Winter 2015 SNES Final Fantasy Relay - March 7th, 2015 (VODs available)

RCFstupca

2015-02-13 10:33:44 pm

If needed I can be a reserve for mystic quest any% (PB: 2:08:50)

andyperfect

Edit history:

andyperfect: 2015-02-16 01:11:48 pm

2015-02-16 10:01:32 am

The Earthbound community can submit Earthbound any% glitchless as a bonus game for this event. After a first pass of talking to the community, we have several people that are interested in participating. All of us are top tier players for this game which could make for a great race. There are a many more people that could be contacted in case someone has to drop out as well.

Runners interested in participating

- Falexxx1
- lltemple
- Aurilliux
- AndyPerfect
- RedBalloonman

puwexil

2015-02-16 10:27:52 am

Professional Second Banana

Quote from andyperfect:

The Earthbound community can submit Earthbound any% glitchless as a bonus game for this event. After a first pass of talking to the community, we have four people that are interested in participating: Falexxx1, lltemple, aurilliux, and myself. All of us are top tier players for this game which could make for a great race. There are a many more people that could be contacted in case someone has to drop out as well.

Awesome! If Earthbound wins, would you all be available March 8th (exact start time can be scheduled based on what works for everyone)? If not, we could do it another weekend, preferable as close to the relay date (March 7th) as possible.

puwexil

Edit history:

puwexil: 2015-02-16 10:43:40 am

2015-02-16 10:39:53 am

Professional Second Banana

Here are updated banners for the relay - note that it will be at http://www.twitch.tv/rpglimitbreak instead of my channel this time (I want to start using the RPG Limit Break channel for online RPG community events as well as the annual charity marathon - if anyone has ideas/offers for other events feel free to PM me).

https://www.dropbox.com/s/v5ryu1skqhzafsd/FF456-relay2015LG.jpg
https://www.dropbox.com/s/tirw4qqk6n4qo9t/FF456-relay2015.jpg

andyperfect

2015-02-16 10:43:32 am

Quote from puwexil:

Quote from andyperfect:

The Earthbound community can submit Earthbound any% glitchless as a bonus game for this event. After a first pass of talking to the community, we have four people that are interested in participating: Falexxx1, lltemple, aurilliux, and myself. All of us are top tier players for this game which could make for a great race. There are a many more people that could be contacted in case someone has to drop out as well.

Awesome! If Earthbound wins, would you all be available March 8th (exact start time can be scheduled based on what works for everyone)? If not, we could do it another weekend, preferable as close to the relay date (March 7th) as possible.

I don't believe March 8th would be a problem. I mentioned the date to everybody and nobody expressed reservations about the event taking place this day. Earthbound races within the community are commonly held on Sunday evenings anyway so it's a common time for us to get together.

animenewscookie

2015-02-16 11:25:38 am

にゃんだにょ！

Oh man does the time fly.. It's just over two weeks away now. Things are still looking pretty good for the JP mirror. I can probably only go for ~12 hours this time (10am - 10pm) but hopefully that'll cover the majority of the event. I can't mirror the bonus stream, but can point viewers towards it on Twitch, at least.

1) Would it be possible to get a list of the nationalities of each runner? It's an easy way to convey just how broad the foreign community is for these games. I'd also like to gather duration as an FF speed runner, best times and such.. if that's available somewhere already, that'd also be awesome information to have. Otherwise, I can easily gather it on my own.

2) Neerrm, thank you for the offer -- yes, would it be possible to maybe get a brief, maybe 2-3 sentence synopsis of a few common English-language memes/in-jokes/etc for the FF games? Doesn't need to be universal or fully agreed-upon -- just something that I can share with the Japanese viewers when the action dies down.

3) If someone can point me to a write-up about the FF4 garbage can glitch (or write a synopsis of how it is triggered) that'd be wonderful.

4) Puwexil, I'd love to mention RPG Limit Break during the event to encourage some viewership from over there. Is there a specific statement (media-friendly/etc) that you'd like me to use?

Oh man does the time fly.. It's just over two weeks away now. Things are still looking pretty good for the JP mirror. I can probably only go for ~12 hours this time (10am - 10pm) but hopefully that'll cover the majority of the event. I can't mirror the bonus stream, but can point viewers towards it on Twitch, at least.

1) Would it be possible to get a list of the nationalities of each runner? It's an easy way to convey just how broad the foreign community is for these games. I'd also like to gather duration as an FF speed runner, best times and such.. if that's available somewhere already, that'd also be awesome information to have. Otherwise, I can easily gather it on my own.

2) Neerrm, thank you for the offer -- yes, would it be possible to maybe get a brief, maybe 2-3 sentence synopsis of a few common English-language memes/in-jokes/etc for the FF games? Doesn't need to be universal or fully agreed-upon -- just something that I can share with the Japanese viewers when the action dies down.

3) If someone can point me to a write-up about the FF4 garbage can glitch (or write a synopsis of how it is triggered) that'd be wonderful.

4) Puwexil, I'd love to mention RPG Limit Break during the event to encourage some viewership from over there. Is there a specific statement (media-friendly/etc) that you'd like me to use?

Vultuz

2015-02-17 11:51:32 am

Just finally discovered this one here.

Dunno if its still needed, but maybe i can join for Mystic Quest Bonus Game
Also could join for Lufia II, but i feel a bit to rusty right now.

Neerrm

Edit history:

Neerrm: 2015-02-18 10:28:24 am

Neerrm: 2015-02-18 10:18:10 am

Neerrm: 2015-02-18 10:17:47 am

Neerrm: 2015-02-18 10:10:58 am

Neerrm: 2015-02-18 10:09:57 am

2015-02-18 10:08:40 am

3) If someone can point me to a write-up about the FF4 garbage can glitch (or write a synopsis of how it is triggered) that'd be wonderful.

I actually don't think one exists...until now!

This glitch was first popularized in pirohiko's TAS of the Japanese version of the game. I am not sure who originally discovered it; someone from the TAS community might know. pirohiko utilizes this glitch in the TAS to quickly annihilate Milon and MilonZ by using the TrashCan and Carrot, which is not only fast, but hilarious. When the any% speedrun route was being worked on by NocashNocash, he contacted pirohiko and the two of them attempted to recreate this glitch on the English version but were unsuccessful. It was thought that because of the version differences, this glitch wasn't possible, much to the dismay of speedrunners and other trash loving enthusiasts.

About a year passed after this. Many of us had tried to recreate this glitch multiple times to no avail. It wasn't until a completely random occurrence that we knew the glitch was even possible on the US version. During a speedrun by Neerrm in October, MilonZ happened to kill Palom with the exact timing required to trigger part of the glitch. This confirmed that the glitch was indeed possible to perform on the US version, but for months nothing more was ever discovered toward making the TrashCan glitch a reality. It wasn't until this past January that the glitch would take full form.

There were two breaking points that allowed the TrashCan glitch to become a reality. The first was the implementation of the "Can't Run" buffer to halt ATB while selecting an action (similar to the FF6 wait trick). The other was the development of a new strategy for Milon and MilonZ. Looking for ways to improve the run, it was discovered that by killing off both Cecil and Tellah during the fight with Milon, Palom would be given enough experience to gain enough levels to learn Fire2 for the upcoming MilonZ fight, which made that fight easier (and is potentially faster...still a point of debate in the community today Smiley

) the_roth developed a (mostly) reliable strategy in order to consistently give Palom the levels he needed for Fire2. During practice of these strategies, Neerrm happened to notice that the ATB of the twins' turns was lining up very close to what was needed in order to properly execute the TrashCan glitch. With the ability to freeze ATB using "Can't Run", he was able to reliably trigger the Twin Mimic glitch, and the non-TAS TrashCan dream was realized.

An explanation of the glitch:

This glitch relies on what has been dubbed the Twin Mimic glitch. If the character casting Twin is interrupted at the correct point of the casting action (by death, Charm, or Stop), this puts the other twin character in a mimic state. The twin will then begin to mimic the actions of the other characters. The strategy used in the Milon fight has Tellah casting Charm on Porom immediately after she has cast twin, which places Palom into the mimic state.

Once the mimic state has been triggered, in order to use the TrashCan, a couple of things need to occur. The first is that the ATB needs to be set in such a way that the 3 characters you have control over all get their turns immediately after one another. Tellah gets his turn first, immediately followed by either Cecil or Porom, and then immediately followed by the last character. Palom will mimic the action of the last character.
Tellah needs to go first in order to cast Stop on the third character, which is necessary for triggering the TrashCan glitch.
Another thing that we need to account for is who Palom will target with the TrashCan. While in the mimic state, the target of Palom's mimicked action is the target of the character who completed the turn before. So, in order to get Palom to target Milon with the TrashCan, the second character in the of the three must target Milon with their action (we use Fight, as the ATB here is tight).
Finally, in order to get Palom to actually throw the TrashCan, we must halt the action of the third character, via death, charm, or stop. Despite the character's turn not being completed, Palom will still mimic the action of this character. In order to have Palom use the TrashCan as an item, on the third character's turn, we must go into the item menu, begin to use a consumable item like a Cure2 or Life, cancel out of selecting a target for that item, and then swap the position of the item with the TrashCan. In doing so, Palom will attempt to use the item in the same slot (which is now the TrashCan) on the target of the previous completed turn, who is Milon. Boom!

Quoting pirohiko's TAS notes:
The battle effect of [TrashCan] is the Holy(White) of 8 hits.
The battle effect of [Carrot] is the Fire3(Firaga) of 8 hits.

There are some potential issues that arise when trying to execute this strategy that are out of the runner's control.
The most difficult part of this trick is synchronizing the ATB so that Tellah acts immediately followed by the two other characters. If any turns do not go according to plan, it is very difficult to get the turn order back to this state.
The "Can't Run" buffer on Porom's turn where she casts Twin is a very small window of time to hit. It's possible to do it too early, which initiates the Twin cast, but the more common mistake is to do it too late, where Tellah will begin to cast Charm before Twin can be selected.
The initial Charm cast on Porom from Tellah has a chance to miss.
When hitting Porom to remove the Charm status, Cecil also has a chance to miss.
Porom, while in the Charmed state, can cast Hold or Slow on a party member, causing the ATB to not be set up properly.
If Milon is mean, he can kill Palom with Lit1 casts.
The final Stop cast from Tellah can also miss.

I think that about covers it.

3) If someone can point me to a write-up about the FF4 garbage can glitch (or write a synopsis of how it is triggered) that'd be wonderful.

I actually don't think one exists...until now!

This glitch was first popularized in pirohiko's [url=http://tasvideos.org/4198S.html]TAS of the Japanese version of the game[/url]. I am not sure who originally discovered it; someone from the TAS community might know. pirohiko utilizes this glitch in the TAS to quickly annihilate Milon and MilonZ by using the TrashCan and Carrot, which is not only fast, but hilarious. When the any% speedrun route was being worked on by NocashNocash, he contacted pirohiko and the two of them attempted to recreate this glitch on the English version but were unsuccessful. It was thought that because of the version differences, this glitch wasn't possible, much to the dismay of speedrunners and other trash loving enthusiasts.

About a year passed after this. Many of us had tried to recreate this glitch multiple times to no avail. It wasn't until a completely random occurrence that we knew the glitch was even possible on the US version. During a speedrun by Neerrm in October, MilonZ [url=http://www.twitch.tv/neerrm/c/5255313]happened to kill Palom with the exact timing required to trigger part of the glitch[/url]. This confirmed that the glitch was indeed possible to perform on the US version, but for months nothing more was ever discovered toward making the TrashCan glitch a reality. It wasn't until this past January that the glitch would take full form.

There were two breaking points that allowed the TrashCan glitch to become a reality. The first was the implementation of the "Can't Run" buffer to halt ATB while selecting an action (similar to the FF6 wait trick). The other was the development of a new strategy for Milon and MilonZ. Looking for ways to improve the run, it was discovered that by killing off both Cecil and Tellah during the fight with Milon, Palom would be given enough experience to gain enough levels to learn Fire2 for the upcoming MilonZ fight, which made that fight easier (and is potentially faster...still a point of debate in the community today :) ) the_roth developed a (mostly) reliable strategy in order to consistently give Palom the levels he needed for Fire2. During practice of these strategies, Neerrm happened to notice that the ATB of the twins' turns was lining up very close to what was needed in order to properly execute the TrashCan glitch. With the ability to freeze ATB using "Can't Run", he was able to reliably trigger the Twin Mimic glitch, and the non-TAS TrashCan dream was realized.

An explanation of the glitch:

This glitch relies on what has been dubbed the Twin Mimic glitch. If the character casting Twin is interrupted at the correct point of the casting action (by death, Charm, or Stop), this puts the other twin character in a mimic state. The twin will then begin to mimic the actions of the other characters. The strategy used in the Milon fight has Tellah casting Charm on Porom immediately after she has cast twin, which places Palom into the mimic state.

Once the mimic state has been triggered, in order to use the TrashCan, a couple of things need to occur. The first is that the ATB needs to be set in such a way that the 3 characters you have control over all get their turns immediately after one another. Tellah gets his turn first, immediately followed by either Cecil or Porom, and then immediately followed by the last character. Palom will mimic the action of the last character.
Tellah needs to go first in order to cast Stop on the third character, which is necessary for triggering the TrashCan glitch.
Another thing that we need to account for is who Palom will target with the TrashCan. While in the mimic state, the target of Palom's mimicked action is the target of the character who completed the turn before. So, in order to get Palom to target Milon with the TrashCan, the second character in the of the three must target Milon with their action (we use Fight, as the ATB here is tight).
Finally, in order to get Palom to actually throw the TrashCan, we must halt the action of the third character, via death, charm, or stop. Despite the character's turn not being completed, Palom will still mimic the action of this character. In order to have Palom use the TrashCan as an item, on the third character's turn, we must go into the item menu, begin to use a consumable item like a Cure2 or Life, cancel out of selecting a target for that item, and then swap the position of the item with the TrashCan. In doing so, Palom will attempt to use the item in the same slot (which is now the TrashCan) on the target of the previous completed turn, who is Milon. Boom!

Quoting pirohiko's TAS notes:
The battle effect of [TrashCan] is the Holy(White) of 8 hits.
The battle effect of [Carrot] is the Fire3(Firaga) of 8 hits.

There are some potential issues that arise when trying to execute this strategy that are out of the runner's control. 
The most difficult part of this trick is synchronizing the ATB so that Tellah acts immediately followed by the two other characters. If any turns do not go according to plan, it is very difficult to get the turn order back to this state.
The "Can't Run" buffer on Porom's turn where she casts Twin is a very small window of time to hit. It's possible to do it too early, which initiates the Twin cast, but the more common mistake is to do it too late, where Tellah will begin to cast Charm before Twin can be selected.
The initial Charm cast on Porom from Tellah has a chance to miss.
When hitting Porom to remove the Charm status, Cecil also has a chance to miss.
Porom, while in the Charmed state, can cast Hold or Slow on a party member, causing the ATB to not be set up properly.
If Milon is mean, he can kill Palom with Lit1 casts.
The final Stop cast from Tellah can also miss.

I think that about covers it.

puwexil

Edit history:

puwexil: 2015-02-19 09:50:41 am

puwexil: 2015-02-18 10:39:29 am

2015-02-18 10:39:08 am

Professional Second Banana

Quote from animenewscookie:

Oh man does the time fly.. It's just over two weeks away now. Things are still looking pretty good for the JP mirror. I can probably only go for ~12 hours this time (10am - 10pm) but hopefully that'll cover the majority of the event. I can't mirror the bonus stream, but can point viewers towards it on Twitch, at least.

Awesome - how ever much you're willing to restream is greatly appreciated!

Quote:

1) Would it be possible to get a list of the nationalities of each runner? It's an easy way to convey just how broad the foreign community is for these games. I'd also like to gather duration as an FF speed runner, best times and such.. if that's available somewhere already, that'd also be awesome information to have. Otherwise, I can easily gather it on my own.

Here's the runners/commentators' streams and nationalities - hoping to have team names set by the end of the week. Their personal bests can all be found at http://finalfantasyspeedruns.wikidot.com (and some have the length of time they've been speedrunning in their Twitch bio) - the categories being run in the relay are FF4 Any% No 64-Door Glitch, FF5 Any% w/English Patch, and FF6 Any% No Sketch Glitch (basically the category for each game that has no restrictions other than banning memory corruption glitches that can be used to skip major portions of the game).

Team Chocobros:
Khobahi-Canada (twitch.tv/khobahi)
DragonLX-Ecuador (twitch.tv/draaagonlx)
Fathlo23-Canada (twitch.tv/fathlo23)

Team TrashCan:
nocashnocash-USA (twitch.tv/nocashnocash)
Deln-Canada (twitch.tv/deln)
LCC-Canada (twitch.tv/thelcc)

Team Y Burn:
catastrophic4-USA (twitch.tv/catastrophic4)
Jenja-Germany (twitch.tv/jenja23)
eLmaGus-Germany (twitch.tv/elmagus)

Team Ultros Boogie:
the_roth-Australia (twitch.tv/the_roth)
HappySquid-Germany (twitch.tv/happysquid89)
bichphuongballz-USA (twitch.tv/bichphuongballz)

FF4 Commentary:
crumps2-USA (twitch.tv/crumps2)
obdajr-Canada (twitch.tv/obdajr)
FeralPigMan-USA (twitch.tv/feralpigman)
Fyreball13-Canada (twitch.tv/fyreball13)

FF5 Commentary:
Dragondarch-USA (twitch.tv/dragondarchsda)
Cereth-England (twitch.tv/cereth)
Incalex-France (twitch.tv/inkalex)

FF6 Commentary:
Essentia-USA (twitch.tv/essentiafour)
Brossentia-USA (twitch.tv/brossentia)
puwexil-USA (twitch.tv/puwexil)

Quote:

4) Puwexil, I'd love to mention RPG Limit Break during the event to encourage some viewership from over there. Is there a specific statement (media-friendly/etc) that you'd like me to use?

RPG Limit Break is a charity speedrunning marathon taking place May 12-16, 2015 in Salt Lake City, and streamed live at http://www.twitch.tv/rpglimitbreak. We'll be streaming over 100 consecutive hours of RPG speedruns, including popular series like Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts. During the event, please consider donating to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (http://nami.org).

The full schedule of games to be played at the event can be found at http://bombch.us/wea - for more info and regular updates, follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/rpglimitbreak.

[quote="animenewscookie"]Oh man does the time fly.. It's just over two weeks away now. Things are still looking pretty good for the JP mirror. I can probably only go for ~12 hours this time (10am - 10pm) but hopefully that'll cover the majority of the event. I can't mirror the bonus stream, but can point viewers towards it on Twitch, at least.[/quote]
Awesome - how ever much you're willing to restream is greatly appreciated!

[quote]1) Would it be possible to get a list of the nationalities of each runner? It's an easy way to convey just how broad the foreign community is for these games. I'd also like to gather duration as an FF speed runner, best times and such.. if that's available somewhere already, that'd also be awesome information to have. Otherwise, I can easily gather it on my own.[/quote]
Here's the runners/commentators' streams and nationalities - hoping to have team names set by the end of the week.  Their personal bests can all be found at http://finalfantasyspeedruns.wikidot.com (and some have the length of time they've been speedrunning in their Twitch bio) - the categories being run in the relay are FF4 Any% No 64-Door Glitch, FF5 Any% w/English Patch, and FF6 Any% No Sketch Glitch (basically the category for each game that has no restrictions other than banning memory corruption glitches that can be used to skip major portions of the game).

Team Chocobros:
Khobahi-Canada (twitch.tv/khobahi)
DragonLX-Ecuador (twitch.tv/draaagonlx)
Fathlo23-Canada (twitch.tv/fathlo23)

Team TrashCan:
nocashnocash-USA (twitch.tv/nocashnocash)
Deln-Canada (twitch.tv/deln)
LCC-Canada (twitch.tv/thelcc)

Team Y Burn:
catastrophic4-USA (twitch.tv/catastrophic4)
Jenja-Germany (twitch.tv/jenja23)
eLmaGus-Germany (twitch.tv/elmagus)

Team Ultros Boogie:
the_roth-Australia (twitch.tv/the_roth)
HappySquid-Germany (twitch.tv/happysquid89)
bichphuongballz-USA (twitch.tv/bichphuongballz)

FF4 Commentary:
crumps2-USA (twitch.tv/crumps2)
obdajr-Canada (twitch.tv/obdajr)
FeralPigMan-USA (twitch.tv/feralpigman)
Fyreball13-Canada (twitch.tv/fyreball13)

FF5 Commentary:
Dragondarch-USA (twitch.tv/dragondarchsda)
Cereth-England (twitch.tv/cereth)
Incalex-France (twitch.tv/inkalex)

FF6 Commentary:
Essentia-USA (twitch.tv/essentiafour)
Brossentia-USA (twitch.tv/brossentia)
puwexil-USA (twitch.tv/puwexil)

[quote]4) Puwexil, I'd love to mention RPG Limit Break during the event to encourage some viewership from over there. Is there a specific statement (media-friendly/etc) that you'd like me to use?[/quote]
RPG Limit Break is a charity speedrunning marathon taking place May 12-16, 2015 in Salt Lake City, and streamed live at http://www.twitch.tv/rpglimitbreak. We'll be streaming over 100 consecutive hours of RPG speedruns, including popular series like Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts. During the event, please consider donating to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (http://nami.org).

The full schedule of games to be played at the event can be found at http://bombch.us/wea - for more info and regular updates, follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/rpglimitbreak.

the_roth

2015-02-18 07:12:39 pm

DO THE MEATEO

One last thing that can fail with TrashCan strats is that it might not do enough damage on Milon (with a very low damage roll).. But damn it's awesome

Jenja

2015-02-19 07:42:30 am

Should we go with the Teamnames from last Relay? It's better than nothing I guess, since it's a nice way to separate the individual teams and it's easier to display this on the layout.

StingerPA

2015-03-01 10:57:37 pm

I mentioned this in Puwexil's chat tonight, but I won't be available for Secret of Mana if it were picked as the bonus game until at least the weekend of the 21st. It'd probably be best if it were dropped as a potential bonus game race so the bonus race won't be massively delayed.

puwexil

2015-03-02 12:58:19 am

Professional Second Banana

I'm fine with dropping it and going with the other 3 (FFMQ, Earthbound, Lufia 2) unless we can get runners for a 4th over the next week.

RedBalloonMan

2015-03-06 02:53:27 pm

I would Be interested in doing commentary for Earthbound instead of running if possible.

puwexil

2015-03-06 03:08:12 pm

Professional Second Banana

Quote from RedBalloonMan:

I would Be interested in doing commentary for Earthbound instead of running if possible.

Sure, that's fine.

puwexil

2015-03-07 07:32:20 am

Professional Second Banana

Going live in 30 minutes! twitch.tv/rpglimitbreak

Jenja

2015-03-08 08:09:58 am

Alright, after sleeping over this event one night and thinking about the whole thing, I want to give a short (probably not that short in the end) feedback from both my point of view and from what I've heard from others.

First of all I think we can all agree, that we had a great time and that the event overall was a success for both the runners (even though Y Burns took a beating Tongue

) and the viewers. We had some really intense moments in there and 2 teams finishing within 2 seconds is just beyond incredible considering the total time is > 12 hours. I still think however that there are some points that need some improvement or rethinking. I'm gonna skim through all the parts I think are necessary to talk about.

Games
I've heard a couple of opinions here and there that said that the games should be switched, because it gets kind of repetitive. I certainly cannot agree with this and given the fact that we had a constantly rising viewership over the entire event, I definitely think that the games should stay like this. It is a Final Fantasy SNES Relay after all, so anything different would kind of defeat the purpose. I will however come back to the argument of this getting repetitive later.

Runners
While I surely can see the point that people might think "Hey these guys were already running the last relays, why don't you get other people to show off?", I cannot see an appropriate way to change this. This relay we barely had enough people to create 4 teams of and if nobody wants to learn FF5, we are going to end up with the same people again. I also don't think this is a problem at all, since it should be more about the games instead of the runners, but that might be my personal opinion only. Overall the relay did well in terms of runners and even though some guys (including myself) had some hiccups, I think everyone did well in the end.

Commentary
Ok, this one is difficult to explain objectively without hurting anyone's pride, so if anyone feels offended by this, please consider this as constructive criticism and in no way personal. First of all I wanna say that I think the commentary was good. Especially FF5 I thought was way better than last years, maybe this was also due to us making sure to have a better focus on this one. There were however some parts that I think went not so good. One big thing that I noticed was Off Topic Talk and "Jokes-only-insiders-can-understand". In my opinion this was a big issue this time, as (without picking anyone out individually) I felt the commentary went Off Topic way too often and way too far. While it is fine to have some talk about other stuff, it should still be somewhat related to FF/Twitch/Speedruns/Runners. Nevertheless I did notice that at parts commentary was completely Off Topic for more than 10 consecutive minutes multiple times, which is not really helpful.
The same goes with the "Inside Jokes". I know we have a lot of jokes or puns that are related to the Final Fantasy Community, but for a normal viewer these things are neither funny or interesting, but rather confusing. Once again I think having these at some parts is totally fine, but I felt like it was just too much at some parts.

Music
One thing I didn't notice myself, since I was running in the relay, but heard from multiple other people, was that the music seemed to be kind of inapropriate at some points or not fitting. I don't know if it is possible in any way, but in the future I would really like to test, how people would see a relay, if we had in game audio from the different runners, switching it between the individual runners once in a while. Another thing I don't know if it is possible to do, but I would like to see is showing on the stream, who actually is talking right now in the call. Because a lot of times, people didn't know who was actually talking and from what I've heard with 4 runners + 3-4 commentators on the same call it was confusing at times and they couldn't follow, what was going on and who was talking about what.

Organisational stuff
I wanna point out a couple things here. The first major point is the frequency of this event. While I definitely think this is an amazing event, which is really great fun for everyone involved, I nevertheless think that this should be once a year only. To me this time it "just" felt like "another relay", but the hype got lost a little bit, I don't know why, it is kinda difficult to explain. To pick up the point I mentioned earlier with this whole thing getting repetitive, I feel like it would be better to only do this once a year, but make it a bigger success then.
One idea I had was to still keep 2 dates a year for relay, but having one date set for the FF SNES Relay and the other date being a different kind of relay, like SoulGaiaNigma or so. That way we still have 2 amazing relays a year but avoid being too repetitive with the games and the runners. I would like to hear different opinions on this though, as once again I might be the only one thinking this way.
Another point, which I'm just conveniently going to put in this area, is the conference call or the program that we use for this and the general background noises. Skype is okay for this (I still think there are better programs out there), but if nobody has push to talk activated, this just causes a big mess. Trains passing by, in game audio being so loud, it can be heard on the other side, people talking in the background, breathing into the microphone, runners thinking out loud their thoughts, the list goes on and on. This kinda connects with the Off Topic issue, but all these things are just unnecessary for an event like this. It just makes it look like we forgot to think about this whole point and that we have just thrown together a conference call right before the start and therefore unprofessional. I HIGHLY encourage people to either mute their mic completely or to use push to talk for this, as this was a big issue, which I not only experienced myself, but also heard from several other viewers.

Once again I wanna say I am glad we did this and still think this was a successful event. I just think that if we fix some of these issues, it can get even better (or you can just tell me that I'm completely wrong and that I am alone with my opinions). As I said I would really like to hear different opinions on these points.

Still thank you Puwexil and everyone involved for putting in the time and effort to build this up and host this, I know it is not easy to organise all this stuff and I think everyone gladly appreciates the whole effort.

TL;DR version: Good, but improvable.

Alright, after sleeping over this event one night and thinking about the whole thing, I want to give a short (probably not that short in the end) feedback from both my point of view and from what I've heard from others.

First of all I think we can all agree, that we had a great time and that the event overall was a success for both the runners (even though Y Burns took a beating :P ) and the viewers. We had some really intense moments in there and 2 teams finishing within 2 seconds is just beyond incredible considering the total time is > 12 hours. I still think however that there are some points that need some improvement or rethinking. I'm gonna skim through all the parts I think are necessary to talk about.

[b]Games[/b]
I've heard a couple of opinions here and there that said that the games should be switched, because it gets kind of repetitive. I certainly cannot agree with this and given the fact that we had a constantly rising viewership over the entire event, I definitely think that the games should stay like this. It is a Final Fantasy SNES Relay after all, so anything different would kind of defeat the purpose. I will however come back to the argument of this getting repetitive later.

[b]Runners[/b]
While I surely can see the point that people might think "Hey these guys were already running the last relays, why don't you get other people to show off?", I cannot see an appropriate way to change this. This relay we barely had enough people to create 4 teams of and if nobody wants to learn FF5, we are going to end up with the same people again. I also don't think this is a problem at all, since it should be more about the games instead of the runners, but that might be my personal opinion only. Overall the relay did well in terms of runners and even though some guys (including myself) had some hiccups, I think everyone did well in the end.

[b]Commentary[/b]
Ok, this one is difficult to explain objectively without hurting anyone's pride, so if anyone feels offended by this, please consider this as constructive criticism and in no way personal. First of all I wanna say that I think the commentary was good. Especially FF5 I thought was way better than last years, maybe this was also due to us making sure to have a better focus on this one. There were however some parts that I think went not so good. One big thing that I noticed was Off Topic Talk and "Jokes-only-insiders-can-understand". In my opinion this was a big issue this time, as (without picking anyone out individually) I felt the commentary went Off Topic way too often and way too far. While it is fine to have some talk about other stuff, it should still be somewhat related to FF/Twitch/Speedruns/Runners. Nevertheless I did notice that at parts commentary was completely Off Topic for more than 10 consecutive minutes multiple times, which is not really helpful. 
The same goes with the "Inside Jokes". I know we have a lot of jokes or puns that are related to the Final Fantasy Community, but for a normal viewer these things are neither funny or interesting, but rather confusing. Once again I think having these at some parts is totally fine, but I felt like it was just too much at some parts.

[b]Music[/b]
One thing I didn't notice myself, since I was running in the relay, but heard from multiple other people, was that the music seemed to be kind of inapropriate at some points or not fitting. I don't know if it is possible in any way, but in the future I would really like to test, how people would see a relay, if we had in game audio from the different runners, switching it between the individual runners once in a while. Another thing I don't know if it is possible to do, but I would like to see is showing on the stream, who actually is talking right now in the call. Because a lot of times, people didn't know who was actually talking and from what I've heard with 4 runners + 3-4 commentators on the same call it was confusing at times and they couldn't follow, what was going on and who was talking about what.

[b]Organisational stuff[/b]
I wanna point out a couple things here. The first major point is the frequency of this event. While I definitely think this is an amazing event, which is really great fun for everyone involved, I nevertheless think that this should be once a year only. To me this time it "just" felt like "another relay", but the hype got lost a little bit, I don't know why, it is kinda difficult to explain. To pick up the point I mentioned earlier with this whole thing getting repetitive, I feel like it would be better to only do this once a year, but make it a bigger success then.
One idea I had was to still keep 2 dates a year for relay, but having one date set for the FF SNES Relay and the other date being a different kind of relay, like SoulGaiaNigma or so. That way we still have 2 amazing relays a year but avoid being too repetitive with the games and the runners. I would like to hear different opinions on this though, as once again I might be the only one thinking this way.
Another point, which I'm just conveniently going to put in this area, is the conference call or the program that we use for this and the general background noises. Skype is okay for this (I still think there are better programs out there), but if nobody has push to talk activated, this just causes a big mess. Trains passing by, in game audio being so loud, it can be heard on the other side, people talking in the background, breathing into the microphone, runners thinking out loud their thoughts, the list goes on and on. This kinda connects with the Off Topic issue, but all these things are just unnecessary for an event like this. It just makes it look like we forgot to think about this whole point and that we have just thrown together a conference call right before the start and therefore unprofessional. I HIGHLY encourage people to either mute their mic completely or to use push to talk for this, as this was a big issue, which I not only experienced myself, but also heard from several other viewers.

Once again I wanna say I am glad we did this and still think this was a successful event. I just think that if we fix some of these issues, it can get even better (or you can just tell me that I'm completely wrong and that I am alone with my opinions). As I said I would really like to hear different opinions on these points.

Still thank you Puwexil and everyone involved for putting in the time and effort to build this up and host this, I know it is not easy to organise all this stuff and I think everyone gladly appreciates the whole effort.

TL;DR version: Good, but improvable.

Deln

2015-03-08 09:26:27 am

tl;dr

first thing first, i personally have only seen 2 people complaint about the music, the rest didnt seem to mind it at all, as for the commentary part i do agree that some part were off topic, that is all.

Drifting Skies

Edit history:

Drifting Skies: 2015-03-08 10:10:07 am

2015-03-08 10:07:01 am

steak Steak STEAK!!!

Quote from Jenja:

Ok, this one is difficult to explain objectively without hurting anyone's pride, so if anyone feels offended by this, please consider this as constructive criticism and in no way personal. First of all I wanna say that I think the commentary was good. Especially FF5 I thought was way better than last years, maybe this was also due to us making sure to have a better focus on this one. There were however some parts that I think went not so good. One big thing that I noticed was Off Topic Talk and "Jokes-only-insiders-can-understand". In my opinion this was a big issue this time, as (without picking anyone out individually) I felt the commentary went Off Topic way too often and way too far. While it is fine to have some talk about other stuff, it should still be somewhat related to FF/Twitch/Speedruns/Runners. Nevertheless I did notice that at parts commentary was completely Off Topic for more than 10 consecutive minutes multiple times, which is not really helpful.
The same goes with the "Inside Jokes". I know we have a lot of jokes or puns that are related to the Final Fantasy Community, but for a normal viewer these things are neither funny or interesting, but rather confusing. Once again I think having these at some parts is totally fine, but I felt like it was just too much at some parts.

As a viewer for the first half of the run, I wholeheartedly agree with this. I ended up just quitting watching the stream altogether about 3 hours into FFV because the commentary and Twitch chat had devolved into meme-spamming and inside jokes and I couldn't even get a simple question answered about what the time differential was at the moment (although I'm still not sure if that's because I got chat-banned, I wasn't connected properly, or I was just being ignored wholesale) At that point, and after not getting a response five or six times either by chat or by the commentators, I sort of took as given that my questions and presence weren't wanted in the stream, and so I up and left to do other stuff.

[quote="Jenja"]
Ok, this one is difficult to explain objectively without hurting anyone's pride, so if anyone feels offended by this, please consider this as constructive criticism and in no way personal. First of all I wanna say that I think the commentary was good. Especially FF5 I thought was way better than last years, maybe this was also due to us making sure to have a better focus on this one. There were however some parts that I think went not so good. One big thing that I noticed was Off Topic Talk and "Jokes-only-insiders-can-understand". In my opinion this was a big issue this time, as (without picking anyone out individually) I felt the commentary went Off Topic way too often and way too far. While it is fine to have some talk about other stuff, it should still be somewhat related to FF/Twitch/Speedruns/Runners. Nevertheless I did notice that at parts commentary was completely Off Topic for more than 10 consecutive minutes multiple times, which is not really helpful. 
The same goes with the "Inside Jokes". I know we have a lot of jokes or puns that are related to the Final Fantasy Community, but for a normal viewer these things are neither funny or interesting, but rather confusing. Once again I think having these at some parts is totally fine, but I felt like it was just too much at some parts.[/quote]

As a viewer for the first half of the run, I wholeheartedly agree with this.  I ended up just quitting watching the stream altogether about 3 hours into FFV because the commentary and Twitch chat had devolved into meme-spamming and inside jokes and I couldn't even get a simple question answered about what the time differential was at the moment (although I'm still not sure if that's because I got chat-banned, I wasn't connected properly, or I was just being ignored wholesale) At that point, and after not getting a response five or six times either by chat or by the commentators, I sort of took as given that my questions and presence weren't wanted in the stream, and so I up and left to do other stuff.

eLmaGus-

2015-03-08 12:03:41 pm

I must simply laugh.

Feedback time. It was fun as usual even if our team had some issues and i had a hard time staying awake at the end, but thats my own fault Cheesy

Anyways I will try to do the same as Jenja basically with feedback.

Games
FF Relay -> FF Games. Mystic Quest is not a Final Fantasy. 456 should stay 456. I know viewers are always like "but we need other games". Well there is the possibility of doing something else entirely, for example Any% -> 4JF% -> Sketch%.
Personally i feel like this is the most appropriate lineup for games.

Runners
I actually have 2 things to say about this. First, I think it will be a good idea to leave the "defending Champions" Team as it is for the next relay. I know people always complain about balancing, but lets be real here in a relay like this anything can happen.
Leaving the "Champions" in would be a nice touch imo.
Secondly, making runners aware that this is a thing. We always have trouble getting 5 and 6 runners, however especially the French community i think is not aware when signups for this relay are since they dont use SDA. I think next time we should have 2 people that generally raise awareness and contact runners directly and ask if they want to signup. I know that is not really how this is supposed to go, but it would help getting more runners interested in actually joining. FF4 has 1 million runners so we wont run out on them.

Also regarding switching up runners: I dont think it matters how many are new to a relay or how many are not running in the next one. The ones that really want to participate should participate, then there is people like me and others who will gladly step aside if need be and commentate/watch/organize.

Commentary
As always, FF4 nailed it. Even with the technical issues, it remained mostly focused on the game, some inside jokes aside, i thought that was very well done
FF5 was a bit of a contrast. For me personally it was great commentary because it was quiet, spread out and on point. However some people did not like that from what i heard, since there were 30 seconds of silence at some points. I mean like i said personally I have no issue with that, im just saying.
Honestly regarding FF6, i had trouble staying awake, I dont even remember most of it right now. The 3 commentators did talk and the runners mostly focused, thats all i know, somebody got excited for Kirin and wanted Cid dead. :>

Overall i felt like it was pretty well done, but could be a bit more organized next time. Meaning like i suggested earlier in this thread, commentators could get together and actually practice commentating once before the relay.

Additionally I would think it would be a good idea to not have the runners on the call. While that makes setting up a bit more difficult, there is no random noises in between when something goes wrong (especially when a commentator explains something) AND you could pull game audio from the runners.

Music
Which brings us to this point. A lot of people are okay with the music, but would prefer actual game audio. I count myself towards one of those people, while i dont have a big problem with playing music in the background. It is a different thing though to have actual game sound going.
My idea for next time would be to switch it up between the 4 teams and displaying somewhere on screen which teams audio is currently going. I feel like that would be a good solution.

Organisation
I would really like to have 2 relays/year. 6 months is a long time and in my opinion way enough. The biggest problem this time was pretty much that puwexil does the organisation on his own and had to manage EVERYTHING by himself. With RPG Limit Break coming up in 2 months, the relay suffered a bit in a few ways.

Imo having no introductory video, having the same layout as in the first relay and promotion were the most crucial things.

Like i said, it is totally understandable with all the things he got going, but for the next relay i hope that he will have 2-3 minions that will support him with layout/video/promotional stuff etcetc. I feel like a lot of the hype for this relay was lost because those things were not in place.

The idea of having an "FF Relay" and another Relay is not a bad one either, but like i said 6 months is a long time.
Possible other Relays: "SoulGaiaNigma", "The Big 3" (SMRPG, CT, Earthbound), "RPG-Europe Relay" (Lufia 2, Terranigma, Secret of Mana/Evermore)

In any case, we had fun and that is what counts. Very surprised we got this many viewers aswell since we were doing it on a completley new channel and it helped out RPG Limit Break aswell, which is great.

Im looking forward to improvements and suggestions/more feedback, until next time.

And remember kids, Y Burn always comes back stronger.

Feedback time. It was fun as usual even if our team had some issues and i had a hard time staying awake at the end, but thats my own fault :D

Anyways I will try to do the same as Jenja basically with feedback.

[b]Games[/b]
FF Relay -> FF Games. Mystic Quest is not a Final Fantasy. 456 should stay 456. I know viewers are always like "but we need other games". Well there is the possibility of doing something else entirely, for example Any% -> 4JF% -> Sketch%.
Personally i feel like this is the most appropriate lineup for games.

[b]Runners[/b]
I actually have 2 things to say about this. First, I think it will be a good idea to leave the "defending Champions" Team as it is for the next relay. I know people always complain about balancing, but lets be real here in a relay like this anything can happen.
Leaving the "Champions" in would be a nice touch imo.
Secondly, making runners aware that this is a thing. We always have trouble getting 5 and 6 runners, however especially the French community i think is not aware when signups for this relay are since they dont use SDA. I think next time we should have 2 people that generally raise awareness and contact runners directly and ask if they want to signup. I know that is not really how this is supposed to go, but it would help getting more runners interested in actually joining. FF4 has 1 million runners so we wont run out on them.

Also regarding switching up runners: I dont think it matters how many are new to a relay or how many are not running in the next one. The ones that really want to participate should participate, then there is people like me and others who will gladly step aside if need be and commentate/watch/organize.

[b]Commentary[/b]
As always, FF4 nailed it. Even with the technical issues, it remained mostly focused on the game, some inside jokes aside, i thought that was very well done
FF5 was a bit of a contrast. For me personally it was great commentary because it was quiet, spread out and on point. However some people did not like that from what i heard, since there were 30 seconds of silence at some points. I mean like i said personally I have no issue with that, im just saying.
Honestly regarding FF6, i had trouble staying awake, I dont even remember most of it right now. The 3 commentators did talk and the runners mostly focused, thats all i know, somebody got excited for Kirin and wanted Cid dead. :>

Overall i felt like it was pretty well done, but could be a bit more organized next time. Meaning like i suggested earlier in this thread, commentators could get together and actually practice commentating once before the relay.

Additionally I would think it would be a good idea to not have the runners on the call. While that makes setting up a bit more difficult, there is no random noises in between when something goes wrong (especially when a commentator explains something) AND you could pull game audio from the runners.

[b]Music[/b]
Which brings us to this point. A lot of people are okay with the music, but would prefer actual game audio. I count myself towards one of those people, while i dont have a big problem with playing music in the background. It is a different thing though to have actual game sound going.
My idea for next time would be to switch it up between the 4 teams and displaying somewhere on screen which teams audio is currently going. I feel like that would be a good solution.

[b]Organisation[/b]
I would really like to have 2 relays/year. 6 months is a long time and in my opinion way enough. The biggest problem this time was pretty much that puwexil does the organisation on his own and had to manage EVERYTHING by himself. With RPG Limit Break coming up in 2 months, the relay suffered a bit in a few ways.

Imo having no introductory video, having the same layout as in the first relay and promotion were the most crucial things.

Like i said, it is totally understandable with all the things he got going, but for the next relay i hope that he will have 2-3 minions that will support him with layout/video/promotional stuff etcetc. I feel like a lot of the hype for this relay was lost because those things were not in place.

The idea of having an "FF Relay" and another Relay is not a bad one either, but like i said 6 months is a long time.
Possible other Relays: "SoulGaiaNigma", "The Big 3" (SMRPG, CT, Earthbound), "RPG-Europe Relay" (Lufia 2, Terranigma, Secret of Mana/Evermore)

In any case, we had fun and that is what counts. Very surprised we got this many viewers aswell since we were doing it on a completley new channel and it helped out RPG Limit Break aswell, which is great.

Im looking forward to improvements and suggestions/more feedback, until next time.

And remember kids, Y Burn always comes back stronger.

Deln

2015-03-08 01:30:33 pm

Quote from Drifting Skies:

Quote from Jenja:

Ok, this one is difficult to explain objectively without hurting anyone's pride, so if anyone feels offended by this, please consider this as constructive criticism and in no way personal. First of all I wanna say that I think the commentary was good. Especially FF5 I thought was way better than last years, maybe this was also due to us making sure to have a better focus on this one. There were however some parts that I think went not so good. One big thing that I noticed was Off Topic Talk and "Jokes-only-insiders-can-understand". In my opinion this was a big issue this time, as (without picking anyone out individually) I felt the commentary went Off Topic way too often and way too far. While it is fine to have some talk about other stuff, it should still be somewhat related to FF/Twitch/Speedruns/Runners. Nevertheless I did notice that at parts commentary was completely Off Topic for more than 10 consecutive minutes multiple times, which is not really helpful.
The same goes with the "Inside Jokes". I know we have a lot of jokes or puns that are related to the Final Fantasy Community, but for a normal viewer these things are neither funny or interesting, but rather confusing. Once again I think having these at some parts is totally fine, but I felt like it was just too much at some parts.

As a viewer for the first half of the run, I wholeheartedly agree with this. I ended up just quitting watching the stream altogether about 3 hours into FFV because the commentary and Twitch chat had devolved into meme-spamming and inside jokes and I couldn't even get a simple question answered about what the time differential was at the moment (although I'm still not sure if that's because I got chat-banned, I wasn't connected properly, or I was just being ignored wholesale) At that point, and after not getting a response five or six times either by chat or by the commentators, I sort of took as given that my questions and presence weren't wanted in the stream, and so I up and left to do other stuff.

sometime its pretty hard to get an answer, but i know that the chat died at some point(nobody would be talking for a while), other than that i can assure you that none of the runners had chat up for obvious reasons, as for commentators.... i dont think it was their fault, but this is a thing that can be improved

[quote="Drifting Skies"][quote="Jenja"]
Ok, this one is difficult to explain objectively without hurting anyone's pride, so if anyone feels offended by this, please consider this as constructive criticism and in no way personal. First of all I wanna say that I think the commentary was good. Especially FF5 I thought was way better than last years, maybe this was also due to us making sure to have a better focus on this one. There were however some parts that I think went not so good. One big thing that I noticed was Off Topic Talk and "Jokes-only-insiders-can-understand". In my opinion this was a big issue this time, as (without picking anyone out individually) I felt the commentary went Off Topic way too often and way too far. While it is fine to have some talk about other stuff, it should still be somewhat related to FF/Twitch/Speedruns/Runners. Nevertheless I did notice that at parts commentary was completely Off Topic for more than 10 consecutive minutes multiple times, which is not really helpful. 
The same goes with the "Inside Jokes". I know we have a lot of jokes or puns that are related to the Final Fantasy Community, but for a normal viewer these things are neither funny or interesting, but rather confusing. Once again I think having these at some parts is totally fine, but I felt like it was just too much at some parts.[/quote]

As a viewer for the first half of the run, I wholeheartedly agree with this.  I ended up just quitting watching the stream altogether about 3 hours into FFV because the commentary and Twitch chat had devolved into meme-spamming and inside jokes and I couldn't even get a simple question answered about what the time differential was at the moment (although I'm still not sure if that's because I got chat-banned, I wasn't connected properly, or I was just being ignored wholesale) At that point, and after not getting a response five or six times either by chat or by the commentators, I sort of took as given that my questions and presence weren't wanted in the stream, and so I up and left to do other stuff.
[/quote]

sometime its pretty hard to get an answer, but i know that the chat died at some point(nobody would be talking for a while), other than that i can assure you that none of the runners had chat up for obvious reasons, as for commentators.... i dont think it was their fault, but this is a thing that can be improved

doicm

Edit history:

doicm: 2015-03-08 01:40:16 pm

2015-03-08 01:35:03 pm

Quote from Drifting Skies:

Quote from Jenja:

Ok, this one is difficult to explain objectively without hurting anyone's pride, so if anyone feels offended by this, please consider this as constructive criticism and in no way personal. First of all I wanna say that I think the commentary was good. Especially FF5 I thought was way better than last years, maybe this was also due to us making sure to have a better focus on this one. There were however some parts that I think went not so good. One big thing that I noticed was Off Topic Talk and "Jokes-only-insiders-can-understand". In my opinion this was a big issue this time, as (without picking anyone out individually) I felt the commentary went Off Topic way too often and way too far. While it is fine to have some talk about other stuff, it should still be somewhat related to FF/Twitch/Speedruns/Runners. Nevertheless I did notice that at parts commentary was completely Off Topic for more than 10 consecutive minutes multiple times, which is not really helpful.
The same goes with the "Inside Jokes". I know we have a lot of jokes or puns that are related to the Final Fantasy Community, but for a normal viewer these things are neither funny or interesting, but rather confusing. Once again I think having these at some parts is totally fine, but I felt like it was just too much at some parts.

As a viewer for the first half of the run, I wholeheartedly agree with this. I ended up just quitting watching the stream altogether about 3 hours into FFV because the commentary and Twitch chat had devolved into meme-spamming and inside jokes and I couldn't even get a simple question answered about what the time differential was at the moment (although I'm still not sure if that's because I got chat-banned, I wasn't connected properly, or I was just being ignored wholesale) At that point, and after not getting a response five or six times either by chat or by the commentators, I sort of took as given that my questions and presence weren't wanted in the stream, and so I up and left to do other stuff.

As an additional viewer, I can attest that I also had difficulty in getting questions answered. This is a strongly developed community that has been around for quite a while, and while I've been aware of it for a long time as well as some of the jokes, it's been pretty difficult to integrate myself with it. I stuck around because of how exciting some of the comebacks were and such, but as for the commentary and chat, I mostly ignored it due to the fact that it felt rather "insider?" (I don't know if that's the right word for it.) I did have lots of fun watching the relay besides that, so great relay all!

EDIT: Disclaimer - I'm already aware of how strange I am in these sorts of things, so you can disregard my comments of not being able to integrate well into a community if you wish. That would be somewhat logical, I think. Lips Sealed

[quote="Drifting Skies"][quote="Jenja"]
Ok, this one is difficult to explain objectively without hurting anyone's pride, so if anyone feels offended by this, please consider this as constructive criticism and in no way personal. First of all I wanna say that I think the commentary was good. Especially FF5 I thought was way better than last years, maybe this was also due to us making sure to have a better focus on this one. There were however some parts that I think went not so good. One big thing that I noticed was Off Topic Talk and "Jokes-only-insiders-can-understand". In my opinion this was a big issue this time, as (without picking anyone out individually) I felt the commentary went Off Topic way too often and way too far. While it is fine to have some talk about other stuff, it should still be somewhat related to FF/Twitch/Speedruns/Runners. Nevertheless I did notice that at parts commentary was completely Off Topic for more than 10 consecutive minutes multiple times, which is not really helpful. 
The same goes with the "Inside Jokes". I know we have a lot of jokes or puns that are related to the Final Fantasy Community, but for a normal viewer these things are neither funny or interesting, but rather confusing. Once again I think having these at some parts is totally fine, but I felt like it was just too much at some parts.[/quote]

As a viewer for the first half of the run, I wholeheartedly agree with this.  I ended up just quitting watching the stream altogether about 3 hours into FFV because the commentary and Twitch chat had devolved into meme-spamming and inside jokes and I couldn't even get a simple question answered about what the time differential was at the moment (although I'm still not sure if that's because I got chat-banned, I wasn't connected properly, or I was just being ignored wholesale) At that point, and after not getting a response five or six times either by chat or by the commentators, I sort of took as given that my questions and presence weren't wanted in the stream, and so I up and left to do other stuff.
[/quote]
As an additional viewer, I can attest that I also had difficulty in getting questions answered. This is a strongly developed community that has been around for quite a while, and while I've been aware of it for a long time as well as some of the jokes, it's been pretty difficult to integrate myself with it. I stuck around because of how exciting some of the comebacks were and such, but as for the commentary and chat, I mostly ignored it due to the fact that it felt rather "insider?" (I don't know if that's the right word for it.) I did have lots of fun watching the relay besides that, so great relay all!

EDIT: Disclaimer - I'm already aware of how strange I am in these sorts of things, so you can disregard my comments of not being able to integrate well into a community if you wish. That would be somewhat logical, I think. :-X

Sakegeist

2015-03-08 02:02:28 pm

Quote from eLmaGus-:

Additionally I would think it would be a good idea to not have the runners on the call. While that makes setting up a bit more difficult, there is no random noises in between when something goes wrong (especially when a commentator explains something) AND you could pull game audio from the runners.

Music
Which brings us to this point. A lot of people are okay with the music, but would prefer actual game audio. I count myself towards one of those people, while i dont have a big problem with playing music in the background. It is a different thing though to have actual game sound going.
My idea for next time would be to switch it up between the 4 teams and displaying somewhere on screen which teams audio is currently going. I feel like that would be a good solution.

These are the two main points I want to comment on from a viewer perspective even though most about commentary has been said already.

Commentary

I agree with eLmaGus that the runners not being in the commentary call is well worth considering, with 3-4 commentators per games as well as 4 runners the call felt "crowded" at places and at certain times there seemed to be a lot of background noise/ runner reactions to what was happening in their runs. While I completely understand the feeling of wanting to rant about run RNG or the "OH SHIT" moment and relief when something goes wrong or the runner just barely escapes death, I personally felt that it was kind of unfitting in the context of a 4 way race with as many commentators as were present, in a few spots it was actually distracting because you heard the runner reactions to something that had not yet happened on the stream taking some of the suspense away.

Having the commentator practice their commentary using one of the relay vods seems like a good idea to me for future relays since it is incerdibly difficult to just show up and wing commentary for a race like this no matter how much knowledge the indivdual commentators have.

Overall i want to say that for the parts of the relay i actively watched (FF4&5) commentary was very well done and i'm talking about minor tweaks here.

Music

While for the most part the music was ok I feel like there was no point in the relay where the music being played was actually favorable over having actual ingame audio from one of the runners. In some spots the music did however become a bit distracting in my opinion, I think it was the end of FF4 for example where the music being played had some kind of vocals which did not mesh very well with commentary (I might be wrong about the exact spot in the relay here, but I remember it being an issue once or twice). Having a setup where runners are not in the commentary call seems like it would make it possible to switch between runners for game audio during fitting parts of the run.

Bonus Game

One thing that hasn't been touched on yet is the way votes for the bonus games were handled. It was nearly impossible for viewers to tell what kind of impact their votes would have on the decision of a bonus game and as a direct result I have seen a lot of confusion about FFMQ being chosen while Earthbound ran away with the viewer vote. From what I heard from runners in the realy the way that the runner votes played out this time around led to a situation where the viewer poll had absolutely no impact on the outcome. I think for future relays it should be either A LOT more transparent how the process actually works or the system should maybe be changed to either only a poll for the viewers or a poll between the runners and not be a mix of both as it seemed to lead to quite some confusion even for some runners of the bonus games.

In closing I do want to congratulate you guys on a well done event though, it was fun to watch and you could tell that everybody involved was having a lot of fun with it. Looking forward to the next one!

[quote="eLmaGus-"]

Additionally I would think it would be a good idea to not have the runners on the call. While that makes setting up a bit more difficult, there is no random noises in between when something goes wrong (especially when a commentator explains something) AND you could pull game audio from the runners.

[b]Music[/b]
Which brings us to this point. A lot of people are okay with the music, but would prefer actual game audio. I count myself towards one of those people, while i dont have a big problem with playing music in the background. It is a different thing though to have actual game sound going.
My idea for next time would be to switch it up between the 4 teams and displaying somewhere on screen which teams audio is currently going. I feel like that would be a good solution.
[/quote]

These are the two main points I want to comment on from a viewer perspective even though most about commentary has been said already.

[b]Commentary[/b]

I agree with eLmaGus that the runners not being in the commentary call is well worth considering, with 3-4 commentators per games as well as 4 runners the call felt "crowded" at places and at certain times there seemed to be a lot of background noise/ runner reactions to what was happening in their runs. While I completely understand the feeling of wanting to rant about run RNG or the "OH SHIT" moment and relief when something goes wrong or the runner just barely escapes death, I personally felt that it was kind of unfitting in the context of a 4 way race with as many commentators as were present, in a few spots it was actually distracting because you heard the runner reactions to something that had not yet happened on the stream taking some of the suspense away.

Having the commentator practice their commentary using one of the relay vods seems like a good idea to me for future relays since it is incerdibly difficult to just show up and wing commentary for a race like this no matter how much knowledge the indivdual commentators have.

Overall i want to say that for the parts of the relay i actively watched (FF4&5) commentary was very well done and i'm talking about minor tweaks here.

[b]Music[/b]

While for the most part the music was ok I feel like there was no point in the relay where the music being played was actually favorable over having actual ingame audio from one of the runners. In some spots the music did however become a bit distracting in my opinion, I think it was the end of FF4 for example where the music being played had some kind of vocals which did not mesh very well with commentary (I might be wrong about the exact spot in the relay here, but I remember it being an issue once or twice). Having a setup where runners are not in the commentary call seems like it would make it possible to switch between runners for game audio during fitting parts of the run.

[b]Bonus Game[/b]

One thing that hasn't been touched on yet is the way votes for the bonus games were handled. It was nearly impossible for viewers to tell what kind of impact their votes would have on the decision of a bonus game and as a direct result I have seen a lot of confusion about FFMQ being chosen while Earthbound ran away with the viewer vote. From what I heard from runners in the realy the way that the runner votes played out this time around led to a situation where the viewer poll had absolutely no impact on the outcome. I think for future relays it should be either A LOT more transparent how the process actually works or the system should maybe be changed to either only a poll for the viewers or a poll between the runners and not be a mix of both as it seemed to lead to quite some confusion even for some runners of the bonus games.

In closing I do want to congratulate you guys on a well done event though, it was fun to watch and you could tell that everybody involved was having a lot of fun with it. Looking forward to the next one!

Deuceler

2015-03-08 06:05:57 pm

SPEEDruns not SAFEruns

Figured I'd throw my two cents in as a viewer instead of participating this time.

Commentary

It's been said but it's getting a little crowded. Having the runners in the call needs to be cut out (thought this last relay as well) and we should have two dedicated commentators for each game. You can have someone who is extremely knowledgeable about the game and a talker easily for each game and I think it would help. You could easily explain mechanics/tricks and still read pressing questions from the chat.

Games

Goes without saying there should be no change - but it's time to mix up the categories. Understandable 5 is a bit different than 4 and 6, but I don't think that will sway viewers from tuning in. Hell, 5 had a higher viewer count than 6 from what I saw.

Bonus Game Voting

I think we need to completely cut out the runners / teams from having a vote here and let the viewers alone decide. There is enough people watching the justify this imo.

Branding

I think running this on the RPG Limit Break channel was a great call, but the relay is big enough to justify having it's own logos etc. Kari does a great job with team logos but having Chris make the layout last time really made it unique.

The Race

I really like eLmaGus's idea of keeping the champs around for the next relay. Gives the runners some incentive to continue playing their game and have the crown until the next race. Another thing we should institute is using RTA timing for each team, if someone isn't ready it should cost there team that time. There's no reason for someone to not be ready to hit start well before they are up. That's just my opinion - we could time each run individually still but have a total time for each team.

All in all the event was done well and the quality of runners continues to improve, thanks to Puwexil for graciously hosting this - I know it's not easy to get it all together.

Figured I'd throw my two cents in as a viewer instead of participating this time.

[b][u] Commentary [/u][/b]

It's been said but it's getting a little crowded. Having the runners in the call needs to be cut out (thought this last relay as well) and we should have two dedicated commentators for each game. You can have someone who is extremely knowledgeable about the game and a talker easily for each game and I think it would help. You could easily explain mechanics/tricks and still read pressing questions from the chat.

[b][u] Games [/u][/b]

Goes without saying there should be no change - but it's time to mix up the categories. Understandable 5 is a bit different than 4 and 6, but I don't think that will sway viewers from tuning in. Hell, 5 had a higher viewer count than 6 from what I saw.

[b][u] Bonus Game Voting [/u][/b]

I think we need to completely cut out the runners / teams from having a vote here and let the viewers alone decide. There is enough people watching the justify this imo.

[b][u] Branding [/u][/b]

I think running this on the RPG Limit Break channel was a great call, but the relay is big enough to justify having it's own logos etc. Kari does a great job with team logos but having Chris make the layout last time really made it unique.

[b][u] The Race [/u][/b]

I really like eLmaGus's idea of keeping the champs around for the next relay. Gives the runners some incentive to continue playing their game and have the crown until the next race. Another thing we should institute is using RTA timing for each team, if someone isn't ready it should cost there team that time. There's no reason for someone to not be ready to hit start well before they are up. That's just my opinion - we could time each run individually still but have a total time for each team.

All in all the event was done well and the quality of runners continues to improve, thanks to Puwexil for graciously hosting this - I know it's not easy to get it all together.

LCC

2015-03-08 06:49:58 pm

As for set up times being added: have a 5 minute limit and then dock for anything above that. You can't really predict when problems will arise, so giving a little bit of leeway is good. My run was delayed a little bit because I changed my name to upper case so my stream would appear on the page the commentators used, but didn't let puwexil know (my fault). In fathlo's case he made a mistake with setting up encounter rng and tried to fix it, which he shouldn't have done since it delayed things heavily. He likely lost time playing outside of the encounter string he's used to, so this time around i'd say his team won.

Music: avoid anything with vocals. I personally prefer to nico style of switching game audio around, but that's me.