''RoarForMe'' | H2 · @H2WhoAreYou
2nd Nov 2017 from TwitLonger
Final Boss - Personal Retrospective on our Pokken Grass Roots Major
Overall I think Final Boss was an incredible event to be at. Aside from all the talent and the international talent of which we had 6 players travel from Japan, 1 from Canada, and 1 from Germany, there was also plenty of incredible experiences beyond the tournament. So much of the community was able to visit Manhattan (shout outs to Rokso), enjoy a variety of foods and meals together, and just chill out getting to know each other even better.
I won't gush for too long about this, but I definitely recommend participating in LAN events with the community. If the opportunity presents itself and you're willing to try and engage yourself with other people it's a great experience, and not only is there the opportunity to meet new people, see familiar faces, and have a good time, but I'm always learning more about myself at events where the community comes together.
We had one minor hiccup with the dinner on the final day, and we were fortunate that everything worked out. It still may be a good idea to coordinate with the local players in the future and have things like this firmly planned ahead of time. It was still delicious and a great time and the restaurant was amazing for accommodating us. Shout outs to Dinosaur BBQ.
There were still problems with the live event though. Venue air flow and air conditioning was not well done. The air got a bit uncomfortable though bearable. This is something TOs should make sure is done well going forward. Competitive environments can be high stress and environmental factors such as a hot venue aren't ideal.
One other problem we knew about ahead of time was the side event for 3v3s was changed, because we couldn't run it the way we expected in LAN and this led to uncertainty in what the rules of the event were. Everyone thought at first it was double elimination because that was what was advertised as far as I'm aware, but then during the event it turns out it was single elimination. To make things more confusing on day two when the event completed top 4 was done as a double elimination bracket. Not that there's a problem with running it this way, it was simply confusing without clear communication ahead of time about the rules. Another thing is that usually players are character locked in the style that the tournament was being run, however, it was unclear that players weren't character locked. Clear communication and follow through ahead of time and clear communication on rule changes for the tournament would help make it so everything is understood. Just something to make sure of going forward.
That said, due to things that were both controllable and things that become uncontrollable once the event got started, I felt really bad about the stream experience in several instances.
First and foremost, the venue internet had issues. There were two problems here. One was controllable prior to the event. On day 1 with the internet that was provided the venue's network couldn't handle the streams that were going. As a result two streams couldn't be run simultaneously and they dropped and went off multiple times. So the impact to the viewers was that the stream count was reduced to one stream and the stream quality was I believe reduced to 30 frames per second. The controllable part of this was that it would have been possible to know ahead of time if the venue provided network could handle what production was setting out to do by testing or checking ahead of time or even prior to the venue's selection. No use in crying over spilled milk though, it was what it was, and the production crew adapted and made due.
Secondly, mother nature came in and did a number on the venue internet during day 2. Nothing can be said about this, as this is strictly out of everyone's control. With how far in advance things can be planned and how unpredictable weather can be, there's just nothing to say here. Shout outs though to Shippo and Allister for immediately and without hesitation using their phone's to live stream from twitter.
Also stream related is that the sound configuration on the stream and recording setups was not done in an intuitive way for the players and production. Headphones were not provided on these setups, so when players would plug their headphones in, they would do it into the Nintendo Switch. This caused sound to go out for stream production. There was also not enough room in the back of the monitors for players to plug into. Fortunately this was later resolved during the tournament with different splitters. Going forward we learned that we need to have free auxilary ports that won't cut sound off too the stream or we need to have head phones provided on the stream setups.
A small thing that wouldn't normally be noticed but should be called out is that unfortunately due to the internet confusion the caster schedule fell apart. More than that though I don't think production actually knew what the caster schedule actually was, only the casters seemed to have any idea. Even with both of these issues, people made due, but this seems like a very simple thing to resolve going forward. Make sure that the caster schedule is properly done, and also communicated properly to those doing production.
Something else caster related. It was challenging to deal with interruptions while live and mid cast. Interruptions by production and organizers even. Additionally the production monitor we were looking at didn't have the view of what was being sent to stream, so I was without context of what was being shown to the viewers the entirety of the event. Also in the future it would be helpful to give queues to the casters. In this case production couldn't talk to us without interrupting us, because they didn't have a feed into our headsets, but a solution for this is to communicate a queue for going to break then once the ads are up start talking to the casters as needed. As a caster it's my job to entertain the stream. That's my responsibility to the viewers. It's also my responsibility to present our community as best as I possibly can. I felt handicaped at times during this event because of some of these things.
I know this was a grassroots tournament, but we've put on excellent quality production with less and at smaller events. It's something that can definitely be improved upon, but it's not something that was overall negative. Production was still there and people were able to view and be entertained from the feedback I've gotten so far.
Again overall this event was amazing. I don't bring up this retrospective to be critical, I bring it up so we can learn and do better going forward. I think we should try to find a stream production savvy member of our community that we can work with to come up with a plan or list of things we want to make sure are properly accounted for. A plan, list, or person to help coordinate with TOs and Event Organizers so we can make sure we have our "I"s dotted and our "T"s crossed.
Shout outs to everyone who made all this happen. It was an incredible experience as I said. I can't say thanks enough to people like Johnny, Rokso, Whitey, Shippo, Oreo, EDD, Sai, that one dude doing production on the other setup, Burnside, Fumu, Allister, Midori, Frankie, Kenny, and so many more. Thank you all. I'll see you at the next event.