Xeris Profile Blog Joined July 2005 Iran 17683 Posts #1



The Finals



Setting up was a ton of work. We broke down the studio on Tuesday, and had all of Wednesday and Thursday to set up, with doors supposed to be opening Friday at 10:00am. Set up was quite a task, we basically just had us in the studio in addition to the sound crew, some of the convention center staff, and two laborers we hired to help set up. Things were going nicely, if you remember



Another problem occurred with the projectors where they weren't sending packets they received (aka, problem projecting). We finally fixed that and got it working by the time stuff started Friday, but it was only a temporary solution (which is why only the feed from the capture computer came to the projector screens on Friday). This is the reason we repeated the "Journey to the Finals" videos on Saturday -- since the people in-house unfortunately didn't get to see them.



The other major problem was the sound (although I was way too busy handling the tournament at that point and wasn't worrying about tech problems myself), which TheGunrun from Justin.tv knew how to fix. The only way to solve the problem was to turn off the stream, change some settings, and start it back. We made a conscious decision to wait until the break (halfway through the Ro16) to do that. In retrospect, it might have been a better idea to fix that immediately.



As far as the delays go -- this was fairly standard for almost every LAN event, but luckily Saturday went MUCH more smoothly. Some delay problems were caused by (to name a few): Moon refusing to let our staff touch his mouse/keyboard and plug them in for him... Boxer accidentally tripping a power cord and shutting off his computer, DarkForcE changing the computer language into German and trying to install some obscure logitech mouse drivers, etc.



This really was meant to be a show rather than a LAN event that most people are accustomed to seeing. The problem, as I see it, is that it didn't translate well to the stream viewer. The people on the stream didn't get to be involved in meet and greets, autograph/signing sessions, raffles, and HoN activities. Almost in between every match we had signings with pro players at different booths. Other spectators were watching players play in the warm up area, etc. There was a lot of stuff going on that really didn't get captured and put up on stream -- so the event, from a stream viewer's perspective, might have seemed a bit silly to go so long with so few games. This is something that we are planning to think about and address for Season 2, in order to make the viewing experience great not just for the live spectators, but for the stream audience as well!



As for the format: we feel like this format is okay. The big changes I believe we're looking into based on player feedback from the event is to make matches starting off be BO5, and introduce a veto system rather than all pre-set maps . In fact, player responses to the actual tournament finals were very positive from the people I talked to (<3 MorroW). To the people who say, "the finals shouldn't just be a single elimination!" I'd like to say: Dreamhack playoffs are single elimination, MLG's playoffs are single elimination (except for the 4 winners of pool play), WCG playoffs are single elimination... etc. The only difference is that since these are LAN events, the stages leading up to the playoffs are played on site, while ours are played online. Ret, for example... didn't fly out to the NASL, play his first matches, and get eliminated. He played for 9 weeks in the regular season. PuMa played multiple matches for every single day in the week, against some of the top level non Korean and Korean players in the Open Tournament (which was single elimination), and then played in the finals... etc. Try to look at the season as a whole rather than the Finals as an isolated event, and it makes a lot more sense.



Overall, we feel very pleased with our first LAN event. We had some hiccups on the first day but largely sorted them out after that. Now, we are much more aware of the things than can and oftentimes do go wrong at LAN events. We will be using this experience to make sure that the problems are corrected for the Finals of Season 2, and promise that it will be an even better event than this one!



The Season



The basic format of our league is unlike anything anyone has really done on a big scale in Starcraft 2. We are really trying to have the format of an actual sports league. Every other event is a tournament, rather than an actual league. If you think about sports: who watches every single NBA game? Only the most die-hard fans. Most people, casual fans, will only watch the teams // players they prefer. Our goal for the NASL is similar. We believe that the number reach of Starcraft 2 and the number of fans is so great that this is a viable format, once people get used to it. Maybe we're wrong, but we will definitely be giving it more than 1 Season to see if it catches on more. We feel strongly that giving players a lot of time each week to prepare for their matches is good, for the players that care enough to do so. Take, for instance, DarkForcE, Boxer, and Sheth. Those are three players who I know specifically put in a lot of preparation for each NASL game. That preparation paid off, and all three of those players advanced to the Finals. Boxer and DarkForcE were considered by many to not be deserving of the league at the start, in terms of skill (Boxer of course... for his fame however)! But this season they showed people what preparation can do for you. We like the fact that the format is different from every other event, so we are planning on keeping a very similar format for next season.



Major issues with the season, are pretty well known to most at this point: walk overs. However, if you actually examine the number of walkovers versus the number of matches played it isn't so bad. Throughout the season and the playoffs, we actually played out 93% of the games. Only 7% of games in a three month long season were walk overs (14 total walk overs). That's pretty good, but we can make it better, and we're planning to. The security deposit seemed like not enough of a disincentive to not attend matches, so we'll be making some tweaks to that rule to try to create more pressure from teams and their managers to ensure their players are more responsible.



Further, two huge complaints we got before the season: "why do you make people be on teams?!" and "why do they need VISA's" were answered this season. Take PainUser and Strelok for example. PainUser was no a dysfunctional/team that died. He was the most problematic player in the league in terms of attendance. The reason we require teams is precisely to take care of this issue. A player in a team is much less likely to have other full time commitments that preclude him from playing in matches, a team is much more likely to ensure their player shows up on time by reminding them, etc. As for the VISA issue, Strelok showed us that this is a real problem that people face. We took one "risk player," and at the end of the day it turned out that he wasn't able to get the VISA on time. Next season, we're going to work with everyone to make sure that they have their VISA's before the season starts before we allow them to participate so we won't have this problem again



A big issue raised by players were the times (for the Koreans), and servers. We are working on strategies to alleviate this problem. However, both fans and players must understand that there is a reason for the way we do things. As for playing the matches live, this seems to be a strikingly better option than casting off replays. Replay casting requires much more policing of players. There is a reason it takes IPL so long to happen despite it being announced months ago. Because they cast from replays, players don't have as much incentive to play their matches on time. Casting from replays means players (or an admin + players) need to schedule match times themselves. Players (fact) are irresponsible and mostly lazy, even with huge prize pools. Leaving it up to them means that there will be delays. We had pre-set times so that the players knew every single week exactly when they had to play. The specific time varied slightly, but if I'm a player I know that "every single Monday between 1-3pm I need to be available for Starcraft matches." This is much more stable and consistent than having players arrange times themselves and replay cast.



Next: we will be attempting to get accounts on the Europe and Korean servers for ourselves (the casters and production crew) and players. This way we can much more easily have cross server playing. We want to be able to have Koreans play Koreans on the Korean server, Europeans play each other on EU, etc. This is a very realistic change that will hopefully be much better for players that we are working on .



Production & Stuff



This is obviously the area that had the most difficulties as people know. It would take a long time to explain a lot of our initial difficulties, so I won't do that. I will, however, say things that we are working on in order to make sure things are better right from the start in Season 2!



The first major problem was that our first editor was a little overwhelmed for the project. We initially thought one editor could handle everything we were trying to do. On top of that, he was making a lot of careless mistakes (which could be attributed to many different factors) that we had to constantly spend a lot of time fixing. For example, our owner slept at the studio many nights because we had to watch the broadcasts to check for errors, then have them fixed if we found any. This process takes an incredibly long time. Encoding 5 hour videos takes hours. As a result, in the beginning we simply didn't have the time to fix all the problems with broadcasts, despite the fact we knew about them.



We now have a very strong crew of four editors (instead of 1), who are industry professionals . They've now learned a lot about the work flow and have a solid rhythm down. We have a new graphic artist and video production guy (you saw his video to introduce the finals of MC vs PuMa, for example) who will be making the look and feel much better. We are very confident that Season 2 will not have the same problems that Season 1 did.



Stream & VODS



The biggest remaining issue is the VODS. This is one area that we need to improve on the most and I want to promise that we are going to look into ways to make archiving and access of our VODS more sensible and user friendly . This will happen during Season 2. We are also working on several options to get lower quality transcodes of VODs (I.E. having vods in 1080, 720, 640, 480, etc) for those who can't always handle 1080p VODS. This second issue is a bit more tricky, but we will be working on providing a solid solution for everyone.



We're aware of stream sound and lag issues. Again, all I can say about the first is that we will work on this and improve it. As for the second, there isn't much we can do outside of what we have done to try to prevent stream lag-- sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't.



What Else?



I personally enjoyed every moment of the ride that was NASL Season 1. It was tough, but we got through it and the final event was an absolute blast. I'm so happy I got to meet tons of people who enjoyed it, I'm happy I got to hear the cheers of people, and I was so happy to receive so many pleasant comments from players and casters at the event!



We're definitely aware that there were problems along the way. We're not perfect but I can promise everyone that we are motivated and improving daily. We hope that our regular season and Finals showcased this. We didn't start off great, but the end of the regular season was lightyears better than the beginning. The Finals started off rough, but ended with a bang. Know that we're going to ride this momentum and make sure that Season 2 is phenomenal.



Regardless of all the haters (even from prominent members of the community, which is pretty disappointing to me), we're going to keep plugging away. We won't lose faith or give up because all of us here believe in our vision. We started from nothing and put on a great show, especially considering that this was our first large scale event. I feel great right now



So I hope everyone enjoyed the season, and I look forward to putting on another great show Season 2. The last note I'd like to say is that: keep an open mind... the NASL is not like other events, give it a chance and it might grow on you!







Got Feedback?



If I didn't respond to a major criticism, if you have other big issues to raise... please do so. As always, I will listen to all constructive criticism. If you're just going to bash on our casters, our format, our event, our stream, etc -- then don't expect a response. Mindless hate is bad; even justified hate is bad if it isn't presented in a reasonable manner (telling me "fix your shitty stream, or... replace Gretorp!" isn't helpful). Pointing out obvious things like "get better booths next time," are on the list: believe me. If you are posting about it being a problem, we've already thought about it.



If there is something you think I overlooked in this post or want to talk about, I'm always free. So anyways. I hope you all enjoyed it and GL&HF!

Hey everyone, just want to say a big thank you to everyone who came out to the NASL Finals this past weekend! It was a truly great event and I'm so happy that everyone there seemed to be enjoying themselves. I'm going to be sharing my experiences from this event and from managing the league in general! I hope that it will be interesting for you all to read about sort of what goes on behind the scenes and whatnot, so enjoy! I'll be working backwards most of the time ~~Setting up was a ton of work. We broke down the studio on Tuesday, and had all of Wednesday and Thursday to set up, with doors supposed to be opening Friday at 10:00am. Set up was quite a task, we basically just had us in the studio in addition to the sound crew, some of the convention center staff, and two laborers we hired to help set up. Things were going nicely, if you remember This Blog and This Blog . The first problem occurred Thursday night, when the projectors were finally installed and raised to the rafters and we were going to test them out. Everything was fine, and then... the right projector broke. Totally not working. We scrambled to get a replacement, which came in Friday morning, and we had to rush to install it before the start.Another problem occurred with the projectors where they weren't sending packets they received (aka, problem projecting). We finally fixed that and got it working by the time stuff started Friday, but it was only a temporary solution (which is why only the feed from the capture computer came to the projector screens on Friday). This is the reason we repeated the "Journey to the Finals" videos on Saturday -- since the people in-house unfortunately didn't get to see them.The other major problem was the sound (although I was way too busy handling the tournament at that point and wasn't worrying about tech problems myself), which TheGunrun from Justin.tv knew how to fix. The only way to solve the problem was to turn off the stream, change some settings, and start it back. We made a conscious decision to wait until the break (halfway through the Ro16) to do that. In retrospect, it might have been a better idea to fix that immediately.As far as the delays go -- this was fairly standard for almost every LAN event, but luckily Saturday went MUCH more smoothly. Some delay problems were caused by (to name a few): Moon refusing to let our staff touch his mouse/keyboard and plug them in for him... Boxer accidentally tripping a power cord and shutting off his computer, DarkForcE changing the computer language into German and trying to install some obscure logitech mouse drivers, etc.This really was meant to be arather than a LAN event that most people are accustomed to seeing. The problem, as I see it, is that it didn't translate well to the stream viewer. The people on the stream didn't get to be involved in meet and greets, autograph/signing sessions, raffles, and HoN activities. Almost in between every match we had signings with pro players at different booths. Other spectators were watching players play in the warm up area, etc. There was a lot of stuff going on that really didn't get captured and put up on stream -- so the event, from a stream viewer's perspective, might have seemed a bit silly to go so long with so few games.As for the format: we feel like this format is okay.. In fact, player responses to the actual tournament finals were very positive from the people I talked to (<3 MorroW). To the people who say, "the finals shouldn't just be a single elimination!" I'd like to say: Dreamhack playoffs are single elimination, MLG's playoffs are single elimination (except for the 4 winners of pool play), WCG playoffs are single elimination... etc. The only difference is that since these are LAN events, the stages leading up to the playoffs are played, while ours are played. Ret, for example... didn't fly out to the NASL, play his first matches, and get eliminated. He played for 9 weeks in the regular season. PuMa played multiple matches for every single day in the week, against some of the top level non Korean and Korean players in the Open Tournament (which was single elimination), and then played in the finals... etc. Try to look at the season as a whole rather than the Finals as an isolated event, and it makes a lot more sense.Overall, we feel very pleased with our first LAN event. We had some hiccups on the first day but largely sorted them out after that.The basic format of our league is unlike anything anyone has really done on a big scale in Starcraft 2. We are really trying to have the format of an actual sports league. Every other event is a, rather than an actual league. If you think about sports: who watches every single NBA game? Only the most die-hard fans. Most people, casual fans, will only watch the teams // players they prefer. Our goal for the NASL is similar. We believe that the number reach of Starcraft 2 and the number of fans is so great that this is a viable format, once people get used to it. Maybe we're wrong, but we will definitely be giving it more than 1 Season to see if it catches on more. We feel strongly that giving players a lot of time each week to prepare for their matches is good, for the players that care enough to do so. Take, for instance, DarkForcE, Boxer, and Sheth. Those are three players who I know specifically put in a lot of preparation for each NASL game. That preparation paid off, and all three of those players advanced to the Finals. Boxer and DarkForcE were considered by many to not be deserving of the league at the start, in terms of skill (Boxer of course... for his fame however)! But this season they showed people what preparation can do for you. We like the fact that the format is different from every other event, so we are planning on keeping a very similar format for next season.Major issues with the season, are pretty well known to most at this point: walk overs. However, if you actually examine the number of walkovers versus the number of matches played it isn't so bad. Throughout the season and the playoffs, we actually played out 93% of the games. Only 7% of games in a three month long season were walk overs (14 total walk overs). That's pretty good, but we can make it better, and we're planning to. The security deposit seemed like not enough of a disincentive to not attend matches, soFurther, two huge complaints we got before the season: "why do you make people be on teams?!" and "why do they need VISA's" were answered this season. Take PainUser and Strelok for example. PainUser was no a dysfunctional/team that died. He was the most problematic player in the league in terms of attendance. The reason we require teams is precisely to take care of this issue. A player in a team is much less likely to have other full time commitments that preclude him from playing in matches, a team is much more likely to ensure their player shows up on time by reminding them, etc. As for the VISA issue, Strelok showed us that this is a real problem that people face. We took one "risk player," and at the end of the day it turned out that he wasn't able to get the VISA on time.A big issue raised by players were the times (for the Koreans), and servers. We are working on strategies to alleviate this problem. However, both fans and players must understand that there is a reason for the way we do things. As for playing the matches live, this seems to be a strikingly better option than casting off replays. Replay casting requires much more policing of players. There is a reason it takes IPL so long to happen despite it being announced months ago. Because they cast from replays, players don't have as much incentive to play their matches on time. Casting from replays means players (or an admin + players) need to schedule match times themselves. Players (fact) are irresponsible and mostly lazy, even with huge prize pools. Leaving it up to them means that there will be delays. We had pre-set times so that the players knew every single week exactly when they had to play. The specific time varied slightly, but if I'm a player I know that "every single Monday between 1-3pm I need to be available for Starcraft matches." This ismore stable and consistent than having players arrange times themselves and replay cast.Next: we will be attempting to get accounts on the Europe and Korean servers for ourselves (the casters and production crew) and players. This way we can much more easily have cross server playing. We want to be able to have Koreans play Koreans on the Korean server, Europeans play each other on EU, etc.This is obviously the area that had the most difficulties as people know. It would take a long time to explain a lot of our initial difficulties, so I won't do that. I will, however, say things that we are working on in order to make sure things are better right from the start in Season 2!The first major problem was that our first editor was a little overwhelmed for the project. We initially thought one editor could handle everything we were trying to do. On top of that, he was making a lot of careless mistakes (which could be attributed to many different factors) that we had to constantly spend a lot of time fixing. For example, our owner slept at the studio many nights because we had to watch the broadcasts to check for errors, then have them fixed if we found any. This process takes an incredibly long time. Encoding 5 hour videos takes hours. As a result, in the beginning we simply didn't have the time to fix all the problems with broadcasts, despite the fact we knew about them.. They've now learned a lot about the work flow and have a solid rhythm down.(you saw his video to introduce the finals of MC vs PuMa, for example) who will be making the look and feel much better. We are very confident that Season 2 will not have the same problems that Season 1 did.The biggest remaining issue is the VODS. This is one area that we need to improve on the most and I want to promise that. This will happen during Season 2. We are also working on several options to get lower quality transcodes of VODs (I.E. having vods in 1080, 720, 640, 480, etc) for those who can't always handle 1080p VODS.We're aware of stream sound and lag issues. Again, all I can say about the first is that we will work on this and improve it. As for the second, there isn't much we can do outside of what we have done to try to prevent stream lag-- sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't.I personally enjoyed every moment of the ride that was NASL Season 1. It was tough, but we got through it and the final event was an absolute blast. I'm so happy I got to meet tons of people who enjoyed it, I'm happy I got to hear the cheers of people, and I was so happy to receive so many pleasant comments from players and casters at the event!We're definitely aware that there were problems along the way. We're not perfect but I can promise everyone that we are motivated and improving daily. We hope that our regular season and Finals showcased this. We didn't start off great, but the end of the regular season was lightyears better than the beginning. The Finals started off rough, but ended with a bang. Know that we're going to ride this momentum and make sure that Season 2 is phenomenal.Regardless of all the haters (even from prominent members of the community, which is pretty disappointing to me), we're going to keep plugging away. We won't lose faith or give up because all of us here believe in our vision. We started from nothing and put on a great show, especially considering that this was our first large scale event. I feel great right nowSo I hope everyone enjoyed the season, and I look forward to putting on another great show Season 2. The last note I'd like to say is that:If I didn't respond to a major criticism, if you have other big issues to raise... please do so. As always, I will listen to all constructive criticism. If you're just going to bash on our casters, our format, our event, our stream, etc -- then don't expect a response. Mindless hate is bad; even justified hate is bad if it isn't presented in a reasonable manner (telling me "fix your shitty stream, or... replace Gretorp!" isn't helpful). Pointing out obvious things like "get better booths next time," are on the list: believe me. If you are posting about it being a problem, we've already thought about it.If there is something you think I overlooked in this post or want to talk about, I'm always free. So anyways. I hope you all enjoyed it and GL&HF! twitter.com/xerislight -- follow me~~