General Empire Wars Stuff
What do you think of the maps?
In general i liked the mappool, it was pretty diverse but most maps favoured aggressive playstyles. I also liked that the mappool was rather big so we didnt see the same maps in every set. The only thing i felt wasnt too great is that Haboob, Atacama and also Land Madness were too similar.
What do you think of the scout start vs 2 horse/camels?
I liked it, i think that was one of the reasons why we didnt see a single game in the main event getting even close to the time limit, it led to pretty aggressive openings. The camels couldnt really be used offensively alone, only to block enemy units, so they were used for autoscouting most of the time, which led to the players knowing everything about the map. Without the camels but a scout who usually was used for fighting very early on the players needed to think about scouting a lot more and i think thats a very important skill that should not be taken over by an autoscouting camel.
What do you think of the number of farms (2), default EW has 8 farms, would more farms make the games more aggressive as you can afford more stuff, or make fc too easy?
I dont really know, i think players are able to answer that way better than me as a viewer. I guess it leads to more feudal aggression where fast castle is a pretty risky thing, and i think thats a good thing for this game mode.
Qualifiers
Is there anything I could do better to make things clearer/easier for you as a participant? as a viewer? as a caster?
Other than the obvious screwup on the first qualifier,
I guess i will mention quite a few points that dont directly refer to your question but is connected to the qualifiers...
-announce the qualifiers earlier. That would give the players more time to prepare, and thus increase the quality of games and also reward good preparation. Additionally it would also greatly help with some other points i will mention
- try to avoid playing the qualification on a friday, especially with announcing it less than a week before it happens. Most people who are working somewhat regular hours and are from america or europe can not play there otherwise, and and getting a day off is also gets more difficult if you can only ask for it on such short notice
- try to play the qualifiers on weekends without any other big aoe events going on. Again, that would be way easier if you would announce the event earlier. This qualifiers did get way less attention than the ones for the first RBW, since most casters understandably were more interested in the Arabia invitational and the Hera vs Liereyy BO21. Those events were organized by one of your official spanish streamers and one of the invited players, so i think it should have been possible to find a way to not overlap if you were communicating with each other earlier
- i preferred the schedule for the qualifiers last time, where the last round games were played at different times. I guess that was also a reason why casters werent really interested to cast this since they couldnt stream all the deciding games anyway. Last time, only the last round was played on day 2 while this time 3 rounds were scheduled for the second day. I think you tried to get the players to play round 5 on the first day as well, but only after some players already finished their round 4 game, so its not really a surprise this didnt work out too well. i think having the last 2 rounds on day 2 and trying to play the last round games at different times would be a nice compromise, even if that doesnt work out completely and there is a bit of overlap.
- find another site for the brackets/administration of the qualifiers. battlefy was a nightmare to navigate even as a viewer who wanted to stay up to date with the results, i dont even want to imagine who it was for players/casters/admins
- get more admins. Robo did an amazing job as always, but even for him its impossible to admin 100+ games that should be played simultaneously, especially with a lot of players that are playing a tournament game for the first time. Thats simply too much to handle for a single person.
Main Event
How was the schedule?
I liked it. if you want to do a tournament on a single weekend i dont think theres a better schedule than the one you used. The only thing that could be improved is to communicate more clearly that the schedule with the starting time of the sets is just an estimate and greatly depends on how many games are played in the sets before and how long they take. Contrary to other people in here i dont think you should focus too much on starting the games exactly at the time in the schedule, i think its better to just go with the flow and take as much time as needed for a post-match-analysis. Sure, the host should keep the schedule in mind and adjust a bit, but dont try to rush to the next series extremely quickly or fill a lot of time with unnecessary talk just because the schedule says so.
One thing i read quite a lot in chat is that the final was overlapping with the champions league. Personally i dont mind that (and without chat i wouldnt even have remembered that the champions league was still going on) but i think that wasnt too smart since there are quite a lot of viewers who wanted to see both events.
Do you think the break was adequate between semi - final, with the showmatch?
Yes, i think that was enough of a break, but i also think the players should be able to judge that better than me as a viewer. I still think the even better solution would have been to play both semis at the same time and stream one of them as recs, and with the showmatch redbull showed that they are not completely against streaming recs. But if you want to show both semis live on the same day, i think the solution with the showmatch is a really good one.
Any feedback on the stream scenes?
overall it looked great. Showing the current score in between games of a series would have been pretty useful, especially on the scene with the map- and civdraft which was shown for the majority of time in between games.
Any other feedback about anything else?
-chat: try to adjust the settings of moobot a bit. I felt it was way too strict when it comes to spam. There were a lot of timeouts for stuff like a few too many 1s in a row or a few emotes in a row, which is completely normal in an aoe-chat. And if there only was a way to get "cumans" out of the filter for the automod, but i guess thats just a dream... also i feel emote-only was used too frequently. Please make sure that it stated more clearly that the chat is english only, it was pretty annoying seeing other languages taking over the chat and people arguing about whether other languages should be allowed or not.
-colors: I know its the sponsors choice and it probably wont change, but red/yellow is just way worse than red/blue (unless its on a pure water map which we didnt have in the event). Theres a very good reason why red/blue is the standard for quite a long time now
-videos: first of all, the monk video was absolutely hilarious, great to see something like that. But i feel it was quite a waste to only show it at the very beginning of the streams, before the time the first match was scheduled to start. This way a lot of people missed this piece of art. I think it wouldnt hurt to show something like that once or twice during the stream. The video explaining the civs was great, something similar for the maps could have been pretty interesting too. The videos with the players were also nice, just make sure they know if the questions asked will be on screen or if they have to repeat the question before answering it. it would have been great to have more of those, i think most regular viewers already heard a lot from the ex-secret/AM-boys, so it would be more interesting to hear from people who usually dont go too deep into the tournaments so they are not interviewed that frequently or who are not streaming regularely in english. It was really refreshing to hear something from LaaaaaN, it would be nice to get an introduction for other players like miguel, Vinch, Capoch etc.
Reading my post again i feel like it sounds overly critical, especially concerning the qualifiers, so i feel like i need to say that everything considered the event was great even tough there are some things that i feel could be improved. Thanks to everyone involved, you did a great job.
What do you think of the maps?
In general i liked the mappool, it was pretty diverse but most maps favoured aggressive playstyles. I also liked that the mappool was rather big so we didnt see the same maps in every set. The only thing i felt wasnt too great is that Haboob, Atacama and also Land Madness were too similar.
What do you think of the scout start vs 2 horse/camels?
I liked it, i think that was one of the reasons why we didnt see a single game in the main event getting even close to the time limit, it led to pretty aggressive openings. The camels couldnt really be used offensively alone, only to block enemy units, so they were used for autoscouting most of the time, which led to the players knowing everything about the map. Without the camels but a scout who usually was used for fighting very early on the players needed to think about scouting a lot more and i think thats a very important skill that should not be taken over by an autoscouting camel.
What do you think of the number of farms (2), default EW has 8 farms, would more farms make the games more aggressive as you can afford more stuff, or make fc too easy?
I dont really know, i think players are able to answer that way better than me as a viewer. I guess it leads to more feudal aggression where fast castle is a pretty risky thing, and i think thats a good thing for this game mode.
Qualifiers
Is there anything I could do better to make things clearer/easier for you as a participant? as a viewer? as a caster?
Other than the obvious screwup on the first qualifier,
I guess i will mention quite a few points that dont directly refer to your question but is connected to the qualifiers...
-announce the qualifiers earlier. That would give the players more time to prepare, and thus increase the quality of games and also reward good preparation. Additionally it would also greatly help with some other points i will mention
- try to avoid playing the qualification on a friday, especially with announcing it less than a week before it happens. Most people who are working somewhat regular hours and are from america or europe can not play there otherwise, and and getting a day off is also gets more difficult if you can only ask for it on such short notice
- try to play the qualifiers on weekends without any other big aoe events going on. Again, that would be way easier if you would announce the event earlier. This qualifiers did get way less attention than the ones for the first RBW, since most casters understandably were more interested in the Arabia invitational and the Hera vs Liereyy BO21. Those events were organized by one of your official spanish streamers and one of the invited players, so i think it should have been possible to find a way to not overlap if you were communicating with each other earlier
- i preferred the schedule for the qualifiers last time, where the last round games were played at different times. I guess that was also a reason why casters werent really interested to cast this since they couldnt stream all the deciding games anyway. Last time, only the last round was played on day 2 while this time 3 rounds were scheduled for the second day. I think you tried to get the players to play round 5 on the first day as well, but only after some players already finished their round 4 game, so its not really a surprise this didnt work out too well. i think having the last 2 rounds on day 2 and trying to play the last round games at different times would be a nice compromise, even if that doesnt work out completely and there is a bit of overlap.
- find another site for the brackets/administration of the qualifiers. battlefy was a nightmare to navigate even as a viewer who wanted to stay up to date with the results, i dont even want to imagine who it was for players/casters/admins
- get more admins. Robo did an amazing job as always, but even for him its impossible to admin 100+ games that should be played simultaneously, especially with a lot of players that are playing a tournament game for the first time. Thats simply too much to handle for a single person.
Main Event
How was the schedule?
I liked it. if you want to do a tournament on a single weekend i dont think theres a better schedule than the one you used. The only thing that could be improved is to communicate more clearly that the schedule with the starting time of the sets is just an estimate and greatly depends on how many games are played in the sets before and how long they take. Contrary to other people in here i dont think you should focus too much on starting the games exactly at the time in the schedule, i think its better to just go with the flow and take as much time as needed for a post-match-analysis. Sure, the host should keep the schedule in mind and adjust a bit, but dont try to rush to the next series extremely quickly or fill a lot of time with unnecessary talk just because the schedule says so.
One thing i read quite a lot in chat is that the final was overlapping with the champions league. Personally i dont mind that (and without chat i wouldnt even have remembered that the champions league was still going on) but i think that wasnt too smart since there are quite a lot of viewers who wanted to see both events.
Do you think the break was adequate between semi - final, with the showmatch?
Yes, i think that was enough of a break, but i also think the players should be able to judge that better than me as a viewer. I still think the even better solution would have been to play both semis at the same time and stream one of them as recs, and with the showmatch redbull showed that they are not completely against streaming recs. But if you want to show both semis live on the same day, i think the solution with the showmatch is a really good one.
Any feedback on the stream scenes?
overall it looked great. Showing the current score in between games of a series would have been pretty useful, especially on the scene with the map- and civdraft which was shown for the majority of time in between games.
Any other feedback about anything else?
-chat: try to adjust the settings of moobot a bit. I felt it was way too strict when it comes to spam. There were a lot of timeouts for stuff like a few too many 1s in a row or a few emotes in a row, which is completely normal in an aoe-chat. And if there only was a way to get "cumans" out of the filter for the automod, but i guess thats just a dream... also i feel emote-only was used too frequently. Please make sure that it stated more clearly that the chat is english only, it was pretty annoying seeing other languages taking over the chat and people arguing about whether other languages should be allowed or not.
-colors: I know its the sponsors choice and it probably wont change, but red/yellow is just way worse than red/blue (unless its on a pure water map which we didnt have in the event). Theres a very good reason why red/blue is the standard for quite a long time now
-videos: first of all, the monk video was absolutely hilarious, great to see something like that. But i feel it was quite a waste to only show it at the very beginning of the streams, before the time the first match was scheduled to start. This way a lot of people missed this piece of art. I think it wouldnt hurt to show something like that once or twice during the stream. The video explaining the civs was great, something similar for the maps could have been pretty interesting too. The videos with the players were also nice, just make sure they know if the questions asked will be on screen or if they have to repeat the question before answering it. it would have been great to have more of those, i think most regular viewers already heard a lot from the ex-secret/AM-boys, so it would be more interesting to hear from people who usually dont go too deep into the tournaments so they are not interviewed that frequently or who are not streaming regularely in english. It was really refreshing to hear something from LaaaaaN, it would be nice to get an introduction for other players like miguel, Vinch, Capoch etc.
Reading my post again i feel like it sounds overly critical, especially concerning the qualifiers, so i feel like i need to say that everything considered the event was great even tough there are some things that i feel could be improved. Thanks to everyone involved, you did a great job.