9 minutes ago, Wibs said:

As for the first post - I had to read through all the replies to find out what was the reason for the first post... And I am still not sure what happened.

No particular activity generated the post, but over the last few months, the expectation for twitch streamers to actively interfere in a game where the chat perceives there to be an issue is building. My opinion is that it breaks tournament rules if the streamers do anything other than inform a judge. Streams are bound by tournament rules and if they continue to break them, maybe tournaments will stop allowing streaming.

3 minutes ago, Sunitsa said:

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here.

Tournament rules are clear. Streamers should follow them the same as anyone else. You might not like the rule, you may prefer it to be different, but by interfering in a game, you are breaking the rules of the tournament. Just the same as if you had a 105 point list, or changed obstacles between games or any other infringement of the tournament rules.

The rules define a clear path to deal with this stuff. You may tell a judge. If you prefer them to tell you directly, you are preferring that people break the tournament rules.

14 minutes ago, Sunitsa said:

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here.

Would you rather have a game decided by an unnoticed crit than having a spectator pointing out the obvious mistake?

I'd rather have a game decided by an unnoticed crit precisely as it would happen in the other 99% of games being played that round than being potentially impacted in one players favour by the fact their mates were watching it and jumped in to help their friend out.

8 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

I'd rather have a game decided by an unnoticed crit precisely as it would happen in the other 99% of games being played that round than being potentially impacted in one players favour by the fact their mates were watching it and jumped in to help their friend out.

That feels like a reductio ad absurdum : because it's sometimes missed in other games, it's not worth enforcing in any game.

I doesn't seem like you really believe that, but that's the way it's coming across.

Quote

‘A spectator is any individual at a tournament not actively engaging in another role . Spectators must not disturb an ongoing game, and cannot provide any input or assistance to players during their games. If a spectator believes they have witnessed a breach of the rules in a game they are watching, other than a missed opportunity, he or she may bring it to the attention of a leader.’

If we want to go full pedant, stream watchers are not "at" a tournament, so they're not even spectators as per FFG's rules. Streamers currently are spectators, and may bring it to the attention, but they also can decide not to. FFG could create a Streamer role if they so wanted, to define their responsibilities and rules associated with that.

I can just imagine the nightmare if everything Twitch chat vomited was brought to the judge. A not insignificant portion of it is just plain wrong, another chunk is trolling. As a TO, there's enough wacky calls to make without having to check in with everything from Twitch chat, where you must first determine if it's even a valid thing to consider before deciding what to do with that information.

Someone should volunteer to have a tournament where everything Twitch chat says is considered, just to see how much abuse that could generate.

I predict a total train wreck. People take this game way too seriously now and vociferously argue for their point, whether they are right or just believe they are, usually without considerations as to the fact that all the actors in these dramas are humans, and thus prone to mistakes, and not perfect AIs that should never fail and should be ridiculed when they do. Well, at least those humans you're not personally friends with, amirite?

I've played on stream several times myself, in both X-Wing and Armada, and generally look forward to the opportunities, so I understand the irony here, but let me play a little Devil's Advocate for a moment:



I don't see why anyone agrees to play on stream . You end up with a bunch of hyper-vigilant Monday Morning Quarterbacks critiquing every aspect of the game, which puts the pressure of a rabid lens focused upon your game that none of the other tables have to contend with, and even if you win there's a chance someone will find some sort of reason to slap an (*) onto your W, either because of a completely unnoticed and unintentional error/bump you or your opponent (or both) committed.

Good things that can come from playing on stream:
+ You play brilliantly and the community sings your praises (but, more likely, they'll just wonder why your opponent "made that dumb move to let you win" or they'll complain about the "OP" list you are flying).

Bad things that can come from playing on stream :
- You make a poor tactical choice or when it comes time to gamble and guess about your opponent's move, you guess wrong, and you look like a goon
- You lose, and the community dissects all the things you should have done differently, or: Wow, Smith Jones is an idiot, how did he even make it to the cut? Must have had super easy match-ups until now!
- You win, and the community whines about your dice variance or your list or the lucky match-up
- You innocently make an error (like the kind that inconsequentially happen all day at so many tables during an event) and the community crucifies you. "OMG Smith Jones just bumped that ship a few millimeters! Game ruined and pointless now! Maybe he did it on purpose!!"
- You don't allow (or do allow) your opponent to take an optional missed trigger. These divisive issues mean no matter what policy you personally follow here, people are going to complain about it and comment on your character ("Tryhard jerk!" "Pushover, letting his opponent walk all over him!"). So many classic double-bind situations, where any response means controversy.
- etc.


So, a Question for the Community: It seems like if you play on stream one semi-sorta-good thing might come from it, but a whole host of negative stuff is just as if not more likely. So, why should players agree to play on stream, when they don't personally gain anything from it, while the streamers gain followers, hits, visibility, and potential passive revenue (even if only later when hosted on YouTube, for instance). Like, why should players put themselves under that spotlight so that someone else can generate content?

17 minutes ago, Tlfj200 said:

That feels like a reductio ad absurdum : because it's sometimes missed in other games, it's not worth enforcing in any game.

I doesn't seem like you really believe that, but that's the way it's coming across.

I don't believe that all games played should adhere to the same rules and have the same play environment?

That seems like a pretty sensible thing to believe in, to me.

Just now, Stay On The Leader said:

I don't believe that all games played should adhere to the same rules and have the same play environment?

That seems like a pretty sensible thing to believe in, to me.

So... yes - when a gamestate violation is noticed, it should be reported. And it's simply more likely to occur in games with more eyeballs on it. Agreed!

4 minutes ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

So, a Question for the Community: It seems like if you play on stream one semi-sorta-good thing might come from it, but a whole host of negative stuff is just as if not more likely. So, why should players agree to play on stream, when they don't personally gain anything from it, while the streamers gain followers, hits, visibility, and potential passive revenue (even if only later when hosted on YouTube, for instance). Like, why should players put themselves under that spotlight so that someone else can generate content?

I mean, they probably shouldn't.

But if you want to also watch streams, then you buy into the system and go up yourself when called.

Frankly, after a few times, it doesn't bother me, but that's my personal feelings. I can tell it makes a lot of people SUPER nervous :-/

Bear in mind FFG's own precedence:

When streaming Worlds games, I know the FFG commentators have noticed egregious rules violations. For instance, I think it was Worlds 2016(?) when they noticed during a Kanan vs Triple X7 game that the Ghost made a rear arc attack after it had launched its shuttle. The FFG commentators, including Alex Davy, noticed the error. And they did not rush over to the table to fix the issue, they just noted something like (paraphrase) "oops, all no... that shouldn't be possible... hopefully it doesn't affect the final outcome." To my knowledge they did not seek to notify any currently active judges or interact with the table in question, though perhaps my foggy memory is incorrectly remembering?

Reference : I think it was Zach Bunn's game, cannot remember his opponent, but perhaps someone good at combing through Twitch archives who is interested enough can find the reference, if they are so inclined.

3 minutes ago, Tlfj200 said:

I can tell it makes a lot of people SUPER nervous :-/

Yea, it's a lot of attention and pressure for some people, and our hobby of X-Wing doesn't require much attention/stress in its normal tournament setting. Unlike, say, high school sports where you know a part of the arrangement is performing under pressure in front of audiences.

Once you ask someone to play on stream in front of a few dozen hyper critical super-fans, where the game will be posted into the permanent record of X-Wing, for some that probably sounds like having all their dumbest in-game decisions Carbon-Froze to put onto display right at the foyer of Jabba's throne room.

15 minutes ago, Tlfj200 said:

So... yes - when a gamestate violation is noticed, it should be reported. And it's simply more likely to occur in games with more eyeballs on it. Agreed!

Reported to a judge - absolutely ... twitch chat spots something, the streamer may then report to a judge.

What should not happen is that a stream host interferes directly in a game.

9 minutes ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

Bear in mind FFG's own precedence:

When streaming Worlds games, I know the FFG commentators have noticed egregious rules violations. For instance, I think it was Worlds 2016(?) when they noticed during a Kanan vs Triple X7 game that the Ghost made a rear arc attack after it had launched its shuttle. The FFG commentators, including Alex Davy, noticed the error. And they did not rush over to the table to fix the issue, they just noted something like (paraphrase) "oops, all no... that shouldn't be possible... hopefully it doesn't affect the final outcome." To my knowledge they did not seek to notify any currently active judges or interact with the table in question, though perhaps my foggy memory is incorrectly remembering?

Reference : I think it was Zach Bunn's game, cannot remember his opponent, but perhaps someone good at combing through Twitch archives who is interested enough can find the reference, if they are so inclined.

I'm unaware of that.

However, the other precedent we have is dial-gate, where, once informed, they took action (slightly different, as it was cheating).

2 minutes ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

Yea, it's a lot of attention and pressure for some people, and our hobby of X-Wing doesn't require much attention/stress in its normal tournament setting. Unlike, say, high school sports where you know a part of the arrangement is performing under pressure in front of audiences.

Once you ask someone to play on stream in front of a few dozen hyper critical super-fans, where the game will be posted into the permanent record of X-Wing, for some that probably sounds like having all their dumbest in-game decisions Carbon-Froze to put onto display right at the foyer of Jabba's throne room.

Basically :-/

I'm 0-4 on stream, but I've just gotten sort of used to crowds sometimes coming to games near the end of time, etc, so it just bothers me less now. But again, that's just me, and truly doesn't extend beyond.

26 minutes ago, Tlfj200 said:

So... yes - when a gamestate violation is noticed, it should be reported. And it's simply more likely to occur in games with more eyeballs on it. Agreed!

And if you can guarantee those extra eyeballs are impartial I'd agree. If not, they should pretend they aren't there.

Just now, Stay On The Leader said:

And if you can guarantee those extra eyeballs are impartial I'd agree. If not, they should pretend they aren't there.

So, we ignore entirely the tournament rule that allows for spectators to contact judges...?

2 minutes ago, Tlfj200 said:

So, we ignore entirely the tournament rule that allows for spectators to contact judges...?

It's unfortunate that rule is in place. I'd applaud anybody who uses their discretion to allow a game to continue without them feeling the need to stick their oar in.

If I had the phone number of literally any other human being there, I would have definitely called them first! I had to weigh the pros and cons of breaking the spectator rule, and decided that calling him and asking to speak directly to the judge was the best outcome I had to try to be helpful. The judge's ruling was fine, too: at that point, they had set all their dials with the assumption QD was alive, and already started moving ships, so just deciding that the Harpooned condition wasn't applied caused the least disruption to the current game state.

You are correct that the streamers should not interfere with the game: I've listened to streamers go "hey, have you used Countermeasures yet?" and the like too often. As a streamer, you should only talk to the players before and after the game: during the game, you only talk to a judge. I've had to call a judge over to the streaming table while commentating and say "hey, I think they forgot a crit on the stream". It's no big deal.

e: sorry, I'm out again

I think it's kinda sad that we have a bunch of comments in this thread and hardly anyone bothering to congratulate the Howards in the other thread.

That's because this thread has the prospect of Drama! and Salt!

Also Paul Heaver replied ... so you know, internets points x 1000

3 hours ago, Dreadai said:

Wow - you've got a really perverse worldview there ... streams cause sloppy play, they cause nerves and missed opportunities. Having a savage pack of basement trolls grabbing their pitchforks at every mis-play and hounding members of the community is reason enough to never want to play on stream again.

I understand that Duncan Howard refuses to play on stream except for top tables - I can't help but wonder if that is down to people in twitch chat being unmitigated pricks.

People grabbing their pitchforks (or not) will happen regardless on whether they are allowed to bring it to the players attention or not. People will still post about it in twitch chat and on forums. Nothing changes.

What changes for the better IMO is that, if viewer input is taken into consideration, potential game changer mistakes might be corrected. Worst case scenario: let's say you are a good player in the streamed final of a big tournament and you make a game altering incorrect rules call (for example shooting from the rear arc of a Ghost whiteout docked shuttle). Afterward, would you rather be the guy who 'made a mistake, stream chat noticed, no biggie' or the guy who 'only won because he cheated'?

2 hours ago, pheaver said:

You are correct that the streamers should not interfere with the game: I've listened to streamers go "hey, have you used Countermeasures yet?" and the like too often. As a streamer, you should only talk to the players before and after the game: during the game, you only talk to a judge. I've had to call a judge over to the streaming table while commentating and say "hey, I think they forgot a crit on the stream". It's no big deal.

Yeah, I've seen a few streamers get a little too "hands-on" with the games with info about the game state, asking questions like that, that could affect the direction of the game. I remember one time recently I think Gold Squadron was streaming and him calling out something like "7 minutes left!" to the players he was streaming which shouldn't be a big deal, its not hidden information, lots of times there are clocks visible and typically judges will call out time when it gets close but he was not a judge and doing so could have influenced the decisions of the players had they not already been tracking the time before he reminded them. Someone in chat called him out on it, but he seemed to disregard the criticism.

I love the work Gold Squadron does, but I think streams are getting little too involved, sometimes.

I don't know if this helps anyone, but I feel this is a similar topic so I will just go ahead.

I like video games, playing and watching. There is typically a delay of a few minutes between the game and the stream to avoid interference.

Maybe just add a delay of 10 - 15 minutes between game and stream, and announce that to the viewers. Then it is clear they can discuss as they want in the chat, but transfer to the table is futile due to delay.

3 hours ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

So, a Question for the Community: It seems like if you play on stream one semi-sorta-good thing might come from it, but a whole host of negative stuff is just as if not more likely. So, why should players agree to play on stream, when they don't personally gain anything from it, while the streamers gain followers, hits, visibility, and potential passive revenue (even if only later when hosted on YouTube, for instance). Like, why should players put themselves under that spotlight so that someone else can generate content?

Last year's regional, I was on stream 4 out of 9 games. The last rounds of swiss were "sure, why not" and it did not affect me. I asked to be skipped for top 8 and only did top 4 because my opponent really, really wanted to be for his GF to watch him (super nice guy I'd never met before, he just made top 8 with a U-wing :D). The final was streamed, because obvious reasons. I had fun with Eric Z, being "X-wing dad" and reminding him of triggers (whether he needed reminders or not) since that was a stupidly long day. I lost due to a single bad decision, no one on stream caught it, but one replay-viewer did ask why I was rolling 4 green dice out of arc with Fenn, which, well, that's what Fenn does. I got teased mercilessly for reminding Eric of triggers he was forgetting because of tiredness and I do not care, I wanted to play his best game, not whatever's left after 14 h of X-wing.

I was on stream 2/4 at a tiny kit tournament (and my son wiped out someone 100-0 at barely 7 y.o. in another streamed game! That was before he tabled a X-wing Junkies) because it was a casual tournaments with the streamers right there and we shot the **** throughout and that was fun.

That was last year. With the militant peanut gallery amplifying, I would avoid any instance of being on stream as much as possible. I don't care to explain why I did something, if someone doesn't get it, that's on them to figure it out.

Further, I don't know that I'd want my son to be on stream again. I doubt the harsh judging would stop, either for him or his opponent and it's just a game. I hear that Mark still gets teased something fierce for losing 100-0 to my son's Glaives, which any local will just tell you happens, none of us have been spared, even those who've gone undefeated in swiss at National level events, with competitive lists. Basically, he can get no credit for winning, because the peanut gallery thinks it was his opponent's failure, and if he lost it's because he was a dumb kid. I would probably tell him there's no upside and to only do it if he wants a record of that game.

There's a lot broken in the game, but I'm beginning to think the cracks showing in the "used to be super nice" community are the worst part. People used to expect the best and act accordingly, we now nitpick tiny mistakes and debate intentions. I still have hope we can go back to that, until then we'll stick to casual events.

10 minutes ago, drjkel said:

Further, I don't know that I'd want my son to be on stream again. I doubt the harsh judging would stop, either for him or his opponent and it's just a game. I hear that Mark still gets teased something fierce for losing 100-0 to my son's Glaives , which any local will just tell you happens, none of us have been spared, even those who've gone undefeated in swiss at National level events, with competitive lists. Basically, he can get no credit for winning, because the peanut gallery thinks it was his opponent's failure, and if he lost it's because he was a dumb kid. I would probably tell him there's no upside and to only do it if he wants a record of that game.

There's a lot broken in the game, but I'm beginning to think the cracks showing in the "used to be super nice" community are the worst part. People used to expect the best and act accordingly, we now nitpick tiny mistakes and debate intentions. I still have hope we can go back to that, until then we'll stick to casual events.

Why are we making fun of people for losing?!

I get being engaged on the stream, or even going "WHYYYY?!" (like screaming at a football game). But making fun of people for losing? That's not cool whether it's on stream or not