Race to the Finish Feedback Thread

2016-04-11 05:11:20 pm

www.twitch.tv/ghoul02

Hey all.

I know that the SDA standard is to usually wait a little bit, but I figured for the most part, I'd like to get this out of the way with while it's fresh on everybody's mind. All feedback is welcome, whether you were at the event or just watching from the stream. Without further ado, my thoughts.

The Good:
Runs themselves were absolutely fantastic. We had really good variety, nobody was, to my knowledge, over estimate. Commentary was universally great as well.

Venue was about the right size and absolutely fantastic but I'm not 100% sure it'd be good if we had more attendance. It's probably something to evaluate if or when we do another marathon, but FX was amazing for this.

Tourney Locator was awesome. Tons of support, great layouts and probably the most consistently fast setups any marathon has had. I'd absolutely love to work with them again, given the opportunity.

Twitch support was great as well - reaching out to Romscout for advice was huge, and easily one of my biggest recommendations to anybody that is looking to organize an in person marathon. (It was about an hour long skype call that really answered tons of the little questions.

The Middle:
I probably should have had more options to keep us on a better schedule. As easy as it is to know that being way behind is bad, being way ahead can be every bit as bad. Doing something like having Duckfist prep Mario 3 as a "We're 15 minutes ahead because our estimates are safe. so let's add this in" game. Similarly, I was really scrambling on Saturday to fill LittleNino's Metroid Prime run slot (massive thanks to JHobz for filling in), and considering that most of my own submissions were meant to be able to fill in if we had a drop (For example, Sonic Heroes was directly correlated to if KirbyMastah somehow couldn't make it out), not staying somewhat practiced on them was an error on my part. This is also in part to how insanely good we were at going from game to game.

Lack of a real set of incentives probably fits here. I don't think leaving donation incentives behind was the worst thing, and that was partially dictated by the platform we used. However, when factoring the fear that setup might exacerbate issues, on top of the other potential problems, I still don't know if adding incentives to push the run longer or showcase smaller thing would have really done that much more. I'll talk more about this later.

I would have liked to had a better icebreaker or just a way for people to mingle outside of just chatting, whether that's just having a stupid game off to the side for people to play etc. Some people are shy so just giving them an excuse to talk and have fun often can really make or break the experience for a lot of people.

On a similar note, it might have been a cool thing to have an "official" dinner after each day. Again, this was slightly hampered by the times the marathon ended (not a ton open at 9), but I should have had something planned for Sunday at least.

Crowd mics might have added a little bit, especially since on occasion there were questions that weren't answered... On the flipside, there were occasionally fighting game people chilling in the background that would have been captured as well.

The Bad:
I clearly should have planned out volunteer stuff a little bit more. I'd hoped people would hop on hosting a little bit more, which was probably a bit naive on my part (massive shoutouts to Spike for doing a ton of help there, especially on the first day and to Frozen for offering to take over during Kingdom Hearts for me)

Promotion could have definitely gone a fair bit better. I'm not terribly creative with naming and TLoc didn't want to make one for me. I think the name/logo were great,but they probably took too long to get out there.

And the big one, donations... It' s a bit of a sour spot, and that's not saying that 1,035 dollars is bad - it's great and going to go to help a great cause. However, there were two major mistakes made here. The first was the initial donate link going to the participant page and not directly to the donate link. So to explain, using Extra Life was a huge deal for me - it meant that all of the money went directly to the cause, auto generated tax receipts for people, and that I didn't have to ever touch it. Which was huge - that removed liability from my end and there was no chance of being excused of stealing etc. I tested the platform and saw that it did basically everything I needed it to do. What I didn't notice was that the giant donate button on the top right went to the Charity and didn't actually go to our profile. We noticed it and learned of it on the second day, but at that point, the damage was done. All of the money still went to a great cause but we had no way of seeing it or adding it to our total. This, in turn, might have kept donation rates down, since that's one of those things that maybe snowballs.

The second thing was focusing on trying to keep it about the runs, and what was, at the time, a schedule that I was terrified about being too dense (remember, I have 5 minutes of setup between games. For a first time marathon, this would be unheard of.) What I should have done, and this was mentioned on the second day, was pretty simple - go buy a 50-100 dollar E-shop card and have a drawing that had a 5 dollar minimum donation to enter. It would have been just enough to get people to donate, etc. It's definitely something we'll do next time.

So yeah, those are most of my thoughts. Feel free to add anything you want to and I'll get to it when I get a chance. Thanks everybody for coming out and making the event a huge success. I couldn't have done it without each and every one of you.

Thread title:

Hey all.

I know that the SDA standard is to usually wait a little bit, but I figured for the most part, I'd like to get this out of the way with while it's fresh on everybody's mind. All feedback is welcome, whether you were at the event or just watching from the stream. Without further ado, my thoughts.

The Good:
Runs themselves were absolutely fantastic. We had really good variety, nobody was, to my knowledge, over estimate. Commentary was universally great as well.

Venue was about the right size and absolutely fantastic but I'm not 100% sure it'd be good if we had more attendance. It's probably something to evaluate if or when we do another marathon, but FX was amazing for this.

Tourney Locator was awesome. Tons of support, great layouts and probably the most consistently fast setups any marathon has had. I'd absolutely love to work with them again, given the opportunity.

Twitch support was great as well - reaching out to Romscout for advice was huge, and easily one of my biggest recommendations to anybody that is looking to organize an in person marathon. (It was about an hour long skype call that really answered tons of the little questions.

The Middle:
I probably should have had more options to keep us on a better schedule. As easy as it is to know that being way behind is bad, being way ahead can be every bit as bad. Doing something like having Duckfist prep Mario 3 as a "We're 15 minutes ahead because our estimates are safe. so let's add this in" game. Similarly, I was really scrambling on Saturday to fill LittleNino's Metroid Prime run slot (massive thanks to JHobz for filling in), and considering that most of my own submissions were meant to be able to fill in if we had a drop (For example, Sonic Heroes was directly correlated to if KirbyMastah somehow couldn't make it out), not staying somewhat practiced on them was an error on my part. This is also in part to how insanely good we were at going from game to game.

Lack of a real set of incentives probably fits here. I don't think leaving donation incentives behind was the worst thing, and that was partially dictated by the platform we used. However, when factoring the fear that setup might exacerbate issues, on top of the other potential problems, I still don't know if adding incentives to push the run longer or showcase smaller thing would have really done that much more. I'll talk more about this later.

I would have liked to had a better icebreaker or just a way for people to mingle outside of just chatting, whether that's just having a stupid game off to the side for people to play etc. Some people are shy so just giving them an excuse to talk and have fun often can really make or break the experience for a lot of people.

On a similar note, it might have been a cool thing to have an "official" dinner after each day. Again, this was slightly hampered by the times the marathon ended (not a ton open at 9), but I should have had something planned for Sunday at least.

Crowd mics might have added a little bit, especially since on occasion there were questions that weren't answered... On the flipside, there were occasionally fighting game people chilling in the background that would have been captured as well.

The Bad:
I clearly should have planned out volunteer stuff a little bit more. I'd hoped people would hop on hosting a little bit more, which was probably a bit naive on my part (massive shoutouts to Spike for doing a ton of help there, especially on the first day and to Frozen for offering to take over during Kingdom Hearts for me)

Promotion could have definitely gone a fair bit better. I'm not terribly creative with naming and TLoc didn't want to make one for me. I think the name/logo were great,but they probably took too long to get out there.

And the big one, donations... It' s a bit of a sour spot, and that's not saying that 1,035 dollars is bad - it's great and going to go to help a great cause. However, there were two major mistakes made here. The first was the initial donate link going to the participant page and not directly to the donate link. So to explain, using Extra Life was a huge deal for me - it meant that all of the money went directly to the cause, auto generated tax receipts for people, and that I didn't have to ever touch it. Which was huge - that removed liability from my end and there was no chance of being excused of stealing etc. I tested the platform and saw that it did basically everything I needed it to do. What I didn't notice was that the giant donate button on the top right went to the Charity and didn't actually go to our profile. We noticed it and learned of it on the second day, but at that point, the damage was done. All of the money still went to a great cause but we had no way of seeing it or adding it to our total. This, in turn, might have kept donation rates down, since that's one of those things that maybe snowballs.

The second thing was focusing on trying to keep it about the runs, and what was, at the time, a schedule that I was terrified about being too dense (remember, I have 5 minutes of setup between games. For a first time marathon, this would be unheard of.) What I should have done, and this was mentioned on the second day, was pretty simple - go buy a 50-100 dollar E-shop card and have a drawing that had a 5 dollar minimum donation to enter. It would have been just enough to get people to donate, etc. It's definitely something we'll do next time.

So yeah, those are most of my thoughts. Feel free to add anything you want to and I'll get to it when I get a chance. Thanks everybody for coming out and making the event a huge success. I couldn't have done it without each and every one of you.

Deuceler

2016-04-11 06:10:51 pm

SPEEDruns not SAFEruns

Didn't get to catch as much as I would like because of work (or attend which I would have preferred!) but feedback I got from people was they had a great time and the stream looked good. From the few runs I watched I'll give you my list of things

PROS:
- Layout was simple but effective. Gave the information needed and showed the game + runner
- Sound was good. Easy to hear commentator/runner and host
- Good variety in games

CONS:
- Wasn't easy to access the schedule or donations. Maybe consider putting links in the bio since that's where people go to look
- Name was good, but seemed rushed and put out at the last second
- While the variety of games was good, there didn't seem to be that many for a three day event

I know you covered some of this stuff already, but overall was great for a first event. Hopefully I can consider attending if I'm back home next time!

osey889

2016-04-11 06:48:13 pm

I had run into that Donation problem, i ended up testing the waters with a $5 donation during catherine but used that big donation button you mentioned.
Early on in the marathon there was some noticeable background noise from what ever was going on downstairs but it was fixed after some time.
all and all things could have gone much worse for a starting out marathon, anything that did go wrong was very common and i think most nowadays are more willing to forgive that.

aneeslol

2016-04-12 10:00:18 pm

I'm a chuckster!

Venue was pretty sweet, but we'd need something bigger if we get more people. At least some sort of side room so we aren't necessarily on cam all the time.

Tech setup was obviously amazing, only thing I can think of was that the crowd couldn't really hear the commentary unless they were talking really loud.

For donations I think just having the donation goal on the stream would've helped give something to work towards - it got mentioned like once on the mic and that was the last of it. Also having the donate/schedule links on the channel page somewhere so you don't have to type commands in chat. And of course having some donation incentives helps a lot, but you'd also need to make sure that they get communicated well - the Sonic category thing was the only one I was aware of and it seemed like it was just kinda thrown in there.

Side stuff/dinner would've been cool, mostly because I suck at making conversation.

A little more communication leading up to the marathon would've also been nice - I was kind of thinking "so is this still happening?" for a while until everything suddenly came together in the last few days. I'm sure that's probably just how it goes, but a "hey we're still working on X and Y" post every now and then would help ease my mind. Also letting us know if there's anything we can help with, either preparing for or during the marathon.

Overall the event was great and all the foundational stuff went really well, so it shouldn't be hard to improve on the next one.

Venue was pretty sweet, but we'd need something bigger if we get more people. At least some sort of side room so we aren't necessarily on cam all the time.

Tech setup was obviously amazing, only thing I can think of was that the crowd couldn't really hear the commentary unless they were talking really loud.

For donations I think just having the donation goal on the stream would've helped give something to work towards - it got mentioned like once on the mic and that was the last of it. Also having the donate/schedule links on the channel page somewhere so you don't have to type commands in chat. And of course having some donation incentives helps a lot, but you'd also need to make sure that they get communicated well - the Sonic category thing was the only one I was aware of and it seemed like it was just kinda thrown in there.

Side stuff/dinner would've been cool, mostly because I suck at making conversation.

A little more communication leading up to the marathon would've also been nice - I was kind of thinking "so is this still happening?" for a while until everything suddenly came together in the last few days. I'm sure that's probably just how it goes, but a "hey we're still working on X and Y" post every now and then would help ease my mind. Also letting us know if there's anything we can help with, either preparing for or during the marathon.

Overall the event was great and all the foundational stuff went really well, so it shouldn't be hard to improve on the next one.

Keaur

2016-04-13 01:41:14 am

ヾ(´▽` )ノ

I only attended Sunday and not for very long (due to having work the next day and living 3 hours away).
My expectations were hit out of the park. The setup, the staff(bwett/ghoul), the transitions, it was all good.
The vibes were very good all around. If there's another, I anticipate that one to be good as well.

kirbymastah

2016-04-15 03:18:40 am

<(^_^)>

+Pros and -Cons

+The size of the event was pretty good. Admittedly I would've liked there to be a few more runners but all in all, it was very tight, everyone involved was basically talking with everyone involved.
+The location was great. the guys at tourneylocator are super nice and were super accomodating. It's also really nice to be in a game exchange spot since I was able to buy >5 PS2 games for the price of around $30 Cheesy

+Solid game list for the most part. A good mix of shorter and longer runs, with a reasonable amount of variety given what was offered and by whom. There were several last minute changes due to players dropping out but ghoul did a good job filling those emptied time slots in.
+Holy crap the setup time barely existed, with the exception of SMW JP (not sure what happened there but it's only one game with a slow setup)

-As ghoul mentioned before, the donation issue sent donations to the general charity rather than the actual one we were supporting, leading to probably a lot of "lost donations". The situation was handled fine IMO
-The donation and schedule should be linked in the twitch bio. Personally this bothered me a LOT, as it didn't help too much with the advertising of the marathon's schedule either.
-Plug donation incentives more. Admittedly this wasn't really that big since there, uh, weren't many in the first place?
-Speaking of advertisement, I definitely agree with aneeslol about that. There wasn't much talked about for this marathon until a week before it. I feel like tourneylocator could've done a better job advertising it too. On the plus side, we got on twitch front page Cheesy

Future stuff:
-As mentioned before, something like a brunch before the marathon each day and a dinner after the marathon at the end of each day would be cool, just to unite the community more. Make it a bit "more official" I guess?
-While this is a speedrunning event, it might be neat to include maybe a short 1 hour thing in the schedule with some of the runners doing a silly party game or some smash (especially with tourneylocator)? After all, this is about uniting the community in the area more. I admittedly didn't give this much thought, but I do think it's definitely worth thinking about.
-As I mentioned before, make the schedule and donation link more obvious. Make it the first thing in the twitch bio, and make nightbot plug it frequently (it was originally 30 minutes on Friday, which is wayyyyy too infrequent IMO)

Overall, while my time there was reallys hort, it was a really fun time and the most fun I've had in a long time! Great job, and I'm looking forward to the next one, whether I attend or not!

+Pros and -Cons

+The size of the event was pretty good. Admittedly I would've liked there to be a few more runners but all in all, it was very tight, everyone involved was basically talking with everyone involved.
+The location was great. the guys at tourneylocator are super nice and were super accomodating. It's also really nice to be in a game exchange spot since I was able to buy >5 PS2 games for the price of around $30 :D
+Solid game list for the most part. A good mix of shorter and longer runs, with a reasonable amount of variety given what was offered and by whom. There were several last minute changes due to players dropping out but ghoul did a good job filling those emptied time slots in.
+Holy crap the setup time barely existed, with the exception of SMW JP (not sure what happened there but it's only one game with a slow setup)

-As ghoul mentioned before, the donation issue sent donations to the general charity rather than the actual one we were supporting, leading to probably a lot of "lost donations". The situation was handled fine IMO
-The donation and schedule should be linked in the twitch bio. Personally this bothered me a LOT, as it didn't help too much with the advertising of the marathon's schedule either.
-Plug donation incentives more. Admittedly this wasn't really that big since there, uh, weren't many in the first place?
-Speaking of advertisement, I definitely agree with aneeslol about that. There wasn't much talked about for this marathon until a week before it. I feel like tourneylocator could've done a better job advertising it too. On the plus side, we got on twitch front page :D

Future stuff:
-As mentioned before, something like a brunch before the marathon each day and a dinner after the marathon at the end of each day would be cool, just to unite the community more. Make it a bit "more official" I guess?
-While this is a speedrunning event, it might be neat to include maybe a short 1 hour thing in the schedule with some of the runners doing a silly party game or some smash (especially with tourneylocator)? After all, this is about uniting the community in the area more. I admittedly didn't give this much thought, but I do think it's definitely worth thinking about.
-As I mentioned before, make the schedule and donation link more obvious. Make it the first thing in the twitch bio, and make nightbot plug it frequently (it was originally 30 minutes on Friday, which is wayyyyy too infrequent IMO)

Overall, while my time there was reallys hort, it was a really fun time and the most fun I've had in a long time! Great job, and I'm looking forward to the next one, whether I attend or not!

Ghoul02

Edit history:

Ghoul02: 2016-04-16 01:54:50 pm

2016-04-16 01:52:18 pm

www.twitch.tv/ghoul02

Alright then...

Links in the bio - This was definitely a miss on our end and something I'll make sure happens next time. My rationale, and probably the same one that TLoc was using, was that for events like tournaments, the bio is usually not changed. However, this being a different situation, and trying to actively get people to donate (whereas, something like checking a bracket is passive, people will do when they want to) and the schedule meaning more in general, meant that it should have had a permanent link in the bio.

Fewer games - hard to argue this too much either way... I took what I thought was the best possible marathon from the games I was given. I actually didn't turn down all that much, and most of them were basically "this run had an offer in the same series by a better runner and I only have about 24 hours total of games to work with". It's something I'll work for if we do a sequel for sure. Also note this was dictated slightly by the venue - the owner didn't want his workers there too late on Sunday, which is understandable. Originally, I wanted to go from 10-10 on Saturday and Sunday, and had to adjust to that. It's something that shouldn't be an issue next time.

Downstairs - There wasn't a downstairs, so that's kinda weird. I know that we might have had a few audio issues on the first day though, so I'm glad that got sorted out.

Side room - Probably the best thing would have been to set up on a monitor out of the cams view. That said, I know you were a PC run, and I set up the PC during practice time on the monitor directly on cam... I don't anticipate this being a problem next time.

Crowd hearing commentators - We talked a bit about trying to pump the audio feed through the store, but it was a fair bit of hassle and risked causing an echo. At the end of the day, we went with the simpler setup. I'd hoped that people would throw a headset on if they were interested in hearing commentary, even if they just left the mic up and out of use, but respecting the runner's space is fair.

Side stuff - Yep, unfortunate missed opportunity, especially given that part of the idea for the event was to meet other runners in the Dallas area. The fracturing across 3 days also hampered this a fair bit.

Communication - This could probably have been a bit better from my side. There were a fair number of periods where there wasn't much happening though, just fyi. Small tidbits with TLoc etc. I also kinda wish I had a few more responses - it gets lonely posting in a thread, especially if you have small questions and nobody usually responds (this was why I did the day where every runner got a "just making sure you're still in" message). I'll do what I can to make sure everybody is in the loop every step of the way next time.

Help - Between hosting, donation stuff, etc, probably should have been better organized for sure, easily one of the biggest takeaways. I was probably a bit too reluctant to ask for it, and wasn't sure how much interest there was on if somebody wanted to, for example, work with the charity aspect. I reached out to a few past marathon organizers when I had questions and tried to at least get some input on how to do things.

SMW J - For those that don't know, this was actually something they learned about their capture card. Apparently, it doesn't like starting up without the game feed going already or something. When you're running FG tournaments, not a problem, since you boot up one console and you're good for the day. For a marathon where hot swapping consoles on the fly is important, it's a bit more problematic. We ran into some smaller issues with Neerm setting the RNG seed for FF4, although they didn't have any impact on the run. (I'm sure Neerm was pretty nervous every time he hit the reset button though)

Donation Incentives - I mentioned this above, but I didn't use them because I really was terrified of the estimates and 5 minute setups. It seemed to me to be impossible at a first time marathon, and topping it off, we were packed in super tight - I really didn't want to go past the expected ending time. I do think just going with the eshop gift card as a prize should incentive donations as well, without the risk of pushing past schedule so much.

Party game block - This could be super fun. Shoutouts to bringing Bishi Bashi Special and never getting a chance to play it. D: I'd actually considered trying to get the local Smash community involved by having them come out and either do exhibitions or something, but heck, just having a 4 player Mario Party game with trash talk for an hour and a half might be the most fun way to fill some time in the schedule, especially if we end up going overnight or something at the next event. That said, I do want to keep the emphasis on speedruns and that hour and a half might be as well spent on giving a new runner a chance to perform at a live marathon (gaining experience for other events, having fun). It's a close balance and definitely something to keep in mind.

Great feedback so far, keep it coming.

Alright then...

Links in the bio - This was definitely a miss on our end and something I'll make sure happens next time. My rationale, and probably the same one that TLoc was using, was that for events like tournaments, the bio is usually not changed. However, this being a different situation, and trying to actively get people to donate (whereas, something like checking a bracket is passive, people will do when they want to) and the schedule meaning more in general, meant that it should have had a permanent link in the bio.

Fewer games - hard to argue this too much either way... I took what I thought was the best possible marathon from the games I was given. I actually didn't turn down all that much, and most of them were basically "this run had an offer in the same series by a better runner and I only have about 24 hours total of games to work with". It's something I'll work for if we do a sequel for sure. Also note this was dictated slightly by the venue - the owner didn't want his workers there too late on Sunday, which is understandable. Originally, I wanted to go from 10-10 on Saturday and Sunday, and had to adjust to that. It's something that shouldn't be an issue next time.

Downstairs - There wasn't a downstairs, so that's kinda weird. I know that we might have had a few audio issues on the first day though, so I'm glad that got sorted out.

Side room - Probably the best thing would have been to set up on a monitor out of the cams view. That said, I know you were a PC run, and I set up the PC during practice time on the monitor directly on cam... I don't anticipate this being a problem next time.

Crowd hearing commentators - We talked a bit about trying to pump the audio feed through the store, but it was a fair bit of hassle and risked causing an echo. At the end of the day, we went with the simpler setup. I'd hoped that people would throw a headset on if they were interested in hearing commentary, even if they just left the mic up and out of use, but respecting the runner's space is fair.

Side stuff - Yep, unfortunate missed opportunity, especially given that part of the idea for the event was to meet other runners in the Dallas area. The fracturing across 3 days also hampered this a fair bit.

Communication - This could probably have been a bit better from my side. There were a fair number of periods where there wasn't much happening though, just fyi. Small tidbits with TLoc etc. I also kinda wish I had a few more responses - it gets lonely posting in a thread, especially if you have small questions and nobody usually responds (this was why I did the day where every runner got a "just making sure you're still in" message). I'll do what I can to make sure everybody is in the loop every step of the way next time.

Help - Between hosting, donation stuff, etc, probably should have been better organized for sure, easily one of the biggest takeaways. I was probably a bit too reluctant to ask for it, and wasn't sure how much interest there was on if somebody wanted to, for example, work with the charity aspect. I reached out to a few past marathon organizers when I had questions and tried to at least get some input on how to do things.

SMW J - For those that don't know, this was actually something they learned about their capture card. Apparently, it doesn't like starting up without the game feed going already or something. When you're running FG tournaments, not a problem, since you boot up one console and you're good for the day. For a marathon where hot swapping consoles on the fly is important, it's a bit more problematic. We ran into some smaller issues with Neerm setting the RNG seed for FF4, although they didn't have any impact on the run.  (I'm sure Neerm was pretty nervous every time he hit the reset button though)

Donation Incentives - I mentioned this above, but I didn't use them because I really was terrified of the estimates and 5 minute setups. It seemed to me to be impossible at a first time marathon, and topping it off, we were packed in super tight - I really didn't want to go past the expected ending time. I do think just going with the eshop gift card as a prize should incentive donations as well, without the risk of pushing past schedule so much.

Party game block - This could be super fun. Shoutouts to bringing Bishi Bashi Special and never getting a chance to play it. D: I'd actually considered trying to get the local Smash community involved by having them come out and either do exhibitions or something, but heck, just having a 4 player Mario Party game with trash talk for an hour and a half might be the most fun way to fill some time in the schedule, especially if we end up going overnight or something at the next event. That said, I do want to keep the emphasis on speedruns and that hour and a half might be as well spent on giving a new runner a chance to perform at a live marathon (gaining experience for other events, having fun). It's a close balance and definitely something to keep in mind.

Great feedback so far, keep it coming.