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I watched the games live from my dorm room.
I think everybody's talked about this, but please please please make sure the Dallas stream starts on time. I skipped dinner at the cafeteria to watch the stream and all I got was some rock music and the MLG logo!
Another thing that would be really helpful is if you gave us an estimate of when the next match would be. This way I'm not staring at the screen as it pans around the audience for twenty minutes.
Lastly, it'd be good if you were more proactive in updating the brackets. Since the stream can obviously only cover one game at a time, it'd be nice to have an up-to-date picture of how the tournament is shaping up.
Overall though, great tournament, great entertainment. Good job!
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1. Commercial breaks
You could do so much more during commercial breaks. Map previews that were aired before matches could be played after commercials. Make those previews even longer, with small bits of players taking about that map and why they like/dislike it. Show brackets before/after commercials too. Break doesn't have to be all about repeating ads.
2. Commentary
Awesome, awesome, awesome. Out of all events I've watched in the past I had the most fun listening to this event. Audio commentary definetly made up for low quality of in-game footage. Kudos to JP, Day9 and djwheat.
3. Interviews
I want more of them!  I greatly enjoyed JP's interview with iNcontroL. Make more please! Interview with Huk would be awesome. Heck, interview people that were there and weren't necessary playing. Gunrun, HotBid, I'm pretty sure you could make some short interviews with them and play them during commercial break after ads. Interviewing random people from the crowd would be cool too, ask them who's their favorite player and why.
4. Quality
First day was terrible. Second day, little better but still bad. In-game video was barely watchable. You could increase bitrate to 10mbps and it'd still be horrible. Bitrate is not really that important. I'm able to stream in-game video in 720p with 800kpbs, don't understand why you have so low quality with 2.2mbps.
Good luck with future events!
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United Kingdom12042 Posts
On October 18 2010 03:18 Siffer wrote:
-Day 1 was pretty horrendous. The delays were annoying and the updates regarding the delays were few and far between.
-I still dont really like the tournament structure and I don't think it 'respects' the players too well. You should really think about stretching the tournament out over three days. You could REALLY tell that players were getting tired towards the end. Select especially.
-The 'extended series' isn't that great either. It destroys map selection and gives the former winner a huge advantage. Winners and Losers are separate brackets. They should not blend together in any way.
-Do a better job of separating players so they don't hear crowd/casters. Obviously having korean style booths could be expensive, but logistically i think it could be done better. I wasn't at the actual event, but it seemed like the players area was right next to the casting desk and spectator area.
-Make a rule to keep mid-game chatting to a minimum. While it does create great moments(its halo, don't worry), it is pretty unprofessional overall. Start of game should be fine for things like "gg gl hf" and even shoutouts to sponsors/teammates, but then it should be silence until the end in which the loser can say things like "gg", "wp", etc. Obviously things like "pp" can be allowed in the middle of the game. The players hsouldnt be having a friggin convo, though.
-The casting and coverage was absolutely amazing. djWheat is by far the most professional caster in esports. No offense JP, but I think that djWheat and Day9 should be the 'A-team' casting duo. You did a great job with interviews and content, but I think that the actual gameplay should be casted by those two.
Why? Chatting isn't unproffesional at all and it makes the players seem more human.
I really enjoyed MLG, I even stayed up until 3AM my time watching Day 1, hopefully the video quality can be a bit better, but yeah definately give better times of when games are going to be, I was sitting around because I didn't want to miss anything, but it was like 20 minutes later before it started. 
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Just some negatives, sorry. Enjoyed most everything!
-Extended series should go imo, although I'm happy to hear why it should stay if MLG is really that committed to it. (Shameless self-promotion, with some good discussion from MLG defenders.)
-If you keep extended series, please explain what happens in a rematch grand final. Does it just become a bo7, like it would in a rematch in LB, potentially giving the WB player less of an advantage? Or does it become a bo7 + bo3 or something like that, reinstating the disadvantage that extended series is designed to give to the LB player?
-But that's moot, because you should get rid of extended series.
-Cutting to commercials from time to time makes sense, of course, but if you're not going to do that, you should switch to ongoing matches when the one you're broadcasting ends. I don't need to listen to the commentators talk for 20 minutes while all these great players start new games that I could be watching.
-At the very least, keep your commentators up-to-date during these massive breaks, so that we know what's going on in all the matches that you're not showing us. It would be even better if you could do this with up-to-date brackets, so that we don't have to read the liveblog, check the online brackets (which were completely out of date almost all the time), listen to the commentators, and read the ticker just to try to piece together the current results.
-Day 2 was already too long for LB players. With the move to 128 players for Dallas, either the format needs to change to groups (or even swiss or something if you just want to be different) with a cut to single elim, or things need to be spread over three days (or both).
-No need for canned map overviews. I'd rather have your very talented commentators explain the features of the map that are relevant to the upcoming game. Tell us about the impact the map has on the particular matchup and on the players' preferred strategies.
-I like Machine, but I don't really need to see every single game he plays. What was up with that?
Edit: Agree with the above, chat is fine, there's no need to prohibit it.
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The inbetween interviews with Greg and Geoff were awesome. Would be great to see those with as many players as possible spread throughout the weekend, even with lesser known or up&coming players.
Cheers for the great show!
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It should not be possible for someone to have to go into the finals match after up to 12 Bo3 games straight against someone that didn't. This game is mentally taxing like no other and it will never result in great final matches this way.
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I watched the free stream on Saturday. I honestly don't have any major complaints, the quality was fantastic for a free service and I thought everyone (Day9, JP, DJWheat) did a great job casting.
My only criticism was that I had no real idea how long the "brief commercial breaks" would be. I don't mind that it took time to get people set up and ready between games, I just wish we were told whether it would be 5 minutes or 15 minutes so that I'd know if I had time to run to the store real quick or take care of some things around the house. I remember missed half of one game because the break was a lot shorter than I expected.
Overall though, great work. It was clear that everyone involved put a lot of effort into making it a great tournament.
Thanks for some awesome Saturday entertainment!
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Thanks for the great event, there were really a huge amount of high quality games played over the week end.
You got my glued to the stream from friday 7pm to saturday 7:30pm non-stop.
I can't wait for MLG Dallas!
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First and foremost Day 9 needs gel on his hair. LOTS and LOTS of gel.
Other than that the website layout could really be improved, it's hard to navigate and not very intuitive.
Awesome tournament, loved it.
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Casting was pretty much perfect. Wheat and JP both are a really good complement to Day9.
The tournament really, really needs more than 2 days to run its course if it's going to be that long/big/double eliminination. I don't think it's ok to burn out players like that. Give them an honest chance to recoup so that the final important games aren't ruined by player exhaustion. Proper restream during off hours or faster vods would be nice too.
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Youre probably aware of this, but;
The live stream on friday was like 1,5-2 hrs late.
During (most?) of this time there were no brackets either. Why can't we see the brackets a couple days in advance instead of 2 hours after the event started?
In several games the stream froze/crashed and this always seemed to happen right at the start of a big fight and then when the stream came back online the ingame view was gone and we got to see the players and had to guess which one won.
I really love the fact MLG gives a rebroadcast, but the friday restream failed and showed a JP-inControl interview looping for hours.
Also, maybe rebroadcasting it twice could be better.
A couple of friends wanted to see MLG, but day2 was broadcasted from 16:00 on saturday CET until 01:30 on sunday CET. I actually stayed home to watch but most friends went out cause it was a saturday and by the time they woke up around 13:00 the rebroadcast was pretty much already over.
Day9 is a good caster, but people are getting bored of him. It would have been nice to see JP and djWheat cast together, or even inControl (didnt he say he wanted to cast a few games?) or some others.
Also some other obvious ones;
Get soundproof headphones or booths
Bigger area for live viewers and more seats
+ Show Spoiler +Oh and;
BIGGER PRICE POULES
How can so much money go to Halo players, that game is so bad :S
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I watched the free stream from home, and the quality on day 2 was excellent. Thank you so much for providing a watchable free stream (none of this ESL tiny window crap). A good free stream will help get new people into the game, so props to you all.
I had no problems with Octoshape, at least not more than I experience with UStream or LiveStream's viewers. It would be good to make it clear that it's going to use some of your upload bandwidth; not everyone has a net speed monitor installed. I understand why it does use P2P, makes it much cheaper for you to stream and the stream is free anyhow.
The MLG website is a bit confusing. Can we have an easier to find schedule that isn't buried somewhere on a different page than the stream? When there's a commercial break or "we'll be back soon" screen, can we have some indication of how long till the next game?
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One thing that MLG somewhat lacks is spectator comfort. I have been to multiple events and spectating is often an uncomfortable mass. There needs to be a more organized way for spectators to watch rather than all sitting on the floor or standing in a huge crowd.
On a side note, JP you should cast more. I know DJWheat was a special guest and all, but that doesn't mean we can't have 3 casters like the GSL. I don't know...maybe casting works better in pairs, but I think you bring a lot of stability to casting because of how calm you are compared to Sean. Good ying/yang mix there 
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On October 18 2010 04:27 magha wrote:
Day9 is a good caster, but people are getting bored of him. It would have been nice to see JP and djWheat cast together, or even inControl (didnt he say he wanted to cast a few games?) or some others.
NO. day9 is by far the best caster. he understands the game better then any of the other casters so he needs to cast all the games and his back up guy be switched around.
id like to see husky at dallas.
someone else mentioned dragging out the tourny longer. that would be a great idea. have the winners bracket final, loser bracket final, winner of loser bracket final vs loser of winners bracket final, and the final game on sunday.
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There was alot of good things, but Ill just list the bad things to keep it short.
1. Seemed very unproffesional playing the finals an a crappy table like that, dirty + wires everywhere. I think noise cancelling headphones would be good when there is so much on the line, and a booth where all semis and finals would be played + the bigger name matches in earlier rounds.
2. The delay between games was pretty bad, especially on the first day. You have 10+ matches to choose at all times in day one, yet one match ends and we wait 20 minutes for the next one. The 150 minute delay didn't help either. We really didn't see many players play on day 1, which kinda made me angry since we easily could have twice as many and you'd still fit the commercials in.
3. I can't help to say you guys need chairs. Just plastic ones like in BW. They cost 5 bucks a piece when you buy in bulk, so it really shouldn't be that expensive. Also, I think you should look at the crowd more often, when the game starts there isn't much going on so it's fine to do that.
I just want to add that casting was great. Day9 was his usual self, and I was suprised how good of a caster DJ Wheat is, and JP did a great job too.
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On October 18 2010 04:39 beat farm wrote:Show nested quote +On October 18 2010 04:27 magha wrote:
Day9 is a good caster, but people are getting bored of him. It would have been nice to see JP and djWheat cast together, or even inControl (didnt he say he wanted to cast a few games?) or some others.
NO. day9 is by far the best caster. he understands the game better then any of the other casters so he needs to cast all the games and his back up guy be switched around. id like to see husky at dallas. lol, first you say you want Day9 because he understands the game, then you say you want Husky. Make up your mind.
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suggestions for mlg
1. please start on time
2. need soundproof headphones
3. make blizzard give you guys sc2 with lan
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Small comment: I'm pretty sure that some of the "o'clock positions" that mapgirl gave were way off. I couldn't rewind to make sure so I hope I don't sound like a jerk for saying so.
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I'm sure you all know about the mistakes on the first day, so I won't mention any of it.
However I thought the improvement from Day 1 to Day 2 was great, more live blog updates, better quality, and almost non-stop action.
I really liked the interviews with the players between games and after winning that was awesome!
The casting I thought was great, I really enjoy Day9 and JP, also Djwheat with Day9 was awesome also, so not much to improve on there keep doing what you guys are doing for that.
If Blizzard gives out a tournament lan, that will get rid of that problem.
And last Im not really sure how I feel about everyone saying get a booth for the final players, sure I don't want them getting tipped off by the audience, but getting the crowd involved is the best thing to do for the event I think. Having comments of the players(like Huk) to the audience and having the audience being able to see the players during the game I think gives more connection.
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I only watched on Day 2 for the most part so everything looked pretty good to me by then.
One thing I did find an annoyance was some of the break time. Someone would say we'll be right back in 5,10,15 minutes etc. but the actual break would be much longer. I understand there are always delays and technical things to get through but it would be greatly appreciated if a voice or a text overlay could pop in every once in awhile to try and give an update on the actual time the games might be back on.
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EPT
