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I think if they want to take out the production tab, they should at least have the supply. It''s really not that large, but it shows so much information. Also, with the lessened information in the overlay, it makes the overlay somewhat bulky looking. For instance, last game with the army value, there was so much space on either side.
I agree with the idea that having the ability to show more information allows the casters more information. For instance, with the basetrade casts, they have the graphs that show the income difference, which is so much more revealing than just the current minerals/gas per minute. If used sparingly, it's really effective.
Also, without the supply and the production, I feel a lot more lost and a lot more dependent on the casters. And I feel that the casters have to be REALLY good at conveying that information...or at least better than they are now.
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Feedback : I am okay with the changes. I don't feel that the games are much more exciting, and I can sure feel that I would like to know the supply sometimes.
All in all, it's interesting. I feel that's not enough for this to become mainstream
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On January 31 2016 03:01 ShoCkeyy wrote:
In BW no production tab was available, everything was an element of surprise.
In 1900s people didn't have computers, should we go back in time? There's no reason to go in the past.
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If this is going to be the future of sc2 casting then it'll be a dead game even faster. Blizzard did a good job with LotV and your killing it with this shit.
Where is the point in not knowing, if a player does an early push how many worker he has behind? How is it interesting if armys clash and i have no idea what upgrades units have, or when they will finish. Is it close before finishing? Is a player stopping with upgrades after 1/1?
Casters became useless, because they have no idea what is going on. They comment on what they see, but they have no idea what players intention is behind any action. I'm a watcher and player since WoL beta, i know how this game works. But not knowing whats going on is not bringing hype, it makes this so boring, i'd rather watch literally anything. This is pure bullshit.
IEM was bad enough without army supplies. But this is killing it.
So far my statement.
edit: also like one of the others already mentioned. if you dont watch the entire game, for example writing this and tune back in, you are just so lost. and many viewers like to be on facebook meanwhile or do other stuff. and they will just close the stream because they dont get into it again
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Wait is liquipedia wrong or did Kelazhur actually beat Neeb with Zerg?
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The lack of supply/production tab is not making it more exciting at all imo. It's just annoying and frustrating to watch. I want to know what's going on in the game and not mindlessly watch units battle each other. I get the idea behind it, but it just doesn't work at all for me. Not fun to watch.
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I find it pointless and extremely frustrating. And kinda boring at times. But mostly extremely frustrating.
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i think it's completely silly to not show any info like army size, population size, or production tab.
doesnt make it any more exciting. tbh makes me tune out more than it would ever make me tune in.
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The thing is, this info, like production, army size, is still there, just not where you expect them. You have look at the game and make an evaluation rather than look at some numbers at the bottom screen. So there's an understandable frustration when you don't see what you want where it has always been (if that makes sense).
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I would probably stop watching sc2 if this became a thing. Just my sincere feedback after watching half a game on the stream
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Hiding the info can possibly still be good. The casters have to really utilize the fact they have the control of the information to create an exciting storyline. Casters can't just talk about attacking and movement, we all can see that. They have to talk more about upgrade timings, what specific upgrades, what possibly each player is going to do next, etc.
For example, the last neeb vs kel game, neeb got warp prism speed and the casters didn't mention at all. If the casters don't utilize the unknown aspect of the information to create hype or inform viewers, the negatives of the format definitely outweigh the positives.
If you don't talk about upgrades / build order, experienced players will be frustrated for not knowing what is going on at the level they want. If you don't utilize hiding the info to create hype and a storyline for the game, the newer players are just gonna get bored.
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The lack of the production tab is awful. But the games are still solid. I'm not having as much fun watching this as I have while watching other games. It's still better than zonking out and watching TV though.
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Actually, the lack of information made the basetrade between Neeb and Kelazhur much more interesting I believe.
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On February 03 2016 10:31 Bupi00 wrote:
If this is going to be the future of sc2 casting then it'll be a dead game even faster. Blizzard did a good job with LotV and your killing it with this shit.
Where is the point in not knowing, if a player does an early push how many worker he has behind? How is it interesting if armys clash and i have no idea what upgrades units have, or when they will finish. Is it close before finishing? Is a player stopping with upgrades after 1/1?
Casters became useless, because they have no idea what is going on. They comment on what they see, but they have no idea what players intention is behind any action. I'm a watcher and player since WoL beta, i know how this game works. But not knowing whats going on is not bringing hype, it makes this so boring, i'd rather watch literally anything. This is pure bullshit.
IEM was bad enough without army supplies. But this is killing it.
So far my statement.
edit: also like one of the others already mentioned. if you dont watch the entire game, for example writing this and tune back in, you are just so lost. and many viewers like to be on facebook meanwhile or do other stuff. and they will just close the stream because they dont get into it again
This non-production tab, non supply overlay sucks. this is a waste of time. bye
This is why we tested it, to see where it would be useful ;D
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On February 03 2016 12:22 EleMenTfiNi wrote:Show nested quote +On February 03 2016 10:31 Bupi00 wrote:
If this is going to be the future of sc2 casting then it'll be a dead game even faster. Blizzard did a good job with LotV and your killing it with this shit.
Where is the point in not knowing, if a player does an early push how many worker he has behind? How is it interesting if armys clash and i have no idea what upgrades units have, or when they will finish. Is it close before finishing? Is a player stopping with upgrades after 1/1?
Casters became useless, because they have no idea what is going on. They comment on what they see, but they have no idea what players intention is behind any action. I'm a watcher and player since WoL beta, i know how this game works. But not knowing whats going on is not bringing hype, it makes this so boring, i'd rather watch literally anything. This is pure bullshit.
IEM was bad enough without army supplies. But this is killing it.
So far my statement.
edit: also like one of the others already mentioned. if you dont watch the entire game, for example writing this and tune back in, you are just so lost. and many viewers like to be on facebook meanwhile or do other stuff. and they will just close the stream because they dont get into it again
This non-production tab, non supply overlay sucks. this is a waste of time. bye This is why we tested it, to see where it would be useful ;D
Thanks for the cast =)
Good finals, especially game 4
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Thoughts on Gauntlet’s Test Tuesday (This is long so be warned):
Tonight Ctone and the Gauntlet crew hosted their first Test Tuesday where they had heard reactions from various pros and casters about removing aspects of the observer UI with the intent of adding tension to the viewing experience. To test this Ctone was awesome and made a tournament to test this idea out. Each series they changed up the UI to show different data, but in each series they always hid production, but altered what they did show, from APM to existing buildings. This gave us a variety of UI to discuss so I want to do that.
I want to especially note this entire experiment rested on how well the casters and observer did, if they struggled the test would be ruined because the player would struggle to understand purely out of weak production. Luckily as expected BobbyAwesome and EleMenT did exceptional work.
Now since I wanted a different view point I watched this with my wife. Her background is that she has watched some Starcraft since I enjoy it and she is amazing, but she’s never played the game and only has a very rudimentary understanding of the game outside of combat. For this I’ll try and include both her and my thoughts so we have the view point of a veteran as well as a true casual fan. To start I want to look at the pros and cons of purely losing production and after that we’ll look at how some of the different UI’s that were used fared. For each point I’ll try and include a game to use as an example so I’m not speaking generally, though some points are meant to be general since they were part of all games.
Pros:
- There is a greater focus on micro. Now this topic was mentioned in the initial conversation that started the idea since in Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm there was too much dead time that removing data with such long slow points ruined a lot of games. Now in Legacy of the Void this is largely a moot point as it’s a faster scaling game with far less down time, there is always something to have the observer focus on. My wife loved this since it’s what she knows best.
- On this line of thinking you also never miss things you might otherwise. When casters are just reading the production tab they often can miss things going on out in the map, especially if the casters are observering. This wasn’t the case as they were almost entirely focused on the minimap and what is going on. They didn’t miss a drop or overlook a skirmish, they were always on top of flanks and run byes, it was nice since often viewers see things casters miss because they are focused on the production bar.
- There are real surprises, HuK versus Kelazhur is a good example of this where on a few occasions the casters didn’t see something coming and then bam, everyone was caught off guard, I won’t say when but one game also featured a surprise nuke.
Cons:
- On the same train of thought of surprises is you also get some really, really frustrating moments of ex machina. For those who don’t know what that means it generally means a story is resolved by an unexpected and unrelated solution, out of left field so to say. So a game could seem really close and intense and then all of a sudden a disruptor shows up and wins the battle and you are left feeling unfulfilled. One example of this was Neeb versus Kelazhur game 1 when it appeared Kelazhur was about to break Neeb apart with drops and then Neeb arrived with about 8 Pheonix and tore the Medivacs apart. We knew Neeb had a single Stargate (discuss that UI data later) and opened with about 3 Pheonix but based on most of the game we thought they had been destroyed but all of a sudden there is a huge swing and it’s over and we are left confused. My wife related it to if you took The Lord of the Rings movies and removed all the characters except Frodo and Sam and when they get to the end and the enemy mountain is empty and they win and don’t know why until after. By not having all the information surprises can ruin a game as much as help. As with Day9’s famous trumpets, having a random, not expected new aspect can ruin a song or game, and this happened with Tempests in one game.
- A point that bothered my wife more than me was she was often confused if an attack or harass was effective. Normally we can see how impactful those are but without things like income or harvesters the casual, I want to emphasize casual, fans ask “I have no idea if that was good or not, so why did the casters show it?” As a more experienced fan I can estimate if damage was good or not but casual fans won’t know those things and it can be frustrating.
- The one thing I took note of a few times was the “wait what is going on?” feelings. In HuK versus Bly there was a point when HuK got supply blocked mid battle but we had no idea this was happening, we only found out because the casters mentioned it off hand. This was a key piece of information at a pivotal time in the game and it had a huge impact on a great battle, but we had no idea it had happened. Had we known HuK was supply blocked it would have altered the entire feeling of the battle knowing he was against the wall. Another example of this if this UI were used in IEM Taipei in Lilbow against ByuN in game 3. They were in a great, heated conflicted but we noticed that while Lilbow was controlling well he was producing zero units or buildings for over 60 seconds. An entire minute with no macro and it was hugely impactful on both the battle and the follow up. This macro mistake by Lilbow was the reason he lost that game, had we not seen production we’d never have known why he lost.
Let’s first look at a few of the specific UI that were used and how they stood out to me:
- The first combination I wanted to look at is when the workers or army count were shown without context. While probably the two most valuable pieces of information outside of the production tab since they show the balance of economy and army strength, but alone they are actually confusing. My wife pointed out that while normally we can see that a player may have more workers but that may have cost them defensive units while their opponent wants to punish them for their greed, but by showing only workers or army value we have no context to that. Do they have fewer workers due to harassment or because they are being overly aggressive? One player may have the larger army but do they have the economy to support continued attacks? These questions just frustrated us rather than adding tension, as we found out in Huk versus Bly.
- I won’t speak too long on the APM only observer UI, while largely useless it did show when a player was really focusing on microing, but it also showed that Kelazhur has Korean level APM, that kid is fast. Not a great full time UI but fun for during fights, but that is already used in that case.
- Another UI they tested was showing workers and army value. Now what this meant is they showed the mineral and gas cost of each army. I was excited when Ctone said they’d test this one out but in reality it didn’t work well. Now early game it was fine since you could estimate army composition based on gas cost. If a Protoss army has a lot of gas you know they probably have a lot of Sentries, Immortals or went skyToss. This UI was used in Kelazhur versus Neeb and lead to a case of one of those bad surprises I mentioned. In game 2 we saw this happen, there was a constant conflict going on mid map and then all of a sudden during all of this Kelazhur gg’d out. Chat felt it was an idra quit but then the casters mentioned how great a comeback if was by Neeb and how Kelazhur threw the game. Similar to Huk versus Bly, it left a “what the hell?” feeling, we had no idea Neeb was behind or that Kelazhur had thrown a lead until the casters told us.
- Possibly my favorite of the UI tested was also in a few matches from Kelazhur against Neeb when they showed only the structures built. They still hid workers and army but showed what buildings had been built. This was surprisingly nice since while we were still frustrated at not knowing what was coming, we had a sense of the capability of what a player could do. We knew if a player had built a Dark Shrine or a Fusion Core. This information didn’t tell us what they were doing right then, but it did tell us what could happen, which was a nice runner up to the production bar. It allowed us to know if a player’s production was ravaged in that last drop or if they had a proxy Stargate outside their main.
Overall most of the UI led not to tension but to frustration or confusion, especially when our information didn’t match what we saw and what the casters were telling us. But I do want talk a bit more about the final UI combination I mentioned, buildings. The goal that HuK and Apollo wanted was to increase tension, the other combinations seemed to struggle with that, either for long term players or casual players. But with the buildings shown we actually had that tension, because while we didn’t know all of the information, we did know what direction each player was going. This gave us vital information that lacked in other formats since often times we had no idea what the production of each player was or what they general plan was, but this gave us that information without telling us with certainty what their current production was. We were still left with frustration over not knowing the economy of army strength of each player of the data combinations used, this would be my preference outside of the traditional model.
I want to really thank Ctone and the Gauntlet group for this tournament. Almost all fans of Starcraft have opinions on this but no real data to back up their opinions so a test like this was vital in gauging how each persona, and the community felt. Judging by chat and the Team Liquid thread it didn’t go well, and I agree with them, but I am happy for the opportunity to learn and judge for myself rather than just talking without experience. I actually prefer more data than less, but I learned WHY I didn’t like only army value or why only showing one of workers or army is a bad idea personally.
Thanks for putting this tournament on Ctone, BobbyAwesome and EleMenT and hope that Apollo, PiG and others got the experience they needed to form educated opinions of their own, whether they agree with me or not.
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Hello everyone, thanks for all who posted feedback and for tuning in. I think the overall sentiment is that it's a frustrating experience to not have the standard UI that we are used to. When I first saw the tweets between HuK, Heyoka, and others, I thought it wasn't the best idea. The more I thought about it though, the people saying those things are folks I have a lot of respect for, so I appreciate Topher_Doll and others who appreciate the attempt to test out these things.
Overall the test went as I thought it would, a lot of twitch chat anger, a lot of "WTF IS GOING ON" moments, but after a while people began to calm down and suggest things such as worker count + army value. We had a last minute change of caster as FalconPaladin was unable to join us for this one, forcing Element to observe, scene switch (produce) and cast all at the same time. He did a good job, but it's something to consider when running a test like this.
I think in max army scenario's and base race situations can benefit from less information on the screen. We had an exciting base race with Neeb and Kelazhur that I honestly feel was improved by the lack of information. Out of the entire night of testing the base race scenario felt to be the only viable time to run this kind of production, but who knows someone else may come along and try this and do much better.
Thanks again to all who tuned in and endured the test with us! The vod's will be uploaded soon for others to see.
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Sorry for refering to only one of your points, but I disagree with this one:
On February 03 2016 16:36 Topher_Doll wrote:
On the same train of thought of surprises is you also get some really, really frustrating moments of ex machina. For those who don’t know what that means it generally means a story is resolved by an unexpected and unrelated solution, out of left field so to say. So a game could seem really close and intense and then all of a sudden a disruptor shows up and wins the battle and you are left feeling unfulfilled.
I believe that BW popularity in Korea was partially thanks to the observed game not being too analytical. No one will convince me that all of these people, especially girls screaming watching tanks getting stormed were there to carefully watch when one player did one thing and understand the game to later come back home and try it themselves.
I realized that games may be casted to analytically, catering only to those who understand the game really good and are able to connect to the thoughts that casters are often presenting. Otherwise they listen to blabber that doesn't matter to them. I think games like LoL can easily be analytical since the game mechanics are pretty straightforward unlike in StarCraft, so the viewer does not have to wonder or know everything about all the underlying layers how champions work. There are champions, they buy items with the gold they get for engaging the enemy and beating up minions on the map. In StarCraft these "hidden", intricate mechanics like cutting workers, building something on certain time, scouting unlike positioning of teammates on the map demands much more of the casual viewer. If these were limited, it's better for a viewer that hops onto StarCraft stream for the first time or a viewer that casually follows just the scene more than the game itself.
I'd be happy to see more of these tournaments of that relaxed type, but with changed overlay, not with these grey boxes :D
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On February 03 2016 23:35 Ctone23 wrote:
Hello everyone, thanks for all who posted feedback and for tuning in. I think the overall sentiment is that it's a frustrating experience to not have the standard UI that we are used to. When I first saw the tweets between HuK, Heyoka, and others, I thought it wasn't the best idea. The more I thought about it though, the people saying those things are folks I have a lot of respect for, so I appreciate Topher_Doll and others who appreciate the attempt to test out these things.
Overall the test went as I thought it would, a lot of twitch chat anger, a lot of "WTF IS GOING ON" moments, but after a while people began to calm down and suggest things such as worker count + army value. We had a last minute change of caster as FalconPaladin was unable to join us for this one, forcing Element to observe, scene switch (produce) and cast all at the same time. He did a good job, but it's something to consider when running a test like this.
I think in max army scenario's and base race situations can benefit from less information on the screen. We had an exciting base race with Neeb and Kelazhur that I honestly feel was improved by the lack of information. Out of the entire night of testing the base race scenario felt to be the only viable time to run this kind of production, but who knows someone else may come along and try this and do much better.
Thanks again to all who tuned in and endured the test with us! The vod's will be uploaded soon for others to see.
Seems like I'm in minority thinking it was overall a good idea...
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On February 03 2016 23:50 aQuaSC wrote:Show nested quote +On February 03 2016 23:35 Ctone23 wrote:
Hello everyone, thanks for all who posted feedback and for tuning in. I think the overall sentiment is that it's a frustrating experience to not have the standard UI that we are used to. When I first saw the tweets between HuK, Heyoka, and others, I thought it wasn't the best idea. The more I thought about it though, the people saying those things are folks I have a lot of respect for, so I appreciate Topher_Doll and others who appreciate the attempt to test out these things.
Overall the test went as I thought it would, a lot of twitch chat anger, a lot of "WTF IS GOING ON" moments, but after a while people began to calm down and suggest things such as worker count + army value. We had a last minute change of caster as FalconPaladin was unable to join us for this one, forcing Element to observe, scene switch (produce) and cast all at the same time. He did a good job, but it's something to consider when running a test like this.
I think in max army scenario's and base race situations can benefit from less information on the screen. We had an exciting base race with Neeb and Kelazhur that I honestly feel was improved by the lack of information. Out of the entire night of testing the base race scenario felt to be the only viable time to run this kind of production, but who knows someone else may come along and try this and do much better.
Thanks again to all who tuned in and endured the test with us! The vod's will be uploaded soon for others to see. Seems like I'm in minority thinking it was overall a good idea...
I took a lot of good away from the test, don't get me wrong. I definitely think we can incorporate the "less info" approach in games where the situation arises. We stuck to the plan with not showing the production and supply count for that very reason, to see where this style of broadcasting is viable. I think we can do both, and am excited for the future!
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EPT
