Congratulations, esoc

[Dolan]

I have a great audio setup, great internet too, and I could reinstall the game if you need just a caster, but my current PC doesn't have great graphics, so I couldn't be a camera guy.
That's the best I could do, if you need a contributor.

[Snuden]

Hold them by gun point if you have to, because you will have to.

Or better yet tell them Dolan said they must cast >:(

I can count the pr 35+ casters on one hand and also the casters who stream in 1080 on one hand. Well, we got 1.00 + (31/35) = 1.89 out of 2.00 (94%) this finals for you.

Well, I heard some high-level players complain about this.. that's why I mentioned it. I guess if they complain about it but they don't want to help with casting, we (including them) kind of deserve our fate.

Rest assured media team tried their best given the awkward scheduling of the finals due to some sudden irl conflicts of the players.

Yeah BTDT and it sucks.

You're a big boy, maybe you should ask casters to cast. You'll probably do a better job!.

Idk, it's kind of an opportunity for them to showcase their insight into strats and gameplay. But if they have a shitty setup or have some kind of apprehension towards doing it, they might balk at using that opportunity.

PS: did you have me muted or did you hear when I explained Mitoe's thought process which led him to quickly scout Sioux's proxy base? He even complimented me after rewatching for catching it
[spoiler=ss][/spoiler]

I don't think I have anyone muted. I wouldn't suspect Mitoe of using maphack, if I said anything to that effect, I was probably memeing.
But some other players' movements are suspicious, yeah.

She was looking for a "WHAAU! - Well spotted!"

User was banned for this post.

[Dolan]

To me, it is slightly more important that a large playerbase is engaged in what competitive aoe3 is like and is inspired to try to also become more proficient in the game than that it is important to provide the optimal competitive environment to top players

Yeah, sure, different people watch tourneys or participate for different reasons. But it's kinda the standard thing to do in any pro tourney: make sure players are playing in the best conditions (ie, no lag, at least).

In the end, I'm not even sure how beneficial the tournaments are to the top players: ego wars intensify somewhat, people don't want to give out strats during tournament games a lot and end up playing on smurfs or just not at all. It's hard to directly point towards the importance of the competitive environment of a tournament with sheer facts, and there's surely both benefits and negative sides. That being said, it seems like an extreme sacrifise to content to put up these restrictions on casters. You're probably not even remotely aware of how limited the caster pool is. I am convinced it is not actually possible to make sure EU casters cast EU games and NA casters cast NA games, not to mention the NA vs EU match ups. Two casters might surely make the lag worse, but it never ends up being too bad to be honest. Lag is part of all games, even all practise games, and thus doesn't affect the competitive environment that badly. Generally, I'd find it hard to point at casters that directly cause lag.

Players can cause lag too, quite often, but then they can't blame it on casters, if organisation is good. Yeah, I know, things are precarious since it's a ded gam.

When the media team was just recently founded we tested how casting over skype screenshare or just based of what someone is saying is possible, but it turned out that really didn't work one bit. I'd say it could be viable to have just one caster too, but not for all casters. Some casters in the current pool definitely need someone that guides them a bit through the strategic side of casting, and I think a fair share of them would detest solocasting and not really manage to fill all of the game with casting. Overall, there's no good solution to the problem. If you want to cast games, you will have lag, and if you want the best casters possible you'll have more lag. It's a tradeoff, but the lag is rarely actually bad and I personally think the value of a good cast cannot be overstated.

IMO, ESOC should always strive for the holy trinity: good image, good commentary and good gameplay. Or the best compromise that doesn't cause lag.

[Cometk]

@Snuden You've warranted a day ban. You've been told multiple times to stop and received a hard warning for it just last week, and yet you chose to continue harassing. I don't want to see that anymore when you come back.

[gamevideo113]

I agree with jerom that the most important aspect of tournament games being casted is to involve the community, otherwise you could just upload the recs and leave them there for those who want to see them. But this is exactly why i think that the occasional low level of the casters should not be a huge deal. Obviously we all like when the casters can provide a nice insightful commentary but imo the priority should be entertainment. If i had to choose I'd prefer a pr 25 caster that can create some hype and shows excitement without doing build order analysis rather than a pr 45 that explains everything in a boring way and focuses on minimalistic details that probably the average viewer doesn't even care about. I am thankful to those who invest their time into casting/organizing these events because in the end they are keeping this community alive.

[momuuu]

To me, it is slightly more important that a large playerbase is engaged in what competitive aoe3 is like and is inspired to try to also become more proficient in the game than that it is important to provide the optimal competitive environment to top players

Yeah, sure, different people watch tourneys or participate for different reasons. But it's kinda the standard thing to do in any pro tourney: make sure players are playing in the best conditions (ie, no lag, at least).

This is clearly not a standard tournament. It's not a pro tournament, and the resources are hard to compare to almost any game. So then, what is the point of this argument?

Show hidden quotes

In the end, I'm not even sure how beneficial the tournaments are to the top players: ego wars intensify somewhat, people don't want to give out strats during tournament games a lot and end up playing on smurfs or just not at all. It's hard to directly point towards the importance of the competitive environment of a tournament with sheer facts, and there's surely both benefits and negative sides. That being said, it seems like an extreme sacrifise to content to put up these restrictions on casters. You're probably not even remotely aware of how limited the caster pool is. I am convinced it is not actually possible to make sure EU casters cast EU games and NA casters cast NA games, not to mention the NA vs EU match ups. Two casters might surely make the lag worse, but it never ends up being too bad to be honest. Lag is part of all games, even all practise games, and thus doesn't affect the competitive environment that badly. Generally, I'd find it hard to point at casters that directly cause lag.

Players can cause lag too, quite often, but then they can't blame it on casters, if organisation is good. Yeah, I know, things are precarious since it's a ded gam.

no amount of organisation can spawn casters out of thin air, can it?

Show hidden quotes

When the media team was just recently founded we tested how casting over skype screenshare or just based of what someone is saying is possible, but it turned out that really didn't work one bit. I'd say it could be viable to have just one caster too, but not for all casters. Some casters in the current pool definitely need someone that guides them a bit through the strategic side of casting, and I think a fair share of them would detest solocasting and not really manage to fill all of the game with casting. Overall, there's no good solution to the problem. If you want to cast games, you will have lag, and if you want the best casters possible you'll have more lag. It's a tradeoff, but the lag is rarely actually bad and I personally think the value of a good cast cannot be overstated.

IMO, ESOC should always aim for the holy trinity: good image, good commentary and good gameplay. Or the best compromise that doesn't cause lag.

The holy trinity can't be achieved. There's simply a tradeoff between playing circumstances and content, in reality, and it'd be a bad compromise to ignore content for minimal lag.

[LegalPenguin]

If I may add something to the debate: Any game casted > no game casted, even if the caster(s) aren't your favourite. Something that could improve the casting in general is having guidelines for the casters (which the media team probably already provides). I remember some games where @Radix_Lecti was so focussed on having conversation, he missed a lot of stuff that the viewers would like to have seen, but he is fairly new and can't be blamed. I imagine it's very difficult. I mean, having the skill to give an in depth analysis, be interesting, focus meanwhile on talking in a foreign language and have everything on camera is just hard.

Practice makes perfect, so give constructive feedback.
(Video quality, camera focusing, installing UI, talking with your co-host instead of just both commentating, practice oral skills to sound warm and enjoyable like a good cup of coffee on a Sunday morning, ...)

I'm certain that the next AoE Championship, which will be on worldwide television, will be commentated by our most beloved casters in the highest quality possible!

[dietschlander]

would like to mention that I do like Radexs' melowness and the fun hes having I'm having, same feeling as a WickedCossack cast

btw, @Radix_Lecti would like to ask a question; you're asking god or God a lot of his or His oppinion.
If you mean Him, kindly leave Him out of it, if you mean god, kindly use his name: Garja (or Tom)

[Garja]

The most important aspect of a tourney is to prove who's the best. Otherwise you can just host a showmatch.

[momuuu]

The most important aspect of a tourney is to prove who's the best. Otherwise you can just host a showmatch.

A tournament is more fun to watch than a random showmatch. It's also more fun to play in than to play in a showmatch, and it's easier to get to play in a tournament rather than in a random showmatch. By the existance of these statements, it's impossible to reach your conclusion; your conclusion is but an opinion unless you are to disregard the original statements as false. But the original statements themselves are simply an opinion, and thus cannot be considered false. In other words, you just presented an opinion as a fact.

[Garja]

Those statements don't deny my statement, which is a mere fact. Those statements are opinions.

[momuuu]

If a tournament has multiple aspects, then on basis of what exactly, other than opinion, can one deduce the most important aspect of a tournament?

[gamevideo113]

I can agree that the most important purpose of a tourney is to prove who is the best, but the most important purpose of casting tournament games is to entertain the community. It should be a priority unless casting hinders in some way the tournament games. Honestly though, getting lag free games is impossible, there isn't a really good reaosn to blame he casters for the lag imo.

[Garja]

If a tournament has multiple aspects, then on basis of what exactly, other than opinion, can one deduce the most important aspect of a tournament?

By the fact that a tourney has a final prize while a showmatch has none.

I can agree that the most important purpose of a tourney is to prove who is the best, but the most important purpose of casting tournament games is to entertain the community. It should be a priority unless casting hinders in some way the tournament games. Honestly though, getting lag free games is impossible, there isn't a really good reaosn to blame he casters for the lag imo.

Surely entertaining is the main purpose of casting. That's why a good caster doesn't necessarily have great game knowledge (even though I personally prefer that).
Lag free is not possible over P2P but almost lag free can be possible. I agree it's not about blaming the caster but rather blaming the number of casters imo.
Honestly, if we ever find a way to play recorded games properly just like a live game that would be ideal.

[momuuu]

I for one would not say that the most important purpose of a tournament is to prove who is best, for what purpose does proving who is best serve? At best, we can settle ego wars. I would argue that the most important purpose of a tournament is to bring entertainment to the table. The most important thing though is that it can be argued, thus making garja's statement simply an opinion.

It can of course be considered as well known that garja does not understand the difference between fact and opinion. Then one should wonder, what purpose to my posts here have? I would argue it brings entertainment to the table.

[momuuu]

If a tournament has multiple aspects, then on basis of what exactly, other than opinion, can one deduce the most important aspect of a tournament?

By the fact that a tourney has a final prize while a showmatch has none.

So anything that has a final prize has as most important aspect to determine who is best? This is then a defining characteristic of anything that has a final prize? So, if I were to award a prize on giving a crucial tip in a murder investigation, then the ultimate goal of this is to determine what the best tip is? I'd say that it is evident that this prize is rewarded with the ultimate goal to solve the murder investigation, not to determine what the best tip was. Then, if you accept this conclusion, your initial premise has been falsified, as having a final prize does not deductively mean that the most important aspect of it is to determine who is the best given that there's an example where this clearly does not hold true.

[Garja]

dafuq are youtalking about. We are talking about a game where players are in competition with each other. There is no competition in solving a murder case. Tourneys are held to determine who's the best at something. Period. That's the unique charateristic of a tourney and therefore the most important. If enterteinament was the main purpose then a showmatch would do it as well.

[edeholland]

How would that do just as well? A tournament is more exciting to watch because players are trying harder. This is because of the fame and because of the prize money. The tournaments are not made to figure out who is the best, if we would wanna know that, we could just have a monthly BO7 between all the top 16 players, and not have any earlier rounds at all.

Why would we even have any casting if the goal was just to find out who is best? I think the goal for ESOC and her tournaments it's to create an Age of Empires 3 community, finding out who it the best is not nearly as important as keeping people interested for Age of Empires 3.

[Garja]

How would that do just as well? A tournament is more exciting to watch because players are trying harder. This is because of the fame and because of the prize money.

Correct.

The tournaments are not made to figure out who is the best, if we would wanna know that, we could just have a monthly BO7 between all the top 16 players, and not have any earlier rounds at all.

Wrong. Players wouldnt try as hard because there would be no incentive. At the same time there wouldnt be something that really legitimate the outcome.
Then again, if we assume that those requirments would be met even without a prize then yes a bo7 among top16 players would be a tourney and therefore a tourney = a competition to figure out who's best. Again, there is no casting and no entertainment necessarily involved.

Why would we even have any casting if the goal was just to find out who is best? I think the goal for ESOC and her tournaments it's to create an Age of Empires 3 community, finding out who it the best is not nearly as important as keeping people interested for Age of Empires 3.

As said previously, casting is for entertainment. You can have a tourney without casting, in fact.
Anyway, this is all very trivial.
The confusion only comes from the fact that in ESOC tourneys the sponsors are by far the main stakeholder, completely financing the tourney. This is in accordance with the model "by the community for the community". The drawback is that the tourney loses in legitimacy as players become less of a stakeholder due to their interest of playing in the best conditions put in 2nd place.
One way to re-equilibrate the interests would be to make ESOC self-substainable with some sort of income to partially finance tourneys.
Another way could be an entry fee.

Oh by the way, all of this raises a question. If entertainment is the main purpose of ESOC tourneys, wouldn't be just better to split the money prize among more events? For sure it would be a more efficient use of donators' money?
I believe there is a foundamental discrepancy between what was the initial intent and the actual output of ESOC tourneys.

[Dolan]

Yeah, I have to agree with Garja here. This is like the "invisible hand" argument in economics. Good gameplay and high viewership come from having lots of good players battling it out to prove who's the best. The objective of getting lots of community members together to have fun watching something exciting is a side effect of the "free market" forces at work. That is, players competing in order to prove who's the best and win the prize pot.

High level players aren't just playing for the sake of the community, they play for incentives.

Of course, as a tourney organiser, your first concern is how to make your product exciting, so you want good gameplay, longer series with lots of comebacks, good casting, good image quality, that can keep viewers glued to their seats.

If you don't have that, you're not going to have donors, and so, not enough incentives for future tourneys. Which will, in turn, affect the quality of participation and gameplay.

[Snuden]

@Snuden You've warranted a day ban. You've been told multiple times to stop and received a hard warning for it just last week, and yet you chose to continue harassing. I don't want to see that anymore when you come back.

I was endorsing gender fluidity.

[MCJim]

It's interesting to see how we got where we did. The first spring was amazing, with great casters too and lots of viewers for the finals. Then the next summer was a disaster, we switched to esoctv, there were lots of random streams at like 360p with bad mic quality, random casters, no announcements, no structure, nothing. The finals got like 200 viewers I think. Then the media team came into existance. It started out with simple goals: smoothly covert casts to youtube (Jim's task) and set a new stream standard (mostly me and bram I think). The latter we did by forcing 1080p on our stream only, by only having announced streams every week that were at least 2 series long and to add newsposts to follow the tourney's story. The idea was that quarantueing a certain quality of stream makes the notification "ESOCTV has gone live" valuable. Someone that sees that notification knows what is going to be on the stream, and then will be more likely to respond to it and start watching. If it's also possible that there's just some random games or low quality stream or whatever someone doesn't like as much, then one won't respond to that notification as much.

[...]

That's how I see the recent developments. Don't know if there's an easy fix. I'd love seeing newsposts come back, have fewer random streams with just a game (honestly just go back to mostly weekend games) with more games in a row, have much shorter stream time in advance (you have a 1.5 hour stream that you start up more than an hour in advance sometimes), and try to at least reach out to higher level players that could be decent casters. Also, it'd be nice if the youtube games sorta kept up with the tournament so that people that can't watch that many streams (like myself) can easily catch up with the tournament. Right now, the RO16 games only come online when it's like the semifinals. At that point, 80% of the series at least have been spoiled for me, so I end up not watching those either.

I do have to say that your post is very good. This is the first time I seem to understand the way your are thinking, so thank you.

My biggest concern during the Autumn tournament was the diversity of casters. The diversity was actually non-existent. It has been a long time since we've had such a small pool of casters. It was barely comparable with Spring 2017 and I'm still surprised it decreased so much. Often there were just no other option than letting the same casters cast over and over again. Well, in fact there is another option but that means no stream at all. To me that isn't an option and I won't ever say "hey, let's not stream this one, otherwise we get this caster again." No, that's just not how I want to work. I do see the urgent task of making the experience better for upcoming tournaments. My goal is to maximize the casting pool again to have our nice diversity of casters again. One of the things I'm planning to do is to talk to litterally every caster to see if this person is still interested in casting. I'll say that it is recommended to be active in the ESOC Casting Discord and if he/she permanently wants to quit casting, he/she will be removed. So overall, a more personal approach. We've never done this, but I think it's needed to expect more commitment from the casters next time. Also if you, or anyone, has ideas to attract more casters I'm very interested.

Another change I do want to invest in is the 2 series per stream rule. I made this rule to ensure a quality stream which is worth tuning in, but the rule is actually no longer being followed. We have to pay more attention to our scheduling, so we can make sure there are at least 2 series without too much downtime.

I also agree that the stream is live too long before the actual series starts. I'd like to bring under attention to the casters that 30 minutes is enough.

Regarding news posts, I feel like we are doing okay. Montcalm is our newest addition to the team and while we probably had a slow start-up, he's now fully here and makes awesome posts. I do also want to point out that our team has been very different every time. Chrisie and Jakey were added around May/June 2017, Jakey left and Xeelee was added even later. Last Autumn tournament was their first real tournament where they had to perform their tasks. I feel like the team is now settled and our experience is growing again. I hope we can do better next tournament, but remember that it always keeps depending on the people we have in store. Too less manpower always means a decrease of the quality.

[_H2O]

Why can’t it serve both purposes. It seems to me a tournament provides entertainment. Some of the entertainment even comes from seeing people strive to earn the title of being the best. It also allows people to prove their skills. Humans like watching people perform at the top level. That’s why people watch speed runs or impressive magic tricks. By the very virtue of being the best you are more entertaining.

[pecelot]

As for me, I choose Chrisie over Kaiserklein all day long

[fightinfrenchman]

Personally I prefer when there are two casters and they have some chemistry/are just generally enjoyable to listen to. Game knowledge is not always all that interesting