QUAKE LIVE at QuakeCon 2012

[dru1d]

Anyone who says this wasn't a totally huge failure is simply wrong.

I wouldn't say the entire thing was a failure, day 2 CTF and the day 3 finals went pretty well I thought.

That is of course if you knew when and where the streams would be happening. The Quakecon website is completely useless for those that are only interested in the games, the only schedule I could find had nothing to do with when the tournament was being played. I had to rely on IRC for the information. Here's a quick list of what I consider to be big failures in the coverage, they can bear these things in mind next year and improve Quakecon for the several Thousand potential viewers, or disguard it and receive yet more hate for what could have been easily avoided. Maybe nobody will actually read this list but who knows, somebody might.

- Only one stream on the first day. I simply can't imagine why they thought only one stream would suffice. It boggles the mind.

- Casting over demos. Better than nothing, but a very poor way to cover a tournament.

- Pooly thought out website with little to no information reguarding the tournaments. Maybe the information was there, just hard to find.
- Tournaments annouced too late making it financially impossible for most Europeans to take part.

- Quakelive.com stream linking the wrong stream. You were advertising and linking a stream with some random people having a chat that had nothing to do with QuakeLive, meanwhile there's some awesome CTF games going on that goodness knows how many potential viewers missed out on.

- No VODs. What can I say, Quakecon is the only tournament that consistantly lets quake fans down by not providing VODs. Nobody is interested in VODs a month later, or a year later. I still don't know what happend in the early stages of the duel tournament, all I know is who was in the final. What happend to rapha? sure I can find out by asking somebody but I want to see what happend, not read about it.

- A general feeling of contempt towards Quake Live. It was clear from day 1 that the Quake Live tournament, particularly duel, was WAY way down on the list of priorities. I was all ready to watch some serious duel games at a fantastic 60fps and what do I get? 2, 3 games at a stunning 15fps? That was it. It hit me then that I was actually just part of a minority that just wanted to watch quake and that Quakecon is just a convention and not a real Quake tournament. It should be the biggest Quake tournament of the year, never is though. Shame they can give away a $50,000 car but can't afford to run a good tournament.

Quake Live really is a sad story since the grand final really showed what an awesome competetive esports game quake is with the close games and the crowd really making the atmosphere great.

[Lam]

couldn't find a simple schedule

It was on the tournaments page, now you can't see it anymore, but for each game there was a date entered (seen between the names on the light gray field). That included ALL games, group stages and playoffs. And it was there for few days before the tournaments, so I knew to take Friday off to sleep :)

I finally later come upon two guys casting some previously demos of the freaking semi-finals
(...)
Nevermind getting to see zero4, chance, sparks, or dkt play any playoff matches, or see several of the players play at ALL.

After the Keynote the stream was offline while the semi-finals were played. Then they were casting at least one eighth-final (sparks vs a1r-r41d, I really enjoyed it), then quarterfinals one by one and I fell asleep around 6:30 AM and they still weren't casting semis.

So your story about checking the stream every 20 minutes is... just a story. It took them probably more than 3 hours between end of Keynote to casting demos of semifinals.

And after CTF tournament on Saturday, they have played a restream of all of that democasting in the middle of their night, which meant whole Sunday morning here in Europe we could watch those playoffs. That's when I finally watched the semis! That was replayed about noon my time when I was already awake, great timing :)

Next time please get your facts straight :)

It is interesting though to see that even as someone who managed to avoid the spoilers (HOW?!), you still didn't get the excitement from that democasting. Maybe you were just disappointed with the rest...

[ehehe]

Lam, the simply fact is, someone as advanced in knowledge as me and as dedicated in effort as me shouldn't have has as much trouble as i did just to WATCH THE MAIN tournament. Yes, I literally did everything i could to watch the games in real-time and avoid spoilers and enjoy the tournament. The fact that you blame me for being let down by having to watch demos of the semi-finals ONLY and call me a liar when I say i just wanted to watch the playoffs in real-time and was unable to is fuc*ing embarassing. How many players are going to work as hard as I did to watch the tournament? How many people are willing to spend 35 minutes googling for tournament schedules? How many players are willing to refresh the stream of quakecon only to see some nerd going on and on about games that AREN'T QUAKE AT ALL and are just a thinly veiled advertisement of new projects that are weak and completely unrelated to quake at all?

You tell me to "get my facts straight." But i say, how many people can you actually expect to work as hard as i did, just to WATCH A SIMPLE TOURNAMENT, only to be completely let down and underwhelmed at what i was able to find even with several hours of work and dedication to watch it. Do you understand what I am saying? Perhaps I am not an expert at exploring every single resource that is available to a complete and total veteran of the game. But I definitely tried as hard as I could to see as much of the tournament as I could. And what I was able to see was totally ****ing weak. My story about checking the stream every 20 minutes? Not a story at all. What do you expect me to do when there is no resource to tell me when and who is playing, let alone a live stream of the games being played? You are being a total apologist for the poor, weak, inexcusable manner in which the tournament was brought to those who aren't able to drive 2,000 miles to watch the games in person. My facts are completely straight for someone who made an earnest effort to watch the tournament, with savvy internet knowledge and CERTAINLY more dedication to seeing the matches than you can expect from a casual observer. WEAK. AS HELL.

[killamatic]

^ why ID ignores players

[*PurpleDax]

^ why ID ignores players

But do they? I hear a lot of people whining that they do, but I find it difficult to believe that they don't read the posts and don't monitor game stats etc. I'll bet they make decisions based on marrying what players want with what their business model needs them to do (which is all they can do) and that the appearance that they ignore players is purely a result of them not responding to every post made by a whiney b****....which is a good percentage of all posts...

[killamatic]

They don't ignore players, real players, paying players, bug reports, etc.. But they do ignore whinging little rants like that above!
It's probably on youtube, and if you didn't get to watch it live you wouldn't know who won. So i missed the point of his rant anyway, which probably related to how he didn't get it NOW like he wanted, self-entitled little twerp.

[Phlogiston]

Although it's quite an angrily phrased post, I agree with all of his points that affected me directly:

- Stream quality was poor, I don't even know how they managed to make such a low quality stream still lag so bad that I had to watch it at 240p - 360p had a lag every 5 seconds or so and still looked rubbish (btw I can normally stream 480p no problems from other casting sites/youtube)
- Information about the tournament times (+ delays) was poor.
- Having to watch demo casts instead of live casts isn't good in terms of capturing the excitement of a game, especially if the casters know the results already and tbh I wonder what the opinions are of the casters who travelled there to do their thang when all they get given is a stack of demos to watch overnight?

That said, both the duel open and invititational finals were brilliant games, CTF was a bit meh because there was no decent opposition for the US dreamteam (needed some EU CTF players there perhaps?)

[Lam]

Do you understand what I am saying?

No, I don't.

Seriously, you're just repeating same things again, right after being given the whole schedule of events. And I guess I actually am calling you a liar... You talk about quarterfinals not being streamed (in reality even an eighth-final was!) and you repeat that you've checked stream every 20 minutes while in reality it had to be over 3 hours. That's your dedication.

And you say it was impossible to find schedule? I really took vacation for this so I needed to know the schedule in advance. And as much as I would love to see proper coverage right here on quakelive.com (with schedule, with stream link pointing to the stream showing games and not the other one), it took me just a few clicks to find the schedule starting from quakecon.org site. And you failed even after searching for 35 minutes? Do I read that right?

If you clicked to watch the stream on own3d.tv's site (as opposed to embedded), then both streams shared the same chat box, which was an IRC channel. So viewers of main stream were asking where's the tournament stream and were given answers by others immediately. When the stream was offline after the Keynote, we were passing info on what's happening (but yeah, this contained spoilers). If you wanted to watch Quake, all it took was to join and ask. As much as Quake players love to get mad at each other, in times like those you can see that there is some semblance of a "community" after all.

Again: I agree this should have been better organized. It's unacceptable to switch to another stream and don't leave a simple screen with schedule and information "hey, now we've moved to stream A", or when main stream is showing t-shirt throwing, there should be a small simple overlay saying "CTF is on stream B" somewhere in a corner. And never ever should a stream be offline! Even spinning logo is better than stream being offline for an hour while you update Twitter with tournament results... That was a catastrophe.

EDIT: Memento_Mori's story seen from the inside looks very nice, apparently it's best to go on location than to watch from home ;)

[*Myran]

Its just a disgrace. I was about to start up my second subscription but now I cant bring myself to do it.

[CoolMike]

Is there any way to watch any of the duel matches other than the finals? I was hoping to watch a few more recent duels with some commentating, but I can only find VODs of the final 5 maps.