- Use of Discord
While I was not on the discord channel for this tournament, I have used Discord for other tournaments and it worked perfectly fine.
- Commenting
The commenting was great and brought in the hype, but I think Eirik was a bit too alone in it, heh. I know there were other commentators, but they got drowned out by Eirik. Now it’s still early on, so there’s not really a chemistry yet, but you guys should try practicing it a little bit! For instance, Eirik can bring the hype (which he’s doing already) while the other guys can provide some more “meta” commentary on the side line. A tip for Eirik: try getting more of a feel for when the other commentators want to talk. Also, as has been mentioned already, try to come up with things for in between matches before the tournament so the flow between matches is smoother. For example, you could try and show some highlights from other matches. VOD’s get updated very quickly and you can find a particular moment within minutes of it happening. Get some people to watch the other matches and when something hype happens, get them to pinpoint the timestamp for it and show it between rounds. Other things for in between matches include showing some stats that are not just the bracket and getting the chat involved.
The commentary was pretty awesome already for a first try.
- Use of CS:GO system
As I was not signed up for my team and thus did not get the full experience I will refrain from touching upon it. All I know is that it took a bit too long, heh. But it was a pretty new system so that’s bound to happen. I’d say don’t drop it yet and see if it goes faster in the next tournament.
- Website
Well you guys already know yourself what went wrong and I don’t have any comments past that.
- General rules
DC’s are a touchy subject and it’s a bit of a shame that (IMO) we haven’t even gotten close to a good ruleset for DC’s. But what I hope everyone will agree on and hasn’t really been brought up yet I think is the following:
What should teams do when they have a DC or see the others DC? Right now teams just do whatever, sometimes they keep playing, sometimes they stop. What I think should happen is that both teams (and especially the team with the DC) should stop playing immediately. I know, DC’s happen and of course it always sucks and there is little we can do about it. But when someone DC’s it should NOT be an advantage for the team that has the DC. With the rules we have now, if both teams continue playing the team with a DC will get a “win-win” situation, a clear advantage. The team that has the DC doesn’t have to worry about losing anymore, there now is zero penalty for losing. If they lose they can just replay the match, if they win that’s a win for them. If the non-DC team wins, they don’t have anything, they have to replay, but if they lose they’re one game behind. Do you see what I’m getting at? When a DC happens one team is playing for a win while the other is playing for a rematch, winning will give different end results, something that obviously shouldn’t be happening.
Now you could say “well it’s 3 vs 4, the other team should win that easily or else they’re just not as good as the other team and deserve the loss”. Well here’s the deal with that, if you play 3v4 with nothing to lose, why would you even defend? When you lose you just replay the match, so there’s no need to hold back. You can just be aggressive as **** without worrying about losing. You as the team also get intel on 4 people while the other team only on 3.
- Pay-ins
I already brought this up before the tournament, but I was skeptical about the pay-in. You guys proved me wrong, but not entirely. A lot more teams than I expected showed up, but unfortunately the cap wasn’t reached. The question now is, will the amount of teams go up or down next tournament? The only way to find out is to make the next tournament pay-in again, really. I can only offer speculation of what is likely going to happen. The pool fase was very well run and hopefully pleasant for all teams. I’m not really in contact with other teams, but I’d like to think they think it’s worth paying the $20 for a well organized tournament. Now to hope that the stream with 1500 viewers (grats on that btw) has been a great way to introduce people, has created some buzz and motivated people to try digging in competitive splatoon. Only time will tell if pay-ins are a good idea.
All in all, great tournament that I can only see becoming better.