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As others have said, downtime between games needs to be minimized.
1) Player profiles and settings should be stored centrally. Setup on 1 computer and you should be set for all computers.
2)Have streams available for more games. Casters that just do replays of non-main stage games works, and you can have these uploaded into a stream. Have a stream that does VOD with commercials played inbetween each game. That way sponsors get more air time and we get to see more games.
EDIT: I expect the technical aspects to be dealt with. There's no mystery there, just straight forward network engineering.
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I dont think its fair to ever compare MLG to GSL because the experience level of the talent and crew in Starcraft productions and e-sports in general is like night and day. I know everyone feels entitled to an incredible experience after hearing about MLG's budget and SC2 on the main stage, but realistically, they won't produce a product of superior quality to other major lans anytime soon.
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On April 04 2011 10:36 oo inflame oo wrote:
Yea, even if stream was working, I think way more games should be streamed. Games should have priority over mindless commentator banter
Well to be Fair the commentators had to do something. The Camera is on their faces and they have to entertain the Stream since there were so many technical difficulties.
To the OP great post, I did feel a little robbed as a someone watching from home as I couldn't get the stream working correctly tell Sunday. which on sunday I think i watched 4 games in 8 hours? or something ridiculous like that. They should have a camera crew with a stream walking around the Convention floor interviewing/Talking to everyone If not showing replays like you suggested. I think they did cast some replays during the Internet outage at MLG Dallas 2010.
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everything i feel has already been said
oh except add cs 1.6 to the roster of games so we have something actually good to watch inbetween :p
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Not to repeat anything, I agree. Horrible experience.
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Patience. They've never done a starcraft tournament of this scale with this BRAND NEW tournament production. I've attended MLG's since 2005, they've come a long way since then, and they catch on fast. Look at the HUGE improvements from last season to this season. They'll catch on and get into a better rhythm for future events. You had some good constructive criticisms, but towards the end it got a little heated. Everything's a learning process, be supportive instead of subjective.
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Why are there such long waits?
1) First off, there were only 34 play stations, and the main stage. That's 70 computers for 256 players. Having so few computers for such a large number of players is insanely impractical. As a result, you have to split the early rounds into different "heats" (4 for the first 2 rounds or something ridiculous).
What's the problem with that?
a) They don't release the bracket until about 10 minutes before the matches start, so even though you're supposed to start at 5:30pm, if you're in Heat 4 of Round 1, you won't actually start until about 9pm. If you have a BYE first round, you may not even start until about 10pm.
This really screws with you. You show up to the event and have no idea when you need to play. You end up waiting around for hours, there's no computers for you to warm up on either, and it totally screws your rhythm up, plus you're bored out of your mind.
b) It shouldn't take 5 hours to finish the first round of a tournament -- 2-3-4 rounds could be played in that time if it is used effectively.
2) Secondly, why do you wait for every match in one heat to finish before starting the next? This created many situations in which there are 50+ computers empty, and players sitting around twiddling their thumbs waiting for 4 people to finish playing. This delays the tournament. Maybe if this was done better, we would have gotten home before 2AM on Saturday morning. Especially if you know your next opponent, and there are computers available, what's the problem with letting them play it? Wouldn't you rather have 20 players who finish their matches early waiting around as opposed to 100 players who HAVE to wait for no reason whatsoever.
Besides, some people who lose early in MLG like to leave, some people like to do other stuff, etc... making them wait around for hours on end doing nothing sucks the life out of the crowd, the players, and everyone involved.
3) Make format more efficient and fair for all players. What do I mean by this? It was hard to tell what was going on and where. Pool play was mixed into the open tournament matches and it was confusing. Pool play finished, and the seeded players were doing nothing. Open Tournament players had to play for hours on end, only to go to the Championship bracket to play well rested seeded players. This gives an unfair advantage in my opinion to the seeded players. If the Open matches take place all of Friday, then the Top 16 group matches and the second half of the Open take place Saturday morning -- then by Saturday evening when the Championship Bracket starts, all players are equally tired and pissed off.
4) Why do you start SO LATE on Friday? There's no reason to play until 2am, especially when you have to wake up at 9am the same day, rush to the venue, and start playing. If the tournament started at a reasonable time -- 1/2pm or so, then we could finish at a reasonable time, 10-12, barring any hiccups, and players could get enough time to sleep and be ready for the following day's matches. Shouldn't the event be ready to go BY FRIDAY?
It felt like MLG was scrambling to do everything (the actual games started 1 hour late) at the last minute rather than being prepared from the opening buzzer.
Anyways, those are my 4 biggest gripes with MLG -- from this perspective it was by far the worst of the MLG events I have attended. I understand a lot of the production stuff / lag issues were out of their control, but this is something that can easily be fixed. I can bet that any player who played at MLG this past weekend will agree that these changes will make the tournament run more smoothly, finish faster, and allow more time for focus to be put on stage matches and casted games, ultimately making MLG a much better experience for both players and spectators alike
(Seriously, if you're a fan, what's more frustrating than going to watch games and then seeing 60 empty computers and a bunch of gamers sitting on the floor doing nothing).
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=208949
Xerix feedback from the player side of the event, the thread got closed.
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To be honest, all I can say is that this is my first time buying an MLG HQ pass and I'm really glad it's getting refunded -__-. My money will be going back to GOM. I can understand them having problems and unlike GSL, SC2 isn't the main focus of MLG. However even on a basic level, everything was beyond awful. I probably watched about an hour of starcraft total.... then spent maybe 3 hours watching "we will be resuming momentarily", video of the venue, wheat and day talking etc... Really really amateur stuff but hopefully they'll learn and improve. And extended series is still so stupid.
P.S: how much did people pay to actually see the event in person? They should get refunds as well. 
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Great post, pretty much sums up my feelings on how MLG Dallas went. Even with the tech problems aside, it was still rather disappointing. Honestly the should add another caster too. Sure the interviews were nice after a win, but I feel like the downtime would have been much less if they had two complete sets of casters. That way they would be able to cast more games without burning the casters out.
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Ok, I don't think this has been mentioned yet regarding the brackets. I think its horrible that they used whatever username the player registered under instead of using there Team and username. I'm assuming that most players don't know this when there signing up to the tournament and I guess its MLG's fault. So I think the following format should be followed to make this process easier for MLG and new players.
EXAMPLE
"The following values will be displayed in the bracket section"
1 - Username: Jinro
2 - Clan/Team: Liquid'
3 - (This section should auto generate the values filled in for 1 and 2) This way the player can choose in what order they want these values to be displayed in the brackets which would be:
A - Liquid'Jinro
B - JinroLiquid'
And for players who aren't in a Clan/Team. The values for part 3 would just default to there username.
As for players that are already registered, like Huk, slush, kiwikaki, qxc, select, etc.. it should be mandatory that they update these values for the next tournament. And for players who joined a new team like qxc, these players should also have access to change there team/clan name which in his case would be FXO and not ROOT.
This would make the brackets look alot better with a better sense of who is on who's team. I cant remember off the top of my head who belongs to what team and I'm pretty sure that anyone who knows less than me would have a horrible time looking at these brackets. Take a look at all the NAMES that were used for this tournament.. Its just horrible... lol
Make sure to click on the "losers" bracket link on the left side when opening up this link as well. This way you can see how its hard to know what teams EVERYONE from the championship loser bracket belongs to. Doing this would also make it easier for people to know what team seems to be DOMINATING the upper portions of the brackets and it would look way more professional.
Championship Bracket
Open Bracket
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It's also possible that, between the Super Bowl fiasco and this, we've really just discovered that Dallas is a terrible place for hosting events.
If that's the case then MLG really just needs to put more thought/effort into scoping sites out before the fact.
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Only feedback i would give is the way the pool play and tournament style is set up. Pool play should be decided to set up seeding like it was. Only issue I had is that after the pool play was over, if people had to play each other again.. they were given a handicap if they win or lose, Either being up 2-0 or 2-1 or vice versa.
When it goes to Tournament style it should all reset. The championship match for instance should have been a best out of 7 with it being 0-0 instead of 2-0 in nani's favor. That way everyone gets a fair chance at winning no matter if they lost before. Pool Play should be separated from going into Tournament mode. Just like NCAA does it. Pool play should be meant for ranking in seeds to set up who faces who. not to rank and give a handicap like that.
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On April 05 2011 07:18 Pittski wrote:
Only feedback i would give is the way the pool play and tournament style is set up. Pool play should be decided to set up seeding like it was. Only issue I had is that after the pool play was over, if people had to play each other again.. they were given a handicap if they win or lose, Either being up 2-0 or 2-1 or vice versa.
When it goes to Tournament style it should all reset. The championship match for instance should have been a best out of 7 with it being 0-0 instead of 2-0 in nani's favor. That way everyone gets a fair chance at winning no matter if they lost before. Pool Play should be separated from going into Tournament mode. Just like NCAA does it. Pool play should be meant for ranking in seeds to set up who faces who. not to rank and give a handicap like that.
I agree with this.
I hated the carrying over rule.
It was kind of ridiculous to expect the already underdog coming from the loser brackets, to start 2 games down in a best of 7. Make it a fresh best of 5 or a fresh best of 7. I didn't like this rule at all because it put players on tilt be4 their fresh matches even started.
For instance in the finals we might have seen a COMPLETELY different series between Naniwa and KiwiKaki. Kiwikaki took 2!!!!! games off of Naniwa... and was still down a game. Naniwa was allowed to brasically GIVE away 3 games with extreme coinflip strategies and even if all 3 failed, he could resort to standard (whatever that might be in pvp atm lol) and still win.
I cant imagine watching a super bowl where one of the teams started with 14 points and the other had 0, or something to that nature.
In the finals it was 2-2 if there was no carry over, and it was Nani, Kiwi, Kiwi, Nani. In a fresh Bo3 Kiwi wins, in a fresh Bo5 or Bo7 it isn't nearly as clear how it would have ended.
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i feel like MLG could have capitalized on the fact that there were so many games going on a lot better than they actually did. They had 270ish player in the whole tournament with tons of games going on at a time, yet on the live stream we would see single matches spread out in time.
In the NCAA tournament first rounds, they have games constantly going on and they create "madness" with the switching back and forth between games. It gives the tournament its charm, and an event like MLG could create something similar by having very limited face time for the casters.
The way they presented it you would assume that only a small amount of games were happening at a time like in a GSL type event. If they could have presented that in the right way they could have had a crazy, fast paced tournament style that not many other starcraft tournaments have. (that i recall, i may be very wrong about that)
I really hope that the SC2 organizers take a look at some of these threads, because the product they showed this weekend was very poorly done.
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ive decided i wont be staying up late to watch the next mlg after my experience last weekend.. sry mlg, you had your chance.
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Good points by everyone. I hope this information gets to sundance as I'm not sure he browses TL all the time. Maybe someone should collect the feedback and send it to him after a couple weeks ?
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I need to endorse the OP's no. 5, though he doesn't elaborate much in the way of prescriptions. I feel that MLG should consider being more flexible with its online broadcast schedule. Specifically, they could allow some quick, decisive authority on the ground, be it a caster or whoever, to fill filibuster time not just with talking, but also with games cast from replays at their discretion. Such a contingency would've done so much in terms of keeping the show going while delays were underway. Indeed replay casts were implemented sometime last weekend after several hours of delays, and viewers latched onto them just as easily as live games. They really just want to see the great games being played, whatever the form.
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On April 05 2011 05:04 tetrash0t wrote:
Patience. They've never done a starcraft tournament of this scale with this BRAND NEW tournament production. I've attended MLG's since 2005, they've come a long way since then, and they catch on fast. Look at the HUGE improvements from last season to this season. They'll catch on and get into a better rhythm for future events. You had some good constructive criticisms, but towards the end it got a little heated. Everything's a learning process, be supportive instead of subjective.
I agree with everything you said. I'm a big fan of MLG for most of their games (even WoW, afk shunning myself). But I don't think you can look at MLG Dallas 2011 and note the "HUGE improvements" from last season 
I'm sure it will be much better next time.
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I could not agree more with the OP's comments. I'm a viewer, not a player (to old, don't want to do the work) but I buy every stream I see on SC now and MLG was a waste of my money. I feel that I'm a desirable demographic for them, I bring strangers to the scene (my wife, my friends) and this weekend the wife and I just gave up on it and went fishing instead. Anyways, my feedback:
I won't even comment on the ineptitude of the communications and lag. I guarantee you that if funded properly this is not a problem, and while 'tournament LAN mode' might be a solution, it's not a requirement. They simply did not do their homework, testing properly.
I like the whole concert styled event idea, I think its neat but it was grossly under-realized in this event. There just has to be a ton more coverage of games, players, social interactions, showing the crowd, and living off the whole event, otherwise the streamed replay format (ala TSL) is just superior.
Why are there not multiple stream casters, covering games. While the whole news-anchor thing is clever, I'd trade my budget dollars for 4 casters covering 4 different games and letting me the viewer pick the stream I want to follow.
Drama is a big part of sports, and while I appreciate GOM and other organizations trying to make the sport 'professional' things like the Skins game in golf, the face off in boxing, and the trash talk before a Nascar race PUMP up the subscriber base and make them want to watch more. These should be encouraged not discouraged. Now I'm not saying let folks start blasting out Nigger and other stupid shit, but I for one rather enjoy seeing a little smak talk in my sports.
Then there is another thing, why isnt anyone making a big deal about the fact that in players can hear what the commentators are saying. I've seen comments on this issue for nearly every live event (including GSL with their stupid looking cockpits) Professional chess players have been looking for a solution to this problem for a long time, and while its complicated without a solution they are killing the game, its competitive nature, and the drama by not fixing it.
Overall they missed out on a chance to put on an epic event, and probably did more to hurt the esports scene then to help it. It will take some serious hype and good PR work from them to get my dollars again.
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EPT
