Eclipse feedback

Hello, I was a competitor at Eclipse this weekend and I wanted to give some feedback regarding my experience in addition to some things I noticed.

First off, the setups. I think the thought behind standardising the setups is great, but only very few of the ones I tried worked well. The LCD monitors that used various high-end capture cards for the signal conversion worked very well although they still have a very different subjective feel to them due to how an LCD displays a frame versus a CRT (LCD's update the entire screen at once while CRT's write pixels from top left to bottom right during the 16ms time window).

However the LCD's that used Wii2HDMI were largely useless. I only saw people play tournaments sets on them from the lack of better setups or when a much higher ranked player met someone they felt confident they could beat regardless. I can see the point in having as many setups as possible but the focus seemed to have laid on the Wii2HDMI solution which in many regards is a useless setup to have for highly competitive play. I think that if a similar type of setup is opted for in the future they need to be verified to be a high standard and not only to be a working solution.


My second point is about food and drink at the venue. I don't think it's an unknown fact that Oslo is the most expensive city in the world to live in. This is fine for many inhabitants since generally their income is comparatively high but for international competitors it can be a major hurdle to overcome. I very much appreciated the idea of an onsite bar and place to buy food but when I showed the prices to some family members even they (*living in Oslo) were quite surprised at how expensive it was. This was a problem combined with the fact that there were no communal kitchen or open place to bring and consume food or drinks. When I asked about bringing a bottle of water in I was told that nothing was allowed inside the venue, however bottles of water was available to buy on-site for 38 NOK if I recall. When I asked if I had to bring the food or drinks I bought inside the venue outside for consumption I wasn't given a clear answer. The solution I saw most people do was to sneak food and drinks inside anyway to consume discretely by the sofas.

If you want to have more international players be able to attend I think it's important for you to help them being able to afford the trip, perhaps by making a deal with a local store or restaurant for cheaper food or giving us access to a kitchen. Otherwise many competitors wouldn't be able to come no matter how much they'd like to which in the long run will hurt the tournament series or give it a reputation of being unaffordable.

The same thing could be said about sleeping areas. I've attended many tournaments and speedrun marathons where either hotels/motels/hostels were subsidised, a gymnasium or similar was available for free/cheaply for communal sleeping areas or both.


My last major point concerns the stream itself. Obviously I haven't watched a lot of it but I've seen a match or two. The gameplay quality is unfortunately absolutely atrocious. I don't know the details but I've heard stories like "everything that could go wrong did go wrong" and that the hardware had potential for amazing quality but that the people handling the software were inexperienced.

Even so, there is absolutely no excuse in my mind for poor quality except a lack of funds which I don't think was the issue here. All the hardware and software for the stream should be tested, quality controlled and well understood days if not weeks (*prior to the event) by the tech crew. Liva, the owner of geeky goon squad, travels internationally with all his hardware carried quite literally on his back and his videos have among the highest quality I've seen. Instead the game feed quality of Eclipse could be bested by an amateur with no previous experience with a €30 capture card bought on Ebay and freeware streaming program OBS. Your gameplay had interlacing, highly variable frame rates, component artefacts and low resolution which is unacceptable.


Minor complaints include:
*A more in-depth schedule. It was clear that registration started at 10 but not that the door was locked. A small comment including "doors open" would've made my morning a bit easier.

*Clearer venue rules prior to the event. The fact that not even water in a closed bottle was allowed was not clear and I more or less had to go outside the venue door to eat my breakfast which I didn't expect.

*On-site ways to check waves and pools during the tournament that doesn't involve TO's. I was in a special situation since I didn't have access to my phone and couldn't use any wifi, but I noticed more people being confused when pools were starting regarding who were in what pool & wave in addition to where each pool was located and what setups belonged to what pool. This lead to a lot of bugging the TO's which I imagine is time they could've used better. A couple of A4's taped to a wall together with better markings of the tables could've sufficed.

*Plastic mugs next to a sink or similar. I feel like any form of mugs next to a toilet sink or portable dispenser by the entrance would've made everyone's lives a ton easier especially if you don't allow water bottles inside the venue without being a major investment.


For the final word I'll just talk a little bit about the Westball drama. Without taking sides, I feel like it was handled poorly. Like it or not the TO's represented the European scene especially with intercontinental players attending. Any decision with high impact is going to be scrutinized and picked apart by the internet. Therefore it is important to have a good argument and reasoning to put forth and to otherwise have a plan to handle an otherwise highly upsetting result. My reaction to what I've seen close to "official statements" were somewhat unsatisfactory and I believe that at least the fallout could've been handled much better.


EDIT: I made a few minor edits with asterixes in order to make a few sentences more clear since I didn't proof read all this text before sending it. Sorry about that :p.