stayed over, so I was already closer to Rochester than usual and thought I'd detour by that way before heading home. I stopped in to Lasertron, but on account of this being "Big Game Day" there was only one session booked with a group which I could join, so after a few successful rounds (my team won every game that round) I headed over to Laser Quest instead. Now, you'd probably think that getting a membership would be one of the first things I would have done when I first started playing here. However, this arena is about three hours away and back in November I didn't realize I would have occasion to be in Rochester five times by now. So I decided that since I'm clearly getting out that way more often than expected I should become a member. They set me up with my key tag (to track my results) and lanyard...

...and registered me as Tivia. Then I went into my first game with about 25 players and did well, scoring 937.

Although I was first in that game, I was particularly eager to see where that would place me in the overall rankings among the members. I figured that average score was the determining factor, but in fact it appears more complex with member points playing a more significant role. But as I looked at the screen I saw that after only one game with my membership I was already ranked as #4 (and yes, I realize that an average calculated from one score is not a real reflection). Still, not bad at all! I was pretty happy with that, although I did not understand the difference between my score and my points. As it happens, the manager on duty was a little fuzzy on that as well, so I can't really say what happened in the next few games to get me to the point where I ended up, but at the end of my last game where I pulled a score of 869, but more importantly (it seems) ended up with 612 member points that pushed me into the number one rank among members at this arena.

Now, I welcome anyone who can explain this better to me to please drop me an email. I turned to the best Quest player I know for a clarification and he told me this... "The member points are a really wonky system, they differentiate based on a numerous factors... number of members in a game, number of players in a game, if it's an ironman game or regular solo mission. Also, if you're playing in games with a member who has a higher ranking and you beat them you can potentially gain more points... and vice versa." Thank you for that, Hot Dice. So, still a little unclear how I managed this in the course of one evening, but in the end when the manager confirmed my ranking I just decided to leave happy that I had accomplished something rather unexpected on my way back from a nice weekend excursion where I was also able to give back to a program that gave so much to me and support my sisters of the sparkly hat.

Comments or questions?
Contact: tivia@tiviachickloveslasertag.com
Websites: www.tiviachickloveslasertag.com and www.photonforever.com
Blog: tiviachickloveslasertag.blogspot.com