Hey everyone,
I've been playing RTS and other games in a competitive level for around 2 decades now and I feel the need to discuss or just speak out about things that don't seem right according to what I believe. First of all, I think that Red Bull 5 is going to be a great success, it'll probably be amazing all around and viewer wise, it will rock all previous AoE2 numbers.
That being said, I feel that this tournament could of been even greater that what we are going to experience. Since I know that a lot of information from this tournament started many months ago, I believe that the excuse that it was rushed out is not correct but yes, it felt rushed. So here's the list of the things that could of been better according to my point of view (with no priority):
I think this covers the main things that could of been better. The list can go on for a bit but I want to keep it with the most important things. This is meant to be a constructive post and not trying to do any harm, just want to improve the experience for big future events. I want the AoE2 community to grow, and I'm pretty sure we all want that here besides having a great show, so why not work for that too? Why wouldn't be want to see AoE2 or even AoE4 be an esport in the future?
There's a lot of things that we can improve, and we can start now.
Kind regards,
Capoch.
I've been playing RTS and other games in a competitive level for around 2 decades now and I feel the need to discuss or just speak out about things that don't seem right according to what I believe. First of all, I think that Red Bull 5 is going to be a great success, it'll probably be amazing all around and viewer wise, it will rock all previous AoE2 numbers.
That being said, I feel that this tournament could of been even greater that what we are going to experience. Since I know that a lot of information from this tournament started many months ago, I believe that the excuse that it was rushed out is not correct but yes, it felt rushed. So here's the list of the things that could of been better according to my point of view (with no priority):
- The tournament is not meant to grow the AoE2 scene or community. This is key point for the players, the format of 84% of players invited and 16% qualifying is just terrible (10 invited and 2 qualified players). Every serious tournament should consider having at least 50/50 or even less invited players. Also, the total 12 player number makes no sense at all, since adding 4 extra players probably won't change much to the sponsor while it would make a more standard tournament with GSL groups or whatever, just the total of 12 players feels weird and I have never ever seen it before in an esport. So this just proves that RB5 is meant to provide a great show but not incentivate players that aren't in the top 10 or close to try hard for these spots, and we need to incentivate players to grow our community. AoE2 needs more people, and more people will bring new competitive players and more viewers in the long run.
- Everything was kept top secret and the information provided was always late trying to generate a fake sense of "hype". It's nice to have 1 video with a nice hype, but informing prizepool, location, etc about the event 2 days previous to the qualifier is just a joke. Informing invited players after the qualifiers makes no sense. Why everything is so hidden and top secret? This was so poorly handled it's just terrible. Why not give out the information even if the invited players are not 100% confirmed, post the Red Bull points list of players invited and in case a player had problems travelling, everyone knows who are the potential replacements. Everything would of been much better with transparency from the start, not 100% transparency but just the things that really matter.
- Not having a champion of Red Bull as part of the event. This is clearly another reason why the players are not considered so important in the event. Why would you organize a LAN event when you know that a previous champion won't be able to attend it? I know having a LAN is amazing, everyone wants to be part of it but at the same time, we are in a pandemic and every country has different issues, laws, etc. It's really nice to have a LAN event, but probably the timing is just bad. Of course that this is also because AoE4 is coming, and probably most of the reasons why things happened this way are because AoE4 is coming, but I believe keeping it the most competitive possible is ideal than having a LAN party, there'll be time soon for a LAN event in the future.
- Admin Loss in qualifiers: It's normal having a couple of AL in the early stages of the qualifier/tournament, but having an AL in Ro16 is just bad. I'm not going to get into details here, but I feel like both players and admins should make an effort and try to avoid this. I'll also add something on this regard that happened to myself in the qualifier: right after day 1 finished, I've kindly asked the admin if I could play later than 13GMT because that's 10 am in my country, which would mean that I have to weak up at 7-8 am to get ready for the games since it's a Ro8 game and not a Ro256 or Ro128 and it's important to warm up, go over stuff, have breakfast and so on. I believed that this was not going to be a problem since a lot of europeans are happy to play at 13GMT and not later. The response was just no, it would **** up the order of the event and if you advance, you won't have time for the next round and blabla. Complete bullshit, since you can reorganize the sets according to player timezones and try to fit them all, it's just 8 players god! Another reason why players in this event aren't so important.
I think this covers the main things that could of been better. The list can go on for a bit but I want to keep it with the most important things. This is meant to be a constructive post and not trying to do any harm, just want to improve the experience for big future events. I want the AoE2 community to grow, and I'm pretty sure we all want that here besides having a great show, so why not work for that too? Why wouldn't be want to see AoE2 or even AoE4 be an esport in the future?
There's a lot of things that we can improve, and we can start now.
Kind regards,
Capoch.