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I bought season 1, but I will not be buying season 2.
My reasons:
- The premium pass adds very little as it is at the moment. What I want and expect is a proper VOD system, and it just isn't there. The justin.tv stuff is a complete and utter mess, and so userunfriendly that over the course of the NASL I have watched maybe a VOD and a half. I've found out I can pretty much watch the matches I want to see on the broadcast/rebroadcast, and that most of the time I can't even be bothered to log in to switch to a higher resolution.
- The second real reason why I bought it was to watch the finals in decent quality, but it turns out I bought it too early. If I waited with buying I would have saved 15 USD, and while I understand why the NASL offers the passes cheaper end of season, part of me felt screwed over by the price reduction. I feel that the NASL should have refunded the people that paid full price, or offer a serious discount on s2 for those that bought s1. It's only logical to reward your most loyal customers.
- I strongly disagree with the delayed 'live' casting. If you're going to delay casts for production etc, I'm fine with that, but I feel that you could just as easily cast from replays then. This would be more convenient for the players and would allow for smoother production/casting. The NASL has been riddled with spoiled matched (by the casters), because they don't record in the same order they are aired, and I feel this ruins the overall 'narrative' of a night. Any league should be aiming to create a story, and answer questions like 'what happens if player X wins?'. The terrible terrible casting format has not allowed them to do anything of the sort, and a night of NASL feels like it's randomly cut and pasted together. Overall production needs to improve dramatically for me to pay for it again.
- The regular season feels meaningless. It's too many games spread over too many nights, and too many games are utterly mediocre. There are too few high end matchups in the regular season, too many lopsided games, and too many players I honestly don't give a shit about because they're not exactly up there in terms of skill.
- Justin.tv is a terrible partner for a league like this. Justin is just poor in europe, and does not offer the options required for a league like this. Lower resolution VOD's are a prime example of this, and while it's been promised for quite a while, it should have been in place from the get go.
- The NASL representatives are generally dismissive of what are very real problems, and it makes me feel like I'm not valued as a customer. MLG has had its screw-ups, but realizing that, apologizing for it and promising to do better goes a long way. I'm willing to pay to support a new league to some extent, but not when the main spokespeople keep hyping it like everything is working out fine. Take your feedback seriously, respond to it in a professional manner and don't dismiss it offhand. It's true that the NASL has gotten quite some unfair criticism, but a lot of the criticism has been quite fair and constructive, yet it gets treated as an attack on the NASL by their spokespeople. We all want this league to be awesome, and we all want to be taken seriously.
That said, if they offer the finals again at a discount rate (say 10 USD), I would buy that, simply because any 3 day tournament with 50k on the line is too exciting to miss out on.
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On July 12 2011 07:51 Zinjil wrote:
I feel like if people went back and compared the quality of games first season of GSL with the quality of games first season of NASL there would be a lot less complaining about stream/sound/caster issues, but maybe people have forgotten what the beginnings of the korean league were like.
The GSL production has always been great. The games were shit in GSL 1 though because the SC2 was too new to have any actual good solid players playing, and it had mostly guys who cheesed their way up.
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On July 12 2011 07:44 coL.drewbie wrote:Show nested quote +On July 12 2011 07:39 Grettin wrote:Didn't buy the season 1 and i wont buy it next season. The broadcasting style is really stupid in my opinion. I don't like "splitting the scene" half, i.e own broadcast times for NA and EU. So that's why i even didn't watch any NASL games during the season, except the finals of course. But that's just my opinion and i kinda understand why NASL would want to do it this way. The prize of the season isn't much, but what i heard from the community, about all of the problems they had during the season, it can't be worth it.  how is it splitting the scene LOL if you are european then you can stay up and watch the first broadcast LOL it's not like you get IP blocked if you are from EU. They picked the time when the most people will watch for the main broadcast, and were nice enough to give a free re-stream to europeans who couldn't stay up late
Yeah, thats why i used "" when i said splitting. I didn't mean it literally or maybe i didn't use the correct word here? And i'm sure that i'm huge minority with this or even alone and thats why i emphasized that its only my OPINION.
But someone who uses facebook, twitter, reads forums and stuff, can't avoid spoilers unless you stop using them completely till you've seen the VoDs or watched the broadcast. And i didn't want to stop reading/using these just to avoid to not get spoilered.
If you are European you can stay up to watch the main broadcast? It's easy to say if you don't go to school or work at the morning.
I'm not blaming NASL for "ripping" the scene, doing stupid decisions with the broadcasting or anything. But this broadcasting style is just not for me. Get it? no need to get pissed about it.
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I bought season 1 and will not be buying season 2. This has nothing to do with the quality or anything. It was just far too many games to watch. I have pretty limited time to use for watching SC, so I think I will be sticking with GSL.
That being said the games were pretty good.
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No offense to people who enjoy NASL but I think it is an extremely poor choice to give them any money in their current state.
All the problems that plagued them were human error and yet they have still not taken responsibility for the problems and just make excuses or pretend people who complain are "haters".
There is no reason to expect they will suddenly improve by season 2 without staff changes. They did not improve much over the season and were still having problems at the finals that they were having on day 1. Also their website is abysmal and justin.tv/twitch.tv doesn't have a very good website either and are not suitable as a VOD provider. And the way they are streaming--by playing their prepared video in windows media player and then running a screencapping program to stream to justin.tv--degrades video quality a lot and causes inflated bitrates. They could take the time to encode and stream properly and they would get higher quality at lower bitrates.
Including other problems like "premium 1080p" being interlaced during camera shots, the audio sounding poor even when they have managed to put it out both channels at the same volume, it really puts their level below even the small weekly cups as someone else mentioned. I would rather support GSL which has very polished and superb production, and MLG who took responsibility for their screwups and really delivered a top notch show at Columbus.
I'd buy two GSL and two MLG tickets to support good organizations before I bought NASL again. Giving NASL money sets a bad precedent in the SC2 esports market that making a cash grab and disregarding quality will be rewarded. I had high hopes for them before they launched but at this point I really hope they go bankrupt to send a message that starcraft viewers have at least some standards and are not complete bottom feeders.
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Their early hiccups were pretty embarrassing, and the hiccups during the live finals was just sad. That said, over the course of the 9 weeks of group play, they improved a TON. Casting improved, the quality of games was pretty good and overall it was pretty enjoyable. I was disappointed by their decision to stop offering 480p for free half way through the Season.
I'm strongly considering a pass for Season 2, but a lot depends on the first 1/2 weeks. If they have improved and the issues are kept to a minimum, I'll buy a Season pass.
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On July 12 2011 07:52 Derez wrote:
- The second real reason why I bought it was to watch the finals in decent quality, but it turns out I bought it too early. If I waited with buying I would have saved 15 USD, and while I understand why the NASL offers the passes cheaper end of season, part of me felt screwed over by the price reduction. I feel that the NASL should have refunded the people that paid full price, or offer a serious discount on s2 for those that bought s1. It's only logical to reward your most loyal customers.
I agree. While this isn't something that we're entitled to as customers, it's a great feeling. MLG did this great, as they gave me MLG Gold free for 15 months, because I had bought MLG Dallas, Anaheim, and the deal for the next two MLG events. Feels great, and I will be a customer with MLG for a long time yet because they do baller stuff like this.
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NASL was the most amateur tournament I've seen in a long time -- even more so that $100 weekly tourneys.
There is no way I'd spent even a dollar on it without first seeing them put on a production that doesn't look like it was made by grade schoolers.
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On July 12 2011 07:56 Gurblechev wrote:
No offense to people who enjoy NASL but I think it is an extremely poor choice to give them any money in their current state.
All the problems that plagued them were human error and yet they have still not taken responsibility for the problems and just make excuses or pretend people who complain are "haters".
There is no reason to expect they will suddenly improve by season 2 without staff changes. They did not improve much over the season and were still having problems at the finals that they were having on day 1. Also their website is abysmal and justin.tv/twitch.tv doesn't have a very good website either and are not suitable as a VOD provider. And the way they are streaming--by playing their prepared video in windows media player and then running a screencapping program to stream to justin.tv--degrades video quality a lot and causes inflated bitrates. They could take the time to encode and stream properly and they would get higher quality at lower bitrates.
Including other problems like "premium 1080p" being interlaced during camera shots, the audio sounding poor even when they have managed to put it out both channels at the same volume, it really puts their level below even the small weekly cups as someone else mentioned. I would rather support GSL which has very polished and superb production, and MLG who took responsibility for their screwups and really delivered a top notch show at Columbus.
I'd buy two GSL and two MLG tickets to support good organizations before I bought NASL again. Giving NASL money sets a bad precedent in the SC2 esports market that making a cash grab and disregarding quality will be rewarded. I had high hopes for them before they launched but at this point I really hope they go bankrupt to send a message that starcraft viewers have at least some standards and are not complete bottom feeders.
I mostly agree with you, besides the whole bankruptcy thing. That's not cool. They should just learn and get better than they are know. With that same logic, you would want MLG to go bankrupt after Dallas too, and while it's not exactly the same situation, they sure have improved. Although, I don't think NASL will improve as MLG did, we can always dream, right?
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lolL everibody smashing nasl production...omg .. ive just seen the best games of sc2 ever and thats what i was there to see! so much QQ
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There needs to be an option for "It depends". Personally, for me it's going to depend on the full player list, the casters, and whether NASL makes an announcement to get their shit together.
I purchased a season pass and watched nearly every game in season 1 (at least, all the ones worth watching), however, I was unable to watch any matches "live" due to JTV's lag issues, and I found much of the casting to be unbearable (read: Gretorp and a few of the guest casters). The finals weekend was a complete farce, and I actually feel like all the effort I put into being a NASL fan over the season was thrown out the window with the shameful way the finals was put together, the lack of consistent scheduling, and the way PuMa got seeded in to win the entire thing. It was like reading a 500-page book only to find out it doesn't have an ending.
Anyway, I feel like I got my $25 worth, but season 2 is iffy for me.
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On July 12 2011 07:55 Calasmere wrote:Show nested quote +On July 12 2011 07:51 Zinjil wrote:
I feel like if people went back and compared the quality of games first season of GSL with the quality of games first season of NASL there would be a lot less complaining about stream/sound/caster issues, but maybe people have forgotten what the beginnings of the korean league were like. The GSL production has always been great. The games were shit in GSL 1 though because the SC2 was too new to have any actual good solid players playing, and it had mostly guys who cheesed their way up.
That's exactly my point. The first season of NASL had some of the best games of starcraft 2 I've seen so far, and apart from being a zerg player and having the high of fruitdealer winning the first season of gsl the majority of the games were not of a good quality.
I'm more than willing to deal with some graphical hiccups and sound issues and a host of other problems in order to see 9 weeks plus a finals weekend plus a huge open tournament of some really amazing players just beating the crap out of each other.
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I bought the ticket but could never watch the VODs because there was no low quality version. Thanks to my Australian internet I had to buffer for 2 hours to watch a 30 minute video and if I ever wanted to fast forward or rewind the process had to start over again. Won't buy season 2 if this isnt changed.
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I'm surprised more people aren't voting that they watched more hours a week. I watched 5-10 hours of the free stream each week and they consistently drew in thousands of viewers with the finals showing 80k viewers. Where are these thousands of viewers? Maybe NASL successfully grabbed a bunch of people that aren't TLers.
I'm still on the fence about a Season 2 pass; it depends on the availability of lower quality VODs. That said, they really improved their whole schtick over the course of Season 1.
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On July 12 2011 08:03 Zinjil wrote:Show nested quote +On July 12 2011 07:55 Calasmere wrote:On July 12 2011 07:51 Zinjil wrote:
I feel like if people went back and compared the quality of games first season of GSL with the quality of games first season of NASL there would be a lot less complaining about stream/sound/caster issues, but maybe people have forgotten what the beginnings of the korean league were like. The GSL production has always been great. The games were shit in GSL 1 though because the SC2 was too new to have any actual good solid players playing, and it had mostly guys who cheesed their way up. That's exactly my point. The first season of NASL had some of the best games of starcraft 2 I've seen so far, and apart from being a zerg player and having the high of fruitdealer winning the first season of gsl the majority of the games were not of a good quality. I'm more than willing to deal with some graphical hiccups and sound issues and a host of other problems in order to see 9 weeks of some really amazing players just beating the crap out of each other.
IMO only the games in the finals were great, the regular season including the playoffs were nothing special. The only real problems I had with the early season GSL were the streaming, the production were always top class, but NASL just had nothing going for it, too many meaningless games towards the end of the season and many poor quality matches.
I will judge the quality of the NASL again once we are 2-3 weeks into season 2.
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On July 12 2011 08:00 Calasmere wrote:Show nested quote +On July 12 2011 07:56 Gurblechev wrote:
No offense to people who enjoy NASL but I think it is an extremely poor choice to give them any money in their current state.
All the problems that plagued them were human error and yet they have still not taken responsibility for the problems and just make excuses or pretend people who complain are "haters".
There is no reason to expect they will suddenly improve by season 2 without staff changes. They did not improve much over the season and were still having problems at the finals that they were having on day 1. Also their website is abysmal and justin.tv/twitch.tv doesn't have a very good website either and are not suitable as a VOD provider. And the way they are streaming--by playing their prepared video in windows media player and then running a screencapping program to stream to justin.tv--degrades video quality a lot and causes inflated bitrates. They could take the time to encode and stream properly and they would get higher quality at lower bitrates.
Including other problems like "premium 1080p" being interlaced during camera shots, the audio sounding poor even when they have managed to put it out both channels at the same volume, it really puts their level below even the small weekly cups as someone else mentioned. I would rather support GSL which has very polished and superb production, and MLG who took responsibility for their screwups and really delivered a top notch show at Columbus.
I'd buy two GSL and two MLG tickets to support good organizations before I bought NASL again. Giving NASL money sets a bad precedent in the SC2 esports market that making a cash grab and disregarding quality will be rewarded. I had high hopes for them before they launched but at this point I really hope they go bankrupt to send a message that starcraft viewers have at least some standards and are not complete bottom feeders. I mostly agree with you, besides the whole bankruptcy thing. That's not cool. They should just learn and get better than they are know. With that same logic, you would want MLG to go bankrupt after Dallas too, and while it's not exactly the same situation, they sure have improved. Although, I don't think NASL will improve as MLG did, we can always dream, right?
No, MLG apologized, offered compensation to paying customers, and took decisive action to remedy their problems. As I understand it many staff were replaced and they hired new people who were capable of delivering a top notch product.
NASL has not taken any responsibility. Xeris comes on the forum and argues and makes excuses, someone apparently associated with NASL made a post on reddit saying that a mysterious "failure" was the cause of their observer problems--trying to pass it off as a technical issue--when it was clearly just that none of their employees were competent enough to set things up to send the same video feed to the stream as they were sending to the projector.
They have no intentions of improving or delivering an acceptable product. They are just milking starcraft fans. I really hope starcraft fans are smart enough not to allow themselves to be treated like cash cows.
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Make it so I can watch the vods in 720.
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On July 12 2011 08:11 Gurblechev wrote:Show nested quote +On July 12 2011 08:00 Calasmere wrote:On July 12 2011 07:56 Gurblechev wrote:
No offense to people who enjoy NASL but I think it is an extremely poor choice to give them any money in their current state.
All the problems that plagued them were human error and yet they have still not taken responsibility for the problems and just make excuses or pretend people who complain are "haters".
There is no reason to expect they will suddenly improve by season 2 without staff changes. They did not improve much over the season and were still having problems at the finals that they were having on day 1. Also their website is abysmal and justin.tv/twitch.tv doesn't have a very good website either and are not suitable as a VOD provider. And the way they are streaming--by playing their prepared video in windows media player and then running a screencapping program to stream to justin.tv--degrades video quality a lot and causes inflated bitrates. They could take the time to encode and stream properly and they would get higher quality at lower bitrates.
Including other problems like "premium 1080p" being interlaced during camera shots, the audio sounding poor even when they have managed to put it out both channels at the same volume, it really puts their level below even the small weekly cups as someone else mentioned. I would rather support GSL which has very polished and superb production, and MLG who took responsibility for their screwups and really delivered a top notch show at Columbus.
I'd buy two GSL and two MLG tickets to support good organizations before I bought NASL again. Giving NASL money sets a bad precedent in the SC2 esports market that making a cash grab and disregarding quality will be rewarded. I had high hopes for them before they launched but at this point I really hope they go bankrupt to send a message that starcraft viewers have at least some standards and are not complete bottom feeders. I mostly agree with you, besides the whole bankruptcy thing. That's not cool. They should just learn and get better than they are know. With that same logic, you would want MLG to go bankrupt after Dallas too, and while it's not exactly the same situation, they sure have improved. Although, I don't think NASL will improve as MLG did, we can always dream, right? No, MLG apologized, offered compensation to paying customers, and took decisive action to remedy their problems. As I understand it many staff were replaced and they hired new people who were capable of delivering a top notch product. NASL has not taken any responsibility. Xeris comes on the forum and argues and makes excuses, someone apparently associated with NASL made a post on reddit saying that a mysterious "failure" was the cause of their observer problems--trying to pass it off as a technical issue--when it was clearly just that none of their employees were competent enough to set things up to send the same video feed to the stream as they were sending to the projector. They have no intentions of improving or delivering an acceptable product. They are just milking starcraft fans. I really hope starcraft fans are smart enough not to allow themselves to be treated like cash cows.
You prove a good point. Although MLG didn't keel in and apologize till countless complaints were made. But like you say, NASL is not taking responsibility for complaints, and they're probably looking upon them as 'haters'. I mean, even in the sometimes unjustified unconstructive hatred of the typical pissed of netizen, there's pretty much always going to be some shred of truth in it, and it should actually be taken into consideration for NASL to progress.
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Ordered immediately when I saw the presale add. €14,40 is a joke for 2-3 months SC2. Just my opinion, not trying to generalize anything.
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On July 12 2011 08:01 reisada wrote:
lolL everibody smashing nasl production...omg .. ive just seen the best games of sc2 ever and thats what i was there to see! so much QQ
You're forgetting that a tournament doesn't entirely consist of the level of the players. Production matters a lot, casters matter a lot, the format of the play matters a lot.
If a tournament had GSL level production and bronze players, I would not be interested. Weekly tournament production and unknown GM players, I would be semi-interested in. You can't have extremes in it, and as far as I'm concerned, the production and the format of the NASL are a huge extreme in shit for me, which is why I'm not interested in the fact that they have amazing players.
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