it really should be used more often, because to truly appreciate the skill level you need to view from their perspective. it's much more exciting cycling player to player like:
looks like all the old pros quit, zero names recognized
it really should be used more often, because to truly appreciate the skill level you need to view from their perspective. it's much more exciting cycling player to player like:
looks like all the old pros quit, zero names recognized
most of the old 'pro' guys are still around, but just not as active and therefore not top level anymore.
still, the epsilon line-up have been top tier for years unless you stopped following tf2 in 2009 (it's european etf2l, maybe you're familiar with the american esea players).
GISPBattle GorgeDenmarkJoin Date: 2004-03-20Member: 27460Members, Playtest Lead, Forum Moderators, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Squad Five Gold, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Onos, WC 2013 - Gold, Subnautica Playtester, Forum staff
The NS2 eSports scene is still in its infancy, and there is room for alot of improvement. But i think we are slowly, whit each event, getting a better production and cast each time.
I would've preferred to have blind casting but maybe he just wanted to watch the event.
Honestly, I would have loved to cast, or drop in backgrounds of the teams, the players, their history, their strenghts and weaknesses, the strategies they used so far, what they struggled with, what they feared, or do map strat talk, post match analysis, highlighting key moments, trying to explain the incredible depth of this game to the viewers. And of course I am a bit disappointed I didn't get a chance to do any of that since it is my greatest dream to be on a casting stage like that.
But I understand that UWE wanted to have this event as professional as possible since they dropped in alot of money which you clearly don't wanna screw up. The event needed to be targeted towards attracting newer players to cover up for the huge costs UWE did put into this. Having show veterans and a famous caster is a big plus for that, and I think the show and commentary was super fluid and the casters harmonized very well. So regarding their goals, I think UWE and ESL did run a great show and I also enjoyed watching it offline again after coming home today.
I really appreciate all the efforts UWE puts into this game and it was a blast to be there. It was so much fun (even just spectating it). And It was a pleasure to meet Charlie, Hugh, Wasabi, b1, all the players and fans and want to thank every one of them. And I really hope this show was a success in terms of increasing the NS2 playerbase, which is important for both the competitive and casual scene. And paying the bills for the greatest game devs
Maybe to add some things, if you are interested in what happened in the backgrounds, b1 and me were running around with the camera during, before and after the whole event and recorded tons of footage we have yet to edit together. Interviews with the team players (before, inbetween at breaks and after the match), with Charlie, with Wasabi, with fun stuff and pre-event party footage. A short teaser of the things to come will be aired live on Monday 15th at 21 CEST on the next episode of NS2 Showtime - don't miss it
(shameless advertising)
And on a personal note, not sure how to say it...It is really overwhelming reading or hearing my name so often...quite missing the words for it. I love you guys. Need to digest that somehow.
But I understand that UWE wanted to have this event as professional as possible since they dropped in alot of money which you clearly don't wanna screw up.
it really should be used more often, because to truly appreciate the skill level you need to view from their perspective. it's much more exciting cycling player to player like:
offtopic.. but...
Are those supposed to be good players?...
ugh that video reminds me of what I don't like about TF2.... they dumbed down the skill ceiling way too much compared to Team Fortress Classic. TFC was way more enjoyable to watching in first person perspective than that.... and the skill needed was much higher.
edit: I should say the individual skill and individual skill ceiling was much higher in TFC , which made for a more enjoyable experience in watching first person perspective. TF2 does have a higher TEAM coordination skill cieling, but makes it not as enjoyable to watching in first person.
First off thank you to all the people who both attended and watched online! What an experience, meeting the teams in person, getting to know fans of the game and to my shock fans of me . Please know that I have read through all these posts and I very much agree with a lot of the things said.
That said, there are certain things that are just out of some people's control once the event starts and ESL was great to work with and their staff were all very friendly. Shame on some of you for singling out Shannon who was great IMO, she was very to the point and handled the social media aspects very well. I will admit I was told about the wrestling about oh a minutes before the duel and being the guy I am I went along with what was asked of me. I also though wayyyy to much time was spent in the facepainting but again once the show starts it out of everyone's hand. I was happy to cast what I did if only for a short moment, I thought that James did a fantastic job as co caster and he also did his homework on the teams. It should be noted he brought a lot to the event as well being a prominent sc caster and he was tweeting about the event too which helps.
At the end of the day the event turned out the way it did and I as well as the audience members had a blast and the teams had a great experience. Hopefully there will be a next time and hopefully I can be a part of it too. I am as always a faithful community volunteer that is here to bring as much awesome NS2 to as many people as I can and I thank you UWE for bringing me along!
Also shout out to Nexzil who is sitting next to me breaking down the event while I type this post
it really should be used more often, because to truly appreciate the skill level you need to view from their perspective. it's much more exciting cycling player to player like:
offtopic.. but...
Are those supposed to be good players?...
ugh that video reminds me of what I don't like about TF2.... they dumbed down the skill ceiling way too much compared to Team Fortress Classic. TFC was way more enjoyable to watching in first person perspective than that.... and the skill needed was much higher.
edit: I should say the individual skill and individual skill ceiling was much higher in TFC , which made for a more enjoyable experience in watching first person perspective. TF2 does have a higher TEAM coordination skill cieling, but makes it not as enjoyable to watching in first person.
the tf2 competitive format does limit the individual skill quite a bit, but you can't take anything away from those players. they're still some of the best tf2 players in the world.
I agree with almost everything (if not everything) OP said, and hope that the devs really take the time to read this as the community seems to agree with it, and surely they want to make an event that appeals to the viewers (which are mostly the community).
Anyone else find it frustrating when trying to find the Brackets and Scores for the matches in this tournament? You think that would be the very first thing posted in the tournament news post but I cant find the Bracket or match results anywhere.
I would've preferred to have blind casting but maybe he just wanted to watch the event.
And on a personal note, not sure how to say it...It is really overwhelming reading or hearing my name so often...quite missing the words for it. I love you guys. Need to digest that somehow.
It's well deserved blind. It's a pity we didn't get to see more from you, even a post-match analysis would have been good.
That's not to detract from Kaelaris, Hugh or Wasabi though. All of the casters did a fantastic job!
I've watched many tournaments of different games, the most notable ones being The International 1-2 (Valve dota2 $1m tournament for those who don't know) and I must say that I was really entertained, the delay between matches was a little boring but understandable, as for the rest, I liked every single bit of it, I know a lot of people disliked hughs sillyness, but a lot of times he made me laugh and imo that's something esports lack these days, we should be enjoying ourselves and not be serious all the time.
Oh, almost missed it, but the other disappointing part was blind not being part of the casters, we (NS2 players) missed a lot of his great insight, hopefully for the next tournament you will be there rocking out the mic man!
But anyways, I don't know why, but it felt really great to see the faces of the people who are truly passionate about this game.
Wasabi, bitey, all of archaea and all of nexzil: you guys are the bosses.
it really should be used more often, because to truly appreciate the skill level you need to view from their perspective. it's much more exciting cycling player to player like:
offtopic.. but...
Are those supposed to be good players?...
ugh that video reminds me of what I don't like about TF2.... they dumbed down the skill ceiling way too much compared to Team Fortress Classic. TFC was way more enjoyable to watching in first person perspective than that.... and the skill needed was much higher.
edit: I should say the individual skill and individual skill ceiling was much higher in TFC , which made for a more enjoyable experience in watching first person perspective. TF2 does have a higher TEAM coordination skill cieling, but makes it not as enjoyable to watching in first person.
TF2 is really not meant for competitive play anyways. I mean jeez, half of the classes are useless in 6v6, some weapons banned, and gameplay mods are required (no-crit/spread). And if you want to increase the players, you won't see as much team coordination like in 6v6, it'll be more of a matter of throwing the right classes/number of people at the objective.
I pretty much agree with everything OP said and thank you for that detailed list of stuff! I was thinking about writing something like that myself but couldn't get my thoughts straight.. would have resulted in rather unconstructive ramblings i fear.
I know a lot of people disliked hughs sillyness, but a lot of times he made me laugh and imo that's something esports lack these days, we should be enjoying ourselves and not be serious all the time.
I don't really think the problem was Hugh's "sillyness" in general. It was the context. I agree with OP here and think that some sort of couter was missing to keep Hugh from going over the top. Reading Wasabi's comment, parts of the event were specifically designed to make him and Hugh do just that. I am blaming the people (whoever they may be) that thought those silly filler stuff would be a good thing. Hugh and Wasabi going along with it, is basically them being good entertainers! It's pretty much what Penn Jillette says: "If you want to be in show biz, but you are not prepared to do a show naked, you don't really want to be in show biz."
btw: did anybody get their game keys from that FB fanart thing, yet? Promised my sister I would give here mine...
Because some people asked an insight point of view of the event, i'll write some feed back for you guys.
First, it was a great honour and pleasure being here. Every single guy i met during this trip was really awesome. Big thank to Charlie and WasabiOne who were with us for drinks, meals and breakfast at hotel ! These two are amaizing, interesting and soooooo friendly !
About the show, i must admit, as a player, i did my best not to focus on the crowd, cameras and keep all my attention on the games coming next. If i wasn't smoking, i would have never put my headphones away at any time. There was one time esl staff asked all of us if we wanted to make a quick live interview between two games but no one wanted to (we all pointed Fana and force him to do it ). I find interviews more stressful than the game itself and i didn't want it to interfere with my concentration.
There were a lot of waiting for us, and we didn't expect this. Casters and esl staff had to fill 4 hours of live stream. Games remained quite short, especially on descent, so they had tons of work to keep people entertained. You guys shouldn't blame Hugh for trying to do his job. He's always been a hyperactive camera "attractor". And he's doing it well. For sure, it didn't suit good in this situation where people look for awesome show and expect "serious" e-sport. He's not used to this format. I'm pretty sure he will take in note all the feedbacks you guys are writing right here. If he doesn't, just punish him with more photoshoped unicorns.
When we watch some SC2/LoL/dota2 competitive streams : they have waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more founds to get stuff look good, serious and interesting. But i agree with you all, some things could have been prepared.
I'll make a list of things i expect to see in an e-sport stream :
- more interviews recorded before the games start so you don't have to disturb players between rounds.
- game analysis thanks to NS2Stats (which is awesome and easy stuff to use), but there, Charlie and Hugh didn't want anything to interfere with the games, since we already saw some in-game bugs related to mods installed on servers.
- players "history", photo of each player, their age, and a quick summary of their experience on the game.
- cast and especially the spectator view more focused on fights (for example, we barely see Bob the builder getting surprised by a single skulk while he's capping. These fights are essential and if we can't see that marines have trouble capping RTs, we miss the whole game). For having casted several games, I don't find this job really hard if you have a co-caster. The one who's streaming must stare at the mini map to see players' movements all around the map and anticipate encounters. For example on the first round, spectators wouldn't have missed the fact that the onos was stuck in server room (on Tram). If marines would have seen him go in elevator hive direction from mezzanine, they would have expected a base rush. But no, we prefered building a gorge tunnel from server to observation to keep it unscouted.
- more interviews of random spectators or Blind or b1, about their feelings during the game, what they were expecting, etc. But please, stay focused on the game itself ! There was a lot of things that made spectators even forget a BIG match was played here.
- no orange pants please ! I nearly had a crisis of epilepsy when i saw Hugh
Again, i want to thank every spectators (on stream and in studios). Esl staff kept saying this community is awesome, and it's true. Thanks to your support and activity for artworks for example, it surely helps to make organizers think about the "next time".
I wanted to thank ESL staff, especially referees you never saw on the stream. As soon as you were scratching your head and look like having a sound problem or anything else, they were jumping on you "May I help ?"
Anyone else find it frustrating when trying to find the Brackets and Scores for the matches in this tournament? You think that would be the very first thing posted in the tournament news post but I cant find the Bracket or match results anywhere.
The actual games were very entertaining to watch! Crazy how fast some stuff was going on, and how good the players are.
I agree with some of the criticism here. You have so many opportunities to talk about the players, the teams, their history, stuff like that which is directly related to the event. Much better than trying to kill time somehow with semi-related fillers. I understand you can't distract the teams but still there are enough possibilities. For example, prepare some videos - this stuff does not have to happen live.
Imagine a person sees this who doesn't know anything about the game. That person has no idea who these people are, what happened in the past and what is going on in this strange event found on twitch (s)he is viewing. So a more presentation/show like format with a lot more explanations would greatly help - especially in attracting new players, which is the point after all.
Also, more travel documentary would be great I absolutely loved this about the PAX coverage, so great to see the meta stuff when you can't be there yourself. This might seem unimportant, but at least for me it was as interesting as the event itself.
But I guess it's due to the broken camera that it was very limited this time.
Hugh and I had so much video stuff planned but his camera broke the day before we left and he was sooooo busy setting up the event that we didn't really film and more stuff using his phone. I guess I could have too but I was having too much fun hanging out with the teams and making sure everyone was taken care of
Germany was incredible, loved meeting and drinking with everyone. I wish Archaea could have stayed a day longer. most of them left Saturday around noon, so we only got to spend time with them on Thursday night basically (Nexzil left on Sunday morning for the most part). it was still a blast, I had the best time.
Stream
the intermissions were pretty silly. I can think of dozens of better time fillers to use off the top of my head, let alone if I had months of preparation. this event was frontpaged on twitch and it had just the most useless time fillers for drawing in audiences. ANYTHING - player interviews, strategy discussion, post-game analysis, I just felt like that was a completely lost opportunity. the intermissions were also way too long - I guess that's also partially because of the games, but maybe splitting it out into 10 minutes for each. instead it was 5 minute intermissions and then a random 30 minute one before the last game, just felt very silly and unexpected and unorganized. the broken camera I can understand, but Blind and b1 recorded a lot of awesome footage and b1 had everything stolen! something can always be done!
Games
obviously the games were pathetic, but I'm not really too upset about them overall. our strategy, coordination, positioning, aim, tactics, and everything else was just completely inferior to Archaea's at the event. we made so many basic mistakes that it's pretty clear we weren't playing even close to as well as we could have. I wished we could have given some better games for the spectators. I had the same sleep / jetlag issues that others complained about but individually, I felt like I played the best games of NS2 in this event that I played in a long time. so, I have zero regrets about how I played and I couldn't be more satisfied with my personal performance.
Casting
having Kaelaris cast was an amazing opportunity, people should stop being silly about it. he's incredibly popular and draws attention and buyers to the game - that is the primary goal of the event. that said, he did a great job - he sat in with us for several practices and same with Archaea, so I would argue that his competitive knowledge was better than Hugh's. which brings me to the next point - Hugh's camera work + casting was definitely not up to par, and this is a recurring theme. missing action all around the map is not really acceptable, there are at most 2 engagements going on at any time. have a dedicated observer, practice camera work, something. it's just unacceptable to miss that much stuff when there's nothing filling the camera time. relying on the popups to tell you a Fade dies and the casters are talking about something completely unrelated is... unprofessional.
regarding first person: I think on LAN it could be used tastefully (fewer interpolation issues), and I definitely prefer it, but you have to know as a spectator who to spectate and when to do it. I have rarely seen any spectator do it tastefully, so it's often better to just leave it untouched than to force first person spectate and just ruin everything. it definitely is better when it's mixed in though because most players play the game first person so it's much easier to understand. also it makes big plays that much more entertaining.
that said, the event was amazing, some organizational issues aside. we had a lot of time to set up, but then out of nowhere they had to do the pre-recorded interviews and then suddenly it was 10 minutes until the game was about to start. most of it was spent dealing with issues with German keyboards, setting up German mumble, setting up server, bickering about the mods and whether or not they were going to be used, etc. it would be so much simpler to just have none of that hassle so the players could just focus on playing the game.
thanks to UWE for covering the expenses of a great weekend and giving us a chance to win money, meet players and developers, and visit a beautiful country. it was also awesome to meet Flayra and speak to him personally.
which brings me to the next point - Hugh's camera work + casting was definitely not up to par, and this is a recurring theme. missing action all around the map is not really acceptable, there are at most 2 engagements going on at any time. have a dedicated observer, practice camera work, something. it's just unacceptable to miss that much stuff when there's nothing filling the camera time. relying on the popups to tell you a Fade dies and the casters are talking about something completely unrelated is... unprofessional.
I give caster/streamers wide latitude largely because its difficult to consistently capture all the relevant action while trying to think of useful things to talk about at the same time.
However, I think these types of events are suited for a multi-caster setup. Specifically, have several people stream their views to a primary computer who switches between the different views and streams that to Twitch. Then you could have the casters only spend their time talking about the game rather than trying to manage the stream.
Since this a asymmetric game a PIP(picture in picture)mode could help show whats going on in both game systems, (the commander and first person view ports) , that way the casters and viewers could see whats going in the current action while still seeing the bigger picture. The two view ports could be switched on the fly depending on whats going on, fight is going switch to first person view while in the right hand corner there still the top down RTS view port.
Next time instead of facepainting maybe just have 2 guys start a game and start showcasing it, marine buildings, weapons, kharaa lifeforms, what to focus in the game etc. That would have made a better filler imo.
SpoogeThunderbolt missile in your cheeriosJoin Date: 2002-01-25Member: 67Members
Reading back through this thread, I'd say it looks quite critical of the whole event but it's easy to point out the negatives. If UWE wants to take anything from this discussion I hope they view it as constructive criticism.
Overall I really enjoyed watching and regardless of the scoring the games were great.
We even got to see turrets! How about that! Not just for pubs anymore
Clearly it was a grand opportunity for the players, especially for Nexzil, and UWE gets high marks for making it all happen. Well done and good show.
I don't have time to play NS2 anymore but I still watch all the streams as I can do that while working. I just watched the finals today.
I thought Kaelaris was awful. He was enthusiastic, but was useless as far as conveying any information about the game beyond who is currently shooting at who. Whenever he tried to go beyond that, I'm not sure I heard a sentence that finished off talking about the same topic it started on. Hopefully the name-recognition brought in some new people.
The filler content was bad, and worse it was a wasted opportunity if the point of the event was to reach a new audience.
The standard NS2Stats overview after the games would have been much better than the hugh-miliation, and would have done a lot more to sell the game to new people. The casters didn't really seem to cover much of the strategic overview, so looking at the build order and resource graph after the game would really have helped new people learn that this is more than just an FPS with an overhead spectator mode.
Another suggestion for better filler content would be excerpts from the best games of the qualifiers and semi-finals.
I'd really like to say something good about it, but I honestly can't think of anything about the event that was better than the launch event or any of the recent casts.
Oh wait, I thought of something - the winning picture submission was better this time.
I guess the real problem with the whole face painting thing is that it isn't a very effective method of advertising. It's marketed solely at the people who already own the game - I can see it potentially being amusing for someone who is familiar with Hugh, but if you don't know who Hugh is there's no way you would find it funny (even a lot of us who do know who Hugh is didn't find it that funny). I just don't see how watching a random Australian dude you don't know having his face painted will convince you to purchase a game.
I went back and checked the previous studio event - it wasn't just my memory, the Starcraft 2 casters brought in for that one really were surprisingly good.
Especially considering you can see they have cheatsheets will all the unit pictures and details on their desks.
Comments
looks like all the old pros quit, zero names recognized
most of the old 'pro' guys are still around, but just not as active and therefore not top level anymore.
still, the epsilon line-up have been top tier for years unless you stopped following tf2 in 2009 (it's european etf2l, maybe you're familiar with the american esea players).
But I understand that UWE wanted to have this event as professional as possible since they dropped in alot of money which you clearly don't wanna screw up. The event needed to be targeted towards attracting newer players to cover up for the huge costs UWE did put into this. Having show veterans and a famous caster is a big plus for that, and I think the show and commentary was super fluid and the casters harmonized very well. So regarding their goals, I think UWE and ESL did run a great show and I also enjoyed watching it offline again after coming home today.
I really appreciate all the efforts UWE puts into this game and it was a blast to be there. It was so much fun (even just spectating it). And It was a pleasure to meet Charlie, Hugh, Wasabi, b1, all the players and fans and want to thank every one of them. And I really hope this show was a success in terms of increasing the NS2 playerbase, which is important for both the competitive and casual scene. And paying the bills for the greatest game devs
Maybe to add some things, if you are interested in what happened in the backgrounds, b1 and me were running around with the camera during, before and after the whole event and recorded tons of footage we have yet to edit together. Interviews with the team players (before, inbetween at breaks and after the match), with Charlie, with Wasabi, with fun stuff and pre-event party footage. A short teaser of the things to come will be aired live on Monday 15th at 21 CEST on the next episode of NS2 Showtime - don't miss it
(shameless advertising)
And on a personal note, not sure how to say it...It is really overwhelming reading or hearing my name so often...quite missing the words for it. I love you guys. Need to digest that somehow.
Oops. They should've got you in there brosef.
offtopic.. but...
Are those supposed to be good players?...
ugh that video reminds me of what I don't like about TF2.... they dumbed down the skill ceiling way too much compared to Team Fortress Classic. TFC was way more enjoyable to watching in first person perspective than that.... and the skill needed was much higher.
edit: I should say the individual skill and individual skill ceiling was much higher in TFC , which made for a more enjoyable experience in watching first person perspective. TF2 does have a higher TEAM coordination skill cieling, but makes it not as enjoyable to watching in first person.
That said, there are certain things that are just out of some people's control once the event starts and ESL was great to work with and their staff were all very friendly. Shame on some of you for singling out Shannon who was great IMO, she was very to the point and handled the social media aspects very well. I will admit I was told about the wrestling about oh a minutes before the duel and being the guy I am I went along with what was asked of me. I also though wayyyy to much time was spent in the facepainting but again once the show starts it out of everyone's hand. I was happy to cast what I did if only for a short moment, I thought that James did a fantastic job as co caster and he also did his homework on the teams. It should be noted he brought a lot to the event as well being a prominent sc caster and he was tweeting about the event too which helps.
At the end of the day the event turned out the way it did and I as well as the audience members had a blast and the teams had a great experience. Hopefully there will be a next time and hopefully I can be a part of it too. I am as always a faithful community volunteer that is here to bring as much awesome NS2 to as many people as I can and I thank you UWE for bringing me along!
Also shout out to Nexzil who is sitting next to me breaking down the event while I type this post
the tf2 competitive format does limit the individual skill quite a bit, but you can't take anything away from those players. they're still some of the best tf2 players in the world.
It's well deserved blind.
That's not to detract from Kaelaris, Hugh or Wasabi though. All of the casters did a fantastic job!
I've watched many tournaments of different games, the most notable ones being The International 1-2 (Valve dota2 $1m tournament for those who don't know) and I must say that I was really entertained, the delay between matches was a little boring but understandable, as for the rest, I liked every single bit of it, I know a lot of people disliked hughs sillyness, but a lot of times he made me laugh and imo that's something esports lack these days, we should be enjoying ourselves and not be serious all the time.
Oh, almost missed it, but the other disappointing part was blind not being part of the casters, we (NS2 players) missed a lot of his great insight, hopefully for the next tournament you will be there rocking out the mic man!
But anyways, I don't know why, but it felt really great to see the faces of the people who are truly passionate about this game.
Wasabi, bitey, all of archaea and all of nexzil: you guys are the bosses.
TF2 is really not meant for competitive play anyways. I mean jeez, half of the classes are useless in 6v6, some weapons banned, and gameplay mods are required (no-crit/spread). And if you want to increase the players, you won't see as much team coordination like in 6v6, it'll be more of a matter of throwing the right classes/number of people at the objective.
btw: did anybody get their game keys from that FB fanart thing, yet? Promised my sister I would give here mine...
Because some people asked an insight point of view of the event, i'll write some feed back for you guys.
First, it was a great honour and pleasure being here. Every single guy i met during this trip was really awesome. Big thank to Charlie and WasabiOne who were with us for drinks, meals and breakfast at hotel ! These two are amaizing, interesting and soooooo friendly !
About the show, i must admit, as a player, i did my best not to focus on the crowd, cameras and keep all my attention on the games coming next. If i wasn't smoking, i would have never put my headphones away at any time. There was one time esl staff asked all of us if we wanted to make a quick live interview between two games but no one wanted to (we all pointed Fana and force him to do it
There were a lot of waiting for us, and we didn't expect this. Casters and esl staff had to fill 4 hours of live stream. Games remained quite short, especially on descent, so they had tons of work to keep people entertained. You guys shouldn't blame Hugh for trying to do his job. He's always been a hyperactive camera "attractor". And he's doing it well. For sure, it didn't suit good in this situation where people look for awesome show and expect "serious" e-sport. He's not used to this format. I'm pretty sure he will take in note all the feedbacks you guys are writing right here. If he doesn't, just punish him with more photoshoped unicorns.
When we watch some SC2/LoL/dota2 competitive streams : they have waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more founds to get stuff look good, serious and interesting. But i agree with you all, some things could have been prepared.
I'll make a list of things i expect to see in an e-sport stream :
- more interviews recorded before the games start so you don't have to disturb players between rounds.
- game analysis thanks to NS2Stats (which is awesome and easy stuff to use), but there, Charlie and Hugh didn't want anything to interfere with the games, since we already saw some in-game bugs related to mods installed on servers.
- players "history", photo of each player, their age, and a quick summary of their experience on the game.
- cast and especially the spectator view more focused on fights (for example, we barely see Bob the builder getting surprised by a single skulk while he's capping. These fights are essential and if we can't see that marines have trouble capping RTs, we miss the whole game). For having casted several games, I don't find this job really hard if you have a co-caster. The one who's streaming must stare at the mini map to see players' movements all around the map and anticipate encounters. For example on the first round, spectators wouldn't have missed the fact that the onos was stuck in server room (on Tram). If marines would have seen him go in elevator hive direction from mezzanine, they would have expected a base rush. But no, we prefered building a gorge tunnel from server to observation to keep it unscouted.
- more interviews of random spectators or Blind or b1, about their feelings during the game, what they were expecting, etc. But please, stay focused on the game itself ! There was a lot of things that made spectators even forget a BIG match was played here.
- no orange pants please ! I nearly had a crisis of epilepsy when i saw Hugh
Again, i want to thank every spectators (on stream and in studios). Esl staff kept saying this community is awesome, and it's true. Thanks to your support and activity for artworks for example, it surely helps to make organizers think about the "next time".
I wanted to thank ESL staff, especially referees you never saw on the stream. As soon as you were scratching your head and look like having a sound problem or anything else, they were jumping on you "May I help ?"
http://www.ensl.org/contests/historical/NS2
To find it, it's as simple as going to www.ensl.org -> hover over "Contests" and press "NS2 History"
I agree with some of the criticism here. You have so many opportunities to talk about the players, the teams, their history, stuff like that which is directly related to the event. Much better than trying to kill time somehow with semi-related fillers. I understand you can't distract the teams but still there are enough possibilities. For example, prepare some videos - this stuff does not have to happen live.
Imagine a person sees this who doesn't know anything about the game. That person has no idea who these people are, what happened in the past and what is going on in this strange event found on twitch (s)he is viewing. So a more presentation/show like format with a lot more explanations would greatly help - especially in attracting new players, which is the point after all.
Also, more travel documentary would be great
But I guess it's due to the broken camera that it was very limited this time.
Stream
the intermissions were pretty silly. I can think of dozens of better time fillers to use off the top of my head, let alone if I had months of preparation. this event was frontpaged on twitch and it had just the most useless time fillers for drawing in audiences. ANYTHING - player interviews, strategy discussion, post-game analysis, I just felt like that was a completely lost opportunity. the intermissions were also way too long - I guess that's also partially because of the games, but maybe splitting it out into 10 minutes for each. instead it was 5 minute intermissions and then a random 30 minute one before the last game, just felt very silly and unexpected and unorganized. the broken camera I can understand, but Blind and b1 recorded a lot of awesome footage and b1 had everything stolen! something can always be done!
Games
obviously the games were pathetic, but I'm not really too upset about them overall. our strategy, coordination, positioning, aim, tactics, and everything else was just completely inferior to Archaea's at the event. we made so many basic mistakes that it's pretty clear we weren't playing even close to as well as we could have. I wished we could have given some better games for the spectators. I had the same sleep / jetlag issues that others complained about but individually, I felt like I played the best games of NS2 in this event that I played in a long time. so, I have zero regrets about how I played and I couldn't be more satisfied with my personal performance.
Casting
having Kaelaris cast was an amazing opportunity, people should stop being silly about it. he's incredibly popular and draws attention and buyers to the game - that is the primary goal of the event. that said, he did a great job - he sat in with us for several practices and same with Archaea, so I would argue that his competitive knowledge was better than Hugh's. which brings me to the next point - Hugh's camera work + casting was definitely not up to par, and this is a recurring theme. missing action all around the map is not really acceptable, there are at most 2 engagements going on at any time. have a dedicated observer, practice camera work, something. it's just unacceptable to miss that much stuff when there's nothing filling the camera time. relying on the popups to tell you a Fade dies and the casters are talking about something completely unrelated is... unprofessional.
regarding first person: I think on LAN it could be used tastefully (fewer interpolation issues), and I definitely prefer it, but you have to know as a spectator who to spectate and when to do it. I have rarely seen any spectator do it tastefully, so it's often better to just leave it untouched than to force first person spectate and just ruin everything. it definitely is better when it's mixed in though because most players play the game first person so it's much easier to understand. also it makes big plays that much more entertaining.
that said, the event was amazing, some organizational issues aside. we had a lot of time to set up, but then out of nowhere they had to do the pre-recorded interviews and then suddenly it was 10 minutes until the game was about to start. most of it was spent dealing with issues with German keyboards, setting up German mumble, setting up server, bickering about the mods and whether or not they were going to be used, etc. it would be so much simpler to just have none of that hassle so the players could just focus on playing the game.
some stuff:
http://i.imgur.com/L4jLCLq.jpg
Hugh matches the wall
http://i.imgur.com/Rc3xOYs.jpg
Garfu (?) trips the fire alarm and wakes up the entire hotel
http://i.imgur.com/NEdkU90.jpg
the studio
http://i.imgur.com/VtRsbao.jpg
no description available.
http://i.imgur.com/W7YtaMY.jpg
aww
http://i.imgur.com/E69Af4o.jpg
scrajm and me
http://i.imgur.com/tOM4HMP.jpg
tane omg omg omg omg im famous
thanks to UWE for covering the expenses of a great weekend and giving us a chance to win money, meet players and developers, and visit a beautiful country. it was also awesome to meet Flayra and speak to him personally.
However, I think these types of events are suited for a multi-caster setup. Specifically, have several people stream their views to a primary computer who switches between the different views and streams that to Twitch. Then you could have the casters only spend their time talking about the game rather than trying to manage the stream.
That is a photo of the NS spirit. Well done to all.
Overall I really enjoyed watching and regardless of the scoring the games were great.
We even got to see turrets! How about that! Not just for pubs anymore
Clearly it was a grand opportunity for the players, especially for Nexzil, and UWE gets high marks for making it all happen. Well done and good show.
The social media stuff is always so cringey it hurts.
I thought Kaelaris was awful. He was enthusiastic, but was useless as far as conveying any information about the game beyond who is currently shooting at who. Whenever he tried to go beyond that, I'm not sure I heard a sentence that finished off talking about the same topic it started on. Hopefully the name-recognition brought in some new people.
The filler content was bad, and worse it was a wasted opportunity if the point of the event was to reach a new audience.
The standard NS2Stats overview after the games would have been much better than the hugh-miliation, and would have done a lot more to sell the game to new people. The casters didn't really seem to cover much of the strategic overview, so looking at the build order and resource graph after the game would really have helped new people learn that this is more than just an FPS with an overhead spectator mode.
Another suggestion for better filler content would be excerpts from the best games of the qualifiers and semi-finals.
I'd really like to say something good about it, but I honestly can't think of anything about the event that was better than the launch event or any of the recent casts.
Oh wait, I thought of something - the winning picture submission was better this time.
Especially considering you can see they have cheatsheets will all the unit pictures and details on their desks.