Dev blog: Alliance Tournament XVI - The Megablog!

Due to the Time Zone the matches were played in I didn’t stay up to watch all the matches so maybe I missed something.
I did watch the final matches though (I replayed the stream the next morning my time) and one thing I noticed.

I did not see ANY mention of what the prizes were and who got how many !

I heard mention in early matches that finishing in the top (8 ?) would give a team some “prize ships” but throughout the AT, in all the matches I was able to watch, I did not see anything about what those ships actually were.

I was especially expecting to see it after the final match. I thought for sure they’d throw up some pics of the prize ships and note what made them special and how many each team got of each type.
I was also expecting that they’d show the “Final Standings” so people could see where the teams ended up finishing and what prizes (if any) that they won. Even if it was just the “top 40” (or however many get automatic invites to next year’s event).

Very disappointed.
When the final match ended it was like CCP (or whoever) couldn’t close out the stream fast enough.
You’d think that maybe they’d have interviews with the winning captain (and the losing captain) as well, kind of like how they do after Stanley Cup/Grey Cup/World Series or other major championship events.

Instead we had - silence.

Aside from the issues with the video/audio synch, I thought the rest of the stream wasn’t too bad. Some of the commentators though. Meh.
One thing that could have helped is, the commentators should have the ability to highlight certain ships (without having to zoom in on them so that they fill the entire screen and nothing else is visible) and use pointers/arrows to help visualize what they are talking about. So often all we saw was some little lines from the Tactical View moving around with no real clue as to who was doing what.
That tech has been around for decades now (longer actually). The commentators should literally be able to click on the screen and have a ship pop-up in a small window or click on the screen and draw a line so people can tell which ship is the “Vindicator that is burning into the center of the other ships” instead of just looking at a bunch of white lines moving on the screen.

It was very rare when they’d get the zoom so that we could see a ship that was getting the reps or the ship that was receiving them (or was firing or getting hit, etc). It was, in pretty much every match, either zoomed out to the max, or zoomed in on one ship so that nothing else was visible.

Remember, the stream is meant for us to see what is happening, not for the commentator(s) who wants to spurge over a certain ship/pilot.
Half the matches I had no clue what was going on because the camera angle was off or they were zoomed in tight on one ship or another for nearly half the match.

This is supposed to be CCP’s “Flagship” event but seriously, if I never played the game before and watched this tournament, I doubt I’d be sold on it.

More graphics (pics not “graphs”) of the ships themselves would be helpful. In fact, whenever the commentators are yakking, the background behind them should be showing hi-res pics of a ship (i.e. one ship across the 3 background screens, or one big background screen, with the view zoomed in enough to see details of the ship as it slowly “spins”). (You could even put the “counter” at the bottom so people could see how many times it has “spun” as an “inside joke”.)

During the match, zoom in a bit on different ships so people can see what you are actually talking about. They don’t have to “fill the screen” but we hardly saw any of them except for the “the last one about to blow up”.
As well, we didn’t get to see many of the “effects” unless it was the last ship about to explode. I’d have liked to seen some views of a swarm of rep drones being smart-bombed off of a ship by another ship but instead all I saw was some weird camera angle that showed almost nothing, or a ship that filled the screen and blocked everything else from being seen.

Some of the ships are ones that the majority of EVE players have never even heard of while others may simply be unfamiliar to them. Some are “favourites” of a lot of players and even though they know them quite well, they’d still get a “tickle” at seeing their favourite ship on screen, in the tournament and seeing what “skin” was being used. Hardly heard any mention of skins at all, despite how hard CCP has been pushing to sell them.

In fact, as soon as the teams warp into the arena, the commentators could start highlighting and zooming in on different ships before the match starts, instead of 8-10 seconds before the match starts.

(In case you are unaware, talking heads in a studio aren’t as exciting as seeing shiny ship hulls about to explode.) Less “studio” time and more “arena” time would be nice. Or at least more discussion - and pics - of the ships and their abilities (and why people are picking them) would be preferable instead of looking at some stupid jacket or piece of fruit on a table. Save that sh*t for the bar after the matches are over.

Lastly (for now), maybe next year the AT could be held in an Abyssal setting (without the “losing ship and pod” bit if you don’t finish fast enough). You could even include random Abyssal effects that the players wouldn’t know about beforehand just to spice things up a bit !

Just remember, it’s a game about spaceships. In space. Not nerds in studios.

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