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I was thinking about this yesterday, and even tho ive only played in afew casted tournies so far, I really truely believe that all online tournies SHOULD be casted by replays after the fact.
Its just too much of an issue, esp with cheating, as ive seen it happen afew times (mainly on SC1, but im sure it happens on SC2 too) and the lag is unbearable already in BNet 2.
Casters who wont leave the game when they are lagging when the players say so, thats the most idiotic thing I've ever seen (I remember watching some of Huks games where it happens, how retarded).. They should be banlisted from casting/obsing any games in the future, kinda like a DotA-Banlist type thing IMO. Thats really lame.
So yea, Cast live LAN tourneys, and cast from replays for all the online tourneys, thats what I think.
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Players should be respected way more!
Casts from replays is NO PROBLEM at all. And it only means that people will see the match 20minutes later as usual. Also the caster can rewind for a few seconds in case he misses some important drop or fight or w/e (which happens way too often with the streams I watched so far, no matter who the caster is).
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On September 06 2010 20:32 xtfftc wrote:
There's a huge problem with casting from replays right after the games are played that people appear to be missing.
Let's say Game 1 lasts for 10 minutes. The caster receives the replay and starts casting immediately. Ten minutes later they check their email but apparently Game 2 is still going on, so there is an indefinite pause until the game is over.
Alternatively, you could send the replays after all games have finished but with a bo5 or bo7 this could mean waiting for a looooong time. SC2 is still a new game so most games tend to finish for about 10-15 minutes. However, (hopefully) this will change, so even 3 30 minute-long games plus bio breaks = 2 hours.
These delays will add-up during the course of the tournament. Finals are often played very late in the evening - imagine pushing the whole tournament for at least two additional hours? Making a reasonable schedule would become an even bigger nightmare then it already is. The only way to cope with it would be to cast pretty much the whole tournament the next day.
That's no different than the situation now. With casters left to their own devices, they often have a ton of trouble finding a game. They look at the brackets trying to find players they have on their friends lists, message some people, then find out that half the players don't want casters and the other half already started their games. Then the audience gets 30 minutes worth of the streamer's Quick Match screen.
If everyone is required to upload replays, then there are in all likelihood, more matches than streams going on. If there are 32 1st round matches, and only a handful of casts, there should be plenty of replays to choose from to kill time in case games run long.
With regard to the difficulty streamers have had getting replays from players:
1) Don't begin any round until the previous round is complete. There will be delays from matches that run long, but there should also be plenty of replays available from shorter series to cast in the mean time.
2) Winner is required to upload his replays before he may begin his next round.
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HDH and King of the Hill beta should not be mentioned as an argument promoting how successful replay based tournaments can be, as they were done in the beta and were also the two biggest tournaments done so far. The hype up until release was obviously feeding their popularity and people were starved for high quality games, thus people couldn't care less about it being casted from "old" replays.
As far as current online tournaments go, big "psuedo LAN" tournaments excluded, there are a couple of things that just isn't optimal at the moment.
1. Cheating - this is bound to happen if a game is being streamed live. It's 100% guaranteed it has already happened and that it will continue to happen as long as games are being cast live with just a few seconds delay. This is a huge issue so this should really be a big priority at Blizzard if they really do want SC2 to be a serious esport game.
2. Lag - keeping lag to a minimum should be in everyone's interest. I remember back in the beta when there were 10+ spectators and several streamers in a single game and I remember thinking how selfish those people were. And to top it off some people didn't even leave when they lagged the game going "I'll leave if it happens again". How arrogant isn't that?
I have to say that most of the casts I've seen these days have been with just a couple of spectators, but really, there should be a maximum of just 3 people spectating. 1 ref and 1 streamer with a co-caster. That is if it's being cast live at all.
3. Organisation / stress for the player - In an optimal world there shouldn't be any organisation required by the player in the senes of having to host the game, invite the players, streamers and so on. This should obviously be handled by the organisors of the event, however, when you have 64+ players, that's a huge task so it's understandable that things are as they are right now, and as long as players are aware of this, then it shouldn't be an issue as they know what they get themselves into.
Who's the most important? Casters or players?
I don't think it's fair to state that one is more important than the other. Obviously there is a synergy going on here and both need eachother to have a product to offer. If casters couldn't cast high profile games, well, then those games wouldn't be high profile and those high profile players would certainly not be as high profile except maybe for a very hardcore group of followers. But who wants SC2 to be only for a "small" number of hardcore followers when there are threads all over the place wanting everyone to do their thing to make SC2 and esports "huge" outside of Korea.
Is it feasible to cast games as soon as they're done?
Yes, it is.
Is it difficult to do it?
Yes, it is.
Would it solve some of the issues with lag and the possibility of cheating?
Without a doubt.
Will it introduce another problem, namely spoiling thus ruining a lot of the hype, viewer experience and ultimately the legitimacy of the tournament?
Yes.
Viewers wouldn't be able to tell the difference from a live match to a casted replay if they follow a planned schedule. The only problem with casting a recent replay is obviously spoilers. Spoilers will happen, and that would be a disaster for any large and or serious tournament. It doesn't matter what the consequences for spoiling are, it will still happen.
What SC2 needs is, like others have said already, a "live" cast with a 5 min delay or so. This should've been implemented by Blizzard ages ago. That would be the solution to everything, but alas it's not currently something that is possible right now, so we're stuck with trying to improve what is already being done.
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On September 06 2010 18:26 Macavity wrote:
Why do we need casters at all? Everyone watching knows what the Starcraft 2 units are.
And everyone watching Formula 1 knows that there's cars and they drive fast.
No one would watch 2 hours of cars going around the track with no commentary.
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On September 06 2010 09:55 jamesr12 wrote:
live casting is good for lan style events
bad for online tourneys
There's no such thing anymore, it's still all bnet traffic 
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As for casting from replays, doing this for open 512 man tournaments is a ridiculous suggestion. It's a lot more trouble planning wise to pull it off with tournament and casting and different dates. Open tournaments don't have this luxury as they often don't have the money or crew to make this ever worth it.
Bigger tournaments with the current state of bnet have very little choice but to use replays.
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I agree that some of this tournaments should be run a little different and the current set of rules in some of these tournaments is far from optimal. Letting every streamer run rampart and join any game they want is stupid. The players should not be forced to accept anyone joining their games who can register a livestream/ustream account.
BUT
The moment you sign up for such a tournament you, as a player, agree to follow their rules, even if you think that they are total bullshit. You have no right to complain about any of those rules, while you're playing this tournament. Throwing a huge tantrum during the tournament should get you banned.
If you want to play for the price money you have to stick to the rules. If you don't like the rules don't join.
In the future this may change, because there will hopefully be more tournaments for pro's and semipro's to choose from.
If a player can't join every tournament there is on a given date he will choose the tournaments who provide the highest price money WITH the best playing conditions. So in the long run tournaments with bad playing conditions will cease to exist, if the fail to provide huge price pools as a compensation for bad playing conditions.
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Hyrule19202 Posts
That's why I like Wolf's rules: there are only certain caster (teams) who can join OWC games, and until semi-finals, only 1 caster (team) per game. Seems to work pretty well, and it also allows almost all of the tournament to get casted.
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HuK -
Don't really disagree with any of your points. But, in case nobody's said it in the previous 13 pages of this thread, the real payoff is that it generates real-time interest in an event. eSports is trying to make money. You, Idra, Morrow, all the best players, would really like for professional SC2 to be a legitimate career. Being able to follow it real-time along with thousands of other people helps bring eSports closer tot hat goal.
Not sure if it outweighs all the negatives, but that's the big positive.
-Cross
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On September 06 2010 21:22 shrinkmaster wrote:
In the future this may change, because there will hopefully be more tournaments for pro's and semipro's to choose from.
If a player can't join every tournament there is on a given date he will choose the tournaments who provide the highest price money WITH the best playing conditions. So in the long run tournaments with bad playing conditions will cease to exist, if the fail to provide huge price pools as a compensation for bad playing conditions.
Actually that would be pretty bad....
Right now most of the "pros" like Huk and Morrow (sorry had to use you guys cause i saw you did it in the past) play more than 1 tournament now. Like at the same time Zotac, Go4Sc2 and Wolf Cup. And you hear from casters that for example "we have to wait for Morrow game cause now he plays his game in X tournament"...
Tourney admins are turning blind eye for it falls under "cause the delay in play" and "doesnt respond to game invite in 15 minutes".
So all the sides are in fault.
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On September 06 2010 21:16 abrasion wrote:Show nested quote +On September 06 2010 09:55 jamesr12 wrote:
live casting is good for lan style events
bad for online tourneys There's no such thing anymore, it's still all bnet traffic
LAN style events - the players are physically in the same location, playing in front of administrators and an audience.
Online events - the players are in their own homes, not supervised.
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+1 for no opportunities to cheat
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bnet doesnt make replay sharing very easy. one of its many, many shortcomings
Imagine if a player could publish their replays, and choose if its for everyone or friends only etc. Would make it much easier to cast tourneys off replays.
What they absolutely need to do is limit the obs to the bare necessities. It's absurd seeing games full of players, half of them casters half random obs. You only need one caster
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8751 Posts
Online events shouldn't have live casting. The standard should be casting replays. It makes the cast much smoother, making it a better product for the viewers (don't have to wait on players between games, don't have to search and ask players between matches, can choose good games to cast rather than just hoping to pick a good game). It also prevents many potential problems for the players (cheating, lag). TSL and TSL2 did an excellent job covering huge tournaments by casting replays.
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Yeah man casters bring in the big dough, lots and lots of greens so lets allow any douchebag with a youtube channel with 100 subscribers to crash in a top players game and lag that shit till its unplayable.
Get your heads out of your asses, what is the difference if it brings money right now? Do you think this kind of practice is viable for the future, its complelty unprofessional and only harms the game.
Hey Huk what i recommend you to do is talk to the other high level players and try to come to an agremeent with them, so that if you are in a game and its unplayable due to lag, just pause that shit and tell the obs to GTFO, if they dont just keep it pause. There are plenty of things you can do as sign of protest in game, like 2 hours of no agression etc.. as long as you and the other player are on the same page.
From the admin point of view the solutions are obvious.
Have only 1-2 official observers ingame streaming, others may re-stream if they want.
The cheating issue can easly be minimized with a 5 min delay, with 1-2 official observers is pretty easy to coordinate.
Another option is to just cast replays and have 1 referee ingame to share the replays asap.
Its also possible for the event results to be hidden until X time after the game to let the replays be casted first.
There is absolutly nothing you can say to justify 14 obs in one game lagging that shit up, its the same as during a futeball/basket/hokey whatever game 14 commenters go stand in the middle of the field and say thats is OK
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Part of the problem is everyone wants in on the most popular players like HuK if HuK is playing everyone wants in on that game.
I wouldnt mind casted replays maybe move the start time for casts say 15 to 30 minutes delay after matches started so you may have 1 or 2 rounds complete already alsot giving time to set up deal with player issues. Players not showing up or needing to be replaced. Maybe a caster is having technical difficulties have time to set up overlays on streams I think that would be good.
Now ppl don't know who is casted on who's channel cause there are no schedules of that and its like a crap shoot maybe bigT gets nightend or morrow while gosugamers gets HuK or ICCUP gets idrA. Caster put up a translucent overlay of who is playing and everyone knows were to go or watches who they want. Or maybe Casters could work with players beforehand to determine who gets what replays.
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On September 06 2010 21:34 Crosswind wrote:
HuK -
Don't really disagree with any of your points. But, in case nobody's said it in the previous 13 pages of this thread, the real payoff is that it generates real-time interest in an event. eSports is trying to make money. You, Idra, Morrow, all the best players, would really like for professional SC2 to be a legitimate career. Being able to follow it real-time along with thousands of other people helps bring eSports closer tot hat goal.
Not sure if it outweighs all the negatives, but that's the big positive.
-Cross
nothing at all can outweigh the potential for cheating alone
how can you really try to develop a professional competition where anyone could be cheating at any time and theres absolutely no way to check it?
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faulty protective headphones +200 to cheating in live.
Btw .
Big lol @ Idra.
The problem Huk and Morrow have is mainly with weekly tournaments.
Havent seen you in any of them ;P
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EPT
