[Baldie]

Community,

Here is your best opportunity to give feedback on any aspect of the 2013 season. The core ACL team will be going away to spend a few days in the coming month to discuss this year and what we want to do and achieve in 2014. We value your feedback greatly be it positive or constructively negative. What you say could have a significant impact on how the Australian Cyber League looks in 2014.

We are looking for feedback on..

• Online Rounds
• Offline Events
• Tournament Format
• Spectator Experience
• Competitor Experience
• Streaming Experience
• Community Interaction

.. and any other feedback you can think of!

[Stallion]

from watching streams theres a lot of downtime in both Sc2 and LoL, id suggest saving games and casting them between series or something til the next match is ready. Maybe have more casters to accomplany this

Quick Comments

syfCrimson:

As ever, I agree with the mighty Stallywaggle

[syfRize]

Viewer perspective for me -
I watched as much of ACL's Sc2 broadcast as I could, and...

Good stuff;
- Casting was absolutely fantastic!
- Games were entertaining and the quality of which to view them was excellent.
- Pezz and Pet sitting next to eachother, they're so cute.

Bad stuff;
- The downtime, as was mentioned in a previous post. (Perhaps prepare highlight reels or interview clips for extended breaks?)
- The internet issues, but I know it was most likely out of your power so it is fine, I just think it may have upset some players.
- During downtime I was not a fan of watching the LoL and CoD areas.

[Bav]

All the starcraft streaming was awesome, so no complaints there.
Only thing I would like to see is BF4 in the mix (:

[syfSoundwave]

I dunno how feasible it is but try and get more content apart from just pure games on the ACLPro channel. I'd be interested in seeing recaps, interviews and all sorts of other things on there.

Also, maybe try and arrange for an off-site stream, because there's so many wonderful open bracket and group stage games that don't get casted. An off-site stream would help with that and wouldn't put any additional pressure on your already overworked men.

Quick Comments

SLCN.Kez:

Absolutely love the idea of off-site stream

[SLCN.Kez]

Inb4 I suck ACL's dick, which I do, since if they stop there will be no more dick and Australian e-sports will go from being endangered species to extinct.

Online Rounds

-These were well run and massive double elim format is best I think.

Offline Events

-Your bread and butter. In my personal experience having been to every event they are always the highlights of my year. Personally I loved having a bar at ACL Sydney, and I think a lot of others did too. One problem A few people mentioned was sc2 felt a little bit like a 'side-show'. I understand that these days it is compare to LoL, but could be food for thought and suggest rotating around who gets main stage at certain events ie. in Melb sc2 does, in Sydney CoD does etc etc.

Only other feedback would be internet, don't need to tell you guys the net kinda sucked at Sydney, and whilst I understand you couldn't really help it, having good internet is a MUST.

Tournament Format
-I think everyone likes the top 3 advance into ro12 with 1st in groups getting a bye round. Some people mentioned a double elim lower bracket might be good but personally I think this is not necessary. There is a slight element of luck with who you get in a single-elim, but this only provides more hype and excitement, you aren't going to be able to please everybody on this.

With Open Bracket, I think its more beneficial to have a massive double elim bracket like the Online quals, as you do have a bit of luck in which group of x players you get where only 2 can advance. In massive double elim bracket whilst 1 or 2 people maybe get unlucky ie. hit a good player round 1 and then another good player in lower bracket, I feel this mitigates the profound bad luck of getting 3 solid players in a group where only 2 can possibly advance.

Spectator Experience

At Sydney you guys did a great job of this, the casters were extremely audible (a problem you've had in the past) and the sc2 stage was fantastic and well designed, albeit of to the side slightly. Can't comment on experience from home.

Competitor Experience

-Again other than internet issues I thought it was good overall. A few Pro players mention the annoyance that they get there at 11-12 then don't really play for a few hours or their group matches are spaced out a lot and they don't really get into a rhythm of playing, which can be quite annoying. How you fix this I'm not really sure, if you have people come to late you risk falling behind/having down time for players who qualled from Open Bracket. The problem of spacing their games out was dealt with better at Sydney where you had enough computers that everyone in groups could play simultaneously and where they sat was already pre-planned, which was good organisation.

Streaming Experience
Again, can't really commentate on this, but down time is definitely an issue, and I'd suggest sending a message to the community to either make some funny interviews/content/whatever the **** pre done so you can play them on stream, or just have a list of generally well accepted videos like carbot/tempo songs/whatever that you can play when a game is being ready.

Also as Baldie is quite busy you'd need someone to be talking between stream and players so you can get another game ready as soon as stream is done

Community Interaction

Since this IS community interaction I'm going to guess you mean at your offline events, and tbh there isn't a whole lot you can do about this other than get a someone to run around with a mic and cam and bug audience people. Perhaps something like stream give-aways/beta keys could be looked into as well.

As always these are merely small factors and not fatal flaws, that if not fixed will lead to the death of e-sports. (actually bad internet might fall into this category).

I'd like to say that you guys have come a long way in sc2 since 2012, but in all actuality not a whole lot has changed really, even my first even you had a nice stream with good commentators, a sick live experience, decent prize pool and lots of players show up to your events, so I guess I'll just say keep up the good work.

Oh actually on that side note a few players do qq about prize pool, but there isn't really a lot you can do about that/a lot of it is being self entitled little bitches, but insert captain obvious quote, more prize pool would be awesome.

Oh actually last thing, a few people I spoke to at the event mentioned they only found out about the event x days/hours before the event actually started, and I do agree there needs to be more hype/shit surrounding an upcoming event. Whether this is getting scholars to write hype articles of mythical proportions to get people more interested, having someone from ACL reach out to community members/websites/big sc2 people like artosis/incontrol etc to spread awareness (many australian followers don't even know sc2sea exists). I also spoke to the dude from UNSW sc2 group who said he had no idea the event was on and he could have gotten a lot of people down if he knew in advance, things like this could really help.

Actually since I'm a genius I just came up with a great idea for prize pool AND content, (preface: NFI where actual extra funds will come from) But you could totally do something where you ask the community to make vids/content/whatever the **** and increase prize pool based on amount of (useable) content you get!

Ok I think that's about all I got

/end wall of text

[syfSoundwave]

Originally Posted by SLCN.Kez

With Open Bracket, I think its more beneficial to have a massive double elim bracket like the Online quals, as you do have a bit of luck in which group of x players you get where only 2 can advance. In massive double elim bracket whilst 1 or 2 people maybe get unlucky ie. hit a good player round 1 and then another good player in lower bracket, I feel this mitigates the profound bad luck of getting 3 solid players in a group where only 2 can possibly advance.

I agree with this. I think the ACL Brisbane Open Bracket this year was cooler than the ACL Melbourne/Sydney ones.

Quick Comments

asdfSchnitzel:

Brisbane is cooler than Melbourne/Sydney* fixed it for you

[Montycarlo]

Competitor Experience

I participated in ACL Melbourne and the experience was great. I want to personally thank you for manning the fort the whole time, it was obvious you were incredibly busy trying to manage everything. Also I'd like to extend a thanks to Kez who I could see running around finding players all day.

The only problem I had with my time there was playing a match on the sub-stage. The table was far too small to accommodate the screen and keyboard in such a way that it was comfortable for both your eyes and your arms. The screen was just too big in my opinion, I had to sit quite far back and since the table didn't extend far out enough so I had to hold my arms out like a zombie to play, and thus I didn't feel like I was playing well in any regard because of it.

/Naniwa mode

[SLCN.ARze]

One suggestion is to give BYEs immediately if a player no shows. Should not be allowed to play in the LB late. This is because the seeding is done in the WB and expects high seed players to win. However if they show up late in the LB it gives match ups that aren't expected, and it is quite unfair to players in the LB.

The incentive against this is not there, as often these strong players already have a high position in points, so therefore they are in a position to be knocked to LB and be fine.

It's not just a simple situation of, the bracket sucks, I want it to be changed.

One situation that can illustrate this is Me vs Azz in round 1. Stoicwilly awaits in Round 2, and loser of round 2 faces HuT in LB, who showed up late.

It is therefore beneficial to lose in round 1, me vs azz, as it places us in another bracket in the LB. If hut had played from the start or not played at all, this scenario would only arise if hut lost to a scrub (highly unprobable). It's not just simply a case of bad bracket luck. Nothing against hut for what happened of course!

Quick Comments

HuT:

wow bm me more pls~

[iM tgun]

This will be no-bullshit 100% honest. Please don't take it the wrong way -- I really hope ACL continues to grow and succeed.

• Online Rounds
  These are fine. Honestly, they're ran well, the stream is nice, they're spaced out well and with a good format. Absolutely no qualms.
• Offline Events
  I feel like I've covered this in the other parts of this post. However I'm going to go on a small personal rant. I love that ACL runs events constantly and is essentially one of the VERY few things keeping Australian SC2 alive. However, you can't go out and complain about not getting enough volunteers to set up when your venue is in such an awkward position for so many. For example:
  For me - 1h30min to arrive by public transport. ~50min to drive.
  For PiG - ~1h (rough guess) to arrive by public transport. At least.
  For Iaguz - probably longer than these.
  For Ninja - he stayed with PiG because his house is even further away than mine.
  A lot more people traveled interstate and thus would have likely not even been there in-time to set-up. If the venue was in a more central place (say, closer to a train station) I'm sure there would be more volunteers. However, it was an extremely weird way to open up the event. For a post on the internet after? Sure. To small groups of people? Sure. To your whole damn crowd directly preceding an event? You basically said "thanks for being ungrateful wankers" -- even though I'm sure that wasn't the intention.
• Tournament Format
  I think your open bracket system is strange (at tournaments). However, it works quite well so there isn't much to criticise. I love the fact that the final bracket is all single elim, however I think that if you're going to run single elimination you should consider starting Bo5 earlier and a potential Bo7 finals. This is, of course, if time would lend itself to this.
• Spectator Experience
  From what I saw, the spectator experience was great. There was no restriction to the players while they were playing -- which could be a negative, but seems like it worked out fine. SC2 not being on the main stage is understandable (and honestly, logical) and where the SC2 stage was set up was in its own little area - which has both benefits and downside. Benefitial in that hearing the casters would be a lot simpler than putting us where CoD was, detrimental in that you don't get the extra viewership -- for example, when a LoL match would conclude, many people would simply start watching CoD due to the convenience factor.
• Competitor Experience
  All I can comment on is the tournaments I played in -- honestly, they were all reasonable. The internet always seems to lag though. Every event. There has to be some way to check this before-hand. However, the admins and technical setup is almost always spectacular.
• Streaming Experience
  Way too much downtime. Put someone with a microphone doing interviews and run them during downtime. KingKong would be a phenomenal interviewee. Can't hurt to put Andy's face on a stream, ever. Like was suggested earlier, get replays and cast them. There simply just isn't enough content and it's tough to keep someone glued to a stream with downtimes that are extremely random.
• Community Interaction
  Could be improved, but I'm not well versed enough on the situation to comment here.

Quick Comments

NvRossi:

5 mins drive for me :D

[syfSoundwave]

Originally Posted by iM tgun

alms.

• Offline Events
  I feel like I've covered this in the other parts of this post. However I'm going to go on a small personal rant. I love that ACL runs events constantly and is essentially one of the VERY few things keeping Australian SC2 alive. However, you can't go out and complain about not getting enough volunteers to set up when your venue is in such an awkward position for so many. For example:
  For me - 1h30min to arrive by public transport. ~50min to drive.
  For PiG - ~1h (rough guess) to arrive by public transport. At least.
  For Iaguz - probably longer than these.
  For Ninja - he stayed with PiG because his house is even further away than mine.
  A lot more people traveled interstate and thus would have likely not even been there in-time to set-up. If the venue was in a more central place (say, closer to a train station) I'm sure there would be more volunteers.

This is another good point. Back when Azz was on ETL, he made groups at ACL Brisbane. This was his score in group by the end of Day 1.

2-0 Jambi
2-1 Light
1-2 ShOckWavE

He still had to play Ninja and mOOnGLaDe to see who would advance. Advancing was unlikely for him, but still possible. However, it was like a 40-60 min drive each way for him so, coupled with a leg injury, Azz decided it wasn't even worth it to go on Day 2 (too far out of the way), thus forfeiting to Ninja and mOOnGLaDe. That's pretty shitty and disappointing and while I think that's more of an Azz problem than an ACL problem, it's worth noting.

My teammate Crumize (who doesn't play SC2 anymore but that's beside the point) who lives in Melbourne attended the ACL there. It took him two hours by train to get to the venue. So just for one day, going there and back, that's four hours.

Crumize was one Bo3 away from groups, having to play Malice, but before the games Crumize let me know that even if he qualified for groups he wasn't going to show up tomorrow. Being his teammate, I asked him why, and he said that he's not going to take another four hours of his life traveling just for a few games of StarCraft on Day 2. That's...fair enough, honestly. I was disappointed but I couldn't really fault him. Although he lost 2-1 to Malice so it ended up not being an issue, lol. Lots of other people, even some Melbourne natives, noted the odd location for the venue.

Quick Comments

	SLCN.Kez:	In brisbane the venue was in the city, what you want them to do, host it at his house?
	RuineD:	shameless etl plug

[iM tgun]

Originally Posted by ETL.Soundwave

This is another good point. Back when Azz was on ETL, he made groups at ACL Brisbane. This was his score in group by the end of Day 1.

2-0 Jambi
2-1 Light
1-2 ShOckWavE

He still had to play Ninja and mOOnGLaDe to see who would advance. Advancing was unlikely for him, but still possible. However, it was like a 40-60 min drive each way for him so, coupled with a leg injury, Azz decided it wasn't even worth it to go on Day 2 (too far out of the way), thus forfeiting to Ninja and mOOnGLaDe. That's pretty shitty and disappointing and while I think that's more of an Azz problem than an ACL problem, it's worth noting.

My teammate Crumize (who doesn't play SC2 anymore but that's beside the point) who lives in Melbourne attended the ACL there. It took him two hours by train to get to the venue. So just for one day, going there and back, that's four hours.

Crumize was one Bo3 away from groups, having to play Malice, but before the games Crumize let me know that even if he qualified for groups he wasn't going to show up tomorrow. Being his teammate, I asked him why, and he said that he's not going to take another four hours of his life traveling just for a few games of StarCraft on Day 2. That's...fair enough, honestly. I was disappointed but I couldn't really fault him. Although he lost 2-1 to Malice so it ended up not being an issue, lol. Lots of other people, even some Melbourne natives, noted the odd location for the venue.

I just want to add onto this -- I'll still attend events in Sydney, even if they're all still at the roundhouse, purely because I love the events themselves. It's just a giant pain in the arse.

Quick Comments

[TA]LoSt:

I fly interstate for the events, even when I'm not playing, because they're really enjoyable!

[Dox]

Originally Posted by iM tgun

Tournament Format
I think your open bracket system is strange (at tournaments). However, it works quite well so there isn't much to criticise. I love the fact that the final bracket is all single elim, however I think that if you're going to run single elimination you should consider starting Bo5 earlier and a potential Bo7 finals. This is, of course, if time would lend itself to this.

iirc SC2 is almost always finished hours before CoD, so they can probably squeeze some extra games in.

Originally Posted by ETL.Soundwave

This is another good point. Back when Azz was on ETL, he made groups at ACL Brisbane. This was his score in group by the end of Day 1.

2-0 Jambi
2-1 Light
1-2 ShOckWavE

He still had to play Ninja and mOOnGLaDe to see who would advance. Advancing was unlikely for him, but still possible. However, it was like a 40-60 min drive each way for him

That was literally the most accessible venue out of all. It doesn't get more central than that. :x


I'll echo the stream downtime you've heard about a million times already. Having someone on the ground roaming/interviewing will fill time perfectly. Nothing else needed.

Quick Comments

	syfSoundwave:	I said it was more of Azz's problem than ACL's problem, it was being used to tie into the genuine venue complaints,
	RuineD:	so, as you said, it's azz's problem, not acls. thus it's not really constructive feedback
	SLCN.ARze:	i feel all acl's should be held in melbourne, ideally in my suburb

[SLCN.NXZ]

Originally Posted by Dox

iirc SC2 is almost always finished hours before CoD, so they can probably squeeze some extra games in.


That was literally the most accessible venue out of all. It doesn't get more central than that. :x


I'll echo the stream downtime you've heard about a million times already. Having someone on the ground roaming/interviewing will fill time perfectly. Nothing else needed.

Just on the stream downtime note. Roaming camera even of itself would be fine. I remember at ACL Sydney last year they had something like this. I distinctly remember watching ninja vs jazbas on Antiga from behind ninja for a little while. This is something cool that also familiarises the stream audience with where the players are actually playing. Players could sit behind someone and just talk about the game, interviews if you had someone to do that.

[iM tgun]

Originally Posted by x5_NXZ

Just on the stream downtime note. Roaming camera even of itself would be fine. I remember at ACL Sydney last year they had something like this. I distinctly remember watching ninja vs jazbas on Antiga from behind ninja for a little while. This is something cool that also familiarises the stream audience with where the players are actually playing. Players could sit behind someone and just talk about the game, interviews if you had someone to do that.

Hell if you run another event in Sydney, put the Camera over the players shoulder and get another player of the same race (eg: ninja is playing, grab moonglade) and talk about what ninjas doing and why -- from his perspective.

[SLCN.NXZ]

Originally Posted by iM tgun

Hell if you run another event in Sydney, put the Camera over the players shoulder and get another player of the same race (eg: ninja is playing, grab moonglade) and talk about what ninjas doing and why -- from his perspective.

Yeah as long as the player is fine with this it would be sweet.

[x5_Bard]

Negatives

Open bracket: You need firmer rules for the open bracket. Melbourne just seemed strange to me. Although changing the open bracket to bo1 for time constraints was reasonable, to then change them back to bo3 was weird. I remember confusion in the Malice vs Glade series when Malice won the first game, thought he had won the series due to bo1 and was then told he had to play a bo3. That was unfair.

Late Players: I think you are aware of how frustrated I was about Fonzie and Pig being penalised a game each for for being (and I quote you) "30 seconds late". I know you were trying to be firmer after everyone on day 1 arrived whenever they wanted, but this was over the top. Also I would have been fine if hut was sitting on the main stage all set up in a lobby, waiting for his opponent. But you had not even organised this. You talked about time constraints for the entire event but if you are waiting for someone it would seem logical to have everything already set up for when they arrive.

Basically please make a firmer walkover rule with a concrete time for when players are walkovered/forfeit games. A simple 15 minutes after scheduled start would be fine. Others have also made suggestions regarding the open bracket which would also work. Just pick one and stick by it.

Event Stream: The stream was simply frustrating for me to watch. I turned it off after one point and simply got updates from people at the event. I'm not going to go into this because I think you are already aware of the issues.

Positives

Online rounds: These are fantastic. Well organised, good streaming quality and production values.

Spectator Experience at offline events: I found it really enjoyable being able to watch both players perspectives at the same time, not sure if you do this at every event but it was really cool. There was enough seating and the stage was well lit. My only thought would be that it needed rum, but hey then poor stormz wouldn't be allowed in.

On a side note I would be happy to volunteer to set up and pack up, but when I have to travel an hour to and from the event its just not logical.

Quick Comments

	iM tgun:	If it was +15minutes 30seconds, then I fully support the admins decision. If it was literally 30 seconds, nope..
	x5.Stormz:	5 months Bard 5 months :P

[Baldie]

To chip in, at Melbourne to have 65 open bracket players is both amazing but also logistically a nightmare. Being my first event as head admin doing all schedules etc there definitely was a lot of learnings from it and I hope they showed at Sydney.

Melbourne was in no way a demonstration of the kind of events and communication I want to happen but ultimately what I did needed to happen otherwise we would have finished at 2am again. Admittedly in the heat of the moments there were some communication breakdowns. All I can say is that kind of thing will never happen again.

In regards to the Day 2 walkovers. I made it clear to everybody the doors opened at 8:30am, I wanted people in client by 9am ready and if the game hadn't started at 9:15am whoever wasn't ready would be penalised. Now I hate doing that, but for PiG and MegaFonzie to arrive at 9:15 (apparently thinking I said 9:30am start) I can't do anything about. Games were meant to start at 9am to catch up as we were behind schedule, that 15 minutes buffer was until 9:15. You could argue me not penalising the HuT vs ?? game was a mistake but they were in client, not just starting to setup their peripherals.

Ultimately there are learnings for both me and players from that event and I understand your frustration at the situation. I also can take responsibility for a lot of what happened at Melbourne and like I said, I hope there were noticeable differences and transparency at Sydney.

[x5_Bard]

Originally Posted by Baldie

You could argue me not penalising the HuT vs ?? game was a mistake but they were in client, not just starting to setup their peripherals.

Hut was playing Fonzie, which is why I was annoyed you forfeited Fonzie a game when hut wasn't even set up to play. Also I remember us arriving just before 9, socialising a bit then being told that we were being penalised for being late. Obviously we remember this situation differently but no use arguing, its in the past and both PiG and Fonzie won 2-1 anyway!

Also you've got to remember that if your venue is an hour away from where people are staying then commute times can vary greatly. Its fine if you need to make the start time earlier due to a rough first day. But when you make the start time 9, people are now dealing with rush hour traffic. Someone could be well organised and just get stuck/miss a connecting bus/train. This is not really their own fault (especially interstate players), they were just unlucky. Being a little understanding of these kind of circumstances would go a long way I think. Especially on the last day of bracket play where 1 game can make a huge difference.

Quick Comments

Baldie:

Yeah all good learned from it hopefully a situation like it doesnt happen again!

[SLCN.NXZ]

I don't know when you would ideally want the event to end but I have noticed that with the new final bracket format it feels like it ends earlier. This might be me imagining things but I would like to see maybe bo5 start a round earlier and a bo7 final or just one of those. Would enjoy that.

I do also agree that I liked Brisbane open bracket more, for Melbourne and Sydney I opened the brackets once and immediately knew the top 2. As much as people don't want randomness and bracket luck in tournaments I think that having a bigger bracket with bigger names hitting each other earlier makes for a more exciting tournament rather than "lets wait for those 8 players to finish winning a few games before they finally are in groups".

Lastly, I know its been mentioned a lot but getting a venue that is centralized makes for a better event. Brisbane was great, Melbourne not so much, don't know about Sydney but it would be amazing to see more of the Brisbane esque venues. Internet is crucial too but I'm sure you are already aware.

So yeah, once you're at ACL its great (minus a few small things) but the getting there and the downtime are the issues that I've seen most people have problems with.