On July 09 2011 19:59 Hardigan wrote: man, NASL did 1 BIG mistake: They didn't hire TL forum poster. It seems like they exactly know how things work and could solve all problems in the world.....
Anybody who is moderately competent with modern technology could have done a better job, yes. There are probably a lot of savvy computer users on here who would not make such mistakes. I wouldn't really even call them amateur mistakes, it's more like a fundamental technological incompetence that prevents them from seeing problems and fixing them without constant complaints and someone holding their hand.
I know you were being sarcastic but I think you missed the mark and hit "unintentional irony".
The problem here is that NASL is concerned only with giving their friends employment, rather than actually hiring people who can do the job. In the regular season they even turned down offers from skilled people who were willing to do these jobs for free.
Name fail. Why are there so many koreans in the NORTH AMERICAN Star League. Shouldnt this be called the Global Starcraft League??? errr wait. uhhh. Awkward.
On July 09 2011 21:12 RexFTW wrote: Name fail. Why are there so many koreans in the NORTH AMERICAN Star League. Shouldnt this be called the Global Starcraft League??? errr wait. uhhh. Awkward.
GSL is the global starcraft league.
they currently have 3 foreigners in the main league (which is going to change soon, but it wasnt really 'worthy' of the name global starcraft league)
Its wierd but the name of the league shouldnt matter too much
I completely agree with people being against the tournament format. It can be such an awful feeling to come to the grand finals after 3 long grueling months, just to get eliminated in 15 minutes. While watching the finals I was thinking that they should have had the RO16 online then make the RO8 a BO5 at least so the players would have a better chance at making a comeback, and better games for the viewers without that long schedule that they had today.
Looking at the NASL production from a viewpoint of having some experience in event production, the entire thing makes me feel kind of sad. I can see the NASL guys doing the same kinds of mistakes people with lack of experience always do.
I do not wish to rip into the guys doing it, because I know they are in over their heads and they are mostly putting out fires at this point and don't need people to lay into them, so I will try to give some constructive feedback instead.
First of all, set design for video and stage design are two different beasts. The stage looks quite good from a stage design viewpoint. I'm sure it looks good in person. However, it does not work all that well as a tv set. The pure black backdrop makes it harder to get good shots.
Which brings us to the point of camera angles. The main cameras were mounted way too far away, an they were mounted on a wobbly platform. The end result is that the cameras shook every time someone walked by, leading to a seasick impression much of the time. The alternate side-ways camera angle was nice as an effect, but should not be overused.
The cameras also suffered from exposure and white balance issues. Due to the black background, it is easy to overexpose the image unless you control the exposure manually. Ditto the tungstedn WB stage lights need to be compensated for as well, lest you end up with the commentators looking oddly like the cast from Jersey Shore.
The interviews should have been filmed as close as possible, or off on a different set (e.g. a corner with a sofa). The far-away camera, combined with the tri of interviewer/interviewee/interpreter not hitting their marks, led to an impression of a high school play being filmed with a camcorder, with the cameraman desperately trying to pan around to fix what is a problem with blocking.
Then there's the audio. The audio production suffered from a multitude of issues. Ground loops plagued the audio the entire day. The caster mics sounding to me like they were out of phase with each others (i.e. one of them had flipped polarity), which lead to comb filtering effects and sudden volume fades. This luckily got fixed during the day. For the interviews, you would like one mic per person - you do not want mics to be passed around. Finally, it was fairly obvious that there was no compression being used.
Now, my strength is really in audio production, and it saddens me to notice these issues. Ground loops, phase problems and things like compression are things that are easy to set up, easy to fix and easy to test for if you have the experience. However, you need to do all of that beforehand. If you end up trying to find ground loops while the show is un, you are in a very uncomfortable position as an audio engineer.
The final impression I got was that the production was done by a group of talented amateurs/volunteers who were in over their heads. Having experienced staff on hand would have helped tons. Again, this is just my humble impression: I shall not presume to know what the actual situation was like.
Here's hoping the issued get fixed, and that the next finals will be a stellar production.
On July 09 2011 21:12 RexFTW wrote: Name fail. Why are there so many koreans in the NORTH AMERICAN Star League. Shouldnt this be called the Global Starcraft League??? errr wait. uhhh. Awkward.
This complaint has gotta be one of the most pointless things I see posted over and over. Stop nitpicking you're acting like one of those people tastosis mock all the time. I don't have a problem with people criticizing but goddamn try to pick something that actually matters instead of complaining about semantics.
Now onto my thoughts about NASL.
I feel like all their efforts are completely misguided. They put so much effort into making ridiculously long player introductions but then they fail at getting the basics right. And I'm not even talking about the the technical issues such as the sound etc, although those are bad enough, hardware failure(If I'm to believe the excuses) can happen. I'm talking about the general crummyness and cheap feeling you get when watching such as the delays in sound when transitioning from stage to the game, forgetting to enforce setting profiles to busy, poor choice or lack of transition music, awkward breaks, cheap looking boothes/stage etc. Watching it just feels very lackluster compared to even small online tournaments.
I have a problem with their schedule, maybe such a spread out schedule would work if they had other events people could watch inbetween the games, but when they the tournament is ONLY starcraft 2, what the hell are people meant to do for 30 mins to an hour between every game??? I really feel sorry for the people who payed to come watch, I'd probably have got bored and left after the 2nd match. I also sympathize with the casters who were forced to awkwardly fill time over and over again, they did their best and are actually probably the only reason the event is not an absolute disaster, just rather disappointing.
I hope NASL forgets about trying to be fancy and different from the other leagues with all the players stories and such stuff for now. Instead they need to focus on being competent first.
The idea of hype videos is good in theory, but don't include the 3(?) month old application videos (while some are good, others were just embarrassing). Also, when watching the in-game footage from NASL group stages it became very apparent how biased Inc/Gretorp were; in the hype videos for the korean players you hardly ever heard their names mentioned, the focus was solely on their (non-korean) opponent. This was just a pet peeve, but at some point my brain thought I was watching an introduction video for Grubby instead of the actual finalist. Make the videos shorter, 2-3 minutes max, and perhaps add a pre-finals interview done on location. Anything but the application videos really. ^_^
2nd point, map choices. I don't know what you're trying to accomplish by forcing the same fixed map order for every set, but who are you trying to please? The veteran viewers like me will all be like "why isn't it Loser picks? I'm bored of these maps damnit." and people new to SC2 would hopefully appreciate the event more if they got some variety and got to see completely different maps. I only watched the first 4 matches (up to Hasu vs Moon) - and they were all 2-0's featuring only 2-player maps, XNC and Crossfire. Yay.
Finally those booths scare me. I would not be comfortable in such a confined space, it just looks like they should be waaaaay bigger.
The stream quality was amazing, consistent and stable.
I for one enjoyed the extended recapping for each of the players. It reminded me of some of the epic moments of the group stages and it felt honest.
Again, I appreciate they did a Bo3 format so the fans were guaranteed to see every match. With the delays and problems, having an extremely tight schedule would have caused chaos.
-'s
Apart from the obvious improvements they need to make on the production side, the matches should have been all started on a map like Terminus or Shakuras and then been loser's choice from that point onwards.
Next time NASL attempts a LAN, the schedule needs to be a lot fuller.
If you have delays or problems, get a spokesperson to communicate with the fans, even if it is " no idea whats wrong lol".
The booths just look terrible. Looks like they need to fire their carpenter.
Pressure is on now though to have a flawless day today though, otherwise Season 2 is going to be a huge uphill struggle for these guys.
I'm a chill enough person not to get angered by a shaking camera or an echo.
Please bare in mind though, I was a NASL fan from the start when it was "cool" to just hate on them.
- map veto should be done the way ESL does it: players take turns vetoing one map, then when the x maps for the BOx are left they take turns selecting the map order. Fairest system, please no loser's choice it sucks, especially bo3
- graphic setting were totally horrible imo, too dark and just weird. Just look how Crossfire looks like with Dreamhack settings (imo the best graphic settings I have seen so far) in this VOD and compare that to the horrible look Crossfire had yesterday...
Is this where we're supposed to post feedback about NASL?
Anyway, I guess most things about sound/camera shakiness/observing problems already been covered, I just wanna add something about someelse else where NASL seems to receive a good amount of complaints: the schedule. I dont really see the problem with it. The did 8 matches in 12h, or actually 8 matches in 10h with a 2h delay at the start (which is a separate problem). I really dont see the problem with 8 matches in 10h, it seems normal or even better than normal.
-MLG had so many more games going and two streams (!!), yet there were always lots of commercials, sometimes same game on both streams or just crowd shots during pauses. Dont have any stats on how many games/hour, but even if it was better it certainly wasnt with much.
-Dreamhack, which seems to get a lot of credit for the way they run the tourny without delay, has always had 1game/hour schedule. With maybe a lunch break in between some game, which NASL also had. So DH would probably run 8 matches in ~9h. NASL did in 10. Problem?
NASL actually had filler stuff. You can argue about whether it was fun or not, and maybe the player highlight videos were a little too long, but would you rather have watches the crowd idle in 10min over those videos? I think not. Also remember that these kind of intros "gave people nerd chills" during TSL when they had similar for Naniwa/Thorzain.
Personally I think these intros were good, possible a tad too long, but if the alternative is commercials or crowd shots, please go ahead with those intros. And the fact that they show all 8 games rather than skipping games for schedule reasons is something I think they should have credit for, not being flamed for.
On July 09 2011 22:11 DisaFear wrote: Is it only Americans or something that get ads? I was watching for free and didn't get ads...or did I not notice them lol
They were actually part of the video feed so everyone got them; you just didn't notice apparently. That is on top of Justin.tv ads (which may not be given to Australians), so it's understandable why people are angry -- especially if they paid for "no-ads" which really ended up meaning half-ads.
On July 09 2011 22:11 DisaFear wrote: Is it only Americans or something that get ads? I was watching for free and didn't get ads...or did I not notice them lol
They were actually part of the video feed so everyone got them; you just didn't notice apparently. That is on top of Justin.tv ads (which may not be given to Australians), so it's understandable why people are angry -- especially if they paid for "no-ads" which really ended up meaning half-ads.
I never get justin.tv ads when I watch streams. I see players type in that commercial thing, never shows up
Ok, some of these criticisms make sense and some don't. The problem is that once there are enough legit problems to make the tone in the live report thread negative, everyone just gets pissed off about every little possible issue. Sound problems were substantial. The delays were definitely annoying. Commercials for people who paid not to have them is pretty dumb. Complain about that. I'm totally with you.
But we're really going to complain about the player booths having a bland external design? Really? Until very recently no foreign tournaments had player booths of any kind. This is just dumb. Picking a random group from GSL, I checked the VODs and the total time to watch 5 games, not including the commercial breaks in the live stream is 90 minutes. Add in commercial breaks and its substantially worse. NASL is too slow, yes, but not by as much as people are making it out to be.
Everyone is angry about Ro16 being best of 3? GSL used Bo3 for code S Ro16 and people weren't that upset. People fly to Korea for a single-elimination Bo3 qualifier and lose in the first round and no one's that upset. The MLG code A-qualified people will fly to Korea for a single-elimination Bo3 tournament. It's not optimal, sure, but it's really not the end of the world. Would round robin groups of 4 with Bo3 matches be better? Of course, but it's three times as many games, and means either lots wouldn't get casted or the event would be an extra day. Obviously the viewers would be fine with that, but it means substantially more expenses for them.
Things like the camera filters being slightly off and so forth are perfectly good things to say as constructive criticism. But those are the sort of issues that most of the time, watching most things, you wouldn't pay attention to.
Before getting really pissed off, just think - would this same error have made me this upset if GSL did it? Sometimes the answer really is yes, but sometimes it's just a bandwagon of complaining.
On July 09 2011 19:59 Hardigan wrote: man, NASL did 1 BIG mistake: They didn't hire TL forum poster. It seems like they exactly know how things work and could solve all problems in the world.....
Looks like it, plenty of tl posters actually have jobs.
On July 09 2011 21:25 kmh wrote: Looking at the NASL production from a viewpoint of having some experience in event production, the entire thing makes me feel kind of sad. I can see the NASL guys doing the same kinds of mistakes people with lack of experience always do.
I do not wish to rip into the guys doing it, because I know they are in over their heads and they are mostly putting out fires at this point and don't need people to lay into them, so I will try to give some constructive feedback instead.
First of all, set design for video and stage design are two different beasts. The stage looks quite good from a stage design viewpoint. I'm sure it looks good in person. However, it does not work all that well as a tv set. The pure black backdrop makes it harder to get good shots.
Which brings us to the point of camera angles. The main cameras were mounted way too far away, an they were mounted on a wobbly platform. The end result is that the cameras shook every time someone walked by, leading to a seasick impression much of the time. The alternate side-ways camera angle was nice as an effect, but should not be overused.
The cameras also suffered from exposure and white balance issues. Due to the black background, it is easy to overexpose the image unless you control the exposure manually. Ditto the tungstedn WB stage lights need to be compensated for as well, lest you end up with the commentators looking oddly like the cast from Jersey Shore.
The interviews should have been filmed as close as possible, or off on a different set (e.g. a corner with a sofa). The far-away camera, combined with the tri of interviewer/interviewee/interpreter not hitting their marks, led to an impression of a high school play being filmed with a camcorder, with the cameraman desperately trying to pan around to fix what is a problem with blocking.
Then there's the audio. The audio production suffered from a multitude of issues. Ground loops plagued the audio the entire day. The caster mics sounding to me like they were out of phase with each others (i.e. one of them had flipped polarity), which lead to comb filtering effects and sudden volume fades. This luckily got fixed during the day. For the interviews, you would like one mic per person - you do not want mics to be passed around. Finally, it was fairly obvious that there was no compression being used.
Now, my strength is really in audio production, and it saddens me to notice these issues. Ground loops, phase problems and things like compression are things that are easy to set up, easy to fix and easy to test for if you have the experience. However, you need to do all of that beforehand. If you end up trying to find ground loops while the show is un, you are in a very uncomfortable position as an audio engineer.
The final impression I got was that the production was done by a group of talented amateurs/volunteers who were in over their heads. Having experienced staff on hand would have helped tons. Again, this is just my humble impression: I shall not presume to know what the actual situation was like.
Here's hoping the issued get fixed, and that the next finals will be a stellar production.
Second half of the event was very enjoyable but man, have them setup while the 20 minutes of video are playing. There is no reason to start fixing driver issues _after_ that.
I remember when we DIDN'T EVEN HAVE STREAMS, JUST LIVE REPORTS. and people are raging about the sound quality of a fucking epic live event that obviously did their best to accommodate the tens of thousands of viewers?
At one point I would brag about the superiority of the Starcraft community to my friends. We used to be a bastion of excellence... now all I see is the immaturity and false sense of entitlement of spoiled children who grew up with silver spoons under their metaphorical tongues.
I'm sorry if this doesn't belong in this thread, but honestly the thing that brought down the level of this event the most for me, were the hordes of kiddies complaining about minor annoyances. It isn't just this event either. MLG, TSL, and GSL are all plagued in one way or another by this bullshit.
Boring same maps. Crap format. Laughable sound and camera. Cheap look. Awful production. Get rid of inc and gretorp and let the actual casters cast.
It might be there "first time" but the nasl in a whole has been pretty dire since it started imo, why they didn't just employ professionals who actually seem to have a clue is beyond me. And seriously what's with the "a lot of koreans in the nasl" thing? lets face it it would be an even worse tournament if it was full of mediocre NA players.
EPT
