RPG Limit Break 2016 - Feedback Thread

puwexil

Edit history:

puwexil: 2016-05-26 09:55:23 am

2016-05-26 09:21:42 am

Professional Second Banana

I and the rest of RPGLB Staff are extremely pleased with what we've accomplished this year, between raising 150% of our donation goal and hearing a lot of attendees say they had a great time participating in the event. As always, we’d love to know what people (both attendees and stream viewers) thought did and didn't work about this year’s marathon, so we can make RPGLB 2017 even better.

To get the conversation started, here’s some thoughts from Staff - feel free to add on to these topics or any others you can think of:

Schedule/Games
-Extending the marathon to 5 1/2 days accomplished our goal of allowing time for more 6+ hr runs while still keeping to at least 30 total games. We're open to the possibility of extending it again to GDQ-length of 6 1/2 days (Sunday - Saturday), but are concerned about that extra day meaning less time for setup and us burning through the library of marathon-viable RPGs faster.
-Estimates were pretty conservative this year, which I think is due to 'going over estimate' having somewhat of a negative stigma in our community these days.
-Using 30-45 min bonus games to resynch the schedule when it got ahead worked out pretty well - would like to continue this, along with possibly other types of content like runner interviews or behind-the-scenes features.
-Outstanding play quality overall by the runners!
-Having chosen the games and made the schedule, I'm obviously biased - curious how others thought we did as far as making a schedule good for both raising donations and representing many sides of the RPG speedrun community.

Venue
-Conference rooms worked pretty well for the # of attendees we had - no room ever felt overly crowded to me even during peak usage.
-Practice room got pretty hot during peak times, though getting an additional AC unit installed helped somewhat. We can ask for this right away next time, along with better planning the TV placements.
-Hotel room shortage was unfortunate, and some attendees had to stay offsite for part of the event and spend more money on their rooms. To prevent this from happening again, while still avoiding risk of Staff members being financially responsible for unused hotel rooms, we're going to use RPGLB channel Twitch partnership revenue to establish a surplus fund. This will allow us to be less conservative with our attendance estimates when setting the contract for next year's event.
-Lack of a hotel airport shuttle was an inconvenience, though having both cheap (light rail) and fast (shuttle/taxi) transportation options was the next best thing.
-Very interested to know what attendees thought of the Salt Lake City area for travelling to, and the University Guest House for the event venue. Unless there's very significant community desire for a different venue city, we'd prefer to stay in the SLC area (due to having a great relationship with NAMI-Utah, staff & other community members local to the area, and our TV supply and other tech equipment being located in the Western US); but we are very open to looking at other event spaces based on your feedback.
-Interest in post-marathon activities was extremely low this year, and all but ~10 attendees left on or before Sunday (which is a trend with current GDQ events as well). Interested to know if anyone would like to see post-marathon 'bonus days' continue, and if so what should be done during them to get people to stick around.

Tech
-Very happy with the overall setup - almost no downtimes, long setups, or other issues.
-Paypal issues were frustrating - we are looking into backup options for this in the future, such as temporarily switching to a different payment gateway.
-Twitch connectivity issues were mercifully brief, unfortunately really affecting one run in particular - Romscout helped us try to troubleshoot this from on site (thanks!)
-Seriously, Vulajin is really, really sorry for turning off Bizkit’s PS2. In the future, neither Vulajin nor any other tech volunteer will be messing around with cables during any run, period.
-Skype call! Huge success, very few issues, 10/10 would have devs again. Thanks to Reverend Miller for helping organize this.
-Future priorities: make running the stream even easier, teach volunteers better, possibly permit uploading VODs as runs finish.

Chat/Website
-The Quakenet chat was advertised on the RPGLB Twitch channel bio and via Moobot, and was still barely used. It's very little effort on our part to have a 2nd chat, so we'll continue doing so if there's any interest at all.
-Overall both chats were generally civil/appropriate - moderation could have been stronger in a few cases.

Commentary
-Absolutely incredible. I've watched about half of the marathon VODs so far, and every one has knocked it out of the park with informative and energetic commentary.

Prizes
-Opening of prize submissions got delayed a few times due to the tracker still being set up, but that will not be an issue next time.

Incentives
-Most incentives (especially during the 1st few days) ended up being underpriced, though that was done in response to some early incentives not getting met at all last year.
-Asking for incentive ideas to be included with game submissions worked pretty well - we might just make those the 'official' incentive submissions next time and not have a separate submission process for incentives/bid wars.

Charity
-NAMI was chosen based on community feedback during the planning stages of RPGLB 2015 - they continue to be great to work with overall and very grateful for our community’s support, and the cause seemes to resonate pretty well with our viewers.
-Still concerns about NAMI’s impact being US-centric; but I haven't heard many people cite that as a deal-breaker for supporting the cause.
-Charity partner selection is something we always want to have strong community backing - let us know what you think about the cause of mental health support/awareness and NAMI in particular.

Volunteering
-Next year, volunteer shifts (with the possible exception of hosts) will be based on times (ie 8AM-10AM) rather than tied to runs on the schedule. This will avoid volunteers ending up with overly long shifts (no more than 2-4 hours at a time), and avoid confusion over how schedule changes impact volunteer shifts.
-Training and documentation for volunteer roles can be a lot better, and Staff will make that a priority to improve on for next time.

Social Media
-RPGLB Twitter was again used well during the marathon to promote the event/runs

Thread title:

I and the rest of RPGLB Staff are extremely pleased with what we've accomplished this year, between raising 150% of our donation goal and hearing a lot of attendees say they had a great time participating in the event.  As always, we’d love to know what people (both attendees and stream viewers) thought did and didn't work about this year’s marathon, so we can make RPGLB 2017 even better.

To get the conversation started, here’s some thoughts from Staff - feel free to add on to these topics or any others you can think of:

[u]Schedule/Games[/u]
-Extending the marathon to 5 1/2 days accomplished our goal of allowing time for more 6+ hr runs while still keeping to at least 30 total games.  We're open to the possibility of extending it again to GDQ-length of 6 1/2 days (Sunday - Saturday), but are concerned about that extra day meaning less time for setup and us burning through the library of marathon-viable RPGs faster.
-Estimates were pretty conservative this year, which I think is due to 'going over estimate' having somewhat of a negative stigma in our community these days.
-Using 30-45 min bonus games to resynch the schedule when it got ahead worked out pretty well - would like to continue this, along with possibly other types of content like runner interviews or behind-the-scenes features.
-Outstanding play quality overall by the runners!
-Having chosen the games and made the schedule, I'm obviously biased - curious how others thought we did as far as making a schedule good for both raising donations and representing many sides of the RPG speedrun community.

[u]Venue[/u]
-Conference rooms worked pretty well for the # of attendees we had - no room ever felt overly crowded to me even during peak usage.
-Practice room got pretty hot during peak times, though getting an additional AC unit installed helped somewhat.  We can ask for this right away next time, along with better planning the TV placements.
-Hotel room shortage was unfortunate, and some attendees had to stay offsite for part of the event and spend more money on their rooms.  To prevent this from happening again, while still avoiding risk of Staff members being financially responsible for unused hotel rooms, we're going to use RPGLB channel Twitch partnership revenue to establish a surplus fund.  This will allow us to be less conservative with our attendance estimates when setting the contract for next year's event.
-Lack of a hotel airport shuttle was an inconvenience, though having both cheap (light rail) and fast (shuttle/taxi) transportation options was the next best thing.
-Very interested to know what attendees thought of the Salt Lake City area for travelling to, and the University Guest House for the event venue.  Unless there's very significant community desire for a different venue city, we'd prefer to stay in the SLC area (due to having a great relationship with NAMI-Utah, staff & other community members local to the area, and our TV supply and other tech equipment being located in the Western US); but we are very open to looking at other event spaces based on your feedback.
-Interest in post-marathon activities was extremely low this year, and all but ~10 attendees left on or before Sunday (which is a trend with current GDQ events as well).  Interested to know if anyone would like to see post-marathon 'bonus days' continue, and if so what should be done during them to get people to stick around.

[u]Tech[/u]
-Very happy with the overall setup - almost no downtimes, long setups, or other issues.
-Paypal issues were frustrating - we are looking into backup options for this in the future, such as temporarily switching to a different payment gateway.
-Twitch connectivity issues were mercifully brief, unfortunately really affecting one run in particular - Romscout helped us try to troubleshoot this from on site (thanks!)
-Seriously, Vulajin is really, really sorry for turning off Bizkit’s PS2. In the future, neither Vulajin nor any other tech volunteer will be messing around with cables during any run, period.
-Skype call! Huge success, very few issues, 10/10 would have devs again. Thanks to Reverend Miller for helping organize this.
-Future priorities: make running the stream even easier, teach volunteers better, possibly permit uploading VODs as runs finish.

[u]Chat/Website[/u]
-The Quakenet chat was advertised on the RPGLB Twitch channel bio and via Moobot, and was still barely used.  It's very little effort on our part to have a 2nd chat, so we'll continue doing so if there's any interest at all.
-Overall both chats were generally civil/appropriate - moderation could have been stronger in a few cases.

[u]Commentary[/u]
-Absolutely incredible.  I've watched about half of the marathon VODs so far, and every one has knocked it out of the park with informative and energetic commentary.

[u]Prizes[/u]
-Opening of prize submissions got delayed a few times due to the tracker still being set up, but that will not be an issue next time.

[u]Incentives[/u]
-Most incentives (especially during the 1st few days) ended up being underpriced, though that was done in response to some early incentives not getting met at all last year.
-Asking for incentive ideas to be included with game submissions worked pretty well - we might just make those the 'official' incentive submissions next time and not have a separate submission process for incentives/bid wars.

[u]Charity[/u]
-NAMI was chosen based on community feedback during the planning stages of RPGLB 2015 - they continue to be great to work with overall and very grateful for our community’s support, and the cause seemes to resonate pretty well with our viewers.
-Still concerns about NAMI’s impact being US-centric; but I haven't heard many people cite that as a deal-breaker for supporting the cause.
-Charity partner selection is something we always want to have strong community backing - let us know what you think about the cause of mental health support/awareness and NAMI in particular.

[u]Volunteering[/u]
-Next year, volunteer shifts (with the possible exception of hosts) will be based on times (ie 8AM-10AM) rather than tied to runs on the schedule.  This will avoid volunteers ending up with overly long shifts (no more than 2-4 hours at a time), and avoid confusion over how schedule changes impact volunteer shifts.
-Training and documentation for volunteer roles can be a lot better, and Staff will make that a priority to improve on for next time.

[u]Social Media[/u]
-RPGLB Twitter was again used well during the marathon to promote the event/runs

bathtubb

2016-05-26 10:48:47 am

I really liked this year's RPG Limit Break. I thought it ran smoothly, and had some great runs. There are two small issues/critiques I would like to give.

The first one is Final Fantasy 4,5, and 6. I am personally burnt out on these speedruns. I understand that they are classics and a lot people love them, but at least one of them makes into every bigger speedrun event. I would of like to see one replaced with a different game.

The second one is during the Elder Scrolls run it sounded like the announcer was breathing into the microphone the whole run. Maybe have the announcer on a push to talk, or something like that.

Other than those two things great event, already waiting for next year!

TheSabin

2016-05-26 11:12:31 am

Suplexes Trains

From a viewer point of view, here is my feedback of the event.

Schedule/Games
-Yo-Kai Watch was surprisingly enjoyable to watch. I had no idea this franchise existed and was actually fun to watch with the commentary. Expected nothing, left surprised, I think we still need some games like that for next year. Also KH2FM was super hype. Great job to Bizkit and the commentary, you guys made it the perfect closure of the event.

Stream
-My only issue really with the stream overall is most of the marathon was showing up an empty room with no one sitting behind the couch. It felt like an empty marathon for the most of it unfortunately.

Social Media
There was not enough on-site pictures during the marathon from the RPGLB Twitter . I went back to it and saw 5-6 during the marathon. I enjoy seeing the behind the scene and stuff happening in the practice room, because I felt this is where all the people were hanging out, which is a follow up of the empty streaming room is mentioned before.

Charity
-It was hard for me to actually donate this year for NAMI, and probably for other Canadians as well, and the reason is simple. NAMI is mostly US-Centric, and by the time RPGLB was happening, here in Canada, we had the Fort McMurray wildfire happening which destroyed 2400 homes and buildings. And since, even at work, we had a Red Cross campaigns to help them, it was more important donating for that in my eye than RPGLB.
I guess my point is, having a US-Centric cause makes it harder for people from the other country to actually donate. I think this is my major downside of the whole thing this year, bad timing I guess.

From a viewer point of view, here is my feedback of the event.

Schedule/Games
-Yo-Kai Watch was surprisingly enjoyable to watch. I had no idea this franchise existed and was actually fun to watch with the commentary. Expected nothing, left surprised, I think we still need some games like that for next year. Also KH2FM was super hype. Great job to Bizkit and the commentary, you guys made it the perfect closure of the event.

Stream
-My only issue really with the stream overall is most of the marathon was showing up an empty room with no one sitting behind the couch. It felt like an empty marathon for the most of it unfortunately.

Social Media
There was not enough on-site pictures during the marathon from the RPGLB Twitter . I went back to it and saw 5-6 during the marathon. I enjoy seeing the behind the scene and stuff happening in the practice room, because I felt this is where all the people were hanging out, which is a follow up of the empty streaming room is mentioned before.

Charity
-It was hard for me to actually donate this year for NAMI, and probably for other Canadians as well, and the reason is simple. NAMI is mostly US-Centric, and by the time RPGLB was happening, here in Canada, we had the Fort McMurray wildfire happening which destroyed 2400 homes and buildings. And since, even at work, we had a Red Cross campaigns to help them, it was more important donating for that in my eye than RPGLB.
I guess my point is, having a US-Centric cause makes it harder for people from the other country to actually donate. I think this is my major downside of the whole thing this year, bad timing I guess.

Bizkit047

2016-05-26 03:05:54 pm

I had a great time at this marathon (more fun than GDQs for me). I have tons of good stuff I can probably say, but to keep this a bit brief I'll mostly focus on minor issues I saw personally, since I think that's more important (plus original post covered most praise).

Schedule/Games
-Schedule wise, it seemed pretty good to me. I'm a bit biased though, since I got the finale prime time slot.
-However, I personally think there is a lack of "popular" games in the marathon, that would probably bring in more viewers/donations (FFVII/VIII/IX, at least one of these would have probably helped a lot). A sad truth is that many people may not be interested in watching a run of a long RPG they never heard of vs one that most at least know of. I also know that it's cool to have runs of obscure games too though, especially if the runners are good, but if the goal is more viewers/donations, it might require sacrificing a couple obscure RPG runs to get in a big name one, at least imo. I'm not sure what other popular games were submitted or denied though, so I could just be wrong about that.
-Bonus games was a great idea since it kept the schedule together, rather than shift the runs to way different time slots than they were supposed to and end up confusing people.
-As far as estimates go, I think it's always a good idea to assume near worst case runs. For example, I can no reset run KH2FM LV1 and get 4:20 or less pretty easily every time. However, I assumed in a marathon it could be filled with bad luck, so I went with a 4:30 estimate to be safe. It may not hurt to have runners come up with a showcase of things to display at the end of the run if possible, in case they crush their estimate imo so that people can give safe estimates and also cover the situation of saving too much time in the schedule (I assume bonus games wouldn't be too useful if you only save like 15-20 mins on a run).

Venue
-It's always nice to have the venue be a hotel as well. The rooms were pretty comfy, and it was great to have a fridge/microwave. It was also pretty easy to get to the other rooms as well.
-It sucked not being able to walk to any food places, but the shuttles were a nice answer to that problem, so I was pretty content with the venue for the amount of people we had overall.
-I'm biased and would prefer EC location, but I can understand why you'd stay there for the convenience. I live where there are no mountains, so seeing mountains so close is pretty cool
-I think the issue with bonus days is people would rather stay from beginning of marathon and leave near end, than come late to stay for bonus days. I know I personally can't stay for the entire thing AND bonus days, so I imagine others have that same problem. If bonus days are to be more successful, maybe planning out ahead of time what people should do as a group may help?

Tech
-Jokes aside about my run, tech side seemed pretty solid.
-Only big issue is due to not being able to hear the game sound well as a viewer in the stream room, it probably turned people off from spectating in that room, making it look empty during a lot of runs. Not sure what can be done about that from the tech side, but just something that seemed off to me when I was watching Spike's CC run.

Chat/Website
-The only issue I had with the website was that it was pretty difficult to find the donation incentives for a run. It didn't stand out going to the website, so I wouldn't be surprised if a bunch of donators missed it. If that can be fixed for next time, it could possibly help get more donations.

Commentary
-This year it definitely seemed like the commentary was stepped up. I don't think some runners/communities from GDQs understand how important having solid commentary during a run is.

Incentives
-I think a possible option is to have backup incentives for a run if that may work out well. That way, if all incentives get met, it doesn't immediately turn off donations for the rest of that run. For example, if we didn't last minute think of the changing Keyblade for Sephiroth fight incentive, that would have been a massive drop in donations for the finale run, rather than tacking on a hard to reach final incentive that gave us a bunch.

I had a great time at this marathon (more fun than GDQs for me). I have tons of good stuff I can probably say, but to keep this a bit brief I'll mostly focus on minor issues I saw personally, since I think that's more important (plus original post covered most praise).

Schedule/Games
-Schedule wise, it seemed pretty good to me. I'm a bit biased though, since I got the finale prime time slot.
-However, I personally think there is a lack of "popular" games in the marathon, that would probably bring in more viewers/donations (FFVII/VIII/IX, at least one of these would have probably helped a lot). A sad truth is that many people may not be interested in watching a run of a long RPG they never heard of vs one that most at least know of. I also know that it's cool to have runs of obscure games too though, especially if the runners are good, but if the goal is more viewers/donations, it might require sacrificing a couple obscure RPG runs to get in a big name one, at least imo. I'm not sure what other popular games were submitted or denied though, so I could just be wrong about that.
-Bonus games was a great idea since it kept the schedule together, rather than shift the runs to way different time slots than they were supposed to and end up confusing people.
-As far as estimates go, I think it's always a good idea to assume near worst case runs. For example, I can no reset run KH2FM LV1 and get 4:20 or less pretty easily every time. However, I assumed in a marathon it could be filled with bad luck, so I went with a 4:30 estimate to be safe. It may not hurt to have runners come up with a showcase of things to display at the end of the run if possible, in case they crush their estimate imo so that people can give safe estimates and also cover the situation of saving too much time in the schedule (I assume bonus games wouldn't be too useful if you only save like 15-20 mins on a run).

Venue
-It's always nice to have the venue be a hotel as well. The rooms were pretty comfy, and it was great to have a fridge/microwave. It was also pretty easy to get to the other rooms as well.
-It sucked not being able to walk to any food places, but the shuttles were a nice answer to that problem, so I was pretty content with the venue for the amount of people we had overall.
-I'm biased and would prefer EC location, but I can understand why you'd stay there for the convenience. I live where there are no mountains, so seeing mountains so close is pretty cool 
-I think the issue with bonus days is people would rather stay from beginning of marathon and leave near end, than come late to stay for bonus days. I know I personally can't stay for the entire thing AND bonus days, so I imagine others have that same problem. If bonus days are to be more successful, maybe planning out ahead of time what people should do as a group may help?

Tech
-Jokes aside about my run, tech side seemed pretty solid.
-Only big issue is due to not being able to hear the game sound well as a viewer in the stream room, it probably turned people off from spectating in that room, making it look empty during a lot of runs. Not sure what can be done about that from the tech side, but just something that seemed off to me when I was watching Spike's CC run.

Chat/Website
-The only issue I had with the website was that it was pretty difficult to find the donation incentives for a run. It didn't stand out going to the website, so I wouldn't be surprised if a bunch of donators missed it. If that can be fixed for next time, it could possibly help get more donations.

Commentary
-This year it definitely seemed like the commentary was stepped up. I don't think some runners/communities from GDQs understand how important having solid commentary during a run is.

Incentives
-I think a possible option is to have backup incentives for a run if that may work out well. That way, if all incentives get met, it doesn't immediately turn off donations for the rest of that run. For example, if we didn't last minute think of the changing Keyblade for Sephiroth fight incentive, that would have been a massive drop in donations for the finale run, rather than tacking on a hard to reach final incentive that gave us a bunch.

Ghoul02

Edit history:

Ghoul02: 2016-05-28 12:33:59 am

Ghoul02: 2016-05-26 03:14:59 pm

2016-05-26 03:11:21 pm

www.twitch.tv/ghoul02

I'll go through these in the same order as Puwexil did.

Schedule/Games:
-I'd love to see the extra day tacked on. The fact that my "guess" list was only 70% accurate or worse means that there's plenty of room for more amazing runs, and there were even some of the largest RPG communities that didn't have any real representation at the largest event (Tales being the one that comes to mind). When the marathon only happens once a year, I'm less worried about burnout and games repeating, and it seems like a good bit of them repeated from this year anyway. (FF4 which admittedly was a last minute replacement and done very well by Neerm, FF6, Lufia 2, KH2...).
-Nobody does games submissions better than RPGLB, and I mean that even in a post Vulajin-as-the-face-of-the-games-committee SGDQ era. From start to finish, they're handled exceptionally well and fairly to all runners, feedback on rejected runs is readily available if asked (and can be taken care of quietly, which is huge). I also love the way that RPGLB does do some of the "out there" picks as well, to give more diversity and allow different parts of the community to showcase themselves. Seriously, don't change that, just add another day.
-I do think that I'm worried about FF6 having a "Super Metroid" effect on the marathon, and potentially KH2 as well. Not that these aren't some of the largest, most popular RPG speedruns, but seeing them in every marathon, would, I think, be detrimental to the marathon as a whole, and to RPGLB's purpose of showcasing the community as best as possible. If the main reason FF6 makes money is determined to be Demon Chocobo shenanegans, I'd suggest using the layout as a way to keep the incentive (also would be great as a way to keep donations strong through the end of the marathon, allowing for more untraditional closers like KH2 to still have a huge incentive or bidding war. As clever as the "let's handicap Biz" incentive was at the end, there wasn't nearly as much to put money towards as there potentially could have been and it's a constant problem with marathon closers).
- Party trick RPGs were great as a way to fill the slots, although I don't know how many of them we're going to get each year. I think a more thorough evaluation of each runner's estimate may help us to understand how much of each of them are needed, as well as when and where they might happen. (For example, for Yo-kai Watch, I could have said that in the 3:15 estimate, 2:40 of that was from a PB pace run, :02 of it was from naming incentives, :07 of it was to account for bug RNG, :10 for the incentive and :08 of it was to account for a worst case scenario death on the final boss, or something like that.) More data for schedule making would only be a good thing. Having other alternatives, whether it's putting Stinger on to play some Theatrythm for 15 minutes (donation incentive for which songs), runner interviews like GDQs do, showcases of boss fights from runs that may show up in the future as a "trial run", etc may make lots of sense as well.
-Personal thing, I don't like forcing English fan translations on games that were never released in the US. I understand the reasoning, but it really, really sucks that the Dragon Quest 3 run doesn't have the true history or pedigree behind the run in a way. This places a bigger burden on the commentators, for sure, and might make naming incentives harder, but we have so many naming incentives anyway, losing a few won't really hurt that badly.

Venue
-Lack of any viable cell reception is my only major complaint for the main venue. I found it comical that you needed text message access to use the wifi, but I only needed WiFi because I had no cell reception. Again nothing RPGLB could do, just bad design by the University.
-Hotel room shenanigans were unfortunate. Understandable, but something that should be avoided next year if at all possible.
-Salt Lake City is fine overall. It's good to have it in a place that's cheap, as well as having multiple staff members live in the area.
-Having a piece of tape mark where the cameras are so that people know to not just stand in the doorway would be nice. To the stream, the room looked somewhat empty. There were almost constantly 4-5 people standing outside the range of the camera. This is partly because people don't necessarily want to commit to sitting and watching a full run, which we need to tell people that "it's okay to get up and leave" as well. Having fewer chairs might have also helped as it was sometimes hard to actually get to a seat, leading to watching from the door.
-More HD setups would be nice. CRTs are lovely and cheap for sure, but I would have felt bad using an HD setup for anything but practice since we had so few.

Tech:
-Vulajin is a god.
-Twitch issues are on Twitch. The only thing I can think of is to look at the League and other major esport schedule and try to avoid it, but there's nothing we can do on our end sometimes but to deal with them.
-Getting runs up as they finish would be incredible. I don't know how some Smash streams do it, but I know that GeekyGoonSquad (unfortunate name) will literally have the youtube link available in chat before Twitch delay finishes the match. Contacting event streamers to find out how they do that might be an interesting thought exercise that benefits everybody. Getting them over in one place before people feel the need to snag and upload them themselves is only going to be a good thing for the marathon as a whole.
-There weren't a ton of guidelines on the Twitter integration, so I wasn't necessarily sure if I was supposed to show everything on stream or only stuff that seemed fun/relevant. I ended up doing the latter, but basically just comes down to keeping documentation as thorough as possible. Everything else was easy enough though.
-Get a lagless monitor for HD games, or have that as an option. Didn't affect me personally, but using a true gaming monitor is more consistent than using whatever HD TV is on hand, even a very high quality one. If I were to run a game in HD next year, this might cause issues.

Chat/website:
-I barely used chat, so I can't comment on it a ton.
-The website was way too late to go up. There was no access to the schedule, tracker or prizes until the day of the event, which is pretty terrible. When every staff member is telling me that "Yo-kai Watch got a million prizes" and I'm excited to see and thank everybody who donated and struggle to do so until Vulajin literally inputs the URL for the tracker, that kinda sucks.
-As an aside, it'd be cool to see the website also keep a calendar of all the upcoming events and try to do more to be a hub for RPG Speedrunning Events in general and not just the main event. I understand this is much more complicated, but I think it'd be a great way to benefit both the channel and the community as a whole.

Commentary:
-Shoutouts to Osey for being everything I could have asked for in a co-runner/commentator. The quality across the board for the marathon, with very few exceptions, was awesome. The one thing I'll say is that there might need to be more focus, especially in the early part of a run, to give the general, "5 minute tutorial" to explain what the combat is more so that people can better follow along at home (and admittedly, by all the comments that nobody understood Yo-kai Watch, even though they loved it, we could have improved on a fair bit.) Probably the best example of doing this well was Chrono Cross, where the combat was explained as though nobody had ever played it, and all of a sudden, for the rest of the 7 hour run, I was able to follow the combat and see the decision making.

Prizes:
-I covered this more in website, but basically, these need to be visible before the marathon starts, as a way of generating interest in the event. I'd also consider staying away from repro carts, since they're really iffy legally, and may prevent from publishers being able to support the event.

Incentives:
-I get why incentives in general were underpriced, since there was a desire to avoid a Valkyria Chronicles situation where none of them were met, but it did kinda hurt that we were set on incentives through Yo-kai Watch as of the very first run of the marathon. That said, pricing incentives is damn near impossible, so yeah.
-I think a bit more back and forth on choosing incentives would have been nice. For example, in Yo-kai Watch, we didn't get a ton of "Okay you offered these, we like this, and this is why, and we don't like this and this is why". I personally think the me vs Osey incentive would have been the better pick, but it wasn't really clear why or how some were chosen. Maybe that was on our end, but I posted a pretty decent summary and there wasn't really a response on it, for better or for worse. (I also don't think I handled the incentive we did have as well as it could have been, so there's that as well and that was on me).
-I'd avoid incentives with a "right" answer as much as possible. Saving kid in Chrono Cross would probably have better been served as a true incentive instead of as a bidding war. Eternal Sonata's language was stated multiple times that English would be funnier for the run, so a small 100 dollar incentive to use English voices for comedy factor might have worked better etc. This really does come down to communication at the end of the day though. I'd also recommend that runners not use their own games or incentives as their runner's choice with *maybe* the exception of Essentia and Puwexil on Demon Chocobo shenanigans.

Charity
-I like NAMI. They sound like a joy to work with, and it's for a cause that clearly resonates well with the community, if the finale is anything to go by.
-US centric sucks. I don't know what to do about that though.
-I also understand that there's probably a good reason to continue to evaluate it, as avoiding a GDQ situation and getting locked in to a specific charity would, again, be detrimental to the marathon and the community as a whole.

Volunteering
-I like tech shifts not necessarily being tied to games. Hosts, however, should always be tied to games. Hosts need to have some kind of dynamic with the runner and that's hard to develop if you don't know exactly who you're working with. I knew going into this RPGLB that I had to be ready to work with Ourolen, Spike and Ash. This also makes things easier on runners as well, as they knew exactly who they were going to have work with them. I know that some of this feedback is from hosts that do some of the longer games (I don't have issues with it personally), but having an option on the form that "I'd be willing to split a run as host" or "Don't schedule me for more than X hours at a time" would probably be ideal. Hell, if it's an issue, I will literally host every 6+ hour game for the marathon as needed, but decoupling hosts from runs would cause issues for both commentary and hosting.
-I have the best luck on tech shifts ever. Tongue

I'll go through these in the same order as Puwexil did.

Schedule/Games:
-I'd love to see the extra day tacked on. The fact that my "guess" list was only 70% accurate or worse means that there's plenty of room for more amazing runs, and there were even some of the largest RPG communities that didn't have any real representation at the largest event (Tales being the one that comes to mind). When the marathon only happens once a year, I'm less worried about burnout and games repeating, and it seems like a good bit of them repeated from this year anyway. (FF4 which admittedly was a last minute replacement and done very well by Neerm, FF6, Lufia 2, KH2...).
-Nobody does games submissions better than RPGLB, and I mean that even in a post Vulajin-as-the-face-of-the-games-committee SGDQ era. From start to finish, they're handled exceptionally well and fairly to all runners, feedback on rejected runs is readily available if asked (and can be taken care of quietly, which is huge). I also love the way that RPGLB does do some of the "out there" picks as well, to give more diversity and allow different parts of the community to showcase themselves. Seriously, don't change that, just add another day.
-I do think that I'm worried about FF6 having a "Super Metroid" effect on the marathon, and potentially KH2 as well. Not that these aren't some of the largest, most popular RPG speedruns, but seeing them in every marathon, would, I think, be detrimental to the marathon as a whole, and to RPGLB's purpose of showcasing the community as best as possible. If the main reason FF6 makes money is determined to be Demon Chocobo shenanegans, I'd suggest using the layout as a way to keep the incentive (also would be great as a way to keep donations strong through the end of the marathon, allowing for more untraditional closers like KH2 to still have a huge incentive or bidding war. As clever as the "let's handicap Biz" incentive was at the end, there wasn't nearly as much to put money towards as there potentially could have been and it's a constant problem with marathon closers).
- Party trick RPGs were great as a way to fill the slots, although I don't know how many of them we're going to get each year. I think a more thorough evaluation of each runner's estimate may help us to understand how much of each of them are needed, as well as when and where they might happen. (For example, for Yo-kai Watch, I could have said that in the 3:15 estimate, 2:40 of that was from a PB pace run, :02 of it was from naming incentives, :07 of it was to account for bug RNG, :10 for the incentive and :08 of it was to account for a worst case scenario death on the final boss, or something like that.) More data for schedule making would only be a good thing. Having other alternatives, whether it's putting Stinger on to play some Theatrythm for 15 minutes (donation incentive for which songs), runner interviews like GDQs do, showcases of boss fights from runs that may show up in the future as a "trial run", etc may make lots of sense as well.
-Personal thing, I don't like forcing English fan translations on games that were never released in the US. I understand the reasoning, but it really, really sucks that the Dragon Quest 3 run doesn't have the true history or pedigree behind the run in a way. This places a bigger burden on the commentators, for sure, and might make naming incentives harder, but we have so many naming incentives anyway, losing a few won't really hurt that badly.

Venue
-Lack of any viable cell reception is my only major complaint for the main venue. I found it comical that you needed text message access to use the wifi, but I only needed WiFi because I had no cell reception. Again nothing RPGLB could do, just bad design by the University.
-Hotel room shenanigans were unfortunate. Understandable, but something that should be avoided next year if at all possible. 
-Salt Lake City is fine overall. It's good to have it in a place that's cheap, as well as having multiple staff members live in the area. 
-Having a piece of tape mark where the cameras are so that people know to not just stand in the doorway would be nice. To the stream, the room looked somewhat empty. There were almost constantly 4-5 people standing outside the range of the camera. This is partly because people don't necessarily want to commit to sitting and watching a full run, which we need to tell people that "it's okay to get up and leave" as well. Having fewer chairs might have also helped as it was sometimes hard to actually get to a seat, leading to watching from the door.
-More HD setups would be nice. CRTs are lovely and cheap for sure, but I would have felt bad using an HD setup for anything but practice since we had so few.

Tech:
-Vulajin is a god.
-Twitch issues are on Twitch. The only thing I can think of is to look at the League and other major esport schedule and try to avoid it, but there's nothing we can do on our end sometimes but to deal with them.
-Getting runs up as they finish would be incredible. I don't know how some Smash streams do it, but I know that GeekyGoonSquad (unfortunate name) will literally have the youtube link available in chat before Twitch delay finishes the match. Contacting event streamers to find out how they do that might be an interesting thought exercise that benefits everybody. Getting them over in one place before people feel the need to snag and upload them themselves is only going to be a good thing for the marathon as a whole.
-There weren't a ton of guidelines on the Twitter integration, so I wasn't necessarily sure if I was supposed to show everything on stream or only stuff that seemed fun/relevant. I ended up doing the latter, but basically just comes down to keeping documentation as thorough as possible. Everything else was easy enough though.
-Get a lagless monitor for HD games, or have that as an option. Didn't affect me personally, but using a true gaming monitor is more consistent than using whatever HD TV is on hand, even a very high quality one. If I were to run a game in HD next year, this might cause issues.

Chat/website:
-I barely used chat, so I can't comment on it a ton. 
-The website was way too late to go up. There was no access to the schedule, tracker or prizes until the day of the event, which is pretty terrible. When every staff member is telling me that "Yo-kai Watch got a million prizes" and I'm excited to see and thank everybody who donated and struggle to do so until Vulajin literally inputs the URL for the tracker, that kinda sucks.
-As an aside, it'd be cool to see the website also keep a calendar of all the upcoming events and try to do more to be a hub for RPG Speedrunning Events in general and not just the main event. I understand this is much more complicated, but I think it'd be a great way to benefit both the channel and the community as a whole.

Commentary:
-Shoutouts to Osey for being everything I could have asked for in a co-runner/commentator. The quality across the board for the marathon, with very few exceptions, was awesome. The one thing I'll say is that there might need to be more focus, especially in the early part of a run, to give the general, "5 minute tutorial" to explain what the combat is more so that people can better follow along at home (and admittedly, by all the comments that nobody understood Yo-kai Watch, even though they loved it, we could have improved on a fair bit.) Probably the best example of doing this well was Chrono Cross, where the combat was explained as though nobody had ever played it, and all of a sudden, for the rest of the 7 hour run, I was able to follow the combat and see the decision making.

Prizes:
-I covered this more in website, but basically, these need to be visible before the marathon starts, as a way of generating interest in the event. I'd also consider staying away from repro carts, since they're really iffy legally, and may prevent from publishers being able to support the event.

Incentives:
-I get why incentives in general were underpriced, since there was a desire to avoid a Valkyria Chronicles situation where none of them were met, but it did kinda hurt that we were set on incentives through Yo-kai Watch as of the very first run of the marathon. That said, pricing incentives is damn near impossible, so yeah.
-I think a bit more back and forth on choosing incentives would have been nice. For example, in Yo-kai Watch, we didn't get a ton of "Okay you offered these, we like this, and this is why, and we don't like this and this is why". I personally think the me vs Osey incentive would have been the better pick, but it wasn't really clear why or how some were chosen. Maybe that was on our end, but I posted a pretty decent summary and there wasn't really a response on it, for better or for worse. (I also don't think I handled the incentive we did have as well as it could have been, so there's that as well and that was on me).
-I'd avoid incentives with a "right" answer as much as possible. Saving kid in Chrono Cross would probably have better been served as a true incentive instead of as a bidding war. Eternal Sonata's language was stated multiple times that English would be funnier for the run, so a small 100 dollar incentive to use English voices for comedy factor might have worked better etc. This really does come down to communication at the end of the day though. I'd also recommend that runners not use their own games or incentives as their runner's choice with *maybe* the exception of Essentia and Puwexil on Demon Chocobo shenanigans.

Charity
-I like NAMI. They sound like a joy to work with, and it's for a cause that clearly resonates well with the community, if the finale is anything to go by.
-US centric sucks. I don't know what to do about that though.
-I also understand that there's probably a good reason to continue to evaluate it, as avoiding a GDQ situation and getting locked in to a specific charity would, again, be detrimental to the marathon and the community as a whole.

Volunteering
-I like tech shifts not necessarily being tied to games. Hosts, however, should always be tied to games. Hosts need to have some kind of dynamic with the runner and that's hard to develop if you don't know exactly who you're working with. I knew going into this RPGLB that I had to be ready to work with Ourolen, Spike and Ash. This also makes things easier on runners as well, as they knew exactly who they were going to have work with them. I know that some of this feedback is from hosts that do some of the longer games (I don't have issues with it personally), but having an option on the form that "I'd be willing to split a run as host" or "Don't schedule me for more than X hours at a time" would probably be ideal. Hell, if it's an issue, I will literally host every 6+ hour game for the marathon as needed, but decoupling hosts from runs would cause issues for both commentary and hosting.
-I have the best luck on tech shifts ever. :P

GhostKingG1

Edit history:

GhostKingG1: 2016-05-28 03:16:59 am

GhostKingG1: 2016-05-27 03:15:29 am

GhostKingG1: 2016-05-26 05:09:56 pm

GhostKingG1: 2016-05-26 04:40:07 pm

GhostKingG1: 2016-05-26 04:01:12 pm

GhostKingG1: 2016-05-26 03:54:33 pm

GhostKingG1: 2016-05-26 03:44:19 pm

GhostKingG1: 2016-05-26 03:35:13 pm

GhostKingG1: 2016-05-26 03:34:16 pm

GhostKingG1: 2016-05-26 03:28:05 pm

2016-05-26 03:22:13 pm

Why Hello it is Me

All right, Ill go into what I got step by step:

Schedule/Games:
-Very very good schedule selection. A handful of surprises, but nothing I would deem "questionable". A lot of people agreed that the schedule was very strong this year.
-Loose estimates did end up being an issue for sure. I think Runners should be encouraged more to reduce estimates if the run in fact gets significantly shorter. That said, I know a few games still went above estimate, so it's not unlikely for it to happen, so I'm not too concerned. I admit I was at least a bit guilty on my end, as it was my first marathon run, so I think that has a bit to do with it.
-Schedule should adjust for incentives that add to estimates. MMBN6 and Radiant Historia needed 10 more minutes for those incentives and that didn't get added until after those runs were well underway. This seemed to be an issue for some situations and not for others, which I think may have been partly on the runners and partly on how the submission process was somewhat ambiguous on how that time would get added.
-20-35 minute backups made a great way to catch up. I think possibly more options should be considered if offered. also there was one occasion where they were looking for one of the bonus game Runners and he was nowhere to be found at that moment (for a good reason) and there seemed to be a bit of a panic trying to find him, so I think tech should plan these out a bit better. For instance, perhaps have a way to contact the runners and notify them beforehand that the run may end up being done.
-Add those runs to the schedule in some way (is there a way to include an extra tab on Horaro?), especially if they do in fact get added, that way people looking at the schedule can see "Oh Baldurs Gate was run, maybe I'll check out the VOD."
-Excellent runs, play and commentary. People were having a lot of fun with it there.
-The schedule was nice and diverse, with plenty of genres. Someone did note that Western RPG representation was a bit light, but scheduling one of these is not easy so something is gonna get the short end sometimes. I don't think any of the games should be viewed as though it "didn't raise enough money" here since there was a really consistent audience of over 4000 watching at basically any point in time.
-Saturday Morning RPG on a Friday? (Even though FF4 did take its place)
-One issue that did come up is kind of on timing, specifically the middle of May. A lot of students were in the middle of finals, and that led to at least a couple people being unable to show up. Just something to kind of keep in mind, I don't really know an easy fix to that because I know U of U lets out before we got there.
-I really liked how many runs were co-op. It A: showed a bit more of how speedruns are a community and not just the runner of the game, and B: Gave longer games some relief for the runners.
-Dev call for QFG was a major highlight. Would love to see something like that again.
-I think one bad game each year is a good fit. Not many knew of Drakkhen, and yet we were laughing about it for the entire event. It was also nice because it was (supposed to be) a one hour joke, so it (was supposed to have) came and went pretty quickly, and got people talking. Though that may also be the tech difficulties that game ended up causing too.

Prizes:

-I agree with Ghoul: reproduction carts are kind of an iffy prize legally and that could be harmful going forward.

Venue:

Great venue. Would love to do another event there. Free, decent breakfast for people who were on-site. Hopefully I don't get lost again on the way there (entirely my fault)
-The three rooms were good, lots of space to practice or just have fun, the casual room was good and the stream room was nice
-Hotel room shortage was indeed troublesome, but I get why it came up, so a learning experience for next year.
-As someone who never has been to SLC I did like the choice, though I am from the West Coast.

Tech:

-Good setup, sounds like most of the volunteers were usually able to work it just fine.
-Consider keeping around a bigger shortlist of people to contact in the event of issues. I was on donations and host and on multiple occasions heard "anyone know where Vulajin is?" Whenever an issue popped up. I heard this once during a graveyard run when at least one other tech person was up and I believe they were able to resolve the issue. I recall Gamer told me that people can ask him for help for instance.
-I wholly agree that I don't think tech should necessarily be a game by game shift. Of the volunteer positions, tech is the one who is least able to get up to go to the bathroom or grab some water, which is pretty rough on whoever has to tech for Chrono Cross, Shining Force, or other 6 hour runs. I know the runner has to stay put, but it still would ease the burden on tech if the longer runs had some room for breaks.
-Game audio in the stream room was sometimes almost completely quiet during some of the runs. For RPGs music is often a big part of the appeal, so it would be nice for people there to be able to hear it.
-Puwexil put the rest of what I got up there, issues were generally dealt with in a timely fashion, make sure to teach volunteers a bit better (I figured a few things out on my own as well), so on.

Chat:

-Good, but was a bit inconsistent with moderation at the beginning. I got purged once on Monday for using the word "Schizophrenia", despite using it in a very non-negative way (the way I brought up was for the purpose of stressing the importance of not stigmatizing mental disorders), and then another purge for asking if the word was blacklisted. After that, the purges were a lot lighter on the rest of chat and some fairly rude things did get through, although the worst stuff was usually taken care of very handily. It's tough for when there's 4000 people and a number of moderators, so all in all I would say it was good, but there was some room for improvement. Chat was mostly very civil and moderation is a thankless job so I will give credit where it is due.

Charity:
-Considering how a number of people in the community from outside the US donated and came to the event, it's clear mental illness is an issue people are concerned about regardless of NAMI being US centered. I liked that there was the suggestion for " And if you live outside of the US, there are people you can talk to."
-NAMI was great with attendees. Lunches and the gift bags were really nice.

Incentives:

-A lot were met, but a decent number of naming incentives and bidwars went fairly untouched by comparison. Diversity and options were good for sure though. Again, puwexils suggestions are something I agree with, though I think there should still be room to add more later as the incentive I used came up after submissions.
-The 5000 dollar last minute incentive for Data Org was good in response, but I feel like the last run of the marathon should still have some form of bidwar, naming incentive, so that we avoid a situation where people have nothing to donate for after the second to last run has started and all incentives for the finale were met. I did really like KH2 as the closer I should add though.

Volunteering:
-I noticed a decent number of people say that donations to Runners choice didn't go through, so definitely bring up how to fix this to host and donation as I had to kind of figure out by myself how to do this for around 300$ total worth of 6 donations at one point.
-Having this much support come out to volunteer is awesome. I think some of it is just how new to it a lot of people were.
-I don't think we needed a dedicated early morning person for donations on Saturday. Can't say this will stay the same next year, but for this year it didn't seem like enough came through to justify giving someone a 6 AM shift that the host honestly could take care of.
-Hosts were fantastic. Lots of wonderful people, and I liked that at least a few contributed to the run (Osey was basically a second couch person for Radiant Historia which was really helpful to me) which was actually nice when they knew how to play off the runners and chime in when it was beneficial.
-Osey took over for Bob on hosting Radiant Historia which I think was better in that case as it was better that someone who knew the run and runner took that run. Especially since Ghostwheel was super busy during the event.

Runners/Commentary:

-Awesome runs, awesome commentary. Even in the stream room people found some time to have fun, which people seemed to like, at least since nobody overdid it.
-I encourage commentors of more complex and longer games to consider briefly reiterate some of the basics from time to time. For someone who misses the first few minutes of the run and joins late it can be easy to get lost. That's just a very minor point however.

Other:

-More comfortable couch would be nice. It was kind of stiff and it was like three separate pieces of a couch.
-People, please get some sleep. On at least two occasions, I saw someone in the audience falling asleep while on camera. It's not healthy to be sleep deprived no matter how excited you are Sad

-I know some people in the community are not a fan of using translation patches, and I understand the argument of "it doesn't really matter to a runner when you skip text as fast as possible", but I did notice a few people in chat during MMBN6 saying that they still ended up kind of having a harder time following the game and had lost some interest in it because of it being in Japanese, and not necessarily because of the story but because the HUD was basically unintelligible, and the runners can only explain what's going on so many times and so thoroughly. As a runner it's easy to say that's it's a bit silly, but that is still a chunk of the viewerbase. Point being: I know translation patches are undesired but I'm not really all too against them for most games.

I took a decent amount of notes at the event for things to point out (and I will add more as it comes up), but overall, this was a fantastic event. Everyone there was really nice, we had a ton of fun and it was extremely personal. Definitely appreciated the passing around of the mic at the end, where people got to share a few of their own words, almost got me choking up. I will do whatever I can to make sure I can be there again next year.

All right, Ill go into what I got step by step:

Schedule/Games:
-Very very good schedule selection. A handful of surprises, but nothing I would deem "questionable". A lot of people agreed that the schedule was very strong this year. 
-Loose estimates did end up being an issue for sure. I think Runners should be encouraged more to reduce estimates if the run in fact gets significantly shorter. That said, I know a few games still went above estimate, so it's not unlikely for it to happen, so I'm not too concerned. I admit I was at least a bit guilty on my end, as it was my first marathon run, so I think that has a bit to do with it.
-Schedule should adjust for incentives that add to estimates. MMBN6 and Radiant Historia needed 10 more minutes for those incentives and that didn't get added until after those runs were well underway. This seemed to be an issue for some situations and not for others, which I think may have been partly on the runners and partly on how the submission process was somewhat ambiguous on how that time would get added.
-20-35 minute backups made a great way to catch up. I think possibly more options should be considered if offered. also there was one occasion where they were looking for one of the bonus game Runners and he was nowhere to be found at that moment (for a good reason) and there seemed to be a bit of a panic trying to find him, so I think tech should plan these out a bit better. For instance, perhaps have a way to contact the runners and notify them beforehand that the run may end up being done.
-Add those runs to the schedule in some way (is there a way to include an extra tab on Horaro?), especially if they do in fact get added, that way people looking at the schedule can see "Oh Baldurs Gate was run, maybe I'll check out the VOD."
-Excellent runs, play and commentary. People were having a lot of fun with it there.
-The schedule was nice and diverse, with plenty of genres. Someone did note that Western RPG representation was a bit light, but scheduling one of these is not easy so something is gonna get the short end sometimes. I don't think any of the games should be viewed as though it "didn't raise enough money" here since there was a really consistent audience of over 4000 watching at basically any point in time.
-Saturday Morning RPG on a Friday? (Even though FF4 did take its place)
-One issue that did come up is kind of on timing, specifically the middle of May. A lot of students were in the middle of finals, and that led to at least a couple people being unable to show up. Just something to kind of keep in mind, I don't really know an easy fix to that because I know U of U lets out before we got there.
-I really liked how many runs were co-op. It A: showed a bit more of how speedruns are a community and not just the runner of the game, and B: Gave longer games some relief for the runners.
-Dev call for QFG was a major highlight. Would love to see something like that again. 
-I think one bad game each year is a good fit. Not many knew of Drakkhen, and yet we were laughing about it for the entire event. It was also nice because it was (supposed to be) a one hour joke, so it (was supposed to have) came and went pretty quickly, and got people talking. Though that may also be the tech difficulties that game ended up causing too.

Prizes:

-I agree with Ghoul: reproduction carts are kind of an iffy prize legally and that could be harmful going forward.

Venue:

Great venue. Would love to do another event there. Free, decent breakfast for people who were on-site. Hopefully I don't get lost again on the way there (entirely my fault)
-The three rooms were good, lots of space to practice or just have fun, the casual room was good and the stream room was nice 
-Hotel room shortage was indeed troublesome, but I get why it came up, so a learning experience for next year.
-As someone who never has been to SLC I did like the choice, though I am from the West Coast.

Tech:

-Good setup, sounds like most of the volunteers were usually able to work it just fine. 
-Consider keeping around a bigger shortlist of people to contact in the event of issues. I was on donations and host and on multiple occasions heard "anyone know where Vulajin is?" Whenever an issue popped up. I heard this once during a graveyard run when at least one other tech person was up and I believe they were able to resolve the issue. I recall Gamer told me that people can ask him for help for instance. 
-I wholly agree that I don't think tech should necessarily be a game by game shift. Of the volunteer positions, tech is the one who is least able to get up to go to the bathroom or grab some water, which is pretty rough on whoever has to tech for Chrono Cross, Shining Force, or other 6 hour runs. I know the runner has to stay put, but it still would ease the burden on tech if the longer runs had some room for breaks.
-Game audio in the stream room was sometimes almost completely quiet during some of the runs. For RPGs music is often a big part of the appeal, so it would be nice for people there to be able to hear it.
-Puwexil put the rest of what I got up there, issues were generally dealt with in a timely fashion, make sure to teach volunteers a bit better (I figured a few things out on my own as well), so on.

Chat:

-Good, but was a bit inconsistent with moderation at the beginning. I got purged once on Monday for using the word "Schizophrenia", despite using it in a very non-negative way (the way I brought up was for the purpose of stressing the importance of not stigmatizing mental disorders), and then another purge for asking if the word was blacklisted. After that, the purges were a lot lighter on the rest of chat and some fairly rude things did get through, although the worst stuff was usually taken care of very handily. It's tough for when there's 4000 people and a number of moderators, so all in all I would say it was good, but there was some room for improvement. Chat was mostly very civil and moderation is a thankless job so I will give credit where it is due.

Charity:
-Considering how a number of people in the community from outside the US donated and came to the event, it's clear mental illness is an issue people are concerned about regardless of NAMI being US centered. I liked that there was the suggestion for " And if you live outside of the US, there are people you can talk to."
-NAMI was great with attendees. Lunches and the gift bags were really nice.

Incentives:

-A lot were met, but a decent number of naming incentives and bidwars went fairly untouched by comparison. Diversity and options were good for sure though. Again, puwexils suggestions are something I agree with, though I think there should still be room to add more later as the incentive I used came up after submissions.
-The 5000 dollar last minute incentive for Data Org was good in response, but I feel like the last run of the marathon should still have some form of bidwar, naming incentive, so that we avoid a situation where people have nothing to donate for after the second to last run has started and all incentives for the finale were met. I did really like KH2 as the closer I should add though.

Volunteering:
-I noticed a decent number of people say that donations to Runners choice didn't go through, so definitely bring up how to fix this to host and donation as I had to kind of figure out by myself how to do this for around 300$ total worth of 6 donations at one point.
-Having this much support come out to volunteer is awesome. I think some of it is just how new to it a lot of people were.
-I don't think we needed a dedicated early morning person for donations on Saturday. Can't say this will stay the same next year, but for this year it didn't seem like enough came through to justify giving someone a 6 AM shift that the host honestly could take care of.
-Hosts were fantastic. Lots of wonderful people, and I liked that at least a few contributed to the run (Osey was basically a second couch person for Radiant Historia which was really helpful to me) which was actually nice when they knew how to play off the runners and chime in when it was beneficial.
-Osey took over for Bob on hosting Radiant Historia which I think was better in that case as it was better that someone who knew the run and runner took that run. Especially since Ghostwheel was super busy during the event.

Runners/Commentary:

-Awesome runs, awesome commentary. Even in the stream room people found some time to have fun, which people seemed to like, at least since nobody overdid it.
-I encourage commentors of more complex and longer games to consider briefly reiterate some of the basics from time to time. For someone who misses the first few minutes of the run and joins late it can be easy to get lost. That's just a very minor point however.

Other:

-More comfortable couch would be nice. It was kind of stiff and it was like three separate pieces of a couch. 
-People, please get some sleep. On at least two occasions, I saw someone in the audience falling asleep while on camera. It's not healthy to be sleep deprived no matter how excited you are :(
-I know some people in the community are not a fan of using translation patches, and I understand the argument of "it doesn't really matter to a runner when you skip text as fast as possible", but I did notice a few people in chat during MMBN6 saying that they still ended up kind of having a harder time following the game and had lost some interest in it because of it being in Japanese, and not necessarily because of the story but because the HUD was basically unintelligible, and the runners can only explain what's going on so many times and so thoroughly. As a runner it's easy to say that's it's a bit silly, but that is still a chunk of the viewerbase. Point being: I know translation patches are undesired but I'm not really all too against them for most games.

I took a decent amount of notes at the event for things to point out (and I will add more as it comes up), but overall, this was a fantastic event. Everyone there was really nice, we had a ton of fun and it was extremely personal. Definitely appreciated the passing around of the mic at the end, where people got to share a few of their own words, almost got me choking up. I will do whatever I can to make sure I can be there again next year.

Vulajin

2016-05-26 03:48:12 pm

Some quick notes responding to various comments about tech stuff:

- The speakers being pretty quiet for viewers in the stream room was a side effect of the room being pretty small and that aspect of the audio setup not being very thoroughly tested. I'll take a much closer look at this for next year. The point was to improve the in-person viewing experience, but unfortunately we had some feedback issues that came up, preventing us from taking full advantage of this.
- Literally last week I acquired two extremely low latency BenQ monitors (a 27" and a 24") which we will be using for PC+HD games next year.
- Expanding the tech contact list sounds like a good plan. It will, of course, depend on who volunteers next year, but several folks went above and beyond these first two events and I expect we'll be able to count on some of them in 2017.

Highspirits

Edit history:

Highspirits: 2016-05-26 04:43:16 pm

2016-05-26 04:43:01 pm

My opinion from the comfort of my uncomfortable chair:

-Overall the event was great. For the most part I liked the schedule (except the fact that my favorite runs were always on when I was working Sad

). If I had one big complaint about the schedule personally, was not really the fact that the usual SNES FF staples were included, but the fact the schedule was overloaded with FF games. I feel like other series, like Tales noted earlier, could have made an appearance. I understand you need popular franchises to pull in viewers and donations, but that seemed overkill to me.

-The only other thing I saw that no one has mentioned was the race layout. The 2 player race layout had very small windows with giant text boxes that could have been worked with to make the game play a little easier to see.

Good job guys, hopefully my financial situation will be better off next year and I'll be able to attend again.

GhostKingG1

Edit history:

GhostKingG1: 2016-05-26 05:03:35 pm

GhostKingG1: 2016-05-26 05:03:31 pm

GhostKingG1: 2016-05-26 05:03:30 pm

GhostKingG1: 2016-05-26 05:02:27 pm

GhostKingG1: 2016-05-26 05:01:45 pm

2016-05-26 05:00:49 pm

Why Hello it is Me

To Bizkit047: I generally agree with the comment that having some more popular games would benefit the marathons success, however there weren't a whole lot offered that didn't make it. Undertale had reasons that got outlined, only one Dark Souls run was offered, no Paper Mario, only one Fire Emblem was offered (and Kirbymastah couldn't make it in the end), Pokemon was initially on but the runner withdrew, only one Elder Scrolls was offered (Oblivion was added last minute), no Diablos were offered, and Fallout 4 was taken off at runner's request. Really the only major "snub" I've heard of as far as popular games goes was Tales of Symphonia (which I am in agreement that there should be a Tales of game next year) so really it becomes a matter of what people offer next time. And the channel grew a lot so I can definitely see more offerings from the big hitters of the big name games next year.

To Highspirits: I'm partly in agreement on "too much Final Fantasy", but bear in mind FF4 was a very last minute replacement, Final Fantasy Adventure was added a few weeks in advance (and is more of a Mana game) and FF1 was initially FF1 PSP, which is an hour and a half shorter. Basically 5 and a half hours of Final Fantasy was added as a backup. I am in agreement with Bizkit that I think next year is the time for a PS1 FF, and those games I think will fill enough time for two or three FFs.

To Bizkit047: I generally agree with the comment that having some more popular games would benefit the marathons success, however there weren't a whole lot offered that didn't make it. Undertale had reasons that got outlined, only one Dark Souls run was offered, no Paper Mario, only one Fire Emblem was offered (and Kirbymastah couldn't make it in the end), Pokemon was initially on but the runner withdrew, only one Elder Scrolls was offered (Oblivion was added last minute), no Diablos were offered, and Fallout 4 was taken off at runner's request. Really the only major "snub" I've heard of as far as popular games goes was Tales of Symphonia (which I am in agreement that there should be a Tales of game next year) so really it becomes a matter of what people offer next time. And the channel grew a lot so I can definitely see more offerings from the big hitters of the big name games next year.

To Highspirits: I'm partly in agreement on "too much Final Fantasy", but bear in mind FF4 was a very last minute replacement, Final Fantasy Adventure was added a few weeks in advance (and is more of a Mana game) and FF1 was initially FF1 PSP, which is an hour and a half shorter. Basically 5 and a half hours of Final Fantasy was added as a backup. I am in agreement with Bizkit that I think next year is the time for a PS1 FF, and those games I think will fill enough time for two or three FFs.

rizu-kun

2016-05-26 05:12:11 pm

The best way out is always through!

Here's my feedback:

Schedule/Games: Really solid lineup this year. There was at least one run I wanted to watch every day. I agree that there could be better representation of other franchises, like the Tales series, or use this as a chance to showcase other runs that have never been shown at a GDQ event before, so long as there's someone to run them. This might be a good chance to show off some more indie RPGs as well, again, provided there's someone to run them. I can say for certain that seeing Child of Light and Half-Minute Hero at this event got me interested in both games.

I agree that I'm feeling a bit worn down with the whole FFIV/V/VI showing, but it's difficult to argue when VI alone brings in over $10,000. I'd like us to be able to use the power of the Demon Chocobo for as long as we can, or at least until it gets tiresome.

Some personal highlights for me were: Child of Light, Drakhen (yes, really, that run was hysterical), and Yo-Kai Watch, particularly from the Peanut Gallery in the food room.

Venue: I really liked this venue. The staff were very helpful (shoutouts to the guy at the front desk that I threw $10 at while trying to get acetone for the Drakhen cart), free breakfast is a really, really big freaking deal, especially when most food is not within walking distance, and I had no problems with the room itself. I feel bad for some of the staff being unable to stay on site because I had a room to myself, but now that I know people at the event, I have no problem sharing. Speaking of food, I'm incredibly grateful that there was on-site catering every day of the event, in addition to a couple of places that did delivery. I'm pretty much hungry all the time and I never had any issues with lack of food at the event, so that was handled really, really well. As far as travel to/from the airport is concerned, I took the light rail getting there the first day and an Uber back. Since this is such a small event, in the future, people might be able to coordinate travel so that multiple attendees can take a shuttle at the same time. Just a thought.

Tech: I know next to nothing of tech, so I can't say much besides Vulajin is a god, praise be. Echoing the idea that tech shifts, especially, would be better tied to certain time slots rather than runs to give people a chance to get food, use the bathroom, etc.

Chat: Given what I saw in part of the NASA chat this past week, chat was golden. For the time I spent on it, very well-behaved. That chat started having a discussion regarding some of the consequences of mental illness was nothing short of miraculous, and I'm glad that conversation happened. Which leads me to:

Charity: I'm incredibly biased, given that I've wrestled with mental illness for over ten years, but I'm very much in favor of continuing to support NAMI. It does suck that it is US-centric, but there were still non-US residents who offered a lot of support to the cause, even if it couldn't be monetary. If we decide to stick with NAMI, that might be something worth bringing up well in advance of next year's event: ways to get people outside the US involved in a way that is meaningful to them. This is the age of the internet, after all, and I like the whole "stigma free" campaign. Vulajin's mentioning of the suicide hotline numbers during Celes' leap of lack of faith during FFVI was really meaningful, and definitely an important thing to mention during the course of the marathon. I'm overall really happy with how things have worked out with NAMI so far.

Incentives: the incentives were great this year. Special mentions go to, of course, Demon Chocobo and JeffBound. I don't know how the Jeff train got started, but it was beautiful.

Prizes: I liked the prizes being offered (again, biased), but it definitely would have been nice to have been able to see what a lot of them were on the website before the event. I'm also not sure, was there a banner again this year? I'm watching VODs from last year and I like the idea of a banner signed by all the runners/attendees.

Runners/commentary: absolutely stellar. For every run I saw, the couch commentary was very informative and/or charismatic. Commentary can make or break a run, and I'd say this year far more runs were made by the runners/commentary present. The one thing I'd like to see, if there's a good way to do this, is if there's a way for people watching, either in chat or at the event, to ask questions about certain tech during the run. For the most part, I thought runners were very good about explaining why they did certain things and that a marathon isn't necessarily the best place to ask about tech, but if there's a way to allow for questions like that that isn't super disruptive or difficult, it might be worth a shot.

Overall, I had an absolutely fantastic time at the event. People were really friendly and welcoming, I loved the (for lack of a better word) "intimate" atmosphere of a smaller event, the Salt Lake City area was great, I really can't say enough good things about it. Congratulations and thank you, thank you, thank you to all the organizers who made this event possible. I cannot extend my gratitude enough. I might have to dust off some of my old cartridges and start practicing for something to submit next year!

Here's my feedback:

Schedule/Games: Really solid lineup this year. There was at least one run I wanted to watch every day. I agree that there could be better representation of other franchises, like the Tales series, or use this as a chance to showcase other runs that have never been shown at a GDQ event before, so long as there's someone to run them. This might be a good chance to show off some more indie RPGs as well, again, provided there's someone to run them. I can say for certain that seeing Child of Light and Half-Minute Hero at this event got me interested in both games.

I agree that I'm feeling a bit worn down with the whole FFIV/V/VI showing, but it's difficult to argue when VI alone brings in over $10,000. I'd like us to be able to use the power of the Demon Chocobo for as long as we can, or at least until it gets tiresome.

Some personal highlights for me were: Child of Light, Drakhen (yes, really, that run was hysterical), and Yo-Kai Watch, particularly from the Peanut Gallery in the food room.

Venue: I really liked this venue. The staff were very helpful (shoutouts to the guy at the front desk that I threw $10 at while trying to get acetone for the Drakhen cart), free breakfast is a really, really big freaking deal, especially when most food is not within walking distance, and I had no problems with the room itself. I feel bad for some of the staff being unable to stay on site because I had a room to myself, but now that I know people at the event, I have no problem sharing. Speaking of food, I'm incredibly grateful that there was on-site catering every day of the event, in addition to a couple of places that did delivery. I'm pretty much hungry all the time and I never had any issues with lack of food at the event, so that was handled really, really well. As far as travel to/from the airport is concerned, I took the light rail getting there the first day and an Uber back. Since this is such a small event, in the future, people might be able to coordinate travel so that multiple attendees can take a shuttle at the same time. Just a thought.

Tech: I know next to nothing of tech, so I can't say much besides Vulajin is a god, praise be. Echoing the idea that tech shifts, especially, would be better tied to certain time slots rather than runs to give people a chance to get food, use the bathroom, etc.

Chat: Given what I saw in part of the NASA chat this past week, chat was golden. For the time I spent on it, very well-behaved. That chat started having a discussion regarding some of the consequences of mental illness was nothing short of miraculous, and I'm glad that conversation happened. Which leads me to:

Charity: I'm incredibly biased, given that I've wrestled with mental illness for over ten years, but I'm very much in favor of continuing to support NAMI. It does suck that it is US-centric, but there were still non-US residents who offered a lot of support to the cause, even if it couldn't be monetary. If we decide to stick with NAMI, that might be something worth bringing up well in advance of next year's event: ways to get people outside the US involved in a way that is meaningful to them. This is the age of the internet, after all, and I like the whole "stigma free" campaign. Vulajin's mentioning of the suicide hotline numbers during Celes' leap of lack of faith during FFVI was really meaningful, and definitely an important thing to mention during the course of the marathon. I'm overall really happy with how things have worked out with NAMI so far.

Incentives: the incentives were great this year. Special mentions go to, of course, Demon Chocobo and JeffBound. I don't know how the Jeff train got started, but it was beautiful.

Prizes: I liked the prizes being offered (again, biased), but it definitely would have been nice to have been able to see what a lot of them were on the website before the event. I'm also not sure, was there a banner again this year? I'm watching VODs from last year and I like the idea of a banner signed by all the runners/attendees.

Runners/commentary: absolutely stellar. For every run I saw, the couch commentary was very informative and/or charismatic. Commentary can make or break a run, and I'd say this year far more runs were made by the runners/commentary present. The one thing I'd like to see, if there's a good way to do this, is if there's a way for people watching, either in chat or at the event, to ask questions about certain tech during the run. For the most part, I thought runners were very good about explaining why they did certain things and that a marathon isn't necessarily the best place to ask about tech, but if there's a way to allow for questions like that that isn't super disruptive or difficult, it might be worth a shot.

Overall, I had an absolutely fantastic time at the event. People were really friendly and welcoming, I loved the (for lack of a better word) "intimate" atmosphere of a smaller event, the Salt Lake City area was great, I really can't say enough good things about it. Congratulations and thank you, thank you, thank you to all the organizers who made this event possible. I cannot extend my gratitude enough. I might have to dust off some of my old cartridges and start practicing for something to submit next year!

ryubasteon

Edit history:

ryubasteon: 2016-05-26 06:00:50 pm

2016-05-26 05:59:38 pm

I can speak for the poor GPS/Cell Reception at the venue, which was mainly caused by its proximity to a Military installation; but, being a spectator I had a blast, the venue was great (aside from the fore mentioned but that is not their fault.) - The games, while I didn't watch most in the stream room, I caught quiet a few in the casual room, was having too much fun socializing with people that have similar interest.

As for chat, I poked into the IRC Chat whenever I went back to my hotel room, but didn't really pay any attention to it. From my experience with the GDQs its usually too crazy fast so I ignore it most of the time.

Charity: I'm not sure, NAMI is a good cause, as are Prevent Cancer, and Doctors without borders, I think it would be best to aim for something with more of an international outlook, simply because we're pulling in international viewers and most would prefer to support causes that affect them locally.

Tech: Probably wouldn't hurt to have some sort of backup PC in place should things hit the fan, or for an additional game machine. If I am able to drive out next year I'm going to try to bring either my General Purpose or Gaming Machine to help with this.

Prizes/Runners/Commentary: I don't have anything to add that wasn't already said.

Local Shopping: While I kinda feel bad for the game shop we all raided, they probably enjoyed the business. If the vent remains at the location, getting some sort of food service would be a great asset; but, I'm not sure if they even have food trucks there in SLC.

Airport: I have to say this, I got flagged by security on the way home, something about some residue on my laptop *shrugs* but wasn't much of a hassle and got through it pretty quickly (about as long as it took for me to get my boots back on honestly).

Light Rail: This was nice, quick, and cheap, my only complaint goes to that there was no real signage from the station to the venue, spent a fair bit walking in the rain trying to find the venue but well, it wasn't bad. Not sure if this can be addressed in the future, but is something to consider.

Dates: Not sure if next years will be of a similar time but I have to ask, the sooner I know the better (so I can get it requested off of work...)

Post-Marathon Activities: Sadly I wanted to stay longer but had to get back to the office. I do intend on trying to get 2-weeks off next year so I can drive and/or hang out longer after.

Everybody: Thank you!!! I may be a bloody casual but I felt like I was part of the family and loved every last minute of it. Smiley

I can speak for the poor GPS/Cell Reception at the venue, which was mainly caused by its proximity to a Military installation; but, being a spectator I had a blast, the venue was great (aside from the fore mentioned but that is not their fault.) - The games, while I didn't watch most in the stream room, I caught quiet a few in the casual room, was having too much fun socializing with people that have similar interest.

As for chat, I poked into the IRC Chat whenever I went back to my hotel room, but didn't really pay any attention to it. From my experience with the GDQs its usually too crazy fast so I ignore it most of the time.

Charity: I'm not sure, NAMI is a good cause, as are Prevent Cancer, and Doctors without borders, I think it would be best to aim for something with more of an international outlook, simply because we're pulling in international viewers and most would prefer to support causes that affect them locally.

Tech: Probably wouldn't hurt to have some sort of backup PC in place should things hit the fan, or for an additional game machine. If I am able to drive out next year I'm going to try to bring either my General Purpose or Gaming Machine to help with this.

Prizes/Runners/Commentary: I don't have anything to add that wasn't already said.

Local Shopping: While I kinda feel bad for the game shop we all raided, they probably enjoyed the business. If the vent remains at the location, getting some sort of food service would be a great asset; but, I'm not sure if they even have food trucks there in SLC.

Airport: I have to say this, I got flagged by security on the way home, something about some residue on my laptop *shrugs* but wasn't much of a hassle and got through it pretty quickly (about as long as it took for me to get my boots back on honestly).

Light Rail: This was nice, quick, and cheap, my only complaint goes to that there was no real signage from the station to the venue, spent a fair bit walking in the rain trying to find the venue but well, it wasn't bad. Not sure if this can be addressed in the future, but is something to consider.

Dates: Not sure if next years will be of a similar time but I have to ask, the sooner I know the better (so I can get it requested off of work...)

Post-Marathon Activities: Sadly I wanted to stay longer but had to get back to the office. I do intend on trying to get 2-weeks off next year so I can drive and/or hang out longer after.

Everybody: Thank you!!! I may be a bloody casual but I felt like I was part of the family and loved every last minute of it. :)

Enkaybee

2016-05-26 06:45:40 pm

twitch.tv/enkaybee

I wasn't there, but

- Really nice layouts
- Really nice job cropping (most of the time)
- Commentary on all of the runs I watched was solid

Melodia

2016-05-26 09:29:53 pm

As a viewer...

The scheduale was great as others said, with a nice variety, but yeah, the whole FF SNES trilogy being there (granted FF4 /was/ a replacement) on top of 1 and 13...but still overall it was a great mix, and what's more I think the schedualer did an especially good job mixing it up so things were varied.

The bonus games were a fantastic idea, but perhaps adding them to the scheduale as well as on the stream would be a Very Good Thing as waaay too many people (myself included) were confused on chat.

Chat was fantastic for a Twitch chat of that many viewers. There was VERY little negativity overall, even during FF13. Even the one guy who came in and tried to piss all over speedrunning/using glitches/etc got logical arguments instead of flaming toward him

Loved watching DD play Drakken and would love to see an absolutely hidious but yet hilarious game again.

If I actually had one complaint it was that the rotating marquis at the top made it often hard to know what was at a glance. Would be nice to have that permanently for those of us who just keep the stream on not always actively watching. But if that's the worst I got....you know it went well, heh.

And yes, great commentary. And great running of course. Everyone seemed very enthused to be there.

As a viewer...

The scheduale was great as others said, with a nice variety, but yeah, the whole FF SNES trilogy being there (granted FF4 /was/ a replacement) on top of 1 and 13...but still overall it was a great mix, and what's more I think the schedualer did an especially good job mixing it up so things were varied.

The bonus games were a fantastic idea, but perhaps adding them to the scheduale as well as on the stream would be a Very Good Thing as waaay too many people (myself included) were confused on chat.

Chat was fantastic for a Twitch chat of that many viewers. There was VERY little negativity overall, even during FF13. Even the one guy who came in and tried to piss all over speedrunning/using glitches/etc got logical arguments instead of flaming toward him

Loved watching DD play Drakken and would love to see an absolutely hidious but yet hilarious game again.

If I actually had one complaint it was that the rotating marquis at the top made it often hard to know what was at a glance. Would be nice to have that permanently for those of us who just keep the stream on not always actively watching. But if that's the worst I got....you know it went well, heh.

And yes, great commentary. And great running of course. Everyone seemed very enthused to be there.

Geisterkarle

2016-05-27 05:23:34 am

I was also only a viewer so my thoughts:
Someone else mentioned it already: The website with all the links to donate and so on was online much too late! If not my browser-cache was "wrong", I think the website with stream, chat, ... got online during the first run! That is MUCH too late!
Asider from the also mentioned problems with the donation link I noticed no troubles with that. So "okayish" finish Wink

I don't know if the stream had issues, at least when I tuned in it was always there und running smoothly.

About the games... well I'm biased because I'm a FF fan Smiley

so no problems with me and many of those Wink

I actually liked the combination of very well known runs and games and "new" and "unknown" RPGs. Broaden my horizon Smiley

What I was a little disappointed - and I know it is difficult with RPGs because of the runtime - is that basically every single run was any%! At least put a few (or even only one or two) 100% runs in there! Would be appreciated!

Also a little sad were that for some runs the room was empty aside the player(s). and I'm not only talking "night-shift" but also "noonish" and early afternoon. There should be someone awake already Smiley

Don't know how to "fix" that, because I hope we don't need "claqueure"...
What I liked from the crowd, often they "joined" the game and moved along with the characters or distinctive scenes! Really entertaining!
Also most of the commentary was great! ... but while I like him and everything he said had his meaning: spikevegeta, could you sometimes inhale and let a few donations through!?!? Wink

For donation incentives ... well maybe we could put a few higher. But I sometimes even think at xGDQ events, that some incentives at the very beginning are not meet! ... ok, we don't need to have all, but the marathons often start "slowly" and so maybe even "hard" incentives at the first one-two days should be more reasonable than ones from highly anticipated games at the end of the week!

Overall: will watch again; when is the date for 2017? Wink

I was also only a viewer so my thoughts:
Someone else mentioned it already: The website with all the links to donate and so on was online much too late! If not my browser-cache was "wrong", I think the website with stream, chat, ... got online during the first run! That is MUCH too late!
Asider from the also mentioned problems with the donation link I noticed no troubles with that. So "okayish" finish ;)
I don't know if the stream had issues, at least when I tuned in it was always there und running smoothly.

About the games... well I'm biased because I'm a FF fan :) so no problems with me and many of those ;) I actually liked the combination of very well known runs and games and "new" and "unknown" RPGs. Broaden my horizon :)
What I was a little disappointed - and I know it is difficult with RPGs because of the runtime - is that basically every single run was any%! At least put a few (or even only one or two) 100% runs in there! Would be appreciated!

Also a little sad were that for some runs the room was empty aside the player(s). and I'm not only talking "night-shift" but also "noonish" and early afternoon. There should be someone awake already :) Don't know how to "fix" that, because I hope we don't need "claqueure"... 
What I liked from the crowd, often they "joined" the game and moved along with the characters or distinctive scenes! Really entertaining!
Also most of the commentary was great! ... but while I like him and everything he said had his meaning: spikevegeta, could you sometimes inhale and let a few donations through!?!? ;)

For donation incentives ... well maybe we could put a few higher. But I sometimes even think at xGDQ events, that some incentives at the very beginning are not meet! ... ok, we don't need to have all, but the marathons often start "slowly" and so maybe even "hard" incentives at the first one-two days should be more reasonable than ones from highly anticipated games at the end of the week!

Overall: will watch again; when is the date for 2017? ;)

GhostKingG1

Edit history:

GhostKingG1: 2016-05-27 05:45:40 am

GhostKingG1: 2016-05-27 05:42:30 am

2016-05-27 05:42:13 am

Why Hello it is Me

^ There were plenty of alternative categories: Etrian Odyssey, Seiken Densetsu 3, Legend of Mana, Ys Origin (and sort of Chrono Cross) ran particular routes. SuperStar Saga and Earthbound were glitchfest runs that were much longer than any%, both KH runs were on different difficulties, Quest for Glory was an entire series of 5 games, FFVI was a longer category than any%, and Wild Arms was unique to say the least.

Sadly, 100% runs are seldom viable for RPG marathons. There was Chrono Trigger last year and there are some like Illusion of Gaia, Golden Sun, FF6, and a few others where the established "100% objective" still has a decent estimate, and its up to the selection staff to make the final call on what is and isn't a viable length, but a lot of 100% RPGs exceed the 10 hour mark which I believe is seldom going to make really any marathon, let alone one where over 700 hours of submissions get condensed into 130 hours, from what I've seen.

Personally I feel the category of choice for basically all games was fine. Besides, variety in categories can come with time.

^ There were plenty of alternative categories: Etrian Odyssey, Seiken Densetsu 3, Legend of Mana, Ys Origin (and sort of Chrono Cross) ran particular routes. SuperStar Saga and Earthbound were glitchfest runs that were much longer than any%, both KH runs were on different difficulties, Quest for Glory was an entire series of 5 games, FFVI was a longer category than any%, and Wild Arms was unique to say the least.

Sadly, 100% runs are seldom viable for RPG marathons. There was Chrono Trigger last year and there are some like Illusion of Gaia, Golden Sun, FF6, and a few others where the established "100% objective" still has a decent estimate, and its up to the selection staff to make the final call on what is and isn't a viable length, but a lot of 100% RPGs exceed the 10 hour mark which I believe is seldom going to make really any marathon, let alone one where over 700 hours of submissions get condensed into 130 hours, from what I've seen.

Personally I feel the category of choice for basically all games was fine. Besides, variety in categories can come with time.

Tide

2016-05-27 08:21:24 am

Insanity Prelude

Schedule/Games
- No major complaints from me. Overall, it was a good mix of classic RPGs (FF6) with some newer ones (Braverly Default).
- The only real complain as noted before may be the over saturation in some of the more popular titles (FF was the big one, but KH/EB could also be on the list) and it runs a risk where the games can get stale. As previously noted, its understandable that a few of these games should be in every year as they do draw in money, but perhaps they need to be better spaced.
- One of my other concerns is that there seems to be no hope for any longer speedruns. And even if there are, there's almost no chance for the less popular ones to make it (Legend of Legaia, Personas, Wild ARMS series etc). I'm not sure what can be done about this because some of them can be quite entertaining.
- Expanding on the previous point, a few of us in IRC joke about setting up a B) stream, but I wonder if that can become more viable assuming we have enough long games to put on the B stream, similar to ESA. There are some notable disadvantages ofc but I rather give those players/runners a chance to showcase their work as well if possible.
- Re: Extending the marathon - I think for the most part, this isn't a bad idea, given the number of submissions this year along with the average length of an RPG. I'll add though that extending the marathon is likely to further reduce post-marathon activities since people may not be able to take that many days off and many consider the marathon itself to be the main event. It's also extra costs for room and board although it's only a day, but still worth mentioning
- Re: Burning through marathon-viable RPGs. I guess this is mostly regarding to length? "Marathon-viable" is a little vague, but that's also why I would consider trying to do a better rotation/spacing of the more popular ones. That way, there's always a good fallback and the concern for burn out is less of an issue.
- Re: Estimates. Conservative estimates are probably better just because of the bonus games as mentioned. It's easier to fill in time IMO then to make up time, as in the former case, the staff will have control over it. In the latter, the game may not cooperate with the runner.

Venue
- There was the early note of a fire hazard when setting up the TVs - probably should make a future note about not daisy-chaining (although I think the hotel staff did most of it). This kind of goes along with the TV placement.
- I wasn't paying attention but I'm sure the practice room had other Fire safety concerns >_>. We should probably check that as well in the future during set up.
- Other than Practice Room temperature, there was also a smell in it after like 2-3 days. This could partially be due to food being taken and left there although the hotel staff was pretty timely at removing excess trash. Could bring in air Refresher maybe?
- Re: Hotel Transport - Just a suggestion in the future. Having a map that is marked for how to get from the station to the hotel might be a good idea in the future. There was some confusion amongst our group when we first got off the shuttle and I doubt we were the only ones. Also, having a general travel thread is always a good idea IMO. It helps address any concerns and can reduce travel anxiety (especially for those out of state)!
- Along the same lines of travel - The thread might also be a good place for those that are out of the country to communicate regarding how they are going to reach the site. Elmagus ran into some issues this year and there's always the entire customs process that can be quite an ordeal (although I think people are getting smarter about it general - reminder that Meta did get detained one year).
- Hotel Staff in general were amazing. Very helpful with regards to our travelling to the hotspots for food or recommending places to go. I feel bad about not tipping the driver actually since they are always very prompt after a call. Helps that lot of the local places (such as the taxi shuttle) know where the site is.
- No issues really regarding the site; I wouldn't mind it being back in Canada just because travelling is easier for me - but I kind of understand at this point that the majority of runners are from the US and it would be kind of silly to move just for that.
- Re: Post-marathon stuff: Mentioned before, but I think most people just don't have the vacation days to stay that long. If we consider other events that take place, staying for an entire week is quite a bit of time. Most likely, there may be family trips or other conventions people may want to go to, so I think most people just stayed for the main event or for a few days for when their run would take place. For example, multiple people came in late, and a few people who came early, left a few days after their run. If people want to do more post-marathon stuff, attaching the even to a long weekend (for example, Canada had Victoria Day one week after) would be helpful since that's 1 less day people need to take off.

Tech
- I will say this: The audio is vastly superior - I could hear the commentary very clearly and people without mics usually didn't register on the audio.
- Paypal issues as noted were unfortunate. Not sure how to fix this, but I do wonder how much of the donations was lost because of it.
- No other real complaints. The only other thing I can think of is that as a runner, I couldn't notice the donation station that easily. It might be better if the position was within the runner's side glance or something so they know when a donation has come in or when the host wants to make an announcement.

Chat/Website
- No comments regarding chat as I was largely absent. But I understand it was quite tame for a stream that had about 4k-5k viewers.
- Website still felt underused to me - was there some sort of promoting for it before the event that I missed? I just watched everything off of twitch and I think most people did the same thing.

Commentary
-Reviewing the runs where I took part in this, I felt this was pretty good overall. There's some stuff that I wanted to go over more in during my run but as I was saying to Brossentia, we probably could've talked for the entire 2.5 hours for VP2 and still only be scratching the surface.
- On that note, shout outs to my entire commentary crew who I felt covered all the bases: Nitrodon for his detailed mechanical knowledge of the game, Aithere for knowing a bit about the route and my struggles/problems that I can run into and Gerrick for remembering the lore and casual experience with the game. Made it easy to have everyone jump in and easy to delegate portions of commentary to people.
- Extra thanks to Nitrodon for reminding me when I should stop talking because ultimately, this was a charity and there are donations to be read! Seriously. This is also why I wonder if the Donation station can be placed in an easier area to spot because we probably would've just kept talking if Nitrodon wasn't there to remind me.

Prizes
- One suggestion I have is to take a picture of the prizes and then have them be included in the line up when the prize is relevant at the scrolling portion of the layout. It usually swapped between the RPGLB logo, Nami as well as any tweets, but having a visual of the prize (especially some of the smaller ones like perlers) could be helpful.

Incentives
- I waffle back and forth regarding incentives. I don't like incentives that are there just for the sake of needing an incentive. Ultimately, I'm most comfortable with those that add difficulty or change the route since those feel like they add "value" to the run by making it more entertaining.
- Stuff like cutscenes, I'm not so sure (you can youtube those easily) but I think singing/re-enactments are okay if a bit cliched I guess.

Charity
- As a Canadian, I would prefer for the charity to be international. I won't really press the issue because Mental health is a big concern and there's a lot of stigma associated with it in general.

Volunteering
- Was there a separate schedule that listed which volunteer was supposed to be on when? I don't recall seeing this one, but I do recall several of the actual schedule and area maps. Maybe make it a bit more visible and not in Black and White?

Schedule/Games
- No major complaints from me. Overall, it was a good mix of classic RPGs (FF6) with some newer ones (Braverly Default).
- The only real complain as noted before may be the over saturation in some of the more popular titles (FF was the big one, but KH/EB could also be on the list) and it runs a risk where the games can get stale. As previously noted, its understandable that a few of these games should be in every year as they do draw in money, but perhaps they need to be better spaced. 
- One of my other concerns is that there seems to be no hope for any longer speedruns. And even if there are, there's almost no chance for the less popular ones to make it (Legend of Legaia, Personas, Wild ARMS series etc). I'm not sure what can be done about this because some of them can be quite entertaining.
- Expanding on the previous point, a few of us in IRC joke about setting up a B) stream, but I wonder if that can become more viable assuming we have enough long games to put on the B stream, similar to ESA. There are some notable disadvantages ofc but I rather give those players/runners a chance to showcase their work as well if possible.
- Re: Extending the marathon - I think for the most part, this isn't a bad idea, given the number of submissions this year along with the average length of an RPG. I'll add though that extending the marathon is likely to further reduce post-marathon activities since people may not be able to take that many days off and many consider the marathon itself to be the main event. It's also extra costs for room and board although it's only a day, but still worth mentioning
- Re: Burning through marathon-viable RPGs. I guess this is mostly regarding to length? "Marathon-viable" is a little vague, but that's also why I would consider trying to do a better rotation/spacing of the more popular ones. That way, there's always a good fallback and the concern for burn out is less of an issue.
- Re: Estimates. Conservative estimates are probably better just because of the bonus games as mentioned. It's easier to fill in time IMO then to make up time, as in the former case, the staff will have control over it. In the latter, the game may not cooperate with the runner.

Venue
- There was the early note of a fire hazard when setting up the TVs - probably should make a future note about not daisy-chaining (although I think the hotel staff did most of it). This kind of goes along with the TV placement. 
- I wasn't paying attention but I'm sure the practice room had other Fire safety concerns >_>. We should probably check that as well in the future during set up.
- Other than Practice Room temperature, there was also a smell in it after like 2-3 days. This could partially be due to food being taken and left there although the hotel staff was pretty timely at removing excess trash. Could bring in air Refresher maybe?
- Re: Hotel Transport - Just a suggestion in the future. Having a map that is marked for how to get from the station to the hotel might be a good idea in the future. There was some confusion amongst our group when we first got off the shuttle and I doubt we were the only ones. Also, having a general travel thread is always a good idea IMO. It helps address any concerns and can reduce travel anxiety (especially for those out of state)! 
- Along the same lines of travel - The thread might also be a good place for those that are out of the country to communicate regarding how they are going to reach the site. Elmagus ran into some issues this year and there's always the entire customs process that can be quite an ordeal (although I think people are getting smarter about it general - reminder that Meta did get detained one year). 
- Hotel Staff in general were amazing. Very helpful with regards to our travelling to the hotspots for food or recommending places to go. I feel bad about not tipping the driver actually since they are always very prompt after a call. Helps that lot of the local places (such as the taxi shuttle) know where the site is. 
- No issues really regarding the site; I wouldn't mind it being back in Canada just because travelling is easier for me - but I kind of understand at this point that the majority of runners are from the US and it would be kind of silly to move just for that. 
- Re: Post-marathon stuff: Mentioned before, but I think most people just don't have the vacation days to stay that long. If we consider other events that take place, staying for an entire week is quite a bit of time. Most likely, there may be family trips or other conventions people may want to go to, so I think most people just stayed for the main event or for a few days for when their run would take place. For example, multiple people came in late, and a few people who came early, left a few days after their run. If people want to do more post-marathon stuff, attaching the even to a long weekend (for example, Canada had Victoria Day one week after) would be helpful since that's 1 less day people need to take off.

Tech
- I will say this: The audio is vastly superior - I could hear the commentary very clearly and people without mics usually didn't register on the audio.
- Paypal issues as noted were unfortunate. Not sure how to fix this, but I do wonder how much of the donations was lost because of it. 
- No other real complaints. The only other thing I can think of is that as a runner, I couldn't notice the donation station that easily. It might be better if the position was within the runner's side glance or something so they know when a donation has come in or when the host wants to make an announcement.

Chat/Website
- No comments regarding chat as I was largely absent. But I understand it was quite tame for a stream that had about 4k-5k viewers.
- Website still felt underused to me - was there some sort of promoting for it before the event that I missed? I just watched everything off of twitch and I think most people did the same thing.

Commentary
-Reviewing the runs where I took part in this, I felt this was pretty good overall. There's some stuff that I wanted to go over more in during my run but as I was saying to Brossentia, we probably could've talked for the entire 2.5 hours for VP2 and still only be scratching the surface. 
- On that note, shout outs to my entire commentary crew who I felt covered all the bases: Nitrodon for his detailed mechanical knowledge of the game, Aithere for knowing a bit about the route and my struggles/problems that I can run into and Gerrick for remembering the lore and casual experience with the game. Made it easy to have everyone jump in and easy to delegate portions of commentary to people.
- Extra thanks to Nitrodon for reminding me when I should stop talking because ultimately, this was a charity and there are donations to be read! Seriously. This is also why I wonder if the Donation station can be placed in an easier area to spot because we probably would've just kept talking if Nitrodon wasn't there to remind me.

Prizes
- One suggestion I have is to take a picture of the prizes and then have them be included in the line up when the prize is relevant at the scrolling portion of the layout. It usually swapped between the RPGLB logo, Nami as well as any tweets, but having a visual of the prize (especially some of the smaller ones like perlers) could be helpful.

Incentives
- I waffle back and forth regarding incentives. I don't like incentives that are there just for the sake of needing an incentive. Ultimately, I'm most comfortable with those that add difficulty or change the route since those feel like they add "value" to the run by making it more entertaining.
- Stuff like cutscenes, I'm not so sure (you can youtube those easily) but I think singing/re-enactments are okay if a bit cliched I guess.

Charity
- As a Canadian, I would prefer for the charity to be international. I won't really press the issue because Mental health is a big concern and there's a lot of stigma associated with it in general.

Volunteering
- Was there a separate schedule that listed which volunteer was supposed to be on when? I don't recall seeing this one, but I do recall several of the actual schedule and area maps. Maybe make it a bit more visible and not in Black and White?

AlecK47

2016-05-27 09:27:16 am

A couple quick notes:
- At GDQ's they have a script set up to immediately upload runs to their youtube as soon as the tech person stops and restarts the recording between runs. This is possible, but not a high priority for us. Not to mention that if we don't have as good of an internet connection at a future event, the immediate upload could affect the quality of the stream.
- The daisy-chained power strips were indeed set up like that when we got the room, and we spent some time fixing that as soon as we noticed.

doicm

2016-05-27 11:03:22 pm

Hi.

I liked this year other than getting sick for the second half of the week and having to miss it. Most of my time ended up being spent as a chat moderator on Twitch, which I didn't mind, but I do want to spend some time talking about that.

It was nice to have some commands at our disposal, such as !prizes, !shirts, !donate, and so forth. I would type them in whenever people asked or whenever the host brought them up during a run just to keep relevance or to be polite. However, there is one thing (and I did confirm with Brossentia) that was missing, and that was an !about command, one for the cause or the marathon itself. Granted, people may have been able to search about NAMI or what the marathon is raising money for if they searched hard enough, but I was a bit surprised that there was no command explaining what we were raising money for. They could be directed to a donate page, but a command explaining what the donations are going towards or a command explaining in detail who we are raising money for would have been neat. Whenever I could, I just ended up copying and pasting the NAMI explanation in chat. I figured that was better than nothing.

Also, I went a little bit further with prizes/donation incentives during each block and posted some images to the specific prizes offered during those exact blocks. !prizes would've shown the entire list, but I worry that viewers may feel a bit overwhelmed with a giant list to scroll through to find the current block's specific prize/donation incentive, so I figured advertising it in chat during the actual runs would help bolster some donations (if the host weren't currently able to do it via showing it on-stream or otherwise). I do prefer the on-stream showings with an image of some sort, but I figure this could also work (or maybe have the tracker highlight the lines of the current run's/block's donation incentive and prizes).

Chat was pretty tame when I moderated, partly because I was pretty decent at quieting some unruly people, imo. I'm very happy the puzzle turned out successful.

The map that indicated Panda Express in the University cafeteria was open until later in the evening was incorrect. I was very upset not necessarily at the onsite map but at Panda Express because I verified it with their online site that says they're open from 7PM to 9:30AM (yes, open through midnight...but probably not.) Regardless, University dining failed me, but fortunately I had a vehicle and was able to travel offsite at my convenience to other places.

Thanks to NAMI for the 1000+ beverages (I'm taking a stab in the dark) and food they provided.

Regarding the shortening of estimates, I think that might be a bad idea for the translation crew that is already running on a stricter schedule. I saw something already about them having to drop out of translating for another recent marathon due to them falling about 6 hours behind or something. It's safer to be a bit ahead than a lot further behind. I may have misread whoever wrote that earlier.

That's all. Hope I made sense.

Hi.

I liked this year other than getting sick for the second half of the week and having to miss it. Most of my time ended up being spent as a chat moderator on Twitch, which I didn't mind, but I do want to spend some time talking about that.

It was nice to have some commands at our disposal, such as !prizes, !shirts, !donate, and so forth. I would type them in whenever people asked or whenever the host brought them up during a run just to keep relevance or to be polite. However, there is one thing (and I did confirm with Brossentia) that was missing, and that was an !about command, one for the cause or the marathon itself. Granted, people may have been able to search about NAMI or what the marathon is raising money for if they searched hard enough, but I was a bit surprised that there was no command explaining what we were raising money for. They could be directed to a donate page, but a command explaining what the donations are going towards or a command explaining in detail who we are raising money for would have been neat. Whenever I could, I just ended up copying and pasting the NAMI explanation in chat. I figured that was better than nothing.

Also, I went a little bit further with prizes/donation incentives during each block and posted some images to the specific prizes offered during those exact blocks. !prizes would've shown the entire list, but I worry that viewers may feel a bit overwhelmed with a giant list to scroll through to find the current block's specific prize/donation incentive, so I figured advertising it in chat during the actual runs would help bolster some donations (if the host weren't currently able to do it via showing it on-stream or otherwise). I do prefer the on-stream showings with an image of some sort, but I figure this could also work (or maybe have the tracker highlight the lines of the current run's/block's donation incentive and prizes).

Chat was pretty tame when I moderated, partly because I was pretty decent at quieting some unruly people, imo. I'm very happy the puzzle turned out successful.

The map that indicated Panda Express in the University cafeteria was open until later in the evening was incorrect. I was very upset not necessarily at the onsite map but at Panda Express because I verified it with their online site that says they're open from 7PM to 9:30AM (yes, open through midnight...but probably not.) Regardless, University dining failed me, but fortunately I had a vehicle and was able to travel offsite at my convenience to other places.

Thanks to NAMI for the 1000+ beverages (I'm taking a stab in the dark) and food they provided.

Regarding the shortening of estimates, I think that might be a bad idea for the translation crew that is already running on a stricter schedule. I saw something already about them having to drop out of translating for another recent marathon due to them falling about 6 hours behind or something. It's safer to be a bit ahead than a lot further behind. I may have misread whoever wrote that earlier.

That's all. Hope I made sense.

Germench

Edit history:

Germench: 2016-05-28 02:26:26 am

2016-05-28 02:25:53 am

We are Germench! We are Rummel!

@doicm
The problem with the NASA-Marathon was, that they were already starting with a delay. And this delay only got worse during the first day. The reason for that were most of all techproblems and it had nothing to do with the estimates. Germench is still looking forward to next years NASA and will restream it.

@topic
From a restreamers point of view, this was a fantastic marathon. We had so much fun restreaming it and providing commentary for our Germanspeaking Viewers.

I'd like to thank all the runners for giving us their speedrun-notes. This made the commentary easier, especially for those of us, who don't have the experience of running the game themself.

I don't have anything to criticise. Well, not really anything.:
What could have been better, was keeping the horaro schedule up to date. We mainly orientate ourselves on this schedule, especially if we are making our own VODs. So not really adding the bonus games or the real runtime wasn't that helpful.

But that's a minor complaint from us. It was an awesome marathon and Germench is looking forward to restream next years RPGLB!

@doicm 
The problem with the NASA-Marathon was, that they were already starting with a delay. And this delay only got worse during the first day. The reason for that were most of all techproblems and it had nothing to do with the estimates. Germench is still looking forward to next years NASA and will restream it.

@topic
From a restreamers point of view, this was a fantastic marathon. We had so much fun restreaming it and providing commentary for our Germanspeaking Viewers.

I'd like to thank all the runners for giving us their speedrun-notes. This made the commentary easier, especially for those of us, who don't have the experience of running the game themself.

I don't have anything to criticise. Well, not really anything.:
What could have been better, was keeping the horaro schedule up to date. We mainly orientate ourselves on this schedule, especially if we are making our own VODs. So not really adding the bonus games or the real runtime wasn't that helpful.

But that's a minor complaint from us. It was an awesome marathon and Germench is looking forward to restream next years RPGLB!

GhostKingG1

Edit history:

GhostKingG1: 2016-05-28 02:52:38 am

GhostKingG1: 2016-05-28 02:50:12 am

2016-05-28 02:45:44 am

Why Hello it is Me

I think part of why estimates were so liberal was because it was the first in-person marathon that a lot of attendees and runners had gone to. Like in my case my estimate was basically "everything goes to hell in a handbasket, and possibly I discover a hidden softlock by accident on top of that", and I absolutely did not want to go over estimate, so even though my run resulted in a pretty bad time compared to my PB, I was still 10 minutes under estimate. Now that I know how these things are, I think next year I will have a better idea of how to better estimate game length. Hopefully if we see a few more repeats who were first-timers this year, the experience from this event will help.

To add a bit of positive feedback: I do like that the organizers were able to adjust for estimates. I was honestly scared to ask because I didn't want to look like I didn't know what I was doing Sad

but it worked out in the end. My estimate was lowered twice, one for the fact that I got better at the game, and two for the fact that the game developed a pretty significant amount in terms of new tricks to save time (WR lowered by over 5 minutes between submissions and RPGLB). This noticeably happened with several games, such as Superstar Saga and Shining Force II.

There are some things that are tough to account for too, like how good the RNG was in Robotrek or Phantasy Star IV, or how amazing the Soul Blazer run went. And a number of runs did in fact go a little over estimate, so even fairly safe estimates aren't necessarily able to account for what happened with Tai Ho (Suikoden II) or Viola (Radiant Historia).

I think part of why estimates were so liberal was because it was the first in-person marathon that a lot of attendees and runners had gone to. Like in my case my estimate was basically "everything goes to hell in a handbasket, and possibly I discover a hidden softlock by accident on top of that", and I absolutely did not want to go over estimate, so even though my run resulted in a pretty bad time compared to my PB, I was still 10 minutes under estimate. Now that I know how these things are, I think next year I will have a better idea of how to better estimate game length. Hopefully if we see a few more repeats who were first-timers this year, the experience from this event will help.

To add a bit of positive feedback: I do like that the organizers were able to adjust for estimates. I was honestly scared to ask because I didn't want to look like I didn't know what I was doing :( but it worked out in the end. My estimate was lowered twice, one for the fact that I got better at the game, and two for the fact that the game developed a pretty significant amount in terms of new tricks to save time (WR lowered by over 5 minutes between submissions and RPGLB).  This noticeably happened with several games, such as Superstar Saga and Shining Force II.

There are some things that are tough to account for too, like how good the RNG was in Robotrek or Phantasy Star IV, or how amazing the Soul Blazer run went.  And a number of runs did in fact go a little over estimate, so even fairly safe estimates aren't necessarily able to account for what happened with Tai Ho (Suikoden II) or Viola (Radiant Historia).

Vulajin

2016-05-28 11:44:17 am

Quote from Germench:

What could have been better, was keeping the horaro schedule up to date. We mainly orientate ourselves on this schedule, especially if we are making our own VODs. So not really adding the bonus games or the real runtime wasn't that helpful.

Our overall intention is for the authoritative schedule to be on the RPGLB website and tracker. This year's was at http://rpglimitbreak.com/tracker/runs/4. It is always kept as up to date as possible, including actual run lengths and bonus games. My apologies that this was not clearly communicated.

vaxherd

Edit history:

vaxherd: 2016-05-28 12:25:33 pm

2016-05-28 12:24:35 pm

Thanks to puwexil, Vulajin, NAMI, etc. for setting up the event and making it such a great success! Just a few thoughts from a first-time attendee:

Schedule/Games
- I thought the idea of short bonus games to pad the schedule worked well, with the caveat that it would be nice if the schedule could be updated on the fly. [edit: It looks like there was an auto-updating schedule, but I feel like the horaro.org link was publicized as the "official" schedule location -- at least that's the one I always came across -- so at least I didn't think to look elsewhere.] I do think it's better for runners to overestimate than underestimate, since it's a lot harder to make time up than to add it in. Another possibility, though it'd mean more planning overhead all around, would be to have runners submit both best-case and worst-case estimates, schedule bonus games ahead of time based on the best-case estimates, and then drop them as needed.
- Aside from being a bit FF-heavy, I thought the lineup was great -- a good mix of well-known games and less common ones. I don't really have anything constructive to say other than that I enjoyed all the runs I watched!
- I agree with Ghoul's comment about translation romhacks on Japanese games (though I'm bilingual, so take all this with a huge grain of salt). Viewers aren't going to be seeing text long enough to read it most of the time, and it seems to me the runners and commentators were pretty good at explaining what they were doing anyway, so I'd rather see the game as it was originally designed.

Venue
- I have no problems with SLC as the location, though coming from Tokyo, one US city is pretty much the same as another. (: The weather was pleasant, so in that sense I think it's a good choice given the season.
- Aside from connectivity issues, I was really satisfied with the Guest House. The facilities were good, the rooms were comfortable, the breakfast was decent (which is fine for free food!). I didn't mind the distance from the airport, though I'm used to public transit so I may not be a representative sample.
- I didn't stay for bonus days partly because of my own schedule, but mostly because I had no idea what would be happening on those days. It might be helpful to have some defined thing going on, whether a bonus stream or whatever, just so people know there's a reason to stay.

Tech
- I'd definitely like to see VODs of runs as they're finished, if that's feasible -- it'd make it easier to check out runs missed while sleeping or otherwise occupied.

Charity
- From the viewpoint of someone living outside the US, I agree with some of the other comments that it's unfortunate NAMI is a US-centric organization (though I personally have no problem supporting NAMI). That said, there aren't a huge number of international charity organizations to choose from, and I think it'll result in a better event overall to pick a charity whose cause is meaningful to the community, as NAMI seems to be.

Thanks to puwexil, Vulajin, NAMI, etc. for setting up the event and making it such a great success! Just a few thoughts from a first-time attendee:

[u]Schedule/Games[/u]
- I thought the idea of short bonus games to pad the schedule worked well, with the caveat that it would be nice if the schedule could be updated on the fly. [edit: It looks like there was an auto-updating schedule, but I feel like the horaro.org link was publicized as the "official" schedule location -- at least that's the one I always came across -- so at least I didn't think to look elsewhere.] I do think it's better for runners to overestimate than underestimate, since it's a lot harder to make time up than to add it in. Another possibility, though it'd mean more planning overhead all around, would be to have runners submit both best-case and worst-case estimates, schedule bonus games ahead of time based on the best-case estimates, and then drop them as needed.
- Aside from being a bit FF-heavy, I thought the lineup was great -- a good mix of well-known games and less common ones. I don't really have anything constructive to say other than that I enjoyed all the runs I watched!
- I agree with Ghoul's comment about translation romhacks on Japanese games (though I'm bilingual, so take all this with a huge grain of salt). Viewers aren't going to be seeing text long enough to read it most of the time, and it seems to me the runners and commentators were pretty good at explaining what they were doing anyway, so I'd rather see the game as it was originally designed.

[u]Venue[/u]
- I have no problems with SLC as the location, though coming from Tokyo, one US city is pretty much the same as another. (: The weather was pleasant, so in that sense I think it's a good choice given the season.
- Aside from connectivity issues, I was really satisfied with the Guest House. The facilities were good, the rooms were comfortable, the breakfast was decent (which is fine for free food!). I didn't mind the distance from the airport, though I'm used to public transit so I may not be a representative sample.
- I didn't stay for bonus days partly because of my own schedule, but mostly because I had no idea what would be happening on those days. It might be helpful to have some defined thing going on, whether a bonus stream or whatever, just so people know there's a reason to stay.

[u]Tech[/u]
- I'd definitely like to see VODs of runs as they're finished, if that's feasible -- it'd make it easier to check out runs missed while sleeping or otherwise occupied.

[u]Charity[/u]
- From the viewpoint of someone living outside the US, I agree with some of the other comments that it's unfortunate NAMI is a US-centric organization (though I personally have no problem supporting NAMI). That said, there aren't a huge number of international charity organizations to choose from, and I think it'll result in a better event overall to pick a charity whose cause is meaningful to the community, as NAMI seems to be.

puwexil

Edit history:

puwexil: 2016-05-29 01:28:29 pm

puwexil: 2016-05-29 01:28:04 pm

puwexil: 2016-05-29 01:18:38 pm

puwexil: 2016-05-29 01:18:23 pm

2016-05-28 08:07:18 pm

Professional Second Banana

Great feedback so far from a nice variety of viewpoints - keep it coming!

Re: the schedule being pretty Final Fantasy-heavy, GhostKingG1 summed it up pretty well how that was much more the result of drops (like Torchlight 2 and Fallout 4, which were to represent WRPG franchises) than of my and the games committee's original intent (we certainly didn't envision having all 3 major SNES FF titles in 1 marathon). To add some context, the only 2D Final Fantasy that was a 'lock' during game selection was FF5 (which hadn't been in a major charity marathon for 3 years). FF6 being included again this year was actually a bit contentious, as multiple members of the games committee were in favor of giving the game a break for a year. In the end though, since we lacked a strong PS1 Final Fantasy submission, we agreed to give FF6 another run instead, with a different category/runners from RPGLB 2015.

Given its success at attracting viewers/donations, it's definitely tempting to make FF6 the 'GDQ Super Metroid' of RPGLB, but with the game being significantly longer and its active community being smaller, it'll be getting years off in favor of other popular FF games or SNES JRPGs.

Highlighting runs during the event and uploading to Youtube is definitely something we could have done this year, given that were intending to just export the Twitch highlights to Youtube (with the recording setup we used this year, the only value in trimming/uploading OBS recordings was getting whole recordings of runs that were disrupted by Twitch server/Internet issues). We'll definitely look into this for next year, with whatever recording setup we end up using.

If anyone has suggestions for a mental health-focused charity with a more international focus, let us know and we can take a look. Alternatively (since I'm skeptical a strong international option exists, just due to the nature of the cause), maybe we could include some suggested mental health charities local to other countries that we have viewerbases in (Canada, UK, Germany, France, etc) on our website, though I'd want to keep it fairly subtle to avoid diluting the focus of our event too much.

I'm hopeful that the 'empty room' problem will become less common as the event continues to get more attendees. Not really sure what we can or should actively do as staff, other than maybe Ghoul02's suggestion of using tape or something to mark the edge of the camera view.

Great feedback so far from a nice variety of viewpoints - keep it coming!

Re: the schedule being pretty Final Fantasy-heavy, GhostKingG1 summed it up pretty well how that was much more the result of drops (like Torchlight 2 and Fallout 4, which were to represent WRPG franchises) than of my and the games committee's original intent (we certainly didn't envision having all 3 major SNES FF titles in 1 marathon).  To add some context, the only 2D Final Fantasy that was a 'lock' during game selection was FF5 (which hadn't been in a major charity marathon for 3 years).  FF6 being included again this year was actually a bit contentious, as multiple members of the games committee were in favor of giving the game a break for a year.  In the end though, since we lacked a strong PS1 Final Fantasy submission, we agreed to give FF6 another run instead, with a different category/runners from RPGLB 2015.

Given its success at attracting viewers/donations, it's definitely tempting to make FF6 the 'GDQ Super Metroid' of RPGLB, but with the game being significantly longer and its active community being smaller, it'll be getting years off in favor of other popular FF games or SNES JRPGs.

Highlighting runs during the event and uploading to Youtube is definitely something we could have done this year, given that were intending to just export the Twitch highlights to Youtube (with the recording setup we used this year, the only value in trimming/uploading OBS recordings was getting whole recordings of runs that were disrupted by Twitch server/Internet issues).  We'll definitely look into this for next year, with whatever recording setup we end up using.

If anyone has suggestions for a mental health-focused charity with a more international focus, let us know and we can take a look.  Alternatively (since I'm skeptical a strong international option exists, just due to the nature of the cause), maybe we could include some suggested mental health charities local to other countries that we have viewerbases in (Canada, UK, Germany, France, etc) on our website, though I'd want to keep it fairly subtle to avoid diluting the focus of our event too much.

I'm hopeful that the 'empty room' problem will become less common as the event continues to get more attendees.  Not really sure what we can or should actively do as staff, other than maybe Ghoul02's suggestion of using tape or something to mark the edge of the camera view.

ryubasteon

2016-05-29 09:11:54 am

This is a Mental health group that supports 35+ Countries including the US, some research would need to be done into them but its something else to look at: https://bbrfoundation.org/

Rosael

Edit history:

Rosael: 2016-05-29 02:11:01 pm

2016-05-29 01:59:09 pm

Menu Faster!

Other than the fact my run was an abomination, there were a lot of donation incentives for my run that shouldn't have been there, such as one of the endings still being there and that one of the Farmers naming incentives went through despite the fact it was removed in the incentives thread.

Thankfully I ran into Vulajin before anyone donated toward that ending and got it removed.

As an event goer some things I saw that could be improved on are:
-the layout of the Tech and donation station should be altered slightly so the tech person knows when they need to mute the donation reader better
-the lack of cell service
-too many tvs in the practice room (thankfully they removed one row and made it less claustrophobic)

Edit: Also during the runs I was there for there were times where the desktop would take the place of the game feed and not show the game for a few seconds.