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On June 08 2013 09:08 NotSorry wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 02:57 Sissors wrote:ALSO STOP PREDICTING FIGHTS CASTERS. YOU NEVER HEAR A SPORTS ANNOUNCER PREDICT SOMEONE TO WIN WITH 30 SECONDS LEFT IN THE GAME WHEN THERE IS STILL ANY CHANCE. Actually, you do. Besides that it is also kinda stupid to have people again complaining that SC2 casters aren't good enough players and don't play enough, and at the same time we are again comparing it with regular sport announcers now. Most of them really won't be any good at the games they cover. Not to mention I believe most casters are fairly good players also. It's not that they aren't good enough players, it's that they don't know the game. It's like saying, I could beat my boxing coach in a match, doesn't change the fact that he's an amazing coach that has produced countless champions and has forgotten more about the sport than I'll probably ever learn.
If a caster comes by to check here how he could do better (by catering more to disgruntled TL'ers), he will leave really confused.
You say the issue isn't their skill. Literally the next poster claims the issue is their skill. Then the problem is they just give stats. But if they describe their playstyle the problem is that apparantly describing their playstyle is currently considered a buzzword. And they have to be purely objective. But not stats. And not 'screaming' when something exciting happens. But they also should be more enthousiastic, since that is the issue. Oh and not to mention they should be more like sport casters. Well they should be more like sport casters, when it suits the poster for his argument. Because half the other demands are completely the opposite of many sport casters.
And no personally I don't think the casters are perfect. I do think the issue is blown way out of porportions here, and considering that the problems people have here are often contradicting each other, and that is just from the people on TL, I do think they are doing quite well.
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On June 08 2013 09:56 ayaz2810 wrote:Just watched and they gave me chills. I really wish I was into professional BW back when it was in its prime.....
Pretty much. I must have watched each of them like 20 times by now, and still...
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There's no solution because being good at or knowing anything about the game is not a prerequisite of being a caster. So long as casters gain nothing from actually doing their jobs well, since most viewers don't know the difference anyway, it's not going to get any better. And it hasn't.
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On June 08 2013 14:51 Alejandrisha wrote:
There's no solution because being good at or knowing anything about the game is not a prerequisite of being a caster. So long as casters gain nothing from actually doing their jobs well, since most viewers don't know the difference anyway, it's not going to get any better. And it hasn't.
They do gain something by doing their job well, more viewers. But if as you say the vast majority of the viewers are completely fine with the current casting, than maybe their simply isn't an issue.
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On June 08 2013 04:13 CatsPajamas wrote:
Hey everyone! This is actually really great feedback for us. I'd like to talk a little about the process here and let you know how we're incorporating the feedback:
1.) WCS Today started as a quick recap show, meant to show you everything you missed from the day before and get you ready for the upcoming matches. However, since the launch of our new WCS Portal, that focus mostly changes now as you can go to a site and catch up on everything you've missed.
2.) Going forward, we're going to evaluate all the comments and criticism here to implement into future episodes. We definitely feel the focus should steer more towards telling the story of the players, and we'll work to improve.
I've passed on the criticism to the entire core team here and we're reviewing to see how we can improve.
Thanks!
Kevin
Good to see blizz is listening!
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On June 08 2013 14:56 Sissors wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 14:51 Alejandrisha wrote:
There's no solution because being good at or knowing anything about the game is not a prerequisite of being a caster. So long as casters gain nothing from actually doing their jobs well, since most viewers don't know the difference anyway, it's not going to get any better. And it hasn't. They do gain something by doing their job well, more viewers. But if as you say the vast majority of the viewers are completely fine with the current casting, than maybe their simply isn't an issue.
I don't think there is an issue because a caster making wrong calls will not necessarily make or break a tournament. The games and players are what is more important. The only time it becomes an issue is when the casters are way worse than the players, as it begins to feel kind of disrespectful to the players.
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On June 08 2013 14:35 Nerski wrote:
I think rather then people focusing on the casters being at fault when they don't know everything about everyone. People should start holding leagues more responsible to support the commentators with information.
Let me put it this way, how hard would it be for leagues to have 1 or 2 salaried employees who's only job is to do research on players coming to their events. Maybe in the case of an open bracket MLG at Anaheim not every single player, but at least the players most likely to be on the main stream.
These 1 or 2 people put together talking points for all the players. How they like to play, interesting background information, anything they can get directly from the players, recent results etc. You take those talking points put them in a giant packet and hand it to all your commentators. Now anytime anyone is playing it becomes as simple as flipping to a page in a booklet to have information at your fingertips.
I personally used to do some of the above when I did casting, but frankly it was way to much work to have more then a few key players for say a weekly tournament prepared to go. I can't tell you how much better I thought a commentary with that kind of information went compared to one with players where at best they had a liquipedia page to go off of.
This sounds nice, but quite possibly unrealistic. You can't just create jobs out of nowhere without having a foundation to pay these people. Casters should do a lot of their own research.
I think all casters could learn something from the OP. Very "well" written. "Solid" post. haha 
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I think casters, at least the play-by-play variety, need to take a lesson from announcers in other sports. A great example of how you can vary your language when going through the play-by-play of a game is in the NHL. Hockey announcers do a fantastic job of diversifying their syntax. A puck that's dumped into the other team's zone happens dozens of times a game, but they find unique verbiage to make it interesting.
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On June 08 2013 15:26 MistaBlue wrote:
I think casters, at least the play-by-play variety, need to take a lesson from announcers in other sports. A great example of how you can vary your language when going through the play-by-play of a game is in the NHL. Hockey announcers do a fantastic job of diversifying their syntax. A puck that's dumped into the other team's zone happens dozens of times a game, but they find unique verbiage to make it interesting.
Perhaps you give casters of sports too much credit. I'm sure they are good and bad ones, but in the rare occasion I watch a game on tv, I'm usually surprised how little the commentator actually says.
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On June 08 2013 15:26 MistaBlue wrote:
I think casters, at least the play-by-play variety, need to take a lesson from announcers in other sports. A great example of how you can vary your language when going through the play-by-play of a game is in the NHL. Hockey announcers do a fantastic job of diversifying their syntax. A puck that's dumped into the other team's zone happens dozens of times a game, but they find unique verbiage to make it interesting.
I agree with this. Mike "Doc" Emrick, for hockey, is the absolute gold standard of someone who has put in incredible effort and honed his craft. His game calls are never stale, never re-gifted terms of art. You will never hear "at what cost" equivalents 15 times in the span of 2 minutes...
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This has been an issue since the beginning of SC2, and I'm glad someone has spoke up about it.
However looking at the comments, I don't think anything will change. 3/4 of the posts in this thread somehow came up with a completely wrong conclusion from the OP and used it as an excuse to bash casters.
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Some casters instead of hyping up the players or the game they are casting, they like to call out mistakes(usually they aren't even mistakes) players made but not praise the other player for doing well. Made me feel like I am watching some bronze games, really demotivate me to keep watching the game when I hear the word "mistake" constantly whether it is true or not. :D
Most of the stats are pretty stupid anyways because the sample size is too small.
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This is why I've always disliked IPL's way of commentating. Lots of fluff, hyperbole and buzzwords, with little substance and analysis to back it up.
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A perfect analysis. I fully agree.
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I do not agree with OP.
One of the main reasons I like about watching SC II tournaments is that the casters are not boring professionals or lets say do things that other professional sports dont casters do. They are much more down to earth and much more individual and I like that.
This is also one reason why WCS america fails because their casters seem to want to imitate other professional sport casters and this sucks. For the same reason NASL began to suck.
Your comments about summaries is also not really convincing. If you want so much information about the game, then go along and watch it. A summary should only include the few major points if there where any and the stats, otherwise just watch the vods ...
And interviewing the players all the time is difficult and the reasons are:
* multiple languages and often players speak bad English
* players are young and have no media training of course and this leads to stupid awkward interviews
Another thing for me is the quality on interviews, if you have a long drawn out interview, a normal talk where the player explains things thats okay. If you mean the interviews where players say 2-3 lines and then with a [woosssh] or other sound effect the next player talks and then the next. Every time I see this I want to punch the production guy in the face for stupidity.
So I think that the amount of interviews is okay, there are some short and some long but I dont need intervirews everygame and I certainly don't need that cheese filler intervies where players say one dumb line.
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Well written. As to the point that casters compliment without giving reasons, SC2 has now developed to the stage where well-known pro's are retiring (think IdrA) and have a chance to continue as casters. This increases the number of people who understand the game at a profound level and can talk about the games themselves at length. If we look at sports casters, it's often the case that the best casters were previously professionals. Due to the technical nature of SC2, this is even more important for Starcraft casters.
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This sounds nice, but quite possibly unrealistic. You can't just create jobs out of nowhere without having a foundation to pay these people. Casters should do a lot of their own research.
Just would respond with, in reality there is no foundation at least from a profit stand point to pay anyone in eSports. It's all investment at this point, so why not invest in something that makes sense for the overall production of your broadcast. That and honestly speaking they could probably get a few people more then willing to do something like this without paying them that much at all, if at all.
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8748 Posts
On June 08 2013 10:39 Reborn8u wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2013 06:05 NonY wrote:On June 08 2013 05:54 Reborn8u wrote:
What a great problem to have. "Some of the massive amount of free content I get from this awesome game, and it's awesome competitive scene, doesn't measure up to my standards". The pursuit of excellence is one of the few things in this world you can't denounce from any angle. And this criticism was written voluntarily and given freely, same as the content. For the record, I love you and the free content you produce as well <3 Yes, we should continue to strive for excellence, but I stand by my point. What an awesome problem to have in light of how things were just a few short years ago!
Thanks. I think I've missed your point then. I'm not sure what "an awesome problem to have" is. It just seems like an oxymoron to me.
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United Kingdom14103 Posts
On June 08 2013 02:38 darthfoley wrote:
I actually would enjoy some personalized stats regarding specific players. Too many times do casters just speak of the "race win rate," I would much rather hear about how player X does on map Y or in tournament Z.
Casting has been much improved since the beta, but I still think it would be cool to have stats either before/after (in game there is plenty to look at). I just feel like it would be interesting to note that player X has a 61% WR on map Y even though his race averages 46% in major tournaments (for example).
I thoroughly agree with the rest though. Recaps are DEFINITELY needed, I'm tired of hearing about "nerd chills because their play was AMAZING" 40x per tournament...
I think that SPL does this pretty well and maybe GSL.
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I wanted to make this type of post (OP) for the past month. Very well done OP.
I feel that almost all casters nowadays are butchering the hype for the game and make it painfully boring. Same phrases thrown left and right, without anything interesting to say. To me they all sound the same, tell same boring facts and comment things that happen in the game which I can see with my own eyes. I want more. As a fan of SC2, I absolutely demand more, because I think this game is great as a spectacle and deserve better. Give me best observer (I know 3 of them, not more) and I don't need useless rambling of egomaniac caster-wannabes.
On June 08 2013 14:51 Alejandrisha wrote:
There's no solution because being good at or knowing anything about the game is not a prerequisite of being a caster. So long as casters gain nothing from actually doing their jobs well, since most viewers don't know the difference anyway, it's not going to get any better. And it hasn't.
Hundred times this. Casters got no incentive at all to improve. They will keep their jobs anyway. At least that's what I think it is. Does not matter if they deliver sub-par experience to the viewer.
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EPT
