On July 10 2011 11:35 Schwang wrote: the time between games was too long. I understand the desire to build a story... but... it was simply too long, I couldn't keep my friends interested who usually love watching gsl with me.
In what way does having someone wander around the crowd asking wood league nobodies what race they play "building a story"?
Let's be realistic here. NASL is a profit motivated business. They are not your friend. They are not a charity. They are not your grandpa telling you a story.
The long and empty schedule was for the sake of pushing out more advertisements.
it seems as though they didn't hire ANY of the professional staff required to pull off a broadcast of this magnitude.
this isn't just "streaming on the internets" anymore guys... this stuff can be as good (if not better) than traditional broadcast mediums.
it sucks to see a crew not realize this and provide such a sub-standard product.
yes, it is season 1 and i can appreciate the growing pains that come along with that... but there are plenty of skilled and qualified people that can help make an event like this shine. sucks that NASL didn't anticipate their "Grand Finals" being worthy of this kind of treatment.
On July 10 2011 11:18 Kluey wrote: How does this look amateur? Booths, Webcams for the players, after-game interviews, a HUGE prize pool, the best commentators in the world... What more do you want?
The booths look like something that could be DIY'ed from materials sourced at the Home Depot over a weekend. There is a nasty spaghetti of wires just behind the casters' desk (which is visible depending on the camera being used.) Not that this is a deal breaker, but points to the fact that they don't have someone with broadcast experience. The players are barely visible on said webcams. (That we know they are webcams is problematic.) After game interviews have been awkward at best. The caster on the right (as the audience sees it) looks considerably more washed out than the caster on the left. They both look sickly under the stage lighting.
I will concede that they do have an amazing prize pool and casters, but what do either of those have to do with how the show looks? They need a director, they need stage hands in the audience running up and down the aisles pumping up the crowd (watch Day9's post KOTB daily), they need a light engineer, they need a sound engineer, and they need a makeup artist.
Also they need a new cameraman. Shots are shaky, poorly framed, and worst of all the "premium 1080p" video is interlaced meaning it is recorded with a 1080i video camera at best. They aren't even deinterlacing it. The video has combing.
On July 10 2011 11:18 Kluey wrote: How does this look amateur? Booths, Webcams for the players, after-game interviews, a HUGE prize pool, the best commentators in the world... What more do you want?
The booths look like something that could be DIY'ed from materials sourced at the Home Depot over a weekend. There is a nasty spaghetti of wires just behind the casters' desk (which is visible depending on the camera being used.) Not that this is a deal breaker, but points to the fact that they don't have someone with broadcast experience. The players are barely visible on said webcams. (That we know they are webcams is problematic.) After game interviews have been awkward at best. The caster on the right (as the audience sees it) looks considerably more washed out than the caster on the left. They both look sickly under the stage lighting.
I will concede that they do have an amazing prize pool and casters, but what do either of those have to do with how the show looks? They need a director, they need stage hands in the audience running up and down the aisles pumping up the crowd (watch Day9's post KOTB daily), they need a light engineer, they need a sound engineer, and they need a makeup artist.
Also they need a new cameraman. Shots are shaky, poorly framed, and worst of all the "premium 1080p" video is interlaced meaning it is recorded with a 1080i video camera at best. They aren't even deinterlacing it. The video has combing.
Eh... At least the game video quality is better than I can run on my PC :D
You can get away with hiring less experience, cheaper staff. But you need to compensate with a lot more time to prepare. Or smaller milestones that let staff work through mistakes. Or insanely talented and experienced management (the kind that aren't afraid to work 12 hours a day and do 80% of the work).
On July 10 2011 09:49 Jester.1561 wrote: To be fair to NASL, wasn't everyone extremely critical of an MLG event that went poorly? MLG cleaned up their act and pulled off an extremely great event recently with Columbus, and only improve the more events they throw.
I can only imagine the same with NASL. Yes, maybe this event isn't exactly the best and there are a lot of issues, but things can only get better from here.
MLG apologized for their screwup, offered compensation to customers, and replaced employees who were not able to do their jobs up to a professional standard.
So far NASL is: 1. Denying all responsibility for screwups 2. Refusing to acknowledge they need to hire competent staff 3. Degrading the quality of their (let's be honest, already horrendous) product by stretching the schedule way too thin for ad revenue 4. Unwilling to offer any compensation, such as free season 2 tickets to people who were swindled by season 1
Continuing to cheerlead for them and give them money will not help them improve. That is not how the market works. When you give them money or praise for this sort of product you are sending the message that you want more of the same.
Anyone who wants to support eSports should be issuing a chargeback with their credit card company.
The only way NASL will improve is a huge overhaul. The problems are with their management, and the decision to hire only friends instead of professionals. They aren't going to change anything until they are financially hurt by this nepotism.
Yep, they have offered no compensation to customers. MLG immediately offered refunds, NASL...not so much. It really shows the business side of things, and which organizations want to "just make money" or ones that want to grow with e-sports.
People also have been sort of brainwashed into this notion of "i have to support this tournament for the sake of e-sports." But if a product or tournament is not delivering, and has repeatedly failed to deliver and then after a fiasco not even offered official response, no compensation...people can make up their own minds if they want to be brained into the "i must give my money for the ESPORTS" or "i'll go support organizations that deliver on their promises (like MLG has, above and beyond."
On July 10 2011 11:57 Defacer wrote: You can get away with hiring less experience, cheaper staff. But you need to compensate with a lot more time to prepare. Or smaller milestones that let staff work through mistakes. Or insanely talented and experienced management (the kind that aren't afraid to work 12 hours a day and do 80% of the work).
It's not that they cheaped out on staff. They refused offers of free assistance from people who actually knew how to do these things.
The problem is they have a lot of money, but they want to give it to their friends instead of giving it to someone who can do the job.
My thoughts are pretty much the obvious ones such as technical issues, playing those recaps videos for insanely long (did not need them) and then the other thought I had were that a single elimination tourney in a 16 man tourney where people are flying 10+ hours is ridiculous. Also you fly out the three most popular and best casters in the world and you have gret/inc casting some of the most hyped up matches on day 1.
Also I didn't buy premium but for them the "no ads" but we will play sponsor messages was really stupid.
I should also add hire a web developer. Their website is abysmal and without any in house developer they are unable to improve it. They really shouldn't be relying on justin.tv for their entire functionality. What sort of serious business has their customer accounts and everything that matters entirely on a third party website?
Even one single decent web developer could set them up a nice site with their own on-site login and VOD system backed by a CDN like akamai. This is how any serious non-amateur website like MLG and GSL does things.
The way they were doing the regular season streams was to play the pre-recorded and edited video in windows media player, then use a screen capping program to stream it to justin.tv! That is so absurd. They are screencapping a video, so they can send out a video of that video. The screencapper is transcoding in real time, significantly degrading quality. They could have encoded it with better quality once and streamed the file directly. I really can't find the words to describe how amateurish that is. It's like they have nobody on staff who is a skilled computer user.
Even the vods are not encoded from the source, they are just chopped up parts of this transcoded video of a video.
They need to hire a web developer and a person to take care of video encoding, in addition to replacing current staff.
I still can't watch because of lag (premium ticket holder). Tried in two PCs with two different internet provider connections. I have no hope of ever getting a refund, as Ive been complaining since week1 to no avail. NASL will never get a dollar from me again.
On July 10 2011 11:57 Defacer wrote: You can get away with hiring less experience, cheaper staff. But you need to compensate with a lot more time to prepare. Or smaller milestones that let staff work through mistakes. Or insanely talented and experienced management (the kind that aren't afraid to work 12 hours a day and do 80% of the work).
It's not that they cheaped out on staff. They refused offers of free assistance from people who actually knew how to do these things.
The problem is they have a lot of money, but they want to give it to their friends instead of giving it to someone who can do the job.
Nepotism. Cheaping out. It's pretty easy tell that the NASL has either one or both of these issues, but I'm going to be charitable because I have no idea how much their staff is paid.
The value of free assistance is limited, if you're don't have the time to properly coordinate or manage them. (It can actually be counter-productive and risky to rely on free labour to do anything critical). But I have to agree, if they have better organized and disciplined management, they could have gotten some value from the community.
On July 10 2011 12:14 DontGiveUp wrote: I still can't watch because of lag (premium ticket holder). Tried in two PCs with two different internet provider connections. I have no hope of ever getting a refund, as Ive been complaining since week1 to no avail. NASL will never get a dollar from me again.
If you bought with a credit card, phone the credit card company and ask for a chargeback. Credit card companies are very good with consumer protection. Let them know the product was not as advertised and they have ignored requests for a refund.
Depending on the credit card company you should have six months to a year to do a chargeback.
On July 10 2011 11:01 Whitewing wrote: I don't like the presence of an open bracket in a league that's this long and has this many games. Some guy who didn't put in the time and effort of the other players can show up, win the open and then be a strong contender for the whole prize, with a lot less time investment.
Ask ANYONE if they rather be invited and play NINE games across NINE weeks to get a shot at $50,000 or if they rather have ONE shot in a single elimination tourney. Everyone will pick the first option. You say the guy didn't put in the time, into the league sure, but Puma did put in the same if not MORE time into practicing SC2 enough to make it to the top in the Open Tourney and now to the Finals.
On July 10 2011 11:57 Defacer wrote: You can get away with hiring less experience, cheaper staff. But you need to compensate with a lot more time to prepare. Or smaller milestones that let staff work through mistakes. Or insanely talented and experienced management (the kind that aren't afraid to work 12 hours a day and do 80% of the work).
It's not that they cheaped out on staff. They refused offers of free assistance from people who actually knew how to do these things.
The problem is they have a lot of money, but they want to give it to their friends instead of giving it to someone who can do the job.
Nepotism. Cheaping out. It's pretty easy tell that the NASL has either one or both of these issues, but I'm going to be charitable because I have no idea how much their staff is paid.
The value of free assistance is limited, if you're don't have the time to properly coordinate or manage them. (It can actually be counter-productive and risky to rely on free labour to do anything critical). But I have to agree, if they have better organized and disciplined management, they could have gotten some value from the community.
They shouldn't be relying on the community. I used that example to illustrate that being cheap is not their problem at all. They aren't even trying to be cheap. Xeris claims the plywood coffins cost them $10,000, their sound board and most of the equipment is overkill and they don't even know how to use it, the venue was larger than needed, they flew out Tasteless and Artosis to have them sit on the sidelines most of the time, etc. They are wasting money like crazy.
They should be hiring people who are able to do their job. It's that simple.
They have more than enough money to fire their friends and hire professionals. They just don't want to.
On July 10 2011 12:09 Gurblechev wrote: I should also add hire a web developer. Their website is abysmal and without any in house developer they are unable to improve it.
They need to hire a web developer and a person to take care of video encoding, in addition to replacing current staff.
They need an art/marketing director to manage their entire design and brand. For example, they're releasing replays to other casters without them being branded with their logo or website. It's like they're trying to sabotage themselves. It's nutty.
And to be brutally honest, the design aesthetic overall is at the level of a second-year design student. It's the kind of design you might have seen in the late 90's.
MLG's design isn't that creative, but it is clean, 'corporate', consistent and well executed. It looks and feels like a professional sports league.
On July 10 2011 12:14 DontGiveUp wrote: I still can't watch because of lag (premium ticket holder). Tried in two PCs with two different internet provider connections. I have no hope of ever getting a refund, as Ive been complaining since week1 to no avail. NASL will never get a dollar from me again.
This lag kicks up at the latter part of the two days thus far. The game I want to see are stuttering and skipping around until I barely know what is what.
I have tried to restart, shut down all other programs, Shift to lowest resolution, but nothing.
My task manager says i am using hardly any bandwidth on my end atm and CPU jumps from 0% to 15% and back. Can someone more tech-savvy then me provide a suggested solution or is this really on their end alone?
EPT
