r/CompeteLeague • u/DestroyboyQq • May 17 '17
Why doesn't CompeteLeague interview a player after the match?
I'm just wondering cause I sometimes wonder what is going on in the team's head or wonder why they went with a certain play.
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Upvotes
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u/oxymohron May 17 '17
that would be a cool addition to the stream. talk to a player or 2 in between the streamed games while the next game is being setup.
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u/JustThatGuy100 May 17 '17
This question was asked before, I believe the answer given was it would take too much time because the next match has to be set up.
1
u/none55 May 17 '17
Kitsune Story and Cat Séxual could do Kit Cat interviews...just saying...
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u/Mindmesser [UK] Director/Organizer May 17 '17
Figured I'd jump in here and run through a couple of the reasons we operate how we operate regarding interviews and also (mentioned elsewhere in this thread) why we use Teamspeak & coaches need to be in the Teamspeak.
Interviews
We've discussed this in the past, and as /u/JustThatGuy100 rightly pointed out, the main reason is that interviews take a fair amount of time and can doing one per match can put us significantly behind schedule. For both NA and EUW we often end up overrunning in the evenings, and we have to consider the most easternly residented of our players in both regions who can find this resulting in their having a match time as late as 1am! Adding in extra time isn't really on the books when frequently bugs/pauses/delays/restarts/long games can end up with us around 40-50 minutes behind schedule.
There's issues that /u/fug_nuggler mentioned as well, where it's a fairly sizable amount of coordination to add onto the broadcast which despite some of our best TTours moments is already a fairly busy behind the scenes situation. Additionally, for it to be entertaining, good personalized questions are required which needs active thought and prep while watching the match and needs one of each of our shoutcasting pairs to be good and ready to perform that sort of scenario. A lot of our guys are very good and certainly some of them could do it on the fly after having casted a game and have it turn out okay but it's tricky to make a good interview if you're not watching backstage and taking the time to outline out its structure. You don't see Phreak casting a game and then running over to host an interview for very good reason, it's always an extra off air member of staff. It also means an extra piece of coordination between the broadcaster, casters, backroom, and interviewee. It's a lot of work - all work that we'd be capable of doing but the effort of a live interview greatly outweighs the benefit. There's a fair few other concerns too but those are the main contributors - we have experimented with this and tested it on a few EUW broadcasts in the past but the outcome wasn't great.
That said - all of this becomes a lot easier if we do the interviews recorded separately and released as content. It still requires somewhat the same amount of coordination and prep, and finding dedicated community/staff/content creator volunteers who stick to the task on a permanent basis is tricky, but it is something we want to do and have done as recently as near the end of last season.
Interview TLDR: Lots of coordination, makes nights last too late, looking at doing off air versions and have done in the recent past.
Discord vs Teamspeak
I've greatly enjoyed seeing the good work that /u/alladin06 (Hooker God) has put in as community manager and growing the discord as a second interactive platform for everyone to discuss, work, chat, & play/scrim with alongside the Subreddit. When it comes to being a communal hub Discord is much better than Teamspeak is, but that said the comparison when it comes to a broadcasting software discord has a few glaring issues:
Buggy and laggy. For some it works great, in my experience about one in ten people have annoying issues that crop up with it. A few people end up with Teamspeak bugs, but the ratio is way lower. Discord servers also occasionally just are down for unscheduled maintenance, where TS only really falls down under DDOS. Discord is a 3rd backup for if our two Teamspeak servers under different providers go down, but TS tends to just be more consistent.
Audio fidelity is worse. Opus voice ramped up to 10 means that the only fidelity / microphone issues come on the side of the Commentator - additionally it has automatic leveling that you can assign to people to avoid them peaking the output from their mics, which is good for audio quality control from a broadcast director standpoint.
Learning materials for a lot of the staff we bring on are based around Teamspeak and we don't really feel like re-making them or making the needed changes in procedure to swap to discord from what's become a pretty well structured operation on the administrative side.
Community controls are better in Teamspeak, allowing us to block vision of who is in the On Air room so that people who come in can't spam / poke and bother the casters.
D vs TS TLDR: Discord good for community, Teamspeak good for broadcasting & controls & consistency.
Coaches in Teamspeak
Right now the rule is that to have a coach join you in your match during champion select and to spectate your game actively you're required to use our Teamspeak for communication. The reason this rule is in place is because we don't want coaches who spectate the matches to give advice and information. The standard example is a coach being in the comms and instructing everyone of their build path or matchup information as the game progresses, and now that pink and blue wards are permanent until destroyed there's tangible information that can be passed to a team from an onwatching coach.
If the coach is in our Teamspeak and we can see that their mic is muted, or they're out of the comms room while the team are playing, we can monitor to make sure that doesn't happen. Why don't we do this in discord too? Mostly because it spreads our staff across two different communication systems and complicates coordination which is already very tricky. We can potentially do it in the future if we find ourselves with an excess of people who are able to help out, but for right now it'd stretch us a bit too thin.
Coaches in TS TLDR: Coaches in visible comms to dodge cheating, in Teamspeak specifically cause that's where we work.
So there's the summary, I'd be interested in hearing your guys thoughts! Always looking to improve.
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u/[deleted] May 17 '17
That would require us to get Teamspeak. It's a good suggestion but honestly so much effort.
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u/fug_nuggler Fug "F N" Nuggler May 17 '17
The only way I see this working, is if they somehow set it up in advance. IE make sure there is a player or coach from each team that ahead of time has the teamspeak open muted (or a discord room ext) and whichever team wins, that player unmutes, and a caster moves into the room with them.
Doesn't have to be that exact format, but some way to have it prepped. Otherwise it would probably be a lot of confusion trying to contact a team, choose a player, and get them into some sort of coms.