Today, after a long wait, we had the grand final of Terra Nova. It featured a fantastic best of 7 series between ACCM and Vinchester (which you can watch in its entirety here) and now it's time to bring a few reflections up and leave this space open for anyone who wishes to provide feedback for the event.
First of all, I am happy the tournament ran quite smoothly for the most part. As my first time hosting an event targeted at pro players I was quite anxious something could go wrong, so the conclusion takes some weight off my shoulders, so to say. There were a few issues with some players being unable to stick to the schedule initially, since the time load due to the amount of series was significant, WC2020 was also taking place at the same time, and some groups had players with very different time zones. This ended up working for the better, as the original final date was set to be Dec. 20th, but it would have collided WC2020's final. Although the extensions were fairly short and always for good reason, next time I think there's a few things that could be changed to encourage sticking to the schedule:
- Match up players by time availability (time of the day in GMT that they can play) so the series are easier to schedule.
- Use a dedicated discord server to encourage communication and make it easier as opposed to leaving it up to each participant.
- Potentially rewarding players who stick to the schedule with bonus $ as opposed to penalizing players who might be harder to schedule with.
The map pool provided good variety, and I'd like to thank @Huehuecoyotl22 for his concepts and also @TheMadCADer big time again for helping me out with them, as they were numerous and he was super quick and helpful in providing working maps and fixing them if issues arose. That being said, some of the maps were, conceptually, more welcome by the players than others, and some needed significant tweaking after being first introduced. This isn't the map creator's fault obviously, so for a next edition I think there's a few things I could do to improve this process:
- Play testing the new maps in a competitive setting with free civ access. Having high level players do it would be ideal, since they're usually more thoughtful about abuse potential. It's fine that a few civs are very strong in a map, it isn't good when the map disproportionately favours a single civ (such as the original version of Paddies + Khmer)
- Maybe trying to stick mostly to ready-made maps, or maps that assimilate more common ones, combines different aspects of multiple maps or just have a few tweaks compared to the originals (such Mudland which combined mudpool + bogland, or our versions of Cenotes and Pond Arena) so the volume of brand new maps stays fairly low proportionately speaking, thus providing fewer chances for abuse before they can be rebalanced.
As for logistics, it was my first fairly big tournament with pro players and it wouldn't have been possible without @Lord_patito . It's the first time we worked together, and the dynamic between us evolved as the tournament progressed. I think a second edition would be easier for both of us. He did a good job and has a lot of potential. For things I think I could have done better, and this could be helpful to know for somebody else, I'd say:
- Providing more defined roles and tasks, so your admin knows exactly what you're expecting and doesn't have to guess (receive and rename recs, upload them, inquire players about unplayed series after X amount of days, or whatever it is you might need them to do).
- Make clear to the players who the admin is and how to contact them, so they don't send recs and results directly to you before the games get cast (thus spoiling the results to the caster)
Finally, production value, prizes, money and overall success of the event.
Obviously production was very very limited when compared to gigantic tournaments such as T90's, Nili's or Memb's, but this is natural for smaller streamers. I am overall satisfied though as we were able to get a few custom-made wallpapers (Tournament, Europe, America, Africa, Asia, Christmas), and I put hundreds of hours myself into making high quality map intro videos for the entire map pool (all of which you can find here) but in hindsight I'm not too sure how much it was worth it when compared to producing different content. Big thanks to @snapesnaps for providing the voice overs by the way! An alternative to this could be working on highlight videos for each player/series, or maybe making a tournament explainer video so players and viewers understood the concept easier. I think in the end what I went for can still be somewhat useful since now I have a bunch of assets to do extra stuff with, but I'd advise other small organisers to get familiar with video editing software and maybe do this type of work instead. Ideally in the future, with some more funding or more preparation, I might be able to either commission part of the work or do everything ahead of time. This is tricky though as I'd need to know exactly what all the maps will be months ahead of time etc.
As for the prizepool, it was not large for today's standard but it was quite an investment personally. I didn't put all the $ myself as I collected donations for a month and a half, but I covered the missing gap to $1k and then there were production and admin costs. I didn't make a profit on this tournament, in fact I "lost" quite a bit of money, but it was something I was willing to risk as it was also mostly about getting experience and paves the way for a potential larger second edition. Now the players know who I am, a bunch more people are familiar with my content and ngl it was a blast having such legends play in a tournament of mine. I almost felt legit at times. Yes, money buys you happiness 11
I think for a second edition I'd have to distribute the prize money in a different way though, if we are to have such an extensive group stage again. Maybe having 40/60 split of the money for the group and knockout stages respectively, as some of the players who didn't make it into the knockout stage still put a significant amount of time into playing their 12 group stage series. I reckon a tournament can potentially provide "free content" for those who run their twitch or youtube channels, but not everyone does this and I'd like to compensate the players more appropriately for their time spent in the tournament, even if they don't make it into the KO stage. This is one of the things I'll be inquiring the players about before a new large tournament of mine takes place, as they'll be the ones to be affected by it.
As for promotion, I think this was the most lacking area though, and something I hope will be better for a potential second edition. Players by and large had a good time with the event. The format was fresh, diverse and the viewers enjoyed it a lot. Alas coverage was extremely limited and for the most part I was the only one covering it from a caster's perspective (despite some seriously great series happening all the time). I think I saw only one large caster covering a single bo3 series featuring DauT, and a few smaller casters covering the semis and the final, mostly in different languages.
Obviously this was better for my own viewership, but it wasn't as good for the event and it undermined the potential interest from the community on the tournament format. I would happily have traded my own viewership in favour of the tournament getting more exposure, potentially attracting sponsors to make a second edition be even better and thus giving the whole community even more fresh and diverse formats to enjoy in a yearly basis like many of these multi-year tourney series we're seeing. I think there's a few things I could've done to encourage more coverage, but it could also have been just due to the unlucky timing with WC2020 taking place simultaneously.
- Make an explainer video which makes it easier for other casters to understand the format
- Be more forward about the fact this was open streaming all along, such as making calendar events for each series and mentioning it in the description of the thread
In any case, it was a great experience and I had a blast. I'm very happy we had some of the best players in the world participate in it despite the modest prizepool and WC taking place at the same time, and I'm looking forward to hear some of your feedback if you have any, and to the next events for this year! Cheers everyone!
First of all, I am happy the tournament ran quite smoothly for the most part. As my first time hosting an event targeted at pro players I was quite anxious something could go wrong, so the conclusion takes some weight off my shoulders, so to say. There were a few issues with some players being unable to stick to the schedule initially, since the time load due to the amount of series was significant, WC2020 was also taking place at the same time, and some groups had players with very different time zones. This ended up working for the better, as the original final date was set to be Dec. 20th, but it would have collided WC2020's final. Although the extensions were fairly short and always for good reason, next time I think there's a few things that could be changed to encourage sticking to the schedule:
- Match up players by time availability (time of the day in GMT that they can play) so the series are easier to schedule.
- Use a dedicated discord server to encourage communication and make it easier as opposed to leaving it up to each participant.
- Potentially rewarding players who stick to the schedule with bonus $ as opposed to penalizing players who might be harder to schedule with.
The map pool provided good variety, and I'd like to thank @Huehuecoyotl22 for his concepts and also @TheMadCADer big time again for helping me out with them, as they were numerous and he was super quick and helpful in providing working maps and fixing them if issues arose. That being said, some of the maps were, conceptually, more welcome by the players than others, and some needed significant tweaking after being first introduced. This isn't the map creator's fault obviously, so for a next edition I think there's a few things I could do to improve this process:
- Play testing the new maps in a competitive setting with free civ access. Having high level players do it would be ideal, since they're usually more thoughtful about abuse potential. It's fine that a few civs are very strong in a map, it isn't good when the map disproportionately favours a single civ (such as the original version of Paddies + Khmer)
- Maybe trying to stick mostly to ready-made maps, or maps that assimilate more common ones, combines different aspects of multiple maps or just have a few tweaks compared to the originals (such Mudland which combined mudpool + bogland, or our versions of Cenotes and Pond Arena) so the volume of brand new maps stays fairly low proportionately speaking, thus providing fewer chances for abuse before they can be rebalanced.
As for logistics, it was my first fairly big tournament with pro players and it wouldn't have been possible without @Lord_patito . It's the first time we worked together, and the dynamic between us evolved as the tournament progressed. I think a second edition would be easier for both of us. He did a good job and has a lot of potential. For things I think I could have done better, and this could be helpful to know for somebody else, I'd say:
- Providing more defined roles and tasks, so your admin knows exactly what you're expecting and doesn't have to guess (receive and rename recs, upload them, inquire players about unplayed series after X amount of days, or whatever it is you might need them to do).
- Make clear to the players who the admin is and how to contact them, so they don't send recs and results directly to you before the games get cast (thus spoiling the results to the caster)
Finally, production value, prizes, money and overall success of the event.
Obviously production was very very limited when compared to gigantic tournaments such as T90's, Nili's or Memb's, but this is natural for smaller streamers. I am overall satisfied though as we were able to get a few custom-made wallpapers (Tournament, Europe, America, Africa, Asia, Christmas), and I put hundreds of hours myself into making high quality map intro videos for the entire map pool (all of which you can find here) but in hindsight I'm not too sure how much it was worth it when compared to producing different content. Big thanks to @snapesnaps for providing the voice overs by the way! An alternative to this could be working on highlight videos for each player/series, or maybe making a tournament explainer video so players and viewers understood the concept easier. I think in the end what I went for can still be somewhat useful since now I have a bunch of assets to do extra stuff with, but I'd advise other small organisers to get familiar with video editing software and maybe do this type of work instead. Ideally in the future, with some more funding or more preparation, I might be able to either commission part of the work or do everything ahead of time. This is tricky though as I'd need to know exactly what all the maps will be months ahead of time etc.
As for the prizepool, it was not large for today's standard but it was quite an investment personally. I didn't put all the $ myself as I collected donations for a month and a half, but I covered the missing gap to $1k and then there were production and admin costs. I didn't make a profit on this tournament, in fact I "lost" quite a bit of money, but it was something I was willing to risk as it was also mostly about getting experience and paves the way for a potential larger second edition. Now the players know who I am, a bunch more people are familiar with my content and ngl it was a blast having such legends play in a tournament of mine. I almost felt legit at times. Yes, money buys you happiness 11
I think for a second edition I'd have to distribute the prize money in a different way though, if we are to have such an extensive group stage again. Maybe having 40/60 split of the money for the group and knockout stages respectively, as some of the players who didn't make it into the knockout stage still put a significant amount of time into playing their 12 group stage series. I reckon a tournament can potentially provide "free content" for those who run their twitch or youtube channels, but not everyone does this and I'd like to compensate the players more appropriately for their time spent in the tournament, even if they don't make it into the KO stage. This is one of the things I'll be inquiring the players about before a new large tournament of mine takes place, as they'll be the ones to be affected by it.
As for promotion, I think this was the most lacking area though, and something I hope will be better for a potential second edition. Players by and large had a good time with the event. The format was fresh, diverse and the viewers enjoyed it a lot. Alas coverage was extremely limited and for the most part I was the only one covering it from a caster's perspective (despite some seriously great series happening all the time). I think I saw only one large caster covering a single bo3 series featuring DauT, and a few smaller casters covering the semis and the final, mostly in different languages.
Obviously this was better for my own viewership, but it wasn't as good for the event and it undermined the potential interest from the community on the tournament format. I would happily have traded my own viewership in favour of the tournament getting more exposure, potentially attracting sponsors to make a second edition be even better and thus giving the whole community even more fresh and diverse formats to enjoy in a yearly basis like many of these multi-year tourney series we're seeing. I think there's a few things I could've done to encourage more coverage, but it could also have been just due to the unlucky timing with WC2020 taking place simultaneously.
- Make an explainer video which makes it easier for other casters to understand the format
- Be more forward about the fact this was open streaming all along, such as making calendar events for each series and mentioning it in the description of the thread
In any case, it was a great experience and I had a blast. I'm very happy we had some of the best players in the world participate in it despite the modest prizepool and WC taking place at the same time, and I'm looking forward to hear some of your feedback if you have any, and to the next events for this year! Cheers everyone!
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