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On July 13 2011 02:09 Beyonder wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2011 01:45 Xeris wrote:On July 13 2011 01:40 turdburgler wrote:On July 13 2011 01:39 bonifaceviii wrote:On July 13 2011 01:33 Xeris wrote:On July 13 2011 01:30 bonifaceviii wrote:On July 13 2011 01:25 Xeris wrote:
I'm not blaming players. I'm explaining that were a lot of reasons for delays that were actually pretty standard for many LAN events. And as I said, the only extra reason for delays was on the first day, when the players adjusted their settings after the intro videos. On Saturday they started doing it before the intros and it was better.
I'm confused as to what other delays you guys are referring to. It's the opposite of a delay, but could you comment on bumping up the grand finals on sunday by 2 and a half hours at the last minute, resulting in people (like me) missing them completely? Because mass people were complaining about 10 hours for 2 series, and we realized that our opening act really wouldn't fill up that much time -- The five minute song that you scheduled half an hour for, you mean? if they have a tight timing for something like a song what do they do if they start late? its completely reasonable to over budget time for an event its just a shame if they dont have a back up plan  Yep, I think one of the biggest issues was our lack of a solid backup plan to fill time. But rest assured, we learned all about it at this event We'll have more stuff created for next time in case we need to fill time! Dont create more stuff, there was already too much stuff T_T.. put your awesome casters on air, get them to interview people, get more games.. not more stuff.
i disagree that there was too much stuff. i thought the 20 year intro to each player was too much but thats still 1 'thing' even if its a big thing :o
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5003 Posts
I will accept the production mistakes of NASL as growing pains for it to become a better event in the future when NASL admits that that there were pains and acknowledging that instead of the constant sugarcoating and skimming over it. Be upfront.
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I made a lengthy post in another thread on this, and while parts have been answered I would like to bring this up (and hoping for a response from someone over at NASL ;p):
One of my main reasons why I bought a season 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 seems rather illogical to make your most 'loyal' customers pay more. I'd like to hear some thoughts from the NASL on this.
(Keep my 15 bucks, I'd like to think it went to Puma ;p).
Full post in other thread spoilered, lots of it has been adressed by Xeris (who I congratulate on not sounding hostile this time around ;p). Even with Xeris' post tho, I'm going to have to see improvements before I buy again. Promises are easy.
+ Show Spoiler +On July 12 2011 07:52 Derez wrote:
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.
EDIT: I'd like to add that I think the argument against casting from replays because 'players are lazy' is incredibly shortsighted. Even with casting from replays it is entirely possible to enforce a regular playing time, overseen by admins, with punishments as severe as they are for showing up late for a live match. You have all the tool you need to enforce it, and I feel it would greatly improve your overall production. Spoiler explains why.
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On July 13 2011 02:15 turdburgler wrote:
i disagree that there was too much stuff. i thought the 20 year intro to each player was too much but thats still 1 'thing' even if its a big thing :o
Congratulation on your 1,000th post sir
We'll definitely be looking at what we do in-between games for the Season Two Finals. We are listening.
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On July 13 2011 02:09 Beyonder wrote:
Dont create more stuff, there was already too much stuff T_T.. put your awesome casters on air, get them to interview people, get more games.. not more stuff.
This.
You have Day9, the archon and some of the best players in the world available. There's a hundred things you can do with them that would be more interesting than some babe interviewing people or some random audience shots.
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On July 13 2011 02:19 Milkis wrote:
I will accept the production mistakes of NASL as growing pains for it to become a better event in the future when NASL admits that that there were pains and acknowledging that instead of the constant sugarcoating and skimming over it. Be upfront.
Great post. I agree 100%.
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I appreciate your taking the time to address some of the concerns. I think a lot of the angst in the chat on tournament days over this past weekend could have been alleviated with better communication. Having a mod in the chat say something the flies by as everyone is chatting quickly isn't enough. There should have been some announcement on the website saying, "The projector is broken. This is why. We expect to start the games at X time." The lack of communication was the most annoying part for me in watching the streams. We had absolutely no idea of when the matches would be played, how long the breaks were, etc. I can understand the delays between matches being fine in person with booths to visit and players to meet, etc., but a countdown would have been great for those of us watching at home.
I would much prefer a knowledgeable SC person doing interviews than just a pretty face.
I think there should be no open tournament qualifier for the playoffs. Players should only be able to qualify in a tournament for the following regular season, not the playoffs of the current season. The playoffs should be reserved only for those who finished high enough during the regular season. Ret totally got screwed by actually having to play a superior player, even though he got the #1 seed. Please don't let people skip the 9-week regular season and qualify that way.
The NASL website was clumsily laid out. It was always a hunt to find information on schedules and such, and it was much easier to search for brackets and updates on TL rather than the actual NASL site. Once again, better communication would be great.
I can remember sitting through awful lag during the regular season, and the Mods would always say, "It's a Justin.tv issue; it's not our fault." Well, that is fine, but now is the time to do something about it. If JTV doesn't have the capacity to host an event like this, you have got to switch to someone who does. The lag in the finals games, especially Saturday night in MC v Select and the finals games on Sunday, was unbearable. Person after person in the chat complained about the freeze-ups during big battles, even at low resolution. As for me, I had to stop watching bc the lag was so bad, and I just watched the VODs later. Having brutal lag during your showcase event is unacceptable, and it's something to address in the off-season.
I know I sound really negative, but that's because I want to support North American e-sports so badly. I want so much to have a local league that's not on at 3 am that I can be proud of to call my local league. Take all the criticism as a good sign that people are really wanting the NASL to flourish. If no one was upset, that would mean no one cares. We want American e-sports to be something we're proud of, not something that looks and feels second-rate.
Though I paid for a subscription this first season, I'm going to hold off on buying season 2 to see how many improvements are made before making a decision.
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On July 13 2011 02:19 Milkis wrote:
I will accept the production mistakes of NASL as growing pains for it to become a better event in the future when NASL admits that that there were pains and acknowledging that instead of the constant sugarcoating and skimming over it. Be upfront.
I don't get it. I've said a dozen times that there were problems and that we are working to fix them. Just because I try to explain the reasons why certain things happened doesn't mean I'm sugarcoating, I'm just trying to give the community an inside perspective.
It doesn't change the fact that we had issues in Season 1, I've never said "well we had problems but it wasn't our fault," sure some things were out of our control, like the projector breaking, but a lot of things (like set design and not having enough content to account for us not hitting our schedule exactly) were on us, and we'll make sure those don't happen again.
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You still didn't talk about the casters situation.
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On July 13 2011 01:47 OCsurfeR wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2011 01:39 bonifaceviii wrote:On July 13 2011 01:33 Xeris wrote:On July 13 2011 01:30 bonifaceviii wrote:On July 13 2011 01:25 Xeris wrote:
I'm not blaming players. I'm explaining that were a lot of reasons for delays that were actually pretty standard for many LAN events. And as I said, the only extra reason for delays was on the first day, when the players adjusted their settings after the intro videos. On Saturday they started doing it before the intros and it was better.
I'm confused as to what other delays you guys are referring to. It's the opposite of a delay, but could you comment on bumping up the grand finals on sunday by 2 and a half hours at the last minute, resulting in people (like me) missing them completely? Because mass people were complaining about 10 hours for 2 series, and we realized that our opening act really wouldn't fill up that much time -- The five minute song that you scheduled half an hour for, you mean? Yes sir, that's what he means. One of the reasons we decided to move the matches up rather than invent filler content was that we were already aware that the community was already critical of quantity of extra-curricular content we had included already. Another reason is the players were ready and we felt making them wait when they were ready was a disservice to them. Obviously the quality of the matches proved that assumption correct. Yet another reason we decided to move the matches up was so that our EU fans could watch them at a more reasonable time. So, in the end the original schedule for Sunday was clearly unrealistic, so we evolved it on-the-fly to try and create a better viewing experience for everyone.It caused some people who were expecting the matches to air at a specific time to miss them, and we apologize for that. We did our best to alert Fans via Twitter, Facebook and through our correspondents on TL.net, Reddit and WP.org. In the end it was the correct decision that benefited far more fans than it hurt
In view of lack of a formal apology from the NASL staff (I do not consider a post of 14th page of an obscure TL post which barely says sorry to the fans who missed the finals an apology), I have to respectfully disagree.
You talk about disservice to the players of making them wait till the 'scheduled' time to play but do not talk about the disservice to the multiple of fans who were unable to watch the games for no fault of theirs. NASL announced a time for their finals event and people made schedule arrangement according to it. Now, on the last moment, you change the time w/o any announcement of it on your freaking site, and no proper announcement/overlay on your stream as to when the finals will start. What use is your craptastic 'state of the art' site if it does not show any relevant information to the league at the point of time.
People missed the game because NASL was at fault. Are you making amends by providing free VODs for the finals for the people since they missed the games because of your fault? I have not heard anything like that from anyone related to NASL.
Also, the wonderful comment about the preponing the finals for the betterment of EU fans, If you had really considered them, you would not have made a terrible schedule upfront. At this point of time, it just seems that instead of manning up and accepting the mistake, you are trying to find another diversionary way to not taking the blame.
I would have had a lot more respect for NASL if you had the humility of accepting your mistakes and apologizing instead of finding pointless excuses for every single thing.
Also, I find it amusing that you and Xeris are sweeping the questions raised about Strelok issue under the rug and ignoring those questions. Comments like above and dishonest responses to the public make me seriously doubt your professionality.
Frankly, you guys lucked out that the players played an excellent finals but barring that the event had been full of problems. I shelled out 25 bucks for season 1 but rest assured, barring some drastic changes, I would definitely not be buying a season 2 pass.
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I think all the very legimated concerns and critizism has been voiced, so I'll just add my 2 cents and say, I had awesome weekend, so thank you Xeris and rest of the people handling the event.
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You still didn't talk about the casters situation.
lol what casters "situation" ? now there was also problems with the casters?
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On July 13 2011 02:30 djfoxmccloud wrote:
You still didn't talk about the casters situation.
Yes I did.
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cmon xeris give up some news on next season, some nice surprises to cheer everibody up, including the haters :D
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United States7481 Posts
On July 13 2011 00:20 Jibba wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2011 00:14 AdamBanks wrote:On July 13 2011 00:10 Jibba wrote:On July 12 2011 23:14 Hammurabio wrote:Just so it is clear, here's what Xeris said about Strelok and his VISA in March: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=203988¤tpage=207#4122As for NightEnd -- once again: Romania is a "high risk" country, as are Russia, Ukraine, and Poland (just because Romania is in the EU doesn't mean they have a VISA waiver program... which they don't, which makes it automatically more difficult to get a VISA to the US). We didn't want to have multiple "high risk" players in the league due to obvious reasons. What if more than 1 of them qualifies for the finals, can't get a VISA, and don't show up? That ruins our live event completely.
White-Ra has demonstrated an ability to come to the US, BRAT_OK showed us his VISA, as did Strelok. So we were really left with two players (MaNa and NightEnd) from "high risk" countries. We only wanted to select 1; we chose MaNa. As I said multiple times before -- I should have explicitly stated the need for a VISA. I mistakenly thought it was obvious that people outside the US would ask about it considering the contract states that you must guarantee your ability to enter the US. It was my fault for not explicitly stating that they needed a VISA. So my question for Xeris, how could you have seen Strelok's VISA when he hadn't even applied for it? Was Strelok or MaNa the one "high risk" player? Now that's interesting. o.o Correct me if im wrong but hasnt xeris alrdy explained this post? Show nested quote +On July 03 2011 01:11 Xeris wrote:On July 03 2011 01:08 tsuxiit wrote:
That blows. I thought a requirement to entering the tournament was actually having a valid visa? As we said at the start of the season, Strelok was the 'risk' player we accepted, because his team Mouz assured us that he could get a VISA on time. MaNa was the 'risk' player. They saw Strelok's VISA.
just wondering if you could touch on this xeris or russell
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On July 13 2011 02:27 Xeris wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2011 02:19 Milkis wrote:
I will accept the production mistakes of NASL as growing pains for it to become a better event in the future when NASL admits that that there were pains and acknowledging that instead of the constant sugarcoating and skimming over it. Be upfront. I don't get it. I've said a dozen times that there were problems and that we are working to fix them. Just because I try to explain the reasons why certain things happened doesn't mean I'm sugarcoating, I'm just trying to give the community an inside perspective. It doesn't change the fact that we had issues in Season 1, I've never said "well we had problems but it wasn't our fault," sure some things were out of our control, like the projector breaking, but a lot of things (like set design and not having enough content to account for us not hitting our schedule exactly) were on us, and we'll make sure those don't happen again.
Well, when there's a huge number of people who still consider your league to be a complete joke that's incapable of delivering a quality product, and you say in your original post "Well fucking Boxer tripped over this computer power cord and it turned off, so that basically accounts for why the stream sucked," it kind of makes it seem like there's a disconnect in how NASL and it's viewers see reality.
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On July 13 2011 02:37 Antoine wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2011 00:20 Jibba wrote:On July 13 2011 00:14 AdamBanks wrote:On July 13 2011 00:10 Jibba wrote:On July 12 2011 23:14 Hammurabio wrote:Just so it is clear, here's what Xeris said about Strelok and his VISA in March: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=203988¤tpage=207#4122As for NightEnd -- once again: Romania is a "high risk" country, as are Russia, Ukraine, and Poland (just because Romania is in the EU doesn't mean they have a VISA waiver program... which they don't, which makes it automatically more difficult to get a VISA to the US). We didn't want to have multiple "high risk" players in the league due to obvious reasons. What if more than 1 of them qualifies for the finals, can't get a VISA, and don't show up? That ruins our live event completely.
White-Ra has demonstrated an ability to come to the US, BRAT_OK showed us his VISA, as did Strelok. So we were really left with two players (MaNa and NightEnd) from "high risk" countries. We only wanted to select 1; we chose MaNa. As I said multiple times before -- I should have explicitly stated the need for a VISA. I mistakenly thought it was obvious that people outside the US would ask about it considering the contract states that you must guarantee your ability to enter the US. It was my fault for not explicitly stating that they needed a VISA. So my question for Xeris, how could you have seen Strelok's VISA when he hadn't even applied for it? Was Strelok or MaNa the one "high risk" player? Now that's interesting. o.o Correct me if im wrong but hasnt xeris alrdy explained this post? On July 03 2011 01:11 Xeris wrote:On July 03 2011 01:08 tsuxiit wrote:
That blows. I thought a requirement to entering the tournament was actually having a valid visa? As we said at the start of the season, Strelok was the 'risk' player we accepted, because his team Mouz assured us that he could get a VISA on time. MaNa was the 'risk' player. They saw Strelok's VISA. just wondering if you could touch on this xeris or russell
I did it many times in another thread. Mouz told us 100% that they could get Strelok's VISA and that they were working on getting him a B1 (which White-Ra and BRAT have, for example). Due to their longevity and repute as a team I had no reason to believe that this wouldn't happen. Strelok switching teams midway through might have had something to do with it, however.
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On July 13 2011 02:39 Xeris wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2011 02:37 Antoine wrote:On July 13 2011 00:20 Jibba wrote:On July 13 2011 00:14 AdamBanks wrote:On July 13 2011 00:10 Jibba wrote:On July 12 2011 23:14 Hammurabio wrote:Just so it is clear, here's what Xeris said about Strelok and his VISA in March: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=203988¤tpage=207#4122As for NightEnd -- once again: Romania is a "high risk" country, as are Russia, Ukraine, and Poland (just because Romania is in the EU doesn't mean they have a VISA waiver program... which they don't, which makes it automatically more difficult to get a VISA to the US). We didn't want to have multiple "high risk" players in the league due to obvious reasons. What if more than 1 of them qualifies for the finals, can't get a VISA, and don't show up? That ruins our live event completely.
White-Ra has demonstrated an ability to come to the US, BRAT_OK showed us his VISA, as did Strelok. So we were really left with two players (MaNa and NightEnd) from "high risk" countries. We only wanted to select 1; we chose MaNa. As I said multiple times before -- I should have explicitly stated the need for a VISA. I mistakenly thought it was obvious that people outside the US would ask about it considering the contract states that you must guarantee your ability to enter the US. It was my fault for not explicitly stating that they needed a VISA. So my question for Xeris, how could you have seen Strelok's VISA when he hadn't even applied for it? Was Strelok or MaNa the one "high risk" player? Now that's interesting. o.o Correct me if im wrong but hasnt xeris alrdy explained this post? On July 03 2011 01:11 Xeris wrote:On July 03 2011 01:08 tsuxiit wrote:
That blows. I thought a requirement to entering the tournament was actually having a valid visa? As we said at the start of the season, Strelok was the 'risk' player we accepted, because his team Mouz assured us that he could get a VISA on time. MaNa was the 'risk' player. They saw Strelok's VISA. just wondering if you could touch on this xeris or russell I did it many times in another thread. Mouz told us 100% that they could get Strelok's VISA and that they were working on getting him a B1 (which White-Ra and BRAT have, for example). Due to their longevity and repute as a team I had no reason to believe that this wouldn't happen. Strelok switching teams midway through might have had something to do with it, however.
OK, but you didn't say you had absolute confidence Strelok could get you guys a VISA. You said he showed you a VISA. Those are completely different things.
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On July 12 2011 15:32 Xeris wrote:Show nested quote +On July 12 2011 15:00 Joseph123 wrote:
What makes me sad is that you think your format is ok.. (example you think its fair for Ret to win everything in the open season and then to lose 2 games and its out)
You want NASL to be unique but at the same time you say the format is like other tournaments so its fine..
Dunno why didnt you excuse to the viewers for flying Tastosis and Day9 and not letting them cast all the games?..
You think its ok to get the best casters in the world and let them watch the finals in the audience?
You didn't say anything about the long intros which were really boring for 97% of the people.. and no - progamers can't be an excuse for the delays nobody is believing that
Your post really comes from a serious lack of insight. It would be really bad and disrespectful if we didn't have Gretorp+iNcontroL cast the finals. What does that say about how we value our employees if someone (Gret+iNc) bust their asses off for 3 months only to get thrown under the bus by 2 guys who just flew in for a weekend? Why would anyone want to work with us in the future if we disrespect employees that way? If we had anyone else cast the finals it would be like us saying "we don't have faith in your ability to be on the big stage," but we believe in them as casters and know they've worked hard for us all season. Whether you like them or not, that is the truth of the matter.
The solution to that is not to shoot yourself on the foot by bringing to your event the most loved and respected casters in the community and then not having them cast the big ticket matches. A false expectation was created when you announced Tastosis and Day 9, without clarifying that Gret+Inc would cast the grand final.
Just be open and explicit when you market yourselves. Much of the hate from the community comes from the fact that you weren't giving enough information to the community throughout the season and particularly during the finals.
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EPT
