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I want to write a blog to tell any person from MLG that might be watching that I really appreciate the fact that they keep making every tournament better from a stream watcher’s perspective.
The new stream-player is really good because it has all the information like brackets, live updates, chat etc, as well as the different display options which are very cool. The only thing about the player that is broken is the volume. I’m sure that will be fixed by the time they have the next tournament though.
The time between matches now is short, and even if you have to wait there are other streams you can watch while you are waiting, so that is awesome. I hope you can continue with the fighting games stuff. The fighting game community are a pretty tough crowd to win over, but I’m sure that you guys can do it, and it will be worth it in the end.
One thing that was less good was how the casters were organised this time around. I understand that you are trying to give them a bit of a break, but I can’t help but feel that it could be better organised for watchers and casters. The issue is it seems to me, that the tournament has to happen for like 10-12 hours each day so that you can get through all the matches, but you seem to expect the casters to be there for the whole time. I think it would be better if you had less experienced casters in the morning, then have your main casters come in after lunch and give 2 solid periods of casting with a break in the middle. From the casters perspective it would mean that they wouldn’t have to work for 14 hours, and for the watchers perspective it would mean that I could sit down and get a good solid dose of either Day9/DJWheat or Tastosis.
The other thing I would hope someone would consider is whether the format you have at the moment hasn’t become outdated already. The original idea behind the current format was that instead of watching Pros beating up newbs in the first few rounds of the tournament, we could watch the top players play each other for seeding matches. The problem is that to me these matches have lost a lot of their meaning because all players in the groups know that they will make it through to the last day even if they lose their group matches. At the same time, right now we have so many well known players making their way through the open bracket, there are often do-or-die matches going on right from the start of the tournament. I honestly think that if all the players played through the open tournament there would be a lot more exiting matches to watch in the first 2 days of the tournament. What about the arenas? Well you could still play them with the prize being an all expenses paid trip to the main live events. This would obviously make the whole thing a lot fairer for the players as well. Everyone can see that fighting through the open bracket is tougher than getting seeded into the groups, even for a GSL champion like Polt.
I’m sorry I wrote more about what I would like to see rather than what was good about MLG this time, I guess it is always the way. I really had fun watching it all weekend, and I look forward to the next event.
 
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I think dedicating the 3rd and 4th stream to OB would be fine, at least, when there are appropriately competitive games.
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The pool matches are in fact incredibly important for the championship, and should be casted over OB games if there is a choice to be made. They are not seeding matches, they determine directly who is likely to win the championship. Coming out of your pool in first place is a massive advantage.
(I don't disagree that casting more OB matches would be good, but the pool play matches are the more interesting, especially now that the obvious flaws last season have been ironed out (no more 1 korean a group))
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On March 26 2012 23:29 Derez wrote:
The pool matches are in fact incredibly important for the championship, and should be casted over OB games if there is a choice to be made. They are not seeding matches, they determine directly who is likely to win the championship. Coming out of your pool in first place is a massive advantage.
(I don't disagree that casting more OB matches would be good, but the pool play matches are the more interesting, especially now that the obvious flaws last season have been ironed out (no more 1 korean a group))
I disagree. The pool play matches are less interesting, if you consider it comparing them to the OB losers-bracket games. People get actually knocked out of the tournament there. I would have loved to see MorroW / Polt, Stephano / Inori, HasuObs / Sheth.. and thats just a few examples.
MLG had the capacity of casters to at least show a few of important OB games and still show all of the pool play matches.
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my feedback is rather negative for this MLG. I freaking loved the 2011 Pro Circuit, but everything they have done this year so far, including the event from last weekend, gave me a bad feeling. Well not everything, since Socke had a great run  but the overall experience went downhill.
check the spoiler for a more detailed feedback
+ Show Spoiler +taken from my blog: http://zulison.blogspot.de/2012/03/mlg-columbus-2012-feedback.html (the format is f***ed up in the spoiler and 2 pictures are missing, but you can read the whole text here) tbh this was the worst MLG since Dallas last year.  There was lots of trouble with the stream (refreshing every 20 minutes, no volume adjustment, repeated laggs, way too loud adds). Most people missed some crucial games, due to the fact that those were moved to the pay-to-watch-streams. I mean i get it - MLG needs money bad. Though when Sundance says he holds the Arenas to "cash in" (he puts it in other words) from the already existing fanbase, but wants to enlarge the scene with the 4 events were the streams are FREE, well, then this leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, when a) not all streams are free and b) big matches get moved to the premium streams. Same goes for the casters. Either wheat(9) was free to watch or tastosis, but never both. If you truly mean to advertise through these (only!!) 4 events per year, do it right. I have absolutely no harsh feelings towards Sundance, I actually like him as a person (from what I see) and last year MLG was the event every other league had to compete with. In 2012 it changed IMO. MLG has made too many drastic changes too fast. I don`t think PPV is for the long-term good. I don`t like how only MLG collides with other organizations Events (IEM New York last year, Asus ROG one month ago and the upcoming Dreamhack in April). Yeah, this might all have been unavoidable, but still, it only happens to MLG. The bitter taste returns. Communication. Overall MLG communicates a lot, but sometimes they focus is on the wrong aspect. I remember last year when it became public that MLG will collide with the IEM New York stop and it was stated, that they will try to improve communication with other organizations and hopefully avoid this in the future. Well, in a most recent interview sundance said something slightly different. Organizations won’t reveal their information upfront, because of business stuff and therefore those collisions just happen. meh. Another communication aspect. Sundance tells us that he tries to support the eSport ecosystem by providing plane tickets and hotel rooms for the players and wants the fans to think this is necessary. It is not. Here is how it goes: - Player plays great - Player gets fans - Clan needs great player to get more sponsorship dollars - at the same time: Player needs money to travel and to take the next step in his career - Clans signs player - Clans gets money from Sponsor(s) - Player represents Clan and the Sponsor(s) and gets money from Clan – yeah! - Fans see all the Sponsor logos and the next time the need to buy something, they get awesome eSport related stuff – yeah! - Sponsor makes money – yeah! - Sponsor wants to make more money and (via the team) send players all over the world to get more recognition and in addition to that, Sponsors give money to leagues - Leagues make money – yeah! - On top of that all leagues, players and teams offer something special to make some extra cash (merchandise, HD Streams, some kind of “VIP” access ...) ---------------------------- missing pictures ---------------------------- Why would you take the sponsors out of that equation, when it makes everybody happy? And this is what you are doing with PPV. Why would sponsors stop investing money into this scene that spends a LOT of money. It would only happen if the scene shrinks and reaches a point where the ROI for the sponsors make no sense any more. Guess what, PPV aids to that shrinking process, because it cuts out the majority of the scene. And when the scene reaches the point where the sponsors wont invest anymore money, there will also not be enough fans to pay the PPV fee anymore. Ergo, more money comes from growth and you need easy (in this case “free”) accessibility to achieve that growth. When the industry reaches the point where huge profit is made, league should go ahead and pay for everything, but until then, there is no need to. Now lets talk about the system. Extended series! really? still? It is so wrong, that it never should have been used in the first place, but ok, everybody makes mistakes. But why would you use it after everybody told you it is bad and it makes no sense? explain please. Imagine Barcelona and Liverpool are in the same Champions league group, play each other and Barca wins 3:0, 2:0. Now they meet again in the grand final and Barca would start with a 5:0 lead. How can one not see that this is stupid. The winner of the group stage game should be rewarded - agree. And he already is. He gets a better group placement and needs to play lesser games. And what happened at the start of this MLG? The event was listed on the sidebar of TL and disappear shortly before it started and streams got embedded even later. Many people were wondering about this in the forum and on irc, but all we got was a statement from a TL admin, that an MLG person can explain this. What the ...? Again, the bitter taste. What’s the end of it? I will watch the next MLG Event in June, but if it turns out to be like the one from last weekend the chances are high, I wont watch the one after.
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On March 27 2012 00:51 zul wrote:my feedback is rather negative for this MLG. I freaking loved the 2011 Pro Circuit, but everything they have done this year so far, including the event from last weekend, gave me a bad feeling. Well not everything, since Socke had a great run but the overall experience went downhill. check the spoiler for a more detailed feedback + Show Spoiler +taken from my blog: http://zulison.blogspot.de/2012/03/mlg-columbus-2012-feedback.html (the format is f***ed up in the spoiler and 2 pictures are missing, but you can read the whole text here) tbh this was the worst MLG since Dallas last year. There was lots of trouble with the stream (refreshing every 20 minutes, no volume adjustment, repeated laggs, way too loud adds). Most people missed some crucial games, due to the fact that those were moved to the pay-to-watch-streams. I mean i get it - MLG needs money bad. Though when Sundance says he holds the Arenas to "cash in" (he puts it in other words) from the already existing fanbase, but wants to enlarge the scene with the 4 events were the streams are FREE, well, then this leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, when a) not all streams are free and b) big matches get moved to the premium streams. Same goes for the casters. Either wheat(9) was free to watch or tastosis, but never both. If you truly mean to advertise through these (only!!) 4 events per year, do it right. I have absolutely no harsh feelings towards Sundance, I actually like him as a person (from what I see) and last year MLG was the event every other league had to compete with. In 2012 it changed IMO. MLG has made too many drastic changes too fast. I don`t think PPV is for the long-term good. I don`t like how only MLG collides with other organizations Events (IEM New York last year, Asus ROG one month ago and the upcoming Dreamhack in April). Yeah, this might all have been unavoidable, but still, it only happens to MLG. The bitter taste returns. Communication. Overall MLG communicates a lot, but sometimes they focus is on the wrong aspect. I remember last year when it became public that MLG will collide with the IEM New York stop and it was stated, that they will try to improve communication with other organizations and hopefully avoid this in the future. Well, in a most recent interview sundance said something slightly different. Organizations won’t reveal their information upfront, because of business stuff and therefore those collisions just happen. meh. Another communication aspect. Sundance tells us that he tries to support the eSport ecosystem by providing plane tickets and hotel rooms for the players and wants the fans to think this is necessary. It is not. Here is how it goes: - Player plays great - Player gets fans - Clan needs great player to get more sponsorship dollars - at the same time: Player needs money to travel and to take the next step in his career - Clans signs player - Clans gets money from Sponsor(s) - Player represents Clan and the Sponsor(s) and gets money from Clan – yeah! - Fans see all the Sponsor logos and the next time the need to buy something, they get awesome eSport related stuff – yeah! - Sponsor makes money – yeah! - Sponsor wants to make more money and (via the team) send players all over the world to get more recognition and in addition to that, Sponsors give money to leagues - Leagues make money – yeah! - On top of that all leagues, players and teams offer something special to make some extra cash (merchandise, HD Streams, some kind of “VIP” access ...) ---------------------------- missing pictures ---------------------------- Why would you take the sponsors out of that equation, when it makes everybody happy? And this is what you are doing with PPV. Why would sponsors stop investing money into this scene that spends a LOT of money. It would only happen if the scene shrinks and reaches a point where the ROI for the sponsors make no sense any more. Guess what, PPV aids to that shrinking process, because it cuts out the majority of the scene. And when the scene reaches the point where the sponsors wont invest anymore money, there will also not be enough fans to pay the PPV fee anymore. Ergo, more money comes from growth and you need easy (in this case “free”) accessibility to achieve that growth. When the industry reaches the point where huge profit is made, league should go ahead and pay for everything, but until then, there is no need to. Now lets talk about the system. Extended series! really? still? It is so wrong, that it never should have been used in the first place, but ok, everybody makes mistakes. But why would you use it after everybody told you it is bad and it makes no sense? explain please. Imagine Barcelona and Liverpool are in the same Champions league group, play each other and Barca wins 3:0, 2:0. Now they meet again in the grand final and Barca would start with a 5:0 lead. How can one not see that this is stupid. The winner of the group stage game should be rewarded - agree. And he already is. He gets a better group placement and needs to play lesser games. And what happened at the start of this MLG? The event was listed on the sidebar of TL and disappear shortly before it started and streams got embedded even later. Many people were wondering about this in the forum and on irc, but all we got was a statement from a TL admin, that an MLG person can explain this. What the ...? Again, the bitter taste. What’s the end of it? I will watch the next MLG Event in June, but if it turns out to be like the one from last weekend the chances are high, I wont watch the one after.
1) The business model of MLG has been discussed at length. They know all about the benefits of having pay per view or free models. Personally I just decide if I want to buy it or not, it's not up to me to tell them how they can make their business most profitable. Obviously it would be great if we could have everything for free but sometimes it doesn't work that way.
2) I don't understand why people have a problem with extended series. Your comparison with Champions League is not a good one because it is a different system. The Champions League is a single elimination, knockout tournament, which you qualify for through group stages. Actually you could say because the score is cumulative from both home and away legs it is rather like the extended series at MLG.
MLG is a double elimination bracket. This means that everybody gets to lose one series. This is fine, but when you are the winner of the winners bracket it means you haven't lost any series. In order for it to be fair, the winner of the winners bracket must be allowed to lose one "best of" series without being knocked out.
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On March 27 2012 01:39 deathly rat wrote:Show nested quote +On March 27 2012 00:51 zul wrote:my feedback is rather negative for this MLG. I freaking loved the 2011 Pro Circuit, but everything they have done this year so far, including the event from last weekend, gave me a bad feeling. Well not everything, since Socke had a great run but the overall experience went downhill. check the spoiler for a more detailed feedback + Show Spoiler +taken from my blog: http://zulison.blogspot.de/2012/03/mlg-columbus-2012-feedback.html (the format is f***ed up in the spoiler and 2 pictures are missing, but you can read the whole text here) tbh this was the worst MLG since Dallas last year. There was lots of trouble with the stream (refreshing every 20 minutes, no volume adjustment, repeated laggs, way too loud adds). Most people missed some crucial games, due to the fact that those were moved to the pay-to-watch-streams. I mean i get it - MLG needs money bad. Though when Sundance says he holds the Arenas to "cash in" (he puts it in other words) from the already existing fanbase, but wants to enlarge the scene with the 4 events were the streams are FREE, well, then this leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, when a) not all streams are free and b) big matches get moved to the premium streams. Same goes for the casters. Either wheat(9) was free to watch or tastosis, but never both. If you truly mean to advertise through these (only!!) 4 events per year, do it right. I have absolutely no harsh feelings towards Sundance, I actually like him as a person (from what I see) and last year MLG was the event every other league had to compete with. In 2012 it changed IMO. MLG has made too many drastic changes too fast. I don`t think PPV is for the long-term good. I don`t like how only MLG collides with other organizations Events (IEM New York last year, Asus ROG one month ago and the upcoming Dreamhack in April). Yeah, this might all have been unavoidable, but still, it only happens to MLG. The bitter taste returns. Communication. Overall MLG communicates a lot, but sometimes they focus is on the wrong aspect. I remember last year when it became public that MLG will collide with the IEM New York stop and it was stated, that they will try to improve communication with other organizations and hopefully avoid this in the future. Well, in a most recent interview sundance said something slightly different. Organizations won’t reveal their information upfront, because of business stuff and therefore those collisions just happen. meh. Another communication aspect. Sundance tells us that he tries to support the eSport ecosystem by providing plane tickets and hotel rooms for the players and wants the fans to think this is necessary. It is not. Here is how it goes: - Player plays great - Player gets fans - Clan needs great player to get more sponsorship dollars - at the same time: Player needs money to travel and to take the next step in his career - Clans signs player - Clans gets money from Sponsor(s) - Player represents Clan and the Sponsor(s) and gets money from Clan – yeah! - Fans see all the Sponsor logos and the next time the need to buy something, they get awesome eSport related stuff – yeah! - Sponsor makes money – yeah! - Sponsor wants to make more money and (via the team) send players all over the world to get more recognition and in addition to that, Sponsors give money to leagues - Leagues make money – yeah! - On top of that all leagues, players and teams offer something special to make some extra cash (merchandise, HD Streams, some kind of “VIP” access ...) ---------------------------- missing pictures ---------------------------- Why would you take the sponsors out of that equation, when it makes everybody happy? And this is what you are doing with PPV. Why would sponsors stop investing money into this scene that spends a LOT of money. It would only happen if the scene shrinks and reaches a point where the ROI for the sponsors make no sense any more. Guess what, PPV aids to that shrinking process, because it cuts out the majority of the scene. And when the scene reaches the point where the sponsors wont invest anymore money, there will also not be enough fans to pay the PPV fee anymore. Ergo, more money comes from growth and you need easy (in this case “free”) accessibility to achieve that growth. When the industry reaches the point where huge profit is made, league should go ahead and pay for everything, but until then, there is no need to. Now lets talk about the system. Extended series! really? still? It is so wrong, that it never should have been used in the first place, but ok, everybody makes mistakes. But why would you use it after everybody told you it is bad and it makes no sense? explain please. Imagine Barcelona and Liverpool are in the same Champions league group, play each other and Barca wins 3:0, 2:0. Now they meet again in the grand final and Barca would start with a 5:0 lead. How can one not see that this is stupid. The winner of the group stage game should be rewarded - agree. And he already is. He gets a better group placement and needs to play lesser games. And what happened at the start of this MLG? The event was listed on the sidebar of TL and disappear shortly before it started and streams got embedded even later. Many people were wondering about this in the forum and on irc, but all we got was a statement from a TL admin, that an MLG person can explain this. What the ...? Again, the bitter taste. What’s the end of it? I will watch the next MLG Event in June, but if it turns out to be like the one from last weekend the chances are high, I wont watch the one after. 1) The business model of MLG has been discussed at length. They know all about the benefits of having pay per view or free models. Personally I just decide if I want to buy it or not, it's not up to me to tell them how they can make their business most profitable. Obviously it would be great if we could have everything for free but sometimes it doesn't work that way. 2) I don't understand why people have a problem with extended series. Your comparison with Champions League is not a good one because it is a different system. The Champions League is a single elimination, knockout tournament, which you qualify for through group stages. Actually you could say because the score is cumulative from both home and away legs it is rather like the extended series at MLG. MLG is a double elimination bracket. This means that everybody gets to lose one series. This is fine, but when you are the winner of the winners bracket it means you haven't lost any series. In order for it to be fair, the winner of the winners bracket must be allowed to lose one "best of" series without being knocked out.
Why would you punish a player twice, for losing once? Why did Socke deserve to start his match against HuK being down 0-2, when he already had been punished and had to play 4 bo3 (2-1 PuMa, 2-0 DemusliM, 2-1 crazymovinG, 2-0 TheStC) before meeting HuK, just to start with a punishment again?
It makes no sense. Also MLG Championship bracket / Pool is single elimination. You get your placement from the pool play, and after that its single-elimination for most of them. Only the first in the group gets the benefit of the tournament being double-elimination.
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On March 27 2012 01:53 Type|NarutO wrote:Show nested quote +On March 27 2012 01:39 deathly rat wrote:On March 27 2012 00:51 zul wrote:my feedback is rather negative for this MLG. I freaking loved the 2011 Pro Circuit, but everything they have done this year so far, including the event from last weekend, gave me a bad feeling. Well not everything, since Socke had a great run but the overall experience went downhill. check the spoiler for a more detailed feedback + Show Spoiler +taken from my blog: http://zulison.blogspot.de/2012/03/mlg-columbus-2012-feedback.html (the format is f***ed up in the spoiler and 2 pictures are missing, but you can read the whole text here) tbh this was the worst MLG since Dallas last year. There was lots of trouble with the stream (refreshing every 20 minutes, no volume adjustment, repeated laggs, way too loud adds). Most people missed some crucial games, due to the fact that those were moved to the pay-to-watch-streams. I mean i get it - MLG needs money bad. Though when Sundance says he holds the Arenas to "cash in" (he puts it in other words) from the already existing fanbase, but wants to enlarge the scene with the 4 events were the streams are FREE, well, then this leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, when a) not all streams are free and b) big matches get moved to the premium streams. Same goes for the casters. Either wheat(9) was free to watch or tastosis, but never both. If you truly mean to advertise through these (only!!) 4 events per year, do it right. I have absolutely no harsh feelings towards Sundance, I actually like him as a person (from what I see) and last year MLG was the event every other league had to compete with. In 2012 it changed IMO. MLG has made too many drastic changes too fast. I don`t think PPV is for the long-term good. I don`t like how only MLG collides with other organizations Events (IEM New York last year, Asus ROG one month ago and the upcoming Dreamhack in April). Yeah, this might all have been unavoidable, but still, it only happens to MLG. The bitter taste returns. Communication. Overall MLG communicates a lot, but sometimes they focus is on the wrong aspect. I remember last year when it became public that MLG will collide with the IEM New York stop and it was stated, that they will try to improve communication with other organizations and hopefully avoid this in the future. Well, in a most recent interview sundance said something slightly different. Organizations won’t reveal their information upfront, because of business stuff and therefore those collisions just happen. meh. Another communication aspect. Sundance tells us that he tries to support the eSport ecosystem by providing plane tickets and hotel rooms for the players and wants the fans to think this is necessary. It is not. Here is how it goes: - Player plays great - Player gets fans - Clan needs great player to get more sponsorship dollars - at the same time: Player needs money to travel and to take the next step in his career - Clans signs player - Clans gets money from Sponsor(s) - Player represents Clan and the Sponsor(s) and gets money from Clan – yeah! - Fans see all the Sponsor logos and the next time the need to buy something, they get awesome eSport related stuff – yeah! - Sponsor makes money – yeah! - Sponsor wants to make more money and (via the team) send players all over the world to get more recognition and in addition to that, Sponsors give money to leagues - Leagues make money – yeah! - On top of that all leagues, players and teams offer something special to make some extra cash (merchandise, HD Streams, some kind of “VIP” access ...) ---------------------------- missing pictures ---------------------------- Why would you take the sponsors out of that equation, when it makes everybody happy? And this is what you are doing with PPV. Why would sponsors stop investing money into this scene that spends a LOT of money. It would only happen if the scene shrinks and reaches a point where the ROI for the sponsors make no sense any more. Guess what, PPV aids to that shrinking process, because it cuts out the majority of the scene. And when the scene reaches the point where the sponsors wont invest anymore money, there will also not be enough fans to pay the PPV fee anymore. Ergo, more money comes from growth and you need easy (in this case “free”) accessibility to achieve that growth. When the industry reaches the point where huge profit is made, league should go ahead and pay for everything, but until then, there is no need to. Now lets talk about the system. Extended series! really? still? It is so wrong, that it never should have been used in the first place, but ok, everybody makes mistakes. But why would you use it after everybody told you it is bad and it makes no sense? explain please. Imagine Barcelona and Liverpool are in the same Champions league group, play each other and Barca wins 3:0, 2:0. Now they meet again in the grand final and Barca would start with a 5:0 lead. How can one not see that this is stupid. The winner of the group stage game should be rewarded - agree. And he already is. He gets a better group placement and needs to play lesser games. And what happened at the start of this MLG? The event was listed on the sidebar of TL and disappear shortly before it started and streams got embedded even later. Many people were wondering about this in the forum and on irc, but all we got was a statement from a TL admin, that an MLG person can explain this. What the ...? Again, the bitter taste. What’s the end of it? I will watch the next MLG Event in June, but if it turns out to be like the one from last weekend the chances are high, I wont watch the one after. 1) The business model of MLG has been discussed at length. They know all about the benefits of having pay per view or free models. Personally I just decide if I want to buy it or not, it's not up to me to tell them how they can make their business most profitable. Obviously it would be great if we could have everything for free but sometimes it doesn't work that way. 2) I don't understand why people have a problem with extended series. Your comparison with Champions League is not a good one because it is a different system. The Champions League is a single elimination, knockout tournament, which you qualify for through group stages. Actually you could say because the score is cumulative from both home and away legs it is rather like the extended series at MLG. MLG is a double elimination bracket. This means that everybody gets to lose one series. This is fine, but when you are the winner of the winners bracket it means you haven't lost any series. In order for it to be fair, the winner of the winners bracket must be allowed to lose one "best of" series without being knocked out. Why would you punish a player twice, for losing once? Why did Socke deserve to start his match against HuK being down 0-2, when he already had been punished and had to play 4 bo3 (2-1 PuMa, 2-0 DemusliM, 2-1 crazymovinG, 2-0 TheStC) before meeting HuK, just to start with a punishment again? It makes no sense. Also MLG Championship bracket / Pool is single elimination. You get your placement from the pool play, and after that its single-elimination for most of them. Only the first in the group gets the benefit of the tournament being double-elimination.
If you look at my OP you'll see I am in favor of having everyone play through the open bracket as this is most fair. However, do you think it would be fair if in the winners bracket Huk won 2-0, and then he lost 1-2 to the same person in the losers bracket. This would mean that despite winning more games overall he would be knocked out.
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On March 27 2012 02:19 deathly rat wrote:Show nested quote +On March 27 2012 01:53 Type|NarutO wrote:On March 27 2012 01:39 deathly rat wrote:On March 27 2012 00:51 zul wrote:my feedback is rather negative for this MLG. I freaking loved the 2011 Pro Circuit, but everything they have done this year so far, including the event from last weekend, gave me a bad feeling. Well not everything, since Socke had a great run but the overall experience went downhill. check the spoiler for a more detailed feedback + Show Spoiler +taken from my blog: http://zulison.blogspot.de/2012/03/mlg-columbus-2012-feedback.html (the format is f***ed up in the spoiler and 2 pictures are missing, but you can read the whole text here) tbh this was the worst MLG since Dallas last year. There was lots of trouble with the stream (refreshing every 20 minutes, no volume adjustment, repeated laggs, way too loud adds). Most people missed some crucial games, due to the fact that those were moved to the pay-to-watch-streams. I mean i get it - MLG needs money bad. Though when Sundance says he holds the Arenas to "cash in" (he puts it in other words) from the already existing fanbase, but wants to enlarge the scene with the 4 events were the streams are FREE, well, then this leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, when a) not all streams are free and b) big matches get moved to the premium streams. Same goes for the casters. Either wheat(9) was free to watch or tastosis, but never both. If you truly mean to advertise through these (only!!) 4 events per year, do it right. I have absolutely no harsh feelings towards Sundance, I actually like him as a person (from what I see) and last year MLG was the event every other league had to compete with. In 2012 it changed IMO. MLG has made too many drastic changes too fast. I don`t think PPV is for the long-term good. I don`t like how only MLG collides with other organizations Events (IEM New York last year, Asus ROG one month ago and the upcoming Dreamhack in April). Yeah, this might all have been unavoidable, but still, it only happens to MLG. The bitter taste returns. Communication. Overall MLG communicates a lot, but sometimes they focus is on the wrong aspect. I remember last year when it became public that MLG will collide with the IEM New York stop and it was stated, that they will try to improve communication with other organizations and hopefully avoid this in the future. Well, in a most recent interview sundance said something slightly different. Organizations won’t reveal their information upfront, because of business stuff and therefore those collisions just happen. meh. Another communication aspect. Sundance tells us that he tries to support the eSport ecosystem by providing plane tickets and hotel rooms for the players and wants the fans to think this is necessary. It is not. Here is how it goes: - Player plays great - Player gets fans - Clan needs great player to get more sponsorship dollars - at the same time: Player needs money to travel and to take the next step in his career - Clans signs player - Clans gets money from Sponsor(s) - Player represents Clan and the Sponsor(s) and gets money from Clan – yeah! - Fans see all the Sponsor logos and the next time the need to buy something, they get awesome eSport related stuff – yeah! - Sponsor makes money – yeah! - Sponsor wants to make more money and (via the team) send players all over the world to get more recognition and in addition to that, Sponsors give money to leagues - Leagues make money – yeah! - On top of that all leagues, players and teams offer something special to make some extra cash (merchandise, HD Streams, some kind of “VIP” access ...) ---------------------------- missing pictures ---------------------------- Why would you take the sponsors out of that equation, when it makes everybody happy? And this is what you are doing with PPV. Why would sponsors stop investing money into this scene that spends a LOT of money. It would only happen if the scene shrinks and reaches a point where the ROI for the sponsors make no sense any more. Guess what, PPV aids to that shrinking process, because it cuts out the majority of the scene. And when the scene reaches the point where the sponsors wont invest anymore money, there will also not be enough fans to pay the PPV fee anymore. Ergo, more money comes from growth and you need easy (in this case “free”) accessibility to achieve that growth. When the industry reaches the point where huge profit is made, league should go ahead and pay for everything, but until then, there is no need to. Now lets talk about the system. Extended series! really? still? It is so wrong, that it never should have been used in the first place, but ok, everybody makes mistakes. But why would you use it after everybody told you it is bad and it makes no sense? explain please. Imagine Barcelona and Liverpool are in the same Champions league group, play each other and Barca wins 3:0, 2:0. Now they meet again in the grand final and Barca would start with a 5:0 lead. How can one not see that this is stupid. The winner of the group stage game should be rewarded - agree. And he already is. He gets a better group placement and needs to play lesser games. And what happened at the start of this MLG? The event was listed on the sidebar of TL and disappear shortly before it started and streams got embedded even later. Many people were wondering about this in the forum and on irc, but all we got was a statement from a TL admin, that an MLG person can explain this. What the ...? Again, the bitter taste. What’s the end of it? I will watch the next MLG Event in June, but if it turns out to be like the one from last weekend the chances are high, I wont watch the one after. 1) The business model of MLG has been discussed at length. They know all about the benefits of having pay per view or free models. Personally I just decide if I want to buy it or not, it's not up to me to tell them how they can make their business most profitable. Obviously it would be great if we could have everything for free but sometimes it doesn't work that way. 2) I don't understand why people have a problem with extended series. Your comparison with Champions League is not a good one because it is a different system. The Champions League is a single elimination, knockout tournament, which you qualify for through group stages. Actually you could say because the score is cumulative from both home and away legs it is rather like the extended series at MLG. MLG is a double elimination bracket. This means that everybody gets to lose one series. This is fine, but when you are the winner of the winners bracket it means you haven't lost any series. In order for it to be fair, the winner of the winners bracket must be allowed to lose one "best of" series without being knocked out. Why would you punish a player twice, for losing once? Why did Socke deserve to start his match against HuK being down 0-2, when he already had been punished and had to play 4 bo3 (2-1 PuMa, 2-0 DemusliM, 2-1 crazymovinG, 2-0 TheStC) before meeting HuK, just to start with a punishment again? It makes no sense. Also MLG Championship bracket / Pool is single elimination. You get your placement from the pool play, and after that its single-elimination for most of them. Only the first in the group gets the benefit of the tournament being double-elimination. If you look at my OP you'll see I am in favor of having everyone play through the open bracket as this is most fair. However, do you think it would be fair if in the winners bracket Huk won 2-0, and then he lost 1-2 to the same person in the losers bracket. This would mean that despite winning more games overall he would be knocked out.
Well do you want to discuss about the system as its right now, or about your system. As for now, groupstage is groupstage. There are 2 options:
You beat someone and you finish with a better place than him in the group. You are rewarded for that, as it will place you higher in the bracket.
If he manages to play through his bracket to get back to you, well your reward still stands, you didn't have to play any other games besides the group games and you are at the same point. Punishing him now is unfair. And no, if he comes back and wins vs you after a 0-0 score, I don't see how that would be unfair.
You beat someone but you still finish with a worse place in the group. That person had a better overall score than you, and is rewarded because of that.
If you proceed to win and face him again, well why should he be punished here? He had a better result in groups even though losing to you, so now you want to have an advantage over him, cannot see why.
The only point I will agree on, if you have a a full double elimination (group stage to QUALIFY for the double-elim bracket, instead of group places determining the place you will have in the single elim bracket, MLG uses an akward system, only #1 of each group is double-elim) is that someone who went into the winner bracket finals should have an advantage over the person coming from the LB finals.
This should be either a 1-0 advantage in a bo5 or the other person having to win 2 bo3 / bo5, without any map advantage. Right now or before the bo5 / bo9 change of MLG you could go into the WB final and find yourself in the following situation:
Extended series, because you faced your opponent already. Being down 1-2 and having to win a bo7.
Now if you end up taking the lead 3-2 suddenly the advantage of the winner becomes a disadvantage. Not only doesn't he have the lead anymore, but he's BEHIND in the only bo7 to win.
This should never happen. The person from the LB should never be able to get the advantage out of a disadvantage, but only be possible to even it up. (And 2-2 isn't evening it up, because the WB player still didn't lose a boX yet)
Hope you understand, its a bit chaoticly written >>
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On March 27 2012 01:39 deathly rat wrote:Show nested quote +On March 27 2012 00:51 zul wrote:my feedback is rather negative for this MLG. I freaking loved the 2011 Pro Circuit, but everything they have done this year so far, including the event from last weekend, gave me a bad feeling. Well not everything, since Socke had a great run but the overall experience went downhill. check the spoiler for a more detailed feedback + Show Spoiler +taken from my blog: http://zulison.blogspot.de/2012/03/mlg-columbus-2012-feedback.html (the format is f***ed up in the spoiler and 2 pictures are missing, but you can read the whole text here) tbh this was the worst MLG since Dallas last year. There was lots of trouble with the stream (refreshing every 20 minutes, no volume adjustment, repeated laggs, way too loud adds). Most people missed some crucial games, due to the fact that those were moved to the pay-to-watch-streams. I mean i get it - MLG needs money bad. Though when Sundance says he holds the Arenas to "cash in" (he puts it in other words) from the already existing fanbase, but wants to enlarge the scene with the 4 events were the streams are FREE, well, then this leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, when a) not all streams are free and b) big matches get moved to the premium streams. Same goes for the casters. Either wheat(9) was free to watch or tastosis, but never both. If you truly mean to advertise through these (only!!) 4 events per year, do it right. I have absolutely no harsh feelings towards Sundance, I actually like him as a person (from what I see) and last year MLG was the event every other league had to compete with. In 2012 it changed IMO. MLG has made too many drastic changes too fast. I don`t think PPV is for the long-term good. I don`t like how only MLG collides with other organizations Events (IEM New York last year, Asus ROG one month ago and the upcoming Dreamhack in April). Yeah, this might all have been unavoidable, but still, it only happens to MLG. The bitter taste returns. Communication. Overall MLG communicates a lot, but sometimes they focus is on the wrong aspect. I remember last year when it became public that MLG will collide with the IEM New York stop and it was stated, that they will try to improve communication with other organizations and hopefully avoid this in the future. Well, in a most recent interview sundance said something slightly different. Organizations won’t reveal their information upfront, because of business stuff and therefore those collisions just happen. meh. Another communication aspect. Sundance tells us that he tries to support the eSport ecosystem by providing plane tickets and hotel rooms for the players and wants the fans to think this is necessary. It is not. Here is how it goes: - Player plays great - Player gets fans - Clan needs great player to get more sponsorship dollars - at the same time: Player needs money to travel and to take the next step in his career - Clans signs player - Clans gets money from Sponsor(s) - Player represents Clan and the Sponsor(s) and gets money from Clan – yeah! - Fans see all the Sponsor logos and the next time the need to buy something, they get awesome eSport related stuff – yeah! - Sponsor makes money – yeah! - Sponsor wants to make more money and (via the team) send players all over the world to get more recognition and in addition to that, Sponsors give money to leagues - Leagues make money – yeah! - On top of that all leagues, players and teams offer something special to make some extra cash (merchandise, HD Streams, some kind of “VIP” access ...) ---------------------------- missing pictures ---------------------------- Why would you take the sponsors out of that equation, when it makes everybody happy? And this is what you are doing with PPV. Why would sponsors stop investing money into this scene that spends a LOT of money. It would only happen if the scene shrinks and reaches a point where the ROI for the sponsors make no sense any more. Guess what, PPV aids to that shrinking process, because it cuts out the majority of the scene. And when the scene reaches the point where the sponsors wont invest anymore money, there will also not be enough fans to pay the PPV fee anymore. Ergo, more money comes from growth and you need easy (in this case “free”) accessibility to achieve that growth. When the industry reaches the point where huge profit is made, league should go ahead and pay for everything, but until then, there is no need to. Now lets talk about the system. Extended series! really? still? It is so wrong, that it never should have been used in the first place, but ok, everybody makes mistakes. But why would you use it after everybody told you it is bad and it makes no sense? explain please. Imagine Barcelona and Liverpool are in the same Champions league group, play each other and Barca wins 3:0, 2:0. Now they meet again in the grand final and Barca would start with a 5:0 lead. How can one not see that this is stupid. The winner of the group stage game should be rewarded - agree. And he already is. He gets a better group placement and needs to play lesser games. And what happened at the start of this MLG? The event was listed on the sidebar of TL and disappear shortly before it started and streams got embedded even later. Many people were wondering about this in the forum and on irc, but all we got was a statement from a TL admin, that an MLG person can explain this. What the ...? Again, the bitter taste. What’s the end of it? I will watch the next MLG Event in June, but if it turns out to be like the one from last weekend the chances are high, I wont watch the one after. ... 2) I don't understand why people have a problem with extended series. Your comparison with Champions League is not a good one because it is a different system. The Champions League is a single elimination, knockout tournament, which you qualify for through group stages. Actually you could say because the score is cumulative from both home and away legs it is rather like the extended series at MLG. MLG is a double elimination bracket. This means that everybody gets to lose one series. This is fine, but when you are the winner of the winners bracket it means you haven't lost any series. In order for it to be fair, the winner of the winners bracket must be allowed to lose one "best of" series without being knocked out.
Yeah, but the double elim has nothing to do with this. look at Socke vs. Huk or HuK vs. Heart - both matches happened during groupstage and after the groupstage has ended, everybody gets his seed and exactly after this point the score-counter has to be reseted. Naruto explained the rest very well, so I will just end it with one more sentence: Extended series does only make sense in a true double elimination bracket and even there one might argue that 2 Best-of-X is more entertaining. (but the difference would be very small)
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Well I can see that integrating these groups into a double elimination bracket doesn't really work, and I agree with you there. I especially think you have a very good point in that there is a scenario in which the winner of the winners bracket could start the final actually down in games, and that is not good.
However, extended series are integral to a double elimination bracket, and that I cannot change my mind on. Firstly there is the issue I already described with the winner of the winners bracket having never lost a series but the person from the losers bracket already having lost a series.
Secondly, if an extended series happens before the final, it resolves the problem of which victory is most important. Say for example that Huk and Socke meet in the winners bracket and Huk wins 2-0, then later they meet again and Socke wins 2-0. If it were not an extended series Huk would be eliminated, because essentially the losers bracket victory would trump the winners bracket victory. However in an extended series neither of the games is more important than the other.
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EPT
