I recently visited the Columbus location and though I loved the concept of the place there are a lot of issues that need to be ironed out for me to consider another visit.
- Scoring system: You go in with a group all fired up, exchanging trash talk, ready to dismattle everyone else's pride aaaaaand then! Nope! No scoring, no stats, no fun! This was the biggest let down for us. Without any scoring/stat tracking each match felt senseless. We noticed that each gun kept track of what other gun shot you, so simply extend that functionality to associate each gun with a registered player through their ID card, and BAM we got the start of a beautiful stat tracker. Guns referencing a player will immensely help with team games and friendly fire. We had some mom in our matches who has insatiable bloodlust who shot everyone her son told her to shoot. Her son was young, disoriented, and trigger happy so he kept directing his mom's fury on her own team by accident. Not cool! Turn friendly fire off except for "traitor" mode. I'm assuming you guys need to develop a central hub architecture that the guns can communicate to, obviously each gun is ad-hoc sending IDs to other guns on hit and that's it. Make them communicate to a hub or data transfer of each gun to a hub at the end of the game for it to crunch the numbers. UPGRADE!!!
- Unreliable guns: The weapons were very clumsy and confirming a kill was very difficult. Some guns seemed like they were not actually working and the shotgun was incredibly overpowered to a fault (more on that later). Without any smoke/fog in the arena there was no way to confirm if your gun was working or not mid game. Before I stuck with the shotgun, I didn't seem to be able to hit anyone with any other gun. The shotgun on the other hand hit everyone that was in front of me (friend or foe). Though it also seemed to hit everyone who was next to me but not in front of me...which seemed incredibly odd (impossible even). Adding an industrial fog machine and proper calibrations would greatly improve the experience. Also the shotgun should be bursting lasers not shooting a solid square (we had a suspicion that the shotgun was just a remote control and not actually shooting lasers, hence the solid square).
- Kills and re-spawns: the worst issue with laser tag is players getting killed and just standing in place until they re-spawn. Worst yet, players who exploit their "grace period" to gain the upper hand. Add sensors to "spawn point" areas for specific teams (see gun system upgrades over player-gun association) so that players can only re-spawn once they enter those areas. Players are going to be jerks, so mitigate that!
- Bar? What bar?: There is no bar!!! Sure you sell alcohol but it ain't a legit bar. Not a huge let down but it added to the feeling of cheapness and emptiness that my group got from the environment. The "dining" area felt very empty and cold. Carpets and booths would liven up the place, and an actual bar please!!!
The concept is very nice, but the execution was poor. At least adding scoring and fog like most other laser tag places, come on!!! read more