Dreamhack Montreal 2016 Thoughts

So ill start with the bad stuff, then the good, personal rant about my runs and general thoughts at the end

The bad

So ill try to give constructive criticisism when i can but ill just say everything i truly did not like / felt could have been alot better about the event. It will be mostly for the speedrun event itself as i spent most of my time there but there will be a couple thing non related to that but more to the rest of the event.

Speedrun Corner:

- There were almost no light for some reason, as much as it gave a chill vibe to it, i felt like it was bad for the stream cam.
- Having the practice "Area" being right behind the stream setup in a very small space felt really bad. There were very little space to walk and we would sometime be in the way of the setup guys wich already were having trouble.
-Not Having a dedicated area for practice were we would chill w/o having to be carefull with screaming and annoying the runners playing on stream a couple meters aways
-From the complaint above, being a runner and getting distracted by the people playing behind the TV you are running on
-Having almost no CRT for practice, and i think none were from dreamhack themself but just people's bringing the few ones
-Having the entrance being on the stream cam and next to the runners felt weird, there should have been another entrance to get behind the setup w/o potentially disturbing the runner

Alot of these could have been adressed with a seperate practice area, like we had at LAN ETS,idk why it was not a thing this time arround. Also Dreamhack need to provide us some CRT ffs

Stream/Stream Setup:

-Sound was coming from TV, as you can imagine with all the sound from the other stuff going arround, i could hear very little from the game and got distracted alot
-Could not hear Fozzy/Bismuth Commentate very well, had to guess what they said sometimes and fozzy said the same to me
-During the race, i was hearing bismuth audio more than mine, a big problem for stuff like Tiny Phase and Mad Jack
-Staff not having an N64 compatible with JP Cart for my DKR run, litteraly tried to cut tabs live during setups instead of taking mine after insisting, then giving up on it and taking my N64 anyway. they also knew in advance in the submittion than i was running on jp because we had to specify the region/console in it
-Waiting 5 min before somebody tells me what to do in the setup
-Setups taking forever making the stream get super far behind, also probably having setups time that were to tight in the scheadule
-Alot of tech difficuties for setups
-Almost no help from dreamhack themself it seems like
-Almost no advertisement on social media from NASA/reddit/whatever

Some things to make it better:
-Soundproof Headsets for runner with theie game audio + commentator, might be somewhat hard but GDQ does it so its possible, and for races its a must imo
-Better staff, by that i mean staff being more prepared and being faster on setups /  testing stuff before runs instead of wondering why it does not work for hours
-Better audio quality for stream somehow
-More advertisement, sad to see the stream with like 100 viewers, its fucking dreamhack come the fuck on lol

Scheadule handling:

Cutting runs/getting faster category to finish the marathon before is very bad imo, if you have that far behind live with it. especially when most of that time is due to setups.

Also on the DK64 race, i got asked if i wanted to cut DK64 race to help them since i and bismuth had another run, i was not going to let them do that obv so i sugested 5 kong instead to wich bismuth also agreed. Then the NASA staff tells us NLE is fine so we start doing NLE, 5 min in the run the QSR (No reset staff) tell us we have to do 5 kong instead and it honestly made me extremely mad, not because it was not NLE (wich i would highly prefer but i was still ok with that) but because both staff tells us diffent things and i was already mentaly prepared for one run and not the other. It just throw my off very badly. Especially that i just had a bad DKR ending.

They also wanted me to do Any% for DKR but no fucking way i was gonna let that happen lmao, i like hundo to much and it had been a while since anybody showed that run

They also cut some other runs like 120 star to 70 star, its just not how you handle problems and it makes me angry/sad tbh


The good

Speedrun Corner:

-having a seperation between the crowd/runners is good imo
-Stream on big screen looked nice and sound was ok when it was fixed
-Having an area right next to the stair leading to the main hall is nice since most people will see it right at the begening
-The area was really cold wich is a nice change because i had been burning all summer in my no AC appartment, i know some people complain about that but i loved it

Scheadule:

-Getting a run per runners and trying to make it work, props for choosing to give everyone a chance
-Props to shokushu choosing my DKR hundo as a backup to drop out (wich happened) after saying i really wanted to do that category instead
-Generaly happy with the games chosen and variety of runners and lenght of the games, mine were 2 of the longest (if you count dk64 as NLE) and i feel lucky tbh


Tickets:

Having the runners tickets's being free and availaible in a special line is a very nice perk that i am very gratefull to dreamhack for so thank you for that.

People:

This event would not have been fun if it wasn't from the people there. From the boys i already knew to the one i met yall were awsome and i can't wait to meet you guys next time. I know i was shy from time to time, but i hope i was good company. Special shoutout to THE fozzy for the commentary on my run and bismuth for the fun race even if i choked. Also prak it was cool to see you for a view hours :D


General Thoughts:

Has much as i said alot of crap about the staff and the stream, i know it was not an easy task and that you guys needed to deal with alot of stuff, but im sure next time will be better with the experience you got here and i can't wait to see how it will turn out next time. Also i understand if it was really hard with the audio with all the noise arround with the other tournaments. Also i hope next years melee tournament wont be in comflic with another one because i wanna meet the big boys. Lastly, I would  go to another of these if im still arround speedrunning and i can't wait to chill with all of you again.


Dreamhack rant is done, rest is personnal thoughts on my runs

DKR:

I felt like the run was decent to mediocre, but i was ok with it since i knew it was well below estimated (2h is quite safe for me). I was a bit nervous so i was not playing at my best but i was still happy. thats until i forgot the key in Boulder Canyon. Top kek right? i really wanted to not forget any of these but it happened, oh well. Then my ffl was quite ok so i got fine with the run again but it was before the desaster that Wizpig 2 was. Oh my God lmao. Never felt so bad about playing DKR ever before. It was quite a shame that i fked it up so bad tbh


DK64:

I really REALLY wanted to do NLE. I know bismuth does not really prefer 5 kong or NLE, but i like NLE 1000% more and i had practice alot for it. So it made me really angry to some extend. The 5 kong run itself was very good for me. It was high 45/low 46 pace wich is good considering i have a 45:00 PB in that. But because i long jump instead of walking for 2 second i lost the race and almost did not beat the 50 min estimate (got 49:50 lmao). Still congrats to Bismuth on winning the race. I should have won imo, but i guess i got to impatient and could not take it safe, wich made me really depressed and sad because i really wanted to win. Im a really competitive person if you did not know hehe.

Overwall, These were not terrible and i was under estimate wich alot of people did not even meet so i guess i did an ok job on both my runs and commentary.


Alright i think thats all for now, feel free to give me feedback on my commentary/run :)