Added a bunch of screenshots from today’s stream. It gets worse when I switch it to fullscreen, so I’ve been watching it in a window. It’s a shame such an exciting event is being marred by technical issues, but it’s a joke that they would charge for this (Vesper Arcade’s second time streaming). I subscribed earlier in the week to show the streamers that I support them giving the option to pay for premium content, and I find myself regretting it immensely. $8.95 isn’t that much money, but I’m a college student with a part-time job. I have a very small amount of money designated to “fun stuff,” and that was part of it. Now I’ve donated that to someone who couldn’t even match the quality of free, weekly streams like Wednesday Night Fights, Guard Crush, and Electric Wind God Fridays. This is a very bad start for a service that could (and should) be a great option for fans of fighting games that don’t have the time or money to travel to majors.
The lack of information from the broadcasters is also disappointing. Can no one get on the mic to tell us what’s going on, or let us know that they’re working on the numerous issues? When you start taking people’s money, you also take on a responsibility of providing some kind of customer service. Popping into the stream chat and asking the monsters if everything looks alright doesn’t work. 90% of the chat is just people trolling. Do you really think that’s a good source of feedback?
While you can see the birate is low, the images don’t really explain how bad it was. Mostly it was the framerate issues all over the place. It was impossible to keep up with the action when frames are dropping in high action moments.
A copy of the body of my message to @jaredr, who announced that if you also don’t agree with how the stream was handled, you should e-mail him at Jared@twitch.tv. The stream was largely outstanding all weekend. Barring one or two restarts over three days, it was a very enjoyable experience to watch everything. That being said, there is no excuse for showing ads during key moments of matches on a stream that is advertised to have a free viewing mode. If operators want to charge for viewing certain matches they should have announced that up front, in advance of the tournament. Having the final moments of the Street Fighter IV: AE team tourney not visible to a majority of streamers was completely unacceptable, and was a major letdown for those of us who had put in multiple hours (hours in which we happily watched numerous ads) in order to have a positive spectator experience. Similarly, as I type this, the stream was cut off as David and James were thanking us for watching and sharing their contact information for people interested in future events for which they produce commentary. This was just as unprofessional as having ads during the middle of the finals matches. On the whole, it was a great stream – but it was definitely made worse by the intrusion of these ads and cutoffs at times the audience was especially invested in.
As I reflect on this, I should have clarified “great stream” – I very much enjoy listening to David and James casting, and most of the time, the stream was quite smooth for me at 360p. The ads between every single match got old very quickly also, and I felt that they occurred with a little too much frequency. I am definitely hoping that the next FGC stream I watch (and I will – I’m a huge fan here in the Midwest, unable to travel to be an in-person spectator) thinks of me as a part of the community, not some idle money counter at which to throw as many ads as possible
That youtube video sums up alot. I was quite dissapointed that no side tourney was done i.e. MK9, T6, BB on stream but HDR was…wtf… Not entirely bashing HDR cause I like ST but I think they deserved as much spotlight as HDR. I doubt they were even recorded or even going to be put on youtube all we know are results and that’s it.
The quality wasn’t that amazing, but I paid cause I wanted to support vesper for the hard work he did with the tutorials a while back but even so I feel a bit dissapointed with how things went, I don’t know why there were so many twitch adverts even though I subscribed that’s just false advertising right there and on top of that they even interrupted matches in the tourney which was quite a bit of a let down. I’m glad I got to see some of the amazing matches from MvC3 with filipino vs jwong and filipino vs marn those matches were godlike but I think things could’ve gone better.
I won’t get a refund cause that just seems petty and I wanna help build the community but I don’t think I’ll subscribe to vespers streams again unless the stability and the promises made are leveled up quite a bit.
Putting the streaming aside though the tourney itself was very good and very well organized I wish I could just say the same about the stream.
Was a SRK lurker for years prior to registering this account, and have been a card carrying stream monster since before it was a popular term. I’ve never had to rock out with Ad Blocker, as I’ve supported streams through watching (or at least not blocking) ads and donating cash when I could. This weekend broke the back on that stance for me, and I simply had to get Ad Blocker just to be able to watch super low quality, laggy matches that weren’t going to be cut in on with ads for Expedia and Capital One.
Just a unacceptable product in terms of the stream itself; it obviously was a very hype event that had some KILLER matches behind it. But the stream was beyond amateurish and marred the experience for many. There was near constant lag and hiccups in the stream, along with it going down for chunks of time as well. I disabled Ad Blocker, thinking that maybe it would run better and not have those hiccups with it off, and was genuinely disappointed when nothing changed in terms of quality. To those that paid for the premium stream and complained about the ever present lag, they were just told in stream chat to lower their quality? Wasn’t that the selling point of the premium product? And if you are going to ask folks if the stream quality is OK, if they say no then maybe you should try and fix it, as opposed to just popping your head in to ask if things are OK as a way to show your presense because that’s exactly what it felt like to me.
I can only hope that the matches will be available via youtube for all, and that the games other than HDR, MvC3 and AE were at least recorded. I’m not at all a Tekken guy, but would totally watch the Ryan Heart / Tokido finals from that. Along with ya know, that last match of the 5v5 AE uninterrupted.
And it was said before, but cutting off your commentators mid sentence when they’re talking about something that happened during a match, or as they’re doing their send off is JUST as offensive as cutting in ads in between every single match. What’s the point of hiring commentators if this is how they will be treated? Are you saying to the community that what they bring to the event and stream isn’t worth listening to? Is the value of their work a flat $8.95?
When you have a set of guest commentators who are filling in( LapChi and someone else?), and making jokes out of the entire $8.95 fiasco it just shows a complete lack of taking your event seriously. This harks back to the recent discussion in the FGC about commentary, and how / if it should try and work it’s way up to being more serious. At this point it was fucking amateur hour IMO.
Fantastic card, even higher than the ever popular 8.95/10 rating the stream was giving the matches, but the stream and overall coverage was a complete and utter failure.
Can we talk about the tourney itself rather than the stream? It was a great time with some really fantastic matches. Justin VS. F.Champ (never give up No. 2) was super impressive and really hype. The tourney itself was well organized and run extremely well. I only have a few complaints about CC this year (just minor) Friday and Saturday did not have enough casual stations open. Sunday was fine for casuals but I was torn between watching great matches and playing some new competition. Perhaps it was the venue size? The other was not streaming 3S finals, MK9 or T6. Top eights or top four could have been streamed at the cost of sacrificing a couple MVC3 and SSF4AE matches. With killers like MOV, RF, Tokido and Ryan Hart it was criminal not to have these matches on stream. Otherwise it truly was better than the year prior with virtually every player I encountered bringing their best game, which is really quite enjoyable.
It´s not exactly a minor detail when you have so many viewers who have to put up with match interrupting commercials, hiccups and other nonsense throughout the weekend. Or if you live in Europe and are not Batman, you might be sleeping instead of watching the whole thing. As a result you have to pay for archived footage.
Ive heard many times how people purchased the premium package but still had to watch ads. If it was me, I would file a chargeback.
I didn’t really mind watching ads since I got it for free, but those ads interrupted everything. It got to the point where I just left the stream and went on to do something else. I was going to pay for Sunday’s action since I was home most of the day but after all the complaints I decided not to. mods in that channel also sucked huge cock because their response as a collective group was “stop crying it’s a free stream” even to the people who paid for the premium service. Not exactly a stellar thing for Twitch.tv or whoever chooses the mods.
True. But besides EVO, when will you ever see the best (and that amount too) of Japan, Korea, Europe, Singapore, Canada together? Obviously the organizers paid a huge chuck of their own money to get some of these guys that never come to NA, to that tourney. So of course they had to try to make their money back. So before you knock the stream, what other major has had that quantity and quality of opponents?
I agree that there were stream issues and that the free stream when it was delayed had some ill-timed ads, but here’s my take on this as someone who paid for premium. I paid for the subscription and I still think I got my money’s worth because the matches were amazing. I would MUCH rather pay 8.95$ for this than the 20$ for SBO.
Just to address a few points:
But the streamer really did try his best to fix the problems after he asks for feedback, hence all the stream restarts. Obviously it wasn’t perfect but it was still watchable and we saw a TON of matches. The goal wasn’t to “pretend to be listening” but they really did try to fix things, the intention was there even though the results were not what they had hoped.
Vesper and Lap Chi were filling in because Chen and David were still eating breakfast. What probably happened was that the commentators + international guests were well treated and partied all night with the local crew and Lap Chi wanted them to get a good night’s rest and fill in for them early in the morning in the commentary booth. Lap Chi and Vesper still said they loved all the stream monsters, even the ones that didn’t pay for premium and were trolling.
The organizers are the one LOSING thousands of $$$ to run this event (they paid for plane tickets/catering food for almost all the 30+ players that weren’t affiliated with EG/Complexity). So they lost a lot of money, worked 18 hours days and still showed some love for all the stream monsters criticizing them.
My main point is this: The organizers are WELL-MEANING, their team of volunteers worked 18 hours days, they probably lost in the tens of thousands of dollars but they still did everything with a smile and. Trust me if they could have provided a flawless stream they would have.
I’m not talking about you or the stream monsters since we all love fighting games, but I’m afraid that many of the “e-sports media” will spin this premium stream into a tale of greed and moneygrabbing when in truth the organizers forked out tens of thousands to fly over a roster of all-stars and AT BEST only wanted to break even. But in the end they lost money and still seemed to be glad that they made an event that people around the world enjoyed.
And despite the stream issues, I’m sure most of the stream monsters still enjoyed the matches and didn’t regret watching. Some might have regretted purchasing premium, but next year I believe they will still tune in on the free stream because they know that Canada Cup will deliver amazing matches. I think thousands of viewers will remember Wolfkrone OCVing Team Japan on his 21st birthday, Kazunoko’s nearly flawless play, Wong’s comeback against FChamp, Team Canada’s win over Europe and Korea, Infiltration’s Gouken, Cuongster’s clutch Honda,
I purchase premium and made my friend purchase another premium for himself, and for both us we view the payment as helping the organizer offset the cost of flying over 30 international stars, but unfortunately in the end they still lost money.
Like I said, it was a great event in terms of the matches that were offered and that took place.
But if you are going to charge anything for a “premium” HD stream with no commercials, there had better not be commercials and it shouldn’t lag in 720+. The ban happy mods in stream chat were all too pleased to be like “If it’s lagging then drop your quality” to people that DID pay.
Its kinda disappointing because it seems right now the stream issues have almost overshadowed how awesome the tournament itself was - that was one of the strongest top 32s I have ever seen in AE, with representation from all over the world. the international 5v5 was also awesome, Canada represented so well. I gotta point out that CALGARY players repped the hardest. not to take anything away from chi-rithy’s awesome wins vs Korea but jozhear and Riceata put in some serious work
that said, keep up with the feedback on the stream. we are all listening
my opinion is that with success also comes haters. there is no such thing as perfection and the haters will always find something to hate on. all publicity is good publicity whether it’s good or bad as long as people are watching and have something to say about it. numbers do not lie and the stream viewer count hit 20k. that in itself is a success so bring on the haters. the same haters are still gonna watch Canada Cup 2012 :tup:
Go sell that shit to BP or Blackwater. Ask them if they think negative publicity is a good thing. You’re one of those who will yell the loudest about his opinion even though facts were presented to you, aren’t you?
