FAFLive Feedback & Suggestions

This is a thread meant for, as the title says, feedback and suggestions about FAF's Official Twitch. Mainly, what can be done to improve user engagement, what things people would like to be covered, and other things of that nature.

Currently, a thing I'm wrestling with is the idea of simply what to use the channel for. Obviously it will be utilized to cover the major FAF tournament events, but I wonder if that is what the extent of it should be.

Do people want the channel to simply be for these sort of events? What about using it to showcase new things and generate hype for things like the roll out of TMM and leagues? How about something basic like high level players simply reviewing some of their games or doing something where you have a segment where they review 3 curated replays a week? How about doing something like a FAF Podcast where you talk about developments every month and maybe have FAF personalities join in where they can discuss ideas or just talk about the game/replays there?

Really don't know what would be too much or too little and I don't know how many people are motivated to help me organize these things.

also, what will the fafofficial twitch emote be?????

Less UI, show us as much of the game screen as possible, have some info on the players and how they play so we know what are we in for when we are watching the game and what can be expected out of said players. That is as far as the tournaments goes.

As for what else can be used? Maybe for like a Q&A when new game balance patch is coming out, there are always people who wanna ask about that what and whys.

I would also leave the stream for more "official" FAF tournaments where FAF directly contributes money to the price pool.

Tbh I would see it as hub for tournament streams, where if it's online then I can tune in and be sure that I'm watching "official" coverage of currently ongoing tourney. Though I'm not sure how to even properly get system for it running, like dunno we could get list of people with access to the channel and then have tournament TD ask if they are willing to cast the games live.
Although on the other hand not sure if it won't be better to just have them cast on personal channel.

Other things? Where are my BTTV Emotes? I wanna pepeJAMJAM + RainboiwPls to music and CoffinPLZ when snipe happens.

I had some stuff I was going to make a thread for but seeing as you made this i'll just chuck it in here.

Two things I wanted to mention to the public (other td's etc) since the first qualifier stream:

1. Regarding Spoilers

I can't believe I actually need to say this first point.

If people didnt know, the stream was operating on a delay of a couple minutes to prevent cheating. It needed to happen, and I don't have an issue with it.

This does of course mean however, that the results are updated and visible before the casting ends. One can just go see the results and then spoil the game before it is finished on the stream by posting them in the chat.

And somehow, people decided this was a good idea to do. They know who they are.

The purpose of watching a stream is not to provide viewers with results information as soon as it appears. It's there to give a viewing experience. By posting results of the game before it ends, you're ruining that experience.

A couple of things can be done for this, first: people who spoil the games on the main channel should be immediately and permenently banned from posting in that chat. There is not an excuse for doing so and I cannot imagine what would compel someone to spoil games other than either outright stupidity or being a troll. It's not on.

Other things can be done including either hiding the challonge results or delaying them. Unless a TD communicates the next games to be played without it; delaying said stats might mess with how some TD's run tournaments (including me). I don't think this change would be enough to make it not worth doing over people using it to ruin the main channel stream.

2. Regarding footage.

Before I say this point; cheers for all the feedback regarding the trailer, and a second cheers to the people to chose to credit me for making it. It wasn't required and not everyone had the tact, so I felt it deserved a mention.

To the point, there should not be any additional observers in ANY tourney games.

I think we can all agree that people want to see media that is not necessarily "guy commentates game". The only thing we see from that is someone occasionally taking some almost unparsable footage and putting sabaton behind it.

Additional observers make it extremely difficult to record footage, and prevents us from progressing past sabaton hell.

Why? First of all, your backseat commentary is better reserved for twitch chat, and not ingame. It can be "hidden", but that is not justification for what should just be elsewhere.

Second is notify. It's common that in a game when a player upgrades, notify pings the chat for all observers as well. So if one guy upgrades gun, 8 other random people also upgrade gun, complete with your very unfunny upgrade messages. This is the same issue as above, but worse. Depending on your audio setup, it might sound very horrible when 8 players trigger the ping at the same time and it might not be removable.

Third is cheat messages. The game glitches out and spams them in a certain spot right in the middle of the screen. You can even see a cheat message in the LOTS trailer if you hunt for it. I'm lucky enough to be able to be in contact with people who can mod that out on a moments notice, but others cannot.

The solution to this is something that we already know, just don't put random people in live observers. I'm letting other TD's know about this and frankly, I wouldn't mind if this was a rule of thumb between all tourney games.

Third is that the graphics/UI on the main channel are not the best, I guess if I want that part to change I probably need to do it myself...

Also reminds me, if people have an interest in utilizing the FAFLive account, they need to talk to me about gaining access to the account.

I would like to see the channel be used for other events as well, not only tourneys. Things like a scheduled BO X series between high level players (live casted), maybe a ladder evening when a 2k+ player streams some ladder games, some FAF organized "fun games" like King of the Hill, Claustrophobia, Phantom on some specific evening.

@biass It was never about spoilers or ruining replays, it was about enjoying talking about the tourney and providing updates in real time. Personally, when other people have left observer comments on replays, I have found them to be entertaining and have enjoyed them. Who trolls a 13 year old game, anyways? You can not like something without assuming there is either malice or stupidity behind it.

Regarding the OP, FAFlive displaying livenames and the highest levels of play is a great idea. Other ideas for content: Player interviews, contributor interviews, tutorials, trailers and promotional content, tips and tricks. If the stream becomes popular enough, perhaps it could help generate revenue for FAF upkeep.

Regarding the stream:
First thing I noticed that your mic was clipping when were talking with a slightly raised voice. Which should be an easy fix with some change in settings. Also the audio in general had some issues. I think someone should be monitoring the stream in the beginning (in my opinion it is impossible for the streamer to do that on his own) and provide feedback. Also everyone appearing on stream during the evening should join in the beginning to dial in audio if possible. It would also be great for everyone to have a dedicated mic. Even the cheap ones for 50€ + 20€ arm improve audio by a lot over the avrg. 50€ headset.

I like that there was some efford on trying to cover a full series. Also I think it is already clear before the tournament starts which matchups will be the most interesting to watch. Maybe make a plan and stick to it. Also that would give the possibilities that the players know in advance when to wait for the casters. There might be some planned downtime between those sceduled matchups where some replays can be selected to watch. It should only be the most "epic" replays of the tournament. It might be possible to base that selection on the feedback of the players themselfes. So if they felt like a certain game was cast worthy they could be in communication with the caster team. Only problem might be that everyone might want to get casted.

Also the map ban website @Rowey is working with has a neat streamoverlay feature. But it would require someone other than the streamer to handle it. Probably the tournament director could do it but that person should be in voice. One big downside of mapban in my opinion is that it doesn't support tournaments yet. So it cannot replace challonge.

Regarding other content on FAFLive: I think we should aim for a quality level that it could get advertised on the newspage. And it should properly be sceduled. Maybe even display the streaming scedule on that page if there is more regular content. Applying to get hosted for certain stuff on FAFlive might also be a possibility. It would enable to promote a lot more different stuff without the whole account/ giving out the pw problem. And also not sacrifice the "high" quality standards of an official stream. Unfortunately hosting doesn't merge the chats, which might be desireable in this case. And I don't know if followers get a notification if you are hosting smth.

@harzer99 said in FAFLive Feedback & Suggestions:

Also the map ban website @Rowey is working with has a neat streamoverlay feature. But it would require someone other than the streamer to handle it. Probably the tournament director could do it but that person should be in voice. One big downside of mapban in my opinion is that it doesn't support tournaments yet. So it cannot replace challonge.

The system was not intedned to replace Chalonge, rather than Co-Exist along side it it a tool that is ther and can be used but it not nessary.

Is it possible to do splitscreen so that 50% of the screen is showing a completely zoomed-out view (strategic level)? Then you wouldn't need a minimap. Basically at the start of the match you would split screen the build orders and then zoom out on the right side for the rest of the game so we can always see what is going on. Then you can zoom in or do whatever you want with the camera on the left.

It might even be possible, using a program like UI-Party or UI-Festival, maybe with the "fullscreen script," to change the size of the split screens. E.g. the left could be 60% and the right side could be 40%.

Most of the time, when the map was zoomed out, almost half of the screen was just dead space (black). The mini map was small and kept appearing and disappearing so it's not really something people could look at.

I second Tagada's suggestion. There could be weekly Phantom or FFA streams. People should be able to submit requests to stream on FAFLive. Ladder players can sign-up on a calendar to stream on FAFLive. Smaller tournaments can apply to stream on FAFLive.

I'll be honest I think most the previously suggested content sounds good, but the one thing that matters above all is that there's consistently high quality. I can easily see all of the suggestions going disastrously wrong and faflive becoming a full on meme, if done poorly.

I think even a relatively small amount of tryharding will go a long way here.

• wait timers to replace awkward game finding phase
• scenes and overlays setup (eg. pre-game with caster facecams and tourny bracket, ingame with series score)
• facecams for casters/hosts/participants
• multiple teams of casters rotated in and out whenever possible (for tourny streams)
• dedicated producer if possible (eg. caster streams to producer which streams to audience)
• general tryharding/prep from casters (breaks between games certainly help here). Eg. taking notes beforehand about players, looking at their match histories, veto histories, etc.
• producer/td setting up games for stream, casters shouldnt have to do any of that stuff

Obviously caster charisma would be incredible too, but learning that is a long road for anyone to take, unless you are already a good speaker.

I guess the one content type i disagree on is some random ladder streams from high level players. I think each stream should be at least some kind of event with more than 1 person involved. This comes back to the point of having consistently high quality content. I'm not gonna bother checking or following faflive if half the stuff i dont care 1% about

Rather than a ladder stream, it could be custom 1v1s or 2v2s, that way there could be a live observer. The observer could be in voice chat with the player. The stream would show the player's screen (so we can see the player's POV, what they're clicking on). The commentator would only observe from the streamer's POV, so they wouldn't know what the enemy player is doing.

The commentator could talk about basically anything that is happening in the game, ask why the streamer is making certain choices, what they're planning to do next, what they think the enemy player is doing, that sort of thing. People could learn a lot about how to play the game by listening to top players talk about what they're doing and why.

You can't really do that without a live observer because of the stream delay

You could make a point of playing some of the 1v1s on maps in the lower-rated ladder pools or just classic ladder maps so people would learn about the meta for various maps so they could try to incorporate some of that into their own games.

The person playing and the person commentating don't have to be both very high level (1800+). If just one of them is high level, I think you could have compelling content and still be giving good info to viewers. Someone who is 800-rated might still be able to ask interesting questions of the player. They are probably a lot more curious about what is happening and why than someone who is 1400-rated or 1800-rated. Or someone who is 800-rated could benefit from having an 1800-rated person essentially coaching them live. I wouldn't say 800s all make the same mistakes, but people on the lower end of the ladder might more from watching 800-rated players bumble their way through games, and get advice about their mistakes, compared to watching 2000-rated players perform near-flawlessly.

I've seen some streams where F-Odin coaches people (without voice) and it's not bad content. It would be better with voice chat of course.

It probably goes without saying that coaching on FAF_Live should only be done by high-rated players.

I'd like to note that besides a player-stream it may also be interesting to have a development stream of some kind. Whether this is for maps, mods, a PR for the faf-code or the client / backend - they are all an essential to faf and they are interesting to see too .

If I missed this on stream I preemptively apologize. But Faflive should also talk about recent events in the community. When it streams (and it should be streaming something once a week), for example latest nvidia driver issue. It could been brought up. At start of stream. And the low rated tournament in a couple days

So two training concepts I'm interested in doing/entertaining on the twitch (so it can exist as highlights there and maybe exported to FAF YT)

1. A rating review of general ladder games across every rating bracket for FAF.

This would be taking a game or two from <300, 300-800, 800-1300, 1300-1800, and 1800+ and then essentially reviewing the replays to explain where players lost the game. The intent would be to showcase what kind of mistakes people are making at various levels of FAF gameplay and what kind of things they should be focusing on in order to avoid game losses. The point would NOT be to explain everything a 600 rated player is doing badly, but rather the major errors that ultimately result in him losing the game.

The games for these sort of reviews would generally be short and standard. There is no need to review some epic 1 hour game that is neck and neck as this isn't being done for the end goal of a cast. It should be the typical 15-20 minute FAF game with typical moves and motions that people can easily apply to their own games.

For this to happen, I would need people interested in reviewing the replays as well as people that are interested in gathering these sort of replays. If people are interested, PM me about it.

2. A FAF "Overexplained" Series

This can go one of two ways. The more intensive one but likely more interesting for general players is one in which 2 high rated players play one another and then proceed to take turns explaining their actions via a replay watch. This would then result in people having 2 different views of the same game explained to them and they can both see how two different players approach the game as well as how they respond to the major game moments. Otherwise, we could just have a single person overexplaining some nice, standard game they played

I would imagine these would be replays that are being watched at -3 or -4 speed just so that a person is capable of keeping pace with the game as they are explaining things. Why did they send that first engie there? Why did they build a few less pgens? Why did they send their ACU now rather than stay in base and make 2 more facs? Why did they go first int instead of first bomber? Stuff like that. Give us the train of thought that is going through your mind as you play.

Obviously this requires players that have some level of coherency in their play. It isn't very interesting to hear people say they did things "because" or "it just works" like we're listening to Todd Howard. If you are interested in taking part in such a series, PM me. We can work something out where either we just have a solo person overexplain their game or have two people take part in the explanation of the game.

that's two pretty cool ideas.

both are really pertinent.

I think the first idea in particular because newer players often say they can't identify at all with the 2000+ type game-play they often see in videos and this makes it hard to captivate students.

so showing them 400 rated play is much better. the dualist did a series kinda like this : https://youtu.be/NK-LvGL9HKc
he's no FA expert though so I can see how having commentary from someone more knowledgeable would really improove this recipe.