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Hi everyone,
Sorry I’m writing this right after losing 3-2 to Optic so my mentality isn’t at its best but I felt like this is something I wanted to talk about. I like writing blogs a lot in general, but to be honest I’ve never really written something against what I perceive as the flow of the community, and I unfortunately care a lot about what people write to me. So let’s all just try to play nice; I’m probably wrong about a lot of things but I wanted to share my thoughts on the ESL/FB stuff anyways. I don’t think I’m overly biased, but my esl hoodie is my only esports hoodie I wear outside so I guess take what I’m writing with a grain of salt.
On reddit I’ve personally been on reddit since before I was involved in esports. Well perhaps esports also fully got me into reddit as I loved following the scene on /r/starcraft. But anyways, reddit is an incredibly useful website for information aggregation--even more so for common interest groups like the esports community. I’ve found everything from announcements to cool mechanics to drama to tournament threads to incredible content in general on /r/dota2 and I personally just like the website in general. However, in my opinion the reddit community tends to become super bandwagony. I feel like any attempt to reason from both sides gets shut down completely and the hatred just rises to the top. It seems like intentions and overarching messages often get ignored in lieu of fallaciously deconstructing arguments--often via a single unrelated mistake--and trying to win the internet argument rather than trying to improve the situation. It’s such an unfortunate reality of what is otherwise such an incredible community.
As a pro player, I often get advice about how I should ignore reddit or people that tweet mean things but it’s honestly so hard. It’s just really easy to read a thread on reddit and fiend. Every pro player knows they shouldn’t but every pro player does it anyways. Some of the best content for dota is on reddit and I’ve learned a ton from a lot of bug threads or even some weird idea comments so I don’t even think it’d good to just fully ignore reddit. But sometimes the hate can become overwhelming and it can easily destroy a player’s mentality. You know you’re screwed when you start not wanting to make mistakes because of the community/reddit; making mistakes are how you learn. Pro esports players still aren’t on the same level as traditional athletes (of course). We don’t have the same type of media training, and even if we did we don’t have the same infrastructure growing up as a traditional athlete. Pro players typically are just pub stars who get good enough. Traditional athletes are more used to dealing with a bit of publicity and are in more constrained mediums. Also, to be fair, there are some dumbass traditional athletes in terms of pr when you let them go on social media. Anyways this was sort of a useless paragraph, but I just wanted to say that it would be nice if people understood that what they write has a good chance to be read and that it will affect people. Please just try to have some empathy.
On having facebook as a streaming platform First I’m going to talk about the main problems I’ve seen with facebook as a streaming platform. Full disclosure: for day 1 I watched ppd’s stream or ingame as they were more compelling products to me and I only watched off the FB stream starting day 2. Also, I was too lazy to try to find the stream on mobile so when I watched on my phone I watched a twitch restream. I know that the day 1 stream had a lot of issues. To be honest day one problems just seem like a reality in the tech space for some reason. Also the lack of ability to clip highlights was very saddening. I know there were also a lot of issues with emotes on the screen and key info being covered. The chat isn’t as good as twitch chat (but then again, what is). Furthermore, people just seem to dislike Facebook as a company. Which is completely fair. People should fight for their privacy and facebook has some pretty insane data mining/tracking. So I’m willing to say that all of these are relatively easily fixed except the last one and I personally don’t think they seem that bad. People might feel more strongly about some of them and that’s probably fair. Edit: last night I watched the Facebook stream on mobile and it was fine with the button that made everything normal (no emotes and chat) Maybe that button wasn't there before.
Now for what I perceived as the positives of the facebook stream. To me the most important thing is that the quality of the stream was very very good for me when I started watching on day 2. Now I love twitch and some of my favourite people work there, but everyone should know that competition is a good thing. I just find it ironic that the same people who are hating on facebook coming into the streaming space are probably the same people who complain about the problems that ISP monopolies like comcast bring. Competition drives improvement and growth and I feel like it should be a welcome part of our community. Furthermore, let's be honest, facebook does have an incredibly massive user base. Esports would benefit from tapping into that audience through this partnership. I don’t know how much said audience will pay attention but I don’t see how it would be a negative thing. I see a lot of talk about the transitionary period that esports is going through as it approaches mainstream status and for better or worse that seems to be the path esports is going. I think that streaming an event on a social media website that over a quarter of the world's population is on is pretty cool. Much better than trying to put esports on an old media like television but that’s probably a topic for another day. Anyways I just wanted to say that my relatives probably have no clue what twitch is but I could easily link them the Facebook stream. They would probably be more accustomed to it similarly to how I had to adjust to viewing on fb instead of twitch. Well maybe in the future when it's hopefully had its kinks ironed out and has more viewers.
On ESL I think there’s a fairly common misconception about tournament organizers in esports. My understanding is that they currently don’t really make that much money from each event if at all. My understanding is that hosting big esports events is basically like investing into the future in the hope that you will get future sponsors/outside investment to come in. Well that might be a bit outdated. Maybe they’re at the easy money making stage already but I know at one point events were not profitable at all. Anyways, if hosting these events was super mega profitable then there would be more event organizers clamoring to host these big ones. I mentioned before that esports seems to be heading towards mainstream appeal but I think we are still in a transition period. I’m not trying to tell you to feel sorry for ESL because they’re poor or something--I don’t think that's true either--but that ESL wanting to sell broadcast rights is pretty reasonable. I can tell you from a pro player perspective that stability from sponsors is very highly appreciated and allows you to play better/produce a better product.
While Valve brought the hammer down on ESL regarding broadcasting rights, I think that ESL’s initial interpretation was pretty reasonable. Dota is a very unique space and Valve being a bit vague makes the situation even more complex. I think that in pretty much any other game/sport if you host an event then you will own the broadcasting rights. ESL brought all the competitors together and planned the event so it’s not too much a stretch. You don’t see people twitch streaming an MMA fight (unless they have a controller and are pretending to play) or another sports event, but let’s be honest, no one would have been surprised if the MMA stream got taken down. Obviously Valve owning the IP makes it a bit different, but I don’t think ESL’s interpretation was anything crazy. My personal opinion is that I don’t think people should be able to stream the games off dotatv and get subs/ad revenue from it, but at the same time I can appreciate what Valve is trying to do with their policy.
Now to be fair, ESL definitely messed up. Their handling of the situation was bad. Their PR was worse. I wish that ESL had done some better marketing. Maybe have an AMA before the event to smooth out some of the perceived issues. Maybe they would have even seen how important some functions like clipping highlights are to the community. I feel like ESL lost sight a bit of what made their events good in the past: their viewers. While viewers may not directly give ESL money for any games been event, they definitely attract sponsors longterm and are at the end of the day why the competitive scene and ESL can exist. Overall, ESL clearly messed up how they handled the backlash and should have done a better job but I don’t think it’s because they’re evil. I’m just sort of sad that the situation is detracting so much from what seems like an otherwise great event.
What I would have liked to see is maybe ESL trying to work with the twitch streamers instead of sending out DCMAs. First of all the DCMAs just seemed sort of cold and corporate and just antagonized a community that prides itself on its grassroots beginnings. I don’t know if this is against the Twitch.tv rules but maybe they could have just asked each streamer to periodically point/link to the main facebook stream. I’m sure most streamers would have been happy to work with them. I guess maybe it’s not an optimal solution for either party but I’m sure someone smarter than me could come up with a better cooperative solution.
Anyways, to tie this into what I was writing before, I think that people need to remember that the people at ESL work hard on their product and that they’re people too. Sometimes your intentions just come off poorly and you make mistakes. Also I can almost guarantee you that none of the casters/personalities that defended ESL were asked by ESL to help them or under some sort of contract to do so. I’m fairly certain they just looked around them at the people working hard and empathized. Yes, ESL fucked up. But dear lord some of the comments are insane. Like look at the comments about theflyingdj not knowing you could watch twitch on mobile without logging in. It’s actually pretty reasonable that he doesn’t know that because when you use the app then you need to log in. And if you have the app you probably don’t watch off a browser ever.
To sum it all up, the goal of this blog is just to try to get people to be a little nicer to each other. People at ESL work very hard on their product and they messed up. They are still people too. It must really suck to read some of these threads. Esports will be exactly what we all make of it together.
A short word on team AP Sorry one thing I'd like to clarify first. On the vgj dq’ing us situation. My statement on them was a bit over emotional. While I was on break I had done some replay review for them to try to help them out because I like their players a lot. I expected them to want to wait when there wasn't really a true obligation. They should not have been forced into that situation in the first place by the admins. Also when I said aim to get last place at a lan I meant it more as a “if we don't work together to improve in na then we will all just suck together on the international stage regardless of which one of us go,” but I framed my idea very poorly. There's a lot of bullshit with na teams refusing to scrim/help each other because they think they're marginally better and I think it's so bad for the region's development. Anyways I've apologized to both Jack and their operational manager and would like to say that I have a lot of respect for all the parties involved in vgj. Also Conrad told me twitlonger was garbage for blogs and long posts and now I completely understand why.
Now onto AP. Even though we lost to optic in the Katowice last chance finals, I’m incredibly happy with our progress; being able to qualify for a minor and be one game away from a major leaves me incredibly hopeful. This specific roster played for a week in december and then took a three week break and only started playing together again on the 2nd of January. For having been together for such a short period of time, I’m feeling pretty good about our future. Both the team and players have honestly exceeded my expectations and I haven’t felt this motivated since the post ti4 iteration of c9 before I got Skype pizza partied. It's a very nice feeling. I’m looking forward to getting into a teamhouse/bootcamp and being able to progress at an even faster pace.
We have found an organization willing to support us and I think they’ll be doing that announcement sometime soon. Sorry about the announcement of an announcement--it’s the EG influence. Thanks to those who have started to support us! Looking forward to the future. I'll maybe be writing more blogs in the future.
Why can't i indent my paragraphs wtf help i can't even put 5 spaces infront edit: ty to the liquiddota staff who fixed my shit but don't indent my subtitles xp
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What are your thoughts on Meteor Hammer? Is it a legit item on support Naga?
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Just fyi, you can use the [ indent ] tag to indent text (without spaces).
Like so.
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I think there’s a fairly common misconception about tournament organizers in esports. My understanding is that they currently don’t really make that much money from each event if at all. My understanding is that hosting big esports events is basically like investing into the future in the hope that you will get future sponsors/outside investment to come in. Well that might be a bit outdated. Maybe they’re at the easy money making stage already but I know at one point events were not profitable at all. Anyways, if hosting these events was super mega profitable then there would be more event organizers clamoring to host these big ones. I mentioned before that esports seems to be heading towards mainstream appeal but I think we are still in a transition period. I’m not trying to tell you to feel sorry for ESL because they’re poor or something--I don’t think that's true either--but that ESL wanting to sell broadcast rights is pretty reasonable. I can tell you from a pro player perspective that stability from sponsors is very highly appreciated and allows you to play better/produce a better product.
Your perspective is correct. I think ESL only became profitable around 2014 or so but as a sales agency they have a lot of valuable properties for sponsorship and broadcasting rights.
Thanks for the insight and thoughts.
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Someone let this man indent his paragraphs stat.
Good read on ESL's fiasco, and a cautionary tale to approach PR and stream client transitions with a careful hand. It's a shame they burned so much goodwill from the community, and likely won't recover it easily. Hope to read more blogs in the future!
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11589 Posts
Thanks for the perspective Aui, I agree with a lot of what you've said here, especially with regards to ESL's public relations being the biggest issue at hand.
As someone who has a much more limited exposure to the public eye, I can also somewhat empathize with the reddit issue. Unfortunately, the worst comments often come from people who want you to read them because somehow they feel justified in making you feel bad. I definitely don't know how you, as someone who is constantly exposed to the rollercoaster ride of having fans, manage to keep your cool.
Good luck in the future with your team. Hopefully you won't run into Optic every qualifier from now on
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Thanks for the blog Aui, I really appreciate hearing thoughts from players like yourself that can see both sides of a problem and come to a reasonable conclusion.
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28057 Posts
On January 27 2018 03:57 PhoenixVoid wrote: Someone let this man indent his paragraphs stat.
Nixer did some light formatting for him.
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2774 Posts
Updated your post with a little BBCode so you've got some indents now.
(For future reference if anyone wants to read up on BBCode formatting wo1fwood has a brilliant guide )
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On January 27 2018 04:08 Nixer wrote:Updated your post with a little BBCode so you've got some indents now. (For future reference if anyone wants to read up on BBCode formatting wo1fwood has a brilliant guide )
ty sir
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I agree that there needed to be a more cooperative solution for personal streams vs the main stream.
If its truly the case that the product with the most viewers is individuals with no production then I think thats something ESL really needs to look into and reflect upon rather than blanket banning. I'm glad Valve is fostering that kind of thinking.
I really hope AP continues to go well, been following the quals and some real exciting games. Was pretty crushed last night when you guys didn't make it but excited to see you on lan!
Thanks for your contribution and thoughts and hope to see you stream some more!
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damn reading the reddit comments its scary how clueless dota community are
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Good read AUI, much agreed. Now here's to hoping that those who's mind needs changing will actually read this. Haters gonna hate after all.
Good luck with the team, I hope NA quality will pick up. Nothing like some good rivalries.
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Cool blog Aui.
You're right, reddit is bandwagon-y. It is harsh and unforgiving and the way votes work, dissenting opinions can get shafted easily. And when controversy like ESL happens, everyone wants to get their voice out, and the best way to do it is to fuel the cult of outrage. At least on a subreddit like /r/dota2, you don't go to reddit to have a real discussion to say the least. Reading the front page the past few days before the Valve post was just horrendous for me.
While I personally don't have gripes against Facebook as a company or their streaming service (worked fine for me), rolling it out the way they did for Genting just feels like a series of mistakes. Their testing of the platform didn't account for 1080p60 or scale, by their own admittance. And there's the lack of accessibility which I've expressed before, the stream is difficult to find. And then their follow-up actions... well there's no justification there.
Anyway, even though there are always going to be people who are adamant against using FB as a platform, the current iteration of the platform is not ready to compete against Twitch or DotaTV. And I think ESL and Facebook should both have known this going into the event and should have tried to make some adjustments before the event began. I'm of the opinion that this kind of event is small fries for FB, so who knows if this will light a fire under their asses to make things better by Katowice. They definitely have room to grow and can do it, but it's not going to be up to ESL, it's going to be up to Facebook to deliver.
Good luck to you and Animal Planet in future qualifiers!
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I always really enjoy reading your inputs Aui. They're so well reasoned and thought out which always gives the outside party more info without tilting them.
Will always be a fan!
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Nice read and good points, even though I disagree with some of them
(And *psssst*, it's DMCA )
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should've finished that sociology major bro or practicing instead of ruining unranked games.
i'm jk, mucho supporto Dr. Ling <3
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Thanks for the blog, lots of agreeable points in there that have certainly crossed my mind before. That said, it's usually helpful whenever someone as deeply involved in the scene as a pro player pens their thoughts for the community to read and ponder as it can genuinely shed light on a lot of things that goes on behind the scenes.
Looking forward to any future blogs and all the best with AP!
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Thank you for reminding people to put into perspective, Aui. I sometimes find myself with a subconscious bias again teams I don't root for, and, despite myself, I sometimes put them down in my comments. I mean, I'm the nicest guy anyone could meet, but there are some comments of mine that probably wouldn't make players feel good about themselves.
I think you're right about the knee-jerk reaction of some in regards to the problems with the Facebook-stream. That is, people don't want to give ESL and Facebook a chance, partly due to the bad PR and partly due to resistance to change. As you admit, though, none of what you write changes the most basic problem with the choice of stream: Facebook being who they are.
To be honest, I use Facebook fairly often, and I don't have any fears that they will use my data for some untoward purpose. I don't fear much for my privacy. But as a company, they creep me out, and many of their initiatives seem very sad, just like Google after they started being run as big business. If we disregard their disregard for privacy for a moment, I just want to say that they don't belong in our scene. It's a soulless platform without any connection to the viewers. I find the superficial concepts of likes, self-promotion and self-contained conversations (where people mention each others in comments, and start talking about the others comments to a video as if they don't exist) a far cry from the cozy Dota scene we know.
Before we know it, we'll have our stream on Facebook, and they'll start censoring content according to American Evangelical values. They'll start forcing us to login and will integrate our login with interactive adds. They'll force polls on us and shut down streams for political reasons. They'll be censored in various countries for cutural/political reasons. These two worlds don't match. Some will feel like me, and even more will likely be opposed to Facebook due to the cultural values they feel it represents. Forcing such people to use a platform like Facebook for something they love as deeply as Dota just isn't fair, regardless of the intention. I think the strong reactions we see and the eagerness to boycott testifies just how deeply involved people are in the Dota scene. Hell, I even found myself almost writing to tell a group of fellow Dota-enthusiasts on Facebook not to watch the stream on Facebook, and that's despite how much a appreciate all the talent on the main stream.
Also, just to add, I must say I'm surprised what a good start Animal Planet have made. Whereas I initially thought "just another half-assed NA project without the right profiles, doomed to mediocrity", I found myself thinking; "wait, were these guys sponsored by the Animal Planet channel or what?". I don't know why I'm so surprised. I guess I forgot that Bryle is one of the brightest talents in NA. Moonmeander is a very solid offlaner, with the flair to turn momentum against even the best of teams, Ritsu was always solid, and despite me always underestimating yourself (mostly due to my first impression of you being the weakest link in a very polished EG team when I started getting into the scene around TI5), I have no doubt in your ability to turn out world class plays and find new ways to approach the game.
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agree with many of your points, tried to give the facebook stream a chance. but it was horrible, even on day 2 massive buffering and horrible audio quality. a realy sad situation, hope ESL will come with a good solution until katowice......
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Good blog and insight Aui ! GL with your new team sponsor !
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I agree with you with most that you said regarding facebook and ESL. However, ESL had so many chances to backpedel and apologize. They fuck up and say some stupid shit once or twice, that's fine, but they never stopped. Look at the AMA with the ESL guy, he still seem to be under the impression that everything they done was the correct move. That is honestly a bit insane.
Haven't checked if they have said anything since then, maybe they have changed their minds now.
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Good stuff, great insight. Agree on a lot of the points. Was rather sad to see such a huge backlash on ESL and even some of the personalities, especially since they have worked so hard for it. TO needs to make some money as well.
They definitely could have handled it better of course, but a mob mentality isn't going to help it. I think such a ruling might actually be detrimental to future TOs considering dota, especially as more games come out all the time.
Regarding facebook, think its the same case as twitch for logging on. Personally I also dislike facebook as a social media tool and deleted my account long ago but I was able to watch without any issues every day without logging on (I believe you have to log on if you want to watch via the app)
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Thanks for the post. I'm really excited to watch you guys grow as a team. Other than one particularly clowny game in a won series you guys have shown great composure, especially considering you have a couple players that are relatively new to the scene. Best of luck going forward. I wish you guys nothing but success.
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The ESL VP claimed that they have a special legal agreement with Valve and they are in constant communication about the whole platform thing. If that was true, then they could have easily asked " hey can i dmca these guys/can you dmca these guys" and found out that they couldn't. So something's weird there or the ESL VP is lying.
In fact , ESL had quite a few defenders on reddit before that who said " hey they mentioned they have a special agreement and Valve hasn't come out to scold them yet so that means Valve must have endorsed them. It would be insane for ESL to lie about this".
Well apparently they did. So yeah any sympathy from me goes out of the window.
It would be a different case if Valve ignores them since i agree the initial statement a few months ago can still be nuanced. But if they have constant communication with Valve and a special agreement as ESL claimed, they could have easily verified first without DMCA'ing illegally when they are not even the IP holder.
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You point out ESL isn't really profitable and highlight broadcasting rights as a key factor in their ability to be profitable but it is not on the law to bend to make ESL (et al.) profitable because we like them or want them to succeed.
ESL and Valve have an agreement. Valve retains all broadcasting rights to Dota. End of story.
Valve and Stramers have an agreement. Valve extends broadcasting rights to Dota to streamers with some conditions. End of story.
ESL and Streamers have no agreement. ESL owns broadcasting rights to their own production (everything except Dota gameplay, essentially) and reserves those rights.
This setup leaves no scope for ESL to interact with streamers who aren't using their production. Under no circumstances can they sue for somebody using Dota TV against Valve's wishes. For example, if Valve required streamers of Dota TV to balance a pineapple on their head ESL would have equally the same scope to DMCA as the did for possible breaches of Valve's "don't monetise under certain circumstances" policy. (Zero scope.)
I think anybody with a grasp of the basic legal concepts of the situation agrees on this and yet it gets muddied when people advocate for ESL's position. What you're doing is essentially arguing that people should just let ESL do this because their profitability is on the line, not because it's technically correct. It sounds nice but what you're subtly doing is de facto transferring value across the agreement between Valve and ESL. Maybe you think it's good for the scene for that to happen and maybe it is, but this is not the place to do it, extra-legally, based on people submitting to bullying for the greater good.
If the agreement between Valve and ESL with regard to broadcast rights is so untenable then it needs to be addressed at that level. Come to a new agreement. The thing is, in that domain the agreement about broadcasting rights will be valued against things like the giant stack of money Valve hands out in the form of prize money co-contributions. Can ESL just straight negotiate a better deal? I doubt it. That's why ESL chose to conduct the battle how they did. That doesn't make it right.
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I agree with most of OP post. Also, I don't know how r/dota2 works, but if it's like the rest of reddit, especially political subs, it's really easy for a competitor to bot content and fuel the bandwagon. Most of the content of default political subs is like that, from r/politics to r/news and even r/politicalhumor (with monopoly of certain political views) where obvious propaganda is always at the top with like 30k upvotes and 2 comments (slight exaggeration :D). It shouldn't be difficult for a competitor to do the same on r/dota2. And yes, I was really against facebook at first (well, I'm still am) but everything was so over the top and dumb that now I feel sympathy for ESL. And it's true that facebook stream quality is way better than twitch. Seems twitch introduced 1080p 60fps, let it work as intended for a few months, then cut its quality for saving bandwidth, I haven't seen a good quality stream on twitch for months and months.
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was a little scared you quietly left the scene entirely after NP.
thank you for apologizing to VG.J about that situation.
it sucked and you know how to handle things if it ever shows its head again. i think you should be able to care about what people type to you, with only the caveat that people are dumb and attention-seeking.
had no issues with facebook stream myself, i used the multi-esl feed and appreciated the scoreboard on the side. i think that's a great addition and they can do other things with it starting from countdown to games starting (local time) in addition to the scoreline.
you have a nice team, try to keep them from indiscretions due to inexperience.
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On January 27 2018 16:32 MrCon wrote: Seems twitch introduced 1080p 60fps, let it work as intended for a few months, then cut its quality for saving bandwidth...
Really think they did this?
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Looking forward to more of AUI's blog post. Long time fan and will always be. Thank you!
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Pro post in a forum and we all hope he'd talk to us but he probably won't have time.
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On Reddit: The reason why people tell people to ignore reddit is because those same people cannot grasp how to disseminate the information on Reddit without reading all the bullshit that's on there. You need to be able to ignore and gloss over posts that are worthless while identifying posts that contain a lot of value.
Sure Reddit is full of astroturfing and fake news and other bullshit, but there's always hidden gems that help dota players out every single day. Telling people on TL that Redditors should be nicer to people because they might affect people is as effective as a warm breeze blowing on a tree. Nobody is going to change. Reminding them, as optimistic as that might be Aui, isn't going to change people either. This has been done every day in every gaming subreddit since the dawn of Reddit and that has not stopped the fact that people will be assholes. The information on the subreddit is clearly more valuable to you and most pro players to stomach the hate that you can see (once you start scrolling past the first few posts).
Good points on Facebook streaming and streaming monopolies. Most people have hated on competition vs twitch not because they hate competition however, but because what was being offered are inferior products. This includes hitbox, google streaming, and of course facebook. People don't give two shits about brand loyalty here. They care about the platform delivering everything they want and more. So on one hand, you make a good argument. But if facebook fucks up on their first day...lets just say first impressions are important.
I sort of think you're trying to take empathy and turning it into compassion. There's a pretty big difference here. Everyone voicing their opinions are already being empathetic to this situation. They however are under no obligation to try and understand it from ESL's point of view or give them any sympathy in that space. They are consumers. They are not required to try and understand it from a business perspective. They are also not trying to argue anything from a business perspective.
Anyways, you're a nice guy Aui. Just don't expect other people to be. If youre really serious about championing this idea to the community, you should bring it up at every interview you do so the message reaches a wider audience!
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watching sing but also keeping the fb stream open!
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