same

it wa sfun :)

This isn't really feedback with body this is subjective.

Considering how much players were lied to about this lan I would want serious proof of anything ESA claims they will have for their next event before I even thought about going.

I'd like to add a few subjective pluses.
1. Looser feeling around commentary. See: https://clips.twitch.tv/esportsarena/StrangeOryxPanicBasket
Loved the occasional little jokes as long as they didn't interfere with commentary at all (like when the reverb came back while Truktruk was in the middle of trying to describe something). I think the occasional bouts of caster bias could be categorized under this as well; so long as they're not shouting angrily when something bad happens to their team I don't see a problem with casters making their opinions clear. It's endearing and makes them feel more like people, which in turn makes the stream more fun. Soccer commentators have gone far beyond what I think is acceptable but it fuckin worked for them

2. Quick fixes to the hud when things went wrong. Obviously it'd be better if things didn't go wrong at all but that's incredibly difficult to achieve when everything is by a 3rd party. I remember sometimes during in-season matches the clock would go out of sync due to a pause but the cameraman preferred to let the clock be wrong for a few minutes rather than let the audience see the console while he takes a second to hud_reloadscheme, but here, everything that went wrong got fixed within a few seconds. I was impressed.

There were a few negatives as well, but the main one for me was the quality of the camerawork itself. I think Tino did everything humanly possible for one person to bring us the best viewpoint, but there was still a lot of good moments that were completely missed. Add one or two people onto the camera crew and I don't see why those issues can't be completely fixed. I'm also assuming LAN STV works the same as online STV? If there are several minutes of delay between the actual action and it getting replayed on STV, I don't see why we would ever have to miss a good moment.

All in all the stream quality was really high compared to the last few LANs I've seen. Few delays, excellent interviews, actual analysis (the desk at i58 should have been renamed to the meme desk), and I'm sure the team view during the matches was a positive. Good stuff.

A lot of the sound mixing was down to repositioning of microphones. Our director would have a setting for each person but with the headsets coming on and off and the mic being different distances from the mouth it does make it tricky. But It's something we'll certainly work on in the future. We'll also be getting another headset because the handheld for the 3rd analyst didn't work as well as we would have liked.

Thank you for all your feedback!

Tino was awesome. We were originally supposed to have two dedicated observers but one had to cancel at the last minute. The LAN STV does not operate on a delay, so we did our best to capture all the key moments, but with 12 phenomenal players all making things happen you can't capture everything. But like I said I was extremely impressed with Tino.

What did we lie to people about?

pretty sure he's just talking about the 144hz for everyone

Also they said open matches would be best of threes

Ah, gotcha. Yeah we were super disappointed about that, but in no way were we deliberately lying to people.

We signed a new contract for 144hz monitors that were supposed to be delivered prior to Rewind (along with 100 new PCs). Both of which got delayed at the last minute till either the end of this month or beginning of next.

I personally did everything I could to get as many as I could. I drove all over the LA/Anaheim area on Thursday and Friday to different monitor and PC companies begging to borrow some. Ultimately I was able to get 36 total for the Invite tournament.

It was never promised but I just assumed since we were at the 'Esports Arena' there would be 144hz monitors, it wasn't mentioned otherwise until like 2 weeks before the event.

b4nny lied about the prize pool to get EVL and 20b (and maybe the foreign teams) to go, saying it was going to be at least 15k.

We were told the open tournament would be group stages and then a double elim bo3 brakcte. it ended up only being a double elim bo1.

We were told open grand finals would be streamed.

Invite teams were all promised to have 144hz monitors, but 20b and EVL both played all of their Friday scrims on 60hz because their monitors weren't there yet.

Not something promised but I was expecting chairs that didn't feel like a screwdriver was being jammed into my neck if if I sat in them for more than 20 minutes.

if we're gonna talk about biased people on rewind we have to talk about fuckin dreamboat
like he literally wants to suck some aussie cock

but yeah besides that i enjoyed watching rewind
the invite tournament was super fun to watch and entreteining
i heard the open tourney was a pain in the ass to play in but besides that everyone ik that went to lan had fun there

hopefully we get more lans like this in the future

I expected better hair from ma3la =(

Suggestion:

At past LAN's, from time to time, the casters would enter the team comms in Mumble for the viewers to hear the players talk at the beginning of a new round during the mid-fight. I felt this added excitement to the cast for the viewers.

I always found those mids to be the most entertaining. It was great to actually hear the coordination of the calls and even the urgency in a players voice live. I would personally like to see casters begin to do this in the future.

Fair points.

Monitors: I mentioned above. We were supposed to have 144hz monitors for everyone. Things happen and it didn't work out in time. We did our best to ensure the Invite tournament was played on 144hz.

Chairs: I agree. They aren't up to par and it's something we're working on.

Open Bracket Format: I actually was not aware that any format was promised to everyone. My Tournament Director made the best decision he could to ensure the event happened taking into consideration the number of teams who registered (more than we anticipated) and the number of stations available.

Streaming Open Bracket Finals: We wanted too, but couldn't fit it in the schedule. A complete Round Robin for seeding was determined necessary. In order to fit the tournament into two days we needed to cut the open finals from the stage. I apologize for that, but sometimes you have to make decisions that aren't the most fun.

Prize Pool: I would have loved for it to be higher. A large onus for that is on the community (but I'm not blaming the community. You all made this event happen). Had 5,000 people donated $1, the prize pool would have been $18,000+. Esports Arena put everything we could as a company into the prize pool, and the players (we lost a decent chunk of money on the event). But aside from that, b4nny does not speak for Esports Arena.

Would that have made you play any better? :^)

It's not like we had enough games for it to make a difference.

I don't know how the planning worked, the impression I got was most of the problems came from b4nny massively over promising what you guys were capable of before checking with you. Also I think this event needed to be 3 days instead of two.

Regardless, I got the impression once I was there that everyone at ESA was super committed to putting on a great event. I just think that next time there needs to be more planning done on both sides before stuff is announced. It really sucks for the few open teams who only got to play 2 or 3 matches and were expecting to get a lot more especially.

Yeah I wish I could have caught more on cam tbh, but we were running 0 delay STV and no secondary so unless I could see the future I was going to miss things. As for the smooths between players, that is something we have been playing (?) with for the past 2 seasons or so, ended up turning them off for day 2 because they didnt look quite right.

One complaint that I heard a few times (and one I share myself) is the timing of the event itself. Scheduling it a week or two earlier would have put it on the majority of college students' winter breaks, making a lot of people able to use time to actually vacation/see LA/Santa Ana.

Also, pumping non-mainstage casts onto the projectors would have been nice. Several people were there enjoying watching TF2, and we didn't care if it was on the stage or not. We just wanted to see some vidya game.

Great event overall though!

This is why I'm not in charge.

Carry on gamers

If at all possible it would be cool to have the non-stage games up there on a delay. No idea how feasible that is with the setup but would have been better for day 1. Also, if there had been food/alcohol options at the venue I imagine you'd have brought in a ton more money from us.

I liked the format of bottom two teams from round robin going into the lower bracket, and the event as a whole was awesome.

There's a reason I requested to not cast any Jasmine Tea games. I got caught doing a bo3 against 20b that I let the bias shine through too heavily. It won't be an issue again though as there shouldn't be a LAN that has both me and Jasmine Tea again.

Sounds like many issues arose from misunderstandings between what the original plan/vision was and what ended up happening after compromises and changes came up. There was a ton of transparency every step of the way (probably too much, to be honest) with the prize pool, monitor situation, tournament schedule, etc. with plenty of evidence of all changes being announced and posts being updated, so calling ESA or myself liars is pretty unfair. If some things were misrepresented, then I apologize, but I've already reviewed all the chatlogs I had with you saam and I was certainly not making promises. There's always a lot of moving parts and things being dependent on other things happening first, so if one part falls through then it cascades to others. But with an event like Rewind, you can't wait to the last moment to start announcing things. If we waited until everything was 100% complete before announcing then we would have announced the LAN the Friday night before the tournament was supposed to start because it turned out I had to pick up the monitors last minute from iBuyPower. There would be no teams at the LAN, but at least we would have a complete and exact account of everything we could offer! That's just not a realistic way to organize/announce things and I don't think you can fault ESA for that. They were extremely flexible and accommodating, so try reciprocating. I guess for a LAN that went amazingly from my eyes, I'm just surprised that you have mostly negative things to say. Is it just residual salt from not getting the opportunity to get 6th place in the Invite bracket instead of Meat Market? Anyways, imo it was a great LAN, great matches, and a lot of fun. Thanks to ESA for hosting us, hope to see TF2 there again some day.

It was an amazing LAN. Most of the problems have been mentioned, and ESA staff were really quick to fix the problems that they could.

People didn't like be shuffled around for matches, or for computer problems.

144 Hz is kind of a big deal, I saw Wade's comments so I understand.

The audio needed to be better for the crowd in the venue, I had to watch the vods to understand the Extine interviews.

I think 3 days would have been more feasible, allowing for more invite matches on stream, open grand finals, and maybe more of shadow run and halo.

Tf2 has a sort of introduction video for people who haven't watched it before. Extine did an amazing job casting the game, but someone really should make a introduction for shadow run, it's a really cool game.

The shadow run guys were super nice, for them atleast, this sort of cross game out reach was a really big deal, and I hope we see more of it in the future, because rewind could almost single handedly revive shadow run.

The format was perfect for just 6 teams but I wonder if it would have been more interesting to combine the top 2 teams from the Open Tournament with the Invite Round Robin teams and create an 8 team bracket for the final Invite Tournament. (if those Open Teams were willing of course)

I wouldn't think either of the Open teams would have had a problem being invited to compete in the real tournament.

If you think 20b and EVL playing all of their scrims on 60hz isn't a massive a problem idk what to say, same for if you think teams coming to play 2 matches in the open bracket is ok.

We played 0 scrims and won the tournament idk what to say.

Some people believe that Shadowrun got backward compatability on Xbox One because of Rewind.

It really is an awesome game.

The easiest solution is 3 days obviously. Coulda woulda shoulda.

I thought all along it would have been awesome for the open winner (or top 2) to be included into the invite in some way. Time is/was a big factor though.

wow, that actually makes a lot of sense. The camera work felt very different pace than I was used too. I would be all for changes that would make a more informative camera that shows the whole game. What if there were even two people watching cameras?