RPG Limit Break 2016 - Feedback Thread

Edit history:

Aithere: 2016-05-29 02:07:14 pm

2016-05-29 02:03:02 pm

I pretty much have naught but positive things to say in general, having been there. Most of the issues were dealt with in a timely and quick fashion, like the overcrowding of the practice room (it was very ambitious, but shoutouts to whoever suggested to remove one of the rows of practice TVs for space and safety concerns).

I do want to chime in on the whole empty audience issue.

Considering this is a RPG-centric marathon and the runs are going to be on the longer side, it's really hard to sit in there for a few hours straight to only watch. Twitch chat is pretty voracious too, I would see that people would always comment on people in the audience looking at their phones and such. Personally I would always try to sit off to the chairs where the camera couldn't see me because I wouldn't want to distract the people viewing at home whenever I wanted to leave for a breather (or look on my phone to fiend twitch chat).

My own suggestion would be actually following what AGDQ did and only have the camera mainly focus only on the couch. I know that the room was small and it was REALLY HARD to actually set up the camera in a good spot, but it should be something to consider for next RPGLB.

I pretty much have naught but positive things to say in general, having been there. Most of the issues were dealt with in a timely and quick fashion, like the overcrowding of the practice room (it was very ambitious, but shoutouts to whoever suggested to remove one of the rows of practice TVs for space and safety concerns).

I do want to chime in on the whole empty audience issue.

Considering this is a RPG-centric marathon and the runs are going to be on the longer side, it's really hard to sit in there for a few hours straight to only watch. Twitch chat is pretty voracious too, I would see that people would always comment on people in the audience looking at their phones and such. Personally I would always try to sit off to the chairs where the camera couldn't see me because I wouldn't want to distract the people viewing at home whenever I wanted to leave for a breather (or look on my phone to fiend twitch chat).

My own suggestion would be actually following what AGDQ did and only have the camera mainly focus only on the couch. I know that the room was small and it was REALLY HARD to actually set up the camera in a good spot, but it should be something to consider for next RPGLB.

phdpqc

2016-05-29 03:42:38 pm

https://bbrfoundation.org/ is a very good suggestion, it's international and research-oriented. We're barely out of the dark age when it comes to understanding mental health disorders and research has a long-term impact. I was happy to contribute to NAMI, but I prefer to give to international charities.

I have nothing but positive things to say about the event. The runners were great, I liked the games, the commentaries were fun & helpful, and good taste lost to the demon chocobo. I can understand why some people are tired of the FFIV/FFV/FFVI games, but I'm not.

AlecK47

2016-05-29 06:32:49 pm

Quote from Rosael:

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.

That the third ending was ever on the tracker was the result of a miscommunication. When I entered it into the tracker, I was using a doc that was not completely up to date, but I thought was. Once informed, I looked through the thread and managed to completely miss your post about it. So that one is on me.

The Farmer's name, on the other hand, was actually something we (those of us who worked on incentives) agreed on. It was borderline from the start, and we knew it, but we decided that because the one character would at least be present for most of the run, that naming them was a fairly harmless incentive. Having since watched the VOD of your run, I'm still fine with it because the character was actually there and doing something important to the run.

Quote from Rosael:

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.

This wass an issue with either the projector view on OBS or the TV's input detection and did not translate to the stream, fortunately. It may even have been both, but if I had to guess I would put my money on OBS weirdness.

[quote="Rosael"]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.[/quote]
That the third ending was ever on the tracker was the result of a miscommunication.  When I entered it into the tracker, I was using a doc that was not completely up to date, but I thought was.  Once informed, I looked through the thread and managed to completely miss your post about it.  So that one is on me.

The Farmer's name, on the other hand, was actually something we (those of us who worked on incentives) agreed on.  It was borderline from the start, and we knew it, but we decided that because the one character would at least be present for most of the run, that naming them was a fairly harmless incentive.  Having since watched the VOD of your run, I'm still fine with it because the character was actually there and doing something important to the run.

[quote="Rosael"]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.[/quote]
This wass an issue with either the projector view on OBS or the TV's input detection and did not translate to the stream, fortunately.  It may even have been both, but if I had to guess I would put my money on OBS weirdness.

puwexil

2016-05-29 06:54:09 pm

Professional Second Banana

Quote from AlecK47:

This wass an issue with either the projector view on OBS or the TV's input detection and did not translate to the stream, fortunately. It may even have been both, but if I had to guess I would put my money on OBS weirdness.

It's OBS - the same issue happens pretty frequently on the projector screens used at GDQs to mirror the stream.

AlecK47

2016-05-29 06:56:16 pm

Ironically I didn't notice that at AGDQ. Probably because I spent most of my time hanging out with people. Tongue

BobTGoldfish

2016-05-29 09:03:49 pm

All the superlatives have been said, so I won't repeat them.

there were one or 2 piece of feedback but The one thing I feel comfortable commenting on here was the "lunch" situation for attendees.

While the food was awesome I think there should be a much more active thought put into saving some for the Runners/volunteers on shift and it being placed in a place that people can't just 'take it out of the fridge" As happened the one day it was tried.

StingerPA

2016-05-30 08:40:00 pm

Venue

-The main concern I have about returning to the same hotel next year was the lack of cell phone reception in the conference room area. Can we ask them about putting a repeater on the roof or something that might mitigate that issue?
-The obvious second concern was the lack of rooms on Wednesday night, but I think the staff has recognized that well enough to where that won't be an issue going forward unless attendance significantly increases.
-Otherwise, I was very happy with the hotel. They were quick to respond to our needs during the setup day, and I had no problems otherwise. The free breakfast was amazing, although I would've preferred if it had been open until at least 10 AM instead of 9:30.

Charity

Personally, I'm beyond happy with the relationship RPGLB has managed to establish with NAMI. They provided a lot of support this year with being onsite a significant amount, the previously mentioned thousands of drinks (I would have definitely been dehydrated without them), and the sheer amount of publicity they pushed through their social media outlets. Moving to an international charity would be nice as far as reaching more potential donors, but it would be a big risk to lose what we already have in NAMI.

Volunteering

-For the sign-up process for volunteering, I have one suggestion. The section that asked for "Planned awake/available hours" was a little too specific for my tastes. It limited us to certain hours for the entire marathon, and as most people who have been to marathons in the past know, you will NOT have set hours you'll be sticking to like you might during your normal day to day life. To me, it would be better to ask whether you have hours you would NOT want to volunteer during. Obviously most people would rather not do graveyard shifts, but otherwise, people will adjust to the schedule within that 12-16 hour range they give.

Tech Station

One suggestion I had was for Tech Station to have a second monitor. I don't know if anyone else noticed this much, or even consider it an issue, but when the Tech volunteer was doing things in the background, occasionally when they needed to change windows, they'd hover on the taskbar icon too long, and that makes windows make everything else transparent, including the OBS Projection on the secondary viewing monitor. To me, it was very distracting when that was the primary screen I was watching off of. Getting a second monitor set up would limit the number of window changes necessary, and keep those distractions to a minimum.

Otherwise, Tech went very well for me. It was incredibly helpful for me to be there during the setup day so I could help out getting things into position, and that helped down the road if I needed to help whoever was on tech troubleshoot problems.

As far as setting up tech station volunteers into fixed time slots instead of full games, I'm on board with that. The one thing I want to point out, though, is that one advantage to having the switch-offs at each game is that you always have 2 tech people in the room for every setup period. That may not happen with the new system, and you could end up with a lesser experienced tech person by themselves in the middle of a graveyard shift. They might be in over their head, like I would've been in my first couple of marathons of volunteering on tech if I had been the only one around to set up a game.

[u]Venue[/u]

-The main concern I have about returning to the same hotel next year was the lack of cell phone reception in the conference room area.  Can we ask them about putting a repeater on the roof or something that might mitigate that issue?
-The obvious second concern was the lack of rooms on Wednesday night, but I think the staff has recognized that well enough to where that won't be an issue going forward unless attendance significantly increases.
-Otherwise, I was very happy with the hotel.  They were quick to respond to our needs during the setup day, and I had no problems otherwise.  The free breakfast was amazing, although I would've preferred if it had been open until at least 10 AM instead of 9:30.

[u]Charity[/u]

Personally, I'm beyond happy with the relationship RPGLB has managed to establish with NAMI.  They provided a lot of support this year with being onsite a significant amount, the previously mentioned thousands of drinks (I would have definitely been dehydrated without them), and the sheer amount of publicity they pushed through their social media outlets. Moving to an international charity would be nice as far as reaching more potential donors, but it would be a big risk to lose what we already have in NAMI.

[u]Volunteering
[/u]
-For the sign-up process for volunteering, I have one suggestion. The section that asked for "Planned awake/available hours" was a little too specific for my tastes.  It limited us to certain hours for the entire marathon, and as most people who have been to marathons in the past know, you will NOT have set hours you'll be sticking to like you might during your normal day to day life.  To me, it would be better to ask whether you have hours you would NOT want to volunteer during.  Obviously most people would rather not do graveyard shifts, but otherwise, people will adjust to the schedule within that 12-16 hour range they give.

[u]Tech Station
[/u]
One suggestion I had was for Tech Station to have a second monitor.  I don't know if anyone else noticed this much, or even consider it an issue, but when the Tech volunteer was doing things in the background, occasionally when they needed to change windows, they'd hover on the taskbar icon too long, and that makes windows make everything else transparent, including the OBS Projection on the secondary viewing monitor.  To me, it was very distracting when that was the primary screen I was watching off of.  Getting a second monitor set up would limit the number of window changes necessary, and keep those distractions to a minimum.

Otherwise, Tech went very well for me.  It was incredibly helpful for me to be there during the setup day so I could help out getting things into position, and that helped down the road if I needed to help whoever was on tech troubleshoot problems.

As far as setting up tech station volunteers into fixed time slots instead of full games, I'm on board with that.  The one thing I want to point out, though, is that one advantage to having the switch-offs at each game is that you always have 2 tech people in the room for every setup period.  That may not happen with the new system, and you could end up with a lesser experienced tech person by themselves in the middle of a graveyard shift.  They might be in over their head, like I would've been in my first couple of marathons of volunteering on tech if I had been the only one around to set up a game.

NoWorries

2016-05-30 09:43:29 pm

I was rather quite pleased with just about everything that went down. I really only have a few comments/suggestions.

1) I loved the venue, however, I'm concerned to its size moving forward with the event as it grows (attendance was capped at 100? and how many more people are wanting to attend next year) I know things never seemed overly crowded save for the practice room, but we did keep the cap rather low. If we were to have say 500 people next year, would that space really be enough?

2) I thought the games were pretty neat. I tried my best to sit through as much of them as I could, though, I did find myself confused at a number of spots I think because of commentary. Sometimes it felt like too many inside jokes/references that I being a complete outsider to that game had no idea what was going on. Just as a casual point of order, it would be nice to have the mechanics/overview/game history be the primary focus of the commentary at least in the beginning. If the game is more than 30 minutes, I balk at the idea of sitting through it if within the first 10-15 minutes I feel or am starting to feel lost. On the whole, commentary was very good, and I did have many of my questions answered, but as always, I do feel like it could always be better.

3) Increasing to at least 6 days I think would be great. I know many more runners are interested next time as well as there were others there with games that could've been performed. As RPGLB feels like the event for people who can't play 30 minute platformers, it feels like being as inclusive as possible seems best. You mention the bonus days, I like others probably could have stayed longer but as I knew very little of what might happen besides just sight seeing SLC, I went home. Having a bit more structure in terms of an agenda (more than "bonus days" if you know what I mean) would really help. Even just something like "an extra day for some lan events/races" would help us to understand what is happening and why we would want to say.

4) I know at least 5 other people who made this mistake: for donating, the "alias, use anonymous if unchecked" box seemed to confuse people as people would type their alias/handle only to have their donation be "anonymous" myself included. I typed the handle, read the prompt and figured I had it right, only to not get to hear my name attached to my donation. The sheer number of anonymous donations leads me to believe that there are many more people out there who have troubles with it as well. Perhaps just changing the tab to be more clear as to "Anonymous, Use Email, Use Handle" or something would help to clear the confusion.

Thanks all! It was a great time and anything to help make it better I'd love to help

Also, SF2 had such a conservative estimate because from the time of the submission to when we ran the game, the WR had been reduced by over an hour due to improvements in the route. I think that's why Bonus games are so helpful =)

I was rather quite pleased with just about everything that went down. I really only have a few comments/suggestions.

1) I loved the venue, however, I'm concerned to its size moving forward with the event as it grows (attendance was capped at 100? and how many more people are wanting to attend next year) I know things never seemed overly crowded save for the practice room, but we did keep the cap rather low. If we were to have say 500 people next year, would that space really be enough?

2) I thought the games were pretty neat. I tried my best to sit through as much of them as I could, though, I did find myself confused at a number of spots I think because of commentary. Sometimes it felt like too many inside jokes/references that I being a complete outsider to that game had no idea what was going on. Just as a casual point of order, it would be nice to have the mechanics/overview/game history be the primary focus of the commentary at least in the beginning. If the game is more than 30 minutes, I balk at the idea of sitting through it if within the first 10-15 minutes I feel or am starting to feel lost. On the whole, commentary was very good, and I did have many of my questions answered, but as always, I do feel like it could always be better.

3) Increasing to at least 6 days I think would be great. I know many more runners are interested next time as well as there were others there with games that could've been performed. As RPGLB feels like the event for people who can't play 30 minute platformers, it feels like being as inclusive as possible seems best. You mention the bonus days, I like others probably could have stayed longer but as I knew very little of what might happen besides just sight seeing SLC, I went home. Having a bit more structure in terms of an agenda (more than "bonus days" if you know what I mean) would really help. Even just something like "an extra day for some lan events/races" would help us to understand what is happening and why we would want to say.

4) I know at least 5 other people who made this mistake: for donating, the "alias, use anonymous if unchecked" box seemed to confuse people as people would type their alias/handle only to have their donation be "anonymous" myself included. I typed the handle, read the prompt and figured I had it right, only to not get to hear my name attached to my donation. The sheer number of anonymous donations leads me to believe that there are many more people out there who have troubles with it as well. Perhaps just changing the tab to be more clear as to "Anonymous, Use Email, Use Handle" or something would help to clear the confusion.

Thanks all! It was a great time and anything to help make it better I'd love to help

Also, SF2 had such a conservative estimate because from the time of the submission to when we ran the game, the WR had been reduced by over an hour due to improvements in the route. I think that's why Bonus games are so helpful =)

Gamer0278

Edit history:

Gamer0278: 2016-06-01 04:11:14 pm

Gamer0278: 2016-05-31 07:48:57 pm

Gamer0278: 2016-05-31 07:48:14 pm

Gamer0278: 2016-05-31 07:44:00 pm

Gamer0278: 2016-05-31 07:43:25 pm

Gamer0278: 2016-05-31 07:43:09 pm

Gamer0278: 2016-05-31 07:42:32 pm

Gamer0278: 2016-05-31 07:42:15 pm

2016-05-31 07:40:24 pm

I absolutely loved this marathon, but I do admittedly have a lot of feedback from experiences, volunteering, and overhearing other ongoings.

Schedule/Games:

I love final fantasy, but we had too much of it. Especially when we had other options, especially a complete lack of Tales. We don't need to replicate the same problem the GDQs tend to have with Mega Man. I understand that a few were replacements/alternatives, which is understandable given the situations, but the end result is the same unfortunately. And even then we avoided the PS1 era. Likewise, I have concerns about FF6 becoming our Metroid. The incentive is great, but with the layout I feel like we can pick ANY long running RPG willing to do it/has Puwexil/Essentia involved and have the war for any game that way.

Bonus games weren't added to anything. They were just done. Was confusing for watchers, volunteers, runners, re-streams, etc. Definitely something to improve upon.

A lot can happen in the months between game submission and the marathon. We had quite a few runs get considerable time savers, in some cases more than half an hour worth that was guaranteed to be saved. There were quite a few instances of runners being guaranteed under estimate due to time saves being found before the event and those time saves not being reflected on the estimates. Be more vocal to runners about the ability to adjust times. While I have nothing against a large buffer for potentially bad RNG, there's a definitive difference between RNG buffering/incentive buffering and a 30 minute time save that was found and just no time adjustment was done regardless. Also, while the bonus games did work wonderfully and I don't have much to complain about, this only works when there's staff available to make that call and runners available to run said runs. I know that personally, when the Battle Network crew we had was trying to determine when we needed to wake up to be ready, it kept getting earlier and earlier, which started becoming problematic trying to plan getting up that early when also considering our various other volunteer responsibilities, eating, sleeping, etc. And during that night's graveyard shift when no one was available, we got ahead another 1-1.5 hours. We were drastically ahead and had no one available to do anything to adjust it except try and roll with it and hope everything went well. I know personally for the Battle Network run, we were down an entire commentator because they weren't there on time because the run started so ridiculously early compared to when it was supposed to start just 12 hours prior. All of this also leads into my other point about having more accurately adjusted estimates closer to the time of the event though.

Venue:

Cell phone service has been repeatedly mentioned. Lack of food in immediate walking distance sucks, but it’s still small enough of an event that people mass carpooling works really well. There’s also the shuttle and uber, so options are plenty. A little unfortunate that nothing is immediate, but not worth food trucks like GDQs have to resort to at all. Also, fantastic breakfast (REAL EGGS!).

Tech: I have a lot to say here.

I absolutely think the tech station could benefit drastically from having a second monitor setup. There's a lot of things to on that machine to cycle through for just a single monitor.

Alternatives to Vulajin - rather presumptuous of me, but at one point during a graveyard run I was up and around from having some late shifts of my own, and told the tech person to get a hold of me because I'd be awake instead of trying to get a hold of Vulajin. This is because a) I was right there and b) Vulajin had just minutes before told us he was going to the other hotel since they didn't have a room the whole time and was obviously going to sleep. It was just unnecessary to rely on Vulajin in that scenario when I was right there. I did indeed help a few times during that game, and Vulajin was never necessary. I know in another instance, myself, Terraj, and Romscout were able to assist whoever was on tech decide to switch servers because Twitch was being Twitch.

My point here being, having a single resource for anything is bad for the people needing the resource as well as the resource in question. We had other volunteers that could definitely lend a helping hand as I tried to do on my own effort. Perhaps something akin to the oncall backup the GDQs have? Where there’s a list of senior tech volunteers that are just oncall or backup for certain times. I know one issue I had frequently was, while I didn’t mind long shifts whatsoever, I still had a need to eat and use the bathroom. During a near graveyard shift run, I had to use the bathroom and there was *no one* around. I had to ask Aleck to leave host to run tech for a few minutes. While that worked out just fine, I shouldn’t have to ask the host to leave their position. They have their own duties and role to play for the stream. Having someone to call up to relieve me for five minutes would’ve been great. That being said, I can’t exactly encourage waking someone up for a bathroom break, so there’s some balance to be had in how that’s setup for next year. I’m not 100% certain personally.

I’m not personally sure of the tech behind the host button at GDQs, but having the same convenience for RPGLB would be welcome. Makes it easier on host and tech.

I've seen quite a few mentions of game audio so far. Just want to point out from tech side of things, we were having issues with the game audio causing clipping through the microphones when it was coming out of the speakers for the room. It first became apparent during one of the Gullwings tracks for FFX-2, because there's a high pitched screech during it. This was causing terrible 'rip headphone users' screeches consistently. I know during my FF13 shift I also had to lower it because I could hear clipping through Vulajin's mic during his commentary. I'm very positive something can be done about a combination of mic locations, speakers locations, and using the various things we have available to us on the sound board to assist with the clipping issue so that the speakers can be louder, but that would need some much in advanced exploring somehow. I think Vulajin may have addressed this in a post as well, but I read this entire thread yesterday at once so I don’t quite recall everything said in here exactly.

As for the TV showing the stream to the audience, as was said by a few people, that’s OBS. More specifically though, it happens when you click OBS and it pops up the two windows, the main window and the projection. If you hover there for about half a second or so I’d say, it then makes everything transparent until you pick one (handy Windows OS feature). I noticed this and got in the habit of clicking back to the correct OBS rather quickly so it wouldn’t happen, but not every tech volunteer was aware to be wary of this.

My last comment on tech, I’m personally really interested in taking on more tech responsibility if staff has a need for it in future events (which I’m definitely going to). Especially including setup, that way I have an even greater understanding of everything that goes into the setup.

Volunteer: Most of my points here have already been mentioned, but I’ll say them as well for emphasis.

Having no volunteer schedule until we were on-site was a tad ridiculous. Leaves no time for corrections, concerns, collaborating, or anything really. There’s just no excuse. This is the one thing about this event that I personally found to be completely pathetic.

I understand completely that tech was still making adjustments until the last minute unfortunately (being a part of that myself), but the tech orientation was not enough this year. I know Vulajin really tried with the time he had left at that point, but if I hadn’t done a tech shift for GDQs beforehand I’d have been sweating bullets in nervousness after that orientation. Luckily the event was small enough that we could afford shadowing and help aplenty, but even know very confidently what my role was, I still didn’t like how rushed the orientation ended up being even for my own taste.

Finally, I agree that not tying tech shifts to a game and having set hours would be very beneficial. Same with having shorter hours. That being said, speaking generally for all volunteering, perhaps having an opt-in for long shifts could be a thing? I know personally, most of the time, when I’m on tech I want to be there for the full game. That’s a personal thing, but I just enjoy it more that way (as long as I have relief for a few minutes once or twice). I know that easily makes it more complicated than it needs to be, so I don’t expect it to happen. But just my two cents.

Expanding the point above a bit, I also did like the point someone made how tying a game to a tech shift forced two tech volunteers for each game switch. Definitely a very strong point we currently have that we’d lose in the new setup if we went that route.

Charity:

While I completely concede that NAMI not being an international charity isn't the greatest thing because of international viewership and donations, I'm hard pressed to say I want another charity either. As evident by the finale (which was SO HARD to balance audio for when I'm choking up so damn hard, curse you all) mental illness really means a lot to our community at large, as well as to me personally, like so many others. I also concede that I don't want to end up in a GDQ situation necessarily, but they've been so good to us and do such good work that I don't want another charity. In hindsight, I think I was able to enjoy the event as well as I did in fair part because of who we were benefitting. Also, those lunches were incredible. <3

General:

Definitely in favor of adding a day. More time to raise money, more time for the RPGLB 'family' to spend some time together, and get more runs on the schedule. If there are concerns about adding too many games per event, might I suggest adding especially longer games/categories a little? I've seen it mentioned that there appears to be an upper limit on how long a game should be to get in, and that limit cuts out a ton of options. Perhaps we could add a day and add a very much longer game or two, that way we're still not putting too many games in per year?

I agree with having markings defining what the camera sees so we can keep a crowd on camera. Added bonus is we shouldn't be crowding the doors anyway, for a variety of reasons.

Growth:

I expect our event to have growth, as almost all speedrunning events do every year they continue, but I really think that we shouldn't raise our attendance cap by all too much. I think 200 absolute maximum would be nice. I know I talked to quite a few other attendees and they had similar hopes for the event going forward. More than anything, I want at least one main marathon in our community to maintain the family and community feeling that we like to pride ourselves on. Having not started attending any events until AGDQ14, this is something that I never found until this event. Perhaps it's selfish in some ways to say this, but I don't want that to ever change. Being able to finally attend a marathon that felt like a community gathering and not a show meant so much to me. So thank you to everyone that I met there, I was very sad to leave an event for the first time in my life.

I absolutely loved this marathon, but I do admittedly have a lot of feedback from experiences, volunteering, and overhearing other ongoings.

Schedule/Games:

I love final fantasy, but we had too much of it. Especially when we had other options, especially a complete lack of Tales. We don't need to replicate the same problem the GDQs tend to have with Mega Man. I understand that a few were replacements/alternatives, which is understandable given the situations, but the end result is the same unfortunately. And even then we avoided the PS1 era. Likewise, I have concerns about FF6 becoming our Metroid. The incentive is great, but with the layout I feel like we can pick ANY long running RPG willing to do it/has Puwexil/Essentia involved and have the war for any game that way.

Bonus games weren't added to anything. They were just done. Was confusing for watchers, volunteers, runners, re-streams, etc. Definitely something to improve upon.

A lot can happen in the months between game submission and the marathon. We had quite a few runs get considerable time savers, in some cases more than half an hour worth that was guaranteed to be saved. There were quite a few instances of runners being guaranteed under estimate due to time saves being found before the event and those time saves not being reflected on the estimates. Be more vocal to runners about the ability to adjust times. While I have nothing against a large buffer for potentially bad RNG, there's a definitive difference between RNG buffering/incentive buffering and a 30 minute time save that was found and just no time adjustment was done regardless. Also, while the bonus games did work wonderfully and I don't have much to complain about, this only works when there's staff available to make that call and runners available to run said runs. I know that personally, when the Battle Network crew we had was trying to determine when we needed to wake up to be ready, it kept getting earlier and earlier, which started becoming problematic trying to plan getting up that early when also considering our various other volunteer responsibilities, eating, sleeping, etc. And during that night's graveyard shift when no one was available, we got ahead another 1-1.5 hours. We were drastically ahead and had no one available to do anything to adjust it except try and roll with it and hope everything went well. I know personally for the Battle Network run, we were down an entire commentator because they weren't there on time because the run started so ridiculously early compared to when it was supposed to start just 12 hours prior. All of this also leads into my other point about having more accurately adjusted estimates closer to the time of the event though.

Venue:

Cell phone service has been repeatedly mentioned. Lack of food in immediate walking distance sucks, but it’s still small enough of an event that people mass carpooling works really well. There’s also the shuttle and uber, so options are plenty. A little unfortunate that nothing is immediate, but not worth food trucks like GDQs have to resort to at all. Also, fantastic breakfast (REAL EGGS!).

Tech: I have a lot to say here.

I absolutely think the tech station could benefit drastically from having a second monitor setup. There's a lot of things to on that machine to cycle through for just a single monitor.

Alternatives to Vulajin - rather presumptuous of me, but at one point during a graveyard run I was up and around from having some late shifts of my own, and told the tech person to get a hold of me because I'd be awake instead of trying to get a hold of Vulajin. This is because a) I was right there and b) Vulajin had just minutes before told us he was going to the other hotel since they didn't have a room the whole time and was obviously going to sleep. It was just unnecessary to rely on Vulajin in that scenario when I was right there. I did indeed help a few times during that game, and Vulajin was never necessary. I know in another instance, myself, Terraj, and Romscout were able to assist whoever was on tech decide to switch servers because Twitch was being Twitch.

My point here being, having a single resource for anything is bad for the people needing the resource as well as the resource in question. We had other volunteers that could definitely lend a helping hand as I tried to do on my own effort. Perhaps something akin to the oncall backup the GDQs have? Where there’s a list of senior tech volunteers that are just oncall or backup for certain times. I know one issue I had frequently was, while I didn’t mind long shifts whatsoever, I still had a need to eat and use the bathroom. During a near graveyard shift run, I had to use the bathroom and there was *no one* around. I had to ask Aleck to leave host to run tech for a few minutes. While that worked out just fine, I shouldn’t have to ask the host to leave their position. They have their own duties and role to play for the stream. Having someone to call up to relieve me for five minutes would’ve been great. That being said, I can’t exactly encourage waking someone up for a bathroom break, so there’s some balance to be had in how that’s setup for next year. I’m not 100% certain personally.

I’m not personally sure of the tech behind the host button at GDQs, but having the same convenience for RPGLB would be welcome. Makes it easier on host and tech.

I've seen quite a few mentions of game audio so far. Just want to point out from tech side of things, we were having issues with the game audio causing clipping through the microphones when it was coming out of the speakers for the room. It first became apparent during one of the Gullwings tracks for FFX-2, because there's a high pitched screech during it. This was causing terrible 'rip headphone users' screeches consistently. I know during my FF13 shift I also had to lower it because I could hear clipping through Vulajin's mic during his commentary. I'm very positive something can be done about a combination of mic locations, speakers locations, and using the various things we have available to us on the sound board to assist with the clipping issue so that the speakers can be louder, but that would need some much in advanced exploring somehow. I think Vulajin may have addressed this in a post as well, but I read this entire thread yesterday at once so I don’t quite recall everything said in here exactly.

As for the TV showing the stream to the audience, as was said by a few people, that’s OBS. More specifically though, it happens when you click OBS and it pops up the two windows, the main window and the projection. If you hover there for about half a second or so I’d say, it then makes everything transparent until you pick one (handy Windows OS feature). I noticed this and got in the habit of clicking back to the correct OBS rather quickly so it wouldn’t happen, but not every tech volunteer was aware to be wary of this.

My last comment on tech, I’m personally really interested in taking on more tech responsibility if staff has a need for it in future events (which I’m definitely going to). Especially including setup, that way I have an even greater understanding of everything that goes into the setup.

Volunteer: Most of my points here have already been mentioned, but I’ll say them as well for emphasis.

Having no volunteer schedule until we were on-site was a tad ridiculous. Leaves no time for corrections, concerns, collaborating, or anything really. There’s just no excuse. This is the one thing about this event that I personally found to be completely pathetic.

I understand completely that tech was still making adjustments until the last minute unfortunately (being a part of that myself), but the tech orientation was not enough this year. I know Vulajin really tried with the time he had left at that point, but if I hadn’t done a tech shift for GDQs beforehand I’d have been sweating bullets in nervousness after that orientation. Luckily the event was small enough that we could afford shadowing and help aplenty, but even know very confidently what my role was, I still didn’t like how rushed the orientation ended up being even for my own taste.

Finally, I agree that not tying tech shifts to a game and having set hours would be very beneficial. Same with having shorter hours. That being said, speaking generally for all volunteering, perhaps having an opt-in for long shifts could be a thing? I know personally, most of the time, when I’m on tech I want to be there for the full game. That’s a personal thing, but I just enjoy it more that way (as long as I have relief for a few minutes once or twice). I know that easily makes it more complicated than it needs to be, so I don’t expect it to happen. But just my two cents.

Expanding the point above a bit, I also did like the point someone made how tying a game to a tech shift forced two tech volunteers for each game switch. Definitely a very strong point we currently have that we’d lose in the new setup if we went that route.

Charity:

While I completely concede that NAMI not being an international charity isn't the greatest thing because of international viewership and donations, I'm hard pressed to say I want another charity either. As evident by the finale (which was SO HARD to balance audio for when I'm choking up so damn hard, curse you all) mental illness really means a lot to our community at large, as well as to me personally, like so many others. I also concede that I don't want to end up in a GDQ situation necessarily, but they've been so good to us and do such good work that I don't want another charity. In hindsight, I think I was able to enjoy the event as well as I did in fair part because of who we were benefitting. Also, those lunches were incredible. <3

General:

Definitely in favor of adding a day. More time to raise money, more time for the RPGLB 'family' to spend some time together, and get more runs on the schedule. If there are concerns about adding too many games per event, might I suggest adding especially longer games/categories a little? I've seen it mentioned that there appears to be an upper limit on how long a game should be to get in, and that limit cuts out a ton of options. Perhaps we could add a day and add a very much longer game or two, that way we're still not putting too many games in per year?

I agree with having markings defining what the camera sees so we can keep a crowd on camera. Added bonus is we shouldn't be crowding the doors anyway, for a variety of reasons.

Growth:

I expect our event to have growth, as almost all speedrunning events do every year they continue, but I really think that we shouldn't raise our attendance cap by all too much. I think 200 absolute maximum would be nice. I know I talked to quite a few other attendees and they had similar hopes for the event going forward. More than anything, I want at least one main marathon in our community to maintain the family and community feeling that we like to pride ourselves on. Having not started attending any events until AGDQ14, this is something that I never found until this event. Perhaps it's selfish in some ways to say this, but I don't want that to ever change. Being able to finally attend a marathon that felt like a community gathering and not a show meant so much to me. So thank you to everyone that I met there, I was very sad to leave an event for the first time in my life.

AlecK47

2016-05-31 08:48:04 pm

The volunteer schedule was actually finished and publicized by April 24th. That said, it's easy to miss a post in a thread and a tweet or two (which was all the publicity it got), so I'll do my best to make sure the volunteer schedule's release gets more attention next time around, especially because I was actually a little nervous somebody would miss it. There are a few ways to do this, including having a thread just for volunteers as we did last year, but we will at least do something about it.

Ghoul02

Edit history:

Ghoul02: 2016-06-01 03:05:10 am

2016-06-01 03:02:50 am

www.twitch.tv/ghoul02

As a way of combining the best of both worlds, would it be possible to both tie a tech volunteer to a time, and another to the transition period between games for a 5-10 minute shift for setup? This would unfortunately not be able to be set in stone, but showing up 5 min before the end of the run and leaving 5 minutes into the start of the next run would be a huge help to whoever happens to be on tech at that point.

Also, was there any thought to taking a super-long game and splitting it in two, like FF9 was in SGDQ when Puwexil and Spike did it? This would potentially get two "Growth" periods where viewers are interested from the start of the run, while avoiding the huge lull in viewers/donations/general interest that happens 5 hours into a 6-10 hour run?

Melodia

2016-06-01 07:10:01 am

FFVII had it too. I always thought it was a great idea too -- you get a lot of people anticipating the second half, etc. I can kinda see why they wouldn't in a mrathon like this though.

GhostKingG1

2016-06-02 05:30:20 pm

Why Hello it is Me

For communicating the volunteer schedule it might make sense to contact everyone scheduled individually. I think most of us got it all right, but more communication definitely wouldn't hurt.

TheSabin

2016-07-03 10:17:41 am

Suplexes Trains

Just a quick suggestion for RPGLB2017, we could maybe use Discord server instead of Quakenet since the majority of the SRL IRC communities have moved on to Discord anyway. I can see this change to generate more interest.

doicm

2016-07-07 02:26:09 pm

Quote from TheSabin:

Just a quick suggestion for RPGLB2017, we could maybe use Discord server instead of Quakenet since the majority of the SRL IRC communities have moved on to Discord anyway. I can see this change to generate more interest.

I like this idea as well, although I'm curious how this could be implemented as a public chat server to advertise (since Quakenet was also advertised).

puwexil

2016-07-14 04:44:18 pm

Professional Second Banana

GDQ used Discord as a private chat server for SGDQ attendees this year (with membership specifically restricted to just e-mail addresses registered for the event) - if there's interest we can certainly look into setting up something similar for RPGLB 2017.

As far as using Discord as a public Twitch chat alternative, we can look into that too - if people actually use it I could see value in having a place for people to talk about the community marathons/relays hosted on the RPGLB channel the rest of the year, or chat about RPG speedrunning in general.