EPTAlso, when I first tuned in on Friday for the finals, I thought it was going to be terrible (due to the terrible production value at the start), but by the end it was better than MLG!
Keep it up!
NASL Finals Stuff - Page 20
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aurum510
United States229 Posts
Also, when I first tuned in on Friday for the finals, I thought it was going to be terrible (due to the terrible production value at the start), but by the end it was better than MLG! Keep it up! | ||
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Duravi
United States1205 Posts
The sound issue is another one you dodged most of, the sound was bad all weekend, even up to the finals where we missed two interview questions. Big thumbs up to gunrun for trying to help, but the bigger problem is why would you need the help of an audience member in the first place? Do you think at a concert the sound guy(s) would let or need anyone from the audience to come help? It seems like yet another case of putting someone (infamous "sound guy") who wasn't qualified in a position where they would struggle. It is not fair to the people you are doing this to, or your audience. Lastly the web-site is atrocious, not just in terms of design but in terms of getting any information out of. It is often not updated until the last minute if at all. There are probably volunteers from the community who would jump to help you and design a website that is 10x better than the one you have now (which I seriously hope you are not paying someone for). | ||
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Absaroka
United States27 Posts
1) Keep the rules consistent: To me, the single worst decision of the season what the arbitrary reduction of the number of qualifiers from the second tournament from 8 to 4. Some players may have chosen not to enter the first one because of other commitments, knowing they had an equal chance of qualifying for season 2 in the second tournament. I'm a fan (serious) of the league, but this single decision was nearly a deal-killing turnoff, because it undermined the up/down nature of the league that implies the best players that are interested have a chance of qualifying. Even to this date, there is no communication how you intend to order the "standby" players that would have been otherwise qualified before the mid-season rule change. 2) Consistent and accurate information: If the goal is to be a professional league, act like one with regard to standings and playoffs. Why is the website standing page often not up to date, and on the rare occasions that it was, it still contained inaccurate stats. You want fans to follow the league and play 'what-if,' with the results and the upcoming matches, why not provide accurate tools to encourage that? 3) Do what you are doing already, by addressing the major concerns: Now that there really is an up/down process for choosing players, I think the open tournament invite to the finals is less important than it was in season one. In season one, it made sense, give the rather arbitrary selection of the initial 50 players. The sound quality (compared with the great video quality) was weak - sorry to repeat what others said, but that needs to be addressed. I think some of the other changes you are proposing make sense, like changing to a best-of-5 in the early matches of the finals. Again, I'm a fairly happy customer, and I'll be buying season 2, just hoping you're honestly interested in addressing this feedback! | ||
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jenzebubble
United States183 Posts
On July 13 2011 04:27 Hammurabio wrote: Just to be clear, being a national beauty contestant alone does not make anyone good at interviews. See: To be fair, Anna has done some very good interviews in the past. So pulling up some random beauty queen who flopped miserably does not necessarily make for terrible interview skills. Also of note is role, in the video you linked she's the interviewee, not interviewer. | ||
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OCsurfeR
United States195 Posts
On July 13 2011 04:24 svarog wrote: Sorry for the jab, but can you look Ret in the eyes and say the same?  Not sure what Ret has to do with the casters we chose. I talked to Ret several times during the tournament. BTW, Ret stayed for nearly every single second of the Finals after he was eliminated, and was gracious and supportive of the entire event. He's coming back strong next season and is ready to continue his strong competitive position within the NASL. | ||
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Xeris
Iran17695 Posts
On July 13 2011 04:17 ZergFerguson wrote: I think one of your challenges is that NASL is a combination of 2 things--a live event and a broadcast. I think you need to decide which you are primarily. If the live event is a money-maker, then just remind fans that you are event-driven, and if they want the full experience they need to attend the event. But if the money is in the subscriptions, then the live event needs to be secondary. I wasn't at the live event, so I can't speak of how to improve it. But I can speak on the broadcast. The most important things are: (1) the best players in the world, (2) great commentators, (3) great streaming with quality options and no lag, (4) a good user interface on the web site with helpful information about when matches will start. In my opinion, you nailed (1) and (2), but (3) and (4) need significant improvement. If the live event is hampering the broadcast, compromise the live event to ensure that the broadcast is top-notch. Viewers need to know when matches start and they need to have a decent quality broadcast with no lag. If Justin.tv can't provide this, find someone who can. If the live event format can't coexist with a satisfying broadcast, change the live event. (That is assuming the live event isn't a huge money-maker.) Whatever changes you make, do not compromise (1) and (2). Like I said, you nailed these, and they are what will keep viewers coming back. For instance, if spreading the prize money out will make live-event attendees like White-Ra happier, but will make top players less likely to sign up in the first place, don't do it. Of course White-Ra wants more money for Ro16 finishes--that's where he finished. Would he still have signed up if the first place prize was only $25,000? On that note, in Puma's interview after the Squirtle match, Anna asked him if it was more important to him to win the money or beat the best players, and he said "I just want more people to know who I am." I think money and fame are the biggest draws for top players. So, make a BIG deal about Puma. Do what you can to make him famous. Produce a high-end video of his highlights with crowds cheering, and end with him holding the check for $50,000 surrounded by booth babes. Put it on YouTube and wherever else your target market spends time. I would make it your goal to make sure EVERYONE who plays Starcraft knows who he is. That is what will keep the big names coming back and ensure the quality of NASL. Heya, thanks for the feedback. I'll respond! Website: We understand the limitations with our current website. This is something we plan to work on moving forward. We hope that we'll be able to update it so that it's easier to find and display information in addition to making a much better VOD interface. Streaming: Having a custom built CDN is really expensive, and to be honest, outside of our capabilities right now. GSL and MLG have their own streaming because they can afford it. In a perfect world, we'll get there one day. For now, Justin.tv really helps make this event possible. They've been great and incredibly supportive of us and have tried to do whatever they could to make our streams as good as possible. We want to make some tweaks in Season 2 to make it better (I.E. we just got a sick fiber internet at the studio so we won't have any more lag on our end, we're working on getting multiple transcodes of different quality VODS, we've got different transcodes of the stream at different quality now). Live Event vs Stream: This is definitely true. We are going to do a lot more in Season 2 to make this better. We could have utilized Day9 and Artosis more throughout the weekend aside from casting and MC'ing, and can have other events for the stream going on, etc. We'll make sure to address this for next season. As far as prize distribution goes: It's a tough balance. People who lose early don't like the top heavy payout, but those at the top do. At this point, I'd rather not change the payout, but say that... if we get additional funds, our priority would be: - more accommodations for players (I.E. giving them larger stipends to try and fully cover travel cost) - fill out the prize pool from the bottom up Obviously however, all additional fund would go first into improving // streamlining production, and prize/player accommodation would be secondary. | ||
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bbulzibar
United States80 Posts
On July 13 2011 04:17 ZergFerguson wrote: On that note, in Puma's interview after the Squirtle match, Anna asked him if it was more important to him to win the money or beat the best players, and he said "I just want more people to know who I am." I think money and fame are the biggest draws for top players. So, make a BIG deal about Puma. Do what you can to make him famous. Produce a high-end video of his highlights with crowds cheering, and end with him holding the check for $50,000 surrounded by booth babes. Put it on YouTube and wherever else your target market spends time. I would make it your goal to make sure EVERYONE who plays Starcraft knows who he is. That is what will keep the big names coming back and ensure the quality of NASL. Dude, you are brilliant. This is exactly the type of "value-add" organizations need to think about -- i.e. adding to the value of your event without large direct expenses like raising the prizepool. Edit: Xeris, your response above is the best one I've seen in the entire thread!!! That type of response is what makes me believe that you are taking responsibility and not blaming others, shows what your priorities are and steps you are taking to improve, and makes me really excited about season 2! | ||
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Xeris
Iran17695 Posts
On July 13 2011 04:29 Duravi wrote: Lindsey did a great job for the situation she was in, I have nothing but respect for her. If you watched Weapon of Choice this weekend, djWheat made an excellent point though, why did you hire someone to walk around and do interviews who had no knowledge about the community or game? Why not at least give her a brief education or rundown first if she was your only choice? It was a huge missed opportunity. This seems to be a central theme of NASL, putting people who are not qualified to do what they are doing in a position where they will undoubtedly make mistakes. The sound issue is another one you dodged most of, the sound was bad all weekend, even up to the finals where we missed two interview questions. Big thumbs up to gunrun for trying to help, but the bigger problem is why would you need the help of an audience member in the first place? Do you think at a concert the sound guy(s) would let or need anyone from the audience to come help? It seems like yet another case of putting someone (infamous "sound guy") who wasn't qualified in a position where they would struggle. It is not fair to the people you are doing this to, or your audience. Lastly the web-site is atrocious, not just in terms of design but in terms of getting any information out of. It is often not updated until the last minute if at all. There are probably volunteers from the community who would jump to help you and design a website that is 10x better than the one you have now (which I seriously hope you are not paying someone for). First: Gunrun isn't an audience member. He's an employee at Justin.tv and it's his job to help fix stream issues, which is what he was doing. He was also rotating with Gretorp doing observing of games. We're aware of the sound problems. We're going to be working to fix them so it hopefully won't happen at our next event! | ||
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Cajun2k1
Netherlands399 Posts
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reisada
183 Posts
Would love if it started right now. | ||
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OCsurfeR
United States195 Posts
On July 13 2011 04:38 Cajun2k1 wrote: It's a bit weird that you have rebroadcast for EU for the regular season, but not for the actual finals. I think this is a missed chance, you could 'easily' fix this by doing a full rebroadcast of the whole finals like MLG does, including commercials. I think this would add revenue and potential viewers. Thanks for the suggestion. | ||
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SKC
Brazil18828 Posts
On July 13 2011 04:18 Doodsmack wrote: lol @ how unreasonable this is. You say that Xeris's simple statement that Anna was Miss Oregon and therefore has interview experience (which is 100% correct, btw) is a "PR problem" and "basically asks for bashing." WTF???? It's a harmless, non-confrontational post on an internet forum. You're completely taking him to task on something that is actually insignificant. Please, Xeris himself admited he should have said that instead. And yes, that is asking for a bashing. I think he has been a part of the community long enough to see how people will react to an statement like that, be it valid or not. There is no reason to create a problem when you don't have to, specially if you have much better reason to back something up. The internet is funny like that, it's those small things that lead to the NASL being treated this baddly by the community, people cling to small mistakes like that all the time. Just look at the few posts after his statement. The hate is definatelly unreasonable, but there is no reason to add fuel to the fire. If there are better ways to communicate something, it's better PR to actually use them, specially if you are accused of lacking PR skills. I can't see how this is so unreasonable. This was also not the first time I've seen him expresses himself badly, and by the number of people agreeing with me, it seems I wasn't the only one. I tried to be respectfull and sorry if those things don't matter to you, but you should know that it the internet doesn't consider those kinds of posts harmless. | ||
Klogon
MURICA15980 Posts
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xuanzue
Colombia1747 Posts
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flowSthead
1065 Posts
I think your biggest problem is in marketing, not in actual execution. I thought the whole NASL was fine. The first week was rough, but it got better as the season went along. The same can be said for the Finals between Friday and Sunday. All of that is fine with me; I understand that your first time running of all this is difficult. The reason I think there are so many haters, and also why I was ultimately disappointed, is because you did not come out saying "Hey, we are making this large league with a serious prize pool. Come check us out!" You came out and said "We are making this large league with a serious prize pool, and our quality will be better than the GSL. Come check us out!" Now, you may just have been speaking to the fact that you were offering 1080p and the GSL wasn't. In fact, I am sure that is what you were saying specifically. But the way it was presented, you had made a comparison with one of the most popular tournaments in SC2. How could people not compare it then? From then on, every thing you have done is tainted by that comparison. That statement, which was made multiple times by more than one of your representatives, really hurt you. And you kept on emphasizing that you wanted the most professional of leagues. This is all great, and I am glad that that was your goal. But you should not have been advertising something you were incapable of delivering. If you hadn't presented yourselves as a super professional SC2 league that was on par with the best Korean league in the world, you wouldn't be having most of these problems. On July 12 2011 13:11 Xeris wrote: A big issue raised by players were the times (for the Koreans), and servers. We are working on strategies to alleviate this problem. However, both fans and players must understand that there is a reason for the way we do things. As for playing the matches live, this seems to be a strikingly better option than casting off replays. Replay casting requires much more policing of players. There is a reason it takes IPL so long to happen despite it being announced months ago. Because they cast from replays, players don't have as much incentive to play their matches on time. Casting from replays means players (or an admin + players) need to schedule match times themselves. Players (fact) are irresponsible and mostly lazy, even with huge prize pools. Leaving it up to them means that there will be delays. We had pre-set times so that the players knew every single week exactly when they had to play. The specific time varied slightly, but if I'm a player I know that "every single Monday between 1-3pm I need to be available for Starcraft matches." This is much more stable and consistent than having players arrange times themselves and replay cast. Another mixed expectations issue is the live casting part. This is more of a miscommunication than a marketing problem, but to a lot of people there was an impression of the NASL being live casted, and 7 weeks into it people were confused on whether there was live casting or not. I understand how it works: you cast the games as they happen, but then you play that cast at a later time. The problem I really have, is that it really does not make sense why this is the case over replays. I read your point above, and that is a legitimate concern. If you think it is more stable to cast live, then that is fine. But live casting, the way you portrayed it, had the implication of fan interaction. If there is a problem in a GSL cast or the Homestory Cup, Tastosis or Take can talk directly to the stream and fix it. If Day9 wants to do a live poll, he can because it is live. The way you've done it though, there is no difference between watching it live and watching it through a VOD. This is a place where I feel like doing it through replays isn't that big of a deal. I personally thought the TSL3 was the best tournament I have seen so far, and it has nothing to do with production since production was non-existant. They just happen to have the best games with the best hype that also delivered on the hype. But I also never felt as if the replays hurt them. I honestly don't particularly care whether or not you use replays. This isn't something I want (as in I don't want it to be like the TSL). I just feel as though the live casting thing was miscommunicated, and having it from replays doesn't confuse while also not hurting your product. _________ I do have another issue though. I rarely was able to watch the live stream. I have a pretty terrible internet, so the VODs work much better for me (and I don't really need the lower resolution; 1080p VODs is fine since I can let them load overnight or whatever). My issue here is with your website. Your website design is not great, but it's not terrible either. I think some people are being too harsh on the website (except for the scheduling thing). The website does what it needs to do. But it does not do enough. I never used your website, because your website had no recommendations. I realize it might be slightly insulting to your players in the league to recommend certain people's games over others, but with so many games 5 days a week for 9 weeks, it is not realistic to expect everyone to watch every game. So what I did was wait until TeamLiquid threads had their recommended games polls finished, and then I watched those VODs. There has to be some way to do something like that for your website as well. You could add a poll for the live stream, or on the website after the game is done to figure out whether you should recommend it or not. Or you could link from your website to the TeamLiquid thread discussing it. I realize you guys are not associated with TeamLiquid, but I really have no reason to go to your website at any time and it would be helpful to VOD watchers like me. Anyways, in conclusion I did want to say that I enjoyed watching the NASL. There were some truly awesome games, and I feel the experience has been worth it. But because of your problem with communicating your execution properly, I am not certain whether I will purchase a second season ticket. I'm still thinking about it. Good luck next season! | ||
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Xeris
Iran17695 Posts
On July 13 2011 04:46 SKC wrote: Please, Xeris himself admited he should have said that instead. And yes, that is asking for a bashing. I think he has been a part of the community long enough to see how people will react to an statement like that, be it valid or not. There is no reason to create a problem when you don't have to, specially if you have much better reason to back something up. The internet is funny like that, it's those small things that lead to the NASL being treated this baddly by the community, people cling to small mistakes like that all the time. Just look at the few posts after his statement. The hate is definatelly unreasonable, but there is no reason to add fuel to the fire. If there are better ways to communicate something, it's better PR to actually use them, specially if you are accused of lacking PR skills. I can't see how this is so unreasonable. This was also not the first time I've seen him expresses himself badly, and by the number of people agreeing with me, it seems I wasn't the only one. I tried to be respectfull and sorry if those things don't matter to you, but you should know that it the internet doesn't consider those kinds of posts harmless. I've also been around long enough for people to know that that's just how I am I'm not making an excuse, because I need to frame myself better a lot of the time. Anyway, its cleared up. | ||
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reisada
183 Posts
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Holcan
Canada2593 Posts
On July 13 2011 05:02 xuanzue wrote: i said it before, a league with swiss format (64 players & 6 rounds) bring 192 matches, instead of the actually 225 matches. it's more easy in the edition, and could bring more NA players. except swiss is the worst format and rewards people for losing, no thanks ! | ||
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svarog
46 Posts
On July 13 2011 04:32 OCsurfeR wrote: Not sure what Ret has to do with the casters we chose. I talked to Ret several times during the tournament. BTW, Ret stayed for nearly every single second of the Finals after he was eliminated, and was gracious and supportive of the entire event. He's coming back strong next season and is ready to continue his strong competitive position within the NASL. To quote the post to which you replied: "I would be horrified if I casted the entire regular season, only to be dumped for the finals by people who flew in for a weekend." If you do not see the parallel I cannot help you mate. It was a jab after all. | ||
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xuanzue
Colombia1747 Posts
On July 13 2011 05:19 Holcan wrote: except swiss is the worst format and rewards people for losing, no thanks ! in the swiss-format tournaments that i have seen the top players really take the top spots, it's not like those single elimination tournaments where the runner up takes that spot because a easy bracket. swiss format had good performance in chess belong decades, you need to explain better why it's the worst format. | ||
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