25 replies to this topic

[mdmzero0]

Sevronis, on 06 June 2016 - 07:58 AM, said:

Felt like I was watching a Powerpoint presentation with the lag I kept seeing. Video quality was terribad even on high or source. Commentators were okay, though sounded a little biased at times, especially discussing loudouts. Who are these guys anyway? They aren't even PGI from the looks of it. NGNG maybe? Would've expected Phil or Daeron if that was the case. At least they know how to stream. Either get them to do these, or PGi themselves. Not some nobodies I never heard of before. It's an official tournament held by an official company. If anything I would expect it to look professionally done at least.

1) We apologize for the stuttering on Friday's stream- unfortunately this was a disruption in service from Time Warner Cable, nothing we can do about that other than possibly call and complain (and seeing as it's an ISP, I'm sure they're plenty used to ignoring complaints).

2) In discussing loadouts- both BanditB17 and myself are competitive drop callers with 4+ seasons of competitive MWO play under our belts. We strive to play at the highest level, and as such the loadouts we are most familiar with are those that are designed for use at such a level of play. I apologize if we seem biased, but in competitive play the loadouts we favor tend to be those that are most effective. Not saying others aren't effective, just that the ones we "favor" tend to be more so.

3) Neither of us are PGI or NGNG staff. We're simply two guys who love to play MWO competitively, and have some experience (about 8+ months worth) of casting competitive MWO. We were recommended to PGI to be the shoutcasters, and they were gracious enough to allow us to do it. So far, we've had a ton of fun with it.

4) As for making it look professionally done, unfortunately things behind the scenes meant that the beginning of the tournament happened rather suddenly for us. We do try and make our casts as professional and entertaining as possible, with as many features as we can, but both Bandit and I work full time jobs, and didn't get home to prepare very early on Thursday/Friday. I think we did a better job improving some things on Saturday, and we'll have even more for the viewers with the upcoming casts this week. I hope you'll watch and enjoy it.

[mdmzero0]

Crystal Blade, on 06 June 2016 - 09:44 AM, said:

overall the streams have been great, and you guys deserve a lot of praise and appreciation from the community for doing them. thank you! (and i can only imagine the inevitable burnout after casting your 500th canyon network match four months from now, heh.)

disclaimer: i'm not sure how much (if any) outside support/assistance you guys might have either from PGI or other community members, and i know you're only two people with only so much time, resources and skills that you can leverage for various features. some of these ideas i'm sure have been suggested before, and some might be more feasible for the regional finals when the field has been narrowed down, or for matches between the established top teams. i've never streamed myself, so i might not be aware of some technical limitations... but all that being said, here are a few suggestions of mine based on what i've seen:

- when showing the post-match map overview (where you draw the teams' movement during the match), the layout still had your webcam video feeds displayed in the center of the screen side by side, so the map overview was just plopped on top of your faces, with the sides of the webcam feeds poking out from behind the map... obviously it would be slightly more ideal if those were moved to the top left/top right corners of the screen for that portion.

- for the more established teams, during the pregame screen/discussion there could be a box highlighting their league/tournament rankings (such as displayed on the sidebar of heimdelight's twitch profile, for example), as well as mentions of the most notable individual players (i.e. psichih0lic finished #1 on two different Kodiak variants during the leaderboard event, TwinkyOverlord averaged 1,000dmg per game in the KDK-3 during the event, etc).

- for all the teams, you could ask the leaders to submit brief statements including info such as team bios describing the players/unit's background, origin, and experience, goals for the tournament, things they may have learned since the tournament began, etc.

- during the wait time between games you could play some quality MWO videos (like many of the ones by these two guys), and solicit from teams (or use already existing) promotional unit videos to play before that team's upcoming match (like this 12DG video for example).

- you could have "special guests" as commentators between/after matches, people from one of the top competitive teams to analyze games and discuss strategies like Jager/TheMagician, and to discuss the mech builds used by the teams and why they were or were not optimal/effective, like the infamous GMan.

- when discussing commonly used mechs/builds, having a view to display a large picture of the mech, with its quirks and the smurfy build overview listed next to it.

- after the match, play back the full screen first person view of the best shots/kills, replay the game from the POV of the match MVP/player(s) with top damage/kills (not sure if this is technically possible unless you had someone already watching and recording their view though)


TL;DR version:
- layout issues during post-game map overview with overlapping webcam video
- info box/discussion of team backgrounds, league/tournament experience & standings, notable players
- play MWO videos/trailers and unit promo videos between matches
- special guests from top teams to analyze strategy and mech builds
- display picture/build/quirks when discussing common mech builds
- first person replay of the key kills or MVP/top scoring players

First off, thank you very much for the feedback.

The map overview/webcam layout is definitely a good idea, and it's been suggested before, so hopefully you'll see it implemented soon

As for notable players and so on, that's a bit more tricky. When we cast the more well-known and established teams, I think you'll find us mentioning a lot of the players you might be thinking of, as we've played with/against a lot of them. Unfortunately, a lot of the more notable teams (with the exception of the NS/Lords NA/228 BW matches on Thursday night) have been scheduling their matches at unofficial times, and we haven't yet started in on the challenges of casting an unofficial match. I think definitely when we get to the regionals/finals you'll see a lot more focus on the players on each team, etc.

As for requesting information from teams, I'm a step ahead of you: http://mwomercs.com/...ion-from-teams/ (although admittedly I haven't gotten much of a response. Again, when the field narrows this will be a bit easier!)

Not sure if you watched Saturday's EU cast, but we actually did try and fill the wait time with replays of the previous MWOWC matches to date, and I think we will continue to do that, just with a bit more presentation than the last minute work we did on Saturday. A lot of these features just come down to time for us to get them implemented.

I definitely like the idea of guest appearances, but again this is probably something for after the qualifiers. There's such a variety of gameplay/builds/teams in the qualifiers that the two of us have plenty to talk about as is!

A smufy build/mech loadout image would be pretty cool for common mech builds. I'll have to look into this further.

Playing back the 1PV might be possible, but we'd have to investigate further (and it would still be the chopped version we currently use- 600x600 with the paper dolls moved to be visible, etc.) to see just how easy/hard it would be. Replaying from the "MVP's" perspective however is a feature we don't have in MWO right now, as much as I would love to see it.

Again, thanks for all the feedback and I hope you keep watching!

[50 50]

BanditB17 & MDMZero0.

Thank you for your efforts in getting these matches broadcast.
Really appreciate being able to watch the matches and hear the commentary.
I like the analysis with the map afterwards and the reflection on the loadouts and strategies from the teams.
Long road ahead and I'm sure more will be added and improved on as the competition continues.
I am looking forward to watching them all.

Might be nice to see some statistics, replays, highlights, mech discussions etc in between the matches. That might be a lot for the two of you to handle but we have plenty of people in the community that can help out and compile some additional vids. Bit like having pre and post match discussions before crossing 'live' to the matches.

[Sevronis]

mdmzero0, on 06 June 2016 - 05:33 PM, said:

2) In discussing loadouts- both BanditB17 and myself are competitive drop callers with 4+ seasons of competitive MWO play under our belts. We strive to play at the highest level, and as such the loadouts we are most familiar with are those that are designed for use at such a level of play. I apologize if we seem biased, but in competitive play the loadouts we favor tend to be those that are most effective. Not saying others aren't effective, just that the ones we "favor" tend to be more so.

Yeah that's always been the mindset I can't always get behind, but I did already apologize for speaking brashly in a post afterwards. Sure, I can't deny some truth to what you say, but my problem is when some competitive players try to force certain load outs on you because THEY think it's effective (I see the numbers, I can agree with it too), my problem is those effective builds only are so in the right hands. Like builds that use gauss - some players can use them better than others (some can't use them much at all no matter how much they try to). I -can- use them well enough that I'm not useless using them, but I still can't use them as well as others. I would rather use a build that I know works best for -me- rather than what works best for others, as well as more fun for me based on how I play (I prefer not to constantly alpha strike - coring someone in 2 seconds with a huge alpha just doesn't seem fun or a challenge to me), while still playing to win. At least in your case, you aren't completely dismissing the viability of 'non-meta' builds, but a lot of comp players from my experience tend to think using inferior builds makes you an inferior player. You can blame those kind of players for my reaction to your comments. But I still apologize for typing before thinking.

[mdmzero0]

Sevronis, on 07 June 2016 - 08:24 AM, said:

Yeah that's always been the mindset I can't always get behind, but I did already apologize for speaking brashly in a post afterwards. Sure, I can't deny some truth to what you say, but my problem is when some competitive players try to force certain load outs on you because THEY think it's effective (I see the numbers, I can agree with it too), my problem is those effective builds only are so in the right hands. Like builds that use gauss - some players can use them better than others (some can't use them much at all no matter how much they try to). I -can- use them well enough that I'm not useless using them, but I still can't use them as well as others. I would rather use a build that I know works best for -me- rather than what works best for others, as well as more fun for me based on how I play (I prefer not to constantly alpha strike - coring someone in 2 seconds with a huge alpha just doesn't seem fun or a challenge to me), while still playing to win. At least in your case, you aren't completely dismissing the viability of 'non-meta' builds, but a lot of comp players from my experience tend to think using inferior builds makes you an inferior player. You can blame those kind of players for my reaction to your comments. But I still apologize for typing before thinking.

No worries, I hope I didn't come off too harsh either. I understand your mindset and wanting to play what's best for you (and most importantly, what's fun for you). Just trying to explain our mindset from casting a competitive match- we will probably always show some bias towards those builds that are oriented towards the competitive playstyle. I hope you don't take this as a "you should play this" but a "this is what would typically be most effective for this style".

[Desintegrator]

Have some nice matches !