Right. I'm guilty of that sometimes, myself. I haven't evaluated everyone's streams or youtube videos, and I'm reluctant to send viewers their way unless I know I'm sending them somewhere entertaining. Plus I completely forgot about the "More comp TF2" link section of my YouTube and left out Kip and Greaver for the longest time, simply out of laziness. I should probably add you as well.

I'm gonna love casting the plat teams this season. Please tell me you are requiring them to upload all STV demos somewhere.

Competition for viewers is a good thing, provided everyone realizes the incentives they're facing.

For eXtv, when we see other shoutcasts getting more views than our channel, we look at why that is and see what we can do to improve our content and bring in more people. It's not a consistent process, but it's never going to hurt anyone's feelings if a PYYYOUR/ggglygy cast gets more views than us at the same time.

There are two metrics that matter to most people - how you're doing right now compared to everyone else, and what your growth looks like. There are many sources of growth, and the ones that help out the whole community are the ones that look outside of it. Streams dedicated to personalities like Tyrone and PYYYOUR are one of the best ways to publicize competitive TF2 to a wide audience. Put on a show, be good at what you do, and publicize yourself to the greater TF2 or gaming/esports community.

The point about getting casters on is somewhat valid, but maybe there hasn't been a consistent enough outreach from eXtv in that regard. How often do eXtine or I ask players like PYYYOUR to co-cast? Probably not enough.

As far as marketing and publicizing our schedule? Still not happening, and yes, it needs to. I did complain about this publicly in the past - eXtv's "upcoming events" section on the sidebar (over at extelevision.com) is rarely updated and almost always out of date. Our scheduler often gets stressed about reschedules and TF2 updates killing ESEA servers, so it may have to be a two-man job to make sure everything gets taken care of.

A lot of the eXtv-related discussion DJC and CBear had was good and should have been directly communicated to eXtine. I'm fine with it being said live on Lange's stream as well, but unless you actively try to push for changes in the organization, all you're really doing is complaining publicly. I don't know whether DJC sent eXtine a message about some of these issues, but I doubt it.

#14 That idea has been around in competitive circles for a while, apparently. Ruwin mentioned it in an interview we did at i46.

#24 I agreed in the post with the graphs with that exact point. They disprove my previous argument.

Sticking with higher-level games does improve my viewership, certainly. I have to think about a few other stakeholders such as "has eXtv already casted this" and "how can I reach out to this particular community" when I pick what casts to do, as well.

I was thinking this as well. There wouldn't be too much difference between a 3-CP Granary and Viaduct, except there'd be more incentive for the team holding middle to push.

The problem with that approach is that my output won't be cut to 1/3 its former levels. Turning each cast into such a huge effort means I probably would only have time to do one a week, or one every two weeks considering school. Like I said before, I'd basically need someone else to do the video prep for me so I can just add voiceover.

And here are some graphs. It looks like my memory has failed me - most of the important matches actually have average or slightly above-average retention! Glad I went back and checked.

http://i.imgur.com/MSRru.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/gwxPc.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/8xLs8.jpg

So that takes some of the wind out of my sails for this. I'd still like to try it and see if it contributes to any uptick in viewership, but it's certainly not a direly necessary change.

The point of rebalancing the maps is to make sure that doesn't happen. Give a short enough respawn time for the players, coupled with enough of a distance hurdle to clear, that the attacking team can't win last after wiping their opponents on mid. It guarantees at least 2 fights per round.

Viewership always drops. What I'm saying is that, for videos of similar length, TF2 videos are below average on viewer retention, and that's a very important stat to look at for how users value their time. It explains that, compared to any other 45-minute long video, at the 30-minute mark, my videos of TF2 shoutcasts do not fare as well as other content. But they do fare much better early on - when the game and the players and the cast are all still fresh.

There's a very clear reason I don't spend 3 hours making one TF2 cast - it's 3 hours for one cast. I can put out 3 casts in the same amount of time and increase the availability of content and coverage of teams significantly. If someone wants to volunteer to cut videos to the exciting action and send me pre-cut VODs like Luke used to do with eXtine, then please do. I'd love to cast those.

#13 True. How much of that is due to the sheer number of players hanging around waiting for a game to start?

Please stop shitposting. This isn't some internet argument you need to "win." This is a request for feedback on an idea, and I believe I already have yours.

Wouldn't players be more willing to play a PUG if they knew the demand on their time was only going to be 30 minutes, or 20, or less?

I have data on VODs to compare. However, live streams suffer from the exact same problems. With Starcraft streams, I don't have data on how long the average viewer stays tuned in, but I doubt whether the majority stay for more than half of a 3-hour series. Live streams, just like VODs, must also compete for their viewers' attention. When each match has about a 20-minute average resolution time, it's easy to tune in for one match and leave without wasting too much time. In TF2, that generally isn't the case for any match worth watching live. Average time to resolve a match is more like 50 minutes.

I'm also not comparing the start of an SC2 game to the start of a TF2 game - that isn't what I wrote at all. I'm pointing out things that Husky does to make SC2 matches more accessible to a wide audience, and one very important thing is to reduce the amount of time the viewer spends watching each match resolve. That's one extremely important component of building viewership. Viewers' time is valuable!

There is far more variation in maps, builds, and armies on the field over the course of those 3 hours than there is in the same amount of time for TF2. The variety keeps things entertaining for the viewer - and watch the view counts for bo7 series' individual maps. You'll see that viewership drop off, except maybe for the last map that decides everything.

Nothing about the 3-CP map idea precludes stalemates. It also doesn't mean you have to reduce the important skill showcase points on the maps - obviously, removing Spire from badlands is a bad example, but a new custom map could come up with very good ways to allow for different playstyles from mid to last.

Anyway - what I'm NOT looking for here is the usual litany of excuses as to why things are the way they are. I'm asking you all to give a well-thought-out, studied critique of the idea. So far, I haven't really seen anything that would make me fail to start this test tournament.

You aren't viewing this from a competition standpoint. I watch HuskyStarcraft regularly, not just for entertainment but for tips on how to effectively market to esports spectators. One thing that Husky has consistently done is looked to make his videos shorter whenever possible - he knows that his audience has a very limited attention span, so he speeds up the first 3-5 minutes of every game. Rarely do his vids go above 25 minutes, and even 20 is pushing the limits of attention span.

I could paste some YouTube graphs in here showing my viewer retention over the duration of a cast, as well. Typically, the first minute or two of my casts have above-average retention, but they quickly deplete to far below average as the map goes on.

In particular, "just be happy with what we have" is an incredibly irksome statement. There is ALWAYS room to improve on what we have.

This is my proposed way of speeding up 6v6. If there's another way that preserves the maps but that ESEA is likely to adopt within a season, I'm happy to discuss that in a different thread.