INKSTORM I: Feedback Thread

[Kbot]

Hello everyone, Kres here.

First, I'd just like to thank everyone for participating, our voulenteers for helping out, our commentators, and everyone involved with InkStorm. You guys are the best!

So, we know we did some things a little out of plan. We'd like your opinions on how we did. So, here are a few things to talk about, but anything is appreciated.

• Use of Discord
• Commentating/overall cast experience
• Use of CS:GO Style rules
• Website design/experience.
  • We are fully aware that there were some problems to fix with the website and we are making our own internal
• Thoughts on General rules
• Thoughts on Pay-ins
• Thoughts on TOs
• Thoughts on Prize pool

Please let us know your thoughts, all feedback is welcome :)

 

[PKfuzzy]

The biggest concern for myself was having group stages with 1 mode per round, but top 8 CS:GO style was extremely smooth among english speaking teams and in my opinion it worked out really well. Not too sure on what to say about commentary or the TO/registration/rules side of things, were still pretty new and im sure all of that can be ironed out.

Also pls seed teams, it didnt ruin too many teams but there were some groups that were far too skewed as either too competitive or too easy

 

[BonFire]

Thank you guys so much for participating and volunteering, all work is much appreciated!
Thoughts on TOs, you can tell us your opinion on every single TO, or at once, thats up to you guys.

 

[1o2]

As a spectator, I'm definitely not a fan of CS:Go style for map+gamemode choosing. It just killed all my hype, as it took way too long. Perhaps if there wasn't the need to translate it would go much smoother, and help keep the hype up.

I didn't really look at the website outside of the bracket, so can't comment much there.

Use of discord made no difference to me.

Commentators were great, and did as well as I expected them to do with such a new and developing game. My only problem was that one seemed to be talking much more than the other (sorry don't know which one was), but it can be hard to tell when someone is going to say something when commentating is not done in person.

Overall, I thought the tournament was excellently ran, but there definitely needs to be something other than CS:GO style rotation for the finals, as with translating across languages it just takes too long.

 

[Vylegrove]

• Use of Discord

I wasn't the team leader for my group so I wasn't on the discord but I don't believe our team leader had problems

• Commentating/overall cast experience

I feel that the commentary was amazing, but there were some problems. One that is already known is that the casters were slightly off-sync with the streams they were watching. There were some problems I believe with the overlay. It should say what the series is (bo5, bo7, etc.) because some people in chat were probably wondering whether losers finals was bo5 or bo7. Another problem is that sometimes i lose track of what player is being spectated. When I was watching a bit of SK vs Memories I couldn't keep track of what team was being spectated and i had to wait for someone to die to read the name.

• Use of CS:GO Style rules

Albeit slow, I preferred the CS:GO style rules heavily over what was done with group stages and winners/losers round 1. (Of course, some of this is a bit of salt due to losing to imperial squids 1-3 in only rainmaker). I dislike rainmaker, but im fine with it as long as it is not for the entire series. Once people understand CS:GO rules more it will go quicker. Once LSDJ left the teamspeak for a bit, me and symph were just like "we have no idea what to do"

• Website design/experience.
  • We are fully aware that there were some problems to fix with the website and we are making our own internal

The group stages were not updating properly but besides checking group stages i didn't use the website often

• Thoughts on General rules
• Thoughts on Pay-ins
• Thoughts on TOs
• Thoughts on Prize pool

I'm indifferent on these last four points

-bS.Ezreal

 

[Prodigy]

Please don't use one mode for an entite round. It is neither fun to play or watch. Halo style moved much faster, but the CS:GO style was the best implementation of this style in a tournament so far. Involves a lot of strategy. I would keep this structure moving forward of halo style early into CS:GO style, but put a chess timer or something on picks. Should not take anywhere close to as long as it did.

Hosting rules need to be changed for international tournaments. Let host change every game if requested, with higher seed getting host first. Teams need to be seeded better.

 

[DeeWee UNub]

Well,I won't say much,as I'll leave that up to everyone else :p I really enjoyed the Mario Kart World Cup,and I really enjoyed watching this tournament. There was a bit of an issue with time,but nonetheless,still a really solid tournament.

 

[swifT]

• Use of Discord

Discord is great. Despite having some small issues early day one(at least on my teams end and a few others) it seemed to not happen anymore through the day.

• Commentating/overall cast experience

I feel like the commentary is was decent. Personally coming from a background in fighting games and mobas I'm used to much different casting, but not only is splatoon a completely different game, good casting just comes in time. Keep at it. One day I hope that one of my teams games that gets casted wont just be a blow out but we'll see :p

• Use of CS:GO Style rules

Personally I liked the concept behind it but I just feel like poor execution occured. What I mean by this is confusion during the first few rounds. Not to mention that the language barriers between teams didn't help that fact. I feel like having 1 TO per match(like designated beforehand) may help with this. But also as I believe Agosta mentioned last night in the discord. Some type of way to do it digitally instead of typing.

• Website design/experience.
  • We are fully aware that there were some problems to fix with the website and we are making our own internal

Love the site. It had a few kinks but I think you guys managed the issues excellently and quickly.

• Thoughts on General rules

I think the rules were solid. Didn't really like the 1 mode per round. Would have preferred straight halo style all throughout the group stages.

• Thoughts on Pay-ins

No issues with it. Kinda worried that it slightly alienated other teams from participating or made them afraid to try, but I think that helps show which teams are more serious in the end. Sorry if that offends anyone just my thoughts.

• Thoughts on TOs

TO's were great. Love yall!

• Thoughts on Prize pool

<3

 

[Blue24]

I absolutely hated one mode per round, especially RM. Also that has the potential to cater to a team that may be super strong on certain modes as well as hinder teams in which certain modes arnt thier best.

 

[Citrus]

Tell Eirik to not say the likes of and let slim speak Kappa

 

[BestTeaMaker]

Commentating/Casting

You guys need to find a way to fill in the blank spaces. While this is the first attempts at casting Splatoon, I feel that you could've delved into some more information, talk about the state of the tournament, talk about the teams playing and their past accomplishments. You also need to be aware of which matches worth watching and can produce some interesting results, or highlight the Japanese teams coming in. In fact, overall, it felt like you guys were in the dark when it came to teams and matches that you weren't commentating. This is where you have someone watching those matches and let you guys know when something interesting or hype occurs. Having a program like Oddshot can help capture moments, which you can then review in the main stream during down time.

Rules

Don't do a single mode for a round. You run into an issue where a team can be possibly hampered simply by the mode being played and locks them into a mode they don't want to really do well in. Concerning the picks/bans phase, the rules needed to be a bit clearer. This led to a huge holdup in a lot of matches, often up to 20 minutes, especially with one/two people translating for the Japanese teams. This is a case where you need to find a way to streamline the process, such as having the players select fewer maps/modes. This goes back to the previous issue where it was hard to fill in down time as you didn't have anything to talk about for the main stream.

Website Design

Did you guys know Challonge has embed features? And proper seeding procedures? I understand wanting to have a professional-looking website, but you guys had pages hidden within pages. It was hard to find rules, to find where map rotations where, to find who opponents were.

Seeding

Please seed your pools. Some of the groups were ridiculously hard, such as B with both Omohide and Squid Box. Other groups were up for grabs and felt needed a stronger team in there to balance it out. Also, seeding helps when people don't check in, as you can easily adjust the groups on the fly. This especially became an issue when it came time to seeding the finals brackets. I don't know what math you guys did, but it looked very haphazard in which teams were placed where. I don't know why teams who only had 3-4 wins were weighted more than those with 5 wins, but this definitely is the result of bad seeding/lack of seeding.

Pay-Ins

Just want to touch on this subject. When you're trying to help the scene grow, especially when it is online-only at the moment, don't put another barrier to entry with a paywall. Yes, $20 per team is not a lot of money, but having a pay-in denotes certain standards. It also discourages the middle/lower tier teams to come and compete. Sure, you can accuse them of not being serious enough, but when you see a stacked event, why bother to come and compete and lose your money.

 

[BonFire]

• Thoughts on TOs

TO's were great. Love yall!

<3 thanks, will try to keep it on that Level!

 

[flc]

• Use of Discord
• Commentating/overall cast experience
• Use of CS:GO Style rules
• Website design/experience.
  • We are fully aware that there were some problems to fix with the website and we are making our own internal
• Thoughts on General rules
• Thoughts on Pay-ins
• Thoughts on TOs
• Thoughts on Prize pool

discord: fine, though it can get very bloated very fast with all the channels you had there. need to be removing channels as they're no longer in use.

commentating was decent during the games but you guys need to have content during those "breaks". granted that there isn't much to talk about meta-wise (since we can't really say "well this map will be good for this team because x y z" or whatever), but surely there's something you can do to fill the time. get some analysts on; you have plenty of them, have one for commentating and the rest to join in after the game. interview some teams or something, idk

csgo style worked fine between western teams (though picking maps to put into the pool was not necessary at all), and it works a hell of a lot better than the ****ty counterpick system. however, I still stand by my previous statements about it being unnecessary at this point given that teams generally don't know their own strengths, don't have specific strategies, and generally don't understand the game well enough to make a csgo style map draft work really well.

website design was visually fine, but neither responsive nor easy to navigate. took me like 5 or 6 clicks to find the registration page and it was only that low because I happened to luck my way into clicking the right buttons. also, yeah, in future, just use challonge's API

general rules: leave the one-mode round **** out in future. we (as in xlt) are pretty decent at rainmaker but the fact that we played two crucial matches in bo5 rainmaker (ss, off) was a bit of a slap in the face for everyone involved, especially in the way that some of those matches were decided (i.e. gimmicks, mostly on my part)

pay-ins: fine, but again, turned teams off. it's a little sad that teams don't see the $20 as an investment into the scene (the only way you get attention from sponsors is to run $1k+ prize pools) but what can you do

TOs: responsive if a little hasty. the ****up with pick/ban in the csgo rules should have been caught, even given the unfamiliarity. should have been able to notice when things were moving slowly and got things moving ahead of time (e.g. map draft was taking forever, should have just straight up said "xlt/sk do map draft now" or whatever instead of waiting for us to do the same). but overall, these are minor things that will come with experience. don't be afraid to put the foot down, basically. get things moving and keep people informed, they want a smooth tournament just as much as you do.

prize pool: nothing to comment on here, it's fine

 

[curry time]

Website Design

Did you guys know Challonge has embed features? And proper seeding procedures? I understand wanting to have a professional-looking website, but you guys had pages hidden within pages. It was hard to find rules, to find where map rotations where, to find who opponents were.

Seconded on Challonge. Challonge is easy to use, easy to read, and easy to look at. I don't see a reason to not use it, honestly.

 

[jamesrcade]

First of all thank you for organising this tournament, overall I think it was a success and the amount of effort and time you put in clearly showed!

• Use of Discord

Great. I think everyone that is part of a Splatoon team knows how great it is, I especially like how you made a channel for each group - I hope other tournaments do this to.

• Commentating/overall cast experience

Unfortunately I didn't get to see much, but what I heard seemed fine.

Biggest problem however being the downtime between matches, this is also a side effect of other problems - but there were times when there were matches going on and on stream it was just a countdown. I know it's infeasible to have commentary for every single match, but streaming a match with no commentary would probably be better than just a countdown.

• Use of CS:GO Style rules

Fine. A little slow but do able. If you get a website to automate the process and also not have the need for translators it should have no problems. I'm still as much of a fan of the Halo style just because it's straight forward/quicker - but I understand there is a need for something like the CS:GO style.

• Website design/experience.

Please have a Challonge bracket too. Website is good for archive purposes, but Challonge is a lot easier for teams/viewers to follow.

• Thoughts on General rules
• Thoughts on Pay-ins
• Thoughts on TOs
• Thoughts on Prize pool

General rules seemed fine. Disconnects still suck, but nothing you can really change about that. Pay-in was fine, some teams don't want to pay and that's up to them, it was especially great to see people willing to offer to pay for teams to play - but hopefully we won't have to rely on that every tournament. Prize pool seemed fine.

So many TOs, even a Japanese TO! Which was great, thanks again for taking the time to help it run. Maybe a little bit too nice and letting people take too much time but I can understand with it being the first of this 'series' but...

Issues:

• Tournaments are still taking way too long to complete. I know there's 100 things that can go wrong, but there were simple things like teams not reading the rules before playing that slowed rounds down. There probably isn't an easy single solution to this, other than teams/TOs getting more experience with the process - but I can imagine some players/viewers might be getting fed up with it if it is like this every time.
  
  
• One mode rounds, everyone has probably already said how dumb it was so I won't say too much :P Halo style, with modes rotating would have been good.
  
  
• Group seeding/bracket seeding - I guess you did random groups? some came out ok, but some did not. The elimination stage was even stranger, it would be great in future if there is more transparency on these processes - because at the moment you only have a few people doing it, some of which are also competing in the tournament.

 

[Burnburn]

- 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.

 

[TheMH]

the likes of

"The likes of" is actually a meme now.

• Use of Discord

I'm a newbie to Discord, but I really like it so far. It's much smoother than the bloated Skype and the devs are still improving it.

• Commentating/overall cast experience

Eirik was casting, not too much to say about this - as always he's done an incredibly awesome job. I also like the fact that he and Sly actually went into random streams and test-commentated Splatoon matches some time ago as they mentioned during the bracket round.
Even though Eirik is the man when it comes to Nintendo online events, I agree we probably should have someone who can keep up with him commentary-wise. It can only be an advantage to have backup as in the current state the cast stands and falls with Eirik (see the schedule problems MKWC2015 had at some point).

• Use of CS:GO Style rules

Halo is faster and probably more comfortable for the audience, but I really like the concept of CS:GO rules. I mentioned this in the lounge already, the key point is to improve and speed up the striking process. Maybe with an online interface where both teams can enter their strikes while it's being streamed live or something like that.

• Website design/experience.

Well done, Raymie ;) As doing some design now and then myself, I know, there is always room for improvement, though. Keep up the good work.

• Thoughts on General rules

I actually was a little confused by the fact that every match in the group stage was one mode only, too. It's kinda balanced, as every team played a bunch of matches before heading off into brackets, but considering certain teams have their favored modes, there is potential to get unlucky with matchmaking. In worst case you're put against xlt in SZ and against bS in TC :D
Bracket was straight forward, not much to improve there.

• Thoughts on Pay-ins

The best thing you can do. Even a low pay-in like $20/teams holds off teams who just register and then don't show up a lot. It makes the whole event look more credible.

• Thoughts on TOs

Just a big Thank You! for putting so much time into this. I know how difficult TOing can get sometimes.

• Thoughts on Prize pool

Same as I said about pay-ins.

 

[Dreamy Luigi]

Erik was fine and honestly did great as the play by play and the analysts did fine as well, I learned a few things about the meta. However the breaks and downtime with no gameplay shown, specifically early in the tournament, was kinda annoying. Something to fill the time would be a better experience for me.

That's all I have to offer as a spectator.

 

[Lonely_Dolphin]

Erik was fine and honestly did great as the play by play and the analysts did fine as well, I learned a few things about the meta. However the breaks and downtime with no gameplay shown, specifically early in the tournament, was kinda annoying. Something to fill the time would be a better experience for me.

That's all I have to offer as a spectator.

lawlz I was literally about say similarly. But yeah overall I enjoyed the little I saw of this, shame on me for not watching more, but if there's replays on Youtube I'll check those out for sure.

 

[Kbot]

lawlz I was literally about say similarly. But yeah overall I enjoyed the little I saw of this, shame on me for not watching more, but if there's replays on Youtube I'll check those out for sure.

There are indeed replays going up, I think they're coming soon.