|
On July 09 2011 17:22 AngryFarmer wrote:Show nested quote +On July 09 2011 17:16 Dark Stalker wrote:
For those arguing for a BO5... I disagree. The only thing it would have done was extent the beatings that the foreigners received by about five minutes (considering how quickly their asses were kicked in most of the games), or alternatively allowed Alicia to come back. BO3 matches were the quickest way to weed out the crappy foreign players so the real games can start tomorrow when its Koreans versus Koreans. Given that we had three hour long delays fucked if I was going to wait for BO5 matches - I had my whole Saturday free expecting NASL to only take up a few hours in the morning but ended up waiting all day for Sen's game. I feel the same way. A BO5 or double elimination won't change the results that much. The other thing is if they did any more than BO3s the tournament would last for over 12 hours. I also mainly saw BO3 complaints only when the fan favorite gets knocked out so there is probably a degree of bias when people are asking for BO5s or double elimination.
Those damn crops aye? Fucking urbanisation, I hate it too. Had to get up the other morning at 4am just to beat my cows 'cos they wouldn't stop mooing.
+ Show Spoiler +I like your username, LOL.
|
The only issue I have is being in Asia for business this week, the original starting time of 2AM was already less than ideal, and being told it's going to start in a minute 20+times when it ended up being two hours was frustrating. I ended up falling asleep and missing a large chunk of games. I know NASL is probably not targeting the Asian market but even Jinro gave up after the long delays. Can't comment too much on production since I was only able to catch 2 games but what I saw was decent.
|
On July 09 2011 17:35 ragealot wrote:
The only issue I have is being in Asia for business this week, the original starting time of 2AM was already less than ideal, and being told it's going to start in a minute 20+times when it ended up being two hours was frustrating. I ended up falling asleep and missing a large chunk of games. I know NASL is probably not targeting the Asian market but even Jinro gave up after the long delays. Can't comment too much on production since I was only able to catch 2 games but what I saw was decent.
I disagree. People in the US have to lose sleep to watch GSL, why can't Asians do the same for NASL? It's mutual.
|
A technical issue:
I found the imbalanced sound (80%right/20%left) very annoying and unique to this event. I had never encountered that before. Also the volume levels were inconsistent with the commentators fading out and in occasionally.
For the format:
I would agree, that groups of 4 with round robin would be awesome, simply because it gives everyone a chance to excel. Four groups of four can be done in a day, if you let games run parallel with either 2 streams or only 1 game shown.
|
Audio
Sometimes too loud, sometimes too low, sometimes has echo, sometimes cannot hear at all, sometimes un-balanced between left and right channel.
Time-spacing
Do you have to do a 30 min preview of players and some empty down time? Is that intentional? Is that avoidable? Why do people get 5~10 min of exciting games and wait for another 30 min?
|
On July 09 2011 17:39 Thrombozyt wrote:
A technical issue:
I found the imbalanced sound (80%right/20%left) very annoying and unique to this event. I had never encountered that before. Also the volume levels were inconsistent with the commentators fading out and in occasionally.
For the format:
I would agree, that groups of 4 with round robin would be awesome, simply because it gives everyone a chance to excel. Four groups of four can be done in a day, if you let games run parallel with either 2 streams or only 1 game shown.
Yes, it can. 2 streams and better organization to clean up those waiting times.
|
On July 09 2011 17:38 twndomn wrote:Show nested quote +On July 09 2011 17:35 ragealot wrote:
The only issue I have is being in Asia for business this week, the original starting time of 2AM was already less than ideal, and being told it's going to start in a minute 20+times when it ended up being two hours was frustrating. I ended up falling asleep and missing a large chunk of games. I know NASL is probably not targeting the Asian market but even Jinro gave up after the long delays. Can't comment too much on production since I was only able to catch 2 games but what I saw was decent. I disagree. People in the US have to lose sleep to watch GSL, why can't Asians do the same for NASL? It's mutual.
He didn't complain about the time, but about the 2 hour delay from the scheduled time. GSL usually starts right on time.
|
On July 09 2011 17:38 twndomn wrote:Show nested quote +On July 09 2011 17:35 ragealot wrote:
The only issue I have is being in Asia for business this week, the original starting time of 2AM was already less than ideal, and being told it's going to start in a minute 20+times when it ended up being two hours was frustrating. I ended up falling asleep and missing a large chunk of games. I know NASL is probably not targeting the Asian market but even Jinro gave up after the long delays. Can't comment too much on production since I was only able to catch 2 games but what I saw was decent. I disagree. People in the US have to lose sleep to watch GSL, why can't Asians do the same for NASL? It's mutual.
You disagree that starting 2 hours late while continually being told the event will start soon isn't frustrating? your post is stupid and ignorant you didn't even read what he said you just wanted to get in your comment
|
So what time does the actual event start time tommorow?
|
On July 09 2011 17:38 twndomn wrote:Show nested quote +On July 09 2011 17:35 ragealot wrote:
The only issue I have is being in Asia for business this week, the original starting time of 2AM was already less than ideal, and being told it's going to start in a minute 20+times when it ended up being two hours was frustrating. I ended up falling asleep and missing a large chunk of games. I know NASL is probably not targeting the Asian market but even Jinro gave up after the long delays. Can't comment too much on production since I was only able to catch 2 games but what I saw was decent. I disagree. People in the US have to lose sleep to watch GSL, why can't Asians do the same for NASL? It's mutual.
You're missing the point. He was complaining about the two hours delay.
|
Might I also suggest offline qualifiers in accordance to the top 16 pool play. That way there's constant content flowing out.
|
While there were obviously technical difficulties during the the event that is far less important to me than what I believe was the main problem, the scheduling.
After watching literally every day of NASL through the re-broadcast for us here in Finland(EU), I was excited to check out the finals as I wanted to see the culmination of their efforts. However when actually watching the event, I feel that having 4 Bo3s in what? 6-7 hours of viewing was NOT acceptable. It was 4am here by the time the 2nd half of the bracket began and by that time it was getting ridiculous so I had to sleep due to obligations.
Of course people are going to chime in with "But us Americans have to stay up for GSL blah blah", which is all good and fine, but the GSL doesn't run for a ludicrous amount of time, and is scheduled properly.
Also I understand that NASL wants to make a big deal of the matches, having a build up to them etc and making them feel exciting/epic, with a narrative. I do feel though that the same effect could be achieved in a more condensed manner.
|
I have to say, I think this Playoff-format is horrible. you spend two months trying to qualify for this event through the league and then you can get knocked out by a single bo3? Also there is little reason to try to get the top spots in the league; as long as you get top 2 in your division you are in. This results in the top players losing interest in the league because there is little reason to try anymore when you sit at 7-0, 7-1 or 8-0.
Here is my suggesstion to this. It is fairly complicated but has the pros of giving advantages to the top seeded players, i.e. there is a reason to try to get #1 seed in the league, you can't get eliminated by a bo3, the final rankings are much clearer (no 9-16 and 5-8), every match is important and there are a lot more games to watch.
First of all this format only has room for 15 players, so one playoff-spot or the open bracket spot has to go. Personally I'd get rid of the open bracket spot, as I feel a player doesn't have a place in a leagues playoffs when he wasn't in the league to begin with.
First round is the Ro12. 3 groups of 4 players in Dual tournament format (same as GSL Code S), only each match is a bo3 instead of a bo1. Top 2 of each group advance. Detailed seeding in the spoiler.
+ Show Spoiler +
Playoff # refers to the league ranking of the playoff qualifiers
Group A
Seed #4 vs. Playoff #5
Seed #9 vs. Seed #10
Group B
Seed #5 vs. Playoff #4
Seed #8 vs. Playoff #2
Group C
Seed #6 vs. Playoff #3
Seed #7 vs. Playoff #2
Losers of loser match get 13/14/15th
Losers of final match get 10/11/12th
2nd Round is the Ro8. 6 winners of round 1 + 2nd and 3rd League Seed. Same format again, but as only 3 can advance the winners of the final match in each group have to face each other for the last spot. Think about tennis, you have to win 2 games more than you lost to advance.
+ Show Spoiler +
Group 1
Seed #2 vs. 2nd Group C
1st Group B vs. 2nd Group A
Group 2
Seed #3 vs. 2nd Group B
1st Group A vs. 1st Group C
Losers of Loser Match get 8/9th
Losers of Final Match get 6/7th
Loser of advancement match gets 5th
3rd round are the semis, the #1 Seed is inserted in here and we go to single elimination as Bo5 or Bo7. As an added bonus the #1 could choose his opponent.
So, those are my thoughts, I think this is a much better format as performing really well in the league guarantees you a top 9 or even top 4 spot, this makes the league part much more important, which it should be in my opinion. In total there will be 30 matches with a 3rd place match(26 bo3, 4 bo5/7), comapred to 16 in the current format.
|
My biggest complaint is the Map Pool. I would really like to hear the reasoning behind having the same 3 maps over and over again. Make it random or losers choice or something, but this is just annoying.
Other than that, I agree with OP. The casters didn't disturb me too much though, I like iNcontrol/Gretorp.
And I wouldn't mind an official statement from a NASL guy. I mean, it is fine to have technical difficulties, nobody expects it to be on the level of an MLG/GSL (which had ton more experience), but it almost seemed as if nothing was tested beforehand? If so, that would be very weird.
Also, for future reference, maybe hire somebody who has done events like this for the finals just to look through everything and make sure everything works fine (there's gotta be people from MLG/DH/GSL who can do that).
|
No Gretorp or Incontrol, No Problems
|
They should of kept it much simpler and just focused on getting the game's video and audio and the caster's audio working well. They've tried to do such much time filler rubbish that they've given themselves so many extra problems to work out.
They have chosen to go down the MLG root and have relatively (to average game length) huge pauses in between broadcasting games. I'm guessing most people want to see the games and not the "spectacle" of the event. But maybe that's just me and other euro's because it was through the night and it felt like they were just wasting time and dragging it out.
Day 1 was pretty much a disaster stream production wise, but then I'm a stickler for audio quality, although the in game video was very dark again as well (like during the couple of NASL broadcasts I watched during the league season). It seems they don't bother to properly calibrate their production monitors.
Good luck to NASL next season! Maybe HoN will run smoother for them (although even that decision is pretty suspect considering the amount of viewers LoL gets!)
|
I particularly strongly agree on the following poins:
- keeping schedule
- sound balance between casters
- shaky camera
and my subjective opinion would be also
- more games, less breaks
but that is a matter of taste.
I think that NASL has been really great so far and I am really suprprised that they make elementary mistakes in production (already after TEN weeks of league broadcasts). The sound imbalance was extremely annoying, I was finally forced to put my headphones on, because I was trying to simltaneously hear gretorp and not wake up the whole house (2 am here) when Day9 speaked.
On a positive note, I absolutely loved IncontroL's funny little IdrA comments  (and to be serious, the games I catched, were mostly amazing).
|
United States22883 Posts
On July 09 2011 17:26 kalany wrote:
You can't blame it all on NASL. The crowd seemed tired and dead. NASL's gotta focus on a better venue and production crew. That computer making that sponsored them was probably in charge and they didn't necessarily do a good job.
It is on NASL. The problems exhibited at the Grand Final have been characteristic of NASL all season long.
I'll start with the venue, since I knew this was going to be a problem just from seeing the pictures several days in advance.
You chose a big airy ballroom with seating for 720 people. That's honestly not a lot of people and you would've been much better served to use a more intimate setting such as a highschool or college auditorium. Reasons:
1. Anyone who's ever been to a club knows that it's better for the club to run out of space than to have vacancies. You say, "Oh, we'll fix that next time but hey everyone, we were overflowing with demand." Even if your crowd was full (it did not look like it was from pre/post-event photographs and first hand accounts), the ballroom was probably only 60-70% filled which just makes it look unpopular.
2. Price. Renting out an auditorium is going to be cheaper than an event center ball room. Your internet requirements are minimal, so that shouldn't be an issue.
3. Knowing your product. It seems like you're trying to emulate an OSL Grand Final in every way you can, but that's not the product you're selling. A smaller, more intimate venue feels better for the live audience, and it looks better at those types of numbers. It also reinforces the idea that this is a home grown product, the way DH Invitational looks.
4. Equipment (I'll touch more on it later.) A lot of it would already been in place and you wouldn't have to bring everything of your own.
5. Audience. Ontario, California is far from everything. No one actually wants to travel there. If you get a campus auditorium, you're not only more centrally located, but you're centrally located for your core audience- young people.
Now onto equipment. You have too much of it. Your event makes me think of a rich kid learning to play guitar, who buys an expensive Fender, amps and effects units before actually knowing how to pluck a string. That soundboard, the lights and the stage are overkill.
1. The soundboard doesn't fit your needs. I don't know who recommended it, but it was a terrible recommendation and you're obviously having a difficult time handling all of the features it provides.
2. Choose a better venue and you don't need that fuckton of lights. The amount you have is seriously absurd and again, it makes lighting harder to manage.
3. Screens. We know you had projector problems, but you still didn't set them up properly for the live viewers. You know this, so I won't touch on it that much but I'll bring up something you might not realize. You don't need 3 screens. 2 would be perfect, 1 would even be passable. The audience isn't spread out enough to really need that much screen coverage and it can actually be distracting from the single screen, the way that watching a panel of TVs at Best Buy is. Again, in a venue with theater style seating, this is even more true.
Staff problems.
1. Your audio people are not good at their job. This has been a problem all season long. They might be nice people, but they don't deserve anyone's slack.
2. Your cameramen are not good at their job. The job of a well-trained cameraman is not a difficult one. I assume yours aren't, so I hope they're at least volunteers. It's actually not the shakiness or losing focus that suggest that the most. It's that they don't know how to center their shots. You learn that on like the first day of class.
3. Your graphics people are not good at their jobs. I don't mean the CGI, that stuff is fine. But the NASL graphics/logo have always been ugly and that overlay needs to be scrapped. Again, I hope no one was paid to make it because that's just the lowest of the low of Photoshop know-how. A bar with a gradient filter, half cutting off the nice overlay that Blizzard built into the game. Who thought that would be a good idea, any why didn't anyone see that and say "turn that off"?
4. The set looks shoddy. The job of set design is an iffy one and I can understand if they were limited by time or resources, but it really just doesn't look good. On top of that, the design is tacky. I'll go back to an earlier point and say you need to tone it down. You don't need a huge stage like that. Give your people less to work on, and they'll do a better job on the fewer tasks they have. This was a problem during the NASL regular season as well. The set design was poor, with very bad colors/shades.
Overall these are a few of the things you need to fix, but these are all symptomatic of the bigger problems NASL has had all season long. You shouldn't have to learn all this stuff over again and go through growing pains. ESPORTS has been going on on a major scale for over 10 years now. There are staff from WCG/IEM/DH/CPL/ESEA/MLG/Blizzcon/ESL/etc. who already know how to put this type of production together. You should've hired them, at least to direct things, than do it entirely yourself. Just think about these two sets of events: NASL regular season/EG Master's Cup and NASL Grand Finals/Day9 Beta Countdown. When you're a business, it being your first time is not a valid excuse.
A lot of these aren't major issues and they don't detract from the game viewing experience, but they highlight a bigger and more serious issue: the director is not doing their job. Running things is a terrifically difficult job, but it falls on them to see the product and say, "that part isn't right, fix it." There have been so many little things continually not right about NASL, and no one noticed it until the fans pointed it out. And I don't mean big, complex things that are difficult to fix. I'm talking about stuff that could be fixed within an instant, and should have been noticed on the first pass through. That "noticer" has been absent. You need to hire a dedicated director, who simply understands how a finished viewing event should look.
EDIT: Also, your tournament format is not very fair to most of the players. I don't mean in a "omg extended series is dumb!" kind of way. I mean that people chocked up a lot of money to fly to the middle of nowhere, play two games and then be out. "But they had the chance to win $50,000!" doesn't matter. Either make it a double elimination bracket (then you set up an extra set of competitor computers backstage) OR make the ro16/ro8 online. Paying $3,000 for a plane ticket and being done in 15 minutes is an awful, souring experience.
|
|
|
On July 09 2011 17:17 Darkybald wrote:
#1 Follow Sundance's example and fucking admit that you screwed up big time and offer the people their money back or give them free passes for next season. Retweeting the few positiv tweets of how you are improving and "this is just ok for your first try", is just pathetic.
Acknowledging you messed up will buy you a lot of credit with the viewership, indeed. Nerds are infuriated very easily, but if you keep your lips closed while it's obvious that you dun goofed, it'll make matters only worse, just throw some of the producers onstage, and let him explain that while some things indeed sucked, it's going to be oke. Assure your audience that you're working on making things right. This will make it far more easier for yourselves.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
