RPG Limit Break 2017 - Feedback Thread

puwexil

Edit history:

puwexil: 2017-05-31 11:01:06 am

2017-05-31 10:41:20 am

Professional Second Banana

I and the rest of RPGLB Staff are extremely pleased with what we've accomplished this year, between raising over $100,000 for the 1st time 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 2018 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
-The venue bookkeeping issue that led to the event dates having to be changed was very, very unfortunate, especially with it happening after attendees had already begun making vacation/travel arrangements. To ensure this doesn’t happen again, we’ve already started the RPGLB 2018 venue search (MetaSigma and Essentia have visited some other hotels), with the goal of having a signed contract much sooner in the timeline.
-Ending the marathon on Friday instead of Saturday didn’t seem to impact the final day donations (almost 25% of the total donations came during the last 24 hours), though it did impact the schedule quite a bit (quite a few games were difficult to schedule due to the runner arriving mid-week, which would have been less of an issue if we had an extra weekend day at the end of the schedule to work with). Goal for next event will be a Sunday-Saturday or Monday-Saturday event.
-Stayed pretty close to or slightly behind schedule all week (with the exception of Sunday morning, where we got far enough ahead to be able to play the full ending to Terranigma). Unfortunately this meant we weren’t able to add any bonus games to the schedule this time - I definitely appreciate the bonus game runners practicing their games in case they were needed.
-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
-The Officers Club worked pretty well for the # of attendees we had - no room ever felt overly crowded to me even during peak usage.
-Noise from the practice room spilling into the stream room was an unfortunate drawback of the space (we were hoping for more out of the divider wall). If we return to the Officers Club again, we’ll look into options like closing the 2nd room divider between the north/south halves and arranging the rooms to try to control noise flow better.
-For next event, we have plans to source some 12+ way power strips to ensure all practice TVs can be utilized.
-As before, 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.

Food
-We will request NAMI provide more advance notice for catering plans next time, especially if they're in a format like a food truck where you need to be there during a certain window to get food (which affects people sleeping/running/volunteering during that period).
-Will request less pizza catering (like only once during the week).

Tech
-There weren’t very many major tech issues/stream outages and they didn’t significantly impact the schedule overall, but the issues before Diablo II ended up consuming time we could have used for a bonus game.
-The 2 main culprits for tech issues were OBS connectivity issues on the stream PC (which will likely clear up when Vulajin rebuilds it during the coming year), and a poor ethernet connection (which ultimately was addressed by covering it up with a box to prevent disturbance).
-We were able to get VODs uploaded to YouTube during the event this time - thanks to Vulajin for automating the uploads and corndan for editing/publishing the videos.

Chat/Website
-Overall chat was generally civil and moderated appropriately.
-rpglimitbreak.com website will be getting a major overhaul in the coming year, and will be used to consolidate information currently spread across multiple sources (SDA Forum, Google Docs, Horaro, etc).

Prizes
-There was a bug with the donation tracker that led to prizes being rotated out of the stream layout omnibar and donation page too early - before drawing prizes next week we’re going to apply a bugfix to correct this, and extend the drawing window to 1 game earlier.

Incentives
-Early-week incentives were priced a bit higher than RPGLB 2016 - almost all got met without issue, but a few unfortunately were not.
-Asking for incentive ideas to be included with game submissions worked pretty well, as far as allowing the committee to consider them as part of game selection/scheduling - we will continue that process going forward.

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 seems to resonate pretty well with our viewers.
-At our request, NAMI has been allocating donations towards programs with international reach as much as possible.
-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 Signups
-A Discord contact option will be added to the signup form next year, as Discord was an excellent tool this year for organization and distributing information.
-The deadline for volunteering will be more plainly stated. It was generally stated that signups would close at the same time as registration, but it would have been better to have that date stated outright when volunteer signups open.
-Hosts will likely need to do auditions next year so that we have a better idea of who excels on a microphone.

Volunteering General
-The biggest issue with the volunteer schedule on-site was it not being updated for the change made the week before the marathon in Child of Light being added, and the Diablo II and Kingdom Hearts 1.5 estimates being lowered.
-Training was an improvement over last year. Due to a later start time this marathon, we had ample time the morning before the marathon began to go over the donation, host, and tech stations.
-At the same time, training being on Saturday morning was not ideal for many arriving volunteers. Several arrived either later that day, or later in the week requiring them to be trained after the fact.
-One problem that someone brought up that does make sense is to make an outline of what to do when you’re hosting someone’s run next. An outline or guidelines PRIOR to your hosting hopefully will get created to have a more streamlined and consistent approach to hosting WITHOUT taking the personality out of the host themselves. This was a major concern brought to the attention of a few staff members that will be addressed in future events.
-Regarding the extra setup and teardown requirements this year, I would like to thank everyone who participated in bringing TVs from Essentia’s, setting up the practice room, and then tearing it back down and moving TVs to the trailers and sending them back to Essentia’s on Friday. That would have not been possible without everyone stepping up to help out, and it went as smoothly as could have been expected. Huge shoutouts to AshenPrime who volunteered his time and his trailer to help bring TVs to and from the venue.

Social Media
-Overall, the event was well covered by our Twitter crew. Tweets stayed entertaining, positive, and engaging. Volunteers were able to keep even nighttime runs covered - this was a huge improvement from 2016! The team also did a good job of letting onsite staff know if there were issues on the stream.
-Favoriting tweets and having them on stream seemed to work well, and they added another layer of engagement to the marathon. One or two tweets somewhat less sensitive to mental illness creeped through, and we’ll make sure both onsite and offsite staff are aware of what not to share.
-There was a little inconsistency in the professionalism in tweets; some lacked punctuation and proper capitalization. As we grow, we’ll want to hone our social media voice. It’s a small issue, but it’s something we can use to grow.

Pre-show/Interviews
-A very welcome addition to the event - we’ll be looking into having an interview area separate from the main couch for next event.
-Let us know what you thought of the pre-show & interviews (how many we had, how long they ran, what topics interested you, etc).

Thread title:

I and the rest of RPGLB Staff are extremely pleased with what we've accomplished this year, between raising over $100,000 for the 1st time 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 2018 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
-The venue bookkeeping issue that led to the event dates having to be changed was very, very unfortunate, especially with it happening after attendees had already begun making vacation/travel arrangements.  To ensure this doesn’t happen again, we’ve already started the RPGLB 2018 venue search (MetaSigma and Essentia have visited some other hotels), with the goal of having a signed contract much sooner in the timeline.
-Ending the marathon on Friday instead of Saturday didn’t seem to impact the final day donations (almost 25% of the total donations came during the last 24 hours), though it did impact the schedule quite a bit (quite a few games were difficult to schedule due to the runner arriving mid-week, which would have been less of an issue if we had an extra weekend day at the end of the schedule to work with).  Goal for next event will be a Sunday-Saturday or Monday-Saturday event.
-Stayed pretty close to or slightly behind schedule all week (with the exception of Sunday morning, where we got far enough ahead to be able to play the full ending to Terranigma).  Unfortunately this meant we weren’t able to add any bonus games to the schedule this time - I definitely appreciate the bonus game runners practicing their games in case they were needed.
-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
-The Officers Club worked pretty well for the # of attendees we had - no room ever felt overly crowded to me even during peak usage.
-Noise from the practice room spilling into the stream room was an unfortunate drawback of the space (we were hoping for more out of the divider wall).  If we return to the Officers Club again, we’ll look into options like closing the 2nd room divider between the north/south halves and arranging the rooms to try to control noise flow better.
-For next event, we have plans to source some 12+ way power strips to ensure all practice TVs can be utilized.
-As before, 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.

Food
-We will request NAMI provide more advance notice for catering plans next time, especially if they're in a format like a food truck where you need to be there during a certain window to get food (which affects people sleeping/running/volunteering during that period).
-Will request less pizza catering (like only once during the week).

Tech
-There weren’t very many major tech issues/stream outages and they didn’t significantly impact the schedule overall, but the issues before Diablo II ended up consuming time we could have used for a bonus game.
-The 2 main culprits for tech issues were OBS connectivity issues on the stream PC (which will likely clear up when Vulajin rebuilds it during the coming year), and a poor ethernet connection (which ultimately was addressed by covering it up with a box to prevent disturbance).
-We were able to get VODs uploaded to YouTube during the event this time - thanks to Vulajin for automating the uploads and corndan for editing/publishing the videos.

Chat/Website
-Overall chat was generally civil and moderated appropriately.
-rpglimitbreak.com website will be getting a major overhaul in the coming year, and will be used to consolidate information currently spread across multiple sources (SDA Forum, Google Docs, Horaro, etc).

Prizes
-There was a bug with the donation tracker that led to prizes being rotated out of the stream layout omnibar and donation page too early - before drawing prizes next week we’re going to apply a bugfix to correct this, and extend the drawing window to 1 game earlier.

Incentives
-Early-week incentives were priced a bit higher than RPGLB 2016 - almost all got met without issue, but a few unfortunately were not.
-Asking for incentive ideas to be included with game submissions worked pretty well, as far as allowing the committee to consider them as part of game selection/scheduling - we will continue that process going forward.

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 seems to resonate pretty well with our viewers.
-At our request, NAMI has been allocating donations towards programs with international reach as much as possible.
-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 Signups
-A Discord contact option will be added to the signup form next year, as Discord was an excellent tool this year for organization and distributing information. 
-The deadline for volunteering will be more plainly stated.  It was generally stated that signups would close at the same time as registration, but it would have been better to have that date stated outright when volunteer signups open.
-Hosts will likely need to do auditions next year so that we have a better idea of who excels on a microphone.
 
Volunteering General
-The biggest issue with the volunteer schedule on-site was it not being updated for the change made the week before the marathon in Child of Light being added, and the Diablo II and Kingdom Hearts 1.5 estimates being lowered.
-Training was an improvement over last year.  Due to a later start time this marathon, we had ample time the morning before the marathon began to go over the donation, host, and tech stations.
-At the same time, training being on Saturday morning was not ideal for many arriving volunteers.  Several arrived either later that day, or later in the week requiring them to be trained after the fact.
-One problem that someone brought up that does make sense is to make an outline of what to do when you’re hosting someone’s run next. An outline or guidelines PRIOR to your hosting hopefully will get created to have a more streamlined and consistent approach to hosting WITHOUT taking the personality out of the host themselves. This was a major concern brought to the attention of a few staff members that will be addressed in future events.
-Regarding the extra setup and teardown requirements this year, I would like to thank everyone who participated in bringing TVs from Essentia’s, setting up the practice room, and then tearing it back down and moving TVs to the trailers and sending them back to Essentia’s on Friday.  That would have not been possible without everyone stepping up to help out, and it went as smoothly as could have been expected.  Huge shoutouts to AshenPrime who volunteered his time and his trailer to help bring TVs to and from the venue.

Social Media
-Overall, the event was well covered by our Twitter crew. Tweets stayed entertaining, positive, and engaging. Volunteers were able to keep even nighttime runs covered - this was a huge improvement from 2016! The team also did a good job of letting onsite staff know if there were issues on the stream.
-Favoriting tweets and having them on stream seemed to work well, and they added another layer of engagement to the marathon. One or two tweets somewhat less sensitive to mental illness creeped through, and we’ll make sure both onsite and offsite staff are aware of what not to share.
-There was a little inconsistency in the professionalism in tweets; some lacked punctuation and proper capitalization. As we grow, we’ll want to hone our social media voice. It’s a small issue, but it’s something we can use to grow.
 
Pre-show/Interviews
-A very welcome addition to the event - we’ll be looking into having an interview area separate from the main couch for next event.
-Let us know what you thought of the pre-show & interviews (how many we had, how long they ran, what topics interested you, etc).

PJ

2017-05-31 11:00:11 am

Is PJ

Can we not do the painful "good taste vs bad taste" bid wars in the future? I understand it's an in-joke that RPGLB is particularly attached to for some reason, but completely killing the watchability of an already-niche event is probably not a good idea. I was particularly interested in watching the Final Fantasy Legend III run, but I had to turn it off after a few minutes of staring at pink & lime green. This was a run that I had a legitimate desire to watch. Imagine how people felt coming in and not knowing anything about the game or having any vested interested in watching.

I understand that RPGLB is particularly attached to demon chocobo, and fine, whatever. That's just a menu background. But last year, when you changed the entire layout to be demon chocobo during FFVI, I closed the stream for the rest of the event. Again, this is a game I particularly like watching and an event I participated in, and even I had no interest in watching any more.

I'm glad you guys enjoy the laughs from it or whatever, but it really hurts the presentation and turns off new viewers. And old viewers. Watching an unfamiliar RPG is already a tough sell, but intentionally making it painful to look at the game feed/layout loses the sale entirely.

Can we not do the painful "good taste vs bad taste" bid wars in the future?  I understand it's an in-joke that RPGLB is particularly attached to for some reason, but completely killing the watchability of an already-niche event is probably not a good idea.  I was particularly interested in watching the Final Fantasy Legend III run, but I had to turn it off after a few minutes of staring at pink & lime green.  This was a run that I had a legitimate desire to watch.  Imagine how people felt coming in and not knowing anything about the game or having any vested interested in watching.

I understand that RPGLB is particularly attached to demon chocobo, and fine, whatever.  That's just a menu background.  But last year, when you changed the entire layout to be demon chocobo during FFVI, I closed the stream for the rest of the event.  Again, this is a game I particularly like watching and an event I participated in, and even I had no interest in watching any more.

I'm glad you guys enjoy the laughs from it or whatever, but it really hurts the presentation and turns off new viewers.  And old viewers.  Watching an unfamiliar RPG is already a tough sell, but intentionally making it painful to look at the game feed/layout loses the sale entirely.

Kowal

Edit history:

Kowal: 2017-05-31 11:32:24 am

2017-05-31 11:10:08 am

I had an absolutely incredible time at the event and as a first timer, I can say that everybody was enormously welcoming and pleasant. As a first-time runner as well, I owe a huge thanks to Vulajin and Brossentia for helping me get through the pre-run jitters and keep steady during my run.

My feedback is almost entirely positive, though some things I'd mentioned in Discord should probably get brought up here:

Sound from the practice room bleeding in to the stream room was very severe. The in-game audio was very quiet in the stream room anyway, but the amount of noise that made it through the divider made hearing the audio from the game and runner almost impossible. It wound up being a lot easier to follow what was going on from the food/puzzle room. I noticed during donation and hosting shifts (and occasionally streaming from the hotel room when I was people'd out) that the biggest complaints on twitch were that the stream room was noticeably empty. I can't speak for others but I know in many cases I was simply watching from other rooms so I could hear what was going on.

Hosting as a first-timer was in many ways scarier and more intimidating than running, and while the training Bob provided was super helpful it would also have been nice to get a chance to click around in the tracker and get familiar with it before sitting down to start a shift. If it's possible to rig up a dummy setup so first-timers could get comfortable with the navigation, I think it would help a lot.

Having some music piped in to the stream during setup would have been very nice as well. I'm under the impression this was intended but had to be scrapped last minute, but it'd be remiss not to include it here.

The hotel was really nice, and I quite liked the space. The Officer's Club plumbing wasn't great, though, and the front desk was not very good. I've chronicled some of the issues I had with them elsewhere, but the brief notes is that they managed to consistently make mistakes with the two names on my reservations, the date of arrival, billing, and so on. I want to make it clear they weren't rude or anything, but their follow through and accuracy were not up to par.

And lastly, utterly minor: It would have been nice to avoid doing pizza twice in the same week. But I mean really, if we're at the point I'm whining about a free catered lunch the rest of the event must have been pretty amazing!

I had an absolutely incredible time at the event and as a first timer, I can say that everybody was enormously welcoming and pleasant.  As a first-time runner as well, I owe a huge thanks to Vulajin and Brossentia for helping me get through the pre-run jitters and keep steady during my run.

My feedback is almost entirely positive, though some things I'd mentioned in Discord should probably get brought up here:

Sound from the practice room bleeding in to the stream room was very severe.  The in-game audio was very quiet in the stream room anyway, but the amount of noise that made it through the divider made hearing the audio from the game and runner almost impossible.  It wound up being a lot easier to follow what was going on from the food/puzzle room.  I noticed during donation and hosting shifts (and occasionally streaming from the hotel room when I was people'd out) that the biggest complaints on twitch were that the stream room was noticeably empty.  I can't speak for others but I know in many cases I was simply watching from other rooms so I could hear what was going on.

Hosting as a first-timer was in many ways scarier and more intimidating than running, and while the training Bob provided was super helpful it would also have been nice to get a chance to click around in the tracker and get familiar with it before sitting down to start a shift.  If it's possible to rig up a dummy setup so first-timers could get comfortable with the navigation, I think it would help a lot.

Having some music piped in to the stream during setup would have been very nice as well.  I'm under the impression this was intended but had to be scrapped last minute, but it'd be remiss not to include it here.

The hotel was really nice, and I quite liked the space.  The Officer's Club plumbing wasn't great, though, and the front desk was not very good.  I've chronicled some of the issues I had with them elsewhere, but the brief notes is that they managed to consistently make mistakes with the two names on my reservations, the date of arrival, billing, and so on.  I want to make it clear they weren't rude or anything, but their follow through and accuracy were not up to par.

And lastly, utterly minor:  It would have been nice to avoid doing pizza twice in the same week.  But I mean really, if we're at the point I'm whining about a free catered lunch the rest of the event must have been pretty amazing!

Pwnix

2017-05-31 11:20:37 am

Hey, Phoe here. Let me start off by saying I loved the marathon. I really had a good time watching it. I was just an internet spectator so what I can comment on is limited, but I'll do my best. Just gonna rattle some off in no particular order or category.

Ultimately I think the stream layout this year was the best so far, but I do think it verged on being a little bit cramped and busy, for me anyway. It's hard to beat the simplicity of having just the game and camera windows, but I understand and accept the little twitter/logo window. The third window did provide some fun when it was posting tweets from people using the RPGLB2017 hashtag, I liked that a lot. It gave people who didn't have any money to donate a chance to get in on the pun fun.

The RPGLB marathons have always captured what made early GDQs so pleasant for me, that certain intimate something that makes it so fun. The relative smallness of the RPGLB marathons gives theme an intimacy and vicarious appeal that GDQs. as good as they still are, don't have any more. There's a certain lack of practiced professionalism (I mean that as a compliment) that makes the RPGLB marathons feel more like hanging out with friends than watching a practiced presenter with professional distance. Maybe that sounds like a negative, haha, but I certainly don't mean it that way.

Possibly due to the smaller number of attendees, or the type of crowd RPG speedrunning attracts, likely both, I didn't notice a single problematic or mean spirited thing said on stream. I may have missed something, I didn't watch all of it, but it seemed squeaky clean to me. Admirably done. That type of stuff doesn't bother me much, but it's bad optics, and it's just nice when people are nice. I like that RPGLB seems very nice in general.

The schedule was great, as far as I'm concerned. FF9 is an excellent finale run. Though, I'm biased since FF9 is one of my all time favorite games. It was nice to see it in a marathon again. There's a million games I'd love to see in future marathons, but I like that you folks are willing to change it up and try a bunch of different games out to see how they do. Taking risks is important to keep the game list from stagnating.

I like NAMI as a charity and I think the focus on mental health may actually function to attract more sensitive and kind crowds, on the internet and in person. There's a certain amount of vulnerability and owning your presence in a space that is required to talk about mental health issues or be present for others talking about them. I think that's good. Speaking of, I like that people talk about their struggles with mental illness during the marathon and it reflects well on you that they feel comfortable doing so.

Overall my experience was very positive watching from home. Part of me wishes I liked it a little less so I'd actually have some more constructive criticism for you. I don't want to just heap praise or give you vague suggestions, that's not that useful.

For the future I'd say keep trying out RPGs that haven't made it into marathons before, keep experimenting with what's on the schedule and how the schedule flows. It's like curating a good playlist. Try to keep the marathon small too. These smaller marathons give me the AGDQ 2013 warm fuzzies. I think it creates a more comfortable environment for everyone. Most of all though, just keep going for it. I look forward to this every year.

Great job!

Hey, Phoe here. Let me start off by saying I loved the marathon. I really had a good time watching it. I was just an internet spectator so what I can comment on is limited, but I'll do my best. Just gonna rattle some off in no particular order or category.

Ultimately I think the stream layout this year was the best so far, but I do think it verged on being a little bit cramped and busy, for me anyway. It's hard to beat the simplicity of having just the game and camera windows, but I understand and accept the little twitter/logo window. The third window did provide some fun when it was posting tweets from people using the RPGLB2017 hashtag, I liked that a lot. It gave people who didn't have any money to donate a chance to get in on the pun fun.

The RPGLB marathons have always captured what made early GDQs so pleasant for me, that certain intimate something that makes it so fun. The relative smallness of the RPGLB marathons gives theme an intimacy and vicarious appeal that GDQs. as good as they still are, don't have any more. There's a certain lack of practiced professionalism (I mean that as a compliment) that makes the RPGLB marathons feel more like hanging out with friends than watching a practiced presenter with professional distance. Maybe that sounds like a negative, haha, but I certainly don't mean it that way.

Possibly due to the smaller number of attendees, or the type of crowd RPG speedrunning attracts, likely both, I didn't notice a single problematic or mean spirited thing said on stream. I may have missed something, I didn't watch all of it, but it seemed squeaky clean to me. Admirably done. That type of stuff doesn't bother me much, but it's bad optics, and it's just nice when people are nice. I like that RPGLB seems very nice in general.

The schedule was great, as far as I'm concerned. FF9 is an excellent finale run. Though, I'm biased since FF9 is one of my all time favorite games. It was nice to see it in a marathon again. There's a million games I'd love to see in future marathons, but I like that you folks are willing to change it up and try a bunch of different games out to see how they do. Taking risks is important to keep the game list from stagnating.

I like NAMI as a charity and I think the focus on mental health may actually function to attract more sensitive and kind crowds, on the internet and in person. There's a certain amount of vulnerability and owning your presence in a space that is required to talk about mental health issues or be present for others talking about them. I think that's good. Speaking of, I like that people talk about their struggles with mental illness during the marathon and it reflects well on you that they feel comfortable doing so.

Overall my experience was very positive watching from home. Part of me wishes I liked it a little less so I'd actually have some more constructive criticism for you. I don't want to just heap praise or give you vague suggestions, that's not that useful.

For the future I'd say keep trying out RPGs that haven't made it into marathons before, keep experimenting with what's on the schedule and how the schedule flows. It's like curating a good playlist. Try to keep the marathon small too. These smaller marathons give me the AGDQ 2013 warm fuzzies. I think it creates a more comfortable environment for everyone. Most of all though, just keep going for it. I look forward to this every year.

Great job!

dangodofthunder

2017-05-31 12:35:44 pm

First RPGLB, been to a buncha GDQ's. I really do like the smaller, more casual atmosphere. I had no issues leaving my board games in the casual room, I had no issues if I had to leave a bag unattended for a minute or two, which I can't say at a GDQ.

I wonder if there's maybe some sort of written material that could be sent ahead of time, and/or kept onsite for donation volunteers? Even if you do both GDQ's and RPGLB, you're only doing donation station 3 times a year. While I recall what to do, some of the details get lost when you only work a station a few times a year. So I apologize to Vulajin for forgetting about Confirmation/Regular. This would help since I was in the boat of folks who couldn't make the orientation due to flight issues (In fact, I had to cancel a check in shift as I was scheduled to land in SLC two minutes before my shift was supposed to start).

soothingplumtea

2017-05-31 12:49:33 pm

I really liked the venue. It was great last year, and great again this year. Especially now that there was cell reception in the practice room. If venues were to change I think one of the main things I'd want that this hotel offers is just ease of getting food. With catered lunches this really isn't that big of an issue, but it's really nice how close the light rail was to this venue if you wanted to go out for dinner or stop by the grocery store.

As far as complaints I was thinking about the perception that I feel a lot of the stream audience has when they see an empty room. Due to several other factors such as game communities generally not all coming out to smaller marathons like this, as well as late night runs in local time, there's going to be a lot of runs where the stream room is completely empty. Obviously you want a large area for people to watch during stuff like the first run/finale and to cater to when very large communities do all make it out to the event like the Earthbound community did. But for every other run I feel that the stream room layout kind of hurts it? I like what GDQs do now where there's the A couch which is the focus, and the only focus behind the A couch is a B couch. The rest of the general viewing area for the stream room is off camera. I feel like this alleviates the problem of having a large empty room behind the couch for a lot of runs. This is a pretty minor complaint but I think there's some merit to it. Because I've definitely seen a lot of comments on empty stream rooms with people assuming the game isn't popular or thinking that it looks lonely at the marathon when that's not the case at all.

As far as game selection goes I only have really have my own run to comment on. I love Star Force 2 and am extremely happy I got to show it off, especially since my run went really well. Although seeing the version bid war only raise ~200 dollars was incredibly disappointing. I feel like the overall response to the run was positive, but I think just selecting 2 over 3 was a mistake. Even though I think 2 is the best watch of the series, the casual perception of the game just kind of walled it. One of the first comments on the youtube VOD for the run was "I hate this game with a passion." and I think accepting games like that is maybe a mistake now? I was hoping that people could maybe get over the casual stigma of the game being really bad but in terms of the donation incentive especially, it just stopped a lot of people from donating who otherwise would've donated for a bid war of 1 or 3 game version. I don't know if this really happens with other game series, because this is definitely a fringe case. Where people just casually loathe one game in a series even if it's a really good speedrun. I'm happy the game got accepted because this is probably the only big marathon showing Star Force will ever get, but I think that 1 or 3 probably should've been selected instead just because people don't casually hate them. Limit Break I think does a fairly good job with taking some "community picks" as opposed to just what would raise the most money, but I feel that this is an instance where you could've met it halfway to focus more on popularity. Although maybe this was just my fault for understating in my pitch that the casual perception of the game was really bad. Hopefully this doesn't taint the perception of Mega Man at Limit Break. This isn't as bad as a GDQ accepting something like X7 or Rockman Strategy, but it's more like accepting X6 instead of X4.

Either way, fantastic marathon. Very excited to see where it goes in 2018.

I really liked the venue. It was great last year, and great again this year. Especially now that there was cell reception in the practice room. If venues were to change I think one of the main things I'd want that this hotel offers is just ease of getting food. With catered lunches this really isn't that big of an issue, but it's really nice how close the light rail was to this venue if you wanted to go out for dinner or stop by the grocery store.

As far as complaints I was thinking about the perception that I feel a lot of the stream audience has when they see an empty room. Due to several other factors such as game communities generally not all coming out to smaller marathons like this, as well as late night runs in local time, there's going to be a lot of runs where the stream room is completely empty. Obviously you want a large area for people to watch during stuff like the first run/finale and to cater to when very large communities do all make it out to the event like the Earthbound community did. But for every other run I feel that the stream room layout kind of hurts it? I like what GDQs do now where there's the A couch which is the focus, and the only focus behind the A couch is a B couch. The rest of the general viewing area for the stream room is off camera. I feel like this alleviates the problem of having a large empty room behind the couch for a lot of runs. This is a pretty minor complaint but I think there's some merit to it. Because I've definitely seen a lot of comments on empty stream rooms with people assuming the game isn't popular or thinking that it looks lonely at the marathon when that's not the case at all.

As far as game selection goes I only have really have my own run to comment on. I love Star Force 2 and am extremely happy I got to show it off, especially since my run went really well. Although seeing the version bid war only raise ~200 dollars was incredibly disappointing. I feel like the overall response to the run was positive, but I think just selecting 2 over 3 was a mistake. Even though I think 2 is the best watch of the series, the casual perception of the game just kind of walled it. One of the first comments on the youtube VOD for the run was "I hate this game with a passion." and I think accepting games like that is maybe a mistake now? I was hoping that people could maybe get over the casual stigma of the game being really bad but in terms of the donation incentive especially, it just stopped a lot of people from donating who otherwise would've donated for a bid war of 1 or 3 game version. I don't know if this really happens with other game series, because this is definitely a fringe case. Where people just casually loathe one game in a series even if it's a really good speedrun. I'm happy the game got accepted because this is probably the only big marathon showing Star Force will ever get, but I think that 1 or 3 probably should've been selected instead just because people don't casually hate them. Limit Break I think does a fairly good job with taking some "community picks" as opposed to just what would raise the most money, but I feel that this is an instance where you could've met it halfway to focus more on popularity. Although maybe this was just my fault for understating in my pitch that the casual perception of the game was really bad. Hopefully this doesn't taint the perception of Mega Man at Limit Break. This isn't as bad as a GDQ accepting something like X7 or Rockman Strategy, but it's more like accepting X6 instead of X4.

Either way, fantastic marathon. Very excited to see where it goes in 2018.

Xelnas

2017-05-31 02:32:23 pm

I really loved this years event as a viewer and just a reminder this is all from a viewers point of view(an invested community member/viewer but outside in)

The biggest complaint i have was how empty the room felt and you could see this was shared by a lot of casual viewers sure some were rude and meme'd about it in chat BUT if its possible to have an angle set up for both when the crowd is there and when the crowd is a bit dead that would be fantastic. i understand lots of work goes into these things but if the crowd is empty it leaves a really bad impression on new viewers. I can explain over and over again that these events are more about gaming with friends or chilling at a restaraunt or board gaming but fans wont get that.

Obviously avoid the gdq(2015 i think) option where the couch was mostly isolated from the crowd. this also is probably not a big deal.

I 100 percent agree with pj litterally copy paste his opinion in this post if that wasent a waste.

If possible increase the length of the event from 5/6 days to 6/7 the games are longer i'd love to see more runs with out too much burn out.

perhaps a more active effort of getting rpg communities that are a bit disconnected from the jrpg side into the event! fable was an absolutely fantastic run i'd love to see a soulsborne game ni-oh or even elder scrolls fallout!

I really loved this years event as a viewer and just a reminder this is all from a viewers point of view(an invested community member/viewer but outside in)

The biggest complaint i have was how empty the room felt and you could see this was shared by a lot of casual viewers sure some were rude and meme'd about it in chat BUT if its possible to have an angle set up for both when the crowd is there and when the crowd is a bit dead that would be fantastic. i understand lots of work goes into these things but if the crowd is empty it leaves a really bad impression on new viewers. I can explain over and over again that these events are more about gaming with friends or chilling at a restaraunt or board gaming but fans wont get that.

Obviously avoid the gdq(2015 i think) option where the couch was mostly isolated from the crowd. this also is probably not a big deal.

I 100 percent agree with pj litterally copy paste his opinion in this post if that wasent a waste.

If possible increase the length of the event from 5/6 days to 6/7 the games are longer i'd love to see more runs with out too much burn out.

perhaps a more active effort of getting rpg communities that are a bit disconnected from the jrpg side into the event! fable was an absolutely fantastic run i'd love to see a soulsborne game ni-oh or even elder scrolls fallout!

GhostKingG1

Edit history:

GhostKingG1: 2017-06-07 05:24:31 pm

GhostKingG1: 2017-06-02 04:35:58 am

GhostKingG1: 2017-06-01 06:11:27 pm

GhostKingG1: 2017-06-01 06:09:51 pm

GhostKingG1: 2017-05-31 11:13:23 pm

GhostKingG1: 2017-05-31 10:07:21 pm

GhostKingG1: 2017-05-31 09:59:36 pm

GhostKingG1: 2017-05-31 08:54:34 pm

GhostKingG1: 2017-05-31 03:03:18 pm

GhostKingG1: 2017-05-31 02:59:12 pm

GhostKingG1: 2017-05-31 02:57:10 pm

2017-05-31 02:56:28 pm

Why Hello it is Me

Overall, loved the marathon and the setup was even better than last year. Some things I would like to address here:

-Let's start with submissions. I feel like SDA continues to see less and less activity, so I don't see it as a particularly ideal place to have submissions in the future. Now, a lot of people will even make accounts to submit just to this marathon, but in the future I think we're better off moving to somewhere else to handle submissions. I also understand that some people have a negative opinion of SDA for things unrelated to RPGLB which theoretically might mean that they are less likely to submit potentially strong submissions. I don't think SRcom is the answer to this either, despite it being more active, but I think there might be a better place than this forum which looks kind of dated and is seeing less and less activity.

That said, having editable submissions is superb and I wouldn't have it any other way. I also still really like the submission form, where runners are asked to assess the merits of their run and actually talk about their run, rather than post a small blurb solely for making their run look as good as possible with little room for detail.

-The WiFi on the host's laptop was using the UGuest Wifi. When I was hosting, the Wifi connection went kaput at least 7 times and I had to reconnect and re-login each time. I think this laptop should have been given access to a better connection.

-There needs to be more direction for people on the donation station on how to properly put donations towards runner's choice. I had to edit many donations from multiple previous people's shifts because they weren't properly going to runner's choice. Thankfully most of them were listed on a document and it seemed most people got it right but at least a couple didn't.

-The 6 1/2 day marathon was definitely a factor in its success and I am glad that there was more time at the event. If this is sustainable I would like to continue with this. Considering we had round-the-clock volunteers it seemed like it went mostly okay too, although I understand it places a different kind of burden on staff.

-Thank you for continuing to allow people who want to have a moment to talk at the end do so. I'm not sure if this is something we'll always be able to do, but one of the main things people seem to love about this marathon is how personal it really is, and allowing people at the end to have a moment to say a few words is a wonderful touch that gives it that personal feeling.

-Regarding the schedule, it's kind of a broken record to say that there's too much FF; I don't even mind it too much since FFL is SaGa with the FF name slapped on and FF games bring in a good amount of money, but I do think that having the last 2 days be Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy, Earthbound, Kingdom Hearts (a series with a ton of FF influence), Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy (which was later swapped to Shining Force), and then Final Fantasy was going a bit overboard. I understand a lot of it had to do with schedule of the Mystic Quest, FFLegend and Shining Force runners, but it is something to address going forward.

-We really should have music playing on stream during setup time. This might be a bit more difficult to work in techwise, but having 20 minutes of watching people set up for the next game, especially when things take longer than they are supposed to, with only absolute silence and the occasional word from the host provides a dull presentation. RPGs have a ton of good music, so there's no small selection to set up a playlist for.

-I'm curious why there was no !runner or !follow commands in chat during the marathon, chat was seldom so busy that they would be lost and those help people get to the runner's channel easier.

-One thing I want to say that I really liked about the schedule: the longer runs were not relegated to the graveyard shifts and I really hope this continues. Xenoblade and Golden Sun were in the top 5 longest runs in the marathon and were given mid-day time slots. I really want this to continue because I feel like a lot of great RPGs could end up permanently reserved for graveyard when their only issue is that they take a bit longer to run.

-Chat moderators were a bit too strict on memes in general. Considering this marathon gets a lot of money through donations based on memes (Demon Chocobo/Good Taste, Jeff, and Happy Birthday this year), I think that moderators could stand to be a bit more lax about it. Chat during much of the marathon wasn't wild enough that moderators would have been unable to filter the meme posts. If it got spammy you can always use slow mode, and if people were getting too extreme it's not hard to filter out toxic messages from people just having fun.

-Furthermore, I'm really wondering why the old moderator list was basically cleared out from past community events. I know that there were dedicated moderators for the event, but I was in chat for a lot of time during the marathon, during my volunteer shifts, and during the first two days when I was not there in person. During some of the graveyard hours when I was on host, moderators ended up missing some stuff that I could easily have taken care of. In a nutshell, I don't get why the moderator list was shrunk and people who had previously had moderator status from community events had it taken away, considering the main event is the busiest of them all in terms of chat.

-The practice room was great. It was unfortunate that some of the audio leaked into the stream room, and if a setup like that is to be used again there definitely could be a better partition for it, but overall I was very pleased with how it was all set up.

-Now this one was my fault because I never really brought it up...but I did ask for no volunteer shifts on Wednesday as I was couching 12 hours worth of runs (counting my own), and ended up with a 2-5AM shift Thursday, which is basically the same as being scheduled Wednesday considering I was on couch until 11PM. Again, I didn't ask for a reschedule, I'm just noting that this ended up happening.

-If I recall correctly, I think Shadow Hearts was supposed to have a 4:10 estimate and it ended up with a 4:00 estimate on the schedule? That run went quite a bit over. Similarly, Cthulhu had a 42 minute estimate on the schedule and it was 50 minutes on the final layout. Also I believe at least a few runs had extra estimates

-The empty room problem popped up again, and like Xelnas said this came up in chat a lot with people thinking that the people at the event were not being supportive (no matter how many times we tell them "it's 3 AM local time people are asleep"). I think in the future that the camera should be positioned in such a way that it focuses less on the crowd and more on the runners there during quieter hours. Earthbound handled this pretty well with the side angle view that focused on the teams while still showing a bit of the crowd there as well.

On the other end, having the stream broadcast on the projector in the practice room was a fantastic idea. Plenty of people tuned in here and there in the practice room the entire marathon and I just generally appreciate not having to walk all the way to the stream room when I'm playing something or having to pull out my laptop to put it on.

-Shoutouts to the tech guys for making this fun, like making I Am Setsuna into I Am THE LAW and Saturday Morning RPG into Wednesday Morning RPG, it makes the event more fun to do little things like that.

-As Xelnas said, there was a general lack of western RPGs. This was a consequence of the submissions though, considering Grimrock, Fable, BG2 and Diablo 2 were like...the only western RPGs offered along with Mass Effect (and technically StarTropics as well). I'm wondering what we can do in the future about this, I think the upcoming Bethesda Marathon might help a bit with awareness on that regard, but this is still a heavily JRPG-focused event. Considering we also saw a couple borderline titles (Startropics and Alundra) though, I hope we might see some more diverse submissions going forward. Perhaps when the next submission thread goes live, include a link to past RPGLB schedules to give people an idea of what staff would be willing to put on the schedule for those who might have reservations about whether their submission is RPG enough.

-Catered lunches was again a godsend, my belly gives thanks b('w')b

-I'm really glad that so many people were willing to help out with teardown due to the unfortunate hotel scheduling issues. This event still feels like a massively community supported event, put on by people who love this event and want it to succeed.

-I fully support the event being in Salt Lake City. Chapped lips and random snow day aside, it works well as a travel hub and I've yet to hear many complaints from people "who would have gone if it was somewhere else in the US". I'm a bit biased though as round trip from Salt Lake City is about 150$ from Norcal though.

I'll likely edit and add a few here as they come up. As per last year, any critical feedback is entirely in the interest of improving for next year, and this is still my favorite marathon out of the year.

EDITS:

Since there are some other things I would like to bring up that others have mentioned I'll address/echo a lot of what others have said as well-

-I dont think the donation reading thing was too big of an issue overall as I believe we were able to get basically every donation read, but there could be more done to expedite the process. There weren't as many "there aren't any donations right now, but..." moments this time. Personally I worry about if we say "there arent any donations right now", whether that gets people donating or just puts people off. I feel worse for saying it personally as a host.

-We did also run out of drinks, which was especially unfortunate because the water really helped me with the drier air and the 2 blocks of commentary which ran over 6 hours each for me. That said, I'm really not 100% what to do as the event grows as catering and beverages get harder to account for the bigger the event gets. I also echo the drink options. The other thing is, as much as I do like the venue, it is kind of out of the way so if the venue moves next year, having somewhere closer to places to get food would be nice if we wanted to go out to eat.

-NAMI is still a fantastic charity and I especially like the emphasis on addressing what NAMI does internationally. The fact that it's an America-based charity has not stymied this event's growth nor people's support for mental illness as a cause, which hit many of us very personally. As much as I do want to say that I don't think RPG Limit Break should lock itself into one charity, I also fully support going ahead with supporting NAMI again next year.

-I feel like this marathon hits the proper sweet spot between Charity and Community marathons. While it heavily promotes the charity and focuses on the charity, the presentation and the games selected reflect a focus on an event where the community can get together, have fun and support both the cause and the event. I don't really agree with the idea that the event is "self-limiting" with how it is presented, at least not deliberately since RPG speedruns are still a niche within a niche within another niche by definition.

-I agree that the incentives not being met was not a huge issue this time around. Most of them were relatively minor and most of the major ones got met, and the feeling like it wasnt a guarantee that they would get met gave incentive for people to push to meet some of the tougher incentives. Doing something like having a 2000$ donation incentive on the first day of the marathon was a bold risk but it absolutely paid off.

I am inclined to agree on the vetting of some bidwars. It's impossible to know just how much certain incentives might get (I think the bidwar for Xenoblade surprised everyone by raising over 1500$), and name incentives are always good, but some bidwars continue to make very little, especially if they happen in late-night runs. Another concern I do have, is if we bring back another big bid war like the Demon Chocobo, that we run a risk of more incentives not being met than what happened this year because it soaks up the donations as a "default incentive". The biggest bidwar this year was the same as RPGLB 2015 (KH:BBS character, which erupted into a 3 horse race 4 hours before that run as opposed to it being put on by mainly two people), and that only raised a bit over 1/3 of the Demon Chocobo last year. This year, the donations definitely spread out a lot over many different things, and I do think it should be looked at how to handle incentives next year if a big incentive like Demon Chocobo re-emerges.

-I agree with Kirby that Earthbound getting a third consecutive showing creates some concern. While it was certainly a case of a community showing up big time at submissions and it created a rare multiple-team race, it does present a concerning precedent of whether a community can get basically annual representation by everyone in it submitting. Does it get in again next year if 20 people offer? That kind of concern. With one marathon a year and RPGs being on the long side, I think many of us want to avoid a "Super Metroid" of RPGLB. This is more on the submissions end because that race was fantastic and the EB community is full of awesome people so it's nothing against them.

Overall, loved the marathon and the setup was even better than last year. Some things I would like to address here:

-Let's start with submissions. I feel like SDA continues to see less and less activity, so I don't see it as a particularly ideal place to have submissions in the future. Now, a lot of people will even make accounts to submit just to this marathon, but in the future I think we're better off moving to somewhere else to handle submissions. I also understand that some people have a negative opinion of SDA for things unrelated to RPGLB which theoretically might mean that they are less likely to submit potentially strong submissions. I don't think SRcom is the answer to this either, despite it being more active, but I think there might be a better place than this forum which looks kind of dated and is seeing less and less activity.

That said, having editable submissions is superb and I wouldn't have it any other way. I also still really like the submission form, where runners are asked to assess the merits of their run and actually talk about their run, rather than post a small blurb solely for making their run look as good as possible with little room for detail.

-The WiFi on the host's laptop was using the UGuest Wifi. When I was hosting, the Wifi connection went kaput at least 7 times and I had to reconnect and re-login each time. I think this laptop should have been given access to a better connection.

-There needs to be more direction for people on the donation station on how to properly put donations towards runner's choice. I had to edit many donations from multiple previous people's shifts because they weren't properly going to runner's choice. Thankfully most of them were listed on a document and it seemed most people got it right but at least a couple didn't.

-The 6 1/2 day marathon was definitely a factor in its success and I am glad that there was more time at the event. If this is sustainable I would like to continue with this. Considering we had round-the-clock volunteers it seemed like it went mostly okay too, although I understand it places a different kind of burden on staff.

-Thank you for continuing to allow people who want to have a moment to talk at the end do so. I'm not sure if this is something we'll always be able to do, but one of the main things people seem to love about this marathon is how personal it really is, and allowing people at the end to have a moment to say a few words is a wonderful touch that gives it that personal feeling.

-Regarding the schedule, it's kind of a broken record to say that there's too much FF; I don't even mind it too much since FFL is SaGa with the FF name slapped on and FF games bring in a good amount of money, but I do think that having the last 2 days be Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy, Earthbound, Kingdom Hearts (a series with a ton of FF influence), Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy (which was later swapped to Shining Force), and then Final Fantasy was going a bit overboard. I understand a lot of it had to do with schedule of the Mystic Quest, FFLegend and Shining Force runners, but it is something to address going forward.

-We really should have music playing on stream during setup time. This might be a bit more difficult to work in techwise, but having 20 minutes of watching people set up for the next game, especially when things take longer than they are supposed to, with only absolute silence and the occasional word from the host provides a dull presentation. RPGs have a ton of good music, so there's no small selection to set up a playlist for.

-I'm curious why there was no !runner or !follow commands in chat during the marathon, chat was seldom so busy that they would be lost and those help people get to the runner's channel easier.

-One thing I want to say that I really liked about the schedule: the longer runs were not relegated to the graveyard shifts and I really hope this continues. Xenoblade and Golden Sun were in the top 5 longest runs in the marathon and were given mid-day time slots. I really want this to continue because I feel like a lot of great RPGs could end up permanently reserved for graveyard when their only issue is that they take a bit longer to run.

-Chat moderators were a bit too strict on memes in general. Considering this marathon gets a lot of money through donations based on memes (Demon Chocobo/Good Taste, Jeff, and Happy Birthday this year), I think that moderators could stand to be a bit more lax about it. Chat during much of the marathon wasn't wild enough that moderators would have been unable to filter the meme posts. If it got spammy you can always use slow mode, and if people were getting too extreme it's not hard to filter out toxic messages from people just having fun.

-Furthermore, I'm really wondering why the old moderator list was basically cleared out from past community events. I know that there were dedicated moderators for the event, but I was in chat for a lot of time during the marathon, during my volunteer shifts, and during the first two days when I was not there in person. During some of the graveyard hours when I was on host, moderators ended up missing some stuff that I could easily have taken care of. In a nutshell, I don't get why the moderator list was shrunk and people who had previously had moderator status from community events had it taken away, considering the main event is the busiest of them all in terms of chat.

-The practice room was great. It was unfortunate that some of the audio leaked into the stream room, and if a setup like that is to be used again there definitely could be a better partition for it, but overall I was very pleased with how it was all set up.

-Now this one was my fault because I never really brought it up...but I did ask for no volunteer shifts on Wednesday as I was couching 12 hours worth of runs (counting my own), and ended up with a 2-5AM shift Thursday, which is basically the same as being scheduled Wednesday considering I was on couch until 11PM. Again, I didn't ask for a reschedule, I'm just noting that this ended up happening.

-If I recall correctly, I think Shadow Hearts was supposed to have a 4:10 estimate and it ended up with a 4:00 estimate on the schedule? That run went quite a bit over. Similarly, Cthulhu had a 42 minute estimate on the schedule and it was 50 minutes on the final layout. Also I believe at least a few runs had extra estimates

-The empty room problem popped up again, and like Xelnas said this came up in chat a lot with people thinking that the people at the event were not being supportive (no matter how many times we tell them "it's 3 AM local time people are asleep"). I think in the future that the camera should be positioned in such a way that it focuses less on the crowd and more on the runners there during quieter hours. Earthbound handled this pretty well with the side angle view that focused on the teams while still showing a bit of the crowd there as well.

On the other end, having the stream broadcast on the projector in the practice room was a fantastic idea. Plenty of people tuned in here and there in the practice room the entire marathon and I just generally appreciate not having to walk all the way to the stream room when I'm playing something or having to pull out my laptop to put it on.

-Shoutouts to the tech guys for making this fun, like making I Am Setsuna into I Am THE LAW and Saturday Morning RPG into Wednesday Morning RPG, it makes the event more fun to do little things like that.

-As Xelnas said, there was a general lack of western RPGs. This was a consequence of the submissions though, considering Grimrock, Fable, BG2 and Diablo 2 were like...the only western RPGs offered along with Mass Effect (and technically StarTropics as well). I'm wondering what we can do in the future about this, I think the upcoming Bethesda Marathon might help a bit with awareness on that regard, but this is still a heavily JRPG-focused event. Considering we also saw a couple borderline titles (Startropics and Alundra) though, I hope we might see some more diverse submissions going forward. Perhaps when the next submission thread goes live, include a link to past RPGLB schedules to give people an idea of what staff would be willing to put on the schedule for those who might have reservations about whether their submission is RPG enough.

-Catered lunches was again a godsend, my belly gives thanks b('w')b

-I'm really glad that so many people were willing to help out with teardown due to the unfortunate hotel scheduling issues. This event still feels like a massively community supported event, put on by people who love this event and want it to succeed.

-I fully support the event being in Salt Lake City. Chapped lips and random snow day aside, it works well as a travel hub and I've yet to hear many complaints from people "who would have gone if it was somewhere else in the US". I'm a bit biased though as round trip from Salt Lake City is about 150$ from Norcal though.

I'll likely edit and add a few here as they come up. As per last year, any critical feedback is entirely in the interest of improving for next year, and this is still my favorite marathon out of the year.

EDITS:

Since there are some other things I would like to bring up that others have mentioned I'll address/echo a lot of what others have said as well-

-I dont think the donation reading thing was too big of an issue overall as I believe we were able to get basically every donation read, but there could be more done to expedite the process. There weren't as many "there aren't any donations right now, but..." moments this time. Personally I worry about if we say "there arent any donations right now", whether that gets people donating or just puts people off. I feel worse for saying it personally as a host.

-We did also run out of drinks, which was especially unfortunate because the water really helped me with the drier air and the 2 blocks of commentary which ran over 6 hours each for me. That said, I'm really not 100% what to do as the event grows as catering and beverages get harder to account for the bigger the event gets. I also echo the drink options. The other thing is, as much as I do like the venue, it is kind of out of the way so if the venue moves next year, having somewhere closer to places to get food would be nice if we wanted to go out to eat.

-NAMI is still a fantastic charity and I especially like the emphasis on addressing what NAMI does internationally. The fact that it's an America-based charity has not stymied this event's growth nor people's support for mental illness as a cause, which hit many of us very personally. As much as I do want to say that I don't think RPG Limit Break should lock itself into one charity, I also fully support going ahead with supporting NAMI again next year.

-I feel like this marathon hits the proper sweet spot between Charity and Community marathons. While it heavily promotes the charity and focuses on the charity, the presentation and the games selected reflect a focus on an event where the community can get together, have fun and support both the cause and the event. I don't really agree with the idea that the event is "self-limiting" with how it is presented, at least not deliberately since RPG speedruns are still a niche within a niche within another niche by definition.

-I agree that the incentives not being met was not a huge issue this time around. Most of them were relatively minor and most of the major ones got met, and the feeling like it wasnt a guarantee that they would get met gave incentive for people to push to meet some of the tougher incentives. Doing something like having a 2000$ donation incentive on the first day of the marathon was a bold risk but it absolutely paid off.

I am inclined to agree on the vetting of some bidwars. It's impossible to know just how much certain incentives might get (I think the bidwar for Xenoblade surprised everyone by raising over 1500$), and name incentives are always good, but some bidwars continue to make very little, especially if they happen in late-night runs. Another concern I do have, is if we bring back another big bid war like the Demon Chocobo, that we run a risk of more incentives not being met than what happened this year because it soaks up the donations as a "default incentive". The biggest bidwar this year was the same as RPGLB 2015 (KH:BBS character, which erupted into a 3 horse race 4 hours before that run as opposed to it being put on by mainly two people), and that only raised a bit over 1/3 of the Demon Chocobo last year. This year, the donations definitely spread out a lot over many different things, and I do think it should be looked at how to handle incentives next year if a big incentive like Demon Chocobo re-emerges.

-I agree with Kirby that Earthbound getting a third consecutive showing creates some concern. While it was certainly a case of a community showing up big time at submissions and it created a rare multiple-team race, it does present a concerning precedent of whether a community can get basically annual representation by everyone in it submitting. Does it get in again next year if 20 people offer? That kind of concern. With one marathon a year and RPGs being on the long side, I think many of us want to avoid a "Super Metroid" of RPGLB. This is more on the submissions end because that race was fantastic and the EB community is full of awesome people so it's nothing against them.

steelfeather

Edit history:

steelfeather: 2017-05-31 05:50:42 pm

steelfeather: 2017-05-31 05:15:09 pm

steelfeather: 2017-05-31 05:15:06 pm

steelfeather: 2017-05-31 05:15:05 pm

2017-05-31 05:14:37 pm

bird

Internet spectator here. I believe this was my second time watching RPGLB live and it's quickly become something I look forward to every year, though I do have some feedback to offer.

Setup intermissions left a lot to be desired for keeping viewers interested; music would definitely help. Along with the upcoming incentive slides, perhaps show pictures of upcoming prizes (I'm biased because I love donating prizes to marathons) or even videos or graphics from NAMI if they have any to offer.

I liked the inclusion of interviews for both runners and NAMI representatives with testimonies. The charity's cause hits close to home for me personally, so the balance between fun and awareness for the cause was well done and neither detracted from the other. Please keep them.

Major kudos for having a tech account in chat to reach out to; I got an immediate response to my whisper and the issue was addressed!

Chat moderation was fantastic, but one thing I felt unsure about was seeing triggered memes slide by in chat, given the nature of the charity. There's a possibility it could be perceived negatively by viewers brought in via NAMI who wouldn't think of it as a sjw meme and instead see it as making light of a term used in relation to actual disorders. (On the other hand, I would assume that most of those viewers would probably be watching from the RPGLB website with no chat to look at anyways.) However, I'm neither a NAMI rep nor am I a trauma survivor, so it's really not my position to judge whether it's inappropriate in the context of the marathon.

The game selection was solid and there was something I wanted to watch each day, but I agree that Final Fantasy felt very saturated. Regardless, I respect that it's the most popular JRPG series and it brings in a lot of money, and I'm really happy that XII and Tactics made it in.

Overall, the marathon was fun to watch and meme on in chat, and the atmosphere was super chill. It really makes me want to attend in person in the future!

Internet spectator here. I believe this was my second time watching RPGLB live and it's quickly become something I look forward to every year, though I do have some feedback to offer.

Setup intermissions left a lot to be desired for keeping viewers interested; music would definitely help. Along with the upcoming incentive slides, perhaps show pictures of upcoming prizes (I'm biased because I love donating prizes to marathons) or even videos or graphics from NAMI if they have any to offer.

I liked the inclusion of interviews for both runners and NAMI representatives with testimonies. The charity's cause hits close to home for me personally, so the balance between fun and awareness for the cause was well done and neither detracted from the other. Please keep them.

Major kudos for having a tech account in chat to reach out to; I got an immediate response to my whisper and the issue was addressed!

Chat moderation was fantastic, but one thing I felt unsure about was seeing triggered memes slide by in chat, given the nature of the charity. There's a possibility it could be perceived negatively by viewers brought in via NAMI who wouldn't think of it as a sjw meme and instead see it as making light of a term used in relation to actual disorders. (On the other hand, I would assume that most of those viewers would probably be watching from the RPGLB website with no chat to look at anyways.) However, I'm neither a NAMI rep nor am I a trauma survivor, so it's really not my position to judge whether it's inappropriate in the context of the marathon.

The game selection was solid and there was something I wanted to watch each day, but I agree that Final Fantasy felt very saturated. Regardless, I respect that it's the most popular JRPG series and it brings in a lot of money, and I'm really happy that XII and Tactics made it in.

Overall, the marathon was fun to watch and meme on in chat, and the atmosphere was super chill. It really makes me want to attend in person in the future!

vaxherd

Edit history:

vaxherd: 2017-05-31 08:57:44 pm

vaxherd: 2017-05-31 08:56:59 pm

vaxherd: 2017-05-31 08:55:29 pm

vaxherd: 2017-05-31 08:51:34 pm

vaxherd: 2017-05-31 08:47:48 pm

2017-05-31 08:31:31 pm

Overall, I thought RPGLB 2017 was a great event. It was a success with respect to donations, of course, but the quality of the runs and commentary, the onsite atmosphere, the food (thanks, NAMI!), everything was superb.

Specific comments follow:

Schedule
+ I thought the schedule was solid - nice variety of game types, a good mix of popular and lesser-known titles/runs (there were several games I'd never even heard of before, and all were fun to watch; and obviously I'm grateful for staff including my could-have-gone-much-worse DW3 glitched run). The FF9 ending was especially great, and I like that we closed with that instead of just trailing off after all the thanks.
+ The schedule length seemed just about right as well, with enough time that having a few 6/8/10-hour runs didn't squeeze a lot of other good runs out, but also without dragging too much during the middle days.
+ Not ending on a Saturday doesn't seem to have significantly hurt donations.

Tech
+ It was easy to hear game audio and commentary in the stream room, an improvement from last year.
+ Aside from a few glitches, the stream and layouts were very clean and easy to watch.
- One of the more noticeable glitches was that the streaming PC's desktop occasionally showed on the stream in the practice and break rooms. Based on last year's comments, it looks like that's a Windows/OBS issue with local projection that doesn't show on the stream itself, but it would be nice if we could find some sort of solution for that.
- There were a couple of runs where setup seemed to take longer than necessary. The SaGa Frontier race particularly sticks in my mind - the setup tech spent several minutes trying to get the second TV on stream (and seemingly had no luck contacting backup people).
- PayPal refused to let me donate; it rejected me without even trying to authorize the card transaction (note that I don't have a PayPal account). I believe the GDQs use Amazon, and I've never had trouble with them. Can we look into at least adding Amazon as an option next year?
* My apologies for not volunteering for tech, which seemed to be a bit shorthanded this year - as this was my first time flying directly into SLC (from Tokyo), I wasn't sure how jetlag would affect me and didn't want to commit to something I wouldn't end up being able to do.

Commentary
+ Not much to add here; pretty much every run I've seen so far (still going through VODs) has been amazing. Special shoutouts to Highspirits, puwexil, and tonic for graciously helping out a noob.
- I do feel like some runs could have used a few more breaks to read donations or mention NAMI. Certainly there's lots to explain, but it's easy to get caught up in talking about the game or the run and let the charity aspect fall by the wayside, so perhaps hosts could be a bit more proactive in planning and calling out donation time? I know the first half of my own run was rather deficient in this regard; I'd meant to leave a couple of early slots for donation reading, but I ended up so focused on the run that it slipped my mind.

Venue
+ Decent free breakfast, good beds, all the things from last year still apply.
+ The Officers Club felt like just the right size for the marathon. The practice room in particular wasn't nearly as tight a squeeze as last year despite the increased attendance.
+ I like the Salt Lake City area, at least outside the city center and during this particular season; it's nice and quiet, the air is reasonably clean (having passed through central SLC during the height of summer, I know how bad it can get), and the weather/temperature is generally pleasant. That said, I don't have a strong preference one way or the other regarding location, since anywhere in the US is a long way away from Tokyo.
- Having the marathon in a separate building from the hotel was inconvenient when the weather went sour.

Charity
+ I feel like most of what needs to be said has already been said, but I strongly support NAMI's cause, and I appreciate that they're directing donation proceeds toward international efforts. Barring drastic change, I'd be fully in favor of continuing to work with them in future years.

Food
+ The catered lunches were generally great (especially the BBQ truck), and there was always enough to go around.
- I'll probably be pilloried for this, but I was not a fan of the pizza place that we had delivered from - too greasy, and the cheese was so thick it tended to separate from the bread while eating.
- We ran out of drinks about halfway through the week, and even though additional drinks were brought in on subsequent days, they disappeared pretty quickly.
- It would be nice to have a few more drink options besides water and soda, e.g. iced tea.

Other
+ This is such an amazing community! I realize the main thrust of the event is charity, but I feel like the community aspect is just as important - it's great to be able to spend time with so many people who share the same interests. I'm already looking forward to next year.
* On the same note, though, I do hope we can maintain that same community atmosphere going forward. GDQs seemed to become a bit more sterile after AGDQ 2014; even just watching the stream, there was a definite warmth around that event which was missing from later events, and to be honest it's made me lose some interest in watching GDQ streams, let alone attending in person. (I've heard that earlier GDQs were even more close-knit, but AGDQ 2014 was the first speedrunning event I watched, so I can't comment on that front.) I'd consider it selfish of a relative newcomer like me to suggest attendance caps or such that might discourage even newer people from joining the community (I did hear a couple of comments that RPGLB attendance might be self-limiting due to the narrower scope of the event), so I don't have any suggestions to offer on this front, but I just hope RPGLB doesn't end up going down the same path.

Overall, I thought RPGLB 2017 was a great event. It was a success with respect to donations, of course, but the quality of the runs and commentary, the onsite atmosphere, the food (thanks, NAMI!), everything was superb.

Specific comments follow:

[b][u]Schedule[/u][/b]
+ I thought the schedule was solid - nice variety of game types, a good mix of popular and lesser-known titles/runs (there were several games I'd never even heard of before, and all were fun to watch; and obviously I'm grateful for staff including my could-have-gone-much-worse DW3 glitched run). The FF9 ending was especially great, and I like that we closed with that instead of just trailing off after all the thanks.
+ The schedule length seemed just about right as well, with enough time that having a few 6/8/10-hour runs didn't squeeze a lot of other good runs out, but also without dragging too much during the middle days.
+ Not ending on a Saturday doesn't seem to have significantly hurt donations.

[b][u]Tech[/u][/b]
+ It was easy to hear game audio and commentary in the stream room, an improvement from last year.
+ Aside from a few glitches, the stream and layouts were very clean and easy to watch.
- One of the more noticeable glitches was that the streaming PC's desktop occasionally showed on the stream in the practice and break rooms. Based on last year's comments, it looks like that's a Windows/OBS issue with local projection that doesn't show on the stream itself, but it would be nice if we could find some sort of solution for that.
- There were a couple of runs where setup seemed to take longer than necessary. The SaGa Frontier race particularly sticks in my mind - the setup tech spent several minutes trying to get the second TV on stream (and seemingly had no luck contacting backup people).
- PayPal refused to let me donate; it rejected me without even trying to authorize the card transaction (note that I don't have a PayPal account). I believe the GDQs use Amazon, and I've never had trouble with them. Can we look into at least adding Amazon as an option next year?
* My apologies for not volunteering for tech, which seemed to be a bit shorthanded this year - as this was my first time flying directly into SLC (from Tokyo), I wasn't sure how jetlag would affect me and didn't want to commit to something I wouldn't end up being able to do.

[b][u]Commentary[/u][/b]
+ Not much to add here; pretty much every run I've seen so far (still going through VODs) has been amazing. Special shoutouts to Highspirits, puwexil, and tonic for graciously helping out a noob.
- I do feel like some runs could have used a few more breaks to read donations or mention NAMI. Certainly there's lots to explain, but it's easy to get caught up in talking about the game or the run and let the charity aspect fall by the wayside, so perhaps hosts could be a bit more proactive in planning and calling out donation time? I know the first half of my own run was rather deficient in this regard; I'd meant to leave a couple of early slots for donation reading, but I ended up so focused on the run that it slipped my mind.

[b][u]Venue[/u][/b]
+ Decent free breakfast, good beds, all the things from last year still apply.
+ The Officers Club felt like just the right size for the marathon. The practice room in particular wasn't nearly as tight a squeeze as last year despite the increased attendance.
+ I like the Salt Lake City area, at least outside the city center and during this particular season; it's nice and quiet, the air is reasonably clean (having passed through central SLC during the height of summer, I know how bad it can get), and the weather/temperature is generally pleasant. That said, I don't have a strong preference one way or the other regarding location, since anywhere in the US is a long way away from Tokyo.
- Having the marathon in a separate building from the hotel was inconvenient when the weather went sour.

[b][u]Charity[/u][/b]
+ I feel like most of what needs to be said has already been said, but I strongly support NAMI's cause, and I appreciate that they're directing donation proceeds toward international efforts. Barring drastic change, I'd be fully in favor of continuing to work with them in future years.

[b][u]Food[/u][/b]
+ The catered lunches were generally great (especially the BBQ truck), and there was always enough to go around.
- I'll probably be pilloried for this, but I was not a fan of the pizza place that we had delivered from - too greasy, and the cheese was so thick it tended to separate from the bread while eating.
- We ran out of drinks about halfway through the week, and even though additional drinks were brought in on subsequent days, they disappeared pretty quickly.
- It would be nice to have a few more drink options besides water and soda, e.g. iced tea.

[b][u]Other[/u][/b]
+ This is such an amazing community! I realize the main thrust of the event is charity, but I feel like the community aspect is just as important - it's great to be able to spend time with so many people who share the same interests. I'm already looking forward to next year.
* On the same note, though, I do hope we can maintain that same community atmosphere going forward. GDQs seemed to become a bit more sterile after AGDQ 2014; even just watching the stream, there was a definite warmth around that event which was missing from later events, and to be honest it's made me lose some interest in watching GDQ streams, let alone attending in person. (I've heard that earlier GDQs were even more close-knit, but AGDQ 2014 was the first speedrunning event I watched, so I can't comment on that front.) I'd consider it selfish of a relative newcomer like me to suggest attendance caps or such that might discourage even newer people from joining the community (I did hear a couple of comments that RPGLB attendance might be self-limiting due to the narrower scope of the event), so I don't have any suggestions to offer on this front, but I just hope RPGLB doesn't end up going down the same path.

Ghoul02

Edit history:

Ghoul02: 2017-06-01 10:45:24 pm

Ghoul02: 2017-06-01 10:44:37 pm

Ghoul02: 2017-06-01 10:36:03 pm

Ghoul02: 2017-05-31 09:30:28 pm

Ghoul02: 2017-05-31 09:26:27 pm

Ghoul02: 2017-05-31 09:25:50 pm

2017-05-31 09:24:58 pm

www.twitch.tv/ghoul02

Schedule/Games
- Still okay with how submissions themselves went. The formula is still pretty nice and I like the fact that there’s not really a constraint. There were longer pitches and shorter ones, but given the complexity of RPGs, I feel like there’s a case that imposing a character limit like GDQs would require leaving useful information out.
- While I’m okay with the games for the most part, I’m not terribly happy with how the marathon ended. 4 of the last 5 and 8 of the last 10 games were made by Square and 7 of them either had the Final Fantasy or Kingdom Hearts branding. While yes, in some cases, this couldn’t be avoided due to the messed up schedule, I feel it’s not really giving a big cross section of the community I’d like to see on the final day. I also generally think it’s not good for donations; you’re hitting the Square Enix fanbase so hard and while yes, a lot of these have different fanbases, there’s a huge overlap that you wouldn’t have if, for example, you move a Pokemon game to the final day (and given that I believe Sapphire was the viewer peak of the marathon, there’s a case that they earned it). I do think there might have been too many games with Final Fantasy branding in general, but that is in part due to a lot of stronger offers so it has a bit of the Mega Man syndrome from GDQs. I’m also not really a fan of opening and closing the marathon on the same series; these are pretty prestigious positions to be given and they’re a cool way to give a community some recognition. I wouldn’t mind seeing blocks broken up as well, since I've never been a fan (Dragon Quest doesn’t need to only have one night and then be totally done).
- On games selection, the only biggest complaint I have is the total lack of Tales for two years running. I understand that there might be some other mitigating factors (only two viable offers, one by Yagamoth who had plenty of very strong games), the series has probably the third most viewed marathon in the channel’s history, had the third largest bidding war in the first RPGLB despite starting at like… 1 AM and being one of the relatively weak runs for the series. This is also a series that feels continually spurned by marathons, having now been rejected from every GDQ, the two most recent RPGLB and all but two ESAs. It’s a cautionary tale as to being careful to not completely leave out larger communities for multiple years running. Most of my other disagreements are probably more personal or ideological based, so I can't really argue; in general, it was a well thought and put together schedule.
- I wouldn’t mind the committee reevaluating some of the estimates with conversations with the runners. I find it generally hard to believe that an RPG marathon was behind schedule for most of the marathon, even given the large tech difficulties at a few points (Diablo II, SaGa Frontier setups). This might mean that in an effort to get games in and under arbitrary length limits, we’re pushing for luck marks that we might struggle to hit in some places.
- I like the extra time. More RPGLB is a good thing and will always be a good thing.

Venue
- No major complaints. I don’t think the noise bled over onto the stream and the headphones meant that the couch probably wasn’t distracted. I don’t believe it had an audible effect. The only thing I might recommend is a slightly smaller audience area so that it looks less “empty”, particularly if there is room for more chairs to sit by the side that people can squeeze in. The second building was much better than the basement; it was amazing to have cell reception in the practice room.

Food
- No major complaints again. It’s a nice perk that there’s at least one meal per day that the majority of people don’t need to pay for. There’s not really any way to improve it for people that get stuck on graveyard duty for a majority of the marathon, so I think this is fine as is.

Tech
- Overall, I think this was fine. The main thing is that there might need to be an actual schedule for staff so that there aren’t only two on site when things go wrong (Diablo II). This probably has to be done beforehand, but I imagine that the staff discord could be used to communicate this as well.
- We talked about music during tech orientation, but it never happened. Probably need a playlist in iTunes or VLC and have it ready to roll rather than say “Pull up a Youtube video”. I’m sure we could solicit music from community runners if collecting the music would be an issue.
- I wouldn’t mind seeing more people step up as tech mains. I felt awful when we tried to get ahold of multiple staff who I was sure would be exhausted when trying to set up the SaGa Frontier race, but there’s a “damned if you do” feel where it’s sometimes scary to try to set up for something without full knowledge of what’s going on.
- I’d prefer for there to not be a chromebook or a second monitor for the host station so that Discord can not be a browser window; I’d often forget to check it and would miss something I wish I’d known. Ethernet for the host station would be lovely as well, but I also understand if we’re worried about straining our stream setup too much.

Chat/Website
- Can’t comment on chat beyond that it seems relatively good for a large marathon chat
- Website needs an overhaul, which is good. Would like to see it used throughout the year for ALL of the community marathons, not just the one. Basically, it’s completely useless for 358 days of the year.

Incentives
- Not all incentives should be met imo – I think one or two being missed is a good thing that shows that they need to be met or they don’t happen. It’s unfortunate when it happens to you and there definitely needs to not be a Valkyria Chronicles situation where absolutely nothing gets met and it is just a bad story all around. Slightly more vetting on some of the more insignificant bidding wars may not be the worst thing either.

Charity
- Love NAMI. They seem to like us as well. If research is done just to avoid the feeling that we’re staying complacent when there are definitely other deserving options, I wouldn’t complain but if it’s NAMI again, I’ll still be very happy.

Interviews
- I’m sure we’ll cover more on this internally, but might as well get this in writing for next year: if possible, the separate area needs to be shaped like a V. This allows for easier interaction between the interviewers and the runner while still constantly looking at the camera.

Overall, still my favorite marathon series and one that I'm happy to see positive growth and reactions. Thanks again to everyone who was involved behind the scenes.

EDIT because I forgot something:
Tech needs easier access to both OBS and audio. That shouldn't be an either/or thing, since it meant I had to scramble to run to the mixer if someone was taking a headset off and didn't warn me. Having quick access like in 2016 would be glorious. This does mean hosts need to either get used to staying constantly mic'd or have a separate host mute button.

Also made a few other minor edits, but nothing major.

Schedule/Games
-	Still okay with how submissions themselves went. The formula is still pretty nice and I like the fact that there’s not really a constraint. There were longer pitches and shorter ones, but given the complexity of RPGs, I feel like there’s a case that imposing a character limit like GDQs would require leaving useful information out.
-	While I’m okay with the games for the most part, I’m not terribly happy with how the marathon ended. 4 of the last 5 and 8 of the last 10 games were made by Square and 7 of them either had the Final Fantasy or Kingdom Hearts branding. While yes, in some cases, this couldn’t be avoided due to the messed up schedule, I feel it’s not really giving a big cross section of the community I’d like to see on the final day. I also generally think it’s not good for donations; you’re hitting the Square Enix fanbase so hard and while yes, a lot of these have different fanbases, there’s a huge overlap that you wouldn’t have if, for example, you move a Pokemon game to the final day (and given that I believe Sapphire was the viewer peak of the marathon, there’s a case that they earned it). I do think there might have been too many games with Final Fantasy branding in general, but that is in part due to a lot of stronger offers so it has a bit of the Mega Man syndrome from GDQs. I’m also not really a fan of opening and closing the marathon on the same series; these are pretty prestigious positions to be given and they’re a cool way to give a community some recognition. I wouldn’t mind seeing blocks broken up as well, since I've never been a fan (Dragon Quest doesn’t need to only have one night and then be totally done).
-	On games selection, the only biggest complaint I have is the total lack of Tales for two years running. I understand that there might be some other mitigating factors (only two viable offers, one by Yagamoth who had plenty of very strong games), the series has probably the third most viewed marathon in the channel’s history, had the third largest bidding war in the first RPGLB despite starting at like… 1 AM and being one of the relatively weak runs for the series. This is also a series that feels continually spurned by marathons, having now been rejected from every GDQ, the two most recent RPGLB and all but two ESAs. It’s a cautionary tale as to being careful to not completely leave out larger communities for multiple years running. Most of my other disagreements are probably more personal or ideological based, so I can't really argue; in general, it was a well thought and put together schedule.
-	I wouldn’t mind the committee reevaluating some of the estimates with conversations with the runners. I find it generally hard to believe that an RPG marathon was behind schedule for most of the marathon, even given the large tech difficulties at a few points (Diablo II, SaGa Frontier setups). This might mean that in an effort to get games in and under arbitrary length limits, we’re pushing for luck marks that we might struggle to hit in some places.
-	I like the extra time. More RPGLB is a good thing and will always be a good thing.

Venue
-	No major complaints. I don’t think the noise bled over onto the stream and the headphones meant that the couch probably wasn’t distracted. I don’t believe it had an audible effect. The only thing I might recommend is a slightly smaller audience area so that it looks less “empty”, particularly if there is room for more chairs to sit by the side that people can squeeze in. The second building was much better than the basement; it was amazing to have cell reception in the practice room.

Food
-	No major complaints again. It’s a nice perk that there’s at least one meal per day that the majority of people don’t need to pay for. There’s not really any way to improve it for people that get stuck on graveyard duty for a majority of the marathon, so I think this is fine as is.

Tech
-	Overall, I think this was fine. The main thing is that there might need to be an actual schedule for staff so that there aren’t only two on site when things go wrong (Diablo II). This probably has to be done beforehand, but I imagine that the staff discord could be used to communicate this as well.
-	We talked about music during tech orientation, but it never happened. Probably need a playlist in iTunes or VLC and have it ready to roll rather than say “Pull up a Youtube video”. I’m sure we could solicit music from community runners if collecting the music would be an issue.
-	I wouldn’t mind seeing more people step up as tech mains. I felt awful when we tried to get ahold of multiple staff who I was sure would be exhausted when trying to set up the SaGa Frontier race, but there’s a “damned if you do” feel where it’s sometimes scary to try to set up for something without full knowledge of what’s going on. 
-	I’d prefer for there to not be a chromebook or a second monitor for the host station so that Discord can not be a browser window; I’d often forget to check it and would miss something I wish I’d known. Ethernet for the host station would be lovely as well, but I also understand if we’re worried about straining our stream setup too much.

Chat/Website
-	Can’t comment on chat beyond that it seems relatively good for a large marathon chat
-	Website needs an overhaul, which is good. Would like to see it used throughout the year for ALL of the community marathons, not just the one. Basically, it’s completely useless for 358 days of the year.

Incentives
-	Not all incentives should be met imo – I think one or two being missed is a good thing that shows that they need to be met or they don’t happen. It’s unfortunate when it happens to you and there definitely needs to not be a Valkyria Chronicles situation where absolutely nothing gets met and it is just a bad story all around. Slightly more vetting on some of the more insignificant bidding wars may not be the worst thing either.

Charity
-	Love NAMI. They seem to like us as well. If research is done just to avoid the feeling that we’re staying complacent when there are definitely other deserving options, I wouldn’t complain but if it’s NAMI again, I’ll still be very happy.

Interviews
-	I’m sure we’ll cover more on this internally, but might as well get this in writing for next year: if possible, the separate area needs to be shaped like a V. This allows for easier interaction between the interviewers and the runner while still constantly looking at the camera.

Overall, still my favorite marathon series and one that I'm happy to see positive growth and reactions. Thanks again to everyone who was involved behind the scenes.

EDIT because I forgot something:
Tech needs easier access to both OBS and audio. That shouldn't be an either/or thing, since it meant I had to scramble to run to the mixer if someone was taking a headset off and didn't warn me. Having quick access like in 2016 would be glorious. This does mean hosts need to either get used to staying constantly mic'd or have a separate host mute button.

Also made a few other minor edits, but nothing major.

takaze

2017-05-31 09:38:09 pm

Schedule/Games
I thought the game selection was good, and while I have my biases, it had something for everybody.

Venue
First time here, so I have nothing to compare it to. Officer's Club seemed like a solid space. Issues such as finding practice room power and noise spill over has already been mentioned.

Food
I liked the food selection, but I'm not picky. More advanced notice would be great though. (Breakfast selection was also good).

Tech
As a runner:
I thought it went well. As both my runs were PC runs, we did have some problems finding time to make sure the games ran properly. A 2nd PC or some other setup to more easily allow a runner to test out PC stuff would be great next year.

As a (stream) Tech:
There was a problem (vaxherd mentioned briefly) for setup for SaGa Frontier. The scheduled Setup Tech person was unavailable, and to make matters worse, it was a race, early in the morning, no other Setup Tech or Staff was immediately available. Emergency contacts were used, but went unanswered (One I imagine had just fallen asleep, one didn't receive the call (service?), and one had phone on silent).

I guess I would want to say to make sure the SetupTechs know the "important" runs to be aware of (races, and other potentially complicated setups) ahead of time, as well as make sure there is an emergency contact person available, it's a little nerve wracking to be in a situation where the stream is at a stand still, and emergency contacts are used, and don't work.

While eventually it was responded to, we had already gotten the setup to be passible and continued. Making the decision to proceed was a bit hard, as it wasn't ideal. One thing I noticed GDQ does(though maybe it isn't necessary for our size) is that there is a producer that can direct everything and make that tough call of to proceed or not with the show.

All in all, it wasn't a disaster and we did get to the point of being able to continue. (I believe it took about 25 minutes, and the estimated was 10)

Charity
As I (poorly) tried to explain during the finale, I like this cause and it's important. While I would be OK with another charity, I'm not sure there would be another I would want to support as much as NAMI, or some other charity supporting Mental Health.

Volunteering Signups
I did like I got to try out hosting. I do agree that as the event gets bigger, having better/more solid hosts will become more important. I do hope the auditions will still allow for a wide variety of hosts.

Volunteering General
Having Discord to communicate was great.

Pre-show/Interviews
I didn't get a chance to watch much of them (yet), but from what I did see they were well done and would like to see it continued.

Prizes
One thing I think we might want to look into the best way of doing, is plugging the prizes more, and finding more ways to do so. At GDQs, they have the prizes on site, so they can easily show them off, during interviews. Since I know it might be difficult to suddenly require that all prizes be available onsite, maybe we could have them included in the break screen layout.

Even having pictures or descriptions to the hosts I think be beneficial, as they may sometimes struggle to plug a prize they might not know anything about.

[u][b]Schedule/Games[/b][/u]
I thought the game selection was good, and while I have my biases, it had something for everybody.

[u][b]Venue[/b][/u]
First time here, so I have nothing to compare it to. Officer's Club seemed like a solid space. Issues such as finding practice room power and noise spill over has already been mentioned.

[u][b]Food[/b][/u]
I liked the food selection, but I'm not picky. More advanced notice would be great though. (Breakfast selection was also good).

[u][b]Tech[/b][/u]
[i]As a runner:[/i]
I thought it went well. As both my runs were PC runs, we did have some problems finding time to make sure the games ran properly. A 2nd PC or some other setup to more easily allow a runner to test out PC stuff would be great next year.

[i]As a (stream) Tech:[/i]
There was a problem (vaxherd mentioned briefly) for setup for SaGa Frontier. The scheduled Setup Tech person was unavailable, and to make matters worse, it was a race, early in the morning, no other Setup Tech or Staff was immediately available. Emergency contacts were used, but went unanswered (One I imagine had just fallen asleep, one didn't receive the call (service?), and one had phone on silent).

I guess I would want to say to make sure the SetupTechs know the "important" runs to be aware of (races, and other potentially complicated setups) ahead of time, as well as make sure there is an emergency contact person available, it's a little nerve wracking to be in a situation where the stream is at a stand still, and emergency contacts are used, and don't work.

While eventually it was responded to, we had already gotten the setup to be passible and continued. Making the decision to proceed was a bit hard, as it wasn't ideal. One thing I noticed GDQ does(though maybe it isn't necessary for our size) is that there is a producer that can direct everything and make that tough call of to proceed or not with the show.

All in all, it wasn't a disaster and we did get to the point of being able to continue. (I believe it took about 25 minutes, and the estimated was 10)

[u][b]Charity[/b][/u]
As I (poorly) tried to explain during the finale, I like this cause and it's important. While I would be OK with another charity, I'm not sure there would be another I would want to support as much as NAMI, or some other charity supporting Mental Health.

[u][b]Volunteering Signups[/b][/u]
I did like I got to try out hosting. I do agree that as the event gets bigger, having better/more solid hosts will become more important. I do hope the auditions will still allow for a wide variety of hosts.

[u][b]Volunteering General[/b][/u]
Having Discord to communicate was great.

[u][b]Pre-show/Interviews[/b][/u]
I didn't get a chance to watch much of them (yet), but from what I did see they were well done and would like to see it continued.

[u][b]Prizes[/b][/u]
One thing I think we might want to look into the best way of doing, is plugging the prizes more, and finding more ways to do so. At GDQs, they have the prizes on site, so they can easily show them off, during interviews. Since I know it might be difficult to suddenly require that all prizes be available onsite, maybe we could have them included in the break screen layout.

Even having pictures or descriptions to the hosts I think be beneficial, as they may sometimes struggle to plug a prize they might not know anything about.

AshenPrime

2017-05-31 10:37:29 pm

I’m using a slightly different organizational system. Sorry all.

I spent basically all my time on set working with/worrying about the tech, so my feedback is kinda focused that direction, though there are a few bits dealing with other sections.

And, of course, everything listed is as per my personal opinion.

Things that WERE done, and done well:
Discord Backchannel Chat
-It was SO incredibly helpful as a volunteer to have a dedicated line to the staff and other volunteers.
Volunteer Scheduling
-Stinger and Alex did a great job of coordinating everyone’s availability with the positions that needed covered. Even/especially when they were thrown curveballs after the fact.
-The 3 hr. shifts seemed to work really well.

Things that HAVE to be done:
USB NICs for the Chromebooks
-The hosting and donation stations need a hardline internet connection.
Dedicated Audio Tech
-Separate position from the Stream Tech.
-Especially necessary for races and other complicated runs.
More training for Setup Techs
-It seems like many of the persons assigned this task were in over their heads.
-May need to consider having a specific pool of people for this duty (hopefully ones who were there for setup)

Things the SHOULD be done:
Headphone amp
-Primarily for the host, so their sound feed can come off of the mains
-Could also be useful elsewhere?
Better camera(s)
-Preferably not webcams, or anything else that uses the USB bus.
-Note that this may require additional/professional capture cards.
Camera monitor
-Preferably monitoring the camera feed BEFORE it goes to the computer
--OBS could send a feed of just the camera, but that takes up a slot on the graphics card.
Fewer chairs behind the runner and coach.
-Most of the chairs are usually empty, and that looks sad.
Less confusing registration later in the week
-Not something I experienced personally, but it seemed like attendees who showed up after the first day had to luck into a staff member to get their badges and t-shirts.
-Having a staffed table all week seems unnecessary, but maybe there’s a central place that can some kind of “Hello, I need help here” system in place.
More screenspace for host and donations
-It was only realistically possible to have one screen open at a time on the chromebooks, which meant we had to decide what was the most important at any given time, rather than being able to have several windows open to reference at any given time.
-Might require additional HD monitors
Drinks
-A once-a-day replenishment didn’t seem to be enough, especially of the water bottles.

Things that COULD be done:
Use a multiviewer for races to get all the consoles video into one feed.
-This would mean that we could use one capture card for all the feeds
-The feed could be cropped and split to fit the layout as needed.
External video recording
-Recorded via the building feed.
-Lessen the burden on OBS and the streaming PC
-BUT would be more difficult to get videos uploaded during the event
Find local sponsors to help with technical needs, either donating or loaning equipment
-eg: PC Laptops (or similar) for the gaming and streaming PCs
-eg: RC Willey (or similar) for several showroom HD TVs and/or cameras
-I don’t know how time or equipment usage donated to a charity works, but it seems like it should at least be good PR, and possibly also a tax write-off
Produce training videos for volunteers
-Places the bulk of the work of teach pre-show, so it’s not taking time away from setup
-Could be sent to volunteers several days before the event starts, and could be referenced throughout the week.
-Allows the volunteers to actually see the screens/pages they'll be using before they sit in front of the computers.
Dedicated music player
-Possibly one of the chromebooks or some other laptop plugged into the sound board (or secondary board), and set up to scrobble to the break screen overlay.

I’m using a slightly different organizational system. Sorry all.
 
I spent basically all my time on set working with/worrying about the tech, so my feedback is kinda focused that direction, though there are a few bits dealing with other sections.
 
And, of course, everything listed is as per my personal opinion.
 
[b][u]Things that WERE done, and done well:[/u][/b]
[b]Discord Backchannel Chat[/b]
-It was SO incredibly helpful as a volunteer to have a dedicated line to the staff and other volunteers.
[b]Volunteer Scheduling[/b]
-Stinger and Alex did a great job of coordinating everyone’s availability with the positions that needed covered. Even/especially when they were thrown curveballs after the fact.
-The 3 hr. shifts seemed to work really well.
 
[b][u]Things that HAVE to be done:[/u][/b]
[b]USB NICs for the Chromebooks[/b]
-The hosting and donation stations [i]need[/i] a hardline internet connection.
[b]Dedicated Audio Tech[/b]
-Separate position from the Stream Tech.
-Especially necessary for races and other complicated runs.
[b]More training for Setup Techs[/b]
-It seems like many of the persons assigned this task were in over their heads.
-May need to consider having a specific pool of people for this duty (hopefully ones who were there for setup)
 
[u][b]Things the SHOULD be done:[/b][/u]
[b]Headphone amp[/b]
-Primarily for the host, so their sound feed can come off of the mains
-Could also be useful elsewhere?
[b]Better camera(s)[/b]
-Preferably not webcams, or anything else that uses the USB bus.
-Note that this may require additional/professional capture cards.
[b]Camera monitor[/b]
-Preferably monitoring the camera feed BEFORE it goes to the computer
--OBS could send a feed of just the camera, but that takes up a slot on the graphics card.
[b]Fewer chairs behind the runner and coach.[/b]
-Most of the chairs are usually empty, and that looks sad.
[b]Less confusing registration later in the week[/b]
-Not something I experienced personally, but it seemed like attendees who showed up after the first day had to luck into a staff member to get their badges and t-shirts.
-Having a staffed table all week seems unnecessary, but maybe there’s a central place that can some kind of “Hello, I need help here” system in place.
[b]More screenspace for host and donations[/b]
-It was only realistically possible to have one screen open at a time on the chromebooks, which meant we had to decide what was the most important at any given time, rather than being able to have several windows open to reference at any given time.
-Might require additional HD monitors
[b]Drinks[/b]
-A once-a-day replenishment didn’t seem to be enough, especially of the water bottles.
 
[u][b]Things that COULD be done:[/b][/u]
[b]Use a multiviewer for races to get all the consoles video into one feed.[/b]
-This would mean that we could use one capture card for all the feeds
-The feed could be cropped and split to fit the layout as needed.
[b]External video recording[/b]
-Recorded via the building feed.
-Lessen the burden on OBS and the streaming PC
-BUT would be more difficult to get videos uploaded during the event
[b]Find local sponsors to help with technical needs, either donating or loaning equipment[/b]
-eg: PC Laptops (or similar) for the gaming and streaming PCs
-eg: RC Willey (or similar) for several showroom HD TVs and/or cameras
-I don’t know how time or equipment usage donated to a charity works, but it seems like it should at least be good PR, and possibly also a tax write-off
[b]Produce training videos for volunteers[/b]
-Places the bulk of the work of teach pre-show, so it’s not taking time away from setup
-Could be sent to volunteers several days before the event starts, and could be referenced throughout the week.
-Allows the volunteers to actually see the screens/pages they'll be using before they sit in front of the computers.
[b]Dedicated music player[/b]
-Possibly one of the chromebooks or some other laptop plugged into the sound board (or secondary board), and set up to scrobble to the break screen overlay.

kirbymastah

Edit history:

kirbymastah: 2017-06-01 08:27:36 am

kirbymastah: 2017-06-01 08:23:56 am

kirbymastah: 2017-06-01 08:20:48 am

kirbymastah: 2017-06-01 08:19:59 am

kirbymastah: 2017-06-01 08:19:34 am

2017-06-01 08:18:52 am

<(^_^)>

I want to thank staff for putting together this awesome marathon. I and pretty much everyone else had a complete blast and the marathon was a huge success from what I've seen. All the runs I've caught have been great too.

Most of everything I want to say (positive and negative) has already been said, but I do have two things to say pertaining to scheduling and game selection:

1. When I offered my own game sacred stones as a bid war, to be blunt, I was rather disappointed about the relative lack of donations put in. I think this was primarily due to scheduling. Just before my run was Xenoblade (which was well-done btw!). The problem was, Xenoblade had popular ongoing donation wars going on (which, to my knowledge, exploded much more than everyone originally expected). But I also generally think it's an issue if we have a game with an ongoing bid war before another game with a bidwar closing at the start of it; this really hurts the donations for the latter, because viewers are focused on the current game and would want to throw their money at what's currently going on for that game, not the next one. To note, I don't think it's bad to have consecutive games with bid wars that close at the START of their respective games, but one with ongoing bid wars through the entire run preceding those closed at the start can be an issue. This is something easier to track ahead of time since we now do donation incentives during game submissions anyways, so I would suggest staff to try to avoid these kinds of situations for scheduling future events.

2. To preface this, I love Earthbound itself, I love the community, I watch several runners, and the relay race was fantastic; this is nothing personal against the runners nor the race itself. That being said, I'm not a fan of any game being in at least three marathons in a row, especially a game that leans towards the longer end. I think having it this year was better justified because almost the entire community offered the relay race, which was too promising to pass up on (and it really delivered!). However, for the long term, I would really like us to avoid a "Super Metroid" issue where a game gets in every marathon primarily because it's the game that gets in every time now, and I don't want Earthbound nor any game to become the "Super Metroid" of RPGLB. Again, I would be saying this about any game that's put into several consecutive marathons, which just happens to be this game in this case.

That's really the two main things I want to bring up. Thanks for being open to feedback, and I'm looking forward to next year already!

I want to thank staff for putting together this awesome marathon. I and pretty much everyone else had a complete blast and the marathon was a huge success from what I've seen. All the runs I've caught have been great too.

Most of everything I want to say (positive and negative) has already been said, but I do have two things to say pertaining to scheduling and game selection:

1. When I offered my own game sacred stones as a bid war, to be blunt, I was rather disappointed about the relative lack of donations put in. I think this was primarily due to scheduling. Just before my run was Xenoblade (which was well-done btw!). The problem was, Xenoblade had popular ongoing donation wars going on (which, to my knowledge, exploded much more than everyone originally expected). But I also generally think it's an issue if we have a game with an ongoing bid war before another game with a bidwar closing at the start of it; this really hurts the donations for the latter, because viewers are focused on the current game and would want to throw their money at what's currently going on for that game, not the next one. To note, I don't think it's bad to have consecutive games with bid wars that close at the START of their respective games, but one with ongoing bid wars through the entire run preceding those closed at the start can be an issue. This is something easier to track ahead of time since we now do donation incentives during game submissions anyways, so I would suggest staff to try to avoid these kinds of situations for scheduling future events.

2. To preface this, I love Earthbound itself, I love the community, I watch several runners, and the relay race was fantastic; this is nothing personal against the runners nor the race itself. That being said, I'm not a fan of any game being in at least three marathons in a row, especially a game that leans towards the longer end. I think having it this year was better justified because almost the entire community offered the relay race, which was too promising to pass up on (and it really delivered!). However, for the long term, I would really like us to avoid a "Super Metroid" issue where a game gets in every marathon primarily because it's the game that gets in every time now, and I don't want Earthbound nor any game to become the "Super Metroid" of RPGLB. Again, I would be saying this about any game that's put into several consecutive marathons, which just happens to be this game in this case.

That's really the two main things I want to bring up. Thanks for being open to feedback, and I'm looking forward to next year already!

kytten

2017-06-01 07:38:43 pm

This was, by far, the best marathon i've watched yet. It was spectacularly well done from what i could tell as a viewer, and i only have one or two little nitpicky things to say.

Overall, chat experience was great, filled with a lot of wonderful people, and good mod support. However, there were times, especially late at night, where chat would get a bit rowdy, either saying some stuff they shouldn't or spamming or fighting or just being general nuisances - and there were no mods around. There were sometimes stretches of 2 hours where there were no mods in chat, or at least, not doing anything if they were actually there. So i would say a few more mods, especially ones that will be up late (relative to time at the marathon venue).

Another thing would be there were some sound issues on stream. Either mics being too soft or too loud, same with game sounds relative to mics, and also to the host. These issues were fixed relatively quickly, but sometimes lasted for 10-15 minutes. So i'm not sure how sound tech is being done at the marathon, but having someone check in on chat just to see what people are saying or actually having someone watch the stream, listening for how the sounds, well, sound, would go a long way to making things a lot more pleasant for the viewers.

The last, itty bitty tiny nitpicky thing is - can we try to avoid saying things like "suicide strats" or the like? i know that's general speedterms, but for a marathon for a mental illness charity, it made me cringe ever so slightly inside any time anyone said anything about "killing themselves" etc.

That's really all i have, tbh, like i said really little nitpicky things. i watched almost every single run, had a blast, cried like a baby when it ended, and can't wait for next year.

~~(Please can we get a secondary stream of the practice room, from what i hear it was a hilariously incredible time. xD)~~

This was, by far, the best marathon i've watched yet. It was spectacularly well done from what i could tell as a viewer, and i only have one or two little nitpicky things to say.

Overall, chat experience was great, filled with a lot of wonderful people, and good mod support. [i]However[/i], there were times, especially late at night, where chat would get a bit rowdy, either saying some stuff they shouldn't or spamming or fighting or just being general nuisances - and there were no mods around. There were sometimes stretches of 2 hours where there were no mods in chat, or at least, not doing anything if they were actually there. So i would say a few more mods, [b]especially[/b] ones that will be up late (relative to time at the marathon venue).

Another thing would be there were some sound issues on stream. Either mics being too soft or too loud, same with game sounds relative to mics, and also to the host. These issues were fixed relatively quickly, but sometimes lasted for 10-15 minutes. So i'm not sure how sound tech is being done at the marathon, but having someone check in on chat just to see what people are saying or actually having someone watch the stream, listening for how the sounds, well, sound, would go a long way to making things a lot more pleasant for the viewers.

The last, itty bitty tiny nitpicky thing is - can we try to avoid saying things like "suicide strats" or the like? i know that's general speedterms, but for a marathon for a mental illness charity, it made me cringe ever so slightly inside any time anyone said anything about "killing themselves" etc.

That's really all i have, tbh, like i said really little nitpicky things. i watched almost every single run, had a blast, cried like a baby when it ended, and can't wait for next year.

[s](Please can we get a secondary stream of the practice room, from what i hear it was a hilariously incredible time. xD)[/s]

BobTGoldfish

2017-06-01 07:56:42 pm

Most of my Feedback would be related to my condition so if in looking at future locations, some consideration would be given to less able people (not that the officer's club wasn't terrible (apart from the walk but again that was all on me) it's just something to keep in mind.

exceptions to that:

Volunteer Stations:
The Donation Station felt very isolated this year. Much like in previous years where GDQ had a Volunteer sat at the front of the hall for onsite donations, they felt isolated from the team and the fun, I felt that Donation volunteers were "left out" of a lot of things. I understand the reason you wanted the host to be sat where they were, but this could also be solved in future years with an external Mute box/cough button. Allowing the Host to go back to a proximity near the donation station.

Volunteer Orientation:
I already suggested while at the event a PDF that can be sent out to volunteers ahead of time.

Food:
Please note that I understand this is a free lunch we are talking about. First: Food for those with Dietary requirements (Gluten, Vegetarian, dairy etc) needs to be completely removed from the same area as the regular food. this prevents a) Cross contamination b) people without Said Dietary requirements tanking it. I have heard from several vegetarians that they had issues getting food because it was being left int he same areas and non vegetarians would take it thinking it was just another option. Secondly: More of An effort needs to be made to save food for those that are in the middle of a Run/on the couch/Volunteering when the food arrives. This was also an issue last year.

General note:
While I understand that RPGLB is a smaller Marathon.. I still got a little concerned at certain times about certain members of the Staff and the Amount of exertion they were putting in/Lack of Sleep they were getting. it may be time to looking into getting those that are more active on site more of a solid support structure.

Most of my Feedback would be related to my condition so if in looking at future  locations, some consideration would be given to less able people (not that the officer's club wasn't terrible (apart from the walk but again that was all on me) it's just something to keep in mind.

exceptions to that:

Volunteer Stations: 
The Donation Station felt very isolated this year. Much like in previous years where GDQ had a Volunteer sat at the front of the hall for onsite donations, they felt isolated from the team and the fun, I felt that Donation volunteers were "left out" of a lot of things. I understand the reason you wanted the host to be sat where they were, but this could also be solved in future years with an external Mute box/cough button. Allowing the Host to go back to a proximity near the donation station.

Volunteer Orientation:
I already suggested while at the event a PDF that can be sent out to volunteers ahead of time.

Food: 
Please note that I understand this is a free lunch we are talking about.  First: Food for those with Dietary requirements (Gluten, Vegetarian, dairy etc) needs to be completely removed from the same area as the regular food. this prevents a) Cross contamination b) people without Said Dietary requirements tanking it. I have heard from several vegetarians that they had issues getting food because it was being left int he same areas and non vegetarians would take it thinking it was just another option.    Secondly: More of An effort needs to be made to save food for those that are in the middle of a Run/on the couch/Volunteering when the food arrives. This was also an issue last year.

General note:
While I understand that RPGLB is a smaller Marathon.. I still got a little concerned at certain times about certain members of the Staff and the Amount of exertion they were putting in/Lack of Sleep they were getting. it may be time to looking into getting those that are more active on site more of a solid support structure.

GhostKingG1

Edit history:

GhostKingG1: 2017-06-02 03:18:40 am

GhostKingG1: 2017-06-01 11:11:56 pm

2017-06-01 11:10:48 pm

Why Hello it is Me

In response to Kytten, as a runner of a game where abusing the way the game handles reviving a KO'd party member (a bit of tech that came into play long after the run was accepted) is a thing, I think it has become embedded in player vocabulary to refer to any form of knockout as "a death", which can in turn lead to terms like "suicide strats". Nonetheless, speaking for myself, I get where you're coming from and will try to minimize that in the future if one of my runs gets in again that has something like that.

Thatidiotuhate

Edit history:

Thatidiotuhate: 2017-06-02 08:56:11 pm

2017-06-02 08:34:35 pm

Idiot/TIUH/Reece

I will give my few bits as an attendee as well as someone who occasionally looked at twitter all week. (Nobody on my Facebook seems to really get excited about these events as I do) (I also apologize if my input doesn't seem like any form of contribution to the feedback, but I'll do my best.)

Schedule/Games - I didn't have much if any beef about the schedule, due to lack of comprehending the whole picture, but as for the games, well I did have a slight grievance despite it not being a legit issue. I get that some games don't get the luxury of repeat years to the dismay of some runners who practice often to try and make it, however I do understand that there really are a lot of RPGs out there that aren't always given a chance to shine even from back when they started. I didn't get to really zone in on some of the games, but others I caught a glimpse of were really neat to watch.

Venue - I didn't really think that the UGH was an issue for people? I mean, sure SLC can be a bit of a doozy to get around in like other cities that you're foreign to, but outside of my own personal stair adventures pretending it was ShinRa building, it seemed alright to me. If there's a better hotel/venue in town or somewhere kinda close by, maybe even Denver, that'd probably work for me because I could still afford to attend. (I'm a 2 hour drive from SLC) After reading Bob's post, I can't help but agree that stairs and lack of ease of access were a problem, especially getting in and out.

Yeah, I guess the sound barrier wasn't the best when you could hear half the people in the practice room over the run. But you know, maybe next year will be better?

Food - Although I had a better time enjoying the 2nd round of pizza more over the first, I have to say a toss up between the tacos and the food truck as to which one was my favorite. There was the downside that yeah, maybe 2 rounds of pizza weren't the best choices as I heard multiple people groan about it. The food truck having to be where it was due to geographical layout wasn't the best either. Hopefully next year, we can also find out how many people that attend are vegetarians or vegans so that we can get them a fair share of food distribution. I don't know how many were there that attended, but it didn't seem like there was much to offer for them. Not sure what other varieties of food could've been provided, but as long as there's something for everyone, I'll be fine to dine.

Tech - I never really noticed an issue with streaming outside of the low sound, even when in the audience.

Chat/Website - My only input on this is that I noticed chat being a bit bothersome with being behind and the usual "this game is boring". Donation incentives were the big factor in Tide's run (which he did a good job fighting with what he had, but that's part of the marathon). There was also the end where people were complaining about wanting to hear the song while not caring about what people felt they needed to say when they were on the mic after the marathon. Other than that I didn't pay enough attention to notice tech issues for the website.

Prizes - Um, I did notice that some prizes were available during the last half of the games before they were stated to be eligible. So, if people donated for those prizes during those times, will they still be eligible after the bug fix?

Incentives - I am unfamiliar with most runs in both RPGLB and GDQ settings for the most part, but I figure if we were to start small and slowly get bigger in incentive bids over the course of the marathon, I'd like to think that more of them will be possible to be met before their cutoff times.

Charity - So far NAMI seems to have been pretty good to us for the most part. I'm sure that whatever issues that may have arisen this year will be fixed/worked on next year.

Social Media - Due to constantly seeing updates from Twitter, I'm glad I actually joined Twitter a while back because I wouldn't see any of this on Facebook. There were plenty of good jokes and whatnot related to RPGLB. Thanks to all who participated in that.

Pre-show/Interviews - I mostly saw the end interviews and maybe one or two while I was in the audience, but having the pre-show talks and interviews are pretty wonderful. As a sports fan, it's nice to see the "after game" breakdown/interview with the runner, get to know them and how they felt about their run comes off as a nice play towards that. The end of the marathon real talk where staff and some audience got in on the mic and spoke from the heart was welcoming, as it was last year and at the GDQs. Hearing their stories and having a loving audience comfort them makes me feel welcomed in this growing community.

Again, I don't know if my feedback could be of any use, I hope it is and thanks for having this marathon! @(_@

edit: One last thing, as people viewing pointed out over the course of the week, most of the runs had very poor audience attendance... FeelsBadMan I feel bad for constantly bailing a lot in the middle of the runs. (I had stomach issues, sorry)

I will give my few bits as an attendee as well as someone who occasionally looked at twitter all week. (Nobody on my Facebook seems to really get excited about these events as I do) (I also apologize if my input doesn't seem like any form of contribution to the feedback, but I'll do my best.)

Schedule/Games - I didn't have much if any beef about the schedule, due to lack of comprehending the whole picture, but as for the games, well I did have a slight grievance despite it not being a legit issue. I get that some games don't get the luxury of repeat years to the dismay of some runners who practice often to try and make it, however I do understand that there really are a lot of RPGs out there that aren't always given a chance to shine even from back when they started. I didn't get to really zone in on some of the games, but others I caught a glimpse of were really neat to watch.

Venue - I didn't really think that the UGH was an issue for people? I mean, sure SLC can be a bit of a doozy to get around in like other cities that you're foreign to, but outside of my own personal stair adventures pretending it was ShinRa building, it seemed alright to me. If there's a better hotel/venue in town or somewhere kinda close by, maybe even Denver, that'd probably work for me because I could still afford to attend. (I'm a 2 hour drive from SLC) After reading Bob's post, I can't help but agree that stairs and lack of ease of access were a problem, especially getting in and out.

Yeah, I guess the sound barrier wasn't the best when you could hear half the people in the practice room over the run. But you know, maybe next year will be better?

Food - Although I had a better time enjoying the 2nd round of pizza more over the first, I have to say a toss up between the tacos and the food truck as to which one was my favorite. There was the downside that yeah, maybe 2 rounds of pizza weren't the best choices as I heard multiple people groan about it. The food truck having to be where it was due to geographical layout wasn't the best either. Hopefully next year, we can also find out how many people that attend are vegetarians or vegans so that we can get them a fair share of food distribution. I don't know how many were there that attended, but it didn't seem like there was much to offer for them. Not sure what other varieties of food could've been provided, but as long as there's something for everyone, I'll be fine to dine.

Tech - I never really noticed an issue with streaming outside of the low sound, even when in the audience.

Chat/Website - My only input on this is that I noticed chat being a bit bothersome with being behind and the usual "this game is boring". Donation incentives were the big factor in Tide's run (which he did a good job fighting with what he had, but that's part of the marathon). There was also the end where people were complaining about wanting to hear the song while not caring about what people felt they needed to say when they were on the mic after the marathon. Other than that I didn't pay enough attention to notice tech issues for the website.
 
Prizes - Um, I did notice that some prizes were available during the last half of the games before they were stated to be eligible. So, if people donated for those prizes during those times, will they still be eligible after the bug fix?

Incentives - I am unfamiliar with most runs in both RPGLB and GDQ settings for the most part, but I figure if we were to start small and slowly get bigger in incentive bids over the course of the marathon, I'd like to think that more of them will be possible to be met before their cutoff times.

Charity - So far NAMI seems to have been pretty good to us for the most part. I'm sure that whatever issues that may have arisen this year will be fixed/worked on next year.

Social Media - Due to constantly seeing updates from Twitter, I'm glad I actually joined Twitter a while back because I wouldn't see any of this on Facebook. There were plenty of good jokes and whatnot related to RPGLB. Thanks to all who participated in that.

Pre-show/Interviews - I mostly saw the end interviews and maybe one or two while I was in the audience, but having the pre-show talks and interviews are pretty wonderful. As a sports fan, it's nice to see the "after game" breakdown/interview with the runner, get to know them and how they felt about their run comes off as a nice play towards that. The end of the marathon real talk where staff and some audience got in on the mic and spoke from the heart was welcoming, as it was last year and at the GDQs. Hearing their stories and having a loving audience comfort them makes me feel welcomed in this growing community.

Again, I don't know if my feedback could be of any use, I hope it is and thanks for having this marathon! @(_@

edit: One last thing, as people viewing pointed out over the course of the week, most of the runs had very poor audience attendance... FeelsBadMan I feel bad for constantly bailing a lot in the middle of the runs. (I had stomach issues, sorry)

kytten

2017-06-03 12:10:54 am

Ghost - Yea i understand it's one thing to say "my character is dead, we are going to take an intentional death here, etc" but "And now we suicide" is iffy? i know it's definitely in the lexicon of speedterms, but maybe not something that RPGLB staff need to worry about more so the runners need to just...adjust terms slightly for the marathon. idk, like i said it was just a tiny nitpick. T_T ~~sorryibroughtitup~~

GhostKingG1

2017-06-03 08:26:09 pm

Why Hello it is Me

^ I completely understand where you're coming from, Kytten, and I will work on that. I would also encourage others to do the same. It's just kind of a force of habit if anything that would need to be altered is all.

AtlasJackson

2017-06-05 02:52:25 am

The Stream Room
I agree with comments about the stream room feeling empty. The casual room was just better for viewing, unfortunately, with better balanced sound and better viewing of the game. The projector just didn't have enough contrast with the lights on. I'm not sure if there's a fix for this, except turning the lights down in the stream room. I'm not sure how viable that is.

I can't think of a good way to say this, but just being on-camera in the audience felt like a commitment. It feels bad to not be giving the runner 100% attention, but that's really hard to do over 3+ hours. It felt equally bad stepping in and out the stream room mid-run (especially when the room is empty). Did anyone else feel this way? If so, a tighter camera on the runner might make people more comfortable sitting in on just an hour of Pokemon or only 45 minutes of Dragon Quest, and we might actually fill more seats. Even if we're not on camera, an audience in the stream room has value as something the runners, commentators, and host can play off of and get feedback from.

The venue
The hotel and Officer's Club were nice and roomy for the event. Plenty of seating. Plenty of space away from the event to take a break for a few minutes.

The hotel is a bit of an island, though. The nearest place to pick up travel essentials (toiletries, medicine, food that isn't pizza, etc) was about an hour walk from the hotel. Getting dinner that wasn't leftovers from the catered lunch meant calling a cab. Combining that with sleeping/running/volunteering through breakfast is probably part of the reason "pizza twice in one week" felt like way, way too much pizza. I'm pretty sure I ate pizza at least five times that week. (Personally, I'm going to be much more liberal with Lyft next year, and I will also absolutely pitch in for some bags of fruit.)

Volunteering
Better communication, across the board:

Stream Tech needs a better way to communicate with the rest of the team and runners/commentators during transitions, or needs to change the way the Stream Tech checklist works. Stream Station has a checklist they've got to run through before starting the timer for the next run that requires multiple sign-offs from the rest of the volunteers, runners and commentators, and it was a pain. We were off to the side, almost behind the projector screen, hidden behind two monitors and we didn't have a headset. There was a lot of cross-talking and repeating myself: "Are the runners mic'd? Hey, are the runners mic'd? HEY [waving my arms at runner] DO YOU HAVE AUDIO? [gesturing at my own ears] IS YOUR NAME CORRECT ON STREAM?" But they've got a headset on, and can't hear me, and they're also splitting attention with the setup guys and the host and the commentators.

Having the other techs report when things can be checked off would be great. If the Setup Team just had an Audio checklist, and could give a blanket thumbs-up for Audio to the Stream Tech, that would be even better. Discord was great during games. It's not suitable for communication during transitions, though.

We need the runners off-camera and in the volunteer area for some amount of time between runs to answer questions and get audio set up. Frequently, runners went directly from the practice room to the couch, or from the audience to the couch, but I think all the volunteers would appreciate the undivided attention of the runners for a few minutes. I know that's a pain in the ass for the runners, but it would really help communication.

A whiteboard for the volunteers to better communicate between shifts, as well. I know we screwed up by giving the "okay" to a glitch exhibition once because the host didn't know we were behind schedule. Write down how far ahead/behind schedule we are, if there's an incentive or run that needs help, if a run got moved, if there's a broken bit of hardware, if there's something people need to know four hours from now, etc. We were using Discord for this, but a whiteboard is a little more visceral, and can also be checked by volunteers who aren't in front of a station.

On that note, having a designated lead in the stream room during swing/night shift; someone who can make a call. When someone asks "do we have time for credits or glitches?" or "Should we call Vulajin about this?" they are asking that person, not the entire assembly of volunteers. If that's a staff member, a senior volunteer, or just "This station makes the final call." I absolutely realize that this is likely not worth the effort.

Printing the stream/volunteer schedule in landscape mode. It's a small thing, but I think it's a heck of a lot easier to track times reading left to right, rather than up to down. If we could get "force local time" on the schedule webpage as well... I was never able to get the schedule in Utah time on my phone.

Between-game music: We didn't actually have music, our instructions were to go to youtube, find some soundtrack "that wasn't loaded with ads" and play it. It was so far down the list of priorities, and not something we could queue up during games, either. No one wanted to accidentally play a beer ad during stream, so I think everyone was afraid to even open youtube. Whatever the reason, it just didn't happen. Once the schedule is finalized for next year, it shouldn't be too hard to put together a 10-20-hour playlist of greatest-hits from the games in the schedule. I will volunteer to do this, if needed. Either a collection of audio files stored locally on the stream PC, or (if space is an issue) a youtube playlist.

Maybe some tech-talks on twitch/discord before the event would help with setup and operation, and take some stress away from the on-site volunteer meeting immediately before the event. I know that's asking a lot more from Vulajin before the event, but it might let him get some actual sleep during. If there's any way we can take some weight off Vulajin and the rest of the staff, I would love to help.

Other than all of that, I had a great time. This was my first speedrunning event, thank you everyone. I hope to see you all again next year.

[u]The Stream Room[/u]
I agree with comments about the stream room feeling empty. The casual room was just better for viewing, unfortunately, with better balanced sound and better viewing of the game. The projector just didn't have enough contrast with the lights on. I'm not sure if there's a fix for this, except turning the lights down in the stream room. I'm not sure how viable that is.

I can't think of a good way to say this, but just being on-camera in the audience felt like a commitment. It feels bad to not be giving the runner 100% attention, but that's really hard to do over 3+ hours. It felt equally bad stepping in and out the stream room mid-run (especially when the room is empty). Did anyone else feel this way? If so, a tighter camera on the runner might make people more comfortable sitting in on just an hour of Pokemon or only 45 minutes of Dragon Quest, and we might actually fill more seats. Even if we're not on camera, an audience in the stream room has value as something the runners, commentators, and host can play off of and get feedback from.

[u]The venue[/u]
The hotel and Officer's Club were nice and roomy for the event. Plenty of seating. Plenty of space away from the event to take a break for a few minutes.

The hotel is a bit of an island, though. The nearest place to pick up travel essentials (toiletries, medicine, food that isn't pizza, etc) was about an hour walk from the hotel. Getting dinner that wasn't leftovers from the catered lunch meant calling a cab. Combining that with sleeping/running/volunteering through breakfast is probably part of the reason "pizza twice in one week" felt like way, way too much pizza. I'm pretty sure I ate pizza at least five times that week. (Personally, I'm going to be much more liberal with Lyft next year, and I will also absolutely pitch in for some bags of fruit.)

[u]Volunteering[/u]
Better communication, across the board:

Stream Tech needs a better way to communicate with the rest of the team and runners/commentators during transitions, or needs to change the way the Stream Tech checklist works. Stream Station has a checklist they've got to run through before starting the timer for the next run that requires multiple sign-offs from the rest of the volunteers, runners and commentators, and it was a pain. We were off to the side, almost behind the projector screen, hidden behind two monitors and we didn't have a headset. There was a lot of cross-talking and repeating myself: "Are the runners mic'd? Hey, are the runners mic'd? HEY [waving my arms at runner] DO YOU HAVE AUDIO? [gesturing at my own ears] IS YOUR NAME CORRECT ON STREAM?" But they've got a headset on, and can't hear me, and they're also splitting attention with the setup guys and the host and the commentators.

Having the other techs report when things can be checked off would be great. If the Setup Team just had an Audio checklist, and could give a blanket thumbs-up for Audio to the Stream Tech, that would be even better. Discord was great during games. It's not suitable for communication during transitions, though.

We need the runners off-camera and in the volunteer area for some amount of time between runs to answer questions and get audio set up. Frequently, runners went directly from the practice room to the couch, or from the audience to the couch, but I think all the volunteers would appreciate the undivided attention of the runners for a few minutes. I know that's a pain in the ass for the runners, but it would really help communication.

A whiteboard for the volunteers to better communicate between shifts, as well. I know we screwed up by giving the "okay" to a glitch exhibition once because the host didn't know we were behind schedule. Write down how far ahead/behind schedule we are, if there's an incentive or run that needs help, if a run got moved, if there's a broken bit of hardware, if there's something people need to know four hours from now, etc. We were using Discord for this, but a whiteboard is a little more visceral, and can also be checked by volunteers who aren't in front of a station.

On that note, having a designated lead in the stream room during swing/night shift; someone who can make a call. When someone asks "do we have time for credits or glitches?" or "Should we call Vulajin about this?" they are asking [b]that person[/b], not the entire assembly of volunteers. If that's a staff member, a senior volunteer, or just "This station makes the final call." I absolutely realize that this is likely not worth the effort.

Printing the stream/volunteer schedule in landscape mode. It's a small thing, but I think it's a heck of a lot easier to track times reading left to right, rather than up to down. If we could get "force local time" on the schedule webpage as well... I was never able to get the schedule in Utah time on my phone.

Between-game music: We didn't actually have music, our instructions were to go to youtube, find some soundtrack "that wasn't loaded with ads" and play it. It was so far down the list of priorities, and not something we could queue up during games, either. No one wanted to accidentally play a beer ad during stream, so I think everyone was afraid to even open youtube. Whatever the reason, it just didn't happen. Once the schedule is finalized for next year, it shouldn't be too hard to put together a 10-20-hour playlist of greatest-hits from the games in the schedule. I will volunteer to do this, if needed. Either a collection of audio files stored locally on the stream PC, or (if space is an issue) a youtube playlist.

Maybe some tech-talks on twitch/discord before the event would help with setup and operation, and take some stress away from the on-site volunteer meeting immediately before the event. I know that's asking a lot more from Vulajin before the event, but it might let him get some actual sleep during. If there's any way we can take some weight off Vulajin and the rest of the staff, I would love to help.

Other than all of that, I had a great time. This was my first speedrunning event, thank you everyone. I hope to see you all again next year.

GhostKingG1

2017-06-05 05:48:23 am

Why Hello it is Me

I second getting a playlist for this next year, not even necessarily from the games on the schedule but just RPG stuff in General. I think many of us would be willing to contribute though it may be best to have someone who can filter it as well.

MSKain

2017-06-10 04:56:01 pm

Live and Learn, Die and Learn Faster

As a second-time attendee and first-time volunteer, I don't have a whole lot to add. I really wanted to be in the stream room whenever I wasn't eating, sleeping or visiting my (living local) sister and nephews, and I was one that didn't mind being seen too much on camera--in my face, friends and family such as said sister enjoyed tuning in and seeing me in the audience (look, my brother's live on the internet!) and would often text me about being able to see me or not. My biggest issue with the stream room was the projector; there was too much light for it to be the ideal viewing screen for the audience, particularly in such a large room. I realize we didn't have any other solutions at the time, but it was a big problem; some particularly dark games, such as Legend of Grimrock and Diablo II, were almost unwatchable and since they were PC games the runner had to sit right in front of his monitor so there was no way we could watch that instead. Hopefully next year there will be another solution. The other issue, as noted, was sound; game sound in the viewing room was never very audible, and perhaps some adjustment could be taken.

Those are my only real things I'd like to highlight by way of improvement, otherwise, I really enjoyed the event and I really hope I'll be able to attend again next year.

As a second-time attendee and first-time volunteer, I don't have a whole lot to add.  I really wanted to be in the stream room whenever I wasn't eating, sleeping or visiting my (living local) sister and nephews, and I was one that didn't mind being seen too much on camera--in my face, friends and family such as said sister enjoyed tuning in and seeing me in the audience (look, my brother's live on the internet!) and would often text me about being able to see me or not.  My biggest issue with the stream room was the projector; there was too much light for it to be the ideal viewing screen for the audience, particularly in such a large room.  I realize we didn't have any other solutions at the time, but it was a big problem; some particularly dark games, such as Legend of Grimrock and Diablo II, were almost unwatchable and since they were PC games the runner had to sit right in front of his monitor so there was no way we could watch that instead.  Hopefully next year there will be another solution.  The other issue, as noted, was sound; game sound in the viewing room was never very audible, and perhaps some adjustment could be taken.

Those are my only real things I'd like to highlight by way of improvement, otherwise, I really enjoyed the event and I really hope I'll be able to attend again next year.

NoWorries

2017-06-10 09:34:47 pm

It was my first time doing a race there and second time being there and besides the minor audio issues we had for the race at the beginning, I thought it went great. I was only able to attend for just a few days do to an incredibly busy schedule and I am beyond grateful to the staff for working around my schedule specifically to fit Shining Force in at a more appropriate time for me. I was delayed arriving even; which put my on site time at a mere 55 hours or so, arriving very late Wednesday and leaving very early Saturday, but even so, I had an incredible time and had almost forgotten just how cool it is to be on site and to be able to interact with the online community in person. It's made even more memorable when you meet new fans (of both you the streamer but also the game) and that's an experience I'll definitely never forget.

My only complain is I've brought both Shining Force games which is going to put a lot of stress on me to get another game in next year! I'll figure something out... great job to everyone.

Also, shout outs to sniping Frolki for Max's name at the end, my brother was extremely appreciative of that nod and he may even be hoping to attend in the future if he can find a babysitter for his daughter. Also, kudos to the previous games host for telling me on stream to moreorless, "get your ass moving" when he kindly said "got a donation from NoWorries here, and if I were NoWorries, I'd get down to the stream room". I had a nice laugh that morning that helped wake up the rest of the roomies who also needed to get moving Cheesy

It was my first time doing a race there and second time being there and besides the minor audio issues we had for the race at the beginning, I thought it went great. I was only able to attend for just a few days do to an incredibly busy schedule and I am beyond grateful to the staff for working around my schedule specifically to fit Shining Force in at a more appropriate time for me. I was delayed arriving even; which put my on site time at a mere 55 hours or so, arriving very late Wednesday and leaving very early Saturday, but even so, I had an incredible time and had almost forgotten just how cool it is to be on site and to be able to interact with the online community in person. It's made even more memorable when you meet new fans (of both you the streamer but also the game) and that's an experience I'll definitely never forget.

My only complain is I've brought both Shining Force games which is going to put a lot of stress on me to get another game in next year! I'll figure something out... great job to everyone.

Also, shout outs to sniping Frolki for Max's name at the end, my brother was extremely appreciative of that nod and he may even be hoping to attend in the future if he can find a babysitter for his daughter. Also, kudos to the previous games host for telling me on stream to moreorless, "get your ass moving" when he kindly said "got a donation from NoWorries here, and if I were NoWorries, I'd get down to the stream room". I had a nice laugh that morning that helped wake up the rest of the roomies who also needed to get moving :D

Drifting Skies

2017-06-11 06:42:14 pm

steak Steak STEAK!!!

One thing that I would have liked to see is a little bit more flexibility in terms of when we could have signed up for shifts on the volunteer form. The only options we were able to sign up for were for 6:00 - 12:00 or 12:00 - 6:00 (either AM or PM). I didn't really want to take the midday shift (11:00 to 3:00 or so), so I signed up for the morning and evening shifts.

I wish I could have set my 'availability' to be more along the lines of 3:00 PM - 10:00 PM or so, since the shifts for non-host were awkwardly aligned with what volunteers could sign up for, since they were 2:00 to 5:00, 5:00 to 8:00, 8:00 to 11:00, and 11:00 to 2:00.

In my case, I would have much rather had a 5:00 - 8:00 PM shift than the 8:00 - 11:00 PM shifts I had, even though that technically wasn't within the times I signed up for. I was really in pain from exhaustion on Thursday night by the end of my shift.