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My 2 Cents:
The very first thing MLG should change (after getting the stream stable and making sure players cannot hear commentators) is clearly:
Increasing the Premium Stream Quality!
I really have to say I was SO sad when I saw that the quality was exactly the same like last season..
I mean perhaps the quality was okay last season but now? Every single Streamer on TL has 5 times better quality..and yeah i know it may be harder for you but you know what? GSL just increased their stream quality and they stream from korea...
Nobody cares about the Free Stream quality..it's obviously bad and thats okay
But when I spend 10$ to see like 5 Matchups every day for 3 days i expect to see a clear visual difference between the two streams...
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Correct me if there I am wrong, but it sounds like MLG was handling all traffic for the stream in Dallas.
If this was the case, then I'd ask why wouldn't they want to partner with Justin.tv to handle all worldwide incoming requests for the stream? MLG would only worry about the connection between the observing client in the venue and Justin.tv's servers and also to Bnet.
It might make it easier to guarantee a consistent experience for fans and players, and it seems outside of their business's core competency.
Justin.tv's Live Video Broadcasting Architecture
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On April 06 2011 06:30 TheAmpersand wrote:
Correct me if there I am wrong, but it sounds like MLG was handling all traffic for the stream in Dallas.
Na, you're wrong. But right in that it would indeed be silly if they handled it themselves, more even if on site.
When there was a stream(sadly), it was delievered through Akamai on my end. Which should even dwarf justin.tv in capacity. So it would be safe to assume any problems occured before the data even got to the cdn (Of course the surrounding mlg website could have had issues, but the video delivery shouldn't have been a problem).
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what are the stream numbers?
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On April 06 2011 12:44 Dantaro wrote:
what are the stream numbers?
Sundance said it was close to 1 million
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Despite all the hickups and all the stuff that went wrong, glad to see MLG taking steps in the right direction.
Also having the stream crash due to unexpected too much ppl tuning in, guess thats a "good" problem for MLG.
Started following MLG 2 years ago because of Gears of War, and now because of SC2/Halo Reach, and i must say most of all the MLG events ive seen these last 2 years were pretty awsome, so im not pissed of what happened. Hope MLG keeps up the good work they been making so far.
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On April 06 2011 12:20 Bengalaas wrote:Na, you're wrong. But right in that it would indeed be silly if they handled it themselves, more even if on site. When there was a stream(sadly), it was delievered through Akamai on my end. Which should even dwarf justin.tv in capacity. So it would be safe to assume any problems occured before the data even got to the cdn (Of course the surrounding mlg website could have had issues, but the video delivery shouldn't have been a problem).
Yah, you're right on.
Sundance mentioned in the official explanation that it was the site that went down on Friday, and Saturday and Sunday were both on-site issues. I think later on the MLG twitter feed they mentioned there were some issues with the Dallas ISP, which would be somewhat strange, and troubling for future tournaments.
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I truly appreciate all the effort you put to answer to the critics Sundance.
I know some CEO's of other companies who would never do that for far worse stuff...
I may not be an expert ( yet, finishing my IT engineering degree in 2 weeks W00t! ) but I hope you can use this little bit of my knowledge to help 
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While there are a lot of stuff that I certainly dont know about, I believe MLG :
1. Fell victim to the ( prolly exponantial ) growth of the SC2 Tournament Scene.
-I believe we all know how fast the tournament scene is growing, and it wont slow down anytime soon... After this weekend, I think its lessons learned already
2. Missed some design choices :
-Soundproof booths : I'm sorry, but not having those for feature matches is a pretty big fail...
Possible soution : Borrow blizzard's booths they use for blizzcon for the time being ?
3. Didn't have a complete contingency plan
-For those not in the IT buisness :
A contingency plan is a document that explains the rôle of each person ( from the lowly tech to the CEO ) in case of major issues, no matter if its something that is in their control or not.
When a major issue happens a designated coordinator can quickly use that plan to quickly assign ressources to their specific tasks in order to fix the issue or reducing its impact to the event with the less impact possible to the "clients" ( players, spectators, and stream watchers ).
Building such a document also helps finding out requirements that were missed during the initial planning of the infrastructure therefore preventing problems during the event.
Redaction of such plans requires a whole lot of work ( including extensive testing of all assets ), but its upside is worth it and saves alot of time, money, and reputation when it is actually needed. ( Especially considering internet viewers are known to not be very patient... ) Such plans can be made for almost everything ( network, tournament management, safety, etc. )
I dont know if MLG have such documents for all its critical assets, but considering the delays, I believe it didnt cover enough issues. I believe that needs to be fixed
Also , from what I heard and saw on the stream, I could guess that some of the staff had to improvise for minor issues ( like a certain left-handed mouse for example... ) and caused delays that was unnecessarily way too long. I belive this will have to be fixed on a organisationnal level
Anyway, I hope you guys will be able to get all that fixed for good in time for the rest of the season
Kudos :
*Kudos to day9, DJWheat and JP for their absolutely epic efforts to entertain during the delays. You guys rock !
*Kudos to Sundance and all the staff that had to handle the public relations this weekend.
*Kudos to the community present at the event for having the drive to stay and watch despite the issues
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After listening to State of the Game this week and reading what Sundance had to say, I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't watch any more of their events. From what I (and others) have gathered, the problems that have surfaced can be fixed or at least partially amended. When the stream was up, I was having a great time, all that needs to happen is some more planning for the worst possible scenario and time inspecting the venue a bit more thoroughly.
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I think the tournament system could be better with some easy changes:
Having Groups for the seeds is a good idea and as you said, makes for entertaining games from the first day on. Thats true and nice.
The problem i see with is, that due to the "strong" influence of the group rankings AND extended Series the later stages of the tournament have a high chance of getting "boring".
If 2 people from the same group ater in the tournament meet again, which is very likely, extended series "destroys" the series. Seeing someone win after he's 0-2 behind per default is exciting... Seeing someone just take a BO 5 with one win is not.
Solution:
Group stage result should not translate into the actual tournament. Use the groupes ONLY for putting the Seeds in the tournament but "delete" their record there after. This would make the End-Stages of the tournament way more exciting (stuff like Incontrol being 0-2 up against TLO is just "wrong").
For some reason MLG likes extended series, which while being fair is probably the by spectators most hated "invention" ever. It's "kinda" ok in a double elimination tournament, but the way it is handled right now it just puts the Group Winners too far ahead of the other seeds and makes for less exciting "final" games.
Changes i would like:
Make the seeds a little weaker, just put the Group 1/2/3/4 a little further "back" in the tournament. The amount of games a group winner needs to play is just way to small (after the groups). The Seeds are your star players, people want to see the seeds play when it counts. Groups are nice, but not half as exciting as the games in the actual Winner/Loser-Bracket.
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Besides the technical utter **** up, the biggest problem in my eyes was that most "important" match ups weren't ever casted and not even meant to be casted.
I want to be able to see all/most matches and without VODs I'll NEVER pay for a mlg pass, thankfully I didn't for dallas...
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On April 06 2011 06:20 Ohdamn wrote:
My 2 Cents:
The very first thing MLG should change (after getting the stream stable and making sure players cannot hear commentators) is clearly:
Increasing the Premium Stream Quality!
I really have to say I was SO sad when I saw that the quality was exactly the same like last season..
I mean perhaps the quality was okay last season but now? Every single Streamer on TL has 5 times better quality..and yeah i know it may be harder for you but you know what? GSL just increased their stream quality and they stream from korea...
Nobody cares about the Free Stream quality..it's obviously bad and thats okay
But when I spend 10$ to see like 5 Matchups every day for 3 days i expect to see a clear visual difference between the two streams...
I'd say the most important thing is to get a single flawless stream running before caring about how high the resolution of the HQ one is...
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I had 3 issues with the event.
First Issue, At the live event, there was no Commentary... they just used the game sounds and music for which half the time were masked by the Halo game next to us with their louder speakers. In between fights they would show djWheat and Day9 where they would talk a bit about the game, but the event people would forget to turn their volume back on, or Halo would drown their voices. I believe on one of the semi final games, it had no sounds for half the match. I was excited to go see djWheat and Day9 and listen to them cast, but they were hidden in the back somewhere muted to everyone there.
2nd Issue, the Champion Pool Play. Its a great idea, but even if those people don't perform, they still place well. I don't want to point anyone out, but there were a few people who went 1-5 during the whole event, yet they placed between 19-24. I understand that the people they played are vary good, but that still seems wrong when you consider how hard it is for anyone else to get in. In 1 case, someone went 0-4 in the pool, yet beat 1 person in the losers group, and he is still seeded in top 20 to make it to the next pool. I watched several players beat equally stronger opponents more times, yet get placed far lower. I am not denying their skill by any means, everyone in the pool is great, but people who have an off day or something i believe should be punished hard like everyone else. Perhaps they need to combine the pool sooner in the tournament.
If a person from pool does not win a single game, the lowest they can be placed was 24th. Maybe they should increase that to 64 or whatever.
3rd and last issue is with the Extended series. The only time I think it is appropriate is for the finals. Where the Winners bracket plays the losers bracket. The winner should start with an advantage, and the needing to win 2x last season is a bit harsh. But when you see 2 people in the losers bracket playing each other yet someone starts with an advantage, I don't see that justified to well.
I don't mean to offend anyone, like I said, I respect everyones talent that made it to the pool play. I am mainly trying to understand why things were done this way. Perhaps they may read this and at least listen to my points. I did have fun at the event, I even got to eat lunch with my favorite pro-gamer, but because of my first issue, I will not attend another MLG event. Next time ill save myself money and just get the HD pass instead.
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EPT
