Hey guys, JP here from MLG. First off thank all of you who tuned in over the weekend for our first ever SC2 event at MLG Raleigh. We tried to give you guys as much love as possible out there but really we can’t thank you enough. This was the first event of many to come here at MLG for SC2 and we cannot wait to stream it all over again in the future.
I’ve seen a ton of threads all over TL.net and I just wanted to have one cohesive, final thread so that myself and other MLG staff could skim through it and find all the criticism, suggestions, and comments in one place.
Just in case you’ve missed the other threads over the weekend...
One thing I want to ask of you is to remain from outright complaining. We want to bring you guys the best possible tournament and coverage of the tournament and the only way we can do that is with constructive criticism from the community.
If you were at the event, tell us how to improve the live spectator experience. If you watched at home all weekend, tell us what you would like to see on the stream. If you were a player, tell us what we can do to improve your experience over the weekend. If you attended the event as press, tell us how we can make things easier on you. We’ll try our best to listen and improve the entire experience as much as possible before the next event.
And of course what would this thread be without a plug to the best podcast in SC2 -- State of the Game We’ll be recording a brand new episode later this week discussing the entire tournament and FINALLY some new patch notes, so make sure to check us out. Myself, Day9, and possibly HD and Husky will make an appearance.
Thanks again to everyone who tuned in over the course of the weekend. Big shoutout to Singlecoil and the entire crew who produced the stream all weekend long. You may never see their faces, but please make sure to give credit where credit is due
Needed some sort of booth for the feature match so we could actually listen to the commentary. None of the spectators seemed particularly pleased about that for sure.
Everything seemed to go fine, was a nice event and good to meet your JP!
Like how you rotated between commentators, too much day9 can get dull (no offense ofcourse). Would love to see incontrol and chill, or many of the other great fun casters.
EDIT: Husky and HD did great (dont care if they say wrong things, they bring something enthusiastic)
What I think could improve: - Better summary between matches. Show brackets, explain who played who, who got beaten and how/when. When you're streaming online, a lot of people will join the the feed mid-cast, and it can be a bit confusing to see who's progressing and what not. All in all a great show and well done casters and crew!
I"d like to see a stable casting team (like you and Day9) and a stable interviewing team (maybe HD ans Husky but I think they'll be sad to only do this...)
The sponsors advertisement where rolling like 2 or 3 times in a row. I'd like more diversity on this side.
I'd like to see more crowd and close camera to players keyboard and mouse to see them in action, that'd be awesome.
One last sthing : when i watch the stream in full screen, My left and right side where cut, i could see only half of the minimap.
I couldn't access the stream on the second day, not sure why that was. In any case, I haven't watched too much, but what I would like to see is more structure. Sometimes on the first day it seemed like randomly casting whatever game was available, when it would have made more sense to follow a few anticipated matches (Machine vs InControl). What I think would be fun as well if there was something like the state of the game, but at MLG, like a late evening talkshow where you have the casters and a few players discuss the tournament, maybe show some footage and interviews.
My biggest complaint is an issue that plagues other tournaments/events as well. There needs to be clearly defined caster roles. In pro sports during broadcasts there is always one clearly defined play-by-play commentator and one clearly defined color commentator, there is no overlap. It seems with all E-Sports the commentators both seem to want to do both, and it ends up with both of them trying to talk over each other, or worse, contradicting what the other person just said (accidentally or on purpose).
On August 29 2010 22:13 mortar wrote: I felt the HD stream wasn't really worth it. Quality wasn't as good as I hoped for.
(I'm aware of the preview.)
Cannot help but agree. 10 dollars for MLG for a weekend vs 5 dollars for ESL TV for a month, ingame quality was about the same just one was 16;9, I guess that'll teach me for buying it when the site was going insane on the first day. Also a LOT of false advertising calling it "HD", its 480p I'm fairly sure that doesn't count.
Also if you insist on making Husky cast (Chill/Incontrol and numerous others would have done a MUCH better job) you can at least make sure he isnt 3x as loud as anyone else, had to turn it off because his voice was so loud / abrasive even when nothing "exciting" was happening for all the whine about apollo in the IEM he did an amazing job in comparison.
Also I know you cant really fix this but surely it isnt THAT hard to get gaming based sponsors. I mean jerky and those rancid hot pockets, christ seriously the ads made me wanna puke everytime they came on esspecially the hotpockets - god just because people play games doesn't mean they all eat such heinous food.
Oh and the map previews you started doing made me motion sick, no need for all the zooming and whizzing about - it doesnt make it more interesting it just makes it more confusing / annoying.
Double elimination is also a pretty poor format for an RTS, it just doesnt flow well enough and without constant updates you easily get lost in the torrent of games being thrown at you.
On August 29 2010 22:11 Whalecore wrote: Awesome event and awesome casting!
What I think could improve: - Better summary between matches. Show brackets, explain who played who, who got beaten and how/when. When you're streaming online, a lot of people will join the the feed mid-cast, and it can be a bit confusing to see who's progressing and what not. All in all a great show and well done casters and crew!
Exactly what I thought. I don't care much about interviews. A few here or there are good. But definitely find a way to show the brackets when you're talking about them. The map preview was pretty cool, I guess. Reminded me of American Gladiators when the chick explains the set up before the match lol. Overall, great casting! I enjoyed it.
1. Make an overlay with the results. It was so confusing to know who is gonna play who, as we had to search on irc, gotfrag (who got the matches wrong), liquipedia (i feel sorry for who every edited that thread). 2. Know your players. Print out liquipedia player pages to see what each player has won and what he loves to do. Little tidbits like the ones for the WoW player (nadagast?) were really good, but you can't get away with the statement that SeleCT has no LAN exp. 3. Stream quality was great and it never failed for me. Some people (tofucake) were complaining that it doesn't work in Opera and other browsers (that are not firefox) 4. The downtime was really boring sometimes (i was watching the stream for some 6h), and you could have filled it with some player interviews, replays and such (JP did a solid job with the "ask the caster a question thread") 5. make HD learn the game a little better. He made some rookie mistakes, it's great for noob players to learn basic stuff, but it's terrible if he casts wrong information 6. Buy Husky a suit. 7. Overall, it was a good event.
Maybe you should add a poll or so before ro64 starts so people can vote what games they want to see. Nony raping a noob isn't really interesting, machine vs inc would be far better.
Also it would be great if you could fix the full-screen mode of the stream so it automatically fits depending on which ratio you use 4:3/16:10 etc, couldn't watch it in full-screen since the whole mini-map was cut off pretty much :[
My only complaint is that there was no real coverage of the event besides the commentary, like more indepth interviews and videos of the playarea/players/ behind the scenes etc.
It was hard to get a feeling of the atmosphere at the event.
On August 29 2010 22:16 Diks wrote: This event was Awesome ,JP, you did a great work.
I"d like to see a stable casting team (like you and Day9) and a stable interviewing team (maybe HD ans Husky but I think they'll be sad to only do this...)
The sponsors advertisement where rolling like 2 or 3 times in a row. I'd like more diversity on this side.
I'd like to see more crowd and close camera to players keyboard and mouse to see them in action, that'd be awesome.
One last sthing : when i watch the stream in full screen, My left and right side where cut, i could see only half of the minimap.
yes! this ^ (the last part bout the minimap. I mean you have to have your starcraft as large as possible when watching things like this. I shoulda watched it on my TV now that i think about it.
I had problems with full screen cutting of part of the stream, the left and right parts of the videos weren't showing. Maybe add some chairs to the venue so we don't see gamers laying around on floor.
Also maybe show updated brackets after some of the matches, I honestly didn't have any ideas who will play who, and who went into loser bracket and who moved back to winners and such.
-The free stream was good quality and didn't lag even for an aussie with crappy internets but the left side of the screen was cut off by like an inch so I couldnt see the entire minimap
-post game player interviews could have been quite interesting
-is there going to be a replay package or even just of the finals?
Casters should keep being as casual and fun, it was alot of fun between games, i prefer when the casters are enjoying themself, so keep doing that
More games being watched, maybe even make sure to get the bracket up quick so you can see what matches early on would be sweet to watch
be sure that the stream is working good, alot had trouble with it, either for some it didn't work at all, for others the resolution was wierd(not being able to see mini map ect)
32 sign ups and 32 invites was a great idea, was exiting to see unkown players do good, and some of the well known not performing so good, but maybe balance the numbers of race players better(3 zerg and what 14(?) Terran was a bit meh)
but all in all i think MLG can be MORE than proud about this event, it was great, i loved day 2 timezone better(but then again im from europe), so im very pumped for next event
PS: how many was watching the stream? peak numbers and all around ect
I hate the format...double elimination is poor format.
I also felt robbed of a proper final...I'm sorry but the concept that a final can be played with a player having a defecit or set advantage is not a proper final...
I'm not very good at Starcraft 2, but one of the casters (the asian dude) kept on saying the wrong things and it got really hard for me to follow b/c I had to keep on going to the tier lists to figure out why I didn't understand what he was talking about :\
cant blame mlg, but streamed games were not the most entertaining ones, exept drewbie vs Socke and silver vs gretorp serie, so my question would be how you decide which games to stream?
On August 29 2010 22:34 kickinhead wrote: The Players weren't as good as in the IEM and there were too many boring MU's like PvP. Also, there were nearly no Zergs...
I liked the commentary, also the ones by HD and Husky and I didn't mind the more LAN-like rather than big Showmatch-Style approach...
Indeed there weren't any zergs, but I don't think you can blame the organizers for that.
Although most people hated it, I think it was nice to have 4 commentators switching between games.
- The stream had issues for a number of people. On day 1, for me, it didn't work in FF, Chrome, or IE. I let it sit in Chrome and after over an hour of "MLG Stream now loading" it finally popped on. On day 2, it worked instantly. (I also had no problems at all with Octoshape for IEM Gamescom.) I don't know if anything changed between day 1 and day 2, but anything your tech crew could do to improve availability of the stream so folks don't have to go to restreams by folks who won the "working-stream-lottery" to watch the event would be stellar. I know you really want it to just work for everyone and I'm not trying to impugn your tech guys, this is just the reality of what went down. The work they're doing is appreciated and I'm sure they'll keep it up. - HD/Husky have been debated to death on TL, suffice it to say that HD's admission that he plays 1 ladder game per week sums up my thoughts on that. - I think the map introduction videos were a fantastic idea. Obviously everyone on this site knows what's up with the maps but considering you have lots of Halo players, Tekken players, etc and would like to reach out to a wider audience, I think this is something you need to keep up. However, the Blizzard maps are fairly terrible and IMO bringing in some better maps would make for a much better event. The iCCup mapmaking team is doing good work, unless your partnership with Blizzard stipulates you must use official maps only I would take a look at that. - JP, your makeup in particular looked strange on the stream. It seemed like you were too pale and possibly wearing lipstick. Maybe have your makeup people adjust for next time. :3 - Quality of the free stream was fine once it worked, I had no issues seeing what was going on. The only issue was the in-game being too dark on day 1, but it seemed like that was fixed on day 2. - More interviews! Along with switching up the casting pair, having whoever wasn't casting down on the floor talking to the players made it truly seem like you were all a pro casting team and not just SC nerds who got invited to yak into headsets. And of course it's great to hear from the players. - At some point once there's a solid history of SC2 events, you may consider nerding out enough to put up player stats before/after matches similar to how OSL broadcasts do it. For example you could show last 10 games and W/L% before the game (TLPD has this data), and resources/units killed/average APM/etc after the game.
The event was great. It would be cool with the two caster pairs to have dual streams so that we can have access to more games. The production value was really high, but there could have been more interviews. Some people said that the casters in between games were sometimes awkward with not a lot to talk about. Having more interviews or features to fill in the time would just bring up the production value that much higher. I think the first event was really successful.
Please JP, would love to hear the stats about the event when you guys get them. Heard the alerts stream talking about the SC2 stream being one of the most successful MLG streams of all time. Would love to hear the stats about approx how many HD passes, views, in-person ticket passes that the SC2 community was able to suck up. Want to be even more proud of our community!
On August 29 2010 22:37 Affluenza wrote: I hate the format...double elimination is poor format.
I also felt robbed of a proper final...I'm sorry but the concept that a final can be played with a player having a defecit or set advantage is not a proper final...
I would like to see you abandon double elim. For me it kills a lot of the excitement of the later rounds. Individual games just seem less important.
Some way of getting rid of the bad players before casting would be nice too. That sounds asshole-ish but there's no fun in watching some random vs a good player. Some way of cutting the field in half right away would do wonders for the quality of games I think, rather than random player vs good player, then random players clogging up the loser bracket.
This is my opinion about mlg raleigh, yours may differ:
* More interviews and overall more event coverage. * HD stream is expensive (10$ for weekend, esl had 10€(?) for one month). Would have still purchased, but i won' spend money if i can only watch half of the games, because i can't stand some of your casters. For deep ingame and out of game analysis HD and Huskey's skills are lacking and other casters also provide better entertainment imho. Day9 and JP were great! * Looser bracket is just bad * More data on the players would be great to show before the actual games. Like Win/Loss percentage, Matchup history etc. Of couse this would only be doable when more SC2 events were played. * I liked the commercials at IEM a lot more than your commercials. More gaming related commercials or movie trailers etc would be great.
1) I don't think it is beyond the capabilities of MLG to have someone conducting interviews with players in off/non-tournament hours. Playing some of those videos during the "vamp" time would be much more desirable than watching the MLG logo or hearing commentators say how they're still waiting on players to join. Obviously don't get rid of the commentator vamp time, but alternation would be great.
2) I'm looking for the tournament directors to let us watch *most* of the high profile matchups. There were several instances of us watching big name vs no-name matches when it was an outright stomp. I really enjoyed the few instances when we cut into a series in progress to see the final game in the possibility of an upset. I know it is hard to coordinate, but the viewers want to see the players they are fans of.
3) People were laughing about the map preview of Xel'Naga Caverns (especially you Day!), but that was great. Seriously. That's so professional to have that prepared for each map. Another way to improve would be to have some overlays / interface during the pre-game with statistics and player information. Think TSL or Proleague style here.
I loved the tournament.. definitely made me a fan of Socke who I had rarely watched before. I'm really sad that my favorite players are Dimaga and Socke and I play Terran, but that's the case!
My biggest issue with the stream was that fullscreen mode was forced widescreen. What the fuck kind of bullshit is that? Not everyone has a widescreen monitor, and even if you do, not everyone has the same widescreen size.
I changed to my laptop because it has widescreen, and it was still unwatchable in fullscreen mode because the sides were cropped off. Eventually I found a way to watch it in VLC, but I shouldn't really have to go through all that trouble to watch a stream because you can't configure it properly, should I?
On August 29 2010 22:45 debasers wrote: I really think that if HD and Husky want to make it a job, they need to study more starcraft. They said so many crap during the games...
I agree, they need to get more experience, then they should do live events. Just because you have a good voice doesn't make you a good caster.
-- Downtime between matches was too much, IMO. I realize there needs to be time to recap and run commercials, and that's cool, but it seemed like the commentators were stalling a lot. There's enough legitimate time between matches that there should be no reason the players for the next match to be streamed aren't ready to go right as the current match is wrapping up.
-- Production was a bit on the weak side. Transitions were often very awkward. And at one point your camera guys were killing time by panning around to a bunch of chubby nerds literally laying around (were there no chairs in the spec area??). I won't pretend to have a solution for a situation like that ... I realize it happens sometimes, and I realize it's the first time you guys have run SC2 so there are going to be hiccups. But a little more polish going forward would be cool. Visualize the brackets and/or the match results (maps played, who won which, etc...). Recap some of the other results that went on while the streamed match happened.
-- 480p "HD?" You might be able to fool the halo kids with that, but come on. We're PC gamers. Give me a 720p 30fps stream and I'd cough up the $10 in a second! Ghetto street fighter tournaments can manage it for free, I'm sure MLG can make it happen behind a paywall.
-- On the topic of the stream quality, it was really dark. A little extra contrast/saturation can go a long way, but this was a bit too much. (No, it's not my monitor.)
But ultimately the tourney went off without any major hangups (that I noticed), so props for that. Looking forward to seeing what the future brings for NA SC2!
- It would also be nice to get replays and/or VODs of the matches that we couldn't see. I feel we missed some of the best matches and that really sucks.
- As Avrithor pointed out, more interviews would be nice. It would be nice to meet the players, put a face on the name
Jump from free to "HD" was waaay to small and truly 10 dollars wasted. I literally couldnt see the difference while jumping from one to the other, when I put them side by side I could see a small difference.
On August 29 2010 22:53 bRuTaL!! wrote: Jump from free to "HD" was waaay to small and truly 10 dollars wasted. I literally couldnt see the difference while jumping from one to the other, when I put them side by side I could see a small difference.
I think you had an HD stream next to an HD stream. The difference is massive. The regular stream was completely garbled and unviewable in fullscreen. At least the HD stream, while not great, was fullscreenable.
I would prefer bo3 / bo5 earlier in the tournament instead of loser bracket ( it kills the hype and it is a mess imo ). Maybe bo7 for finals ( no TvT plz :p )
There should be chairs for the spectators, was embarassing seeing them sitting on the floor like cavemen. Loved the map previews with the female voiceover. The award ceremony needs to be better, like perhaps give the top 3 finishers a big cardboard check like other big esports events do.
-since you have two sets of streamers, please bring us two sets of streams. I know you guys need water breaks, but please I know you guys are capable of pretty constant streaming I missed over half of the sets I really wanted to see I only got to see one set played by lastshadow who had the toughest group which would have been an interesting storyline to follow pretty much the only sense of the games/storylines/drama that happened off air was from the cock teasing day9 was doing, basically telling us how awesome a game was(that we couldnt see) T_T
-also possibly bring players who have the time for a little guest commentary or post-game interview i think it'd be cool to hear players like incontrol talk a little bit, hes could definitely provide some entertainment to the casts
overview: more extensive coverage + player commentary/interviewing
1) Stream quality was terrible tbh, even for a free stream. Also there is the full screen issue, but for me it wasn't really an issue- as full screen was nigh unwatchable at that resolution.
2) Commercials are god awful, but there's nothing you can do about that considering it's MLG's sponsors. Also not a huge deal as I just took a break, or muted.
3) I wasn't a big fan of the map previews, I feel that Day[9] gave a much more relevant preview. I guess for HDH it wasn't too bad though, as it seems they didn't know too much about the maps (or they knew about the gimics, not the general features that made the map).
4) Interviews and such are nice, but I feel it went pretty smooth from game to game.
5) TL shirts should be madatory.
6) The observers need to work on their skills a little, or have a third person to observe.
With all that said I think it was a great event. I think all the casters did a pretty good job, obviously it's really hard to compare to Day[9]'s standard. However, since this is a professional event- not just a volunteer job that esports is used to I think it's fair to criticize HDH a decent amount. I feel that there was just not much game knowledge on their part, hopefully they will work hard to improve.
Thanks for all the great work guys, look forward to seeing more in the future!!
I was watching the stream online, mostly day 2 because I live in europe.
- The free stream quality was good. I personally have no problem with Octoshape, but I realize that many people, especially those who pay for download/upload, don't like it. Also the stream was a bit too dark in my opinion, could have been brighter. Sadly on fullscreen mode parts of the sides were chopped off, which I got rid of by using VLC.Maybe some optimization work could be done there.
- While I do know the maps, I think that the general idea of map introductions is good. It would be nice if it could be widened to also introduce the players, which I realize is pretty hard at the moment, especially with "random" players attending.
- It would be nice if some sort of grid could be shown here and there, so it's easier to see the stage of the tournament and previous results, I think there were plenty of downtimes where those could be added.
- The caster quality was good. Mixing them up was also nice. Now I hear that especially HD and Husky seem to "mess up" sometimes, but personally I didn't notice any significant problems. Maybe post-game interviews could be added.
- Obviously the ads are annoying, but I realize that they have to be part of your business model and therefore I can accept them. Though I can second the notion of having PC gaming orientated ads added.
I watched Day 2 pretty exclusively, so if some of this occurred on Day 1, I apologize
1) For nonstop casting, there weren't all that many games cast. With 2 casting teams, why not have 2 casting streams? Have Team A start, then Team B goes for a later game, and y'all can just say "break from noon to one, return then for *insert game." No one is going to be upset that y'all need food and breaks from casting.
2) I have always been quick to defend HD and Husky, but they really let me down this cast. I felt like Day9 and JP really had things well thought out in their head, but I felt that the H-casters were a bit too unprepared for the tournament. MahkSC is much more the style I want out of a caster at this kind of thing.
3) It would be great if we could have match recaps, a bracket for the commentators to pull out between games, just more stuff to make the non-game time less vamping and more relevant to the tournament.
On August 29 2010 22:53 Grettin wrote: Pretty much everything has said, but i gotta disagree with 32 sign ups 32 invites was a good idea.
Too much players = less matches to see (atleast matches which would be interesting)
I would drop the player list to 32 or abit more, but not 64.
And finals > bo5 please.
Otherwise it was a decent event. Hopely the next one is better.
hmmm, if it had been like that tbh me (and i think ALOT of people) wouldn't even have watch this event, if it was the original 32 sign ups
32 unkown people playing isn't that exiting, and without some good players that they MAYBE beat, it would have nothing to measure up
if "bnetuser123" won the event, i would care less if the whole bracket was people i never heard of, but if he had gone through alot of good well known players, then it would mean more, not to forget the level of play is higher
this is not saying your opinion is wrong, just my 2 cent on that subject
I really wish I could have heard more of the crowd, it seemed like the sound was too far away from them. People yelling at the event while I'm yelling at the screen adds to the atmosphere. Then I again, I think it's because the players are separated from the crowd/casters. While the Tekken/Halo events the players are on a stage in front of the crowd.
First of all, I thoroughly enjoyed the whole tournament. The quality for the free stream was definitely acceptable (contrast to ESL), which might even get me to pay for HD next time around.
A few things owuld improve the viewers experience for us at home though.
1: The crowd. While I personally don't want to see it as much as we have to in Korean pro games, hearing them adds a lot to the experience for me. When the mothership came out I could hear the crowd cheer, but it was a bit lower than it should be in my opinion. Obviously shouldn't make us unable to hear the casters, but I think you know what I mean.
2: Seeing the players during the game was nifty and I definitely liked that, but being unable to see the upgrades was a bit 'meh'. It's a nitpick really, but if the player video covered the unit portraits we would be able to see the upgrades and the player. I don't think anyone cares about what a stalker looks like when targetted. Also, let us see the player reaction when they win or lose. If you saw Dimaga v Tarson you'll know why that's important. Also, if we got to see the keyboard/mouse of players that'd be quite interesting. Especially during downtime during games.
3: Coverage. Lack of coverage of some players really surprised me, we didn't really get to see Kiwikaki until he was getting close to the finals, while we did get to see some really terrible players several games in a row. I realize even amateurs should have the opportunity to be broadcasted, but some of the games weren't even worth watching in my opinion. Seeing one of the games from an amateur in a best of 3 and letting us watch better players in some other game would nice.
4: Casters. I really liked what you did here, it shows that you did your research on who the SC community wants. Day9/JP for the more 'hardcore' fans, and HD/Husky for the ones who only watch a few youtube games every now and then. I really have no complaints about the casting per se, but you had two sets of casters. Why couldn't you stream two sets of games? I realize even casters needs to rest of course, but having the ability to chose what games to watch if there are several games going on at the same time would've been nice.
5: Double elimination Honestly, a lot of people will disagree with me here but I really dislike this format. Rather have every game be a Bo5 with a regular Bo7 final. I just don't think double elimination is a good format, at all.
6: Where's the new State of the Game? Patiently waiting here
Overall it was a great tournament, while the caliber of the players wasn't quite up to snuff with the IEM everything else was far superior in my opinion. Great job.
Epic stream quality Epic commentators Epic games Epic tournament
With that said helpful criticism: -Ads for too similar and really stupid (probably not something you can change I know) - Bad time for Australians 12am-11 am (probably not something you can fix I know) -Man I got nothing, awesome tournament.
On August 29 2010 22:13 mortar wrote: I felt the HD stream wasn't really worth it. Quality wasn't as good as I hoped for.
(I'm aware of the preview.)
Cannot help but agree. 10 dollars for MLG for a weekend vs 5 dollars for ESL TV for a month, ingame quality was about the same just one was 16;9, I guess that'll teach me for buying it when the site was going insane on the first day. Also a LOT of false advertising calling it "HD", its 480p I'm fairly sure that doesn't count.
Also if you insist on making Husky cast (Chill/Incontrol and numerous others would have done a MUCH better job) you can at least make sure he isnt 3x as loud as anyone else, had to turn it off because his voice was so loud / abrasive even when nothing "exciting" was happening for all the whine about apollo in the IEM he did an amazing job in comparison.
Also I know you cant really fix this but surely it isnt THAT hard to get gaming based sponsors. I mean jerky and those rancid hot pockets, christ seriously the ads made me wanna puke everytime they came on esspecially the hotpockets - god just because people play games doesn't mean they all eat such heinous food.
Oh and the map previews you started doing made me motion sick, no need for all the zooming and whizzing about - it doesnt make it more interesting it just makes it more confusing / annoying.
Double elimination is also a pretty poor format for an RTS, it just doesnt flow well enough and without constant updates you easily get lost in the torrent of games being thrown at you.
I would like to take the time to disagree with absolutely everything this person has to say. Please, keep Husky casting, get whatever sponsors you can, the map previews were fine, and double elimination isn't terribly problematic for an RTS (better players have more chances).
- Stream quality was good. You can't expect a full HD 720p stream to be broadcasted to thousands and thousands of people for free. It was better quality than IEM and definately more than adequate.
- Although an anticlimactic final, some games were good, but quiet a few werent that interesting either. But theres nothing MLG themselves can do about, so i feel the guys commenting on that are kinda missing the point.
- I am torn if i like the carryover of score from the finals (IE, if Winner bracket beat loser bracket 2-0, the score carries over and it becomes a bo7). It works, but another solution is have loser bracket win 2 Bo3/5's over winner bracket, while Winner bracket only has to win 1. I think Sean talked about him playing in WCG like that or something in his d9d#100.
- I loved Sean and JP's synergy. HDH were fine to me, but Husky really needs a suit and some wax in his hair .
- Was kinda sad to see spectators sitting on the floor AND not able to hear the casters. Either force players who are casted to sit in a soundproof booth (then you immediately cna get a winners ceremony afterwards), or use the same headset set-up as IEM used. Headsets arent that important to SC2 - as long as they play sound well it will work fine for all players.
- Would love to see "after talk" kind of stuff too after the tourney with maybe some players, casters, producers, etc etc.
- I had the same issue with full screen cutting off both siders of the stream. HAving the same problem now with the WoW Arena tourney stream.
Thats about the things i can think of... Overal good event, sadly the games werent as exciting as i hoped for, but thats not MLG's fault.
First of all I really enjoyed the tournament and thought all the casters did a great job.
Since you and Day 9 are more strategy analysts and HD and Husky are more color commentators I think it made sense to split you up. It may be out of your comfort zone but if you all work the same tournament again you may want to try that some more. You might want to download some replays and practice with each if you go that route.
As some others mentioned have something available on the website that lets you catch up on the current status of the tournament.
also going to agree with a lot of people on this MAKE FINALS BO5 OR BO7 the finals seemed like any other set a game 5 is exponentially more intense and epic than a game 3
edit - i now realize this is a inherent quality of the format so i'll say i think it would be better for a round robin group stage into a seeded single elim tournament to allow for amateurs to compete while creating less variance for the pro gamers to advance IMO
1: The crowd. While I personally don't want to see it as much as we have to in Korean pro games, hearing them adds a lot to the experience for me. When the mothership came out I could hear the crowd cheer, but it was a bit lower than it should be in my opinion. Obviously shouldn't make us unable to hear the casters, but I think you know what I mean.
Oh yes. I was watching the Tekken stream at one point and it was amazing. I mean i don't even own a console, i don't know shit about this game but all the people cheering for their favourite player was awesome =D
First, I hope the interest in the stream and enough people bought it for the big guys to realize that SC2 needs some money thrown at it for production. A lot of things that people are asking for in the thread costs money to produce and would be welcome. I think long term SC2 can outstrip the Halo coverage in popularity and for a first trial go I thought it was a success.
With a good budget here's my suggestions:
1. More streams, let us see more matches even if there's no commentator. Ala the NCAA Men's Basketball tournament. Hell, make it part of the $10 fee. Since it's on bnet I wouldn't mind seeing streams farmed out to people not in attendance like IEM did with GLHF.
2. More graphics, give us brackets and results especially. Having to go to gotfrag wasn't the best.
3. I'd like to see defined roles for casters, Play by Play vs. Expert and frankly I think you're better suited as a studio host JP. I think leading an analysis discussion is right in your wheelhouse. Assuming the same crew is around in the future I'd like to see HD or Husky with Day9 and bring on another pro player or commentator to fill Day's role in the second stream. Ideally a third pro to man the desk with you would be great.
4. Highlights from other matches, of course you need other streams for this but can help fill time between rounds.
5. More matches in general. One matchup per round really isn't enough. I realize it's a tight schedule so it makes sense how it was run, but with more prep time for D.C. or even Dallas this would be great.
6. Lose the T-shirts and go collared shirts under the jackets, or golf type shirts no jackets. Don't ever let anyone on camera that's not a player in a hoody again.
Basically, the more production you can talk them into the better. I'm not holding out hope for anything big before next year, but I can see where this can go.
On August 29 2010 23:22 billyX333 wrote: also going to agree with a lot of people on this MAKE FINALS BO5 OR BO7 the finals seemed like any other set a game 5 is exponentially more intense and epic than a game 3 wtf seriously bo3 for the finals?
It was an extended series, it makes sense and it was fair. It's how double elimination work, you'll have to blame the tournament format instead. It was essentially like Kiwi and HuK played a best of 7, and huK went 2-1 as he won the first Bo3 so when Kiwi met him again those points transferred over. It's fair, but not very good for viewers in my opinion. The finals are quite anti climatic that way.
My only real complaint is that it felt like we could've seen more games than we did. There was a lot of downtime where we're just watching the casters desperately trying to think of things to say
I didn't mind you guys switching up the casters though. Day[9] and HD seemed to have surprisingly good chemistry.
1/ Day[9]+ Husky/HD commentating was really good. Would be nice to see more of that
2/ Downtime between games was terrible, Day[9] has allot of charisma and can keep talking and talking and talking but you could see that JP,Husky and HD ran out of things to talk about and relied on Day[9] to keep the momentum going. But it's not like that HD/Husky and JP had no idea what to say, when Day[9] brought up a new topic as the old one started to die, the rapport between the casters was great.
It's not completely unfair to expect the casters to be able to fill in that dead zone but it seemed MLG didn't really help them out, the "ask a caster thread" was great, try adding more "pick up and play" segments like that, maybe give the casters some background info on all the players, or just some interesting segments in general to fill long delays.
3/ I have to agree with what a few people have said already, I don't get all this criticism about HD and Husky casting poorly at all, no one has even bothered to give an example, they have just made some blanket statements. It's not like it isn't true, I mean I caught HD slipping up on a unit name once or twice but it wasn't that bad, they provided some pretty good info and possible plays that could happen through out the game, they weren't as informative as Day[9] obviously, but you can't expect everyone to be like Day[9]. Apart from lacking topics to talk about when there were long delays they casted pretty well.
4/ Whoever is doing the voice over for the Map preview needs to be more enthusiastic, the ones that aired during the event were really poor, she talked sooo slow, I dunno about anyone else but it seemed to me that she was just trying to not screw up what was written down for her rather than actually explain the map.
Maybe it seemed not as good on the stream, but I had a blast at the tournament. I met a lot of the players, and most of them are very nice people! Team root especially, they just rock all out. Kiwikaki and QXC are super funny.
I think some of the main problems of the MLG Raleigh was partly due to poor planning. The area for SC2 and WoW was the same area. It was the only part of the tournaments that required internet, so thats why SC2 and WoW were crammed into 1.5 days each because they shared the same gaming area. If there had been more room, I think MLG could have had more sound on the main viewing screen where we could actually hear the game and the announcers. We were watching the stream, essentially on a projector with no sound, hard to get excited about a game with no sound.
This is their first SC2 event, so hopefully they will have their stuff together for the next tourney in DC and they will have SC2 for 3 days and can use a better tournament configuration, like ESL. All in all the event was great, especially meeting all the gamers there. There were so many good players. I got a shirt signed by QXC, Huk, Drewbie, Cauthonluck, Catz, SLush, Day[9], Inka, LzGamer, Select, Sjow, Masq, Gretorp, LastShadow (Ajtls), and a few more I can't remember at the moment.
I hope more people support and attend MLG events so that they can get more funding and feedback. Bring Pro gaming to the US and NA!
am i the only one that wanted MORE GAMES really showed very little. Also when you did show macthes you showed the wrong machted so please look at the macthes that you are going to be streamed in the future.
On August 29 2010 23:22 billyX333 wrote: also going to agree with a lot of people on this MAKE FINALS BO5 OR BO7 the finals seemed like any other set a game 5 is exponentially more intense and epic than a game 3
- Maybe this is double eliminations fault, but there was not really a good build up except for the final. Once it gets down to 8 or 16 or however many players it really needs to shift from 'casting random games' to casting everything and emphasizing how this affects the bracket. With 64 players and two brackets it would be too much (and not all that important) to do this from the start, but it needs to happen at some point.
For instance when there were just 4 players left (Socke, LastShadow, Kiwikaka, HuK) the Socke vs LastShadow games were not shown. This is equivalent to not showing a semi-final match. How dumb is that? Especially after everyone talking about LastShadow all weekend.
- For having 4 casters there were not that many games actually cast. I'm not really that big into having 4 casters personally, but here it seemed to provide no benefit at all. Whoever cast a game seemed purely on trying to get all casters equal stream time (who cares, it isn't about them). If you are going to have 4 casters it should be so that games can be shown near non-stop (team A has downtime setting up a game then go to team B, vice versa).
- Like everyone else is saying, the stream getting cut off was annoying but more of a technical problem. Same with the darkness (fog of war was brutal!).
- Player Interviews are fun.
- Map preview was dumb -- we stream for the games and the casters, not so some production people can wank off. Do you really think people tuning into the stream on a saturday afternoon need to hear a description of the map?
- I think round robin into single elimination is the way to go. You had a lot of people register just to play in a tournament. They had their 2 BO3 and were out. Round Robin gives these players more games and it also allows expanding the number of invites quite easily to let more amateurs participate. It also provides a clear transition for the tournament from a free for all in terms of casting and scheduling into a clearly defined order of progression (single elimination).
1. Not enough games casted. We missed epic series between good players and instead had to view the amateurs who had yet to prove themselves (and ended up being awful). Sure, broadcast amateurs if they get far and defeat notable players.
This has happened before thanks to open registration. During one of the initial World of Warcraft circuits (trying to remember if this was MLG, but Im 99% sure it was) there was a really crappy team that was made from random registrants that was absolutely horrible, while other good games happened.
2. Multiple streams, yet no way to cover more than one Starcraft 2 game at a time? I enjoy the Korean Starleague Prelim format, (example video):, + Show Spoiler +
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exfPAmu9ii0&feature=related 12:02, and again at 21:53 is when they "segue" into a new game already in progress. the first game was played in full. also they give regular updates during the games of the ones they arent broadcasting.
where the commentators can easily jump game to game (joining ones in progress, as there is a referee or observer account in each game) for maximum viewage and enjoyment. I think it's very important to view as many games as possible and decrease the amount of "filler time." People in IRC joking about how we were having a live Day9 daily because there were such huge gaps of times between games.
My worry here is it seems unlikely MLG will change since they don't even provide multiple streams for their 'flagship game,' Halo 3. I honestly doubt they don't have the money/resources to do it, they probably feel it's just unneeded. I think it is, and I think as the biggest gaming event in North America, you should be setting an example to the world that we can also run an awesome event. For future events, I'd like to at least see two different streams for Starcraft II with the two pairs of commentators available, if it's simply impossible to "jump" between games like the Korean Prelims do.
I loved the tourney, I watched most of day one and most of day 2.
Some suggestions though:
1.) HD and Husky have potential to be great, but they need to learn the game a bit more. It's very distracting when they say something retarded, just like in other sports, when someone makes a weird mistake on air its hard to follow what the hell is going on.
2.) Day9 with other people is great, he has great insights but I agree that some people should be assigned the play by play, and some assigned the color commentary.
3.) Looking sharp is a good way to attract more fans, husky's hoodie was amateurish. Also, Huk wearing that hoodie in the interview was dumb, pull that shit down man, we want to see the banana grin of a winner.
4.) Quality was alright on the free stream, but I don't see myself paying for HD unless we can see all the games played on different streams. Even without commentary or just a solo commentator.
5.) I don't mind JP, and I didn't mind his arena cast stuff, when he was into wow even if it was a bit awkward at times. What I don't like is the looking at the other hosts constantly or sometimes mumbling. You are a journalism major JP you should know these things! Don't stare at the hosts, and don't mumble on air. Also it seems like some of the discussions are sorta planned or thought about before hand and these sound way better than some of the "time filler" discussions you all had.
Regardless I loved the tourney, but I know it can be heaps better. If the tourneys start to be kick-ass then people will watch, even people who are not players.
-not a big fan of the format. Round robin seems a much better format and still gives the good players a chance to advance even if they drop a game or two.
- i dont wanna be to harsh on them but Husky and HD really need to improve their overall game knowledge. IMO as a caster you have to PLAY the game, quite a bit and hopefully at a decent skill level.
At one point I think HD said he only plays " 1 game a week" 1 game? cmon how can you have a deep understanding of the game when you play 1 game a week. I dont care how many replays you watch, you NEED to play as well. idk maybe the more casual players think there good, but to the more experienced SC1 and SC2 players, its pretty clear they often dont have any good insight into whats happening in the game.
I loved the event, everyone really put a lot of effort in this and it was a blast to watch. Thanks for everything! Here's a bit of what I thought could use some attention in future MLG events.
- There where large periods of time when I felt the casters where "waiting" for the games to get set up and trying to fill the time in whatever way. This puts a huge amount of responsibility on the casters to keep the crowd entertained. Obviously the more experienced casters did rather well on this but the more junior of the crew where having a bit of a tougher time to keep the crowd entertained in pure ad-lib mode. Maybe something needs to be considered for these time spaces that keeps the viewer engaged and doesn't rely solely on the caster's ability to make that happen.
- Most of the commercials I found pretty fitting for the event. Good job on that! Though because of the length of the tournament and the amount of time that you're actually spending watching them I felt it could've used a bit more variation. Watching the same commercial multiple times in the same "block" feels a little tacked on. I'm confident you'll do better next time, but I felt it should be mentioned.
Also, I noticed that full-screening the video cut off the sides on 16 : 9 resolutions. The reruns didn't seem to experience this problem. It's just a technical thing though since we're all offering critique I thought I'd throw it out there.
It was an awesome event and it was a lot of fun to watch. Though I guess a tad boring with how everyone played 100% to win making a lot of matches well...a tad lame.
My biggest concern was the purchase of HD! Paying 10$ for 1 event means it should be fairly good... Here's the thing - It was downright awful quality for 'HD'.
4/ Whoever is doing the voice over for the Map preview needs to be more enthusiastic, the ones that aired during the event were really poor, she talked sooo slow, I dunno about anyone else but it seemed to me that she was just trying to not screw up what was written down for her rather than actually explain the map.
I need to emphasize on this. So true, only reason she didnt get flamed too pieces is cause she was a girl percieved hot. It's not something we really need when going to start serious. I felt a bit embarresed for her and for me watching it. Felt like the target audiance was 16years old when she came along. To sum the point up: Be persistent with having a professional outlook
I think everyone was being too critical with the HDH combo. I thought they were really great. Idk why people are bashing on husky for bringing the energy to the game. I know he may get really loud at time it makes the game fun to watch. I think if you were to complain about a commentating team it would have to be JP and Day9 just for the fact that Day9 just keeps going on and on and on that JP had to force his way in. Day9 is awesome, but at the way things look, why not just make him solo cast as he does not seem to want to share. JP and Day9 just did not have the same chemistry that Husky and HD had. And sure the HDH combo look like they need more live commentating experience, but they'll get it the more live tournaments they cover. I would say they did excellent for their first live tournament commentary. As far as the tournament is concerned: 1). Two streams would have been better as many potentially awesome games were missed. I think since there are two commentator teams, two streams would have been awesome. AND/OR one team commentating the winner's bracket, and the other team commentating the losers bracket.
2). Having a visible bracket would have been nice. gotfrag's list was just not good enough. The Halo 3 and Tekken 6 had visible brackets, I do not see why Starcraft 2 didn't.
3). Seeing Player stats pre-matc and having some player interviews during down time would have been nice.
Other than those, I thought MLG was really awesome, had a great experience watch some epic matches and even watching some other games. I did not even know there was a competitive Super Smash and Tekken scene. I am looking forward to the next MLG even.
3.) Looking sharp is a good way to attract more fans, husky's hoodie was amateurish. Also, Huk wearing that hoodie in the interview was dumb, pull that shit down man, we want to see the banana grin of a winner.
That was down right terrible, aswell as him chewing gum throughout the interview - damn disrespectful. Also don't you have a sponsor, why the hell wasn't he wearing their gear.
I personally didn't like the double elimination format. It seemed like it just appeared at the finals and it was like...oh.
I much prefer a group stages into 16 or 32 player single-elim bracket. Much more exciting and less confusing. Trying to read the brackets was just :S, especially because the formatting was stuffed up. Dont break a winning formula, single elimination for lyfe!
3.) Looking sharp is a good way to attract more fans, husky's hoodie was amateurish. Also, Huk wearing that hoodie in the interview was dumb, pull that shit down man, we want to see the banana grin of a winner.
That was down right terrible, aswell as him chewing gum throughout the interview - damn disrespectful. Also don't you have a sponsor, why the hell wasn't he wearing their gear.
He dont have a sponsor, and he was looking for one, but comon, who the hell wants to sponsor a dude like HUK chewing gym hooded. He just looked stupid and amateurish. Not everything is based on what you show on sc2. Hope someone can give HUK feedback on this, as it would do good for him. I wish him the best
Hey, JP. First off, thanks to you and your crew for putting the stream together. This was my first experience watching an e-sports event and you provided an amazing introduction. I will definitely keep an eye out for future events based on the views below.
Commentaries – Your cast of commentators was superb. You all brought your own unique version of casting to the table. I watch both Day9 and Husky regularly. Furthermore, the primary reason I began watching the tournament was to see Husky at a live event.
I think each commentator brings his own style to the game. Each has his areas of strengths and weaknesses, and since people are prone to harp on the weaknesses, I’ll talk about strengths.
Husky, hands down, provides the most entertainment value to the games. He has a great sense of humor and utilize a great bit of improve while casting. If you have watched his sleep deprived cast where he created pylo (and his twin sister (and her twin sister)) you know this from experience. I love how he talks to units behaving oddly. “What are you doing scv? You need to get back to work. If I was an scv I would want to be in his army.” Since this seems to be one of Husky’s first paid casting events, I imagine he erred on the side of caution and stuck more to the facts then letting his humor run free. That being said, he did get some good quips in there. In conclusion, I think Husky’s participation drove my interest in the event and I would really like to see him cast again in the future.
HD: Every comedian needs a straight man, and HD provides this service in spades. Their friendship plays out well on the screen and brings real value to their commentaries. There were times they felt so fresh, they should have called each other the febreeze brothers, and it did seem at times that HD and Husky were the other guys. However, they stood on their own and provided some solid commentary. I hope to see them teamed up again.
Day9, casts with a unique blend of humor and technical knowledge. I watch his dailies more for understanding the meta-game and less from pure entertainment value. He’s like the Bill Nye of commentators. Actually, I’d like to see him in a lab coat. Day9 seems to teach the game such that I feel like I have a better understanding of the game after his commentaries. “The thing I like about reapers is their ability to get away utilizing cliffs. I hate to see when they are used to blindly jump up ramp because there is a risk the other player’s forces are waiting.” If I played terran this is information I could plug straight into my gameplay.
JP, I am afraid I have not had a chance to view many of your commentaries, and after watching you this weekend I hope to remedy this. I would like to say that you definitely have your own unique style, one I would like to see more of. You definitely win for having the best hair.
tldr
Since this post is running quite long, I will end this here and post again on other aspects. Overall, I have this perception that Husky and HD are on rocky ground for casting future events. Solidify this. Their following on YouTube has the potential to bridge many YouTube watchers over to e-sports. What better place to introduce them than the mlg?
I think a lot of emphasis is put on the commentators “knowing the game.” I don’t watch the Daily Show to keep up with the news. I watch it for entertainment. In general people value entertainment over knowledge. Let the teaching take place on the caster’s home turf, streaming or YouTube, and give your commentators the freedom to entertain. E-sports should be about entertainment. Give me,”Oh and it looks like it’s going to be a drop. Are we going to see a stooooormmmmm!!!! OH MY GOD how many probes was that!?!" over,” Typically when you perform a drop, you want to place your units behind the mineral line as we see Huk doing right here.”
Once again, JP, kudos to you and your crew. I hope to see your roster of casters in the future.
- HDH really ruined it alot for me, i thought their lack of game knowledge was irritating and they lacked professionalism, with long pauses and not knowing how to invite players to the game. I also thought husky looked like he had just woke up and wearing a hoody only further added to the unprofessionalism he appeared to bring (in comparision HD whilst i dont really think he knew what he was talking about either, at least looked like he made an effort)
-Not showing the minimap in fullscreen mode was annoying (but if this is fixed for the hd version, i actually like that as a business move lol)
-I thought you and Day[9] where great, entertaining, knew the game and could deal with breaks in the game.
-Liked the ask the caster thread
-Would like more interviews (idealy if you insist on keeping HDH id relegate them to taking interviews with the players where perhaps there game knowledge (or lack thereof) will not be as tested)
-I found the double elim brackets annoying, prefere bo5 format elimation with a bo5 or bo7 final (not with one player having an advantage based on previou games, that annoyed me)
-Didnt like the map analysis, but can see why people who dont play the game might like it.
-Would like to have the "better" or more popular players where given preference to be streamed, even if this means cutting a seeded player v no name player short (other than el paramedico i found these to just be watching a rather onesided game)
-finaly if posible id like to see more of the players during the game, keyboard views and if possible FPV's of players, especially the faster players (200+ apm)
HD and husky did good together with day9, they have good casting voices and can be entertaining. they just need some more analytical skills and game knowledge before they can go without day9.
my only other complaint was I wanted to see more high level zerg players but that's not really something that you can control I guess.
- The production quality was good, aside from Bnet causing some slow downs with how badly designed it is for tournaments. Would of been nice to get some extra segments other then just games (not every day the majority of the good NA players are in one place) but really the sc2 community has a pretty good handle on that stuff anyway. - Whats up with the PS/2 to USB keyboard adapters? I remember seeing a post that it was allowed this once. I'm not really sure why, as long as you have an adapter, you would be forced to use a USB keyboard, if that is the case. - The commercials are mutable (holy crap is that nice, I always hate when I can't mute stream commercials) and they are bunched up, which is nice to go grab a snack or bathroom or whatever. - My only real gripe with the tournament was the stream quality and lack of free attendance. Not having any involvement with mlg, or esports for that matter I can't say how realistic free attendance is, or if it's an eventuality that it has a fee (as basically every sport in the US does). I dunno maybe hearing of free attendance to Pro League has spoiled me but I was surprised at the 25$ fee just to attend. I was also pretty disappointed by the stream quality. I think it's reasonable to offer standard definition for free, and high definition for a price. Except that the free stream was barely legible and the "high definition" stream isn't even actual hd... I think pretty much everyone would be happy (or at least happier) with a 480p free stream, and the payed option of a 720p or 1080p stream. I don't think that is unreasonable given the sponsorship mlg has and the commercials. That being said it's worth noting that the current free stream quality is at least legible, so if that is out of everyone's hands it's not so bad as to make it not worth watching, close though. - Also Octoshape, it needs to not be forced, or if that is not doable (don't know how it works and if it's implementation forces use by everyone) but at least it needs the ability for the user to cap the bandwidth use. A thanks to mlglee and all those reading these kinds of things and responding/trying to improve mlg for the better of the community. Sadly this kind of community involvement is pretty rare in just about anything these days, and it's definitely respected.
1. This is a wonderful step in the right direction.
2. Half the people bitching about HDH probably aren't even good enough to comprehend the actual difference between their game knowledge and Day[9]'s, they just saw a bandwagon and hopped on. I tuned in sporadically between Day 1 and Day 2, and I got bits of Day[9]/JP and HDH. Both satisfied me, and both were solid, in my opinion. My one complaint is the hoodie for Husky. I only saw Day 2, so I dunno if he did it during Day 1, but everyone else had a t-shirt and a jacket, he could use one as well.
3. I would like the idea of interviews with players. Especially during the downtime before the finals on D2, interview players. Hunt down Socke, LastShadow and some of the other top 8 players, see how they feel about their performance.
4. Double elimination was fine, extended series was a bit "meh", I would've liked to see it where Kiwikaki had to win 2 Bo3's like a traditional double elim, but it didn't matter in the end, now did it, haha.
5. GotFrag's bracket was a major headache. Took forever to load, and was very tough to follow until the later stages. The paths players took should've been laid out ahead of time.
Other than that, great event. You guys got the big stuff right, and that's what matters. Keep it up, keep up the great work.
Oh, and since you guys may or may not reply here - were runoff matches played to determine placing for 9th through 16th so appropriate rank points were awarded, or was it just a standard given from there.
- More games, less talking about them for 30 minutes. I realize working a schedule when the game's duration is variable can be a problem but still, just jump into a random game between scheduled broadcasts.
- If you are SELLING HD quality at least make it 720p (1280x720) high bitrate doesn't = HD just minimizes compression artifacts.
- More interviews with the players, more aggressive questions, not just ..."are you happy you won?"...
- Show us the venue if you need to fill time, interviews with the organizers etc, i think the camera was stuck watching people do nothing for like 20 minutes at one point.
- The brackets were awful. They made no sense and the race of the players wasn't being properly displayed, i had to hover over the name of the person and find the tooltip linking to terran/protoss/zerg.jpg hosted on your site that wasn't showing.
The positive:
- The casters did a great job at keeping the atmosphere alive during the games and outside of it, loved husky's energy, HD was making a LOT of mistakes but he was probably the most professional of all the casters. Day9 is always awesome and keeps the crowd entertained (troll face was awesome), JP is the perfect partner for day9 you both have great chemistry together.
- Mixing the casters was a bold move, could've failed horribly but except for day9 + HD it worked great.
- The quality of the free stream was decent enough (although the aspect ratio got messed up when you go fullscreen (at least on firefox). This din't happen if we picked up the stream off vlc
I'm not sure if I've ever heard anybody mention this and I hope I'm not the only guy who feels this way BUT I think there should be ONE very good observer per game (clicks all tech structures repeatedly, watches minimap like a hawk) in the game for the commentators to both share the view of so the audience and the casters share the same view at all times So often I hear something like "OH! hes throwing down the spire!" *observer camera cuts from protoss base to zerg base, 2-3 seconds later* "ah! yes, he is!"
Also a lot of the time I see the observer spot something like a spire being built and its clearly of great importance while the other caster completely rambles on about this and that then FINALLY the spire is mentioned as the second commentator gets his turn on the mic
I've gotta say this seems really out of tune to me, I'd much rather listen to commentators that are on the same page at all times and also hear their reactions simultaneously I know in the professional korean starleague matches, you can hear all three commentators react with enthusiasm and simultaneity when something important/unexpected happens
It feels very awkward for a caster to announce something being built and not have visual confirmation until moments after or vice versa
This was a huge turn off for me during the IEM w/ apollo and day9 i sometimes saw day9 spam select an important tech structure while apollo would ramble on about this or that while day9 anxiously waited for his turn
make sure there are enough of all 3 races because the matchups got old real fast with like 90% terran. The signup thing was stupid if i wanted to watch bronze players play id go to my friends house it was really boring and one sided. Plan ahead so you cast the interesting matches like tylers games instead of the really unpopular players.
Stream was great quality, but the aspect ratio was off. I was introducing the game to 2 friends, and then they see HD rocking a blazer and headset, backdrops etc. and they were like "woah, this is for real". Then I tried to explain the way the metalopolis spawn locations are, and they were totally lost because we couldn't see the left half of the map.
Downtime was okay, JP and Day9 are great time fillers. Could have been a little smoother, but that's about all I can gripe about. Would like to have seen bracket overlays, because it's hard to keep track of "okay slush is in the loser's bracket but needs to win one more against TTone" etc.
- Stream was kinda cut off in widescreen. And it was terrible dark, for next mlg you need to tune it in better. But overall ok quality (bought the HD), no lag but detail wise kinda underwhelming.
- Commentators were ok, I like how you switched em around.
- The small camera view while playing (bottom left) was nice, but have it focus more on player hands. And do like IEM, have some sort of nametag on since it wasent always clear which head belonged to which player.
- Better overview of the tournament please. Use overlays, discuss the brackets etc.
I watched pretty much the whole thing and will say it was a great tournament and overall the coverage was really good. Gotfrag was keeping the brackets and scores updated fast which was also good.
Double elimination format is great and coming from a mostly CS background myself it's cool to see the system in use here.
The one major complaint I have was that there wasn't all that many games streamed compared to how many were played, as much as I love watching Day9 and JP banter about SC2 there was a lot of times where we were missing some really good games. A suggestion would be to always have an admin host all the games. I have no idea how many admins you had but you wouldn't need that many, however you would obviously need a battle.net account for each game. The reason for this is so you can always switch the stream to a game in progress with ease and it should help with always knowing exactly what is being played and where.
The professional approach with all the casters (except Husky ofc) wearing jackets was a nice touch, HD definitely looked the part. More player interviews with some more varied questions rather than just "how did you feel about your last game", would be very welcome. I would suggest having a dedicated interviewer who is good at it (the opposite of that dumbass who presented IEM would be a good start), and have them just going around all the time getting some interviews in and generally getting in among the crowd and the players with a camera and mic. With this you have a perfect "filler" so you can cut to live interviews at good times and play some pre-recorded stuff during the lulls where the casters are eating, taking a break or you are having some delays getting games started.
1. The HD Stream was great. (For those of you complaining about it cutting off the sides, did you ever consider changing to a wider resolution? 1280*720 made it look perfect).
2. Here's my opinion of the casters. Day9 and JP were of course awesome, Husky was more or less fine but HD was pretty bad. I'm really not trying to be a hater, and I know it was his first lan event, but there was so much stuff he said that was so completely wrong I had to end up muting him.
3. I don't know what your staff situation was like but I feel like all of the huge gaps between play could have been filled with more interviews, or even someone just walking around with a camera showing people "this is what MLG raleigh looks like!" rather than just one view of the spectators.
4. I could have appreciate a bit more explanation about the format. I mean, I'm not stupid and I caught on pretty fast, but I feel like a lot of people were confused by it. I really like the double elimination format and would like to see it again, but I think a bit of explanation of the way it works would help out a lot of people. Also, more frequent updates in terms of saying who lost to who (and showing the brackets visually) would have been nice as it would have turned the stream into a contained viewing experience, rather than me having to keep getting off my futon, going over the computer and alt tabbing out to find out who else won.
5. I know this is nitpicking and it doesn't really matter since I paid it anyway (and would pay it again) but I feel like $10 was a little steep for 2 days and the number of matches. Maybe for three days and/or more in between-match content.
In any case, I think this was really great for your first event and I'm really excited to see your other SC2 events, and will continue to support you guys by buying the HD streams and buying lots of hot pockets (haha). Thanks for the entertainment and I hope you guys keep up the good work!
Would have definitely liked to see Machine vs incontrol rather than Nony vs Jetty. I mean, ideally you wouldn't want Machine and incontrol to play one another so early, but if they're going to, I'd like to watch it.
Maybe go over the brackets a little more often, maybe show some highlights from replays of uncasted matches, if that's within your power (since I know MLG may be handling most of the production.)
Thought HDH had a decent amount of chemistry, but I can only stand hearing carriers called collosus, hearing that tanks are the counter to vikings, many other vocabulary errors and poor attempts at [what seem to be scripted] jokes before muting it. I appreciate all their hard work, and I hate to be a hater, but I just feel there are better options for casters when it comes to tournaments, assuming day9/jp don't want to ride solo and need a second team to alternate with.
Maybe some kind of showmatches to fill the time? Not sure if you guys are crazy busy during breaks or what, but that's just an idea.
I like the idea of an extended series in theory, but the grand finals is less exciting if its determined in 3 games. Generally speaking, grand finals should have a huge build-up, and, if not completely one-sided, go on for over an hour. HuK winning 2 games and it being over was kind of anticlimactic to me. Considering the extended series is more of an MLG thing, I realize this may be outside of your power, but still
All in all, good tournament, liked day9/jp, liked the stream quality and will be tuning in to any future events.
i REALLY REALLY liked how you did the map preview thing before hand... it's really cool for newer players and it's small things like that that will get people who aren't into as much into it more and make them understand what exactly in the game is happening and why... commentary was excellent, players were great. looked like it needed more chairs for the people that were there all sitting on the floor maybe something you guys could look into next time but nonetheless it was a great tourney thanks for putting it on
I watched a lot of the stream and here is my bucket list JP:
-Full screen video on 1680x1050 cut off the sides of the video, only half the minimap and hardly the 1st number of the supply count was visible
-Especially on friday the "we don't know when the game starts, but just talk 15 minutes to fill time" segments annoyed me a good bit. On Saturday there were just random crowd shots and an overlay with a "next game X vs Z" wich I liked better. I do not remember if those periods were without background music, wich I would prefer, so I could tab out and just tune back in, when another game starts.
-I liked how you broke up the established "caster teams".
-Do NOT force Husky in a suit jacket. The rest of you already look quite uncomftable in them.
-The only caster comment that had me cringe (once again after the ESL) was Day9 asking the audience to cheer. Read the crowd...people sitting on the floor and watching passively for hours won't just suddenly jump up and scream like their lungs out. The german "fremdschämen" ("ashamed by proxy"(?)) comes to mind, when I hear Day9 do that.
-Invite more Zerg, so you can show some of the less common matchups at least in the beginning of a tournament.
Thats it for me, overall I enjoyed watching and will most likely tune in again.
"Look at your man. Now look at me. Look at your man again. Now look at me."
-You should only have Day[9] and yourself casting, maybe even tasteless or apollo, etc. I felt the other casters weren't up-to-par with the MLG event. They were just rambling, no game knowledge. -Different maps would be great, custom ones, etc. -Interviews, you need moar. -Replays,replays, replays
I really think you needed a second desk or someone to go to to summarize recent results. The casters really were often looking off screen or mumbling about results they weren't sure about. Barring that the casters should have a clean page of recent results on a webpage they could refer to without stumbles.
Also there was a lot of downtime waiting for games to comment on while good games were happening.
Actually having two sets of casters rotating between games would have been great. So one game ends and you go to the other casters who then start up the next game. Not sure if that would be cost effective, as I guess you'd need extra gear. I guess one set of casters could be completely off camera, and the others at the desk.
Anyway to summarize--more games and better result summaries and updates. But I really liked the cast over-all and the casters.
I liked the combination of HD/Husky and Day9/JP. The first are entertainers, but are slowly missing whats going on in the games. So mixing them up would result in an entertaining AND analysing coverage. The commentators have been the highlight of the tourney sadly.
As in stated in another Thread. The games very most of the time boring as hell. No one can improve that, just the players. Also I'm missing emotions, look at korean events, you dont understand a word, but u love to watch them goin crazy if anything happens.
I would consider du prepare some "fillers": ie: Mapreviews, critical reviews of Maps and tactics, Playerhistory and style. Perhaps more interviews, I really like to hear the players getting more involved.
Also very IMPORTANT to me.
PLZ feature Custom Maps, which lead to longer better more epic games. Blizzard has to see that their maps dont work like they should. There is a reason why Metalopolis is the alltime favourite map!
On August 29 2010 22:11 Whalecore wrote: Awesome event and awesome casting!
What I think could improve: - Better summary between matches. Show brackets, explain who played who, who got beaten and how/when. When you're streaming online, a lot of people will join the the feed mid-cast, and it can be a bit confusing to see who's progressing and what not. All in all a great show and well done casters and crew!
Exactly what I thought. I don't care much about interviews. A few here or there are good. But definitely find a way to show the brackets when you're talking about them. The map preview was pretty cool, I guess. Reminded me of American Gladiators when the chick explains the set up before the match lol. Overall, great casting! I enjoyed it.
I completely agree with this. Because of the lack of explanations between the games of who else ways playing who, and the casters not even knowing what round they were casting, it was just like watching a bunch of games in a row rather than watching an actual tournament. Showing brackets before each match and saying who else is playing who would give it much more of a "tournament feel".
Since I've been watching MLG ever since they started streaming, this one was no difference. Everything was fine imo. There could have been more pre/post game interviews. The ingame lighting looked kinda dark from my side. I had personally no problem with some of the matches you guys choose to broadcast but I think you guys could have picked better matches to stream. SjoW for example, we never saw any of his matches and Socke as well.
Even though we're suppose to treat them like everyone else it could have hyped things up a bit more hyped consider how these guys come from Europe, who is suppose to be better than the North American region but get no stream time. Overall it was fine. Know the players better, JP constantly saying "he's been doing pretty good" to who ever he thought that fit, became pretty obvious at one point, doesn't say much about the players or Day9 getting away with "Select has no LAN experience". Things like he recently placed x. at this tournament or mentioning that HuK is coming into this tournament after a rather poor performance at IEM and winning this whole thing.
-More player interviews between matches! There was a lot of downtime and that would have been much more interesting to watch since the casters looked too exhausted to recap things on their own. -It was a struggle to find the brackets and the matchups on the first day, I had really no idea what was going on. -Casting was good, but there are many ways they could improve themselves if they make the effort. -Invite more zergs. I think only 3 Z games were casted, and one was with someone who was a complete noob. -If there is a staff shortage or something get incontrol to do interviews, that guy is awesome.
I think Husky and HD did a fantastically entertaining job!!!! Entertainment is what most people tune in for (at least the mainstream) and these guys provide it in bags. Day9 and JP were nice too but they werent as entertaining (I liked watching them tho as well). I have found most of the criticism unfounded and overly harsh. They will all get better with more experience of live casting. Mixing up the casting pairs was refreshing and should be done more.
More player interviews would be greatly appreciated. Maybe some before the tournament (these could be pre-recorded like on the news) so you can get a view of the players hopes for the tournaments. Also maybe interview the teams together so its quicker and theres always something to talk about. Also interviews of non-players would be good like the team managers. How about asking the fans there some questions??
More video of the venue and the different areas and how the place looked would be nice to give the guy at home an impression of just how big this is. Maybe a shot of the outside of the venue and a sped up run to the gaming area would be nice (pre-recorded ofc)
More cast matches overall would be greatly appreciated. There seemed to be a lot of deadspace which wasnt filled up with commercials and casters talking for tooo long about nothing important. More cast games please!!! Maybe have 2 streams??
Get a better variety of commercials pls!! The same 6 or 7 were shown in the same order and then they were shown again straight away. Please break them up so we dont get the same roll shown 3 times in a row.
Maybe remove the double elimination thing in the last stages (quarter and on) so its a proper knockout. Have the finals a Bo7 and the semis a Bo5. This would make it deadly and intense at the end.
Could you get the players to NOT cover their heads with hoodies etc when they are playing or in the interviews at least. The interview with Huk was really strange and I felt it took away professionalism from the event. Maybe get the casters to wear t-shirts or blazers, but defo not hoodies like by husky. That was just kinda amateur I felt.
Hopefully there will be more events in the future and as a first go I thought it was a good effort (7/10). The stream was great btw here in Europe. I enjoyed myself although the first day went into the early morning but the second day was right on time.
Asking for feedback is awesome btw!!!!! MLG rules.
The only thing i can complain about is the cutoff of the screen in full screen other than that i was very impressed it was awesome how entertaining everything was and how you could tell how much fun you guys were having i will definitely be watching more MLG.
- HD needs to do less "ladies and gentlemen". Seems like a go to crutch. - Get the players names right. Many were mispronounced by one or more casters on various occasions. - *Please* don't say "X is about to happen". I've said this before but when you are wrong it makes you look like a total idiot. And if you're right, then you have nothing to say after X does happen. - I still like the idea of one person being play-by-play and the other being color commentator. All the casters seem to want to fill both roles and it feels a little odd because of it. - I like the current two sets of casters together. I think you should stick with them and practice casting outside of tournies (on your own). Learn how to work with the other person best. It will show when the real casts are done. You'll produce a better product.
Granted I'm not a player, but I think you guys need to branch out and change the maps a bit. Throw in a few player designed maps.
It's obviously related to the balance issues, and we keep saying "wait for tourneys to start picking up REAL maps, then some of these things might get sorted out!" Well, to date, no one is picking up the other maps, so it would be absolutely amazing if MLG lead the charge.
Obviously it'd be experimental as we see which maps are better for which but you could like release a list of 4 or 5 potential maps for testing and then a month before the event, you have the players choose the 2 most balanced maps and go from there. I think a big tourney like MLG doing it is the only way we're going to see 3rd party maps enter the scene.
Right, as an avid viewer of previous MLG events along with being an avid viewer of Starcraft 2, I want to add my personal thoughts, whilst trying to remain as impartial as possible towards my personal like/dislike of certain aspects. Just as a warning (not that I think it's necessary since you can probably see the size of this post) that this is a big Wall of Text.
There are a few key areas that need to be discussed: 1) The Format 2) The Player Pool 3) The Map Pool 4) The Stream Quality 5) Scheduling 6) The Casting 7) Down-time 8) Final Thoughts
I'll address these issues one at a time from my own Point of view and an impartial one.
1) The format, well for streaming or spectating the format, even single elimination, is very unfriendly. With a 64 player pool squeezed over 2 days you are going to have a lot of games clashing, in the First few rounds, confounded by double-elimination you basically can Only cast 1, maybe 2 series from a round, that's going to mean a lot of missed games. If you want to keep this event spread over 2 days (possibly 3 given the fact it could possibly be extended to that time) the player pool is too big, I realise there were a lot of sign-ups and MLG wants to give players a chance, but as a streamer 64 players in a double-elimination means a huge chunk of games missed.
I much prefer the Style the wow players adopt, with a round-robin Style format moving Into a double elimination. This leads to more games can be casted and so-forth. Now this Style Really relies on a smaller player base, which is a separate issue I will come on to, but personally group Style matches means you can eliminate players Just as easily and have easily scheduled matches people can tune in for. I would much rather have 16 good players where I can tune in specifically for a certain match-up that I find interesting, rather than 64 players where I have to apparently have luck to get a good Game shown on the screen before the semi-finals.
I also want to add that the extended Game issue is way too confusing for a spectator audience, the fact that the TL Live report thread had something like 10 pages of people trying to explain this to others really confounds the issue, I feel double-elimination is perfectly easy to explain and comprehend but when you go Into the final with an extended series bo7 instead of 2 bo3's I feel this is unfair. I feel that there is little Point in a double-elimination format if the loser is further punished by being behind further in a bo7, as it so happens the extended bo7 Actually helps the loser bracketted person, which is again rather superfluous in my opinion. If you want to go with double elimination, which personally I am a fan of if they are not going to be bo5's, then there definitely needs to be no tournament History bought in to avoid confusion for the spectator.
2) The Player Pool was surprisingly poor, both in quality and variety. This is bound to happen unfortunately though due to the GSL being scheduled at the same time as MLG, this automatically meant you were going to lose a lot of players to that tournament, and I very much doubt MLG could compete with the GSL, however something else needs to be done for the player pool. Whilst I like the idea of sign-ups, I feel the player pool was too big and too low calibre for a high prize pool tournament. There definitely needs to be some form of offline tournament, so to speak, to whittle down the numbers and Only bring 16 or 32 Max of the Best Starcraft 2 players who want to go to MLG. Especially if you are going to go for a 32 invite/32 sign-up format you need to have a balance of races, sure there are way more terran and protoss playing at a higher level in North America and Europe, such is the Flavour of the Month right now, but inviting only 3 zergs, one of which switched to terran I believe is just not right for spectating.
It is Only logical that non-mirror match-ups are more exciting than mirror-matchups.Mirror-matchups are almost always going to be more technical and "samey" than a fluid PvZ,PvT or ZvT, which is appealing to a certain demographic of really knowledgable sc2/sc1 players, I mean I never followed Brood War but Fantasy vs. Flash was really fun to watch once figuring out certain sc1 mechanics and really loving how mistakes and more obvious to see and technicalitys and such.
Personally I find the ZvT matchup is the most engaging, basically because it is whether the Zerg can hold to the late Game and both players have to engage different types of micro, compared to the same type of micro you get in mirrors. Now, sure, if there are more Protoss and Terran players playing well now, then its Only Natural there should be more of them at the tournament, but all this means are a lot of mirror matches or one type of match-up, at the very worst it should be a minimum of 25% representation of a race. Variety is the key here, if you are going to have loads of one or two types of matches the event is going to become boring, sure the IEM had a lot of ZvT's and that actually got really irritating because the openings of the games became very similar.
Whilst these 3 paragraphs are perhaps contradictory, I feel like you should have something like 50%-75% of the players being invite-only based on race-composition and performance in previous MLG tournaments/battle.net rankings. Whilst the remaining 50/25% of the competition is filled out by an offline qualifier, whilst this may Skew race compositions slightly, if you have a solid minimum 25% of invites being from each race you at least have a good representation of all the races, like shown at the esl as long as the quality of the players is good and there are enough they will progress through the tournament. I don't want to argue semantics here but the protoss players Really underperformed in that tournament and I don't Really have any sympathy since probably the best 8 (maybe 1 arguably shouldn't have been there) made it through the group stages.
3) The Map Pool is almost Always going to be a dilemma, mainly because of the poor diversity of the Blizzard map pool. Personally as a spectator I loved the fact that Desert Oasis was included, but since players could Just downvote one map it was almost Always going to be downvoted. I Remember Day[9] specifically saying he had a specific strategy for that island map in brood war for the WCG's he attended, and that he Just picked it knowing he could Win on that specific map. Whereas at MLG nobody could Really get anything out of practising Desert Oasis specific builds because 99% of the time it would Just End up downvoted and Never seeing the Light of Day.
Personally I want to see it included in the map pool and no down-voting to occur, perhaps this is unpopular with players and Desert Oasis would still not see much choice but I feel that somebody who went out and practised a specific map should be able to pick SaiD map regardless of how the over player feels, maybe there are maps they don't like, but hey that's why it is loser's pick. The map made the map pool so obviously the tournament organisers feel it is suitable for tournament play, it shouldn't be down to the players to snub a map that viewers may want to watch.
I could go on and on about the map pool Really but Scrap-station should be in the map-pool, it is a good map and has different dynamics to the vast majority of the maps. I would definitely agree with limiting the map pool to the ladder pool, simply because it's easier for players to practise these maps on ladder and in custom, perhaps if certain maps become popular MLG could adopt these, but right now it should definitely be confined to the map-pool.
The map-overview was ok.. but I feel like it should be an option, you know one of those secondary streams you get at events where you can browse through technical information if you want to, it Really seemed to Just interrupt the commentator's giving their own opinions on the maps and so interrupted what they are likely to comment on throughout the match, whilst the map information is very useful and valid it is out of place because different commentators place different values on certain aspects of a map. Some people will want to discuss positioning, others the base layout, others expansion patterns, others choke points. There are different aspects of the maps that certain commentators like to focus on and giving a generic preview on top of the caster's preview they are already giving is Just too over the top. These sort of things should be on a secondary stream and in the pre-game show, I.E at the Start of the Day and such.
I also feel that "selected maps" and best of 3's don't work, each map is very different and going to favour a certain race and having certain maps definite starting maps (I believe they were anyway) for each of the rounds means that if you get unlucky, say a zerg player on steppes, then you are probably down for the count. I personally believe every round should probably Start on Metalopolis, it is probably the most balanced map in the map pool right now and has certain rng elements that mean it can favour 1 race or the other, and indeed make some strategies viable and others not so. If you want to go with a loser's pick format every match should definitely Start on Metalopolis with the others choosing, I don't think you will find many players who dislike playing on Metalopolis and more often than not it is the map ChOseN for the second Game (unless a terran wins and then it is seemingly Steppes of War, but lets not get Into semantics).
Perhaps offering Metalopolis First means you have a somewhat bland variety of maps, but I feel we already have this situation where Metalopolis, Xel'Naga Caverns and Steppes of War are probably the most played maps in the tournaments mostly because Steppes is what terran choose when they lose, Metalopolis is what Zerg seemingly default to (although this decision is based on some rng) and Xel'Naga Caverns is usually a secondary choice for all players. You can't Really do much about that since the map pool isn't big enough yet, hopefully the ladder pool will expand over time and we get some other maps in the pool, personally I hOpe crossfire gets in the ladder pool as it is probably my favourite custom map to play on as Zerg.
4) On to the Stream Quality, there are a few points: the free stream was pretty good quality, I akin this to how the Wow-arena stream free quality was Really good for the First few events then it got drastically worse whilst the hd-quality remained the same, please do not do that, this is the precise ReasoN I stopped watching the wow stream, I Actually paid for the hd-quality stream when the difference wasn't so big, but then once the free stream was so awful that you were basically forced Into the HD stream I didn't want to pay at all. Please do not do this.
Secondly, 480p is not HD, not by a long shot. Please do not advertise it as such, 720p is what an HD stream is and I would gladly fork out Money for an HD stream in 720p, a free stream should be in 480 or 360p and the HD stream in 720p. I chose to ignore MLG for vast passages of time on Saturday in Favour of watching the I40 LAN, where sure the quality of players was not as great but the quality was superb, the 720p provided there was exquisite, I would have easily paid Money for a stream of that quality at MLG, and watched all Day, but because the HD stream was not what I would call HD by any shape or form, I would Never pay for it.
If MLG can't fork out the cash or don't have good enough equipment to provide a 720p stream I suggest not providing the option and giving everybody 480p quality, maybe that means less revenue for you but 480p in Starcraft 2 Just does not cut it for a Game of good graphical quality where you want to be able to see things such as the minimap with pristine clarity.
Obviously the issue where full-screening the stream cut-off a good chunk of the screen if you were not in the exact aspect ratio of the screen was pretty ludicrous aswell, I was simply control-zooming to get the stream as big as possible without full-screening to compensate for this.
I guess I will include it here but the adverts definitely need to have some gaming prowess, I know that sponsers obviously need their Air time, but perhaps ask them to provide gaming related commercials at the very least (apart from maybe old spice, because their advert is amazing <3). I don't Really MinD having lots of adverts but they should be gaming related products or at least gaming related commercials, I realise this Point would be pretty hard to accomplish but I think lots of people would appreciate it and perhaps view their adverts if they were more akin to the current genre being broadcasted.
5) I touched on this in previous sections but the scheduling was pretty dire, both because of the long downtime and the fact that so many matches were happening at once and the streamer was given the choice of Only watching one match. This probably has to be solved through previous resolutions to other sections of this post and perhaps subsequent sections but I feel like this was a Major problem.
The most important Point I want to make is how MLG needs to spread this tournament out over 3 days, if it's a weekend I don't Really like how an RTS Game, where matches can take up to say 40 minutes compared to the fast paced Action (relatively) of fps or wow-arena, (and with a bigger player pool) can be fit Into the same time-frame as those events. I respect you had 1 (maybe more?) Wow players in the Starcraft 2 tournament who wanted to participate in both, but Really I would much rather have had less overall matches per Day but more streamed matches overall across 3 days than it all being jam-packed in to 2 days and missing out on half the matches.
The second Point is you need parallel streams if you want to maintain a high player invite list, if the tournament is to remain at a high invite level we need 2 streams so we can watch them both, even if that means swapping in different commentator's, perhaps solo casting some, so people can have breaks. I feel like people would greatly appreciate having some choice if matches are going to be scheduled with conflicting start-times. So this could be solved v.i.a not having conflicting Start times or by simply having parallel streams.
6) Casting, this is a tricky subject without sounding far too personal and neglecting a lot of people's thoughts and views. Regardless to say that there are a few things I want to comment on here. I don't think there could be a contrasting Style of delivery than HD & Husky, compared to JP & Day[9], I'm going to excuse to mix-matching because I don't think it worked. Whether I am for or against these commentators I feel by having all 4 here you get a group of people who Only want to listen to HD & Husky and a group of people who Only want to listen to JP & Day[9]. I feel like their styles are way too different, personally I prefer the latter of these 2 combinations but you cannot dismiss how great the synergy is for HDH I Just personally prefer how people sound as a spectator and JP & Day[9] "sound better", I don't think I could explain it properly it's Just their tone is soft and not harsh and I prefer to listen to that.
Now, whilst you can see how this brings in the viewers for MLG, something commendable since you get a bunch of people who are casually Into starcraft 2 and like the more color commentary of HDH and the people who like the softer more technical commentary of Day[9] & JP, it Just creates too many problems. Again, like with the previous post, I feel if you want to invite all 4 people to cast they need to be on parallel streams, even later on commentating on the same Game so people can choose their commentary. Taking an example from say "the BBC" when you view a sporting event on their website you can choose between radio commentary and television commentary, which personally I Really appreciate as I can pick and choose which commentator's I like to hear on a specific Game.
Of course MLG is also a live-casted event so casters would have to share the main-stage, but I feel a separate "back-door" commentary booth where the other pair could provide commentary to a spectator at home would Really add to the quality of the event and not leave me in a position where I Really Just want to mute the stream.
I also feel their is a big advocation for employed observers covering the match for the main-stage. I feel that commentary is Always a good thing and that having separate screens for commentator's to look at is great, but having say a second monitor for all of them to look at where the observer is looking would be an added bonus, it would mean they would miss less stuff caught in the heat of the moment, or perhaps they could let the main screen cover battles, which perhaps a spectator is more interested in whilst they pan for drops or look at the decisions a player is making and commentating on them, along with drop-play for example.
There was a recent thread here on Team Liquid about how observing the Game is very important and I feel that if you could employ an "expert" observer who provided the stream observation that would Really add to a professional setup, there is nothing worse than a commentator getting caught up in the heat of the moment and missing important Action because they have too much stuff going on.
I also want to add about some of the other aspects, I feel like a tournament is not a place to be going "on and on" about balance, maybe some people love that discussion in a tournament but personally I would rather see between game discussion on strategy, tactics, mechanics and such rather than hearing Day[9] go on about how Zerg feels like a chore to play, I actually love playing Zerg it's just really fun for me to play and not everybody wants to hear the endless tales of balance/imbalance. Discuss them on the forums or in a pre-event show but not pre-game or in periods between games. I feel this was really annoying to hear since whilst balance is somewhat of an issue arguably a tournament is a tournament and I want players to be judged on how well they played and not on various imbalances that may or may not exist, at least at a big tournament.
Other than that, put Husky in a suit, it was ridiculous that he was wearing a hoody when everyone else was wearing a suit for commentating, it was highly unprofessional and would have made me want to switch off if I hadn't known him before. I don't MinD if nobody is wearing a suit and somebody wants to wear a hoody, but it's highly unprofessional to have a casting uniform and 1 caster not abiding by that.
7) I couldn't Really think of an appropriate title for this but I Really wanted to comment on what was happening during the down-time of the event and such. Firstly I think it was somewhat ludicrous the amount of game-stopping that had to occur, I Remember one Game where Select had to wait a good 30 seconds for the Game to be paused after requesting it, that's a pretty big deal in Starcraft 2 and the other player seemed clueless what to do and the extra time in-game probably disrupted him more than the pause screen would have done. I realise you don't want people to tactically use pause and therefore have this request rule in here, but it Really disrupts the flow of the Game. I feel like each player should perhaps have an observer (similar to korean booth girls) who would pause the Game from a separate Machine if their player has a problem, this is done instantly as soon as the player has a legitimate ReasoN explained, i.e less than 5 seconds.
Secondly, the downtime before games seemed Really excessive. There were plenty of times where computers were being re-arranged or something like this and the commentators had to fill in this time, I realise that running a lan on battle.net is absolutely attrocious but I feel there was Just way too much downtime/re-arranging. Obviously Players can't sit next to each other but if you aren't going to employ a "booth-style" system on the main-stage then this needs to be pre-arranged for the games.
I want to add how at the beginning of the matches stat-screens should be introduced, even if its Just their name and played race and maybe a fun-fact or something. Perhaps a W/L record from bnet along with match-up histories (if that information is available) about how they fair depending on what race the opponent is. Obviously this will be much easier to implement in subsequent MLG tournaments because of past results in SaiD tournaments. Something like this Just to fill-in the time or at the very least delaying starting of the "pre-game" until the players are entirely set up so the time before each Game is very standard. Obviously certain hiccups at the Start of a Game might be common but they shouldn't be delaying the actual Start of the loading screen and such.
Post-game analysis was also pretty thin mostly. Their were sparsely any interviews, I mean if there was one thing I took away from IEM it was how much I enjoyed the player interviews, <3 Take, they give you a great insight to the players and well as a spectator I had no idea what half of these players looked like, I Only Really knew how NonY, qxc and HuK looked like because of previous stuff I had watched. So whilst pictures of them in-game were good I simply had absolutely no idea who was who, interviews and stat screens add to this and Really get people behind certain players.
I can safely say, for example, that before the IEM I had no idea what DIMAGA looked like or his personality or attitude other than he was a very aggressive zerg player in online tournaments which were streamed. However after the IEM you could see how happy he was, his attitude and personality seemed to be something I Really took a liking to and regardless of his play made me want to cheer for him compared to some other players. I also knew who he was so I could see his specific reactions on the player cams during a Game.
I also want to say that their wasn't really enough "closeness" of the crowd, plenty of times on the stream you could hear massive roars and screams from the halo (i'm guessing) in the background whereas the Starcraft 2 crowd was barely involved. I can't comment much because I wasn't there but I feel that at the very least there needs to be "sound-dampening" of the other venues so you don't get random noises from other crowds whilst watching the stream, it was really annoying trying to watch a good play just to hear a random cheer.
8) I thought for a First time streaming of a NA tournament it was pretty good, the stream was better than I expected (based on IEM and MLG's usual quality of streams) and I mean you can't Control that the final games ended up being a whole series of PvP's (probably the most boring match-up for me to watch personally). I feel that some work definitely needs doing to make this *the* North American Starcraft 2 Esports tournament, specifically stream quality and a higher calibre player pool.
I feel with some of the issues I have raised here addressed the tournament could become much better than Raleigh and hope to tune into the next MLG weekend and see an improved tournament.
First of all I think you did a great job. =) I had a great time watching the games I did.
I don't know how it all is planned or organized, but it seems to me that you as commentators have to take on many different roles compared to traditional tv-casting. You are commentators, hosts/anchors, on-the-spot-reporters and expert sources during the same show. In addition to that it seems you have to handle some of the organisation as well. Getting players ready, inviting them and creating games.
If the roles were split up a bit more I think you could devote more time and energy to each role. Research the players you don't know, if you are going to commentate a game. Even though they are relatively unknowns, they might have relateable stories, you can throw in, adding to the experience of watching the game. Remember that in the game all players look the same apart from the name. This works well with the players whose names we already know because we associate them with other stories and their history, but makes it can be bland when we see unknows we don't have any associations with. It doesn't have to be their whole biography, but simple things like why they choose the race they play, favourite units, what they see as their weakness strength. etc. Simple things that sets them apart from the rest.
If it are well known players make sure the details are correct. The truth lies in the detail.
Prepare the on-the-spot interviews. As you get experience doing them, you probably find out which questions gives the best answers. The interviews seemed pretty random to me.
I loved the map presentation with the graphics. It might have been a bit too fast for my taste. And it would be nice to have them at the beginning of the broadcast. The special tournament structure with the double knockout could use some a graphical explanation and updates.
I was watching the stream from my home and here's my feedback:
Stream Was great. Worked perfectly from start to finish. Free stream quality is decent enough, unlike the ESL free stream. Really nothing to complain about. I'm planning on getting HD next time. Only issue is that Flash fails to properly display a wide screen stream (in fullscreen mode) on a 5:4 or 4:3 monitor, but as long as I can watch the stream in VLC it's not a real problem.
Casters Day9 + anyone was great. But I did not like the HD + Husky setup. They seemed really uncomfortable, especially in their first few casted matches. Might be their lack of LAN casting experience but I didn't like it. Their mediocre game knowledge and understanding is really annoying. You really should invite Day9 to every event if possible. JP was doing good as well.
Tournament I really like double elim, especially for an event with free sign-ups because everyone gets a second chance. Would suck if you pay money to go there, lose two games and drop out of the tournament. The only problem I have with it is that it's hard to follow individual players if you don't have a site with a proper bracket that's regularly updated. The GotFrag bracket was a total mess. Needs to improve.
Schedule Was good, but the times are difficult when you're watching from Europe. Half of the first day was past 1:00 am. Second day was better. Guess you can't do much about that, but it's hard to pay for premium stream if you can't even watch everything because you fall asleep half way through.
Broadcasted Games Some of the games that were shown were really boring. The first round games were completely one sided. I would've rather watched Machine and Incontrol than a pro vs noob game where I know who'll win before the game starts. Later on with fewer games played it was better obviously.
Misc I would really like to see more pre/post game interviews. You couldn't really see much of the players except a few seconds between the games. IEM was better in this regard even though their interviewer was not very good.
Overall I thought it was really good. I'd definitely watch again, most likely with HD.
0) Great casting, esp. day9, yourself, hd and husky need more knowledge. 1) More Player interviews 2) Crowd shots/participation 3) Brief on players previous games (2 win etc. ) and what you think they are aiming for
less importantly - Players rating themselves for final games (ie. like OSL, star quality, defense, offense etc. apm averages, im willing to help with gathering data) - Chairs for the crowd! - Replays! Replays! Recaps! Inbetween new matches to review great plays or pivotal moments for further understanding.
It was a really good job! I liked the rotation of casters, however something i did not like (too much) were the lack of diversity in the games, it seemed like every game was toss defending against an mm push at the same time, of the same size or zerg defending reapers and if it lasted the mmm ball. The last few games of PvP were intense and excellent though.
Personal opinion, over all it was good. (I watched from home.)
4 casters, one game at a time, waste of resources. Do it as IEM did with a second stream, that way people can pick and choose. Or just do a secondary stream without casters with just an observer moving the camera with production tab on. That way you can view both games at the same time.
You can have two streams easily due to it being b-net based. Just have the second stream be casted from off location, saves on costs of flying people in as well. This secondary stream will get the "worse" games from what one knows beforehand.
The dead time wasn't all that fun when watching the stream. A lunch break is fine, I need to eat as well. Have pre-recorded player interviews or something like that in the breaks between games when it isn't lunch/dinner.
I liked day 2 more than day 1 due to being in Europe. Time zones.
I would like prior to game info to be expanded if we have that much dead time. Things like map info, player info and anecdotes about the players. Make us care about generic player number 3. ^^
Oh and use the tabs top left. The production tab can cover the mistakes of casters and observers to a large degree.
Also: - Fullscreen view was cut off on the edges. This is bad. - Game sound was low in the matches. Would make the casts much more entertaining if I could actually hear the sounds in the games.
Day 9's Audio level was bad at times but its expected . You and Day did great commentating had a great flow.
HDH didn't really have a flow in the beginning of the event but it really did improve the longer they talked and being their 1st event I think they did well.
I think the largest issue was that the commercials got repetitive REALLY FAST. As an avid commercial watcher this was frustrating >
Apart from that I'd criticize HDH's knowledge of the game. I don't know if MLG can force them to just learn more about SC2, although expecting that is a little ludicrous, but it'd be nice if those two could just keep themselves up to speed on the jank. I could have pointed out a couple of instances where they were flat wrong, coupled with a LOT of restatements and obvious observations.
JP, amazing job all around on the weekend. The professionalism of the entire MLG production was outstanding. I think you guys got it 99% right so take these minor criticisms with that in mind.
- As people have stated, a little more recognition of where we were in the brackets and what was going on in the tourney as a whole. Obviously this isn't an issue later in the tourny but when it started it was hard to tell what was going on.
- You guys need to mic the crowd and have it at a low level in the mix. When a player does something sick and the crowd gets excited, I want to hear that. It gives the event a more live and bigger feel. Even during the finals, it felt like it was just you and Day watching a VOD. I want that BIG feel.
- I bought the 'HD' stream to support esports and to let MLG know that I appreciate them promoting Starcraft, but it would be nice if the 'HD' stream worked on Linux. Also, you should NOT be calling it an 'HD' when it's clearly not HD. You should change the name to reflect this.
On August 30 2010 01:47 tehguy wrote:- You guys need to mic the crowd and have it at a low level in the mix. When a player does something sick and the crowd gets excited, I want to hear that. It gives the event a more live and bigger feel. Even during the finals, it felt like it was just you and Day watching a VOD. I want that BIG feel.
There were definitely times where you could hear the crowd after something exciting happened. It was pretty quiet, but it was certainly there. It could have been made a little easier to hear them, though.
I found most of it to be great. The only real complaint I have is that the map preview was at the finals/semifinals. I'm sure the viewers that were at the event could have used some chairs. For a first event, everything was solid and well done. The casting was great, the players were great, and I loved Day9 and JP storytime =D
Well, I've said it all over the place, might as well put it here, right?
I think the event was great despite delays earlier in day 1 and getting the stream to load. It did a lot of things right that were better than IEM. No troubles with the stream after it was loaded though. No skipping or buffering!
Little to no audio troubles from the casters and most were dealt with quickly. Specifically any of the casters talking too loudly into the mic and then being tuned down. I've seen tournaments were this is NEVER addressed. There were a lot of troubles during interviews, mostly with interviewer not holding the mic close enough so we can barely hear the interviewee. Not sure if they just weren't speaking loudly enough.
Sweat blazers for all the casters... except Husky. Added to that extra bit of professionalism. And the casting was excellent as always.
Map previews so those unfamiliar can have an easier time following. I think that was a good touch.
Schedules, standings, and the stream were all easily findable. Just go to the MLG site and there it is! Definitely I was running around like a headless chicken on IEM's website. The live blog was REALLY nice and made it easy to follow the progress of the tournament. It should be on by default though, I didn't even now it wasn't "live" until I saw the button to make it so.
What could be improved on is showing the venue, crowd, or players during the downtime and between matches. This is what IEM did better. I want to get a sense of actually being there. Just a minor problem, but if it can be improved then great!
The matches actually casted are also a problem. Not sure who was in charge of picking which matches to cast. It is understandable that in the RO64 there aren't going to be many great matches, but there was Incontrol vs Machine in that round that could've been casted instead of Tyler stomping Jetty.
Also, the lack of booth babes escorting the winners is fail!
I had the fortune of being able to see a great chunk of the event, but even then following the bracket by simply viewing the stream (i.e. not tabbing) was a bit difficult. If the brackets could be thrown up a bit more often that would have been helpful.
I don't know if the commercials were used as fillers or they were run as often as they had to be. If the former is true, I think better filler content could have been done. Sometimes it just felt like it was the casters killing time between games. I understand players needed to get their stuff setup, but perhaps more player interviews or even quick highlight plays would have been nice. I really did enjoy most of the casters quite a bit, but they can only kill so much time between games. Furthermore, I think some quick player interviews could help the viewers empathize with them a bit more.
You could also probably take a page out of the MSL where you show the players' faces and their screens every so often. It has the same affect as the interviews -- it helps the viewer empathize with the players.
Other then that, it was a fantastic first event and couldn't have gone much better considering.
I don't know if this counts as complaining, but the general UI + the oktober plugin proved to be a not very use friendly experience. I had to load up Stream Transport since the plugin refused to work with Firefox and IE. Also, the ability to quickly rewind (a feature promoted by buying HD I believe?) was not to be found. I just found the entire thing more tedious than hit had ot be. Nonetheless, the stream itself was pretty good and very little hick-ups occurred once operational.
-better organization would be cool. More game streaming, maybe less time between games and fill the gaps with interviews without a 5 minute gap between the game and interview possibly? There was a lot of wait time.
-easier to watch map analysis, not a chick reading the traits off a paper when she knows nothing about it. Also Instead of darting the camera all around on the map, have it being drawn on as you talk about it, like how RiseSC did it for broodwar on youtube. pre recording these are fine
-invest in some chairs! halo fans get a stadium, sc2 fans get a rug??
-scrap station, sup? also more community maps in the future like I think halo does it.
-players and booths would be cool once the chairs are set up. I know huk commented on liking the seperation between players and crowd, but I think the korean set up is way more professional, and more rewarding to people in the audience who show up. I didn't like the eliminated players sitting close distance behind the finalist players, a sound booth would eliminate that. I'm sure they were just trying to watch what huk was doing, but I'm thinking it had some effect on kiwikaki's mental state when he could see more players were watching huk's screen than his in the end.
-less angst from commentators! when they're nervous they should stay professional, some parts of the stream came off super nerdy lol, mostly Husky and day9's nervous moments. It's when they get too excited. Try out some other good commentators like diggitySC and RiseSC if they're down. I'd like this to appeal to as large an audience as it can, not just the nerds. Commentators should shoot for that. I'm not saying don't be yourself because that's always good, but try to be aware of annoying habits lol. This has potential.
-Maybe mix in some halo or WoW etc commentators once in a while too to attract some more attention from that crowd in some more promising games, if any of them play SC2. Obviously you wouldn't want them for technical commentary, but the ones who add a little color to games might be good. Them casting along day9 wouldn't be much worse than day9 + whoever else probably heh. It's not good for e-sports which is struggling to grow in NA to be divided by snobbiness like it is. Make a statement like that to show that we all want the same thing?
Personally, I thought the whole thing was good, wasnt great, but most people covered it. I just want to reiterate that the HDH combo should take some time off to play the game, maybe after the HDH2 Tourney. I mean its only a month in and HD is only playing 1 game a week! I think for everyone, it will benefit if they both just play, They get to enjoy the game they seem to love (maybe not who knows), and they learn and their casts become more insightful.
I've watched MLG events before and they have always been the same so i doubt any of the following will change, but...
1. Less adverts 2. Less talking 3. More games
I find it pretty ridiculous to have to wait 20mins for adverts, then another 20 minutes talking, then more talking while waiting for players/setting up. You could get to cast a shit ton more matches in that time. Broadcasting every match may be unrealistic, but every other event always shows way more stuff than MLG.
First off, I loved the event. It was marvelous for a first SC2 event from MLG.
Now some suggestions:
1. The full screen mode cut off the minimap, which made me go to watching it in the reduced size so I could pay attention to troop movements on the map.
2. The sheer number of matches would benefit from having a secondary stream.
3. Brackets shown as an overlay, or heck just a leaderboard with names on it would have helped.
4. Interviews were nice, but I would love to see more of them. It would have been interesting to interview some of the teams that came out to see what they did to prepare etc...
5. I heard that they had to nix the casters' audio at the event, so maybe some booths for the games that are cast. Course it would also give the featured players get used to actually playing in front of a crowd instead of head to head.
6. In downtime maybe fill it with interviews, replays of non-cast games with just game audio, or heck pull in other events that are going on (I watched some of the Halo 3 matches and enjoyed them, plus it might increase the watcher base for the other games).
7. Turn off the in-game music so it is easier to hear the other in-game audio.
8. Have players fill out info cards so the casters know some background on the players. You could probably do this at the sign-in of the tourney. I'm not worried about real names and such, but knowing where the players are from and their gaming background would be cool.
Things I really liked:
1. Mixing up the casters. 2. The quality of the free stream 3. Having a good mix of sign-ups and invited players (might want to increase the invited players simply to bump up the event, but not by too much). 4. Simply the entire event, I totally look forward to watching the next MLG event.
I (as sad as that may be) watched every hour of the SC2 coverage. First off as the first SC2 coverage by MLG I have to say overall a job well done. It was at least interesting enough to keep me watching from start to finish, with laundry and stuff in between :D
Here is a list of things to change:
- Get rid of HD and Husky - These guys put SC2 in a very very bad light for both new players and veterans alike. To new players they are giving them misleading information and making it even more difficult to follow. To veterans they are just pissing us off. If ever a person at home is noticing mistake after mistake it makes it feel very unprofessional.
- Brackets. I know you told us where to go to see them but viewers in general are lazy and want to have it pulled up for us to give a very nice visual. It helps us understand whats going on. The phrase about 1000 words vs a picture...yea something like that.
- More variety in the commercials. I understand you need to pay the bills, but seeing the same commercial (often twice or even 3 times in a break) over and over and over again drove me mad. It nearly pushed me to stop watching it was that bad.
- Background info. HD and Husky can only talk about the 'backdoor rocks' on blistering sands so many times before you're wasting the viewers time. I know they had to stall a bunch but really? The 'destructible' rocks were talked about in every video before literally the game was available (battle reports ftw). This also goes with point 1 to get rid of HD/Husky but background info on the players is so important. Like when football casters talk about the college they went to, or a funny/different story about them, maybe when they asked them an interview question etc etc. Let us know the gamers background, from where he grew up, to people he idolizes to his gaming style etc etc. People (maybe just me though) want all the info on that stuff as we can get. It helps us connect with the players, lets us share their experiences and creates a much more intimate atmosphere.
- I think someone mentioned in a much earlier post, but have an online poll or something to allow us to vote for certain match ups to be broadcast. This may be difficult to pull off which is understandable. But please, nony (or sorry, Tyler) vs some scrub that I could even beat was not cool esp when that epic game with machine and incontrol was on (if i recall correctly).
- Get the crowd some chairs please. - my puppet show when I was 6 had them. It looks amateur when kids are sitting on the floor, lying down etc. I dont even imagine it would add that much in costs but would help production value plus comfort for the fans.
I really enjoyed the event. Watched pretty much all of it from England. The free stream was fine, didn't lag at all. The edges being cut off were annoying but I'm sure that was a minor technical thing.
Both pairs of casters did a great job and mixing them up worked much better than I thought.
Most of what I think has been said, but I've got one or 2 suggestions
- Like others have said, if your going to have multiple casters cover multiple games. Maybe even get a couple of casters to go solo so you can cover even more and there isn't as much down time.
- Have an anchor that you can go back to after a match who can update on the brackets (with a graphic) and what else has been going on to pull it all together
- More interviews with the players, but also get in amongst the crowd and see how they feel about it. Maybe put a mic on the crowd so you can hear their cheers etc better because it gets the atmosphere going
Logistically this might be too hard, but if there was a "highlights" video that you could play after every few matches to show what happened in the games that were not streamed (simply show the big decisive battles and the gg's), that would make the tournament watching experience for us streaming it at home a lot more engaging and exciting.
Maybe have 1 or 2 maps from Iccup or other mapmakers. It'll increase the exposure of new maps and mapmakers, and help grow the scene since all the maps used in every tourney I've seen have been played to death. I suggest this since all the Broodwar maps I typically played on were all Kespa maps since no one really plays on the Blizzard maps all that much.
On August 29 2010 22:16 BigBadSkathe wrote: My biggest complaint is an issue that plagues other tournaments/events as well. There needs to be clearly defined caster roles. In pro sports during broadcasts there is always one clearly defined play-by-play commentator and one clearly defined color commentator, there is no overlap. It seems with all E-Sports the commentators both seem to want to do both, and it ends up with both of them trying to talk over each other, or worse, contradicting what the other person just said (accidentally or on purpose).
I completely agree with this. I love Day.9 but I think his daily show has gotten to his head. He talks over everybody and it seems as though he isn't even listening to the other commentator. When MLG hires a commentator,they should specify to them who will be the play-by-play and who will be the color commentator. This would really improve the overall experience a great deal.
- HDH, they are both color commentators, they suck at analysis. I liked you teaming them up with Day as he controlled the camera and would catch the important things (although, it'd be nice if there was only one person controlling the camera. I noticed several times him clicking on something waiting for HD or Husky to finish talking so he could talk about something important in the match).
- Stream fullscreen is broken, been mentioned several times.
- HD stream, not HD. If I'm gonna spend money on it, I want it to be worth it.
- More matches cast. It felt like there was a huge number of games and you guys couldn't cover them fast enough on Friday, then on Saturday there was tons of time wasted waiting on games. This felt weird, it should have been planned out better. Having both teams casting games and switching between the better matchups would have been best (aka, start out with Day+JP and if the matchup is really one sided then switch to HDH, who should be watching a different matchup, for the next game).
- Something needs to be done about the atmosphere cause it seemed really lame during the breaks in casting. Just a camera sitting there watching people walk by or looking at a bunch of people sitting on the floor. The interviews were OK, but it was pretty obvious that people just wing'd it. Coming up with better questions to ask players would be nice. Having people interview those in the crowd would be great too, e.g. asking who they want to win? etc. Just getting the crowd involved and letting the people viewing the stream see the crowd is pumped.
- The setup seemed very divided, there was the players in Asia, the casters in the US, and the crowd in Europe. or at leasts thats the way it felt. Day coming out and pumping up the crowd helped a bit, but it might as well not even been a LAN event otherwise. Thats the one thing the Koreans have really done well, they have the crowd watching the players in booths and what not. Even in the IEM the casters were there with the crowd behind them and the players were up on stage.
- Representation of zerg was pretty bad. I would have liked to seen more zerg invites go out (tough to find solid zerg players atm tho)
- More casters, the 4 were nice but Incontrol, Chill, DJWheat, Diggity (and others im sure i'm forgetting) are all great casters and could help fill in the dead space.
- Stories! Relating to the above, I love to hear about past events and the crazy stories that happened. Getting of a bunch of casters together to talk about funny stories and absurd things they've seen during big events is a lot of fun to hear. IMO a great way to pass the time is to get a big round table of all the players not playing atm and just letting them chat (with a caster guiding the convo). Think of the whole "after the catch" thing that Discovery did with Deadliest Catch. It lets the fans get to know the players and gets you vested in them winning.
1. Group stage and single elim rather than double elim 2. More Zerg players 3. Cast more games, perhaps with 2 streams
I enjoyed the event, I'll be sure to catch the next one.
Off topic: I really wish SC2 had something like HLTV for CS1.6. Sometimes the games being casted are not the ones I'm interested in. Being able to follow those as an observer would've been awesome.
On August 29 2010 22:26 s.a.y wrote: I was planning to blog it, but here it goes
1. Make an overlay with the results. It was so confusing to know who is gonna play who, as we had to search on irc, gotfrag (who got the matches wrong), liquipedia (i feel sorry for who every edited that thread). 2. Know your players. Print out liquipedia player pages to see what each player has won and what he loves to do. Little tidbits like the ones for the WoW player (nadagast?) were really good, but you can't get away with the statement that SeleCT has no LAN exp. 3. Stream quality was great and it never failed for me. Some people (tofucake) were complaining that it doesn't work in Opera and other browsers (that are not firefox) 4. The downtime was really boring sometimes (i was watching the stream for some 6h), and you could have filled it with some player interviews, replays and such (JP did a solid job with the "ask the caster a question thread") 5. make HD learn the game a little better. He made some rookie mistakes, it's great for noob players to learn basic stuff, but it's terrible if he casts wrong information 6. Buy Husky a suit. 7. Overall, it was a good event.
it'd be nice for the stream to tune in on other stuff that was happening at the event instead of showing commercials every break but i guess it makes sense if you need to show them that much to pay the bills
I know a lot of these seem to be issues for the "higher ups" not for you guys casting. 1) The advertising. Good god. The advertising. Hot pockets, doritos, stride, jack links, dr. pepper, BIC and old spice. I feel like they're trying to force us into fitting into that "That which has no life" character from South Park. This is a gaming competition. Show us ads for other games, show us ads for computer parts and peripherals. We buy more than just food and body wash. 2) The stream. I have 5:4 aspect ratio on my monitors. Not 16 : 9. Rather than having the video letterbox when fullscreening like every other video website ever to exist since the beginning of time, it forced the 16 : 9 aspect ratio, cutting off the minimap and the food count. Terrible, terrible manner. For the second day, I changed to 16 : 9 ratio because I was tired of not knowing what was on the map, and it looked terrible. 2.5) I didn't mind the stream quality, if you could get it to actually letterbox. 3) Professionalism. I don't expect you guys to wear suits, that's unnecessary. But one guy in a hoodie, two guys in a suitjacket + T-shirts, and one guy actually looking nice. You don't look like a cohesive team. Why don't you all wear a polo with the MLG logo, or something of that nature? It's not overly "dressy" nor overly "casual", and you'll look like a team. Like for your launch party, despite the fact that you and Sean looked really goofy with those specific shirts, the fact that you matched showed cohesion. 3.5) Please tell HuK that during an interview, he should take the hood off his head. 4) The brackets. You had 64 players to work with, so I know that it's going to be confusing. But I felt completely in the dark. It didn't feel like a tournament, it felt like a bunch of random matches. 4.5) Having the "extended finals" (I think that's what you called it) really made the GRAND FINALS not seem so.... grand. I get the intent of doing it, but it seems to fail in execution. 5) The casting setup. I think it would've been nice to have 2 casting booths setup, so that one pair could be prepped for a game as soon as the other pair was done, rather than swapping around, struggling to invite people, etc. You may want to make use of the party system for the 2 casters + 2 players, so you can sort out which map within party chat, and then caster can quickly make and get everyone invited. 5.5) Please tell HD to play more than one game a week. It really is noticeable. 6) The downtime. Commercial breaks are fine, I know they need to pay the bills. But having an idle camera staring down the crowd for 20 minutes is awkward. I completely understand that casters need to take breaks from shouting. Have some pre-recorded content to show us. Interviews from the players, highlights from previous games. How about announcements for upcoming events? Remind us viewers that NYCC is coming up Oct 8th and that the IEM will be continued there, remind us about the GSL, etc. 6.5) The "Map preview". First, her volume was way too low. Second, who is this girl? Third, the camera was flying all over the place, it would've been nice to have it zoomed out and have some way to highlight what she was talking about. 7) Trying to help out the people unfamiliar with the game. As someone who is already into Starcraft, I don't mind if you don't do this at all. But if you're going to try this a little bit, don't half-ass it. In one of the first games, Sean explained the concept of a "15 hatch". But after that, I never really noticed much explanation for the newcomers. Heck, you could use this issue to fill in my issue #6: Have some pre-recorded content explaining Starcraft, explaining counters, explaining some strategies. 8) Work on volume balancing. The map preview girl was really low. Husky gets really excited and loud. 8.5) HD's "This is an intense moment" voice is really creepy.
Well. There's my ultimate feedback. With all of that said? I watched every single moment of the tournament that I could (unfortunately I had to cut off Friday's stream early for class). It was incredibly enjoyable. I look forward to seeing the SC2 tournament scene flourish.
All the commenators should wear the same style of thing, Personally i didnt mind the MLG hoodie husky was wearing, but it look akaward next the to jackets of the other 3. They should all wear MLG shirts and hoodies. Or all wear jackets.
Yeah the stream cut off the corners which although not a huge deal but was slightly anoying
More player interviews would be great
displaying the bracket between matches would be good
casting the bigger games (I think this will be easier as the tour gets going and you have player rankings) jetty v nony or machine v inc, made the wrong choice there.
It took me a bit to get the stream to work I had to come on TL to find out i had to press ctrl f5.
things that were done well:
the roating of commenators was good the interviews which were done were great followed the schedule you put out well once you got the stream working it was stable you got a lot of good players to come out
I look forward to the next mlg event when and where is it?
What's with all the double elimination whining? It had to be explained a thousand times over in the Day 2 thread and instead of saying anything I'lll copy and paste something from there:
On August 29 2010 05:43 BraveGhost wrote: Double elimination system is great imo.. It really allows for a "second chance"... It's especially important for these tournaments that are randomly seeded. Like the team mates who had to play first round etc, just bad luck in pairings...yeah you might be in loser bracket but, you still have a chance to prove you deserve to be in the championship game.
Double elimination is not hard to understand at all.. in the championship match, if it's a rematch, you continue your first series with the same score(In Halo it becomes a best of 11 from a best of 5), so I assume it will become a best of 7 from a best of 3.
If you haven't played before you play 2 series, and the winners bracket only needs to win one, this makes perfect sense.. winner can't just lose the first series then go home.. everyone get's one series loss according to the rules.
I also like it, cause I've gone pretty far in the losers bracket in MLG after being knocked down 1st rd, so without it, I would have gone home friday at at least 2 tournaments, what's the fun in that :D
Yeah imagine if you were in the same tournament as IdrA (only name I can think of), and you get matched up against him first round. You'd lose, but you know you can go way farther than first round. Double elimination makes every player fit or fall where they need to a lot better.
Some of the complaints in this thread are absolutely mind boggling... Anyhow, I'll only point out the major things that are legitimate issues for spectators on the stream, not just personal preferences.
1: Overlays to show anything. Brackets, player bio, anything. Brackets in general are what was needed most since gotfrags were terrible looking (at least the ones I saw) and the viewers shouldn't have to struggle to find a bracket.
2: The stream quality(HD)/cutting the edges. It has been pointed out a lot and I don't feel the need to type a lot about it, but obviously fixing it/improving it would be nice.
3: Filler between matches. Get some pre-recorded interviews before matches as often as possible to play later in the tournament at various times (obviously understand commercials are a requirement). Perhaps have a little instructional video on a particular strat, opinions about specific topics from players/casters to discuss, or the "ask the cast" thread type stuff.
4: More games. Logistically I understand the problems of finding games to cast while rounds of the tournament are being played at the same time, but perhaps delay half the bracket (or just a couple of matches) by 15 minutes to increase the likelihood of catching another match of a series in progress when the featured games finish.
I wont even number my last point, but you should consider changing the map pool a bit. Not having scrap station punishes what few good zergs there are on top of the already problematic pool.
All in all it was very good first the first MLG SC2 live event and I have faith that most of the problems will be ironed out by the next event. Congrats and best of luck.
I have a lot of the same comments as many other people do.
The downtime between matches is tedious and makes for really agonizing viewing in between matches. Having player interviews with the winner/loser about how the match went, what they were thinking, why they play the build they do, how they like different matchups, what they think about their opponent, who are the guys to beat, what do they think about playing amateurs, on and on etc.
The map previews would also be good filler, as well as interviews with fans, admins, pretty much anyone at the venue to give us a feel for the atmosphere at the venue besides just the SC stuff. As far as the map previes I'd prefer to see an overview of the map with areas highlighted instead of the random zooming in, panning around that was kind of disorienting even as a person who knows the maps.
I enjoyed moving between the different broadcasts and this is just an overall thing for the MLG streaming guys. It would be awesome if there were a little light that was red or green to see which events are currently showing gameplay so that I can watch some Halo or Tekken and then when SC lights back up I can click back over.
I would really love the option for a true HD 720p stream as I have a connection which can support it and I like to put streams on my hdtv and watch in the living room, I understand that this has large implications that may be cost prohibitive, but something to keep an eye on I guess.
I would love a the PIP on the broadcast to move from the players' faces to show the hands on mouse/keyboard during play.
Having updated brackets shown frequently as well as just caster updates with results would be crucial. Having some kind of player bio before each match would be really nice as well. Even if it's just Name, where they're from, how long they've played starcraft, stupid stuff that let's us get to know them you know.
From the MLG perspective I think you guys picked good casters, but it's clear they don't get much time to prep and everything is basically done on the fly with whatever knowledge they have already. HD and Husky are enthusiastic and I watch a lot of their stuff just b/c it's in good quality on Youtube and there's a soundtrack as opposed to me watching replays alone. Pro sports casters often spend quite a bit of time before any cast talking with players and learning interesting tidbits to talk about, general bios, who the biggest and best players are and what makes them good, etc. I think if during registration players had to fill out a more extensive bio so your casters could prep for it would be really beneficial. As well, in the early game it would really benefit them to have things to talk about besides a slow opening over and over. Talking about the other results at the tournament who is in what bracket etc would be a good use of that time. I find most of the really egregious mistakes the casters make come in that first few minutes of a match when they are forced to talk without much to talk about. Once the action starts going they can settle in and they play-by-play means you aren't speculating or saying ridiculous stuff.
I did have technical issues with my screen at 1920x1200 getting clipped in fullscreen mode. I didn't experience any issues connecting or staying connected to the stream and it played stutter free except when I would do something else demanding of my connection.
I personally am not a fan of the double elimination format b/c I think it's very confusing as a fan to keep up with where everyone is in the brackets. I like the group pool play that a lot of other tournaments seem to favor b/c once you get to final brackets it's just really easy to keep up with. I don't think a group pool forces you to change how amateurs and pro guys can both compete.
I would like to see better games casted as we didn't see some top guys like Kiwikaki all the way until the finals and there are many other great games I would have liked to see that weren't casted. I know you can only show one at a time, but picking the best game possible wasn't always the case I think. I'm not sure if you do a poll or just let the casters pick who they want to do, but it's something to look at. I'd also like to recommend instead of playing say a whole losers bracket and then a whole winners to try and play each at the same time so there are always winners brackets playing with really top-notch games to cast and view.
One last thing is just overall to tighten up the time between matches. I know guys need to get setup and stuff but it just seems like it takes an eternity from the end of one match to the start of another. If there is some way you can play games in a rolling fashion rather than all at once so that there is always action to broadcast while the next guys are setting up.
I just want to say I loved the event and I'm hoping to make it to Dallas for the finals!
On August 29 2010 22:13 mortar wrote: I felt the HD stream wasn't really worth it. Quality wasn't as good as I hoped for.
(I'm aware of the preview.)
Cannot help but agree. 10 dollars for MLG for a weekend vs 5 dollars for ESL TV for a month, ingame quality was about the same just one was 16;9, I guess that'll teach me for buying it when the site was going insane on the first day. Also a LOT of false advertising calling it "HD", its 480p I'm fairly sure that doesn't count.
Also if you insist on making Husky cast (Chill/Incontrol and numerous others would have done a MUCH better job) you can at least make sure he isnt 3x as loud as anyone else, had to turn it off because his voice was so loud / abrasive even when nothing "exciting" was happening for all the whine about apollo in the IEM he did an amazing job in comparison.
Also I know you cant really fix this but surely it isnt THAT hard to get gaming based sponsors. I mean jerky and those rancid hot pockets, christ seriously the ads made me wanna puke everytime they came on esspecially the hotpockets - god just because people play games doesn't mean they all eat such heinous food.
Oh and the map previews you started doing made me motion sick, no need for all the zooming and whizzing about - it doesnt make it more interesting it just makes it more confusing / annoying.
Double elimination is also a pretty poor format for an RTS, it just doesnt flow well enough and without constant updates you easily get lost in the torrent of games being thrown at you.
if i had pictured you in real life, you would be a spoiled 10 year old kid in a suit asking his mom for something.
More interviews during the down time. It'd be nice to see some of the players throughout the tournament in between games if possible. Also, from what I've heard, the crowd there wasn't really accommodated as well as other games, which I think is completely unfair. Other than that, thank you for the event and I can't wait till I get the chance to go to one myself.
I would like to preface my criticisms by saying that I really enjoyed the tournament. I stayed up from 12AM to 6AM on the first day, and until 3 or so AM on the second day to watch the games live. That said, I think there are quite a few ways in which the MLG can improve:
1. The format. Double elimination is a bad format for both the players and the spectators (it's impossible to follow what's going on without constantly looking at the brackets). Having group stages followed by single elimination would be much better all round I think.
2. The players' setup. Between every match the spectators had to watch 10-20 minutes of ads or the commentators discussing things simply because the players had to set up again. Having the players seating be determined in such a way that this down time is decreased is a necessity. Changing the format to group stages would make this much easier.
3. The games shown. It is difficult to get excited about a tournament if all your favourites get knocked out in games that are not broadcast. With fewer players (I assume future tournaments will be 32 players), more games can be shown which might solve this problem. Another solution would be staggering the games, so that all 32 players don't play at the same time. This will allow you to show more games and fill up the down time.
Also, once the tournament gets to the Ro16/8, you should try to show all the games. Spectators want to follow both the players and the tournament, but the MLG felt a bit more like a gaming showcase than a true sport. You got to see glimpses of the players and their games, but you had no way of following any player or team, which is crucial to building a fan following.
4. Keep the spectators updated. Once again, the large tournament and the double elimination format might be to blame for this, but you need to find a way to keep the spectators up to date with what is going on. Having some brackets integrated into the cast will make it much easier to see what exactly is going on.
5 The commentary. Day9 was awesome as usual, but I considered turning off the stream a few times when Husky and HD came on. They weren't bad, and I got more used to them as the stream carried on, but they are too loud and tend to make very bad calls. I did enjoy the casts they did with Day9, so perhaps having that as a more permanent arrangement would be good.
6. Interviews. You did a few interviews early on in the tournament, and they were very enjoyable. For some reason you stopped after the first few matches. Doing more should be easy considering that almost all the players are English.
On the technical side:
7. The stream didn't work in Opera for me.
8. The stream was too dark on both days.
9. The edges of the screen were cut off in each broadcast.
10. The stream did something strange where it seemed to "reload" itself every once in a while. This reset the volume levels, without changing the volume settings, leading to the audio thundering through my apartment at 4am every few minutes.
How about do double elimination format to place the top 16 or so players then switch to bo3/bo5 single elimination? Double elimination helps insure more good players make it to the top, but it's not as fun to watch once you have all the good players in the top spots.
Randomly, the stream would reset it's volume, and there was like no way to pause the stream?
I had the stream muted in the background and it constantly un muted itself, so i could not just keep it in the background muted i had to close it completely.
Here's a few things I noticed as a spectator of the free stream:
- The crowd. One of the biggest advantages of a live event is you have a live crowd watching. One of the best parts of the King of the Beta Hill and (to a lesser degree) the IEM tournament was hearing the crowd cheer and clap after big plays by the competitors. Hearing a live crowd makes the whole thing so much more exciting - more than just a commentator screaming as storms go off or something. On the same subject, you can probably afford to give them some chairs to sit in. I think I would have been pretty annoyed to just have been given open space as a live spectator, but I wasn't there so I can't really say much.
- The casters. I like the idea of four rotating casters, but I've got to be honest and say that the casters were not equally skilled. This led to me wanting to listen to games cast by Day9 and you, JP, but avoiding the games cast only by HD and Husky. I know they're popular figures in the community, but I really feel they are less experienced than the other two casters. And I haven't seen much improvement in the two since beta days. HD really just needs to play more.
- The tournament. I was watching off and on, and didn't really understand how the double elimination was working, but I had a lot of trouble figuring out how the brackets were working. I felt like I had to really go out of my way while watching to get a sense of the tournament. Maybe you as casters should talk about the brackets more and refresh the state of the tournament for the viewers.
- The stream. The free stream was fine quality at it's normal resolution, but sucked full screen. I'm perfectly fine with that since it was free, but what I didn't appreciate was the forced wide-screen. It meant that I couldn't full screen because I was missing half the minimap, along with screen space on both ends. Please in the future allow for 4:3 full screens. And was there a reason for not being able to pause the stream?
- The map pool. I don't have much to say about this except maybe it would be beneficial for you to get in touch with iCCup and other map makers to come up with custom map pools? I know SC2 is still in its infancy, but I feel like some of the custom maps are far and away better than the maps Blizzard has to offer. More of a suggestion/wish for the long term than for this specific tournament.
Since my entire post has been criticisms, I wanted to say I thought as a whole the tournament was really well done. Good job JP and the entire MLG cast for an exciting tournament. I'm looking forward to more events by MLG as SC2 continues to grow as an esport.
On August 29 2010 22:50 Senx wrote: Also, Fullscreen on stream STILL cuts off the screen so you only see about 70% of the screen. This really needs to be fixed.
This. Very annoying when you have to chose between fullscreen or seeing the minimap at all.
On August 30 2010 02:49 Daigomi wrote: I would like to preface my criticisms by saying that I really enjoyed the tournament. I stayed up from 12AM to 6AM on the first day, and until 3 or so AM on the second day to watch the games live. That said, I think there are quite a few ways in which the MLG can improve:
1. The format. Double elimination is a bad format for both the players and the spectators (it's impossible to follow what's going on without constantly looking at the brackets). Having group stages followed by single elimination would be much better all round I think.
2. The players' setup. Between every match the spectators had to watch 10-20 minutes of ads or the commentators discussing things simply because the players had to set up again. Having the players seating be determined in such a way that this down time is decreased is a necessity. Changing the format to group stages would make this much easier.
3. The games shown. It is difficult to get excited about a tournament if all your favourites get knocked out in games that are not broadcast. With fewer players (I assume future tournaments will be 32 players), more games can be shown which might solve this problem. Another solution would be staggering the games, so that all 32 players don't play at the same time. This will allow you to show more games and fill up the down time.
Also, once the tournament gets to the Ro16/8, you should try to show all the games. Spectators want to follow both the players and the tournament, but the MLG felt a bit more like a gaming showcase than a true sport. You got to see glimpses of the players and their games, but you had no way of following any player or team, which is crucial to building a fan following.
4. Keep the spectators updated. Once again, the large tournament and the double elimination format might be to blame for this, but you need to find a way to keep the spectators up to date with what is going on. Having some brackets integrated into the cast will make it much easier to see what exactly is going on.
5 The commentary. Day9 was awesome as usual, but I considered turning off the stream a few times when Husky and HD came on. They weren't bad, and I got more used to them as the stream carried on, but they are too loud and tend to make very bad calls. I did enjoy the casts they did with Day9, so perhaps having that as a more permanent arrangement would be good.
6. Interviews. You did a few interviews early on in the tournament, and they were very enjoyable. For some reason you stopped after the first few matches. Doing more should be easy considering that almost all the players are English.
On the technical side:
7. The stream didn't work in Opera for me.
8. The stream was too dark on both days.
9. The edges of the screen were cut off in each broadcast.
10. The stream did something strange where it seemed to "reload" itself every once in a while. This reset the volume levels, without changing the volume settings, leading to the audio thundering through my apartment at 4am every few minutes.
1. I don't mind double elimination, i just would have liked to see the brackets at the event somewhere. We all had to rely on people with iphones to look them up
2. Everyone in each round was playing at the same time. When they are streaming machine vs incontrol and they finish before a few of the other people, they have to wait for them to be done before they can start the next round. Plus we were playing for hours and the players needed time for breaks and such.
3. I'm pretty sure everyone was complaining about how small it was and wants MORE players next time. MLG is not a small elite invite only tournament, they want to allow everyone a chance at competition and therefor must accomidate large numbers of players. If this means you can't watch every single one of Tyler's games, i'm sorry but maybe you should expand your interests a bit.
Two thing I would add as suggestions to improve: 1. There were quite a few breaks where the casters were waiting for the next game. These could/should be filled with interviews or maybe some game analysis of previous matches perhaps to keep the interest going. 2. Being a large organization with a large tournament I think it might be nice to actually use new maps. The ones in the current map pool do have some problems and seeing the game on different maps on a large scale might actually create new experiences for spectators. I know I enjoy the game more when iCCup does their fights on the BW remake maps, because I havent seen those a million times already.
IEM/MSL/OSL etc are all single elimination and are very exciting as each match (in winner's) feels more important and the tournament is simpler to follow.
Just do groups in the earlier stages, this allows players to lose but still advance if they do bad against a weak opponent.
-$10 Wide-screen stream quality was really great, only thing to be improved was the extreme contrast.
-Quality casters, Day[9]/JP and HD/Husky were all great, it wasn't strictly necessary to have all 4, but the different styles were refreshing
-Octoshape is great, zero lag for the entire stream.
Meh:
-Rewind feature is nice I guess, but the only time I needed to use it it didn't go back in time far enough.
Bad:
-Horrible game selection and coverage. In the first three hours on the first day you showed exclusively 3 pros stomping on noobs despite all the great games going on. Tons of favorite were eliminated while you showed mediocre games.
-**Fuck your ads** I paid $10 to see this stream and 50% of the time was taken up with advertisements.
- You also had random frat boys talking about halo and sports while tons of amazing SC2 games were missed (You didn't even cast the semi-finals of the losers bracket)
Conclusion: IEM was lightyears ahead of you guys, they showed almost every single game, on two simultaneous streams. I would pay again to watch their stream, for future MLG events I'll just watch the pirate re-streams. Unless they improve a LOT, they're not getting any more of my money.
I have to disagree with some of the comments being made about Husky. While he may be a turn off for the more hardcore crowd, eSports needs to have a Husky in order to make it more accessible. Believe me, as somebody who can understand the Korean casters -- they're FAR worse. I think with a little more experience he'll be fine (also a lot of this is the fault of the stage directors).
As others have said, more defined roles would have been fine. If you have 4 casters 2 can be on the floor at all times and what-not.
I had a lot of fun watching it, up until all the Zerg were eliminated. I still watched some of the games after that, but one of my favorite parts of watching tournaments is seeing what the top Z players like to do in different situations. While the game is still fun to watch, I just don't understand T/P as much, and I have a harder time getting into it.
I've seen some complaints about the commentators, but I thought you all did a great job. HD could use to play the game a bit more though Seems like hes always deferring to others to try and predict their moves and such.
I also think it would be a great idea to have a second stage / backup set of commentators and comment more games total, something like IEM did, with a set of commentators of the lesser games. Even though they aren't big names, it still fun to watch.
On August 30 2010 03:10 ekaj wrote: I'm baffled at how a double elimination tourney is any harder to follow.
I think the biggest reason is just because they didn't show any brackets. It was just up to our best guesswork to figure it out. Also, I was confused because I'm not someone who has followed a lot of tournaments before. I've never encountered a double elimination, it was something completely new to me. And new things are confusing.
Invite more zerg next time please... you invited Slush, Machine, and Sheth? Versus 14 terran and 8 protoss? Obviously you want the best matchups, but the more balanced the races are in numbers, the better. TvT and PvP are significantly worse matchups to watch than anything else in the game right now. ZvZ isn't great, but it is way more entertaining.
The edges cutting off in full screen sucked.
I never really like HD or Husky, but after this event I thought they were really good. Yeah, they don't bring the same knowledge as Day9, but they were extremely enthusiastic and I think they really contributed to the excitement of Socke vs Drewbie Game 3.
I also think you guys should spend more time casting with each other. It'd be cool if you had a "qualifier" for the tournament beforehand, and casted it remotely. The best part would be having content for the vamp time in between matches. If bnetuser123 qualified through the online tournament beforehand, show highlights of his road to MLG. This shouldn't exclude invitees, but maybe have 32 come from an online qualifier instead of selling passes.
Overall, it was exciting, I enjoyed it, I hate that there are no VoDs for the matches I missed or replays to download that I can find.
On August 30 2010 03:10 ekaj wrote: I'm baffled at how a double elimination tourney is any harder to follow.
I think the biggest reason is just because they didn't show any brackets. It was just up to our best guesswork to figure it out. Also, I was confused because I'm not someone who has followed a lot of tournaments before. I've never encountered a double elimination, it was something completely new to me. And new things are confusing.
They said multiple times on stream and it was probably in the first day thread that the bracket was on gotfrag.com, which yes it was screwed up the first day <_<, but they fixed it quickly.
i loved the event i would however like to see more matches i don't know what to do about that other then perhaps let a organization like glhf.tv come in and help out like they did with the IEM. My only grip would be Husky but thats just my own personal preference and to each there own.
i'm curious what MLG thinks of this first sc2 event like how big of a success it was and what if any changes will be planed for the next event.
oh and stop all the bitching about 10 dollars if you want sc2 and e-sports in general to grow its going to take the whole e-sports community chipping in even if that is as simple as forking over 10 dollars (and don't act like 10 dollars is a lot...i don't have a job and i afforded it)
It needs to be more polished. When transferring from casting to interview or casting to commercial...there was always like a 10 second delay in which we see the casters talking are just staring at the camera. It does not look professional and you guys want this to become mainstream...that "polish" has to be address. Also, the backgrounds behind the casters look cheesy. when the casting around look more "glorious" if that is what you want to call it. People are superficial like that and could attract more people. More people means more sponsors which means more money for you guys to reinvest it into MLG.
On August 30 2010 03:10 ekaj wrote: I'm baffled at how a double elimination tourney is any harder to follow.
I think the biggest reason is just because they didn't show any brackets. It was just up to our best guesswork to figure it out. Also, I was confused because I'm not someone who has followed a lot of tournaments before. I've never encountered a double elimination, it was something completely new to me. And new things are confusing.
Brackets were up on gotfrag (owned by MLG) and was spammed countless time in the TL IRC and also the forums. But yeah maybe Brad should have included those in the op but by asking on the forums you would have been directed to it. Well, double elimination is a format commonly used in esports but if it's the first time you see it then I can understand. But I will say you will have to get used to the double-elimination because non-Korean tournaments tend to use it and you are going to see pretty often.
On August 30 2010 03:21 Macki wrote: i loved the event i would however like to see more matches i don't know what to do about that other then perhaps let a organization like glhf.tv come in and help out like they did with the IEM. My only grip would be Husky but thats just my own personal preference and to each there own.
i'm curious what MLG thinks of this first sc2 event like how big of a success it was and what if any changes will be planed for the next event.
oh and stop all the bitching about 10 dollars if you want sc2 and e-sports in general to grow its going to take the whole e-sports community chipping in even if that is as simple as forking over 10 dollars (and don't act like 10 dollars is a lot...i don't have a job and i afforded it)
People who barely follow boxing, pay out $50 for a pay-per-view event. "Fans" of eSports are bitching about 10 dollars with a free stream available as well.
Really complaining about ads? So sorry that they provide us free entertainment while they pay their bills? No wait, we live in a world were everything is free because mommy loves us and pays for everything.
small touch up would be to get in game sounds, as well as go to the countdown screen for the last 5 seconds, broodwar style.
Another thing, dont bother paying JP and Husky to cast, Day9 and HD were leaps and bounds ahead of them, get Husky to do play by play, and day9 to give strategic insight and his player knowledge.
these are a few things i think that would improve the viewer quality.
there was some technical difficulty with the stream that removed a good portion of the sides which really ruined a lot of the tournament for me. the quality was excellent compared to the earlier years when MLG made the free quality awful to make people pay for it.
I thought the event was great. I wasn't keen on Husky and HD, but HD and D9 did make a pretty decent team. The best team, in my opinion, was JP & Day9.
One thing that bugged me was the down time between games. At some points, there was an hour wait between games. I understand that there aren't games happening live at all times, but what's stopping the commentators from commentating from some replays of recently played games?
Anyhow - keep up the good work. Look forward to watching future events.
I loved the event overall. There were some great games (drewbie vs socke from day 1, huk vs kiwikaki in the winners bracket final, etc.) and the casting was top notch. My only real complaint was with the quality of the HD stream. Simply put, it wasn't HD and honestly there was no difference between the HD and SD stream at all aside from the DVR functionality (which was cool). I definitely don't mind paying 10 bucks for some extra quality, but it wasn't there this time around. I knew going in it was only suppose to be 480p but both streams appeared to be 360p to me. Also, both the SD and HD streams seemed kind of dark. I'm not sure what can be done about that but its something to look into. Aside from that though I thought it was a great event and I'm looking forward to the next one!
Well, this is a critcal thread, and unfortunatly there isn't much on what you guys did right, which was a hell of a lot.
I was a fan of the rotating commentators, no NONE of them were perfect, but people forget that it is impossible to keep perfect focus for 6 hours. Rotating casters over such a long period is almost manditory. I love the energy that husky brings to the games.
A bracket visual bracket is so neccesary, yet there was an explaintion of a link to a bracket, but if one exsisted it isn't too hard to put it up on the steam once and a while.
There were litterally moments for me where a cast would call "we are not down to X people left" and I would be shocking, have no clue what happened to the vast majority...
Please keep some slots open for new names, don't listen to the haters!
What I want from MLG is a clearly presented and easy to find vod section!!! This is SOOO important. I dont care whether you spam with ads, I`d watch them, not everybody in other timezones is able to watch until 5 am f.e.
i know iem isnt on the "friends list" of mlg, but i guess they got a ton of views on those vods. also huskies and hds huge subscriberbase is used to vods!! theres a HUUUUGE audience just waiting on you.
also about commentary. Theres not much to cry about. HD and Husky were good/average, not a comparison to you and d9, but i guess this is caused by my manlove for sean
whatever, just keep it up, thats the most important thing (...and the vod stuff)
edit:
On August 30 2010 03:22 iNfuNdiBuLuM wrote: I didn't read the thread so sorry if someone said this.
This is something sorely missing: GAME SOUND.
All I could hear were casters voices. Many people want to be able to hear the pew pew lasers and explosions. It's all about immersion!
This is an easy fix and it helps so much to make casts more exciting
As much as I like day9 I enjoyed listening to HD and Husky more because they bring more hype. I mean after HuK won the grand final it seemed like it was just any random match. Husky has such a great voice for casting. I hope he never goes away. PainUser is probably my favorite for casting. He is super knowledgeable about the game so he always sees things that most other casters dont. It would be great to see him cast some when he isnt playing.
On August 30 2010 03:52 Obstbaum wrote: What I want from MLG is a clearly presented and easy to find vod section!!! This is SOOO important. I dont care whether you spam with ads, I`d watch them, not everybody in other timezones is able to watch until 5 am f.e.
i know iem isnt on the "friends list" of mlg, but i guess they got a ton of views on those vods. also huskies and hds huge subscriberbase is used to vods!! theres a HUUUUGE audience just waiting on you.
also about commentary. Theres not much to cry about. HD and Husky were good/average, not a comparison to you and d9, but i guess this is caused by my manlove for sean
whatever, just keep it up, thats the most important thing (...and the vod stuff)
I feel like HD and Husky have a lot of good characteristics, including emotion and energy. However, when it comes to game knowledge, they are significantly lacking. I think if they hung around top players or got better at the game, it would be to everyone's benefit. And from a business angle, If they continue to stagnate, other casters will take their subscribers/fans over time.
Another thing I want to mention is, they need to watch the minimap like a hawk. They tend to miss crucial moments, even when there is nothing going on, because they are distracted by trying to talk about the meta game (which they coincidently know little about).
I'm glad these two stepped up and are driving the sc2 esports community. But if they don't up their game, they will eventually lose their subscribers to better casters.
HD and Husky needs to cast with more experience on the game. It's hard to listen to a caster that doesn't have good knowledge of the game. Better casters more hype = better response and more views.
I enjoyed the tournament. after trying to get up so early for IEM I enjoyed a tournament that was set to my time zone.
To me the live blogger that was right next to the stream was the best. Let me get a feel for the tournament. The only thing in my head that would be kool is more filming. i like the format and the fact that there was missed games i don't want to blame the format.
I like the booth idea and for the commentator and spectators to be close to each other.
only thing i could think of that would be really cool would be a recap at the end of the day with highlights of the passing day.
also extending the tourney over the whole weekend if you're still going to be set up there.
Maybe I'm the only one, but I found the bracket system really confusing. Like it was a tournament but didn't seem like it had a easy to follow structure, everything was just called "winner bracket". Any chance of a graphical bracket shown after every casted game to make it easier to follow?
Oh and VOD section should be really easy to use when it gets online.
Not sure if anyone has said this, but not everyone knows the player's faces. On the overlay thing on the bottom right of the stream maybe have some sort of way to say who is actually being shown on the screen, that or make them wear name tags on their foreheads =P
Other than that it was really fun to watch for the most part, MLG is always a good viewing experience because the standard free stream tends to be really good.
Great first tournament overall, but I felt like you could've had a better stage (gaming booths?) for the players to play on instead of facing each other on a big table. Also, the spectators had to sit on the ground and it just looked silly.
It might be cool to have player bios - maybe not all, just the players who make it to the later brackets. Sort of like they do before a UFC fight or even world series of poker. Something to amp up the crowd, give us a personal connection to them.
I was at MLG Raleigh NC and I enjoyed the tournament. I would of enjoyed seeing more interaction from Day9 to his fans. HD also never bothered to talk to fans. Husky did a great job interacting with everyone, props to him. That is all.
Hey, guys. Great job! I enjoyed the show immensely and will be sure to check in next time.
With that said, here's your constructive criticism.
1) The Stream I ordered the HD stream and I must say I was impressed with quality. While it wasn't the best resolution, it was consistent and that's what's most important. If I was watching a regular television production, I would be flustered with the various cuts in and out that normally come with an internet stream. However, I was glad to see these were nowhere to be found. This would make it perfect to stream onto a television (which I haven't done... yet). However, I was a little distressed with the "HD" branding. With HD, I would expect at least 720p quality, which, of course, is not what I received. Perhaps "High Quality", or "HQ" is a better term? Though that does make it sound less appealing to the general public. Also, the HD preview did not do the HD stream justice. In fact, it appeared to be of similar quality to the regular stream and made me nervous to purchase HD. I did it anyway, and it was much better than the preview. The preview didn't have the consistency I previously mentioned and also seemed to be at a lower resolution. Perhaps it was my setup? I'm running Safari 5.0.1 on OS X, if that helps at all. A side-by-side comparison would also be great to see the benefits of the HD stream. Finally, the fullscreen mode is a bit bugged. I'm pretty sure the reason behind this is that it assumes you have a 16 : 9 ratio on your monitor and fullscreens to this size, cutting off the edges. Unfortunately for me, I (as well as all recent Macbook Pro users) have a 16:10 ratio. Therefore, my minimap and supply count were cut off pretty horrifically in fullscreen mode. This was very frustrating. I ended up relying on the built-in zoom functionality to fullscreen the stream but it was an awkward and unsatisfying solution. I definitely would like this to be fixed in the future (most probably with letterboxing). I just feel bad for the 4:3 crowd.
2) The Casters Overall, I loved the work of the casters. Everyone was pretty awesome so thanks for showing up! However, some casters are definitely more experienced than others. This is why I really liked it when Day (who is, or at least seems, the most experienced) got an opportunity to cast with both HD and Husky. This definitely helped HD and Husky learn to flow a little bit better and it was noticeable how their casting duties were improved after this time. While this obviously won't be as much an issue in the future, it is definitely a good idea to pair new casters up with veterans sooner, rather than later. HD and Husky's first match was amusing as someone who has been following them for the past few months, though a bit awkward and unprofessional (they were a bit weak on filling time). However, they did a great job and it was good to see them improve over the course of the event. I also loved the idea of mixing up casters on another front. After watching countless hours of the IEM, it tends to all to blend together and become a contiguous blob of matches. However, with multiple casting teams (and mixes between those teams), each match has a much better chance of taking on a life of its own for the viewers. 9 hours of Starcraft is a lot easier to parse in this manner. While I would recommend not bringing on too many casters, I really did like this blending. Also, on a side note, I thought the blazers were a bit... weird. It doesn't really seem to fit the casters, or the event, particularly well. Husky definitely seemed the most at home, though definitely seemed out-of-place as he was the only one left out. Someone previously mentioned MLG-branded polos... definitely not a bad idea. I also think this adds consistency, where blazers do not. Day[9] and JP looked great during the Countdown Party, if only because they were consistent. This is more important than looking formal, I would say. Also, formal done wrong is... meh. I'm the type of person who either dresses in street clothes or dresses in a full suit so perhaps my opinion in this matter is moot.
3) The Tournament Let's start with the format. Double elimination is great from a player's perspective but is dislikable from a spectator's standpoint. This is because so much happens in the background which makes it extremely hard to follow, and even harder to appreciate your favorite players. For example, in this tournament, I was particularly interested in watching NonY (or should I say, Tee-ler ) and qxc play a few games. However, if I remember correctly, I got one of each (which were mediocre matches at best), before they suddenly dropped to the loser's bracket, and then out of the tournament. Not only that, but the news of their status was extremely hard to come by. Only briefly mentioned by the casters, and put on a terrible bracket on gotfrag, I only knew what games they played and where they were at after they were already out of the tournament, which was a bit disappointing. While this let me broaden my horizons with new players (which I always like - can you say, "Mothership"?), I didn't really get to see what I mainly came here to watch. This can probably be alleviated through a caster specifically placed to find out what's happening in games not being casted, and the results of said games. After each casted match, the camera could cut to this caster and he can explain the results of the matches as well as any spectacular parts of these matches (with, dare I say, short replays?). Also, a up-to-date bracket could be presented with the upcoming matches listed, so I don't have to leave the stream to find out what the current status of the tournament is. While JP started to add this to the stream (which I am grateful for), I felt it was mediocre at best in this format (especially using the broken bracket gotfrag provided). This would be great for the double-elimination format, as well as filling time! Moving on, the "grand finals" didn't really feel... grand. I'm not sure if this was due to the format (makes the semis feel more like a hodge-podge of games rather than standard tournament styles), or the lack of any large stage ceremony, ala IEM. I would definitely say IEM overdid it, however. For MLG though, it seemed to lack the epicness the Halo finals often provide. While this is a small gripe, I think it can be easily fixed in the future with a little more polish here and there. On another note, I also liked the interviews. I think they added a bit of polish to the event, and give a more down to earth view on the players themselves. It was great hearing HuK speak as it gave me a bit more respect for both his play and for him as a person. I really liked these, and I think there can definitely be more of this in the future (though some others do not seem to agree with me). Also, just for a brief comparison, it seems a lot more relevant for these interviews on Starcraft players rather than traditional sports interviews. In football, for example, a wide receiver doesn't get the full picture like the spectators/casters do. It's also cliché and pretty obvious what he's going to say ("They played well, and we could have played better, we'll try harder for next year!"). With Starcraft, it gives a lot of insight spectators aren't often given. I really like that. With that said, I definitely would say be a little more prepared for interviews in terms of questions to ask. Also, stray away from cliché, or else every interview will come out the same way, which is definitely something to avoid. Finally, I definitely liked the inclusion of lesser-known players. however, their coverage needs to be a little more formatted. It was terrible to see NonY's first match against j3tty. It only made me feel bad for him and gave me a boring spectator experience. While it's not a bad idea to cast these players (they need their time too), a little research should be done into the more promising players of the bunch and air those games over those of the weaker players.
4) The Extras The Map Previews - These were... meh. A good idea, executed poorly. While these gave a good overview of basic strategy, they were unfulfilling at best. These zoomed in and moved around too much which made it difficult to follow on the scale of the entire map, in order to see the full picture. The voice over also seemed apathetic, and truthfully, it was a bit laughable. Perhaps these map overviews can be done by the casters themselves (considering Day covered all of this information and more while he spoke after the video). This could make it more relevant to each match, as specifics of how each player could abuse the terrain, due to their race and playstyle, could be added (like how HD kept mentioning about the clever pylon placement on Delta Quadrant). Perhaps an overlay could be used for the casters to point at, circle, and highlight information on a given map. So, again, it was a good idea, especially for less experienced players and casual observers, but not executed very well. The Crowd - They are an awesome force to be reckoned with. They can make the difference in a concert, in a sporting event, but most importantly, in a Starcraft match. The roar of a crowd adds a tension unlike any other. They most certainly need to be miced. I regret not being able to hear their thunder when Socke's fleet beacon appeared, nevermind his glorious mothership. The crowd is a tool to not only excite me but to send shivers down my spine. This is a must for future events. Also, the spectator setup did not seem optimal. If I was at the event, I probably would have been a little less than pleased at the setup. The Production Tab - While additional screen clutter is less than satisfactory, I do really like when the production tab is shown on screen. It helps find what the casters miss (and would help them miss less), as nobody is perfect. I noticed HD and Husky had it on much more frequently than Day and JP, and I noticed I was a bit happier with this in their matches. This is still a questionable position in casting, however, especially for a live event. It would make the discovery of the fleet beacon less impressive as some people would already have seen it coming, nevermind the mothership's appearance. So in that sense, it's worse for a crowd environment, where we are all in it together. So actually, it has its pros and cons. Perhaps it should be visited more often by the casters, however, not left on at all times? The Camera Angles - I definitely miss seeing the upgrades on the bottom right corner of the screen when a tech lab is selected. It makes it that much more difficult to know if the player got stim or not, which is a distressing feeling. I definitely don't mind seeing the players, in fact, I welcome it, it's just that I want to know about those damn upgrades! Perhaps Blizzard should add current upgrade tab to the caster's toolset? O.o I think this would, by far, be the best solution. If anyone can make it happen, you guys can. Also, as I've begun to notice, players usually don't react all that much to situations in the game, particularly early/mid-game. Sometimes I feel it would be better to mix up the shots. Keyboard/behind-the-back shots would be awesome. It makes the experience much cooler for people who follow Starcraft, as well as more impressive to players who are more casual observers. The occasional first person view would not be unwelcome either. Post-game camera shots are also welcome (immediately after the gg).
In the end, I was highly impressed for a first effort and I can't wait to see how you improve with upcoming events. Thanks, once more, for an awesome event and good luck in the future!
On August 29 2010 22:37 Affluenza wrote: I hate the format...double elimination is poor format.
I also felt robbed of a proper final...I'm sorry but the concept that a final can be played with a player having a defecit or set advantage is not a proper final...
This.
I also didn't notice at the time, but I consider game sound (minus music) essential. Perhaps in the future an auto-volume situation can be set up where the in-game sounds are slightly louder when the commentators aren't talking?
Liked the commentator switching thing you did, that was really brilliant as the SCII community is really torn between two sets and styles. Variation is also always brilliant and probably kept the commentators a bit more fresh.
As much as I am loathe to admit it, HD and Husky need to buy a ton of Coffee and ladder as Random and memorize all the common openings and such for each race. Also, some playing around in unit tester so that they can get a real feel for what units win in what situations. I am also really sick of hearing things like "that was an early gas..." when it was a totally standard gas for a totally standard build.
Overall I still love them, though.
An actual HD stream in "HD" such as "720p" would have been nice.
The biggest problems were totally out of your control. a) MIRROR MATCHES SUCK. FIX THIS BLIZZARD FIX THIS. b) I really think Blizzard should allow spectators to zoom out slightly more than players can, as it would just make spectating so much more enjoyable to me. I understand limiting FOV for players, as it adds a skill element, but I feel like when I'm spectating I just want to be able to see just a weeee bit more.
I have a few thoughts regarding the event, as a SCII fan in the Raleigh area who went to the event. Most people already covered all the comments regarding the casters, format, etc, so these are mostly with regards to the event itself live.
Overall MLG Thoughts: - Maybe I just felt more isolated being a PC-only gamer and all the other games console, but it really felt like each game had their own section where people really didn't stray between (well, the Tekken 6 and SSBB crowds went back and forth, but beyond that...). Rather than one big tournament with multiple matches going on, it felt like five different tournaments going on in their separate areas with some vendors/sponsors hanging around being the only common theme, and in turn felt like five different communities rather than one big one.
- When I first saw the massive Halo 3 setup/stage, my initial thoughts were "Ah wow, that's an awesome finals setup"... and then was confused and disappointed when that was just all Halo all the time. Have you thought about staggering the finals matchups for each game so they can all take advantage of that rather nice setup you've got going in the middle there? This also seemed to help keep each gaming group isolated, as each game basically had a different setup and style. This also relates to each tournament having a seemingly different setup from each other.
- It might be a good idea to have a small booth setup for information. I had a few quick questions, but there didn't seem to many staff around (well, besides on stage or in the gaming area).
StarCraft Specific Thoughts: - I went to this event primarily to watch SCII, and possibly check out some other events... and I just feel that I wasted my $25. The 'spectating area', such as it was, was really bad. There were two small benches in front of a rather nice projection (I will say that was good), and as folks saw on the stream the majority of people there ended up sitting on the floor. The audio was atrocious (see below), and we didn't even get to watch the commentators directly - we were actually just watching the stream, complete with ads! This was utterly bewildering to me, as I'd come to the event hoping to catch some awesome pro SC action, and realizing that I would be able to see the game much better by simply going home and firing up the stream on my PC. I actually did spend most of the second day sitting in a nearby cafe watching the stream rather than bother with the actual event (I did head down there for the finals).
- I hope this won't be taken as outright complaining, but you need to flog your sound guy, as the sound was non-existent at first and then once it did get going was either way too low or kept cutting out intermittently. This was also made even more frustrating by how loud the Halo 3 stage was in comparison (which was nearby). I didn't mind that so much as Halo 3 is obviously the big draw of the MLG tournament, and I would say the sound was at the right level for them, but being able to hear it anywhere in the convention center, when compared to barely being able to hear the commentators from five feet away for SCII, really demonstrated how bad our audio really was.
- If I understand correctly, the idea behind the individual MLG events is to pick the final competitors for a big MLG Championship at the end of the year, and that's not a bad setup - but as we saw it makes the finals a bit less exciting. It might be a good idea to consider going from double-elimination to a more straightforward setup once you reach 4 or 8 players. It also might not be a bad idea, once you have a stable set of seeded pro players, to have more single-elimination rounds first between the non-seeded/non-invite players, just to hopefully avoid all of the early games being one-sided massacres.
Suggestions for the Spectating Area: - I guess my main question before I make suggestions would be... is the goal with the MLG to broadcast these tournaments, while at the same time allowing some diehard fans to see the tournaments in action (like a tv station almost), or is the goal to actually have this be a live spectator sport? If it's the former, there's really little I have to add, as it was actually very well set up in that regards - the separate commentator's booth/section/area kept them looking very professional, and the stream itself looked quite good. The only thing I would then add is more of a stage/area for the finals rather than just picking a spot within the basic 64-PC setup and playing from there. There should probably also be some kind of sound-proofing for the players, as I have to imagine it was pretty easy to hear the crowd).
- If you are going for more of a spectator sport - it would've been better (imo, of course) to have had the spectators shifted around 90 degrees and facing the crowd directly. Rather than watch the internet stream slightly less delayed, we should be watching the commentators live, with a display above or nearby them showing the game they're commentating on at all times. That would allow the crowd to get much more involved in the event than they were (save the one time Day9 came out and addressed us directly). It's difficult to get involved in an event (barring the lack of seats/audio/poor planning of the area) when you don't really get to see the event happening.
- It might even be good to have multiple games showing up, and especially earlier on when there's a ton of games going on, allowing the casters to switch between games when there's a particularly good one going on.
In Conclusion... I will say again that the stream itself was solid, the commentating was great (even HDH, they keep it exciting and work very well together even if the game knowledge isn't quite there yet - and don't force Husky into a suit, he'd look more ridiculous in one than out), and the gameplay when it got going was great. Hopefully my post wasn't too negative - I really would like to see more MLG games, and more SCII tournament action for that matter, in the US (and in the Raleigh area).
Fantasticly run event, no problem with the streams... Not sure how hes i supposed to make the crowd better like some are suggesting?
Only thing i would think would be intense is multiple streams so we can see more matches. There were alot of really good matchups that werent streamed, so maybe have a day 9 /JP stream an HD/Husky stream, streaming different games so that we can choose which to watch and get more exposure to games.
I ordered the HD stream. $10 seemed a bit steep for two days (as I only cared about the StarCraft), but I know part of the $10 is also paying for the third day, even if I wouldn't be using it. In it's current state, I don't think I would order it again. However, some things that would entice me to would be:
- More games. I know with this being MLG's first shot at SC2, they wanted to play it safe and not go crazy with three days of games. Hopefully this was successful enough and the next event will have more.
- Commercial diversity. I don't know how much control MLG has over this, as it might rest solely on the sponsors shoulders, but they got old kind of fast. That's even after accepting that there's commercials when paying for the stream.
- In game sound. Obviously I don't want to hear it over the casters, but it's still nice to hear it in the background.
- Get Husky a jacket. That annoyed me far more than it should have.
- More player interviews. The ones you had were great, but there was a lot of time spent staring at the MLG logo that could have been filled players talking. I'd have been curious to hear from one or two of the "no name" people, just to hear what it's like playing against a Qxc or a Nony at an event like this.
- Repeat the stream. It seemed like you did this the first day. I happened to visit the page after the games were over the first day and saw the games from earlier. On the second day, I fell asleep at my keyboard during the semi-finals and slept through the rest. When I woke up I thought "No big deal, I'll catch the restream" but it never happened. This was the biggest thing for me. After paying $10, I think I should have a larger window of time to watch it.
With all that said, here are some things I really liked.
-Rotating commentators. I'm sure casting this many games back to back would have it's toll on any one, and being able to switch teams helped to ensure none of them seemed worn out or too tired.
- The casters themselves. I'm not a huge fan of Husky or HD, but I know a lot of people are. Even a lot of my friends wanted to have them cast over Day & JP. I think that diversity helps, and I never felt myself going "oh god, bring the other guys on."
- The commercials. I said that I wanted diversity, but with that aside, most of the ones played weren't that bad. Old Spice won the commercials wars, while Hot Pockets lost. Dorritos would have won with the kid slapping the guy, but that one with the Dorrito warrior guy dragged them down.
- Stream quality. It was good enough on my 32" monitor. Some of the commercials seemed a bit pixelated, but the games were fine enough.
Just thought I'd throw out a suggestion for DC after talking to some people who were at the event and watched the stream.
If it's possible to transition to a first person view for some moments (similar to alot of Korean casts) during the games that are casted, that a lot of people would enjoy that. [i.e. seeing kiwi's micro in first person view].
There NEEDED to be a better setup for the audio commentary. Sitting in the crowd you could not hear the commentators - Yes I understand why it could not be played too loud... but We come to watch and listen. It was horribad that we couldn't hear what was going on on the screen. Also...
How the announcer had the speaker at station 6 and was announcing the next matches and where to go - I saw several players JUMP when he was starting to talk because it startled them (There was a guy playing SelecT and it messed him up for about a minute)
I thought it was very good, it was definitely a step up from some of the other tournament streaming I have seen. I think adding more of a finishing touch and smoothness to the feel would have made it even more enjoyable. Instead of just mentioning where you can find the brackets during the cast, either show them more between matches or directly put them on the stream page.
The map previews were good but seemed to come at weird times. Doing something like the map previews but instead with the players who make it to the semi-finals would have been truly fantastic. A cut scene describing the players background and previous tournaments they have been involved in.
I had some issues with the the stream, it would cut off the edges. Many other users who were using a 16:10 aspect ratio had the same issues. It cuts off some of the tabs and almost a third of the minimap.
Also, I've read that the crowd was under-mic'd(or not at all) and had no commentary from their speakers because the players were like right beside the spectator zone.
On top of that, get those guys some chairs! I know SC2 isn't a main event, but some seating would of been nice.
The quality of the stream was acceptable but for 10 dollars for two days (3 technically) it wasn't very good. Also if I am paying 10 dollars for so so quality why do I have to watch commercials as well? I'd be interested to see some statistics of how much of the stream was commercials. Why not stick the free stream with commercials and we get interviews or other content when they have commercials?
I'm just asking for more content for those paying for the service. The quality does not make up for the money (yes ill still purchase it).
I was at MLG raleigh, my majorist complaint was on night 1 it was impossible to hear the commentary. Originally i thoerized they didnt want the players to be able to hear, but they upgraded the audio of the SC2 area on day 2 which disproves that theory.
I dont think you can really blame the race skew on the tournament, Blizzard has set up a game where Terran is favored but toss tend to do better at higher levels. Hopefully they reach balance ASAP though to see some diversity in the later rounds.
Thought MLG was the best covered most entertaining Starcraft 2 event yet! Would have liked to seen some of the games that weren't shown. I WAS EXTREMELY DISAPPOINTED THAT THE FINALS WERE NOT ON THE MAIN STAGE LIKE HALO! I kind of felt like it was an insult to deny them the exposure and grandeur they deserve. They need to have sound booths like in Korean Esports, and play in front of a huge crowd.
Hope you up the stakes for it in the future as well. These guys need bigger prize pools to accommodate being full time pro gamers. Thought the stream was great. Hope you get more computers setup so the players don't have to switch every game. It was kind of annoying to have such long breaks in between matches. One last thing, the commercials were very repetitive. Those Jack Link Bigfoot commercials are great but there are like 6 of them that are all funny, yet you kept showing the same one.
The stream was great, the casting was great, everything on that side of things was very smooth. One or two things did bug me a little during it - first and foremost not seeing the brackets very often. I'd like to have more of an overview more frequently, otherwise it just feels like random games. I'd also like to see the players and the crowd a bit more at their PCs, or it just feels a bit like a regular LAN.
Waiting for players to set up and swap PCs all the time was a bit troublesome, too, it seems
I thought the coverage was very well done, the map breakdown movies were also a nice touch for any new comers. It was unfortunate the semi finals and finals were dominated by Protoss but theres nothing you guys could have done about that, just the nature of the game. Day9 and Jp definitely made me laugh out loud more than once, thanks for that.
One complaint I have is why in the world are the casters having to setup the lobby's, that seemed like a big distraction for you guys in mid cast. Maybe in the future MLG can set you guys up with some kind of tech guy who handles creating the games and everything and you guys just have a live video feed in front of you. Or maybe you had that, but it definitely looked like you were getting distracted from the cast between games trying to set something up on the computer.
On August 29 2010 23:15 vyyye wrote:2: Seeing the players during the game was nifty and I definitely liked that, but being unable to see the upgrades was a bit 'meh'. It's a nitpick really, but if the player video covered the unit portraits we would be able to see the upgrades and the player.
Yes, do this. Also there is room on each side of the building/unit select bar depending on what resolution you use. This could be used for bracket updates and such.
I think it was pretty nice for a first event. My main suggestion for future ones is to time out games so theres a lot less downtime and you can slide over to another matchup after finishing the current. I'm sure there were a TON of really good games we all missed. Hopefully the SC2 stream was successful enough to extend it over the rest of the days if that helps for getting more games casted.
On that note, I'm really curious about how successful Starcraft 2 was for MLG? How many viewers for the stream?
Forgive me if something like this has been suggested already; I haven't read all 10 pages.
I think it's really cool that unknown local players get a chance to compete with the best and make a name for themselves. Then again, I'm the sort of guy who likes to root for the underdog.
The problem is that the commentators (and consequently the viewers) often didn't seem to know anything about these new players. Before the opening rounds we even had to speculate about their race choices.
My suggestion is to have all the participants fill out a sort of info sheet. It should ask things like where they're from, what gaming background they have, and what race they play. It'd also be nice to have each player share a bit of personal, non-Starcraft-related trivia. For instance, an interesting hobby or an amusing anecdote.
Pass all this information on to the casters so that instead of, "we don't know who this guy is," they can say, "and here we have So-and-so, a Terran player from California. When So-and-so isn't playing Starcraft 2, he likes to climb mountains." Oh cool, now we have an actual person attached to that name.
You just need to be more professional to be more mainstream. I tried getting some friends to watch it. They laughed at Day9's half suit, people sitting on the floor, everyone wearing a hoodie and such. Make people have some kind of team uniform, dress up, look nice, have cut screens so the downtime doesn't show a floor of nerds (not a derogatory term) walking around, could even put a few commercials in. Maybe play some replays of past games or some greatest moments videos in between. Player statistics and map statistics are great too!
JUST PLEASE MAKE IT MORE PROFESSIONAL! It seemed like it was just a few people playing a game and the tournament/streaming part was an after thought.
Side Note: Loved the map previews. Every single one of my friends were impressed. That seemed professional.
PS: Look at the Korean Proleague format. Lets get some SC2 teams and have a league format so we can constantly watch games in a professional manner.
All in all, I loved it, but to really get it to grow, you have to be more professional about it. You and the players. Right now it seems too "hard-core SC2er" to the point that it's tough to get a gamer into it.
To add to what Bradford said, check out the pregame introductions for TSL2. They have player introductions, with sweet art, stats, and a small player bio. They have map introductions and stats, and they have the bracket to show who each player had to beat. That might be a little excessive, considering TSL was played once a week and MLG pretty much continuously, but it's hopefully doable for the WBF, LBF, and grand finals. Something to strive for, at least.
On August 30 2010 05:30 huameng wrote: To add to what Bradford said, check out the pregame introductions for TSL2. They have player introductions, with sweet art, stats, and a small player bio. They have map introductions and stats, and they have the bracket to show who each player had to beat. That might be a little excessive, considering TSL was played once a week and MLG pretty much continuously, but it's hopefully doable for the WBF, LBF, and grand finals. Something to strive for, at least.
Exactly. This made it easy for my friends to watch the TSL, but for MLG they were just like "who's that?" Day9 helped but you could help him out a bit. And, these added touches make it look legit and professional.
1) Drop HD at the very least, get Husky a suit I guess. It's just very annoying because if you're really trying to get SC2 to become accepted within the gaming community these two just don't seem to be the way to do it. Who admits to only playing one game a week ON THE STREAM? Just bad choices.
2) Free stream quality was perfectly fine, and I was pretty impressed. Didn't get the HD stream because it just looked the same to me.
3) JP and Sean were so good together... but you know what duo would be perfect? Chill/Sean... I think I just wet myself putting those two names together like that. Make it happen.
4) This tourney format was not very good. A three game final because the loser bracket guy comes in at a disadvantage? How is that inspired in any way at all... Group stages into single elim is the way to go for sure. Although maybe you guys didn't do it this way b/c you had no way of seeding people. Now that we have seeds, it should be much easier.
5) Final complaint... graphics. Hire a graphics guy or something because brackets, player info, etc should be readily available. Again, this was the first time so you guys didn't know what to expect, now you do.
I know it seems like I'm trashing this program, but I'd like to say I had a BLAST watching this. Thanks for putting on a great show, can't wait to watch the next one.
I enjoyed the rotating of casters, and i think day9 did well with husky and HD. I enjoyed the amount of day9.
I do think though, that there were a general lack of matches being cast. Most of the time was spend (i got the hd stream btw), watching commercials or casters talk. I watched all hours of it, and it felt amazing, but looking back, there were a lot of time just spent waiting. Im not complaining so much as saying that there should be 2 games at any one time that could be ready to cast (minus finals of course).
Definitely way too much waiting in between games, they need to figure out a better way to do that, possible stream games from games being played live? Like install a livestream or something on each computer and then be able to tap into it whenever you guys want to show games? I'm fine with a little analysis but WAY WAY WAY too much idle time going on in between games. I paid the 10$ to support MLG and some of the games were really intense and fun to watch, but it was obvious this was the first SC2 tournament they'd done...
Please rotate the commercials more, old spice has ALOT of commercials you played like two of the million come on rotate commercials
Easier way to get support, your forums didn't load for most part and it took a while to get the HD login page working might need to optimize the load times
Full-screening the stream cut about half an inch on both sides of the video so the minimap and the user video got cut off
1) I would really like it if the audience/ the general location would be shown more often on the stream. 95% of the time it is either the casters or 4-5 guys in front of 2 computers and everything around them is black. You can hear the screams in the background, but you don't really take part in the atmosphere. One additional guy with a camera running around would be great
2) Try to incorporate a certain race balance at the sign ups. Only 3 zergs is just terrible.
3) BRACKETS: This is not about the SC2 tournament (because I checked the brackets via teamliquid), but for the love of god, please consider this. Every single time I watch WoW at MLG, I just wanna take a short look at the brackets. And each time I spend at least 15minutes finding the brackets somewhere hidden, and the layout is completely terrible. There never is a simple overview that just tells me which team is in which group or at what stage in the elimination brackets. Today for Raleigh: If I click on "standings" on top of the stream page, I get the qualifying teams for the 2009 grand finals. Below the stream there is a button "Brackets" (woho), but of course it is never working, everything is empty. When I go to gotfrag, three quarters of the page consists of 2009 results and each link about Ralegih brings my back to the stream where I don't find any results. I like to think that I'm not a complete moron and should be able to find that stuff faster.
Please, just give me a simple bracket-page for each game with a completely unfancey overview, just team names and results, which is updated constantly. This could enhance my viewing pleasure into purchasing HD-stream dimensions.
That being said, all in all the SC2 torunament was very well done. Relatively fast paced and pretty diversified with four different casters.
Says nothing about the actual resolution of the stream just the total bit rate of 1.6mbit/s which is about half than most true HD streams, Its false advertising nomatter how you look at it.
I felt like there was very little decent documentation on how to get octoshape to work for various OS's. Everyone had to find a detailed tutorial deep in a teamliquid or reddit thread in order to even watch. You should also post the octoshape url on the actual page underneath the flash app so that people don't have to search through the html source to find it. Put a help link that doesn't link to an empty forum. Just write a quick page with how to get it working in windows and mac and linux users will figure it out from that.
Other than that, I would have liked more continuous commentary. Be aware of what games are about to occur and get the commentators in there before they start. There's nothing wrong with delaying a game a few minutes if it is up for being casted.
Also, the crowd couldn't get into it for some reason. I heard that they had a hard time hearing the casters. Just get a couple booths and only use them for casted games, that way the true spectatorship can come through. Pick the most interesting sounding non mirror matchup per group and cast that one.
More seating for the live audience. The 2 benches weren't quite enough. Granted, SC2 is new to MLG, so you guys have to feel it out.
Also, devote 2 computers to the livecasted games. Put them away from the audience, and have some soundproofing headphones or something. That way the live audience can hear the commentary too.
The biggest piece of feedback I can offer is: hire someone for official player communication.
This is based on three things:
1. I responded to the email asking for our official handle. The official news post later on had a "." (period) after my handle, something that was not included in my response. I then sent off another email asking that the period be removed and never received a response (not even a "we can't do that now").
2. I couldn't find a place to submit my driver request, so I emailed the three people mentioned in our confirmation email. The only response I received contained the text "Same response." and nothing else. I have no idea what "Same response." means?
3. I posted on the teamliquid MLG rules thread to confirm that we could check-in as late as 5:00 PM, but figured I was reading the schedule right. Then the email went out about a player's meeting at 3:00 PM which I would be unable to make, and I replied upon seeing it to confirm that it wasn't mandatory (about 2 hours after that email was sent). On this, I am mostly to fault for waiting to confirm the latest allowable check-in time, but as I wasn't 100% sure I would be allowed to play arriving close to 5:00 PM, I didn't take the time to drive up.
Overall the streaming and casting of the event was great from home. Very well done. However, it would be helpful to have an improved communication system for those of us attending for fun (ie. don't want to deal with much hassle, especially as we do not have a realistic chance at the top 8). Perhaps one does exist already that I didn't know about, but if so, then add that to the official rules as I did not see it mentioned there.
It was a great tournament overall but a few things could be done better, better games streamed, eg in the first round (maybe see which of the show ups are worth watching in the first round before streaming them, kind of disapointed how we didnt see any kiwikaki until the WB finals and then it was just pvp).
Interviews with big names after good wins (vs another well known player) would be good too. Casting was pretty good not a fan of Hd or husky but they done an alright job of it.
Stream quality was great that should be the benchmark for other tournaments like IEM.
Double elimination is a bad format for both the players and the spectators
Great for the players bad for the spectators.
A group stage followed by single elim is good for players and spectators. It lets bad players have more than 2 games (probably not a big priority, but its cool to get more people playing in tournaments), and good players can still suffer a cheese loss.
Once it goes to single elim the bracket is very clear with regard to quarter, semi, grand finals, etc. This is good for spectators.
It would be amazingly awesome for the early rounds if there was some way to let casters switch between games. I don't know if MLG has a spectator in every game, but if they did some kind of kvm switch so casters could be like "great game, lets watch it" and just pop in.
But again, once it gets down to bo8 then the games should really be staggered so they are all cast. I still can't believe socke vs lastshadow was not cast when they were 2 of the 4 last players.
1. Crowd view - I have no clue what the reception was as far as spectators go (though it seems like it went well). The same as other games broadcasting goes (BW in Korea, Halo for MLG), they show the crowd and that helps you grasp the event better as a nerd sitting watching on your PC. I wanna see cheerfuls!
2. FP Views - I heard reports of how fast some of the players were (for example, Silver being Korean-level speed wise) and it is great to see that on screen. Again, something that is integral for casting for other games, and I'd like to see it for SC2. Would really give the casual audience a grasp of how insanely skilled some of these guys are.
Those are the two main things. Can't think of anything else major atm.
I know it's not your fault... but omgg... 1st 2nd 3rd time... it's ok... but i just felt SPAMMED with the same commercials over and over. Hell at the end I was jokeing with one of my friend and we were mimicing the voice!
Besides that JP + DAY9 = awesome combo... Day9 talks and is verry interesting and JP takes the lead when day9 has notting to say OR bring back day9 to reality when he's going crazy!
HD and Huskey... I like husky and what he has to say just taht sometime I feel like he's an SCKLOPEDIA and it feels boring. HD...well sorry bro... it seems you have an hard time to watch the camera... you mouth is 90% open uke! and so much more. I think you have the FRAME to be a good caster... you just need to get better. Tho your online casts are fun
Besides that... No zergs in the final or even NEAR it.... yay! Make sure at least 1 zerg gets in the final next time
1) Showing the brackets once in a while. If that is the format the viewers should know where we are in the proceedings. Make a graphic and put it up in between rounds. A few times the casters had no idea and played it off with jokes but meh, if you want it to be e-SPORTS, make it more sporting-event-like.
2) Echoing what someone said at the beginning about play-by-play vs. color commentary "roles" of the casters. Overlap was weird sometimes but not a huge deal. (Oh, and HD doesn't seem to know the names of some of the units or messes them up way too much live to be on a cast without some practice.)
3) Something more interesting than showing the winner and losers pack up their mouse and keyboard after the match. Either show updated brackets(!) or do a quick player interview.
Enjoyed alot of the Day[9] / JP casting, these two togheter just crack me up... Not only are they spot on with what happens during the games, they bring a nice touch of humor and to me they feel like an old couple. Overall awesomeness. You can feel the deep passion for the game whenever something sc2 related is being said.
On the other hand about the HDH casters, i respect what they are doing with the tournaments and their effort to promote esports, even tho sometimes i feel their are just greedy for money aswell as trying to become famous people and jumped on the sc2 opportunity to try and achieve their goals.
From a player with a decent game knowledge they are just pissing me off, as someone mentioned above. So many mistakes, not paying attention to what really matters, getting overhyped for nothing, screaming in my ears... Enough of that please. Had to turn off the stream whenever one of those two were on air.
I can understand why so many people like them though, if i was the average joe playing starcraft and found their youtube channels i'd probably like them too.
To resolve this, i propose having two streams, streaming the same games. One stream with Sean/JP and one stream with HDH, this way the viewer gets to choose who he wants to listen while watching the games. That is assuming all the negative feedback didn't scare the organizers away from using HDH as casters ever again.
All in all there is many casters who i feel are way underrated but overall alot more competent and would fit alot better in place of the HDH combo, but hey that is just my opinion.
Can't comment much on the other aspects of the event as i turned the stream off pretty quickly due to the reasons mentioned above. I would have liked the audience to have seats tho, that is very unproffessional and if i traveled there to be a part of the crowd i'd be ranting big time.
I think you guys should be in a bikini or something. Err..
What I mean is.
MLG, IEM etc should not take these things so seriously. It's not mainstream. All kind of goofy stuff would be sooo much fun. Day9 stand-up stuff was a step to right direction.
One of the main issues I had with watching it was that I couldn't full screen or the edges would disappear, leaving half the mini-map and the supply count gone. But the stream did have excellent quality other than that.
Day9/JP make a really good combo and games just seemed to flow much better when they were casting vs. HDH.
I understand that it was HDH's first time casting together in an event like this, and they did a pretty good job considering. I think they just need some more experience casting together and need to work on a couple things like looking into the camera more.
I also think that there should be a camera on the crowd to get some shots of them especially early game (I really like how they do this in most Korean BW matches).
Also its awesome that this thread was even made- I'm glad you're open to criticism and trying to improve
I think alot of people are sucked in on the day9 bandwagon. To be honest looking at it from a nautral standpoint, both HD and Husky did good. Some variety is always needed. Only thing I have to fault them on (as in IEM). Is the sound guy. In the IEM the sound guy had to play WoW music all the time and it was louder than the casters. In MLG the sound of Husky va so high.
I was at the tournament in person, so I'll give my two cents:
First 3 minor criticisms:
SC2/PC gaming were tucked into the corner, while all the other games had space on all sides so spectators could view the players from any angle - this made it really difficult to see the non-broadcasted SC2 games in the early rounds. People would crowd around one side of the competition area to watch whatever match happened to be placed near the outer perimeter.
The volume at which the broadcasted game was played was really quiet considering I could distinctly hear gameplay from Halo 3 all across the arena. At times I wished I could stream the game from inside the event just to hear the audio...
Also, 5PM wasn't a great time for the final, I'd like to have seen it later in the evening.
Basically my only complaints are tied to the fact that SC2 is new at MLG, and I expect these things will be fixed as it becomes more popular and inevitably becomes the biggest MLG event. Overall the tournament was great, a lot of fun to attend, and if I have the chance I'd love to go in person again
On August 29 2010 22:28 qoiN wrote: Maybe you should add a poll or so before ro64 starts so people can vote what games they want to see. Nony raping a noob isn't really interesting, machine vs inc would be far better.
Also it would be great if you could fix the full-screen mode of the stream so it automatically fits depending on which ratio you use 4:3/16:10 etc, couldn't watch it in full-screen since the whole mini-map was cut off pretty much :[
lol, sorry you had to see that...it was definitely one-sided. In MLG's defense, Nony was the most high profiled player at the tournament and given his affiliation with TL, it makes sense to cast his games first regardless of whether he was playing a noob (me ) or a better player.
From a player's perspective:
-Brackets should be made available, both online and at the event, immediately following the start of the tournament...at the latest. -Given the number of people who were watching the main sc2 screen, I hope sc2 is given more floor space and better spectating conditions in DC and future events. -The mic needs to be louder or the sc2 matches should be announced on the main mic. I found there were times when I had no idea matches were being announced because the location changed (sometimes they were announced at the front entrance to the sc2 section and other times at the main screen). I couldn't hear the mic if I was at the front and the announcement was made at the back and vice-versa. -The pause rule needs to be looked at.
Anyway, I had a blast like I always do at the MLG events and it was nice meeting you and the rest of the casting crew/refs/players.
I did read some posts scratching this topic, but I think it's quite underestimated - or maybe overestimated by me. But there needs to be some serious talk about the caster-fashion. First of all, the hoodie was a huge blunder, obviously (as stated quite often already). But more important, wearing a suit/jacket does not make you "professional". It rather takes alot of individualism out of the casterscene. There's just nothing as good to look at like a nice T-shirt. I really do not enjoy watching two guys wearing the exactly same, boring black jacket all day long.
The best example to round this argument up remains Tasteless. I don't think I need to go into any detail here.
So, please don't stick with this fashionstyle. And if you do, at least give the casters some proper stuff to wear underneath those jackets, it really did look awkward.
On August 30 2010 07:06 Siwa wrote: I think you guys should be in a bikini or something. Err..
What I mean is.
MLG, IEM etc should not take these things so seriously. It's not mainstream. All kind of goofy stuff would be sooo much fun. Day9 stand-up stuff was a step to right direction.
e-sports, be different!
This is important to keep in perspective. It's going to be awhile before you have to start worrying about being 'taken seriously' so don't rush it. Get more sc2 gamers interested and cater to those already watching.
I enjoyed the tourney a lot over the stream. I'll just sort of echo some of what I was saying in other threads here for consistency's sake:
- I did fairly well with Octoshape, once I got past the "press no to say yes" issue that I imagine is probably screwing a lot of people up. Specifically, Java has a popup that asks if you want to block Octoshape or not; basic human interface design (as seen by every other such popup in existence) is to ask to allow, not to block. So lots of people, myself included, are just going to click "Yes" without reading the fine print, which means Octoshape can't do its job, which means no stream. Obviously this isn't something you guys can fix directly, but maybe a quick Octoshape FAQ page for next stream would be good.
- Casting was overall very good, I only have a couple minor nitpicks. In one of the games (I don't remember which, sadly) Day9 said "huge blunder" like 5 or 6 times. I love catchphrases and signature terms, but when they get overused then I end up thinking about how the caster is overusing the term and not what's going on in the game. That's the sort of minor nitpicky thing that causes your audience to lose focus, and thus, interest.
- I'm not going to jump on the HDH Hatewagon because I honestly think they did fine, but HD has a few things he needs to work on for future events. He needs to learn the matchups better if he wants to do more than just play-by-play. He needs to not be so quick to call games over, or at least pay more attention to the minimap and the units on the screen; in one of the Socke vs Kiwikaki games I remember him saying "It looks like Socke is going to take this game" when Socke had just 3 or 4 stalkers left in Kiwikaki's main while Kiwikaki had an even stalker count plus a couple zealots. Just little things that end up giving him a reputation for not being very knowledgeable.
- This is probably the biggest issue I had with the casting all weekend, just because it drives me nuts: 3/4 of the casters (the exception being Day9, or at least I didn't catch him doing it) frequently fell into this weird speech pattern where they start emphasising operative verbs as though everything that's happening is just confirming something they'd just talked about (even though they usually hadn't).
Example: "So here we are going into game 1 which is going to be on Lost Temple and it looks like we do have cross positions as the Terran player has spawned at the 3 o'clock position while his opponent has spawned clear on the other side of the map which is the 9 o'clock position. It looks like he is going to be making a supply depot on 10 which is the most common opener and will allow him to wall off if he does build a barracks here..." etc etc.
I have decided to call this "camel casting" because there is a hump every half a second. It makes a really weird flow to the sentences and generally just annoys the hell out of me.
But like I said, I genuinely enjoyed the event and, even with those minor faults, I'm definitely looking forward to the next one
It's hard to play day9 drinking games when JP is casting with him (drink every time he says huge blunder, every time he uses wrong name for unit...) I feel like I'm having double visions too soon
On August 30 2010 07:43 DeltaH wrote: christ, who cares about the wardrobes?
Potential sponsors and people who have the disposable income to buy things like nice cars. In order for esports to make it big the prize pools need to be impressive. The only reason the WSOP is as watched as it is, is the millions of dollars that it's played for. Unless you can get SC2 players to pony up $10k apiece to enter a tournament by the thousands you're not going to get pools that large without BIG sponsors like the ones golf sees.
We all know these guys, but the general public does not. We'll watch/follow the tournament whether or not they improve a lot of these things. We may not buy the stream, but we'll watch the free one. Appearance of the broadcasters makes people that don't know Day9 or HD, "This guy looks like he knows what he's talking about". A guy in some t-shirt and jeans just doesn't give that impression to people.
Honestly, competitive gaming is probably a generation away from going mainstream. I know the players would like to make a living at it as would various casters and in order to do that non players need to be drawn in.
The problem is, with the exception of the map previews DJWheat could have put that whole broadcast together in his house and no one would be the wiser. That's the level that the production is at. I love Wheat, but he just doesn't have the resources at his fingers to produce what a professional sporting event's broadcast looks like.
MLG has that potential and love them or hate them they're the best shot that competitive gaming has in going mainstream in the US because they've slowly built the infrastructure. Now it's time to convince them that SC2 deserves the treatment that Halo gets. Not a stream that is missing a lot of production quality.
As I said in my earlier post, for a first trial go not bad. I paid for it, and will likely do so for the next two events. If we don't see some improvement by then my wallet will stay in my pocket.
1)Downtime, if a necessary evil, should be used more wisely. Consider these points: 1a)SC2 is new to MLG and likely many other gamers so with all the downtime I think there were opportunities to run segments describing the basics of the game/genre vocabulary (2rax FE, APM, etc). I liked the map overviews before the final and when Day9 would explain really basic things like how we measure time with the food count, ex; 10 supply. 1b)If there are one or two matches that look good on paper have a player save the replays and send the files to the caster's station. In downtime load these replays and cast them. It's a very similar idea to how UFC runs their pay per view events. They have prelims to fill time if some matches end too soon. 1c)A lot of other users want to see more interviews and I think HD, or anyone else with an elementary understanding of the game, would be a really good fit for that role. He can speak well and seems like a people person so it would have been a natural fit while Day9, JP, and Husky cast the matches. Without going too much into it, I don't think HD should be casting again, as he likely causes more harm to new viewers than good.
2) I had a very hard time understanding just where we were in the brackets and who played who. Seeing a physical bracket as an overlay, possibly with a minute or two of side commentary on notable matches, would have been a good way to fill time. This is a bigger problem than it sounds because I actually lost some excitement for potentially big matches because I had no idea where we were.
3) Day 1 had streaming problems. It was very hard to connect and once in the cast was chopped off at the sides but I'm sure that's already fixed.
4) I want real HD quality before spending $10 for a two day event. I didn't buy HD because I didn't see the value.
5) Buy some chairs for the SC2 crowd. If you're supplying jackets to the casters in an attempt to look more professional, something I agree with, it's all lost when the camera pans to people sitting and laying on the ground.
6) When casting a skilled player show his hands sometimes. Their face really isn't that interesting because they almost never show a reaction to an ingame event through their face.
7) Aside from HD, whom I already mentioned, I think the casting was really good. Some people are giving Husky some flak but I think that's because he's almost always next to HD. When Husky was with Day9 they worked very well together and it really showcased that Husky can be a very good commentator.
This doesn't fall into any of the threads already created, so I'll just post it here:
The live set-up was a bit lacking. The main issue was that the players weren't given noise-cancelling headphones, so the speakers for the commentary were completely inaudible 95% of the time. It would also be nice to be able to SEE the players (at least during the semi and finals) and the commentators rather than having them veiled behind a black curtain. Finally, there was almost no seating in the SC2 area, and just barely enough room on the floor to accommodate everyone.
MLG has plenty of room to make SC2 a more impressive spectator sport. Some of the love shown for the Halo 3 main stage would help immensely: visible players, multiple screens showing various perspectives (for SC2 it would be awesome to have the Day[9] obs flanked by both player's views), stadium-style seating and commentary you can hear.
That being said, I still had a great time at the tournament, and none of the above was unforgivable.
Oh, and for the casters: Nerdy and semi-professional is the way to go. Don't change anything.
JP: Congratulations on a great first tournament. A few things I'd like to see:
a) shorter downtime between streamed matches b) higher contrast on the stream--even at maximum brightness, game video looked a bit muddled on my eee 1001p, which has one of the best screens in a small laptop c) better coordination between the casters and the producers (if that's the right term . . .)--keeping the casters better informed about in-game problems, not cutting off the casters with the map previews, etc. etc.
Loved the whole thing and looking forward to seeing the next event!
On August 30 2010 05:18 HDstarcraft wrote: I guess nobody took the joke when i said i only played 1 game a week.
Thanks for the great feedback though! For reference though I mostly play cg in house games.
Do you know why? You gotta step up your casting game, look at all the comments.. just playing lots of games wont make you good either, talk alot about SC2, think about all the maps and matchups.
I made the trip up from Atlanta with my brother in law. We had a blast and it was cool seeing SC2 in a live setting for the first time.
The only thing we really wanted were chairs. It was absolutely insane that there were only 2 benches for the SC2 side. There is no way you guys couldn't have rented some cheap chairs from the convention center or something. It would have made everything so much better. Having to lay down on the floor for 7 hours on Saturday was brutal.
Also, turning the sound off for the spectators Friday night was terrible too. We actually complained about it to someone and they finally cut it on about 2 hours after it started. Thank god you guys left that running on Saturday.
Everything else was great. Everyone was extremely friendly and it was awesome watching these guys play in person. Hopefully I'll be able to make it out to another MLG event within the next year or so. Just please improve the spectating experience! The SC2 community is leagues better than the Halo community. We deserve an equivalent spectating experience to those Halo kids.
I was PUMPED for MLG in Raleigh. I was moving this week, and I busted my ass Wednesday and Thursday to get all my crap moved so i could be in Raleigh for my 1st big Starcraft tourney!
Man, was I disappointed.
There were SOOOOO many games going on in the 1st round and they hardly showed any of them. They turned the audio off on the live cast to not interfere with the players playing, I understand that. Why not just load replays for the casters to cast on a delay as to not interfere with the games currently being played.
There were like 3 benches setup in front of the big screen to watch. The players were off to the side. I just expected so much more. I didn't even go back for the 2nd day. We watched online and had a much better time.
Anyone else have a let down about the way they handled SC at MLG? I understand Halo gets all the attention there, but couldn't they at least move SC to the main stage for the finals?
The event just left alot lacking for me. It wasn't at all as exciting as I expected live. The main problem was the setup. The crowd was so isolated from the casters and gamers. It wasn't the atmosphere I expected at all.
On August 30 2010 10:14 Dexerion wrote: I was PUMPED for MLG in Raleigh. I was moving this week, and I busted my ass Wednesday and Thursday to get all my crap moved so i could be in Raleigh for my 1st big Starcraft tourney!
Man, was I disappointed.
There were SOOOOO many games going on in the 1st round and they hardly showed any of them. They turned the audio off on the live cast to not interfere with the players playing, I understand that. Why not just load replays for the casters to cast on a delay as to not interfere with the games currently being played.
There were like 3 benches setup in front of the big screen to watch. The players were off to the side. I just expected so much more. I didn't even go back for the 2nd day. We watched online and had a much better time.
Anyone else have a let down about the way they handled SC at MLG? I understand Halo gets all the attention there, but couldn't they at least move SC to the main stage for the finals?
The event just left alot lacking for me. It wasn't at all as exciting as I expected live. The main problem was the setup. The crowd was so isolated from the casters and gamers. It wasn't the atmosphere I expected at all.
To be fair, the experience was much better on day 2 outside of the fact there wasn't any seating. The crowd was fairly large and loud, and we had sound the entire day.
On August 30 2010 10:18 mikesaysno wrote: To be fair, the experience was much better on day 2 outside of the fact there wasn't any seating. The crowd was fairly large and loud, and we had sound the entire day.
Fair enough, I watched the games online and they were SOOOO epic. CLuck and Huk had an amazing series.
Did they have games constantly on the big screen? We were there for about 4 hours and I think we watched about 5 games tops and there were tons being played. That, and seating, and just the arrangement of the crowd to the players and the casters was my biggest complaint. We were totally isolated from the casters and players.
Oh, one more thing: please publish the URLs of your Octoshape streams (e.g. mlg.600c or mlg.1200a). As it stands it is really hard for a Linux user to find what they need to watch the stream. I could not find it anywhere on mlgpro.com
1) There should be more effort on MLG's part to attract big international stars, particularly from Europe. I realize the main issue, travel costs, being out of MLG's control, but I'm unsure if theres even MLG promotion outside of the States.
2) Be smarter in choosing which matches to stream. Apparently in round 1 there was Incontrol vs Machine, yet we saw Nony stomp some random player (no offense to that player.)
3) Having bracket information more easily accessible and better updated. There's a lot of downtime during MLG, which is understandable, so having bracket information readily available and updated on time makes following the event easier.
Mainstage for finals please, i understand it was the first time SC2 was at MLG and they probably wasnt expecting record viewers (from what i heard), i feel as if it deserves a higher priority, put the players up on a stage in progamer booths or something, the actual event probably needed more room aswell as viewers were all cramped onto the floor, give the poor people some seats! Great event otherwise and a good start for SC2 on the MLG circuit imo.
but I searched the mlgpro website, youtube and a few threads here and can't find a place to look up at the games, I was away from the weekend, and would like to see the games. Any idea where to look ? Thanks in advance...
a) Matching uniforms/outfits for the casters, kind of like you see the Koreans do it. It adds a lot to the professional image. Also buy Husky some shampoo and a better haircut.
b) Replays between sets when it's a boX for people who tuned into between matches.
I was pretty dissapointed with the fact that despite Sjow getting into best of 8 and went all the way from europe but still didn't get any coverage of his games. You had two europeans there but only one was covered.
As far as casting went I'm pretty happy. Any combo with day9 worked well. Still a bit annoyed that HD and Husky lack knowledge about current trends. They don't seem to be watching replays of players outside of US server at all. A lot of european tourneys have showcased a variety of styles and so have many of the korean replays out there. I'm just saying. if you make money off of your commentating you should do your homework a bit better.
Maybe it's just the experience as a commentator. I'm pretty sure JP has the lowest ammount of knowledge but he never says stupid or ignorant stuff ont he stream. He holds himself to what he knows and is obviously the most skilled caster here imo (in the craft of casting).
On August 29 2010 22:16 BigBadSkathe wrote: My biggest complaint is an issue that plagues other tournaments/events as well. There needs to be clearly defined caster roles. In pro sports during broadcasts there is always one clearly defined play-by-play commentator and one clearly defined color commentator, there is no overlap. It seems with all E-Sports the commentators both seem to want to do both, and it ends up with both of them trying to talk over each other, or worse, contradicting what the other person just said (accidentally or on purpose).
i think this guy nailed it, i would like to see people with good voices but with a little less knowledge commentate on what buildings are building etc, and colour commentator explains it.
no i was awake the whole night and crossed my fingers for "socke the awesome" sadly he lost vs kiwi altough he should have won both by strategy. i hope to see more of you guys!
I just wanted to add that I think MLG could do the community and competitive Starcraft a huge favor by talking with ProdiG and create a weekly online league where people could qualify by points for seeding into LAN tourneys. The main purpose of this league would be to use community made maps instead of blizzard maps. You could use these to get map balance feedback and as well to popularize some of the really nice community maps coming out. These maps keep things interesting as well as allow map makers and the community to create maps that can even out perceived imbalances or maps that allow for unique and interesting strats. For example (this isn't a good idea imo) have a completely flat map, whoa now reaper play is useless and maybe we see some other stuff go on in the early game TvZ.
Obviously you can't just throw players into a new map pool without practice. Get together with some of the more well know guys/ custom map community to produce high-quality maps. Then announce what will be used within a given season/event at least 2-3 months? ahead so people can practice. Also, I would guess you want to slowly rotate in one or two map in at a time so guys don't have to learn 6 maps at a time.
I thought overall for the very first MLG tournament with Starcraft 2 it was handled phenomenally.
I mean jeeze.. on day 2 there were so many people in the starcraft "corner". As for a suggestion on next time. I wish it would have been easier to see them playing live. Only if you got lucky could you see someone who was playing at station 6 of 12.. granted this probably distracts the players being right next to that huge crowd, but it is essentially what people went to see.
Utilizing a replay of another match and casting it to fill time would be a uniwue way to fill time and provide content. You could show a big upset, or a well played pro shootout.
Overall, everything was good. more game content.
I will get the next. Maybe a "Season Pass" option.
+1 the idea of a second desk that tracks the results and action. Maybe a board you can go to live and update advance players.
I bought the HD stream, and while the video of the casters/interviews/etc looked great, the in game video was being streamed at a much lower resolution. My thoughts:
1) Charging for a stream is fine. I'll gladly support starcraft e-sports by paying for a quality broadcast. The MLG video player is kind of shit, but you can view the stream through VLC easily enough. I'd ask for some kind of replay feature, though. Starcraft is very much a global sport, and it would be nice if people could replay videos whenever they want through the weekend so that they don't have to stay up to weird hours to watch the games.
2) Make sure the in game video is being captured at the correct resolution. As far as I could tell, the in game footage was being captured at the standard def rate only, which was a major letdown.
3) I don't know what your policy is on replays, but here's a thought. It's impossible for you guys to cast 100% of the matches, but there's a huge group of people who cast matches and post to youtube/whatever. What if you send out replays as they're played to volunteer casters, so that people who care about a random round of 16 match that isn't being featured can actually see it. Finding people to cast would be no problem, as simply getting exposure from people looking for MLG matches would be worth it for them. For all we know there could have been an amazing match that nobody has seen because it wasn't one of those chosen to be cast.
- I love the energy HD/Husky brings to the commentary booth and if they could add some pro-SC2-knowledge to their shows I think they could become HUGE!
- D9 is sooo good (im a fanboy btw) and he and JP just make an awesome team. Cred to both of you.
- As said before, I'd also love to see some brackets now and then as well as some more player interviews.
- Start the HHJF - "Husky Haircut and Jacket Fund".
- Fridays SC2-event started at 23.30 CET (and ended at 06.00 CET) and Saturday's event started around 16.00 CET. Would it be possible to rerun the whole Friday between say 09.00 and 15.00 CET on Saturday? Would make it a lot easier for us Europeans to watch the whole event. (This might have been the case, I do not know as the idea just now struck me). Maybe its too much of a hassle to do the rerun, but it's an idea.
- Get more accounts for the commentators. Set them up so that if 1 series finishes they can jump right into an ongoing series by the press of a button. Get someone to oversee the joining of casters into games and make sure that there is always something to watch. A director of some kind.
Never, ever allow the Old Spice Report anywhere near my screen again. The little bit we did see was an atrocity and an affront to intelligent people everywhere.
Other than that, everything on-screen flowed pretty well. I would like to see more clear tournament brackets, preferably on the stream occasionally. It's nice to hear the commentators sum up what we didn't get to see.
On August 29 2010 22:26 s.a.y wrote: 6. Buy Husky a suit.
Or, better yet, realize that a jacket and a T-shirt looks absolutely ridiculous (this isn't Miami Vice) and wear an actual suit or just wear normal clothing like Husky did.
7. Overall, it was a good event.
Agreed.
It was a bit difficult to follow exactly what was going on with the standings, if you could have some graphics and a regular overview of who's won what, that'd be great.
EDIT:
On August 30 2010 15:55 Node wrote: Never, ever allow the Old Spice Report anywhere near my screen again. The little bit we did see was an atrocity and an affront to intelligent people everywhere.
This. That was absolutely atrocious. The worst kind of lowest common denominator astroturfed faux content.Old Spice went from amusing me (guy on horse, building kick) to making me want to boycott their products.
First, it was a awesome event cuz everything went fairly smoothly with the tournament (ie. no drama of any sort) so thats always good..
-As far as improvements go i would like to say that the casters had to 'stall' for too long while everyone was getting prepared to play, so i think you can fill up this time with some other content like interviews, and etc...
-Also after you guys randomly put the players in the brackets, you can maybe 'fix' it a little so that players from the same team don't have to play each other in the first round...
thats about it, all in all i had a lot of fun watching it, some epic games and great casting from everyone!!
My main complaint with the event was the crappy streaming system - took me forever to get it to work, and even then it would regularly freeze or just spaz out - to some hilarious results at times, but still annoying to have to restart the browser in the middle of matches. I've read that people have had better success with external players, so maybe you should provide more support/information on how to use that (with the HD stream too). Oh, and definitely try to get better "HD" quality - I've mostly bought the premium stream more as reciprocation for the community support, but you should have 720p video for that price if you are going to advertise it as so - or at least 576p.
Also kind of annoying was figuring out the brackets, especially during day one when all of it was pretty messed up in the gotfrag page at times. You really should provide an easy way to access it directly on the MLG site, and show it occasionally during the stream itself too. It's kind of sad at times that even the commentators were clueless as to the results of matches and have to bring up the website on to the screen. Looks really unprofessional to me.
I have little critique for the commentators themselves, who did a mostly fine job. There were awkward moments of inaction though that could be better filled with content and such, such as just roving cameras to let the online watchers see the showgrounds and get a more complete feel of the scope and mood of the event. More interviews would've also been nice.
I did like the double elimination format though, gives the MLG circuit a more unique feel in the regards. The "extended finals" though were rather disappointing though - should've just been loser needs to win two sets of bo3s (or even 2 bo5s, to give the final a more final feel), while the winner needs just one.
Overall, it was an enjoyable experience though. Definitely looking forwards to the next show at DC(?)!
You guys made a big hype elsewhere about "Championship Sunday" which is cool... but it kinda sucked that SC2 was not a part of that. I know that it was the first go, but in the future, I'd love to see the entire tournament spread among the 3 days, with SC2 being a part of the "Championship Sunday". It might've even allowed for us to see some more of the games casted.
OK I haven't read the entire thread so apologies if this is repeated elsewhere, but here's my brief list of things:
After day one they rebroadcasted the entire feed. This was a FANTASTIC idea, anyone who missed the games or lives in a different timezone was able to watch the games. Yet they didn't do this for Day 2. WHY? I hardly got to see any of the finals due to timezone differences, why would they stop doing this halfway through the tournament.
As far as casting goes I thought the casting during games was fantastic from all 4 guys, but between games everyone except Day9 seemed to struggle to find things to talk about. There was SO much that could have been talked about in between games such as:
Talking about the players - I would love to know some of their backstory, rivalries, strengths, weaknesses etc etc.
Talking about the brackets and matchups - it would be great if they could actually explain before each match where the players are in the brackets and who will likely play who if such and such happens. Perhaps a graphic to help this as well would be useful.
Actual player interviews between matches as others have mentioned.
All the above stuff is much more interesting than hearing about the destructible rocks on blistering sands for the 100th time.
Also can I suggest that the casters shouldn't be the ones having to organise the games. It's hard enough for them to find ways to entertain the audience between games without having to find the players, ask them what maps they want and invite them to games at the same time. They need to have a 3rd person doing this so the casters are free to focus 100% of their energy on casting.
Lastly. Double elimination format is great, definitely keep this.
Stream quality wasn't great, but certainly viewable. The HD-upgrade however was more like a bad joke if you ask me. Otherwise it was an awesome tournament, Awesome casting. Thanks alot!
Great casting and the stream was the best i have seen for a tourny this size once i finally got all the plugins working. - I would recommend showing more games, or trying to highlight players doing well, i know MLG has a tight schedule but players like cathoun didn't get very much mention until he made it very deep into the tourny. - I would also like to see more camera shots of the tourney in action and to see what the spectator experience is like, i did see more of this as the tourny went on.
Overall i have to thank you for the experience, it was simple and easy for those of us at home, and thank you for putting this on. (Edit: the stream was really dark, i couldn't see the maps at all in the FoW. luckily I think we all have memorized the maps.)
O yea and as a SC2 fan, the old spice report was way to "in my face" but i think this report was also meant to appeal to Halo fans, and after watching some of the halo stream since i enjoyed halo 2 back in the day, i quickly realized that they take BM to the EXTREME personal level. All players trash talk and call out each others noobness by yelling in-front of the whole crowd >.<. Happy to call myself a SC2 fan after witnessing that.
Overall I loved the coverage. Great games, great setup, and hopefully the start of a flourishing SC2 scene. Just a few items for improvement.
Brackets and results were extremely difficult to follow. Things were already confusing having an uppers and lowers bracket, but the layout of the bracket site was very difficult to follow. I hard time even telling which players were still in the tournament and who had been eliminated.
The 'Caster' thread outlines a lot of the shortcomings of the casters, but having rookies who have very little live experience work such a premier event is a questionable decision. You wouldn't pull a guy who uploads uptube videos to cast an NBA game. You'd have him gain some experience working high school and college games and move up. MLG is trying to be THE league for the North Americas. Have top tier talent working the show if you want to be considered a top tier organization.
Whenever the stream was put on full screen mode it always went to widescreen format. Not very good when some people still run on standard monitors.
Also, the coverage could have been tightened up a little bit. Lots of down time between matches. I know scheduling is hard with a live event where games and rounds end at all different times. Maybe do some prerecorded pieces to fill in downtime when you are waiting for a game. Player bios, game videos to help new comers learn common terms and tactics, and player interviews would be great 2 to 5 minutes pieces that could be fit in while waiting for the next match.
Great event, but way too many commercials. I know that someone has to pay for it, bit this was pretty ridiculous (but very American).
I am missing the VODs or at the very least an indication whether VODs will be released. The SC community is global, so no matter when the tournament is cast; a large fraction of the fanbase will be sleeping/working and therefore miss the live casts.
IEM was very good at releasing the VODs, so it was completely possible to watch the entire thing 1 day postponed without getting the results spoiled.
I loved the event, but I agree with other posters that the player coverage was not up to par. One example is SjoW who ended up as number five and didn't even get casted once.
Fix that and give us more Day9 and I'll be a very happy camper.
On August 29 2010 22:26 s.a.y wrote:5. make HD learn the game a little better. He made some rookie mistakes, it's great for noob players to learn basic stuff, but it's terrible if he casts wrong information.
a) the webpage is a desaster, it's impossible to find anything there - I had to go to 3rd parties' sites to look for grids; this is something that can be fixed very easily and isn't really expensive; but there has to be a simple, clear way to access brackets from the main page at all times
b) it would've been much better to play 3 days in a row and not play everything in just 2 days; especially since it's not single but double elimination; many really good games were not casted
c) you really ought to have "something" prepared for the time between the matches; interview players live or interview players BEFORE the event and play these interviews on stream when there is some downtime; although I love the casters (all of them), it's not really a good solution that they have to keep talking and talking and talking if the matches don't start right away
d) VODs and replays; I understand that it's not easy to collect and upload all the replays and VODs right away, nevertheless it's part of the tournament-experience that you can watch the games that you've missed or games that you've liked really much; other tournaments are capable of this too, just look for go4sc2, they are doing online-tourneys twice a week with replays being available immediately afterwards; if you oblige players to submit their replays to a single source and indicate clearly that they shall submit them with a certain description, all you had to do was to pack them in a giant zip-file
I was a net/stream viewer when I was able. Didn't catch everything.
Pre-Event > Let us know who's going to be there. Many of us (especially if we're here @ TL.net) are fanboys of one level or another toward different casters, players, etc. Knowing that "so-and-so" is scheduled to play may make a difference in whether we tune in or not. > Production planning. This is when you need to be thinking about the "B roll" material, what assignments the casters are going to have, etc. Honestly, it kinda felt like the "planning" was "We'll get 3 SC2 casters from the Net and have JP sit with Sean and stream stuff"
During the Event > Dedicate someone to the B roll coverage. They can be interviewing players, touring the venue, etc. It wouldn't even have to be focused on SC2. For the inter-match stuff finding out more about what an MLG event is like in the bigger picture would be cool too. > Have a way to swap out matches if the one you pick is kinda boring. Think about the opening rounds of March Madness when they'll say "Well, it looks like Duke has this well in hand, we're going to head over to Milwaukee where Butler and Syracuse are locked up in a tie game". Same sort of idea here. If Huk is steamrolling his opponent, be ready to switch over to some other more interesting game. > It's really really really important that we have a way to follow the progression of the tournament. Seeing casts of some good SC2 matches is fine. But we need to know what's going on in the overall event too. > Group/pool play vs double elimination ... I guess that's kind of up to MLG and how you'd like to see things. But I think a Day 1 that was group play followed by a single-elim round of 16 (or 32 depending on number of players and timing) on day 2 would allow players to have some fun on the first day and keep the final day more focused.
Post Event > VOD - If we didn't see all of it live, we'll probably want to see it later. And from a marketing standpoint, we should really be able to come to MLGPro and see the videos there. Seems weird to have to go to some other site that links to YouTube. > Replays - for those of us who really want to dig in, we'd love to be able to get the replay files and watch what was going on at our own pace.
I really hope they listen to a lot of the criticism, after reading them myself, I have to agree on what many people have to say.
One thing to note though guys, if your complaining about the stream quality, you have to keep in mind that their are hundreds of thousands of people tuned in, all across the different games, so be respectful of the fact that they give you a SD version for free. The only thing that I really can nag at from the stream, is the same issue a lot of people are having when they go into full-screen, it chops off pieces of the sides. This has gone on for about 3-4 events now, and I don't know when they will look into fixing it.
As far as people not being satisfied with the HD stream, nothing I can really say about that except for the fact that you get a 30 second preview everytime you load the stream, so you shouldn't really complain about the quality when you got to experience it before buying. It's simple. If you don't like the quality of the preview, don't buy it. It would be like buying a car, and then the next day saying you don't like how it drives. (THEY GIVE YOU A FREE TEST DRIVE)
lol, but anyways. I think the casters did a great job, the interviews were a little short, especially HuK's(joke). But all-in-all, I thought it was a great job for their very first SC2 event, and hope that they listen to the feedback and improve on the next one. Good job guys.
You guys are giving HD and Husky a little bit too hard of a time. It was their first ever live 'major' event. I thought they did a pretty good job. Also it is to note that Husky and HD have very different styles than Sean and JP, and I'm sure that was MLG's intent.
Keep in mind that not everyone follows starcraft and/or is knowledgeable about the game. A good portion of people actually prefered HD and Husky's enthusiasm as they found it more interesting.
Opinions are good but if they are based solely on your taste then that won't really be constructive which is the point of this thread.
On August 31 2010 00:42 Agh wrote: You guys are giving HD and Husky a little bit too hard of a time. It was their first ever live 'major' event. I thought they did a pretty good job. Also it is to note that Husky and HD have very different styles than Sean and JP, and I'm sure that was MLG's intent.
Keep in mind that not everyone follows starcraft and/or is knowledgeable about the game. A good portion of people actually prefered HD and Husky's enthusiasm as they found it more interesting.
Opinions are good but if they are based solely on your taste then that won't really be constructive which is the point of this thread.
Good post, and I agree with you. Day and JP were good, but I really did enjoy the livecast more when Husky and HD were commentating (I was at the event live). Of course, the fact that they turned off the audio for the first half of the tournament was little irritating too.
I liked the 4 casters as an overall group. They each have a clear style and strengths that together made a well rounded group. Experience will only make each of them stronger. And you never learn more than you do from your first time (Look at how much Huk improved from his first LAN event to his second!).
On August 30 2010 09:33 dave22222 wrote: Where are the replays? IEM had them within hours.
They had to delete the replays. SeleCT had gone onto a few of the computers to view PainUser's replays in order to learn his builds etc, and ended up beating him in the next round using perfect counter build orders. After that happened, they changed the policy to delete replays right after the game was done. Because this was their first event, I don't think they have software to handle moving the replays to a single database right after the game.
I had a great time in Raleigh. The venue was very nice and I definitely got my fill of doritos and Dr. Pepper. With that said it could have been better.
Easy things first:
1. Provide a bracket for the spectators. Double elimination was hard enough to follow. I know at one point HD said if you want to find the bracket "go online". Luckily we had our cell phones but finding a website with a good updated bracket was difficult. While you are at it post a match schedule somewhere.
2. More speakers. There was a good crowd for SC 2 but if you sat farther than 15- 20 ft you could not hear a thing. I understand not wanting to disturb the players but if it is that big of a deal then put the players of the match being casted in a booth.
3. More chairs/bleachers. It looked like you planned for 20 or so people to show up at the match. The crowd itself was good. If you get them in actual seats maybe adding a crowd cam in match would be worthwhile.
Harder stuff:
1. Take a look at the format. Best of 5 single elimination or maybe a round robin group stage followed by best of 5 single elims. Do best of 7 for the final. This was the most under-whelming final ever. Regardless of what some say i loved the PvP play.
2. Add a screen or two around the venue so watch non-featured matches. Also try and get the players out of the corner. so we can see more hand mechanics in person. Announce who is playing and at what station (they were doing this at the tekken matches).
3. Move Day9/JP/HD/Husky our of their hole. Think College GameDay. Let them play to the crowd some and come into their own. They are the faces of SC 2 right now that people recognize.
4. Set up a place for players to go sign autographs and talk with fans. They were walled off (which i understand) but there were places for featured halo teams to sign fan stuff. Maybe this happened and i just missed it.
5. If you want lead in filler material have someone manning fraps to splice together a few quick highlights of the players previous matches. Even if you use matches form the day before it would be a good recap.
When Day9/JP commented, they would reflect on the match and then fall into the underlying basics of the gaming, teaching us to be better players. (Day9 would go into professor mode.) << THIS IS GREAT.
However, Husky and HD simply TALKED about the game, like "well, this and this happened" I KNOW it did, I JUST saw the game. Try to really say something meaningful, a-la day9.
for the display of "who is in the winners / losers bracket" ...
instead of showing tables / columns of wins&losses -- show an actual bracket like binary beast and have a winners bracket and a losers bracket, this way it's easier to see how the matches could play out
maybe not binary beast if it's double elim (which is fine because it adds more games/possibilities of finals) but still the actual bracket instead of tables would be great.
On August 31 2010 10:46 reza wrote: less HD and Husky
Agree with this.
Also, have several accounts for your casters/players available ahead of time in case something happens, like HD's account being locked out from bnet (MH?!?! Jokes..) and not being able to get back on for several minutes.
All the casters except Day9 were lacking. I am really saddened if those 3 continue to be the "standing elite" of StarCraft II casters, without major improvements. Cause their blabbering sure made me facepalm all the time during the few matches i watched. The critique here is with no pun intended but if someone does get offended, i think this quote i've read on some user here, will shine bright: "People should be less concerned with whether or not they are being insulted, and more concerned with whether or not it's the truth."
Day9
He is the king of goofiness and nerdiness in casual and innocent way. He has a style and a vibe, and a vision, and he is never boring even when he is sharing his mundane thoughts that are passing through his head. He's really kind of a monolith in the StarCraft II world.
Husky
I remember watching your StarCraft I commentaries when you were starting up, and they were really fun. You fail miserably in duo though. No connection with the co-caster, fake hyping all the time and repeating things bazillion times, things like "I can't wait" blagh blagh... Besides your few sentence gems, your overall performance was far from good.
JP
This guy i noticed on the Day9 countdown party, and i can not see anything why i would like to watch this guy. I mean hes not obnoxious to watch, but he is 0 on the 0-10 entertaining scale. All he does it seems is get by Day9 with just being nerd interested in StarCraft 2. No style, no perceivable passion, no substance in the sentences. Seriously man, what are you doing in the casting world?
HD
Eewwwwww... How do i say this without you guys thinking it's misplaced angst... Oh well i'll try... You man, are seriously obnoxious to listen to. I think the reason for that i can distribute to your sleaky voice (which might be subjective thing by far), but your sentence construction is in pair with that voice. Now, i know that you might not be able to change voices or something, but i seriously will avoid your commentaries in the future.
The players in the tournament were great. Was rooting for the Protoss trio, Kiwikaki, HuK and my main favorite Socke. Darn dude, you put up a hell of a fight, i will closely watch your next appearances.
On August 31 2010 13:39 stylepoints wrote: Start by getting rid of husky. Second point is there was WAY too much downtime between matches at times. Overall though good tourney and fun to watch.
this, husky is miserably annoying.
and we need less commercials and more games, so many games are played while we watch the same 5 commercials 50 times in a loop....
Lack of brackets, lack of solid casters besides Day9, overly hyped "professionalism" and production without any valuable content.
Par for the course of video game tournaments.
Sadly the casters and employees are just attempting to suck the proverbial dick of the organizers and sponsors, and our enjoyment of the cast or production plays second fiddle.
BTW I can't stand Husky or HD.
They got lucky and are now getting exposed for how worthless they are.
I actually enjoyed it quite a bit and look forward to the next tournament. That said, while I think the overall cast was good, I'll list my critiques.
- Player Interviews. There was a few the first day towards the beginning, but they seemed to die off later on and would have been a good way to fill time. I've seen most of these players in games many times, and it's always cool to me to be able to put a voice and face along with the players name and play style.
- Brackets - I kept a tab open on gotfrag to try and keep up with how the other matches and such were going, but they never seemed to be accurate, and random matches seemed to pop up every round that defied what the brackets seemed to show would happen next. Along with this, and explanation of how players lost matches that weren't cast would be good. (Maybe some type of a review of highlights at some point near the end of a casting day or something?)
Down Time - A little more production value to help fill the time between games. I'm sure that you could get fed a little more information like on other matches that have been going on and their outcomes to keep people updated. Yes, there was the little chat window that gave little blurbs, but honestly 2 sentences really isn't enough information on why a player I'm cheering for is now out of the tournament. If there was a brilliant play or something, again, just show it to us! You have the replays.
Player Information - I realize this is the fist time the game has been played in MLG and honestly the game just came out so it's tough to know a lot of the faces yet, but there seemed to be a bit too much of the "I don't really know this player" thing going on. I don't blame the casters at all, they seemed to all be going off their personal knowledge and weren't really being given any information. The casters had computers in front of them, why wasn't there a little writeup of the players? It was known ahead of time who the players were from either the signups or invites.
Again, despite any criticism I have here, I really enjoyed the tournament and the casts. I think double elimination is kind of a nice change from what I've seen in every other tournament. It gave me a little hope that my favorite players might run all the way through the lower bracket and make a comeback to the finals. Casters were great and the switches were refreshing after watching a tournament and hearing the same caster for hours at a time.
On August 31 2010 10:46 reza wrote: less HD and Husky
Agree with this.
Also, have several accounts for your casters/players available ahead of time in case something happens, like HD's account being locked out from bnet (MH?!?! Jokes..) and not being able to get back on for several minutes.
Preparedness in general...
That has nothing to do with preparedness, when warm-ups started all of our accounts got auto locked due to blizzards 'security' system (locks accounts when several logins occur at one ip address)
Actually, this was the first time I ever enjoyed watching HD and Husky. My two friends that I watched the semi finals and finals with, who never have played a starcraft match in their life, enjoyed them as well. So give the guys some credit. Even though they might not be as good as Day9, they are at least contributing and trying to improve themselves (which indeed, is needed)
I’ve seen a ton of threads all over TL.net and I just wanted to have one cohesive, final thread so that myself and other MLG staff could skim through it and find all the criticism, suggestions, and comments in one place.
One thing I want to ask of you is to remain from outright complaining. We want to bring you guys the best possible tournament and coverage of the tournament and the only way we can do that is with constructive criticism from the community.
If you were at the event, tell us how to improve the live spectator experience. If you watched at home all weekend, tell us what you would like to see on the stream. If you were a player, tell us what we can do to improve your experience over the weekend. If you attended the event as press, tell us how we can make things easier on you. We’ll try our best to listen and improve the entire experience as much as possible before the next event.
1. Do not make me install junk on my computer to watch the coverage, I won't do it. Your sponsers won't get my eyeballs.
2. Get non-live videos out faster. I watched recorded video on YouTube with all your sponser stuff cut out because you were too slow. Yet again, your sponsers won't get my eyeballs. If you were faster with videos, I would have seen your sponser ads in them.
3. Your website is impossible to navigate. How many people care about all the different games? I want a Starcraft 2 experience. It's fine to tease you do other things and if I'm interested I'll click deeper, but finding 'just starcraft' on your website was impossible. Nor could I (still to this day) find just straight up videos and/or replays. Your site doesn't seem designed to the people who actually want to be an eSports fan, but rather it's designed seemingly to someone who is trying to advertise MLG. MLG will be cool if it does cool things.
4. Understand your audience. We're gamers, we're young, and we're prolly cheap. We're not going to generally pay for a HD stream, instead someone will rip it for us. Don't give us a reason to rip it... be the source.
5. I don't think I actually was able to find the rankings, ladder, match results, who's there, or anything on your website. Again, just a horrible horrible website. What I really want is to go to http://starcraft2.mlgpro.com and click on 'Raleigh 2010' in a very obvious link, and then from there have access to live stream, all the info on who's there and current standings, and links to replays and videos for each and every game already played, or any games currently being played. I don't understand what's hard about that.
6. Casters shouldn't be setting up the games. There was some issue apparently where the casters were actually trying to get the players in the game. Let the casters cast, have referees handling the tech details out of view and setting up the game. Casters shoudl just see that it's starting and then be given a keyboard/mouse/monitor.
7. More camera on the players. There was a match where HuK was in a small video in the action card of the cast, that was pretty cool. It's interesting to watch the actual players behind the screen, though I know they tend to be somewhat uninteresting and just focusing.
8. Day[9] is a great caster, the others... meh. It's good to be excited watching certain plays, but there was like some serious 'nerd shrieking' going on, there could be less of that.
9. Pre-game and post-game interviews with the players. How do you feel going into this? How do you feel coming out of it? Why do you think you won/lost? WHat was the most descisive moment in your mind? yadda yadda.
10. 'Fun' things before/after coverage. There was a TLOwnage video somewhere that was very fun and funny to watch of TLO just pwning noobs with unorthodox builds and being humorously casted. Or even educational things, pathfinding/micro tricks, overlays on maps showing common routes, etc.
11. If eSports is gunna break out it needs to feel slightly less 'nerdy.' The nerd shrieking stopping would be a good first step. A little more female (the female voice explaining the map before a match was kind of good). A little more preparedness, and the casters not doing the game set up. Add a little 'professionalism' to it (not saying don't have fun).
(Not to be a hard knock, but I don't care if all those points have 'but you can get that by doing ____ on our site' because even if I could, I couldn't find it, and the amount of time I'll spend looking is simply limited before I'll just go to YouTube and watch rips.)
On August 31 2010 17:09 {88}iNcontroL wrote: MLG repeatedly told me that they will be uploading all the reps as vods and possibly even making the reps available.
I certainly hope so because I WANT my games
Had an awesome series with Machine/Lz and my games vs Silver/Masq are worth a gander too.
Perhaps TeamLiquid can use a little of its leverage as the world's best Starcraft fansite to make sure it happens, hm?
Instead of so much downtime, small compilation videos of certain Bo3's that were not streamed could be made and shown quickly why a player got eliminated.
Casting was great. HD and Husky was a little shaky but it was their first LAN event and it had a lot of people watching. Main thing about the casting is simply that you should try and make it less repetitive. As someone mentioned you could get some info on the players as well as their recent games and talk about that instead of talking so much about the early game. There's a limit to how many times we need an explanation of the shields on the protoss probe harrass. But all in all you did a great job.
As for the event in general. When it says HD I expect HD. To me this is at least 720p. I think I logged in 20 times just to make sure that I was actually watching the HD stream I had payed for. Also the way you logged into the HD stream was incredibly confusing. I don't know what it is with e-Sport sites and crappy layout and design but I cannot for the life of me figure out why the site doesn't have a dedicated streaming page made to maximize the overview of the event and separate it completely from the rest of the other events of the MLG page. The GOMtv.net page is awful in this regard as well. Also, keep the paying customers i.e. the HD stream on a different server from the regular stream to prevent crashes. When I pay for a service I should get it or receive a refund. Fortunately I got into the stream after about an hour and a half into the event but it still shouldn't happen.
Take a page from the Korean book of SC:BW and get the contestants you are streaming on a stage and in some boxes.
Lastly I would have liked to see more transitions, brackets and general tournament overview to give if more of a "TV feel". I'm hoping to one day get the kind of quality that I can invite some friends over to watch on the big screen with a few beers.
So definitely room for improvement but you did a great job under the circumstances.
I wasn't there, but from what I understand you had to pay to spectate this live. I wouldn't have been pleased to find that money only bought me a spot on the floor rather than a seat in a chair. It's not that expensive to rent a bunch of cheap chairs. I would have also liked a few more interviews with the players.
people will probably not stop complaining about casters until everyone except day9 has stopped casting - then day9 decides to quit e-sports one day and LOL we are left with nothing
I can't say how much I disdain each of you who gives so much hate to everyone except day9 (I literally "can't say" because it would get me banned....); of course there is always room for improvement, but this is going way overboard and has nothing to do with constructive criticism
The problem is sleepingdog, that I have never heard you speak, you could even be in bronze league, and I would rather have you casting the games than husky. The guy shrieks like a godamn banshee and blasts my eardrums every time something happens. I don't even mind that hd?husky? can't pronounce zealot ffs. Just don't yell in my ear.
And yes, one of the supposed "top casters" can't even pronounce a handful of the units' names correctly. How are we supposed to take them seriously.
What happened to the HD stream, I actually payed the 10$ to get the HD stream, but it was EXACTLY the same as the regular stream.., except that the "Upgrade to HD" button on the bottom of the player was gone.
This does not encourage me or anyone I know to pay for the better quality stream, if we think that we are going to get ripped off.
Other that that it was a great event, I even stopped being angry at the stream issue after a while due to day[9]s and JPs shenanigans and excellent work.
TLDR- If you sell HQ stream, make sure the stream is HQ
On August 31 2010 19:08 Novac wrote: As for the event in general. When it says HD I expect HD. To me this is at least 720p. I think I logged in 20 times just to make sure that I was actually watching the HD stream I had payed for. Also the way you logged into the HD stream was incredibly confusing. I don't know what it is with e-Sport sites and crappy layout and design but I cannot for the life of me figure out why the site doesn't have a dedicated streaming page made to maximize the overview of the event and separate it completely from the rest of the other events of the MLG page. The GOMtv.net page is awful in this regard as well. Also, keep the paying customers i.e. the HD stream on a different server from the regular stream to prevent crashes. When I pay for a service I should get it or receive a refund. Fortunately I got into the stream after about an hour and a half into the event but it still shouldn't happen.
Did you actually see ANY difference between the HD and not HD stream? Me and my 4 friends that all watched this together could not.
On August 31 2010 19:25 sleepingdog wrote: people will probably not stop complaining about casters until everyone except day9 has stopped casting - then day9 decides to quit e-sports one day and LOL we are left with nothing
I can't say how much I disdain each of you who gives so much hate to everyone except day9 (I literally "can't say" because it would get me banned....); of course there is always room for improvement, but this is going way overboard and has nothing to do with constructive criticism
Yep, it seems like basically a lot of people from TL want to see Day9 and no one else. Everyone who isn't Day9 is just going to cop heavy criticism no matter who they are, be it dApollo, HD, Husky or whoever just for taking air time away from Day9.
JP has the right idea, he pretty much just gives Day9 most of the mic time adding the occasional insight or play by play but without trying to inflict his own personality on the casts, he still cops tons of criticism but not nearly as much as the others.
Husky and HD try to add a lot more of their own personalities and they get burned for it because they're not Day9.
On August 30 2010 05:41 itzbrandnew wrote: 3) JP and Sean were so good together... but you know what duo would be perfect? Chill/Sean... I think I just wet myself putting those two names together like that. Make it happen.
Husky gets burned because he shrieks like a banshee when stuff happens. And it's either HD or Husky that can't pronounce zergling or zealot. And as a caster, not being able to speak properly(or without annoying people) I'd say is failing a pretty big prerequisite.
Tasteless and artosis for instance are great casters.
On August 31 2010 13:20 Usurper wrote: All the casters except Day9 were lacking. I am really saddened if those 3 continue to be the "standing elite" of StarCraft II casters, without major improvements. Cause their blabbering sure made me facepalm all the time during the few matches i watched. The critique here is with no pun intended but if someone does get offended, i think this quote i've read on some user here, will shine bright: "People should be less concerned with whether or not they are being insulted, and more concerned with whether or not it's the truth."
Day9
He is the king of goofiness and nerdiness in casual and innocent way. He has a style and a vibe, and a vision, and he is never boring even when he is sharing his mundane thoughts that are passing through his head. He's really kind of a monolith in the StarCraft II world.
Husky
I remember watching your StarCraft I commentaries when you were starting up, and they were really fun. You fail miserably in duo though. No connection with the co-caster, fake hyping all the time and repeating things bazillion times, things like "I can't wait" blagh blagh... Besides your few sentence gems, your overall performance was far from good.
JP
This guy i noticed on the Day9 countdown party, and i can not see anything why i would like to watch this guy. I mean hes not obnoxious to watch, but he is 0 on the 0-10 entertaining scale. All he does it seems is get by Day9 with just being nerd interested in StarCraft 2. No style, no perceivable passion, no substance in the sentences. Seriously man, what are you doing in the casting world?
HD
Eewwwwww... How do i say this without you guys thinking it's misplaced angst... Oh well i'll try... You man, are seriously obnoxious to listen to. I think the reason for that i can distribute to your sleaky voice (which might be subjective thing by far), but your sentence construction is in pair with that voice. Now, i know that you might not be able to change voices or something, but i seriously will avoid your commentaries in the future.
The players in the tournament were great. Was rooting for the Protoss trio, Kiwikaki, HuK and my main favorite Socke. Darn dude, you put up a hell of a fight, i will closely watch your next appearances.
Cheers
this post needs to be called out for being fucking horrible.
On August 31 2010 19:08 Novac wrote: As for the event in general. When it says HD I expect HD. To me this is at least 720p. I think I logged in 20 times just to make sure that I was actually watching the HD stream I had payed for. Also the way you logged into the HD stream was incredibly confusing. I don't know what it is with e-Sport sites and crappy layout and design but I cannot for the life of me figure out why the site doesn't have a dedicated streaming page made to maximize the overview of the event and separate it completely from the rest of the other events of the MLG page. The GOMtv.net page is awful in this regard as well. Also, keep the paying customers i.e. the HD stream on a different server from the regular stream to prevent crashes. When I pay for a service I should get it or receive a refund. Fortunately I got into the stream after about an hour and a half into the event but it still shouldn't happen.
Did you actually see ANY difference between the HD and not HD stream? Me and my 4 friends that all watched this together could not.
I don't demand a whole lot from casters honestly, I don't think many other people do either. JP is fine because he doesn't bother me. Husky and HD actively annoy me. That's why they get heat.
Is it nice to have a great caster like day9? yes. Is it required? Not at all.
On August 31 2010 19:34 stylepoints wrote: The problem is sleepingdog, that I have never heard you speak, you could even be in bronze league, and I would rather have you casting the games than husky.
I am diamond and certainly play "a bit" more than HD with his one game per week; the problem is: I have no interest in devoting my time to casting whatsoever; I'm a teaching and research assistent for law in Austria and can't spend time casting
my point is, that many people "claim" that they could do better, but apparantly everybody has better things to do - therefore we should be grateful that there are at least some who cast somewhat regularly
furthermore I get the feeling that many of you don't know how all this "casting"-stuff actually started, despite playing the ICCup for a long time; I remember the time before youtube where you just got a replay and an audio-file you could download; then the caster in the audio-file would do something like "game starting in 3-2-1" and right now you had to click "unpause" in the game; you had to move the game-view yourself so many times you didn't look at the right spot the caster was talking about; pausing, forwarding, reviewing, etc. was impossible - you would have to paus the game, alt/tab and pause the audio-file; but then they would be out of synchro
nevertheless I was still HAPPY because FINALLY there was a "voice"...somebody who would talk about the stuff that happened and explained things that were going on; nowadays things are so much greater especially due to youtube, I can't even think how I survived back then; but instead of appreciating the rapid progress of coverage which is the main part of e-sport all people do is complain, complain, complain and complain; not contributing constructive criticism but just spelling "this, this and this sucks" in 15093715 different ways; honestly, during the casts of HD and husky I sometimes stopped reading here because all the hatred gave me stomachache
No see you are missing the point entirely. I don't think I could do it better, that's why I don't. I DO know however that he sucks. His voice is annoying. He sounds like someone is beating a baby with a cat. And at least find someone who can pronounce zergling and zealot to replace HD.
I don't think I could play basketball better than Nenad Krstic, but I know enough to know that he sucks at the pro level.
On August 31 2010 21:37 stylepoints wrote: No see you are missing the point entirely. I don't think I could do it better, that's why I don't. I DO know however that he sucks. His voice is annoying. He sounds like someone is beating a baby with a cat. And at least find someone who can pronounce zergling and zealot to replace HD.
I don't think I could play basketball better than Nenad Krstic, but I know enough to know that he sucks at the pro level.
no but what "sucks" in pro basketball can be measured quantitatively. You cannot measure the "annoying"-ness of someone's voice. That's your opinion, of which you are entitled to but if you're deluded into thinking your opinion is some sort of truth, well wake the fuck up and welcome to the real world cuz you are wrong~
Oh I'm sure someone somewhere has done a study on what vocal ranges are the most annoying to the average human ear, making it quantitatively provable. Even ignoring the possibility of quantitative evidence, the amount of people in this very thread complaining should be evidence of something.
It reminds me of the movie Dumb and Dumber, "the most annoying sound in the world" part.
On August 31 2010 21:47 stylepoints wrote: Oh I'm sure someone somewhere has done a study on what vocal ranges are the most annoying to the average human ear, making it quantitatively provable. Even ignoring the possibility of quantitative evidence, the amount of people in this very thread complaining should be evidence of something.
It reminds me of the movie Dumb and Dumber, "the most annoying sound in the world" part.
once again, i'm sorry to burst your bubble, but your opinions are not fact.
There are 144 instances of the word "husky" in this thread. I searched through all of them. They are not all negative, in fact, there seems to be a healthy balance between the two. Should the positive comments be ignored because they don't fit with your opinion? Should we go test Husky's voice to make sure it's not in your hypothetical vocal range regarding annoying voices? Or maybe it'd just be simpler to have you stfu and stop forwarding what you "know" as fact.
You're entitled to your opinion, and this thread is asking for your feedback, of which bitching is a subset. That's fine. But stop talking like you have any sort of authoritative knowledge in this situation. Thanks.
1. Octoshape is ridiculous. "We need to track stats" is not a valid reason to use it, as every single streaming site tracks stats and somehow manages to not use Octoshape. They must be using magic. 2. Octoshape is P2P. Telling people they need to pay $10 for HD is kind of a greedy move. 3. When you offer an HD stream, make sure it's actually HD. 4. 5. People at the live event got to see FPV, but nobody at home did. I'd like to see some FPV every now and then. 6. Map overviews were kind of useless in the finals as all 4 commentators had already stated everything in them numerous times over the past 2 days. 7. More interviews would be great. 8. Get HuK a stool? 9. I don't know how feasible it is, but get some better chairs for the players? They are there playing all day, and even 10 minutes on one of those chairs is really uncomfortable.
When did I say I have authoritative knowledge? I said he's annoying, which he is. Btw I did a quick search and found there is a range of sounds that affect the human nervous system when heard, stuff like babies crying in the 5-7.5khz range.
Whether husky's voice lies in that range I couldn't really tell you, and I'm too lazy to find out. What I can tell you is when he yells for 30 seconds at a time running words off incredibly fast I want to stab a fork into my eardrums. Kinda what I've been saying this whole time.
My feelings about the MLG are really mixed. The (most) games were fun to watch and the commentary was okay. I liked Day9/JP more than the other combinations, but that is just totally personal preference and had nothing to do with my overall reception.
I always kept asking myself "who is the target audience for this". Looking at the jackets, make-up, map-previews, etc. one would guess that they wanted to appear professional and be appealing to a broad audience. But there were so many things that totally destroyed this professionalism.
One thing was the crowd, that had to sit on the floor and follow the stream (they could have been anywhere, there seemed to be no connection to the actual tournament enviroment). I still can't believe that one would pay ?25$? for this. Another deal-breaker was the "flow" of the broadcast. At least to me it didn't appear to be an ongoing tournament but more of a random aggregation of matches. This perception is partially created by the lack of brackets/standings/information (or whatever one would like to call it), so i never really knew what was going on, and of course also the lack of "fillers" between the matches. There was so much time wasted, by the poor casters trying to invite the players to the game and being as entertaining as possible at the same time. What about some interviews, scenes from previous matches of the players who are casted next, general information about sc2 gameplay/terminology, recaps of the previous events, etc.?
Don't get me wrong, i really enjoyed watching but in my opinion there is a lot of room for improvement.
On August 31 2010 22:02 stylepoints wrote: When did I say I have authoritative knowledge? I said he's annoying, which he is. Btw I did a quick search and found there is a range of sounds that affect the human nervous system when heard, stuff like babies crying in the 5-7.5khz range.
Whether husky's voice lies in that range I couldn't really tell you, and I'm too lazy to find out. What I can tell you is when he yells for 30 seconds at a time running words off incredibly fast I want to stab a fork into my eardrums. Kinda what I've been saying this whole time.
once again, oh myopic one, whether you believe he is annoying or not is YOUR OPINION but is not established fact and therefore please stop making statements like:
I said he's annoying, which he is.
You can think what you want but you're not speaking for... anyone really. So stop trying to. Thanks
I'm speaking for me. I never claimed otherwise. Plus I can mute those dolts, the bigger problem with MLG was the enormous waits between matches at times. I don't know if that was planned or due to tech issues. Either way it was bad.
1. Do not make me install junk on my computer to watch the coverage, I won't do it. Your sponsers won't get my eyeballs.
2. Get non-live videos out faster. I watched recorded video on YouTube with all your sponser stuff cut out because you were too slow. Yet again, your sponsers won't get my eyeballs. If you were faster with videos, I would have seen your sponser ads in them.
3. Your website is impossible to navigate. How many people care about all the different games? I want a Starcraft 2 experience. It's fine to tease you do other things and if I'm interested I'll click deeper, but finding 'just starcraft' on your website was impossible. Nor could I (still to this day) find just straight up videos and/or replays. Your site doesn't seem designed to the people who actually want to be an eSports fan, but rather it's designed seemingly to someone who is trying to advertise MLG. MLG will be cool if it does cool things.
4. Understand your audience. We're gamers, we're young, and we're prolly cheap. We're not going to generally pay for a HD stream, instead someone will rip it for us. Don't give us a reason to rip it... be the source.
5. I don't think I actually was able to find the rankings, ladder, match results, who's there, or anything on your website. Again, just a horrible horrible website. What I really want is to go to http://starcraft2.mlgpro.com and click on 'Raleigh 2010' in a very obvious link, and then from there have access to live stream, all the info on who's there and current standings, and links to replays and videos for each and every game already played, or any games currently being played. I don't understand what's hard about that.
6. Casters shouldn't be setting up the games. There was some issue apparently where the casters were actually trying to get the players in the game. Let the casters cast, have referees handling the tech details out of view and setting up the game. Casters shoudl just see that it's starting and then be given a keyboard/mouse/monitor.
7. More camera on the players. There was a match where HuK was in a small video in the action card of the cast, that was pretty cool. It's interesting to watch the actual players behind the screen, though I know they tend to be somewhat uninteresting and just focusing.
8. Day[9] is a great caster, the others... meh. It's good to be excited watching certain plays, but there was like some serious 'nerd shrieking' going on, there could be less of that.
9. Pre-game and post-game interviews with the players. How do you feel going into this? How do you feel coming out of it? Why do you think you won/lost? WHat was the most descisive moment in your mind? yadda yadda.
10. 'Fun' things before/after coverage. There was a TLOwnage video somewhere that was very fun and funny to watch of TLO just pwning noobs with unorthodox builds and being humorously casted. Or even educational things, pathfinding/micro tricks, overlays on maps showing common routes, etc.
11. If eSports is gunna break out it needs to feel slightly less 'nerdy.' The nerd shrieking stopping would be a good first step. A little more female (the female voice explaining the map before a match was kind of good). A little more preparedness, and the casters not doing the game set up. Add a little 'professionalism' to it (not saying don't have fun).
(Not to be a hard knock, but I don't care if all those points have 'but you can get that by doing ____ on our site' because even if I could, I couldn't find it, and the amount of time I'll spend looking is simply limited before I'll just go to YouTube and watch rips.)
Very nicely listed points, I heavily agree with this post. A good bit of simplicity and clarity would have gone a long way.
On August 29 2010 22:37 Affluenza wrote: I hate the format...double elimination is poor format.
I also felt robbed of a proper final...I'm sorry but the concept that a final can be played with a player having a defecit or set advantage is not a proper final...
I agree partially, double elim is fine but the slate should be wiped clean for the final. Start it at 0-0 whether they have previously met in the winners bracket or not.
Mostly echoing some comments as they relate to my experience there:
1) Seating - obviously it would be cool to have a stadium seating setup, but frankly just more benches would be fine too.
2) Game/Commentator Sound - the speakers don't have to be blasting, instead maybe add more, smaller speakers throughout the seating area that can be kept lower on volume as to not disturb the players.
3) Commentator/Crowd Interaction - I would much prefer that the casters have vision to the crowd. I would like to see more interaction there (HuK fightiiiiiiiiiing?). I thought about making some signs, but after the first day I saw no real reason to do it. Allow casters to address the crowd and capture the crowd response well. I think that would encourage more people there to really get into it, and cause people not there to envy the excitement of going to these kind of events.
4) Crowd Shots/Noise - better capture the energy of the crowd (probably goes a long with un-separating the crowd from the casters more).
5) Game Schedule - pacing seemed slow, maybe skew the start of some of the games to cover more games and have less downtime. Especially if you have 2 sets of casters, it still shouldn't be too draining on them.
6) Temperature - it did get chilly/drafty at times.
On August 31 2010 22:02 stylepoints wrote: stuff like babies crying in the 5-7.5khz range. .
His voice doesn't lie in that range. A tenor can hit the low end of a 5khz range (C-D5 is aroung 5khz give or take). But the majority of female singers are there, so talking to a woman must be aboslute hell for you then?
Biggest complaint I have was seeing people sit on the floor, seemed very unprofessional. Folding chairs aren't overly expensive, relatively easy to store, and make it that much more classy.
1. Do not make me install junk on my computer to watch the coverage, I won't do it. Your sponsers won't get my eyeballs.
2. Get non-live videos out faster. I watched recorded video on YouTube with all your sponser stuff cut out because you were too slow. Yet again, your sponsers won't get my eyeballs. If you were faster with videos, I would have seen your sponser ads in them.
3. Your website is impossible to navigate. How many people care about all the different games? I want a Starcraft 2 experience. It's fine to tease you do other things and if I'm interested I'll click deeper, but finding 'just starcraft' on your website was impossible. Nor could I (still to this day) find just straight up videos and/or replays. Your site doesn't seem designed to the people who actually want to be an eSports fan, but rather it's designed seemingly to someone who is trying to advertise MLG. MLG will be cool if it does cool things.
4. Understand your audience. We're gamers, we're young, and we're prolly cheap. We're not going to generally pay for a HD stream, instead someone will rip it for us. Don't give us a reason to rip it... be the source.
5. I don't think I actually was able to find the rankings, ladder, match results, who's there, or anything on your website. Again, just a horrible horrible website. What I really want is to go to http://starcraft2.mlgpro.com and click on 'Raleigh 2010' in a very obvious link, and then from there have access to live stream, all the info on who's there and current standings, and links to replays and videos for each and every game already played, or any games currently being played. I don't understand what's hard about that.
6. Casters shouldn't be setting up the games. There was some issue apparently where the casters were actually trying to get the players in the game. Let the casters cast, have referees handling the tech details out of view and setting up the game. Casters shoudl just see that it's starting and then be given a keyboard/mouse/monitor.
7. More camera on the players. There was a match where HuK was in a small video in the action card of the cast, that was pretty cool. It's interesting to watch the actual players behind the screen, though I know they tend to be somewhat uninteresting and just focusing.
8. Day[9] is a great caster, the others... meh. It's good to be excited watching certain plays, but there was like some serious 'nerd shrieking' going on, there could be less of that.
9. Pre-game and post-game interviews with the players. How do you feel going into this? How do you feel coming out of it? Why do you think you won/lost? WHat was the most descisive moment in your mind? yadda yadda.
10. 'Fun' things before/after coverage. There was a TLOwnage video somewhere that was very fun and funny to watch of TLO just pwning noobs with unorthodox builds and being humorously casted. Or even educational things, pathfinding/micro tricks, overlays on maps showing common routes, etc.
11. If eSports is gunna break out it needs to feel slightly less 'nerdy.' The nerd shrieking stopping would be a good first step. A little more female (the female voice explaining the map before a match was kind of good). A little more preparedness, and the casters not doing the game set up. Add a little 'professionalism' to it (not saying don't have fun).
(Not to be a hard knock, but I don't care if all those points have 'but you can get that by doing ____ on our site' because even if I could, I couldn't find it, and the amount of time I'll spend looking is simply limited before I'll just go to YouTube and watch rips.)
Very nicely listed points, I heavily agree with this post. A good bit of simplicity and clarity would have gone a long way.
Yeah I want draw attention to this post too. It outlines very well most, if not all, of my concerns.
thanks for all the awesome feedback. I'm still making my way through all the event threads to catch up (bit busy over the weekend :D). A lot of the things I'm seeing are already in my own notes from the event, but as always, there's things that I don't catch when I'm in the weeds of the event. Looking forward to improving our casts and our production at the event.
It was great to meet all the TL folks that came as well as all the players. Really looking forward to meeting more folks at the DC event and seeing some more familiar faces. Got a chance to hang out with Ender (who played in the event) and Clutch for a little bit as well. We'll work on making the spectator experience better for the next one.
Big shout out to JP for all his hard work leading up to the event and his great work during the event. It was also great to finally meet Day9, HD and Husky. I thought they all did a great job on stream. Doing this stuff live is always tremendously different then sitting at home.
I don't want to spend too much time replying to the various comments here until we've had a chance to digest internally and figure out what we can do vs we can't do, but look for an update from me before too long.
Thanks again for all the support, for tuning in, and for the detailed feedback!
On September 01 2010 03:19 MLG_Lee wrote: Hey everyone,
thanks for all the awesome feedback. I'm still making my way through all the event threads to catch up (bit busy over the weekend :D). A lot of the things I'm seeing are already in my own notes from the event, but as always, there's things that I don't catch when I'm in the weeds of the event. Looking forward to improving our casts and our production at the event.
It was great to meet all the TL folks that came as well as all the players. Really looking forward to meeting more folks at the DC event and seeing some more familiar faces. Got a chance to hang out with Ender (who played in the event) and Clutch for a little bit as well. We'll work on making the spectator experience better for the next one.
Big shout out to JP for all his hard work leading up to the event and his great work during the event. It was also great to finally meet Day9, HD and Husky. I thought they all did a great job on stream. Doing this stuff live is always tremendously different then sitting at home.
I don't want to spend too much time replying to the various comments here until we've had a chance to digest internally and figure out what we can do vs we can't do, but look for an update from me before too long.
Thanks again for all the support, for tuning in, and for the detailed feedback!
Lee
I'm just hoping you refund those people in your support forum who have yet to hear back as to why they paid for a feature that was never provided.
On August 29 2010 22:50 Senx wrote: Also, Fullscreen on stream STILL cuts off the screen so you only see about 70% of the screen. This really needs to be fixed.
I just wanted to say that the fact that there is even a thread here asking for feedback is a huge plus in my books. There are certainly many things that can be improved but this is a great idea and it's nice knowing that our ideas/suggestions are being heard.
On August 29 2010 22:50 Senx wrote: Also, Fullscreen on stream STILL cuts off the screen so you only see about 70% of the screen. This really needs to be fixed.
This
Had to use VLC player to go fullscreen -.-
We all did, the MLG site is terrible.
It's crazy that Day9 and a few college students can host a 12 hour release party in an auditorium and do it infinitely better than MLG who does it regularly.
On August 29 2010 22:50 Senx wrote: Also, Fullscreen on stream STILL cuts off the screen so you only see about 70% of the screen. This really needs to be fixed.
This
Had to use VLC player to go fullscreen -.-
We all did, the MLG site is terrible.
It's crazy that Day9 and a few college students can host a 12 hour release party in an auditorium and do it infinitely better than MLG who does it regularly.
Day9's event was better, but it still had some of that lack of professionalism. I mean, I get it.. it's hard to advertise a car product you'd never use and you know nobody in the audience cares about whatsoever with a straight face when yer trying to have a fan event.
And of course, this post is sponsered by Gold Bond anti-itch powder.
I just wanted to personally think every single one of you who posted. I have combined this all into a comprehensive document and sent off to the powers that be! Look for updates in the future Thanks so much again.
This has been here for quite a while, but I thought I should say I very very much enjoyed the coverage and handling of the MLG SC2 tourney in Raleigh. I like that you guys seem to be taking steps to bring more money into esports, eventually benefiting progamers. The stream was actually the most enjoyable SC2 tourney that's been held so far, more so than IEM and even GSL. Kudos on getting mainstream advertisers on board, hopefully the number of people tuning into the matches and seeing their commercials will get them excited to bring more money into the loop.
The only suggestion I would make that hasn't been said already numerous times is the following:
You need to have an off camera admin setting up the games for the casters. The fact that it fell on the casters to create games and hound players for the next map really took away from the global casting flow. During that time one caster was basically off in space coordinating the next game while the other caster was left solo casting the weather. Once the game is created and players invited, the admin can make the caster host, and subsequently leave the game.
EPT
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/HJhZL.png)
