On February 08 2010 02:59 ELESSAR wrote: My suggestion is one of the casters should focus on base management: BOs, upgrades, buildings and macro and the 2nd on army movement, drops, battles and so on. I think this way they wont miss so much. It is obvious that even now they are not looking at the same portion of the map but this way each one will have specific task.
edit: I like the cast and thing all casters are doing a great job, I just think this way it might get even better.
NOTE: I made this it's own post because this really is a seperate topic from the post where it spawned so the quote is from that topic.
About this, most sports which I have watched when pairing two commentators up will usually have one commentator give the "play-by-play" while the other perhaps gives more insight into the game.
To use American Football for example the "play" commentator might do something like this: "And the RB runs for a gain of 2 bringing up 3rd and 4. What do you think they might go for in this situation?"
Then the other commentator gives an analysis of the situation and the teams and what we might see. Often times the "play" commentator doesn't even prompt for discussion and end it with "ANd the RB runs for a gain of 2 bringing up 3rd down." The other commentator just picks up here with "Well now with 3rd and 4 we might see..." and so on and so forth.
With Artosis and Tasteless on Saturday it felt like both were trying to be the analyzers with the other occasionally being the "play" guy when they noticed something like a reaver drop.
These commentators are doing a great job I really feel that. However I think we have "too much star power" going on if that makes any sense. Maybe if some lesser known but knowledgable commentator was teamed up with one of these great commentators a nice flow could be worked out. Get the lesser known guy to give more of the "play by play" experience of what is being built, etc., and then the other commentator that knows more and is the better commentator give some kind of analysis.
To be honest it's been a while since I watched the other four matches so I don't really remember how the commentary was in them. I'm looking forward to Chill and Day[9] today and seeing how they do and see what kind of a flow they get going.
Just some thoughts for commentating and future events etc. Keep up the good work TL with the awesome tournament! Looking forward to the matches today!
On February 08 2010 06:01 Schnake wrote: In my opinion they should just keep on doing what they have been doing. No specialization needed or appropriate.
Well today is definitely good. It just seemed like Artosis and Tasteless were kind of stepping over each other a lot yesterday. Chill and Day[9] are maybe just better at taking turns ha ha.
On February 08 2010 07:24 Readersblock wrote: imo it is fine the way it is. At times i find it annoying being told exactly what i'm seeing.
You have to take into consideration the audience TL are trying to reach with the TSL. While it is primarily the top foreign tournament out there, I believe it's sub target is to bring new people into SC, or at least it should be. It can be daunting for some trying to get into the Korean scene, this can be an easy point of access for those foreigners who are new to the scene and once they get an understanding of foreign e-sports tournaments, they can begin to understanding what's going on in Korean casts without the aid of a commentator.
I think the current casts are great, I know what I'm looking at, but we may not get the deep level of insight we get with Day[9] Daily, but that isn't the purpose of these casts, it's to talk about what is going on in the game and they do that well, catering to people playing SC for 10 years and those who have just come to the scene is always a good thing in my opinion.
On February 08 2010 08:01 HuskyTheHusky wrote: This isnt football O.o
Thank you for that great insight. I was so confused when there were no cheerleaders to be found or guys in uniforms throwing a ball around on the screen.
On a more serious note I just used American Football as an example because it is a sport similar to how we all consider StarCraft to be an esport. Obviously I'm not saying this should be exactly like football or anything and the casts today I felt were better than the casts yesterday by Artosis and Tasteless. And with that I'm not even saying those two are bad. They just seemed to both want to talk about the possible strategies and so you didn't know who should be telling you about the game or when one might interrupt the other. It seemed less organized between those two yesterday than the other games they've done. It's simply a suggestion that I've observed be employed in other "similar" presentations that could help organize things.
About this, most sports which I have watched when pairing two commentators up will usually have one commentator give the "play-by-play" while the other perhaps gives more insight into the game.
I definitely like that most Starcraft casters are not super professional about it. I like when they discuss things other then exactly what is happening on the screen at that very moment. I think they are all doing a great job on the TSL. Couldn't ask for a better job.
Seems unnatural to put all the insight burden on one person and forcing the other person to just say the obvious unless they naturally fall into those roles in the first place.
On February 08 2010 09:56 Warrior Madness wrote: The commentating is fine. The obsing however, sucks from time to time.
I think unless you do it all the time like the Korean observers you are going to miss things occasionally. It's not as easy to catch everything as a lot of people would think.
The commentating has been fantastic, really. I'm actually really surprised at how great the Chill/Day team has been doing together. Every once in a while there's a little overuse of the 'oh my gods', but overall It's really quite awesome. Big props to all the commentators.
On February 08 2010 12:54 Mikilatov wrote: The commentating has been fantastic, really. I'm actually really surprised at how great the Chill/Day team has been doing together. Every once in a while there's a little overuse of the 'oh my gods', but overall It's really quite awesome. Big props to all the commentators.
That's the group I actually prefer more out of the two commentating groups... Maybe it's bias for Day[9] though. I really think they did a very excellent job today.
I think everyone should see the match from the observer's point of view. It is a bit confusing/anticlimactic at times if Artosis sees something and mentions it, then the observer scrambles to get there and we just see the aftermath. If something is missed, we all should miss it so we won't really feel too let down. Because you can sort of tell when the observer is frantically checking a few spots on the map. It also isn't that great when Tasteless tells the observer to go somewhere to point out something silly. If the pandabearguy shows up and everyone has the same view, cool give him a shout out. But don't mention him and have the observer clicking all over to find it.
On February 08 2010 09:56 Warrior Madness wrote: The commentating is fine. The obsing however, sucks from time to time.
this. I found during todays cast especially I ended up watching the minimap more than the main screen because I saw Juan going in for a great drop vs JF on fighting spirit and the obs was looking at some random vults lay a couple mines in the field. Also it's quite funny when the observer is watching a shuttle get picked off in TT1 vs White-Ra and Artosis and Tasteless were clueless haha I was like wtf were they watching... probes mine? haha.
I have a feeling this is being done already but I really think the observer should definitely watch the replay multiple times before the live cast and be ready to show the stuff that should be shown. Another time during JF vs Terran we're watching a couple tanks die while JF slams down his ramp vs 10 tanks+turrets and vults (Neo Tornado game) by the time we pan over the battle is completely over.
I know it's really hard to show the "right" stuff and usually I have no complaints, overall I think the casters/observers are doing a great job overall just pointing out a few things here so it's hopefully even better during the ro8!
On February 08 2010 14:46 LuckyFool wrote: ... I have a feeling this is being done already but I really think the observer should definitely watch the replay multiple times before the live cast and be ready to show the stuff that should be shown. Another time during JF vs Terran we're watching a couple tanks die while JF slams down his ramp vs 10 tanks+turrets and vults (Neo Tornado game) by the time we pan over the battle is completely over.
This is normal procedure for us, unfortunately we could not pre-watch the JF vs Terran series due to a snowstorm power outage, and we had to use a secondary obs who stepped in at the last minute. This caused more "obs misses" than usual. Next time we will definitely not have this problem.
This issue has been discussed to death in the TSL Stream Obs thread already, so read that thread for more details about what happened. Today's matches (Ret vs Castro, Brat vs Mondi) were pre-watched with no emergencies, and the obs obviously did a much better job.