RBW3 Feedback

[thepitzaboy]

Positive:

The casters were all on point, loved the comic timings of dave,t90 and Nilli and between them they had an amazing chemistry.
Lil trouble was a nice surprise, kudos to her for waking up so early and radiating energy as someone else said, she got better as the tournament went on
The format of the tourny and time it takes does really work, AOE needs fast tournaments like RBW

-ve
The observer mode I dont think work, the casters are used to casting fast games, observer possibly cant follow all the action especially in the high APM EW(apart from daut :P )
I found some of the interviews very average, dont think it added a lot of fun content. t90 as great a caster he is, his interviews are not top notch
I honestly thought memb should be added to the casting roster, his style is very different and could be a good variety
The timing of the games could be better for the asian players, see there is no 1 timing which fits all - players or viewers.. what you all should probably do is Mark 3 tournament timezones, as: Asia friendly, EU friendly, NA/LATAM friendly.. based on players who are part of the main event poll these timezones and schedule accordingly.. for example if More EU and Asian players the timezone should be between Asia and EU friendly.. the 3rd party will be disadvantaged but someone always has to and it shouldn't be Asians by default every tournament.


Net net, really good to see how far AOC has come from the WCL7 days. A lot of credit for this goes to the people who have dedicated a lot of time to this magnificent game, Robo, t90,memb,nilli,dave every single one of them..

 

[Asfaloth]

Positive:

• I enjoyed Liltrouble as a host. I did not know her at all and I was very impressed by her radiating positive energy, even though she seemed a little nervous in the beginning. If you read this, you surely got a new fan.
• The observer seemed to need some games to get used to his role. In the second week, he was doing a great job and it was really enjoyable for me.
• GSL System providing excellent games and great upsets. In this game mode every win/loss matters (see for example Hera)
• The maps in general provided excellent games. Every single map was great, which happens rarely in tournaments.

What could be improved

• Restricting english casting to the main channel does not make much sense in my opinion. Maybe RedBull can be convinced that it does not hurt them to make further tournaments fully open casting.
• In my personal opinion, noone does interviews quite the way that Memb can do them. Not letting him do the interviews after the game is a missed chance.

I agree with both your what could be improved points. But:
- They problably restrict english casting because it makes more people watch their channel. Their goal is to make RedBull twitch popular, not Age of Empires (they sponsor and stream other games as well). So that will most likely not happen. But they could invite a bigger variety of english casters to the RedBull cast, i would very much welcome that. There are a lot of good casters out there
- I agree Memb is probably the best to do interviews, but since he was casting himself in spanish, it was impossible to hire him for the live interviews during the stream

 

[JoshuaR]

I liked pretty much everything about the event. I love the production value that RedBull and the production team bring. I like the fast-paced settings. The casters did a great job. We had some great games. And we love DauT.

I still dislike the way CaptureAge displays information. I wish the icons, as pretty as they are, could be replaced with short text so that we casual viewers actually know what the stats are saying.

LilTrouble did a great job as host, but it is tough, with her time zone, to host this particular event. The host would have been the perfect person to collect question info throughout a series and do the post-game interviews (which she did in some cases), but in the latter stages simply couldn't and also function as a human with the time zone.

Thanks again. Great event!

 

[The Bloodless]

Loved the tournament for the new strategies and perspective on aoe2. The interviews and observing (not the people doing them but the idea of doing them) sucked though.

Another note, the highlights were a nice idea for filling time. Can always improve on them (like showing 30s at least for better context) but they are a bit new to have them right away like that (right after the games).

Every rbw I like empire wars a bit more.

 

[Toom03]

please have a modding concept for the next red bull event, just modding people is not a good concept for such an big event. That should be considered during the planing.

 

[RobChang]

Thanks for this tournament. It was imo the best edition of RBW and I thank all contributors in front and behind the cameras for their work.

Here my thoughts to improve it even further:

Maps:
I liked the maps more and more during the tournament. I think Chrazini showed that water ew is possible to have in an exciting way. In general, a mappool of 12 maps is nice to have. However some of the maps had a very repetitive way to be played and the maps themselves led to a very narrow meta. However, I am sure that can be improved even further.

Balance:
I know balance is not directly connected to the tournament but as its the only big ew tournmanet and TOs are directly attached to the devs, I think it makes sense to discuss this here too. I dont like the current balance approach of just cutting all dark age bonuses and hoping it will be balanced then. I think we have gone too far. Now after tatars lost their feudal sheep there are only two civs left for Arabia: Vikings and Ethiopians that this edition made up majority of all arabia matchups. I think having ew start by itself will exclude some civs from the meta like mongols malians japanese. And then on top removing all starting bonuses like Lithuanians doesnt feel right. I want them in the pool as much as Persians Chinese Mayans... I dont think that its the worst idea to test Chinese in competitive settings. When they were banned from rbw1 it was so that they didnt start with less ress which made their bonus way stronger. Idk if its good, but at least Lithuanians being viable would be good not only for Arabia but also maps like Kawasan.

Format:
I liked the enhanced GSL system. Making the decider 5 games is good to make it different from the first round which can lead to repeated games anyhow and might feel redundant. Going through r1 fast with bo3s for these very reasons is ok, also justified further with the high skill gap you could expect there. However, I think a slight adjustment to the GSL format would be to also make r2 bo5 already. In case of the loser's match, the tournament life is on the line and thus it shouldn't be decided by a 2-1 who drops out. I think for games that eliminate players with comparable abilities from the main event, you need at least bo5 as you have them also in the SE playoffs later. I think that is just fair. In addition, the same should be the case for the winner's match. Here, the group winner is decided, which determines a lot for the upcoming brackets and something like that feels for me personally also better if it was bo5. Because EW is already very snowbally and little things can make you lose, wouldnt be the best if the bo3 puts you even more so under pressure. Like knowing, you must win your homemap and the opponents strongest map with free pick is really a lot of mental stress I guess. And the effect of a letdown here can have major influences on the whole tournament result. I would just feel more confortable, if both players can lose Arabia and then know, that its still everything open and you can carry things home by winning your prepared homemaps and their weaker homemap for instance.

You could use the Friday of the first weekend then for GSL r1 Bo3s, Saturday for Winner matches bo5, Sunday for Losers matches bo5 and rest as it was already. I think having both weekends start at the same time helps also viewers to be aware when to tune in. And also you can have draft already in r2, so you have less draining mirrors.

Host:
I loved how Liltrouble made her job. A bit nervous at the start, you really felt her becoming more comfortable in interacting with the viewers, the casters and the players the days to come. I think, she is a talent and I hope we will have much more opportunities for other female talents to show off her skills alike. However, sadly she couldnt do the whole event because she needed to step back from the full night shifts in three consecutive days to protect her health. I think, that was the totally right decision and I would find it better, if we tried to make life for our talents as easy as it gets, which will also affect their mood and performance on camera and hence will improve the time all involved people have drastically. I think two hosts would be cool for that case, but also in general. Caster already split their work and have regular breaks, I think the same should be the case for hosts. Even though they are not on cam, there is still off-cam work to do, to prepare for the on-cam sessions like preparing questions and coordinating with the production crew. I think, that would help all, not only here in that specific case it would mean that LT doesnt need to decide for doing the job or her health. I think we can be a good example on that side and protect our community members better.

 

[ZionMainframe]

- Please NO OBSERVERS. Don't fix something that ain't broken. The commentary seemed so disconnected with whats on screen. Although it improved over the days, it was far behind than the case where the caster controls POV.

- Layout of capture age on day 1 was bad/had less info (no k/d). The same on the finals week was good.

- More casters in the pool would be a nice.