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On January 16 2013 04:53 WaveofShadow wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2013 04:45 Numy wrote:On January 16 2013 04:42 TheYango wrote:On January 16 2013 04:39 Numy wrote:
I think the problem is more commentary has to be instantaneous. It's far easier to analyse and make a comment about a play in your own time than it is live on air. Most commentators just don't have that experience yet and I feel you can only gain that experience by actively trying it. That's the irony of this entire argument. Bly is criticizing commentators for passing judgement on players and their decisions despite never having been in their position and having to make an analogous choice--but isn't that exactly what he's doing to the commentators themselves? I don't think he's entirely wrong to criticize though. I do feel like people expect commentators to be the best possible right this moment instead of letting growth happen. Growth only happens when accompanied with mistakes and if you make it so mistakes are such a bad thing that people are too scared to let them happen then you will never get growth. As a side rant this is the same problem schooling has where mistakes are punished more than not trying. I really like this comment. When I cast, I am well aware of mistakes I make after the fact (not during, most of the time) but there are also mistakes I will never even realize I am making (even though I am primarily a PbP caster) unless they are pointed out to me. I guess since I have such support from TL people tend not to rip me apart nearly as much as they would other casters, but I've seen Twitch chat during LCS and TSM invitationals. People HATE those casters sometimes. And yet yesterday we got very little feedback from Twitch at all. There is nothing more I would love to do than improve every facet of my casting, whether play-by-play, analysis, whatever. But when someone comes along and tells me that no matter what I do I will ALWAYS be shit because I'm not a pro player, that's very disheartening to me considering I try to actively do what I can to improve myself. I do my best to learn from my own and others' mistakes, and have paid very close to attention to what people seem to like about other people's casts. I don't want my growth to be hampered by the fact that there is apparently an invisible glass ceiling that I can never breach, and people will always hate what I do because of it.
you don't have to be a pro player but you need to have some mid level 5s experience to understand a lot of what is going on... I don't get why that's so shocking or disheartening. Unless you're content with always pointing out the extremely obvious.
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You guys are having a great discussion, but I feel one point needs to be put out there. Fixing mistakes is definitely a way to improve but it's not the only way. There are ways to improve to just do things better. To better explain this, dying in league is a mistake and fixing it would make you a better player. But you can become a better player by creating more plays, as well.
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On January 16 2013 04:56 zulu_nation8 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2013 04:53 WaveofShadow wrote:On January 16 2013 04:45 Numy wrote:On January 16 2013 04:42 TheYango wrote:On January 16 2013 04:39 Numy wrote:
I think the problem is more commentary has to be instantaneous. It's far easier to analyse and make a comment about a play in your own time than it is live on air. Most commentators just don't have that experience yet and I feel you can only gain that experience by actively trying it. That's the irony of this entire argument. Bly is criticizing commentators for passing judgement on players and their decisions despite never having been in their position and having to make an analogous choice--but isn't that exactly what he's doing to the commentators themselves? I don't think he's entirely wrong to criticize though. I do feel like people expect commentators to be the best possible right this moment instead of letting growth happen. Growth only happens when accompanied with mistakes and if you make it so mistakes are such a bad thing that people are too scared to let them happen then you will never get growth. As a side rant this is the same problem schooling has where mistakes are punished more than not trying. I really like this comment. When I cast, I am well aware of mistakes I make after the fact (not during, most of the time) but there are also mistakes I will never even realize I am making (even though I am primarily a PbP caster) unless they are pointed out to me. I guess since I have such support from TL people tend not to rip me apart nearly as much as they would other casters, but I've seen Twitch chat during LCS and TSM invitationals. People HATE those casters sometimes. And yet yesterday we got very little feedback from Twitch at all. There is nothing more I would love to do than improve every facet of my casting, whether play-by-play, analysis, whatever. But when someone comes along and tells me that no matter what I do I will ALWAYS be shit because I'm not a pro player, that's very disheartening to me considering I try to actively do what I can to improve myself. I do my best to learn from my own and others' mistakes, and have paid very close to attention to what people seem to like about other people's casts. I don't want my growth to be hampered by the fact that there is apparently an invisible glass ceiling that I can never breach, and people will always hate what I do because of it. you don't have to be a pro player but you need to have some mid level 5s experience to understand a lot of what is going on... I don't get why that's so shocking or disheartening. Unless you're content with always pointing out the extremely obvious.
I'm sorry, I still don't buy it. Extreme example here because I am nowhere near that level, but you don't think Deman could provide good analysis if asked, despite him having no 5s experience? Considering he has watched and commentated on almost every important NA pro series (and some others as well) of 2012?
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On January 16 2013 04:56 sylverfyre wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2013 04:45 zulu_nation8 wrote:On January 16 2013 04:36 sylverfyre wrote:On January 16 2013 04:31 zulu_nation8 wrote:
there's no such a thing as having a pro's understanding of the game without being pro. Understanding comes from experience. Jatt doesn't play anymore and Kobe was last seen trolling 1800s or something at season 2's end. Any respectable high elo player with significant 5s experience should know more than those two. You can't understand what the team/player is thinking without having been in a similar situation. But you can still look at a pro player's decision making and have a good idea of why they made those decisions, even if you don't have the understanding to know to make that decision beforehand. You do have to be able to pick up on the decisions and extrapolate the reasons quickly and with an acceptable degree of accuracy. During at least lane phase, the only role where decision making actually matters a bit is jungler. The ONLY people who understand a good jungler's thought process are the people on his team. From there on the understanding degrades by how well you know the specific player and how good you are. But you can look at the things the jungler is doing, compare them to other things you've seen pro junglers do in previous games, and figure out what they're planning, because you can see what they're doing. Yes, you can't read their mind, but you can understand that if blue-reliant is starting red instead of blue and getting a smiteless leash, his intention is likely to be smiteless red-> smite blue -> level 3 gank top, because we've seen it before. It's not "how good you are" but rather how much homework you've done watching top level play (or participating in it). I contest that good casters who aren't great players can put forth the effort and become just as good at it.
except most decisions aren't as simple as which buff to start. By how good, I essentially mean how much experience someone has of playing in high level games, because the more experience, the more stuff someone has seen, and thus be able to interpret. Decision making is way too complicated to learn by watching.
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United States7639 Posts
rip jiji T__T you'll always be my favorite ;;;;;;; <3
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On January 16 2013 05:00 WaveofShadow wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2013 04:56 zulu_nation8 wrote:On January 16 2013 04:53 WaveofShadow wrote:On January 16 2013 04:45 Numy wrote:On January 16 2013 04:42 TheYango wrote:On January 16 2013 04:39 Numy wrote:
I think the problem is more commentary has to be instantaneous. It's far easier to analyse and make a comment about a play in your own time than it is live on air. Most commentators just don't have that experience yet and I feel you can only gain that experience by actively trying it. That's the irony of this entire argument. Bly is criticizing commentators for passing judgement on players and their decisions despite never having been in their position and having to make an analogous choice--but isn't that exactly what he's doing to the commentators themselves? I don't think he's entirely wrong to criticize though. I do feel like people expect commentators to be the best possible right this moment instead of letting growth happen. Growth only happens when accompanied with mistakes and if you make it so mistakes are such a bad thing that people are too scared to let them happen then you will never get growth. As a side rant this is the same problem schooling has where mistakes are punished more than not trying. I really like this comment. When I cast, I am well aware of mistakes I make after the fact (not during, most of the time) but there are also mistakes I will never even realize I am making (even though I am primarily a PbP caster) unless they are pointed out to me. I guess since I have such support from TL people tend not to rip me apart nearly as much as they would other casters, but I've seen Twitch chat during LCS and TSM invitationals. People HATE those casters sometimes. And yet yesterday we got very little feedback from Twitch at all. There is nothing more I would love to do than improve every facet of my casting, whether play-by-play, analysis, whatever. But when someone comes along and tells me that no matter what I do I will ALWAYS be shit because I'm not a pro player, that's very disheartening to me considering I try to actively do what I can to improve myself. I do my best to learn from my own and others' mistakes, and have paid very close to attention to what people seem to like about other people's casts. I don't want my growth to be hampered by the fact that there is apparently an invisible glass ceiling that I can never breach, and people will always hate what I do because of it. you don't have to be a pro player but you need to have some mid level 5s experience to understand a lot of what is going on... I don't get why that's so shocking or disheartening. Unless you're content with always pointing out the extremely obvious. I'm sorry, I still don't buy it. Extreme example here because I am nowhere near that level, but you don't think Deman could provide good analysis if asked, despite him having no 5s experience? Considering he has watched and commentated on almost every important NA pro series (and some others as well) of 2012?
Not as good as anyone who qualified for LCS. He seems to do more play-by-play anyway, If someone can understand the game fully through watching then no one would bother playing it. The mechanics aren't hard. Also you don't know that he has no 5s experience. If you're really not convinced then bring up a recent tourney game and I will write out for the first 10min what I see, and show that it's very simple to understand, but difficult to point out.
Something I really hate is no one ever talks about what the jungler is doing in the first 10min when he single handedly decides games.
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On January 16 2013 05:02 zulu_nation8 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2013 04:56 sylverfyre wrote:On January 16 2013 04:45 zulu_nation8 wrote:On January 16 2013 04:36 sylverfyre wrote:On January 16 2013 04:31 zulu_nation8 wrote:
there's no such a thing as having a pro's understanding of the game without being pro. Understanding comes from experience. Jatt doesn't play anymore and Kobe was last seen trolling 1800s or something at season 2's end. Any respectable high elo player with significant 5s experience should know more than those two. You can't understand what the team/player is thinking without having been in a similar situation. But you can still look at a pro player's decision making and have a good idea of why they made those decisions, even if you don't have the understanding to know to make that decision beforehand. You do have to be able to pick up on the decisions and extrapolate the reasons quickly and with an acceptable degree of accuracy. During at least lane phase, the only role where decision making actually matters a bit is jungler. The ONLY people who understand a good jungler's thought process are the people on his team. From there on the understanding degrades by how well you know the specific player and how good you are. But you can look at the things the jungler is doing, compare them to other things you've seen pro junglers do in previous games, and figure out what they're planning, because you can see what they're doing. Yes, you can't read their mind, but you can understand that if blue-reliant is starting red instead of blue and getting a smiteless leash, his intention is likely to be smiteless red-> smite blue -> level 3 gank top, because we've seen it before. It's not "how good you are" but rather how much homework you've done watching top level play (or participating in it). I contest that good casters who aren't great players can put forth the effort and become just as good at it. except most decisions aren't as simple as which buff to start. By how good, I essentially mean how much experience someone has of playing in high level games, because the more experience, the more stuff someone has seen, and thus be able to interpret. Decision making is way too complicated to learn by watching.
But to cast and analyze you don't need to be able to make the decisions, you just need to be able to interpret the decisions the players are making. You don't even necessarily be able to explain why but you do need to explain what the decision affects in the game.
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On January 16 2013 04:24 sylverfyre wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2013 04:11 hasuprotoss wrote:On January 16 2013 04:02 WaveofShadow wrote:On January 16 2013 03:51 hasuprotoss wrote:On January 16 2013 03:36 wei2coolman wrote:On January 16 2013 03:22 AsmodeusXI wrote:On January 16 2013 03:14 WaveofShadow wrote:
Yeh I watched him and Categorist duo a bit yesterday; essentially his Draven has gotten pretty good, but he can play absolutely nothing else even close to that level currently.
On the subject of casters, while I do agree the ex-pros are the ones who will be giving the best analysis, that does not mean that those who study and learn just as much about the game despite not being able to play on that level can't do so.
(See MB/Neo/LoL subforum staff analysis)
None of these guys are pro players yet their post-game analysis and summaries are among the best around currently, and unrivaled.
I dunno bly, you and I definitely disagree on this point and probably will continue to do so. You make some valid points but I just don't agree that no one can commentate on high level play unless they themselves play at a high level.
(Note: I do not speak for my own casting and analysis ability, which is known to be shit.) I would hope that the prevailing sentiment should be instead "Don't commentate on high play unless you've done some serious thought about what's going on, and NEVER be an asshole about players regardless. Mistakes may LOOK really bad, but they're still way better than you." That makes the most sense to me. That sentiment is so far beyond off.... mistakes are mistakes, no matter who commentates on it. It's easy to say something was a mistake. To say why the player's play led up to that mistake, what they were trying to accomplish when the mistake happened, how that would have effected the game afterwards, etc. That's a lot harder to comment upon without the relevant knowledge. I'm sorry, but if that is what people are expecting in terms of having ex-pros doing the casting then that's ridiculous. Essentially what it seems to be boiling down to is "unless you understand what is going on in that person's head, then you can't commentate on their play because you can't understand the situation they're in." How the hell would anyone EVER be able to commentate on anything then? You don't see ex-pro football players giving such extreme context every time the quarterback tries a handoff that fails/gets fumbled rather than try for an easy short pass. No they give short analysis, talk about what THEY THINK the guy should have done, and that's it. He may be wrong, he may be right, but he certainly doesn't talk about the quarterback's entire past season and every other time he's ever tried to make a play like that and his team-mates thoughts, hopes and dreams. There are too many unknowns at any point in time to ever have a perfect grasp of the situation. The ONLY person that can ever commentate on that is the player who makes the play themselves, post-game. Barring that, there are people who make it THEIR JOBS to GAIN an understanding of what high-level play is like at any sport, E- or otherwise, and as such they can commentate on it at a near-perfect level. Again, I agree that there are man y that come up short, and those who think they understand when they really don't, but the level of perfection that people seem to want from analysis casters on this forums appears absolutely ludicrous. I'm sorry, your example doesn't make much sense to me, but I think what you're saying in your example is what I am expecting. But you can't expect someone who is awful at the game to understand why Player A went for X item. I don't know what I'm really trying to say about this, but essentially I think I'm trying to get to a point that you can't expect low level players to give decent commentary. How many times on streams do you hear commentators just say things that are flat out wrong? If the people commentating are bad, then probably more often than not. I understand why you think what I said was bad, and I agree what you thought I said would be better delegated to more specialist sites to have a discourse of the game events for those few people who enjoy the extreme indepth analysis, but I was talking more about not being completely wrong on general game knowledge and just pointing out mistakes as mistakes instead of giving a little bit of insight into why things happened the way they did. Gonna have to disagree. Some "low level" have a better understanding than others, otherwise us 1200 level players would never be able to state that "caster was wrong about this intention" in the first place. Casting requires a knowledge base to do it, but ultimately takes a different skillset than being a top level player. The skillsets overlap in many places (so some top players can indeed be good casters) but it ultimately takes practice and effort to improve as a caster.
I think where some disconnect is coming from in this discussion is that there are some people who are just labeling "commentator" as one of the people who talk about the game. However, most LoL matches have two people commentating and most of the time. A good number of sports have one of those guys do the "play-by-play"; they'll state what is actually happening in the game. This role can still make good points regarding stuff that isn't immediately obvious, but generally they're the person who is commentating during the teamfights, stating who killed who, saying when a team is doing an objective, etc. etc.
The other commentator is generally the color commentator, and they're the person with the more in depth knowledge. In NFL broadcasts, they're generally the retired quarterback or recently fired coach who discusses the more tactical side of the game. Of course, if there is ever an extremely obvious error, their "I was there, I've done that before" kind of knowledge can help explain the mistake that happened. Like in Wave's post, he would clarify to the audience that the quarterback should've made a different play but since the commentator has had experiences with say, miscommunication in the huddle, that that could have led to the mistake. Doesn't exactly mean that the commentator was correct, maybe it's another issue, just that the problem probably arised from something besides the quarterback randomly going idiotic for a brief spell. Of course, he also has knowledge that may not be obvious to the viewer and he can impart that quickly. Say, during a running play an offensive linemen pulls out to block on a wide running play. Your Average Joe viewer may not catch that, but the color commentator can bring up how that offensive linemen acting as a lead blocker stopped the linebacker from making the tackle, which in turn allowed the runningback to get a big gain on the play. Maybe the play-by-play guy picked up on that during the play, but it's still the color commentator's job to really discuss it.
Color commentators are the ones I'm worried about not being up to snuff. If they can't come up with a succinct reason for a player's actions, or if the reason is way off base, it lowers the standard of the commentary considerably. I'm not expecting the color commentator to describe, in detail, the reason the player did something. The player themselves wouldn't have really had the time to think such thoughts.
Of course, if you're not doing professional level casting then you shouldn't be held to the same standards as someone commentating the LCS. The people commentating the LCS have to be good at what they do since it's the "pinnacle" of the professional scene right now. I don't hold the people who call my old high school's football games on the radio anywhere near the standard that I hold the NFL and NCAA football commentators. That's just not fair.
So just so it's clear, I'm talking about the higher level tournaments that actually fly casters in and the like. They need their commentators to be top class to have a professional showing.
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Czech Republic11293 Posts
On January 16 2013 05:07 sylverfyre wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2013 05:02 zulu_nation8 wrote:On January 16 2013 04:56 sylverfyre wrote:On January 16 2013 04:45 zulu_nation8 wrote:On January 16 2013 04:36 sylverfyre wrote:On January 16 2013 04:31 zulu_nation8 wrote:
there's no such a thing as having a pro's understanding of the game without being pro. Understanding comes from experience. Jatt doesn't play anymore and Kobe was last seen trolling 1800s or something at season 2's end. Any respectable high elo player with significant 5s experience should know more than those two. You can't understand what the team/player is thinking without having been in a similar situation. But you can still look at a pro player's decision making and have a good idea of why they made those decisions, even if you don't have the understanding to know to make that decision beforehand. You do have to be able to pick up on the decisions and extrapolate the reasons quickly and with an acceptable degree of accuracy. During at least lane phase, the only role where decision making actually matters a bit is jungler. The ONLY people who understand a good jungler's thought process are the people on his team. From there on the understanding degrades by how well you know the specific player and how good you are. But you can look at the things the jungler is doing, compare them to other things you've seen pro junglers do in previous games, and figure out what they're planning, because you can see what they're doing. Yes, you can't read their mind, but you can understand that if blue-reliant is starting red instead of blue and getting a smiteless leash, his intention is likely to be smiteless red-> smite blue -> level 3 gank top, because we've seen it before. It's not "how good you are" but rather how much homework you've done watching top level play (or participating in it). I contest that good casters who aren't great players can put forth the effort and become just as good at it. except most decisions aren't as simple as which buff to start. By how good, I essentially mean how much experience someone has of playing in high level games, because the more experience, the more stuff someone has seen, and thus be able to interpret. Decision making is way too complicated to learn by watching. But to cast and analyze you don't need to be able to make the decisions, you just need to be able to interpret the decisions the players are making. You don't even necessarily be able to explain why but you do need to explain what the decision affects in the game.
No, I would say you do need to be able to explain the "why" of decisions, why did the player gank here, why did he push, why didn't they do dragon etc. Without understanding the why you can never fully explain the opportunity cost nor can you make accurate predictions, because your ability to connect things together would be paralyzed by the lack of knowledge. I would say the ability to explain "whys" is one of the most core principles of analysis in commentating.
Also the skill you use to make decisions is the exact same skill you employ to predict the decisions of players: forseeing the eventual outcomes. Without that, you can never place the things players are doing in the game within a broader context.
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On January 16 2013 05:11 Scip wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2013 05:07 sylverfyre wrote:On January 16 2013 05:02 zulu_nation8 wrote:On January 16 2013 04:56 sylverfyre wrote:On January 16 2013 04:45 zulu_nation8 wrote:On January 16 2013 04:36 sylverfyre wrote:On January 16 2013 04:31 zulu_nation8 wrote:
there's no such a thing as having a pro's understanding of the game without being pro. Understanding comes from experience. Jatt doesn't play anymore and Kobe was last seen trolling 1800s or something at season 2's end. Any respectable high elo player with significant 5s experience should know more than those two. You can't understand what the team/player is thinking without having been in a similar situation. But you can still look at a pro player's decision making and have a good idea of why they made those decisions, even if you don't have the understanding to know to make that decision beforehand. You do have to be able to pick up on the decisions and extrapolate the reasons quickly and with an acceptable degree of accuracy. During at least lane phase, the only role where decision making actually matters a bit is jungler. The ONLY people who understand a good jungler's thought process are the people on his team. From there on the understanding degrades by how well you know the specific player and how good you are. But you can look at the things the jungler is doing, compare them to other things you've seen pro junglers do in previous games, and figure out what they're planning, because you can see what they're doing. Yes, you can't read their mind, but you can understand that if blue-reliant is starting red instead of blue and getting a smiteless leash, his intention is likely to be smiteless red-> smite blue -> level 3 gank top, because we've seen it before. It's not "how good you are" but rather how much homework you've done watching top level play (or participating in it). I contest that good casters who aren't great players can put forth the effort and become just as good at it. except most decisions aren't as simple as which buff to start. By how good, I essentially mean how much experience someone has of playing in high level games, because the more experience, the more stuff someone has seen, and thus be able to interpret. Decision making is way too complicated to learn by watching. But to cast and analyze you don't need to be able to make the decisions, you just need to be able to interpret the decisions the players are making. You don't even necessarily be able to explain why but you do need to explain what the decision affects in the game. No, I would say you do need to be able to explain the "why" of decisions, why did the player gank here, why did he push, why didn't they do dragon etc. Without understanding the why you can never fully explain the opportunity cost nor can you make accurate predictions, because your ability to connect things together would be paralyzed by the lack of knowledge. I would say the ability to explain "whys" is one of the most core principles of analysis in commentating.
Yup, I agree with Scip on this. Not really much else to say right now, I think I'm argued out.
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On January 16 2013 04:50 onlywonderboy wrote:
Edit: Yango just said the exact opposite of what I did haha, I still think that criticizing a team for a bad result is still valid regardless of intent. The goal of the game is to win and if you do something that hurts that chance there is nothing wrong with someone commenting on that.
Except most commentators (and most people watching the game too) have no idea how to properly analyze a decision that results in a bad outcome.
You cannot judge a decision solely based on its outcome; it's like judging a risk by the result rather than the risk itself. There are plenty of cases where the correct decision leads to an unfavorable outcome.
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On January 16 2013 05:05 zulu_nation8 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2013 05:00 WaveofShadow wrote:On January 16 2013 04:56 zulu_nation8 wrote:On January 16 2013 04:53 WaveofShadow wrote:On January 16 2013 04:45 Numy wrote:On January 16 2013 04:42 TheYango wrote:On January 16 2013 04:39 Numy wrote:
I think the problem is more commentary has to be instantaneous. It's far easier to analyse and make a comment about a play in your own time than it is live on air. Most commentators just don't have that experience yet and I feel you can only gain that experience by actively trying it. That's the irony of this entire argument. Bly is criticizing commentators for passing judgement on players and their decisions despite never having been in their position and having to make an analogous choice--but isn't that exactly what he's doing to the commentators themselves? I don't think he's entirely wrong to criticize though. I do feel like people expect commentators to be the best possible right this moment instead of letting growth happen. Growth only happens when accompanied with mistakes and if you make it so mistakes are such a bad thing that people are too scared to let them happen then you will never get growth. As a side rant this is the same problem schooling has where mistakes are punished more than not trying. I really like this comment. When I cast, I am well aware of mistakes I make after the fact (not during, most of the time) but there are also mistakes I will never even realize I am making (even though I am primarily a PbP caster) unless they are pointed out to me. I guess since I have such support from TL people tend not to rip me apart nearly as much as they would other casters, but I've seen Twitch chat during LCS and TSM invitationals. People HATE those casters sometimes. And yet yesterday we got very little feedback from Twitch at all. There is nothing more I would love to do than improve every facet of my casting, whether play-by-play, analysis, whatever. But when someone comes along and tells me that no matter what I do I will ALWAYS be shit because I'm not a pro player, that's very disheartening to me considering I try to actively do what I can to improve myself. I do my best to learn from my own and others' mistakes, and have paid very close to attention to what people seem to like about other people's casts. I don't want my growth to be hampered by the fact that there is apparently an invisible glass ceiling that I can never breach, and people will always hate what I do because of it. you don't have to be a pro player but you need to have some mid level 5s experience to understand a lot of what is going on... I don't get why that's so shocking or disheartening. Unless you're content with always pointing out the extremely obvious. I'm sorry, I still don't buy it. Extreme example here because I am nowhere near that level, but you don't think Deman could provide good analysis if asked, despite him having no 5s experience? Considering he has watched and commentated on almost every important NA pro series (and some others as well) of 2012? Not as good as anyone who qualified for LCS. He seems to do more play-by-play anyway, If someone can understand the game fully through watching then no one would bother playing it. The mechanics aren't hard.
Because no one plays games for fun.
Experience is helpful, but it isn't required. Composers do not need to be able to play the instruments in an orchestra to write symphonies, they need only know how each instrument functions and what its capabilities are in the hands of a skilled musician. That knowledge can come through experience, mentoring, study, observation or any other vector. What matters isn't the method by which the knowledge is acquired, only that it is present.
For most people experience is the easiest method to learn, but it is not the only one. There's a reason we have the proverb, "A wise man learns from the mistakes of others, a fool his own."
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On January 16 2013 05:07 sylverfyre wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2013 05:02 zulu_nation8 wrote:On January 16 2013 04:56 sylverfyre wrote:On January 16 2013 04:45 zulu_nation8 wrote:On January 16 2013 04:36 sylverfyre wrote:On January 16 2013 04:31 zulu_nation8 wrote:
there's no such a thing as having a pro's understanding of the game without being pro. Understanding comes from experience. Jatt doesn't play anymore and Kobe was last seen trolling 1800s or something at season 2's end. Any respectable high elo player with significant 5s experience should know more than those two. You can't understand what the team/player is thinking without having been in a similar situation. But you can still look at a pro player's decision making and have a good idea of why they made those decisions, even if you don't have the understanding to know to make that decision beforehand. You do have to be able to pick up on the decisions and extrapolate the reasons quickly and with an acceptable degree of accuracy. During at least lane phase, the only role where decision making actually matters a bit is jungler. The ONLY people who understand a good jungler's thought process are the people on his team. From there on the understanding degrades by how well you know the specific player and how good you are. But you can look at the things the jungler is doing, compare them to other things you've seen pro junglers do in previous games, and figure out what they're planning, because you can see what they're doing. Yes, you can't read their mind, but you can understand that if blue-reliant is starting red instead of blue and getting a smiteless leash, his intention is likely to be smiteless red-> smite blue -> level 3 gank top, because we've seen it before. It's not "how good you are" but rather how much homework you've done watching top level play (or participating in it). I contest that good casters who aren't great players can put forth the effort and become just as good at it. except most decisions aren't as simple as which buff to start. By how good, I essentially mean how much experience someone has of playing in high level games, because the more experience, the more stuff someone has seen, and thus be able to interpret. Decision making is way too complicated to learn by watching. But to cast and analyze you don't need to be able to make the decisions, you just need to be able to interpret the decisions the players are making. You don't even necessarily be able to explain why but you do need to explain what the decision affects in the game.
and i'm saying you won't know, unless it's obvious like, oh bot got 4 man ganked and died so they'll lose tower and probably dragon. There are a lot of little stuff that have a significant impact on the game that the commentators now don't realize, such as wards, jungle paths, considerations of counterganking, etc. If a jungler refuses to gank a certain lane because he's scared of getting counterganked, that decision will be the most important decision of the game for as long as that lane is affecting the game. Far more important than gold/items/build. But that piece of information is also hidden to most viewers and commentators, but easily understandable once pointed out. If the jungler gets counterganked, they will lose 2v2 because they are weaker 2v2, the winning team can they rush drag afterward and further snowball the game, etc.
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United States23745 Posts
On January 16 2013 05:11 Scip wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2013 05:07 sylverfyre wrote:On January 16 2013 05:02 zulu_nation8 wrote:On January 16 2013 04:56 sylverfyre wrote:On January 16 2013 04:45 zulu_nation8 wrote:On January 16 2013 04:36 sylverfyre wrote:On January 16 2013 04:31 zulu_nation8 wrote:
there's no such a thing as having a pro's understanding of the game without being pro. Understanding comes from experience. Jatt doesn't play anymore and Kobe was last seen trolling 1800s or something at season 2's end. Any respectable high elo player with significant 5s experience should know more than those two. You can't understand what the team/player is thinking without having been in a similar situation. But you can still look at a pro player's decision making and have a good idea of why they made those decisions, even if you don't have the understanding to know to make that decision beforehand. You do have to be able to pick up on the decisions and extrapolate the reasons quickly and with an acceptable degree of accuracy. During at least lane phase, the only role where decision making actually matters a bit is jungler. The ONLY people who understand a good jungler's thought process are the people on his team. From there on the understanding degrades by how well you know the specific player and how good you are. But you can look at the things the jungler is doing, compare them to other things you've seen pro junglers do in previous games, and figure out what they're planning, because you can see what they're doing. Yes, you can't read their mind, but you can understand that if blue-reliant is starting red instead of blue and getting a smiteless leash, his intention is likely to be smiteless red-> smite blue -> level 3 gank top, because we've seen it before. It's not "how good you are" but rather how much homework you've done watching top level play (or participating in it). I contest that good casters who aren't great players can put forth the effort and become just as good at it. except most decisions aren't as simple as which buff to start. By how good, I essentially mean how much experience someone has of playing in high level games, because the more experience, the more stuff someone has seen, and thus be able to interpret. Decision making is way too complicated to learn by watching. But to cast and analyze you don't need to be able to make the decisions, you just need to be able to interpret the decisions the players are making. You don't even necessarily be able to explain why but you do need to explain what the decision affects in the game. No, I would say you do need to be able to explain the "why" of decisions, why did the player gank here, why did he push, why didn't they do dragon etc. Without understanding the why you can never fully explain the opportunity cost nor can you make accurate predictions, because your ability to connect things together would be paralyzed by the lack of knowledge. I would say the ability to explain "whys" is one of the most core principles of analysis in commentating.
Fair enough, I kind of see this side of the argument. I still think they can have more knowledge of the game than your Elo indicates though. I don't have the time to practice the mechanics (and I'm not naturally good at it) but I have a decent knowledge of the game from watching pro games and reading this forum. I don't play ranked, but I have a feeling I would be low Elo compared to the amount of game knowledge I have.
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I'm talking about top level analysis too. And you don't need to be a [former] pro player to be that color commentator. You do need a lot of experience at least watching and analyzing games, it takes effort and practice as a player OR as an observer to pick up on to interesting decisions, mistakes, and so forth.
There's a lot of great casting and analysis that isn't top level players but the analyst has clearly done his homework and imparts interesting, effective analysis. It's easier for me to come up with BW examples (where almost NONE of the english casters had true pro-level experience, but several had analysis that I would not hesitate to call professional grade.) I guess you could argue that's because I never experienced truly professional BW casting, though...
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On January 16 2013 05:14 xes wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2013 04:50 onlywonderboy wrote:
Edit: Yango just said the exact opposite of what I did haha, I still think that criticizing a team for a bad result is still valid regardless of intent. The goal of the game is to win and if you do something that hurts that chance there is nothing wrong with someone commenting on that. Except most commentators (and most people watching the game too) have no idea how to properly analyze a decision that results in a bad outcome. You cannot judge a decision solely based on its outcome; it's like judging a risk by the result rather than the risk itself. There are plenty of cases where the correct decision leads to an unfavorable outcome.
This is something I've brought up many times before when this discussion occurs. Commentators are overwhelmingly results oriented. Fanboys are guaranteedly results oriented. It takes someone who can think for a sec to analyze only the decision itself apart from the result.
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Czech Republic11293 Posts
On January 16 2013 05:16 onlywonderboy wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2013 05:11 Scip wrote:On January 16 2013 05:07 sylverfyre wrote:On January 16 2013 05:02 zulu_nation8 wrote:On January 16 2013 04:56 sylverfyre wrote:On January 16 2013 04:45 zulu_nation8 wrote:On January 16 2013 04:36 sylverfyre wrote:On January 16 2013 04:31 zulu_nation8 wrote:
there's no such a thing as having a pro's understanding of the game without being pro. Understanding comes from experience. Jatt doesn't play anymore and Kobe was last seen trolling 1800s or something at season 2's end. Any respectable high elo player with significant 5s experience should know more than those two. You can't understand what the team/player is thinking without having been in a similar situation. But you can still look at a pro player's decision making and have a good idea of why they made those decisions, even if you don't have the understanding to know to make that decision beforehand. You do have to be able to pick up on the decisions and extrapolate the reasons quickly and with an acceptable degree of accuracy. During at least lane phase, the only role where decision making actually matters a bit is jungler. The ONLY people who understand a good jungler's thought process are the people on his team. From there on the understanding degrades by how well you know the specific player and how good you are. But you can look at the things the jungler is doing, compare them to other things you've seen pro junglers do in previous games, and figure out what they're planning, because you can see what they're doing. Yes, you can't read their mind, but you can understand that if blue-reliant is starting red instead of blue and getting a smiteless leash, his intention is likely to be smiteless red-> smite blue -> level 3 gank top, because we've seen it before. It's not "how good you are" but rather how much homework you've done watching top level play (or participating in it). I contest that good casters who aren't great players can put forth the effort and become just as good at it. except most decisions aren't as simple as which buff to start. By how good, I essentially mean how much experience someone has of playing in high level games, because the more experience, the more stuff someone has seen, and thus be able to interpret. Decision making is way too complicated to learn by watching. But to cast and analyze you don't need to be able to make the decisions, you just need to be able to interpret the decisions the players are making. You don't even necessarily be able to explain why but you do need to explain what the decision affects in the game. No, I would say you do need to be able to explain the "why" of decisions, why did the player gank here, why did he push, why didn't they do dragon etc. Without understanding the why you can never fully explain the opportunity cost nor can you make accurate predictions, because your ability to connect things together would be paralyzed by the lack of knowledge. I would say the ability to explain "whys" is one of the most core principles of analysis in commentating. Fair enough, I kind of see this side of the argument. I still think they can have more knowledge of the game than your Elo indicates though. I don't have the time to practice the mechanics (and I'm not naturally good at it) but I have a decent knowledge of the game from watching pro games and reading this forum. I don't play ranked, but I have a feeling I would be low Elo compared to the amount of game knowledge I have.
You definitely can have more knowledge than your elo indicates, I mean we have examples of that in EUW LP right now (Equilash, previously Broken Watch etc.) But it is painfully difficult to extract that knowledge from different sources than your own experience.
About the latter part of your statement, I don't mean to sound patronizing here, but I doubt that what you are saying is actually true. Mostly because of my own experience.
Back when I played sc2, read forums 24/7 and watched 5+ hours of streams daily, I thought the exact same thing, because it seemed like the intuitive thing to think. And boy, was I wrong. I only realized that though once I went to play the ladder and got my ass handed to me by players who knew 10 times as much as I did, despite spending less time on the actual game (if you count reading+watching streams). The main reason why I adopted that illusion is because watching streams and reading posts leaves you wholly ignorant of the issues that you don't know about (d'oh) and there is no mechanism that would make you aware.
vvvvvv bly08 is mad because he can't match the massive numbers I can put in my sig :p
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i can't believe scip has become one of those losers who puts his elo in his signature as a desperate attempt to win arguments. so not manly.
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United States23745 Posts
On January 16 2013 05:23 Scip wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2013 05:16 onlywonderboy wrote:On January 16 2013 05:11 Scip wrote:On January 16 2013 05:07 sylverfyre wrote:On January 16 2013 05:02 zulu_nation8 wrote:On January 16 2013 04:56 sylverfyre wrote:On January 16 2013 04:45 zulu_nation8 wrote:On January 16 2013 04:36 sylverfyre wrote:On January 16 2013 04:31 zulu_nation8 wrote:
there's no such a thing as having a pro's understanding of the game without being pro. Understanding comes from experience. Jatt doesn't play anymore and Kobe was last seen trolling 1800s or something at season 2's end. Any respectable high elo player with significant 5s experience should know more than those two. You can't understand what the team/player is thinking without having been in a similar situation. But you can still look at a pro player's decision making and have a good idea of why they made those decisions, even if you don't have the understanding to know to make that decision beforehand. You do have to be able to pick up on the decisions and extrapolate the reasons quickly and with an acceptable degree of accuracy. During at least lane phase, the only role where decision making actually matters a bit is jungler. The ONLY people who understand a good jungler's thought process are the people on his team. From there on the understanding degrades by how well you know the specific player and how good you are. But you can look at the things the jungler is doing, compare them to other things you've seen pro junglers do in previous games, and figure out what they're planning, because you can see what they're doing. Yes, you can't read their mind, but you can understand that if blue-reliant is starting red instead of blue and getting a smiteless leash, his intention is likely to be smiteless red-> smite blue -> level 3 gank top, because we've seen it before. It's not "how good you are" but rather how much homework you've done watching top level play (or participating in it). I contest that good casters who aren't great players can put forth the effort and become just as good at it. except most decisions aren't as simple as which buff to start. By how good, I essentially mean how much experience someone has of playing in high level games, because the more experience, the more stuff someone has seen, and thus be able to interpret. Decision making is way too complicated to learn by watching. But to cast and analyze you don't need to be able to make the decisions, you just need to be able to interpret the decisions the players are making. You don't even necessarily be able to explain why but you do need to explain what the decision affects in the game. No, I would say you do need to be able to explain the "why" of decisions, why did the player gank here, why did he push, why didn't they do dragon etc. Without understanding the why you can never fully explain the opportunity cost nor can you make accurate predictions, because your ability to connect things together would be paralyzed by the lack of knowledge. I would say the ability to explain "whys" is one of the most core principles of analysis in commentating. Fair enough, I kind of see this side of the argument. I still think they can have more knowledge of the game than your Elo indicates though. I don't have the time to practice the mechanics (and I'm not naturally good at it) but I have a decent knowledge of the game from watching pro games and reading this forum. I don't play ranked, but I have a feeling I would be low Elo compared to the amount of game knowledge I have. You definitely can have more knowledge than your elo indicates, I mean we have examples of that in EUW LP right now (Equilash, previously Broken Watch etc.) But it is painfully difficult to extract that knowledge from different sources than your own experience. About the latter part of your statement, I don't mean to sound patronizing here, but I doubt that what you are saying is actually true. Mostly because of my own experience. Back when I played sc2, read forums 24/7 and watched 5+ hours of streams daily, I thought the exact same thing, because it seemed like the intuitive thing to think. And boy, was I wrong. I only realized that though once I went to play the ladder and got my ass handed to me by players who knew 10 times as much as I did, despite spending less time on the actual game (if you count reading+watching streams). The main reason why I adopted that illusion is because watching streams and reading posts leaves you wholly ignorant of the issues that you don't know about (d'oh) and there is no mechanism that would make you aware.
See I don't count reading and watching streams as spending time with the game, which is why I was actually agree I would probably get my ass handed to me, that's part of the reason I don't play ranked. All I meant is I think I would have more game knowledge than the people around me in my probable shitty Elo, that's all. I don't think stream time + reading translates directly into in game skill.
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Straight outta Johto18973 Posts
On January 16 2013 05:03 Kiett wrote:
rip jiji T__T you'll always be my favorite ;;;;;;; <3
I know right? The news broke my heart orz...
Re Commentators: Valid points on both sides. I think though that one issue is the need for speed. Commentators don't have the luxury of time on their side because they need to keep up with everything that's going on now while worrying about what just happened. Even if you have someone perfect, there are going to be things they miss simply due to gameflow. Also, at major events commentating needs to not only be factual but also entertaining. After all, the entertainment factor is a important. If your commentary is too dense for the target audience, too much of it won't sink in and it will become boring to them, which can be a problem.
I think the arrangement The International had in DotA was really great where you had the casters during the games and then the analytics/host desk in between game. It helps balance both sides and fill in where things were missing (entertainment/analysis). The LoL Weather Booth thing helps, but I think there's a lot more that can be done.
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EPT
