EVE Alliance Tournament Discussion

More knowledgeable EVE players than myself might have been able to dissect the commentary and spot errors. I just know that you kept it coming, and now I know why you didn't sound thrilled at the action I was seeing.

I think you did a good job commentating, and thanks your posts above I see that you were doing it while chewing gum and dancing backward like Ginger Rogers, so my hat's off to you. I don't do PvP, and I don't know enough about the game to appreciate the depth of the strategies in play, but this format kept me glued to the big screen all weekend. Thank you very much!

Hope you get beef up staff for next month, and keep the energy high.

Thanks for this "Behind the Scenes" report! I'm looking forward to your next tournament in March.

Awesome report Bacc, it gives some incredible insight and makes one realize what a huge load of work stands behind such an event!
I remember hosting a 2on2 frig tourney back in Rote and even that was quite alot of work, so you guys definetly have my biggest respect for pulling it off (in my oppinion) rather smothly, especialy with so few people.

As Hoarr said before, we (exodunks) all had a blast! It was my first (apart from some smaller ones in-corp/alliance) real tournament and i realy liked it and hopefully will be able to participate again in March :)

That beeing said, some input from me:
(most people i talked with about those points where feeling the same btw)

1st - Frequency:
As far as i understand it, you guys want to do this on a monthly basis. Don't!
It will not only wear you guys out, bu also the teams who are participating. It will also most likely interfere with the AT and things like the NEO.
And eventual it will also get borend for the viewers, unless there is a distinctive difference between those tournaments. Most people see Tournaments as something special, that will drop if it happens too often.
Maybe do it only every 2nd or 3rd Month?

2nd - System:
In my oppinion, "Double Elimination" paired with a "Best of 3" and all over the timeframe of only 2 days is just to much (I realy like the idea of lots of matches in a relatively short ammount of time tho).
For the teams, the 10 minutes between the matches is a lot of stres (especialy if you want to react to the previous one in any sort of way that requires refitting).
And if anything forces you into a delay, it will push back the matches a lot. (Like you said, the 2nd day it was 4am in the morning for some russian guys. I actualy had to leave early aswell due to working on mondays)
Maybe choose either DE or Bo3? Or spread it over two weekends?


Nevertheless this is a great thing and i hope it will continue
Good work!

For those who don't know me, I'm the Oneiros that refused to die during the match of Insurance Fraud Inc VS The Reputation Cartel, giving the victory to my team and I'm here to say a few words from my point of view about this amazing experience.

It all started when our captain, Fafer, asked me if I was interested in becoming member of the Insurance Fraud Inc tournament team. I had never flown in a tournament before, so it was something totally new for me, but I said yes as I was given a unique chance to enrich my knowledge as well as the opportunity to fly with the so-called "old wolves", such as Fafer and Bluemelon.

Our training sessions were interesting and educating. Most of us had never flown together before and this was the hardest part, but through hard work we managed to unite as team and work our way towards the big weekend of the first SCL tournament.

I didn't even realise how fast the days passed, when we all gathered and started preparations a few hours before our first match. Being always a bit anxious and a control freak, I had everything sorted: water, a sufficient amount of coffee, spare batteries and the rest. Chatting with my new friends helped me relax and focus on the upcoming fights.
Saturday was stressful, as it was our premiere. Losing against Warlords of the Deep, resulted in us playing on the losers' brackets on Sunday. When I woke up next morning, I knew we had a difficult day ahead, but I was looking forward to it. We ended up having 10 matches in a row!! We were getting tired after some point, but we all worked as well-tuned machines; fight, go back, prepare, check, fight again and so on. I couldn't even calculate how many times I fought. The only thing I had in mind whenever I boarded my Oneiros was "I will not let my guys die, I will keep them alive and team work will lead us to victory".
The match with The Reputation Cartel was the one I will remember forever. The first minutes looked like a harmless but tensed dance between the two teams. But then the first blood was shed. "There you go girl, do what you have to do and don't let them kill your guys", I thought to myself. As time was passing, andrenaline was reaching high levels. "Eraya is primaried", sounded like a bomb in everybody's ears. It's one of the moments when time stops and you hold your breath and keep struggling. "Eraya down". With this phrase I'm pretty sure I made everyone's heart stop beating for a moment. At that point, I didn't understand what was happening around me. Then Bluemelon woke me up, saying: "Girl, do you know what you just did?" -"Yes", I replied, "I died and we lost!". It took me some seconds to realise what had just occurred; my ship died literally half a second after the match was over, as CCP Fozzie announced. Victory was ours and I could start breathing again!

The outcome? It was one of the best experiences in my EVE life! If only the commentators wouldn't refer to me as "HE". But of course, how could they know? It is said that MMORPG also stands for "Many Men Online Role Playing Girls". It is also said that "Girls can't PvP". Who knows...

All in all, it was an exciting weekend. I would like to thank everyone who organized and helped with this, since without their contribution we wouldn't live such legendary moments. You guys did a great work! Special thanks and a place in my heart from now on for CCP Fozzie, who volunteered and spent his whole weekend helping with the event. Congratulations to the rest of the teams for doing their best, everybody is a winner. Last but not least, a great thanks to Fafer and Bluemelon, who put themselves into this and lead us to the 3rd place of the first SCL tournament.

It will be so. Henceforth Eraya Silverstone will be referred to as "she".

That was one place we failed this weekend, though I chalk it up to time and staff limitations.

We really want to showcase the players and teams much much more. I watched League of Legends tournaments even before I played much of the game because the stories were compelling. And I rooted for teams I had never heard of in the Season 2 finals because of such stories. The Vietnamese team out of nowhere shocking the Asian qualifiers and earning a ticket to LA for the finals, making so many waves with their victory that the Vietnamese PRESIDENT flew to LA to be there to cheer for the team? How could you NOT want them to win!?

SC2 and LoL tournaments do a fantastic job of interviewing players, giving backgrounds on the players and teams, and generally investing the viewers in what they're watching beyond just the gameplay. For anyone who follows SC2, you'll probably have heard of EG InControl, aka Geoff Robinson. He's a bit of an underachiever when it comes to SC2 tournaments, but he's still one of the more popular players, streamers and figures in the scene just because he's such a likable guy. His teammate Idra on the other hand is quite the opposite. Idra is a bit of a "badass" in the sense that he's often a complete jerk to other competitors, never gives his opponents credit for their wins instead blaming himself and ragequitting matches when things aren't going his way. He too is well known in the scene not as much for his skill, but his personality. These are the stories that EVE tournaments lack, and they add a lot of flavor to the tournaments. It's no longer blue team vs red team (another failure I'm noticing on our part--we had a hard time working in the team names during matches, either due to forgetfulness or the intensity of the action, which in turn detracts from the viewing experience--not having the UI that hits the stream makes it harder to remember though).

We saw our viewership peak far above the rest of the weekend anytime the TEST team played. TEST are known, they have a lot of members, and so it follows that a lot of people would want to watch them compete. A lot of the other teams were unknown until their pilot names showed up on the screen, and even then in many cases still seemed anonymous. EVE is a big place with a lot of names, and sometimes it's easy to get lost in the haze. Hell, I didn't realize Seldarine was the captain of the team I lost to in the EVE NEO until he and I sat down to chat!

We really want to do some player spotlights, team showcases, and fill some of that dead air time that we all hate so much with these stories. How much more exciting would that Oneiros race would have been if the viewers knew more about you Eraya, what you have done in EVE, and got to know you in a 60 second spotlight? How about when Bob Shaftoes hero tackled a Tengu in his Algos in a move that turned that particular match into his team's favor? Those moments are much more memorable if we know the pilots involved, and that's something that I hope we can bring to future iterations of the SCL.