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I said this in a different thread, and it's along the lines that some have suggested here, but they need to get an MLG observer account in EVERY SINGLE GAME BEING PLAYED. Then, you use that account to stream via something like JustinTV. You don't need a commentator.You just need someone to move the observer camera. This could be a referee working the tournament, or could even be a volunteer from home.
They should have a way for members of the community to sign up, especially in the early open brackets.
I would have been more than happy to stream a random open bracket game from home. You name all of these streams something like this:
MLG A
MLG B
MLG C
MLG D
MLG E
etc.
Then, on the bracket schedule on MLG's website, it lists the streaming channel that the match is being played on--ideally there would be a link. So if I want to watch two scrubs playing in round one of the open bracket, I just click on the link on the MLG bracket website, and I'm taken to the JustinTV channel where the games are being streamed.
What's cool about this is that the main casters like Day9 and DJ Wheat could just tune into these channels if their scheduled casted games were already done. e.g. "Well folks, since TLO knocked out IdrA so quickly there, we're going to take you to MLG channel D where we have a game in progress between. . . "
You get the idea. Any reason this can't be done?
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1) More games, less talk. I can understand that there are schedule problems, nearly every big event (and even small ones) has them, but this could be avoided with more computers on the stage.
Yesterday Naniwa had some problems with his mouse and because he just arrived on the mainstage, it took ages to fix while we were waiting for the game. With just two extra computers the players who are supposed to play next could prepare and the chance that the match actually starts on time rises.
2) Extended series. I don't like this system at all. If a player won against the other during the previous stages he had enough of an advantage because of the seeding / he did not have to play that many games. Also it gets less exciting when a player starts with a 2:0 or 2:1 lead.
3) More casters / streams. If the game is not broadcasted on the main mlg stream then authorized casters should be able to show the other games that are played. There were many examples why this but be better during the weekend, several times games were played that were not casted, sometimes even though the stream was "free" and not showing anything.
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I would really like a easy to find link of a bracket on the MLGPro.com website, one that also shows where people end up if they get kicked out of the winner bracket.
I've had the hardest time figuring out who was still in the tournament, and where.
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Just to reiterate, even without all the technical difficulties, MLG broadcasts are notorious for downtime rather than gameplay. The ratio of downtime (either commcericals, fan shots or casters buying time) to the amount of game footage is extremely low for a major event. To make a sports analogy, MLG is about 2-3x worse than the Superbowl when it comes to actually showing games (for foreign users, the Superbowl is probably the worst professional sporting event in this regard.)
This is by far the biggest the biggest problem. I had to reinstall Baldurs Gate just to have something to do between games.
Even if I was extremely disappointed with MLG they still have such great games and I love following the tournament. It's such a shame we get to see so little due to technical issues or simply lack of coverage.
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I think MLG needs a third person constantly watching the non televised games and compiling the results/report on each one. They can even interview some of the players after the game to fill some down time. The reason I say this is that frankly the casters are given the wrong results and nearly always there seems to be a delay. I will give an example from this MLG
Incontrol Vs TLO the second series. JP was on air checking Team liquids site and another site for twitter updates, while watching battlenet to see if the game had ended. Why at your own event is the information about your results/game status/progress so poorly transfered to the casters, that they chose to basically ask the spectators for updates.
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On April 04 2011 15:57 SpinmovE wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2011 15:40 Rabiator wrote:On April 04 2011 15:28 FaZe wrote:
For a couple thousand bucks, You do realize that MLG is a business who has to make a profit to make it worthwile and to increase the quality next time around? "A couple thousand bucks" may be nothing to you, but companies like these (and their sponsors) are usually nitpicking about every cent ... a penny saved is a penny earned and a few more cameras might improve the quality for the viewer, but lack of these cameras will NOT make people stop watching the event. We are addicted after all and used to these things and the whining adds enough emotion to keep it "interesting" even though some games might not be worth watching. So people will watch, regardless of the quality. Ya, I totally agree, you can speak for every person that has ever tuned into a SC2 stream with one broad generalization. I know I turned the stream off multiple times because watching a crowd of people isn't my version of enjoyable. I did turn back in to see iNcontroL play but I'm absolutely POSITIVE that they had to of lost quite a large amount of spectators when they had absolutely no content playing for hours at a time. This event was honestly embarrassing as a fan of esports. I tried to watch it with my girlfriend on day 2 and I'm going to say I don't think she'll ever be done for trying to watch another sc2 game for the rest of her life. The entire I had the stream open there were no games casted despite the fact that games were being played. I legitimately get mad about how badly MLG is going about running a sc2 tourny. We all want this year to be the year for esports in NA. There is no way in hell that is going to happen when events go this insanely badly. Anyone that had a friend tune in is surely put off from the game, people that watch Halo or CoD that tuned in will most likely never do so again. It's a fucking travesty for the growth of esports and Sundance and crew should be absolutely, unequivocally ashamed of the complete shit show they put on. If the next MLG isn't all sorts of beyond fucking amazing there is noway in hell I will ever make time to watch it again. I am a huge fan of esports, I've competed in WCG Canada for cs 1.6, I've been playing star2 consistently since the beta, I've paid for lesson from iNcontroL and I've paid for multiple seasons of GSL. But what MLG tried to call entertainment was just plain brutal. I can't even imagine how this event could have been any worse. Dismissing all of the technical difficulties the event was still pure crap from a spectator perspective. I hope they are sick about how badly they preformed their jobs. At least 90% of my information about what was going on at the event came through twitter and I had no idea who is in or out of the tournament for the first 2 days. I really want MLG to do better but with their track record I'm about out of hope 
I think we all agree that the Dallas event wasnt organized perfectly, but do you really think that a camera showing the fans for 20 minutes (and they sometimes did show the "hall camera" where some nerds played "look there is a camera, so lets act stupid") will help make it more popular. That is what I commented about and which would cost "a couple of thousands" for no real gain.
The real crux was their broadcasting schedule, which was horrible and rigid (the same problem is true for the IEM events). With the amount of time spent on talking over the course of three days (the casters have to talk off camera a lot as well I would say) you have to be careful or really hurt their voices. Having three casters is a good start, but more might be a better if they loosen up their broadcasting schedule. The stupid "we only cast games from the main stage and dont cast anything if the players are quick about it" has to go ... far far away. MLG (and IEM) need "game scouts" who are looking for games to cast in the next 30-60 minutes and to talk to players about it. Obviously MLGs funky bracket doesnt help with that, but casting games from replays is a great idea for breaks.
So to return to your sarcastic part ... would your girlfriend understand and be inclined to watch another tournament if there were long periods of nerds who are standing around (*1) or acting stupid OR would she be more inclined to watch if they showed more games without pause? I think the second one is much easier.
I should not have cut the quote in such a way, because "a couple of thousands for a few cameras to show the fans" was the point I was arguing about ...
Investing into "crowd cameras" ... NO
Investing into "showing more games" ... YES
That was what I should have said more or less. Here is the uncut quote ...
+ Show Spoiler +On April 04 2011 15:28 FaZe wrote:
I'll admit as much as the next guy that the quality of the MLG broadcast was disappointing.
I'm confident that a lot of the networking issues will be worked out for Columbus.
What needs to happen is someone needs to take better control of SC2. Someone with passion needs to step up and take control - it has to be someone different than the team that does everything else and doesn't give a damn about anything other than it being "good enough".
There were tons of opportunities for this to be a phenominal event.
1 Canon XF-300 in the crowd, with an energetic host interviewing random people / players would cost literally 500$ to rent all the equipment for the weekend with full integration into the existing system. When there absolutely has to be downtime, cut to that guy. Fill some time with something other than DJWheat and Day9 telling stories. Hell, get 3 or 4 cameras out there. For a couple thousand bucks, you just quadroupled the amount of content that you can deliver to people watching the stream.
What they lack for Starcraft 2 is effort. Sundance says that he cares about SC2, and maybe he thinks he does. If they gave control of the SC2 production to someone who loves the game as much as most of us do, he would see what passion really is.
(*1) Fans are only excited when something is happening and if we dont get games from the main stage they wont have much to be excited about either ... so renting a few cameras to show the fans is stupid when you arent exciting the fans ... and even if they get excited during a break YOU have no connection to the reason for that excitement either, so it would just be bad for the viewer at home.
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Get cameras behind the players when, there`s a problem thats very entertaining in compare the face of day9 and other intelectual midgets
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those suggestions are right on the spot.
I'm sure i wasnt the only one who got totally bored of waiting and watching either black screens, 'stream will continue momentarily', djwheat and day9 talking about tekken and USB ports, having a 1h camera which is showing the crowd.
My god if i think back, i literally found the LR thread more exciting than MLG itself. With cat crossing the stream pics and eagles stream.
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Dont forget the story about lil wheat, which was very important to know.
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Hire TheGunRun and TheBeard.
Problem solved
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Set a partnerstream up like every big event out there. Of course you cant stream 3 games at once and of course the caster need a break after 3-4 games... Thats just how it is.
Let the partnerstream cover every game that is not covered by the mainstream and most of the problems are solved...
Even tho the level of production was pretty low, the downtimes were the REAL problem. I mean after two days of fails I started raging like a fat little kid when I realized that they made a break for 40mins while TLO was playing Idra!!!
Get Real MLG!
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A "live" view of the problems, http://pro.majorleaguegaming.com/live/starcraft_2
Even the rebroadcast is filled with downtime and crowd shots. How hard can it be to cut this video into game VODs and stream?
I think that when dreamhack goes live 12 april in Stockholm they will show how a good production can be done. This year they have real sponsors for SC2 and the people behind the events love SC2 and esports.
Sundance, book a flight, take Lee in the ear and drag him to stockholm to studie how things should be done.
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1. An extra pair of casters to be able to cast two games simultaneously --> or at least just to have more games casted and less time with no games at all.
2. Extra pair of computers on stage so the next match can be setup to decrease downtime between casted matches.
3. Easier homepage to navigate. Tbh. the current homepage is a maze compared to many other sites --> I had problems finding out when the event started and who was playing who (no direct button to the brackets afaik). And on that note, please state when the events starts in different timezones CET, KST etc.
4. Keep the brackets updated! It was hard to keep up with who beat who, and what games were up next.
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Well the schedule problems at IEM were not realy the fault of the sc2 players or esl, most of the time it had to do with counterstrike teams not showing up (delayed the start of day1 for several hours) or going into overtime.
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On April 04 2011 22:00 Jocoma wrote:
1. An extra pair of casters to be able to cast two games simultaneously --> or at least just to have more games casted and less time with no games at all.
2. Extra pair of computers on stage so the next match can be setup to decrease downtime between casted matches.
3. Easier homepage to navigate. Tbh. the current homepage is a maze compared to many other sites --> I had problems finding out when the event started and who was playing who (no direct button to the brackets afaik). And on that note, please state when the events starts in different timezones CET, KST etc.
4. Keep the brackets updated! It was hard to keep up with who beat who, and what games were up next.
How do you find the brackets while browsing the site? I have never found it
Could someone make a click by click to the bracket? Brackets should be max 3 clicks from the main page.
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Good to see this thread full of constructive suggestions instead of just whining. I hope someone from MLG reads it.
My own suggestion - on the website when you click ProCircuit -> Dallas 2011, there should be links to the brackets, the stream, and any other info about it that is on your website. I still don't know what you are supposed to click on on the MLG site to find the brackets, I viewed them from TeamLiquid links.
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So the prime audience of the MLG is gamers, and people watching the streams. You had more downtime than up.... need i say more?
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100% agree with OP and a lot of other Posts made in this Thread.
It was a sad Event ):
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I don't pretend to understand the mechanics of running and event like this, but they should really spit ball some ideas of how to get more games and less talking on stream. Just anything, even only streaming the 2nd game of a bo3 and not the others, is better than not streaming anything.
Maybe something similar to the way that they cover the offline prelims from MSL or OSL if anyone remembers them? They would just drop into the games being played and it gave a great feeling of constant movement and excitement with games constantly happening.
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My standards for this were not that high, I know snags and glitches happen in esports and I've been a patient fan/player for many years. But really, the worst part was the "well guys there's a really epic game going on right now, and there was a pretty epic one already as well, but after this 30 minute break we are going to just chill and tell stories instead." I mean c'mon now, it was almost like a bad joke, I felt like I was listening to baseball games on the radio in 1920. Except even worse since it was just a line of text that said who won and described the game in maybe one sentence.
I realize a LOT of games were played and not all of them can be covered. But to have so much downtime when games are being played is just beyond my comprehension... and no disrespect to Day, Wheat or JP, they did an excellent job and made the thing worth watching, and I could tell they were frustrated at times too.
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EPT
