Tournament Feedback

While this is fresh I wanted to give devs the list...

Needs:
We NEED local chat to be shorter and we NEED a "yell" that goes 3x what chat goes... we wanted to use the walls of the castle and had to redecorate at the end because you can't see from one side to the other of the SHORT side on the castle... the long side is 3x chat distance... I think I should be able to yell from one side of my player lot to the other... it's NEEDED... thanks!

The local chat was so confusing running an RP element here... we had four people doing four different things in the same chat and local chat made it so when you're a reasonable distance your chats still mix... let us control when it mixes with Yell option, thanks!

We NEED an in-game roll command so I can show people what I'm rolling and they don't question it. I've used VBot from IRC so people who are in the community channel (#AvatarsRadio) are able to see what I'm rolling and know but that's just not good enough imo... we need to have the in-game roll and I know this is a low hanging thing... just give me a /roll option that rolls a 1-20 and if I put a number after it (under, say, a million) it will randomize a number from 1-#... that's what VBot does and it works great!

Wants:
I'd love to have the ability for people to tie into TS3 and I personally don't have the time to do that code (sorry @RichardGarriott... but I hear ARMA3 does something like that but I don't play it so idk specifics... maybe see where they got it?) it would have made thing so much easier if I was able to make a voice channel in-game that I could enter/leave at will like I did via TS3... I don't know how someone without TS3 could hold an event like this and that's not cool to require it for RP events. (talking to contestants privately, quickly, and getting questions answered via voice)

I want the ability to put signs up that stack on decorations... not just signs like we've talked about that are static on your house or for streets... I want a horizontal and vertical banner sign that is a decoration and shows it's title in-game without interaction (maybe hover over, but that's it at best) and I would like plaques like the Benefactor/Founder plaques that work similar. (for this tournament: marking where you stand, where you go, etc... like starting points and waiting points)

Additional comment,
I've asked Winfield to watch the event as a spectator and not be part of the event. It matters to me that this RPG can have PvP events and have them feel amazing so I'm going to ask him to give feedback on this timely as well. I realize we're at the end of development for Episode 1 lock but we're also just having enough people to do this type of testing in the last couple releases. Thanks.

 

Don't make local chat shorter. If you're asking for Yell, also ask for an option to have a "speak to the people around you (aka, softer)" option.

 

Avatar's radio was delayed approximately 5-8 seconds for me which made it more of a recap than a live broadcast. Would be great if we could track down where the latency is occurring and see if the gap can be closed some.

 

Very hard to follow in local chat because too many conversations going on Confusing to say the least...

 

Im not going to vote because i wasn TRYING o pay attention, but i can definately tell the text chat was difficult to follow.

 

Will be great if/when a Event Organizers chat filter and mechanic is added so a tab can be created to see just what the event hosts are saying.

 

Captain Jack had no issues with reading the text. But he missed the end of the event, and couldn't find an update on SotA forum. Captain Jack think that you should post the updates/picture of results to SotA forum with the new Herald account which was created, instead of trying to get traffic to your site.

 

My family and I had a blast being a part of this event!

That said, I agree that it was difficult keeping track of everything. Being able to allocate different types of chat (The popular one being the RPers vs. the Contest Officials) would've gone a long way, and I do agree that a tied-in VOIP chat would have saved a lot of headache, even if it was just to speak privately to the contestants. Frankly, if Eternal Knight hadn't started whispering me at the time of our match, it would've taken us several moments to know that we were supposed to be on the field. Without having my family on a Skype group chat in advance, my wife and mother (Zekla and Reyven, respectively) would've gotten lost quickly.

Among other things, the biggest issue I had with the blur of activity was that, as a contestant, I was generally unable to participate in any of the conversations (RP or otherwise) because I was busy trying to keep track of the officials rules and cues throughout. I felt much more engaged in the social portion of the event as a spectator.

Other than that it was busy and hectic, but that's to be expected of a big event.

One last note for future events: sign up earlier, folks! Half the reason that this was so dragged-out was because Duke Violation and his team were struggling to keep everything organized. While I'm glad they were willing to bring on PUG groups, we could have saved them a TON of headache if they'd been able to message the majority of us what the plan was ahead of time. Without that option, tons of time was lost in directing us each individually, a task that looked nigh-impossible as it was.

I hope this feedback was helpful. I'd love to be a part of this again! Thanks to everyone who put so much energy into making this event great!

 

Edit - moved some stuff
Comments:
　
I guesstimate that I had a 10sec delay on the in game aether. (Didn't test it directly over website, but when I have done that before the delay isn't nearly as much) There was no way I could use that as was intended.
I'm in CET so maybe that plays a role?
　
Need to have split chats.
Not tabbed ones like we do now.
I had a party chat with my team, a guild chat with guildies in audience, a whisper from others, plus the local chat to keep track of. Tabbing those would be insane so had to have them all going in the same chatbox. Keeping track of multiple tracks of thought, while trying to do some weak RP at least for OoV sake since they wanted to try it out. I don't think there are many who could keep up such like I did.
　
If I could have had the different chats open in a window each, then I could have kept much better track.
　
Would have loved to be able to throw some of the extra UI over to a second screen.
　
Need to have colors in chat.
So that if you do some extra special things, then you could show up as a new color. That way event organizers text would highlight and one could easily keep track of it.
As it was we had four organizers trying to give info all with the same text color.
Maybe *thinking freely* tie this to zones that the owner could set. Then one could have a podium surrounded by a zone giving X color. Then the bar could have a different, and the bleachers a third. That way one could get a clear distinction between differnt RP.
As above - if I "select" someone I want to be able to see their "chat" seperately/highlighted. That way one could "select" an organizer and that way keep track of them in the chat.
　
　
too late, need sleep zzzz

 

One more quick observation regarding the in-game radio/aether device. Activating 2 or more devices within the same area creates an echo effect; not sure if its intentional or if multiple audio streams are running simultaneously, but in either case I'd prefer to not hear the echo. Also, it would be great to be able to differentiate in-game music, and radio/aether volume levels. OK, that was two quick observations

 

YES! We had to cut things because we had to spend 30 minutes handling late sign ups and changing script... was very sad. I have more for the future if people are willing to sign up. I think in the future I'll start canceling events that a minimum of people don't sign up for. And, once the event day comes I'll close invites... this will give a better prep for the team and less stress on me

They're coming! And I assure you we'll use them

Yes, I think the yell should come up different just like whispers do so the Event Herald could use, say red for yell, and the others could use standard local chat Great point!

One of the many benefits of a pvp zone

We actually are combat ready guards so we don't lock things like gust... and I was the tournament rezzer for Sciamano and Lukashka and my tournaments, all held in the same castle but the smaller arena, previously this release. Unfortunately three people with one locked rez isn't realistic... they time out too quick by the time the fight is over. Once there are larger zones to afford us to have 4 or 5 non guard people that just heal/rez we'll do that... but right now with 64 max attendees we want to keep our guards around 8-12 so we can have as many attendees as possible... this gives us enough room for two squads and one heal/rez guy which is me. Sorry, just can't do that for 3v3.

We even killed guildies for doing this... not sure what else you want?

Those were placed last minute because we learned that chat didn't travel to the wall... we wanted everyone to hear the Herald for the tournament and we had to close off the walls because chat doesn't work... see my above post about yell. We reworked the whole arena about 1 hour before the tournament because our prior tests didn't involve the far corners and the very back wall... unfortunately you cannot decorate the walls so I couldn't say "stay inside the XYZ decorations" on the walls so I made a last minute call to cut off the walls and not allow them to be used so people had the ability to see what was said. That's a system issue not a planning issue which is why I started this thread

Thought it through... it was planned... smaller isn't exploit... it's a fact of life... it's harder to hit a smaller target I will do my best to not allow pre targeting at all of my events. I think targeting is part of combat skill and if you can't learn how to target your ... target ... you shouldn't deserve the first place. If there is an issue with targeting we need to find and solve that issue and report it to the devs... not continue to use workarounds.

Sure, if we change that we will but I doubt it... this was the first tournament scheduled to allow pre-draw and Net, either seeing it or deciding on his own, ran a cage match right before this with predraw as well and I don't think he said "DRAW!" either... I was busy with trying to write script for late attendees and get the music because Amber Raine had real life show up so she was unable to provide any of the music... I didn't get to learn from his at all so there will be some polish things we can learn from this. I think this doesn't matter... "READY!" is a better word and we did/do use that. Thanks for the feedback on this.

That was the goal! Glad you liked it. I think Amber Raine and royalsexy did amazing and I was happy I could sit in on their broadcast. Thanks guys for having me!!!

Goodnight and thanks so much for your feedback. This thread was designed more for feedback about the game itself but this post gave so much about both the game and the event that I just wanted to say thanks, I appreciate it, and I hope more will be so thorough with their feedback.

 

I enjoy the radio coverage of events, but unfortunately fell asleep waiting for this one even though i was looking forward to it. Timeslots are not great for my location XD

 

Thanks! As a reminder this thread is more for system feedback designed to give devs a better understanding on what we want to make the game better for us... for all event specific information please post that here: https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...3v3-tournament-sunday-the-11th-3pm-nbt.19574/

THANKS AGAIN! Keep that feedback coming guys, I love seeing all the support about changing text chat a bit... anyone who agrees with me I agree with... just sayin!

 

I gave up on local chat most of the time, I tried to follow certain names and everytime I saw mine name in, but mostly I tried to listen to radio, which was delayed by 15-30s, that is quite a big issue. Also it was really hard to watch distant fights...

The local chat was too busy for me to follow, and it was interlaced by party messages and whispers, it was really hard to keep an eye on things. And I was lucky that guild chat was silent at the time.

I think that few things could help with some chat issues.

- Lot owners can shout (their messages are highlighted somehow) and they can give permissions to others to shout.
- If you target someone, their messages in the chat are written in yellow insted of white or something like that.
- Ability to form local (instance wide) chat groups (e.g. organizers + team 1, organizers + team2, organizers + both teams) - though this could be complicated. Those could be one way communications (only organizers or perhaps organizer and team leaders would have voice in them).

Anyway, these are my first thoughts, I am sure some people will be able to offer better solutions.

 

I like the target highlight... That's a great idea.

 

Here is my feedback from being in the middle of everything yesterday on what I think (I/We/SotA) need to improve going forward:
There was a lot of great stuff that happened yesterday at the event but I am pretty critical on myself so here it is
I want to hear what you all think as well.

Planning: We did everything that we thought we could do to prepare for what to expect for the event.
Sign-ups went alright as we had 5 of the 9 teams use online registration. These teams were asked for info about them to help with the introductions.
We had 4 teams sign up at the event and that took some time to work through before and at the beginning of the event.
Some of our delay was just making sure we had all teams accounted for and the new teams signed up with the proper information.
I know that sounds simple, but we were working like mad trying to get the event started on time.
Unfortunately for our 9th team, we did not find a 10th. They could not compete but Lord Britches and Sir Pants gave us a great 1 v 1 show when we came back from break.

Theme music was planned for each of these teams as well.
I believe this added something to the event and it was our first attempt at bringing in all of these songs and trying to sync them with in-game actions.
Hopefully we can try this again in the future with some improvements (Working with the delay)

We had some last minute changes to the arena because of chat limitations that were discussed above.
This limited down what we wanted to accomplish and how the arena was set up.
Violation and others did a great job getting it all ready but then had to rework some of it at the last minute because of chat distance.
Bottom Line - if there isn't a new system, I need to figure out a better way to announce from the middle.

During The Event
Chat log confusion
My lord does the chat log get crazy when you have 72 people all packed into a small area like we did.
I had a hard time following what was happening and I knew what was going on and was doing most of the talking!
Hopefully a good system will be created because the current game mechanics are not sufficient for this type of event.
Bottom Line - if there isn't a new system, I need to figure out a better way to announce from the middle.

Avatars Radio
I understand there was a delay and it screwed up some of our timing as we were trying to play the entrance themes.
We need better communication between the radio and the tournament so we all know what is going to happen next.
This was partly my fault as we were not in sync some of the time and its my job to announce what is happening.

Fight Set Up:
We had issues mostly early on getting the teams to the field.
A lot of that was carry over from the registration at the beginning of the event and trying to get everything started ASAP.
I tried to PM some teams along with Sciamano but more communication is key to help get everyone ready.
It got better as we got further into the tournament.

Ready/Draw/5/FIGHT!
Thanks for the feedback on this part.
Sorry for the confusion I might have caused calling out the fight.
It will be better next time!

After The Event:
1) I didn't win a prize
2) I died.......
3) Did I mention I didn't win a prize?

Recap:
Everything above has a negative light to it because its improvements but there were a lot more positives then negatives and I wanted to thank everyone's effort it took to allow me to get into the center and call out these fights. A lot of time and planning was done by OoV.
I had a great time and it was a blast.
Lets do this again right now!

EK

 

Sorry about that - should have noticed but it was like three in the morning .

I have gone back and edited my post to split of the feedback on the tournament into that topic - if you could split your replies on those to that we can continue there.
I have kept the things relating to the game. Tonight I will add more stuff.

 

*cough* *cough*

 

I feel like I may be intruding here, as I have not been involved in the tournament, but I can shed some light on the radio issue and the delay.

This is not the fault of Avatars radio. However it is not avoidable. It is common to ALL streaming and digital radio sources. I can listen to our national broadcaster, either on analogue (standard radio) or digital (available on a digital receiver or via the internet). The digital stream as ALWAYS several seconds behind the analogue broadcast.

Because I don't know any better, I think it's due to the process of digitizing the signal.

The delay is also variable. We have found this during our theatrical productions - the actors were listening to the stream via Avatars Radio, and timing their actions to the audio; trouble is one or two were a few seconds behind. I have even heard that if you have two Aether Amplifiers near each other they can be out of sync. We had to resort to unusual methods to keep all the cast in sync.

The take home message is - you can't fix the delay, you have to find ways of working with and around it.

 

LOL you forgot to target a dev with that cough...

*cough* @darkstarr