Hey everyone, I decided to make this thread to explain some of the policy decisions that we have made for this event in the effort to be completely transparent. You may want to check the Handbook which outlines all of the details about the entire event, and hopefully serves as an example of what levels of transparency we are aiming for.
I hope you can understand our situation and reasoning regarding the following topics.
Regards,
ZeroEmpires
I negotiated hard to get the best playing experience for the players as I recognise that AoE:HD provides a sub-optimal playing experience. With GameRanger we will be able to utilise the Userpatch 1.5 and Wololokingdoms to hopefully give the smoothest playing experience possible for the participants.
After testing, the setup for GameRanger is fairly straight forward and the results are really good, very low latency even with a player from each continent in the game. The only issues we may face are connection issues, as players will be required to port forward in order to play.
It is stated in the Handbook that in the case of connection issues, players may try to resolve their problems by using DirectIP or trying AoEHD.
This has been a topic of hot debate in the community recently, and I want to write a short bit about the streaming policy.
We've worked hard to find a solution that fits the needs of everyone, and that's not easy. This event is unlike any other and Age of Empires II is in a strange position right now. We're not quite an eSport yet but we're not exactly dead and buried either. In fact, we're growing and continuing to see more and more opportunities as time goes by.
The streaming policy enables small channels the ability to stream at any time with no cost, while those with a sizeable audience will pay a percentage fee based on their subscriber counts at the time of casting. This is a semi-open policy, since the way that the rules are written mean that streamers will be first streaming on the EscapeAoE channel and in the situation that they are not picked to cast will have the possibility to stream on their own channel as a secondary measure.
This ensures that the quality of casting on the EscapeAoE channel is always top class, while still giving the opportunity for a second or third stream to surface if we have too many streamers available and can't give them all a shift on a particular weekend.
I'm happy to say that after extensive talks with streamers we have come to a solution that works for them and for Escape Gaming and we're all on board with this project. I think the important thing here is that we are all working together to make the future of this game better.
We've worked hard to find a solution that fits the needs of everyone, and that's not easy. This event is unlike any other and Age of Empires II is in a strange position right now. We're not quite an eSport yet but we're not exactly dead and buried either. In fact, we're growing and continuing to see more and more opportunities as time goes by.
The streaming policy enables small channels the ability to stream at any time with no cost, while those with a sizeable audience will pay a percentage fee based on their subscriber counts at the time of casting. This is a semi-open policy, since the way that the rules are written mean that streamers will be first streaming on the EscapeAoE channel and in the situation that they are not picked to cast will have the possibility to stream on their own channel as a secondary measure.
This ensures that the quality of casting on the EscapeAoE channel is always top class, while still giving the opportunity for a second or third stream to surface if we have too many streamers available and can't give them all a shift on a particular weekend.
I'm happy to say that after extensive talks with streamers we have come to a solution that works for them and for Escape Gaming and we're all on board with this project. I think the important thing here is that we are all working together to make the future of this game better.
The decision to use recorded games is for a couple of reasons:
1). GameRanger. We can't spectate live with GameRanger and as you can read in the first section of this post: GameRanger is our best option right now.
2). Timing. Even if spectating live were an option, we would have games sporadically played at all different times, making it harder to schedule casters and making it harder for you to know when the games will be played. We could cast the recs as soon as the games are completed; but if we are going to do that then we may as well wait a few days and do them all together.
Ultimately, the games will be seen for the first time when we cast them, the casters will not know the results ahead of the games and by casting the recorded games we can produce a regular show (14GMT start on Saturdays) without any delays, technical problems or any of the other drawbacks of live games.
1). GameRanger. We can't spectate live with GameRanger and as you can read in the first section of this post: GameRanger is our best option right now.
2). Timing. Even if spectating live were an option, we would have games sporadically played at all different times, making it harder to schedule casters and making it harder for you to know when the games will be played. We could cast the recs as soon as the games are completed; but if we are going to do that then we may as well wait a few days and do them all together.
Ultimately, the games will be seen for the first time when we cast them, the casters will not know the results ahead of the games and by casting the recorded games we can produce a regular show (14GMT start on Saturdays) without any delays, technical problems or any of the other drawbacks of live games.
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