Honestly, the only thing I could possibly ask for, is to never host at the Ceasar’s again. That place is horrible. Went to visit the Rio with some friends for some items at the little asian shop, and got instantly nostalgic for the American bar and grill and the sports bar. The rooms at the Rio are also cheaper, and yet are NICER than Ceasar’s which is bizzare. Sure it’s off the strip but, I dunno~ I had a lot more fun at that hotel in previous Evos.
…also, can we avoid having this tournament on Fourth of July weekend? The hotel prices were fucking ridiculous. Nobody I knew even stayed there.
Please bring back the two-screen setup so that I don’t have to watch button checks. That ate into a huge amount of time.
Please have Top 8 players ready to go faster.
Have a better way of presenting player names of those who are playing on stage. Using the stream wasn’t a bad idea, but at a certain distance back it was really hard to make them out. This includes all days of the event.
Improve door security for badges. When UMvC3 finals started, the security guy was nowhere in sight. I saw people walk in without badges in plain view no problem while he was there!
I just watched some of the YouTube uploads. Please improve the crowd mic, sounds pretty muffled.
First off, I loved EVO this year. Pools ran quick and on time. And loved the provided headphones at each station. Great move. Also the round count being displayed on those little screens to the sides of the huge main screen and showing the stream feed and crowd shots on Finals day were great touches.
As for my suggestions.
I say as well to have stream 2 up on one of the 3 big screens, like the one on the left right behind the stream 2 set-up. Does seem wasteful having all 3 show the same thing, and made that corner crowded.
I also suggest bringing back the 2 set-ups to switch between on the main stage. I think this does 2 things.
Obviously on Finals day, it speeds up the time between matches, so it is not wasted on button checks. It would had saved at least a good amount of time, especially since things were running behind schedule. It also keeps the pace up.
For the pool play, it speeds things up to move the brackets along, as people are waiting to play their matches up there, and cutting down time for button checks can only be a good thing.
Also, would had been nice to have player names on the big screen on days 1 & 2,
The pool stations in the top corners were super crowded because they were close to the stage. Don’t know how to fix that, but people constantly running into you is a tad annoying.
I also hope for the BYOC area to be BIGGER next year. And no July 4th date
More room needed I agree with, filling it with more consoles for main games I disagree with. A lot of people at evo want to play older games that no longer get any limelight (if having gotten any limelight to begin with). Which people across the world. You already have 30 stations for SF4 or Marvel. Why can’t their be at least 1 VS station? a lot of people were using the pool stations for casuals after pools finished at those stations. Plus you guys made your own BYOC outside in the hallway.
Please don’t have this on July 4th weekend again. It inflates the prices of everything (food, rooms, airfare, drinks, etc.) and Caesar’s is already mad expensive for what you get.
On that same note, can we please go back to the Rio? It was cheaper room and food-wise and it seemed like we had WAY more space there. In addition, it being off-strip meant the hotel was more “ours”. In general, it seemed like space was a huge issue.
Finals takes forever. I’m not sure what can be done to shorten it, but it seems like there is time here and there that could be saved.
Megaphones for the pool judges. It’s hard for them to yell over the noise of the crowd.
Rope off the pools area. There were often times way too many people crowded around competitors that didn’t need to be.
Finally, can there please be some way to broadcast the stream commentary? I would settle for short-band AM radio at this point.
Otherwise I had a fantastic time. Thanks for yet another fantastic Evo!
Yeah I was extremely put off by the crowding in my tournament matches. I had people way to close to me and when people got up next to me from their match it would urk me how close they’d get to the screen. I’m pretty sure some people got screwed over by an accidental bump or someone crossing the screen mid match. We need a visible buffer.
I think ultimately we need to expand to a bigger venue. The numbers this year were huge and MvC finals were stupidly packed. This will solve the spectator badge fiasco. I think we’re beyond needing Caesars at this point. EVOs grown too much and their services are over priced for what they offer.
Another issue with Caesars was connection. I REALLY wanted to use that awesome app, but i couldn’t even get a signal to text my friends inside. Some of my friends had signal, but I wasn’t alone pulling a Lion King trying to get a signal.
Don’t run it 4th of July weekend. Bigger venue with more BYOC setups. Background checks on judges to ensure they’re not going to just run off with the free T-shirt?
I think the issue with moving back to the Rio is the world series of poker is there and that is like an 8 week event. Honestly with all the people booking rooms there for that event I imagine a lot of people going to evo would be out of luck. But we do need a bigger venue it was just too crowded this year.
This was my first EVO and I enjoyed it immensely. I don’t know how it was in previous years, but here are some things that could make it even better:
Make sure TVs in rooms work prior to picking the venue. Monitors and working TVs became a valuable commodity since Caesar’s doesn’t let consoles to be easily set up. I got lucky in having a electrical support member with a master control set up a channel for the console. While it will always be crowded at the event, having working TVs in rooms would eleviate the amount of people looking for casuals.
More casual stations for bigger games. My friend never got to play casual Marvel at the event floor because of the wait lines for it. Tekken had about 8 monitors set up and lines were minimum. Maybe have small areas of designated “casual” for specific games (Marvel, Street Fighter, KOF) similar to how Tekken did.
Separation of competitors and crowds. Skullgirls in particular had it bad since people checking out the Persona booth kept knocking into TVs and chairs. Some ropes and stanchions for booths would go some way to helping out with this.
Direct connection of matches from main event to overflow room. It’s either the computer or the internet connection, but there were several times where the stream dropped during matches. A direct line via a really long cable would prevent that.
Bigger overflow room. Assuming next year’s event needs one, a bigger overflow room is needed to avoid filling up. I had to go at 1 PM to ensure I’d have seats for Marvel at 5.
Booths staying up for whole event. There were several games I never got to play since I was involved in tournaments the first two days. Having the whole event area reserved only for tournament play on the last means preventing people not interested in the tournaments games from enjoying EVO. Maybe having the booths set up in the hall for the final day (if possible) would be a better choice. But this would depend on the hotel and fire safety regulations.
The food wasn’t that bad a situation since you could walk to nearby restaurants (mcdonald’s, chipotle, panda) for cheaper food.
I always have a great time at every EVO and have been going for years. And I appreciate all the people and work that goes into it. That said:
LIVE COMMENTARY! It’s a bit absurd that streaming has been happening for several years now and still we don’t hear the commentators live, like we used to. It’s a lot more fun listening to Seth + Whoever while the final matches go down. This isn’t rocket science. Devastation did this a few years ago. Hook this up already! If the stream needs to suffer by blocking out the crowd noise then so be it. The optimal experience should be given to the people attending.
Expand the lineup. For years, our game selection was stagnant. But in recent years, it’s blown up. It’s kind of sad to see classics like ST/HDR or community-grown games like Skullgirls not part of the official line-up. Maybe make it like SBO where there’s multiple stages to allow more games into the “official” line-up.
I say this every year, but give those poor people that work the pools a cheap-o megaphone. I always feel bad knowing they’ll probably lose their voice by the end of the weekend.
EVO is so big now that only the official tournaments and sponsored booths/games should be in the main room. The pools need to go back to the previous layout and spaced since the front was congested this year. The BYOC/S needs its own room with the newer/older games on opposite sides of the wall. I know the staff is looking into more space considering that only 4 venues can host them now and with the unexpected jump in overall attendance this year it may be fewer then that. 4 days should also be considered.
EVO was great, but there were a couple things that I thought were a bummer:
Room prices. Even with the EVO discount, it was still crazy expensive, $100 more than the previous discounted rate at Caesar’s for the same room? For less than the price of two nights at Caesar’s, I stayed at Harrah’s for six nights.
I really like the addition of headphones for the stations… except my pool didn’t have them lol
Finals day seating. In order to get a good seat, you had to go really early. Ok, I’m fine with that… However, if you wanted to go eat or use the washroom, there was no way to keep your seat. Not sure how to rectify this… but it did suck to have worry about seat vultures constantly.
Food prices. Everything in Caesar’s was not cheap, and I understand EVO doesn’t have much control over that, but the EVO food? $8 for a stale cafeteria hamburger? Shrivelled hotdogs in rock-hard buns? I swear I have also never seen a bottle of soda that small before in my life. Hands down the absolute WORST and most overpriced food in the entire building. It seemed like outright gouging and taking advantage of the players’ desire to stay close to the event (especially on finals day).
Don’t get me wrong, the event itself was great, it’s just these few things (the food especially) could be improved.
About the seat stuff, the people in my section were really cool about it. We would hold each others seats when one of us went to the head or got some food or something.
For less than the price of dinner, I stayed at the TI for four nights. My friends get a player’s card, gets $1000 or so in chips and play for long enough that their rooms are comped for the next year. If you play conservatively you can actually save a bunch of money that way.
Something to think about anyways. I saved about $1220 over staying at Caesar’s thanks to him letting me use one of their two comped rooms.
If you want to save some $$$, you/others should seriously look into this.
