Malammoth, my problem with noobs going so far into the tournament was not because they went far into the tournament, but because many regulars performed miserably and overall level of the games was low in 1vs1 tournament. In general new people going far in the tournament is a good thing attracting new participantw and viewers, but not at the cost of quality. I certainly do not have a problem with new people joining. And I don't quite understand what do you mean by being harsh on beginners... the opposite being what exactly? Not pointing out mistakes and treating every play as equally good? In any case if we get a regular commentator I will be more than happy to pass the commentator role to someone else, I recently clocked in on ~80 hours of commentary overall, which is 2 weeks of full-time job...

Szew - ok. then i misunderstood you. i agree, the "regulars" performed very poor in the last one. :) As for harsh - yeah.. it was probably a wrong word to describe what i meant.. All i meant was that sometimes you just laugh and say that something was played "fu#@#$% bad" without explaining what exactly was wrong. Of course me and you, and probably even most of the average players will know what have been done bad in an instant, but obviously people who have done those mistakes could not. (I know you often do explain even the most basic mistakes, but i do feel you sometimes don't where i think you should) I do appreciate your hard work, and that you put so much time and effort into this. Like i said - you are a very valuable commentator. if not the most..

Malamouth i have never played a live tourney since i don't have time or am not online when they happen.

in that case sorry Ironheart, but you have no idea about those.. as i said - in my opinion it's more of a learning opportunity for the community than a competitive arena.. (applicable to lolowut's* livestreamed tournaments of course, not all live tourneys)

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* or should i say mythonian's livestreamed tournaments in recent situation..?

I felt sorry for Timinator and Mala. They were glued to theirccomputers for a long time waiting for the bad players to kill each other before they could move on to their next game. In Mala's case, he didn't really have a good opponent until the finals. So he had to wait around for hours to get a good game.

This will discourage good players from joining. They might find their time better spent doing something else. Or they might not have the time to wait around watching bad players kill each other off and not join. If I arranged a tournament with 56 AIs and 8 good players, would that be better than one with 8 good players?

Easy solution if Fizzer wants to get bad players hooked on his 1v1 ME and help them improve: make maximum winning % prereqs so 2 live tournaments could happen: max 49% (1v1 ME with training wheels) and min 50% (for winners).

Qi - you might be right, but only partially - there were players like gnuffone, hhh, luxis, falker etc but somehow they all have lost their games.. this last 1v1 LST was weird.. And once again - i think it's a great way to teach people on their own mistakes, and if the noobs are (with some amount of luck) able to win games again better players, then i have nothing against.. it's not like they were all just cannon fodders looking at who was defeated by them... But as i said - i partially agree with you, that's why i suggested fizzer should invite players over some threshold of stats.. now that i think of it, prereqs which i wrote initially could be a bit to low, but not much i guess to encourage people to play.. and an additional not prerequisited invite for the stream alone would be great..

Agree with Qi point here.
Livestreamed Tournament 1v1 #27, the first one enlarged I think - I had my first real game was in 4th round (1st one bye, two later ones boots). That wasn't entertaining at all.

there were players like gnuffone, hhh, luxis, falker etc but somehow they all have lost their games

I think good players don't focus that much in games against random players they never heard about.
And I think it's quite discouraging if you see you will have 1st notable opponent in round 4th or so.

I think you guys need to decide, amongst yourselves, what you want, before you go ahead and make these tournaments.

If you want the n00bs, like myself, to join, then that's fine - I'm happy to come along and join - it's a good learning curve, and I enjoyed the experience. However, the (general) reaction, both throughout the tournament, and then in this thread, kinda puts me off joining another..

Their seems to be an "elitism" problem within the community here, where only the very best are welcome in the tournament. To a degree, I understand that attitude - the best games are when you play against people your own standard, regardless of your ability, but if that's the case, if you think n00bs waste your time, then fine, but don't invite them, and don't advertise it - make it an invite only event. Don't make it 128 people, encouraging anybody & everybody to join, and then moan when they do play, and beat the better players..

they dont care about certain people, just get annoyed when people 1. are noobs that boot right at the direct boot timer, and 2. when all the games are boring

@Major Risk/Gnuffone, yes, the time is wrong. I was doing it from the East timezone instead of Central. xD

@Hedja, the templates were said in the OP as being 1v1 Strategic and 2v2 Strategic. I did say we'd use the build-in ones, but ended up changing that last minute. Sorry about that.

@Malammoth, we had planned on that, but instead of 15 minutes gave the regulars 5 or so minutes to join. We'll extend it a bit next time to let more of the regulars join, and we'll definitely have some prerequisites.

@x (nosy), sure, we can analyze more games from non-regulars/beginners.

@Qi, good point, but we aren't trying to make ultra-competitive tournaments. These were meant to be more casual from the beginning, and we attracted the attention of the pros over time.

@Widzisz, I think that boots from inactive people are the biggest problem with opening it up to the public. That should be the main prerequisite we use. I am fine with having newer players and beginners playing, as long as they're active.

@Dom, I fully plan to continue opening this to the public for newer players to have a chance to get more involved in things. There are many other events/tournaments/leagues that focus on the best of the best, and as Malammoth said letting it be a learning opportunity for people is a big reason these livestreamed tournaments were started in the first place.


The thread for this weekend's events will be posted Wednesday afternoon.

focused content: tv/radio/youtbe programs tend to have content that is focused. having more focused tournaments and commentary would make your content more focused and keep viewers tuned in.

focused commentary: leveling students is what teachers do in the classroom. i don't want to watch someone dissect the moves of two bad players. others do. to have one tournament do both in the same video will not please everyone at all times. having two tournaments with focused commentary (one commentary that is more instructional, one that is more casual) would please more people. (1) bad players/learners can see their games and/or learn more. (2) better players can have more fun and see better games.

wasted time: if timi has to waste 1-3 hours playing bad players before he gets a real game, is it worth his time? 50%+ prereqs are not ultra-competitive. they are simply a way to save people's time and provide two tournaments and more focused commentary.

If we can get another host or if my schedule clears up, then having two separate tournaments would be fine. However, at the moment we can barely have one.

Saturday is the only day I have enough time to do a full tournament, so with the limited time and opportunities we have, I figure finding some compromise between the two is best.

Once my schedule clears up next month or if we can find another person able to host livestreams consistently, then I would fully support the idea of separate tournaments, as it sounds like a cool idea.

i agree with x that in the early rounds you should probably focus more on covering games from unknown players and use those for basic strategy tips. reviewing games where more notable players have lost against unknowns also makes sense. but you should leave the reviews of the famous players clashing each other for the quarter finals.

like mala said i understand where szew is coming from, you learn more by analysing pro games, not noobs making basic mistakes, but atleast in the beggining of the live stream, where most of the noobs who lost are watching, you should probably make an effort to explain those basic flaws and be a little more forgiving. sze's commentating on horrible mistakes is actually entertaining but probably not so for the guys who feel those errors were legit. i think with a slight more attention to that detail you could easily make those comments more fun for everyone. you can still say those picks were f#$&$# horrible as long as you properly explain why.

and i agree with mala and Gui that the call should invite more notable players first and only 10 or 15 minutes later announced it to public. having some prerequisits like 300 games played, 10% boot and 40% 1v1 win also seems like the best solution to make sure the folks who are in are all dedicated in trying to win.

that being said, making the live stream tournament more of an elite only thing is clearly bad. it would push people away from participating and watching.

ps, btu sometimes you get games between the two best players in the first round if they get unlucky. e.g. HHH vs Timinator, you wouldn't not (double negative :O) go over that and go over 3 noob games.

Also I think the better the quality of the game the more interesting it is for the commentators, who if not get bored of saying the same things. e.g. why is he attacking a wasteland (depends on how nooby the players are)

The main reason people want better players, is because they are much less likely to get booted and let everyone down.

well I think this is all just a great idea and there have been some good points brought up namely the idea of ratio between pro and newer players. I might have some suggestions though.

When organizing the brackets have more experienced players at the top and newer players in a separate lower bracket and after the initial rounds they can then merge.

The advantage to this setup is you can more easily focus on a storyline while hosting the live event.

Notable players will quickly line up for matches that would be fun to watch and then you can have someone skimming the other games to find some diamonds in the rough so to speak. as a story line develops in the lower bracket a clear winner will rise out of it and could be the underdog so to speak to get people to root for similar to how russel Wilson of the seattle seahawks was so popular last year because he was such a late round pick out of the draft. eventually you have a david vs goliath situation that would be really intruiging to watch.

The drawback to this setup would be that the semifinals of the top bracket could be viewed as a true championship of sorts much like how the SEC is so dominant in college football which could have a negative effect on the viewership but the pros out weigh the cons in my opinion.

If you need any help let me know what I can do this sounds like a lot of fun.

hedja: i'm not saying they should ignore games with obvious good players completely, just that they shouldnt prioritize them on the first rounds. if they notice a game where a good player lost to an unknown, that's likely to be a game worth watching for example. And a clash worthy of a final like HHH vs Timinator would also qualify as worthy to check out. But if there are none of those games available, pick random unknowns.

Also, sometimes when watching the stream i find it would be nice to be able to speed up on some games that are clearly going nowhere interesting and use that time to cover one more game. Or just skip to first turn and comment on the picks they got directly instead of doing the whole possible strategies analysis thing. Not for all games, only for those that might not be as interesting.

I agree, a higher and lower tier tournament would be best. You'd have to do both on the same stream though, I don't see how to get around that.

Also agree that there is fat to be cut from the streams, probably why Coffee Breaks were the best, Lolo would do the prep on the analysis of the ladder games and he could cut to the interesting parts. There's no easy way to do this though, it seems to be a issue with the format.

Hedja:

the better the quality of the game the more interesting it is for the commentators

That's true, but you miss the point, because it's not most important for it to be fun for commentators, but for viewers. And as it is meant to help people improve (especially the below average), then repeating the same advise each week is inevitable to some extent...

MR. Jaberwochy - Your idea is not possible with what limited tools warlight gives the host. But it sort of is the same to hosting two tournaments which was proposed by Gui. And i agree it would be good in terms of teaching basic gameplay based on one tournament, with separate stream, and teaching advanced to expert gameplay based on another tournament, but as mythonian said - it would require another host of the stream.

ps - skipping the picking stage is not a bad idea provided that picking strategies and how picks work will be covered in other games, since as many agree this is for many games the most important factor..

skipping the picking stage is not a bad idea provided that picking strategies and how picks work will be covered in other games, since as many agree this is for many games the most important factor..

yes, everyone agrees that being able to analyse the map well and picking carefully is a very big part of the game. but certain games could easily be skipped to turn 1 and only go back to check some details (if a certain combo was missed, if a certain player knows about the others positioning). in some cases skipping that first map analysis and all the searching for where the picks are actually located would probably save up to 5 minutes of talk that would be better used commenting on more important games later on.