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On March 20 2012 00:22 Testuser wrote:
Rotterdam and Bitter always talks "too much" about their friends. Always, you have to listen to countless things about Dimaga. And no, I do not dislike either of those two, or Dimaga for that matter, but sometimes it's a bit too much.
I really like these kind of things in a casting. It's always nice to hear a funny or interesting story about a well-known player. And they usually do it in the early game, which is most of the times very boring. There are some casters (like Cats Pajamas) who are so annoying in the early game, because they can't talk about anything else but the builds. Honestly, what's so exciting about a 12 rax or a FFE? Nothing.
More on the topic: As a terran player I find it really strange that all of the casters are either Z or P. Anyone has a clue why?
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On March 19 2012 23:46 XiGua wrote:
One solution that I know is to let a 3rd person be the observer. The casters can say whatever they want but the observer will provide enough information for the viewers to get satisfied.
But this can also lead to problems such as bad synch and a worse viewer experience.
While this is a good idea, it can also lead to problems. The GSL uses a dedicated observer (ST_Legend, who is doing an awesome job, one of the best observers in the business), but it occurs quite often that the casters are discussing something and the observer isn't looking at the same area or the other way around: the obs shows something happening and the casters miss it. This can lead to some awkward situations.
Of course, the GSL problem has to do with a language barrier. In a non-GSL setup you can have the obs listen to the casters (via the stream or whatever) while the casters have an audio feed from the obs in their headsets (Obviously the obs should limit what he says to the really crucial things to make sure the casters aren't getting confused by all the information they're receiving). That way the caster(s) and obs can better synchronize that what's being discussed is also what is shown. And while the discussion does not directly relate to what is going on in the game at that moment, the obs can use this spare time to make sure both sides of the game are equally represented.
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On March 20 2012 00:13 TotalBiscuit wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2012 00:12 BicBootyBoi wrote:
Personally, I just mute the casters most of the time other than when I watch GSL because tasteless and artosis are so funny to listen to. I've never tuned into a MLG and probably won't be able to because of their PPV, hopefully I'll be able to and hear some good commentating from their casters. This really has nothing to do with the subject at hand.
More so than your post stating that it has no subject at hand, but if it's that much of a problem that you have to point it out let me elaborate more upon what I mean.
I feel that there is no way to deal with one-sided comentary, as stated from previous posters it's either you watch it or turn it off but, most of the time people will watch just to watch and if so you have so many different options that many have already stated for example watching in different streams, players view where there is no commentary at all.
In the end, there will be no way to completely remove one-sided casters as each caster will have their favourites and all casters have a favourite race they play as well so that bias will always be there. On the other hand, there are casters that are great that don't bring in their bias towards the cast and this is why they're the great casters we know. I mean who would have known Idra could cast so well as we saw during IEM.
Ultimately, I feel there is no solution to one-sided casters. I also feel that the problem is not only because of bias but can be because they are simply human, and cannot view all things in the game at the same time. I mean, it's pretty easy to watch a game and commentate on the players they watch go at it with each other doing so many actions per minute, each right?
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They do this because it's what they know best. I'm a zerg player if you get me to watch a TvP and tell you what the players are doing and why, the best I can do is guess.
I think the best way of casting is to dual cast, either one player looking and commenting on things in base and major attacks (new tech, big army clash) and the other is looking for the other possibly less noticible things (drops, hidden expo).
Or to try balence the bias, have the casters as the same race as the players so you get the most experiance, PvZ = Husky and HD. Both will get excited about their own race but it will even it out and the rivalry could make things more interesting
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Caster bias with race I don't mind so much, since it's probably the race they play on ladder.. (ex: MrBitter plays zerg, favors zerg bias at times) which he can elaborate more on the race so that point is fine imo for any race.
Caster bias on a player is a complete different thing tho :/
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That's a flaw in Artosis cast too, i think he's way to biased toward the one he considers the best. I remember quite a few games where i was about to shut off the sound before hating on him as i'm a fan of his cast usually but he usually don't observe so it's not so often.
Observer should be very very neutral. You souldn't be suprised by an army movement or something because the observer was looking at the same person for 5min+.
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I don't care if casters are biased in terms of liking one player more than the other, as long as they don't talk down on the other one. I do care if observing is one-sided, that's really annoying because it means keeping important information from me so that I only get to see half the game. A possible solution would be to just wtfm - watch the f'ing minimap.
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One thing that gets me quite often is the biased against Z and P vs T. I can't put my finger on one pro caster out there that is a high level Terran player. The casters that comes to mind are all Protoss or Zerg and therefore pretty much all the focus is on P or Z when it comes to timings and responses. You get the standard "Terran opens reactor hellion it's not much to talk about" and then they rabble on about what Zerg needs to do now. From there on you like never get to see the Terran base, gas timings, building swapping, tech lab/reactor timings, tech lab/reactor swapping and the possiblities and timing windows they can create.
The two that actually are close to do this are Apollo and Day9 from what I can remember, and suprise suprise - both of them play random(?) at at least high master/GM level.
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I think the main problem the OP has is watching/listening to Husky
With that being said - to respond to the opening post
I think that everyone shows bias by praising one players play over the other, because no doubt one will win and one will lose - so I don't think this "bias" is hurtful. Especially if one of the players has a really crisp build we have not really seen before
The bias that is bad is a caster that only focuses on the point of view of one player and seems to neglect the other - i rarely see this happen execpt with low level casters
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On March 20 2012 00:46 Gosi wrote:
One thing that gets me quite often is the biased against Z and P vs T. I can't put my finger on one pro caster out there that is a high level Terran player. The casters that comes to mind are all Protoss or Zerg and therefore pretty much all the focus is on P or Z when it comes to timings and responses. You get the standard "Terran opens reactor hellion it's not much to talk about" and then they rabble on about what Zerg needs to do now. From there on you like never get to see the Terran base, gas timings, building swapping, tech lab/reactor timings, tech lab/reactor swapping and the possiblities and timing windows they can create.
It is annoying to guess what a terran is doing, because he can switch buildings and addons around so much, your chance of saying something that is right is just higher if you focus on P and Z.
I mean, how the hell are you supposed to guess whether or not a terran will open banshee or raven or medivacs or more marines or get stim, when he has a fast 2nd cc, and 1 rax, 1 factory, 1 starport (building), and 1 tech lab (building on rax), and one reactor complete ...
Then he throws down a 3rd CC, more rax, 2nd factory, start researching cloak or whatever ... and you can start talking about what this means.
I made a lot of notes about ZvT and ZvP and what the T and P could have at certain times based off build ... there are literally 3 times as many variations, over a much longer time span, for when terran can pressure, and a lot of the builds are pretty much identical from the start - whereas in ZvP the # of gasses and when (if) probes are cut, are very telling when it comes to P builds - and all the timings are between 8:00 and 10:30 pretty much. Terran timings from 4:15 to 13:00 pretty much (though 13:00 and later means a 6:00 3rd OC with fast double upgrades pretty much).
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If Husky does one sided commentary on his YouTube channel and you don't like it, get over it. It's his content. He can do what he wants. Now, if that behavior carries over into his MLG casting (and it doesn't), then there is an issue.
I don't care if the casters want a certain player to win as long as they are fair to the cast. For example, on a few occasions, MrBitter stated before a game that he really wanted IdrA to win, but throughout the cast he was entirely neutral only to make a few remarks of disappointment as IdrA lost the first game.
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Casters are not Omniscient, if Husky is biased towards WhiteRa's play, it is partially also because he understands how the Protoss race is being manipulated. If I remember correctly, I think that Husky mains Protoss, and I know that Mr. BItter is a Zerg player, also addressed in the OP. I believe that the bias comes from the caster's knowledge of the game due to the race he plays, not just because he/she is a fanboy of any particular player, though admittedly the two might be correlated.
If this is the case, I think that it would be cool if the normative "casting duos" could be turned into "casting trios", like we see in BW casting at times. Have each caster be from a background of being extremely knowledgeable about each different race, and that might fix a lot of problems...Or just have a fail-safe like Artosis, or Day9 in the mix, and you won't have to worry about any of that! xD
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On March 20 2012 00:46 Gosi wrote:
One thing that gets me quite often is the biased against Z and P vs T. I can't put my finger on one pro caster out there that is a high level Terran player. The casters that comes to mind are all Protoss or Zerg and therefore pretty much all the focus is on P or Z when it comes to timings and responses. You get the standard "Terran opens reactor hellion it's not much to talk about" and then they rabble on about what Zerg needs to do now. From there on you like never get to see the Terran base, gas timings, building swapping, tech lab/reactor timings, tech lab/reactor swapping and the possiblities and timing windows they can create.
The two that actually are close to do this are Apollo and Day9 from what I can remember, and suprise suprise - both of them play random(?) at at least high master/GM level.
That's because the Zerg response to reactor hellions is a lot more important at the time than the timings of gas, or the tech lab/reactor timings, because how the Zerg response to the hellions is giving insight towards his future tech. Obviously if the Terran goes something noteworthy like banshee they would take notice immediately, but there isn't much to watch of a standard hellion expand, whereas you're checking the Zerg (is he going spine heavy, fast lair --> mutas, roach pressure --> fast third, heavy lings with ups --> ling infestor) etc.
That's just for that specific example though, I agree with you on the T hate a bit, but from a casting and viewing perspective, it's quite silly sometimes to see a Terran go all in and pull 30 scvs but it's not all in because he he has triple orbital and catches back up in workers in 3 minutes...
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I think removing bias is something all casters strive for, to allow for a more engaging and accurate description of the game for the fans watching. I do agree with you that there are several casters currently that do show signs of bias, but it doesn't bother me too much. One example of bias I've seen however is how a lot of casters always seem to make a joke about Mules whenever they hover over it, like they see 5 Mules mining and are like "Oooooh boy, look at that income" -.- I've heard this like 1000x. It's not funny anymore, casters.
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On March 20 2012 00:55 Flonomenalz wrote:
That's just for that specific example though, I agree with you on the T hate a bit, but from a casting and viewing perspective, it's quite silly sometimes to see a Terran go all in and pull 30 scvs but it's not all in because he he has triple orbital and catches back up in workers in 3 minutes...
This is a good example of casting bias. You sound like Incontrol. Every time he sees at a T base he can only say that mules are ridiculous. Luckily he is not casting frequently.
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I rly hate (completely) biased commentary.
One caster that comes into my mind is Mr. Bitter -_-
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On March 20 2012 00:33 Velr wrote:
It's mainly a problem with Casters observing themselves... sometimes you really see basically only one players base for the whole game...
omg that really happens? I only watch the gsl mostly and ive never seen anything like that happen. I can put up with biasness in the casting itself (like wolf showing no enthusiasm unless a protoss is involved) but what i cant put up with is bad observing. The observing has to be good enough where you dont even think about it.
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On March 19 2012 23:28 Liquid`NonY wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2012 23:22 kurrysauce wrote:
Kinda noticed it during the Lone star clash with mr bitter & his co caster. Especially so in the game between heavenslight and select. Light seem to be playing EXTREMELY greedy in the early game , building 3 roaches to defend against hellions hoping that select doesn't take the risk and just run past the roaches. The casters just kept saying "wonderful , amazing , brilliant , intelligent play by heaven" or something along that lines.
But I guess mr bitter's biasness has been discussed to death anyway. Don't really see obvious biasness in any other caster though This is different. Two ways to be biased: (1)praise and congratulate one player more than the other and (2)report what one player is doing more than the other. (1) is pretty common and has already been discussed quite a bit. I think (2) is what we're talking about here and it's a bigger problem because it prevents the viewers from following the game well. It's like having vision on only one player. These games need to be in the 3rd person perspective. When viewing and talking about only one player's perspective at length, the 3rd person perspective is dropped.
This perfectly summarizes why I can't stand certain casting duos. They actually make the viewing experience worse because of (2). I think hiring a dedicated observer is one of the best things any tournament can do because it at least allows us to see what is happening for ourselves.
EDIT: Though some casters are awesome at observing and talking. Day9, for example, is definitely good enough to not need an observer. He is definitely an exception though.
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On March 20 2012 00:37 BicBootyBoi wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2012 00:13 TotalBiscuit wrote:On March 20 2012 00:12 BicBootyBoi wrote:
Personally, I just mute the casters most of the time other than when I watch GSL because tasteless and artosis are so funny to listen to. I've never tuned into a MLG and probably won't be able to because of their PPV, hopefully I'll be able to and hear some good commentating from their casters. This really has nothing to do with the subject at hand. More so than your post stating that it has no subject at hand
Except I already replied to the thread with an actual answer. Thanks for now providing something worth reading.
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complain about commentary's being wrong, not about it's being 1-sided
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EPT
