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For me personally it was the best ESA I've attended. I'll start with what I felt was improved from last year. Now, sadly, to what didn't quite work for me And finally while this is not event specific its more of a general problem with the discord server. As a volunteer at the info desk I often found myself looking for hosts/readers for whatever reason and while you can ping individuals on there if they aren't looking at their phone they may not even see it. It's fine having different channels open for the hosts/readers/tech etc but there should be a General Volunteer room where everyone volunteering can communicate more easily with each other. And having the reader/tech/donation/mod schedules posted for all volunteers to see would help too. |
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There are a lot of pros, too many to be able to list them all. Positive: Cons: -This is the con about the 20$% and 25$% run Idea to handle(?): |
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This was my second ESA event and even though I didn't think it was possible, this year was even better than last year! Thanks everyone for organizing. Already looking forward to ESA Summer 2020. + The location is amazing. Super easy to get to and the hotel is great. Superb wifi and everybody loves ice cream and + Everyone organizing, including volunteers, were super nice and friendly. Loved the 24 hour info desk. + The separate arcade room was a great addition. More of everything please. But please put the rhythm games and the other games like pinball far away from each other. + Really nice to see Stream 2 get more attention. Made me actually remember to watch a few of the runs on that stream. + The schedule this year was perfect for me. Managed to catch everything I wanted to see (i.e. the NES blocks) and still get proper sleep in between runs. + I didn’t participate in any tournaments but the speedgaming addition was awesome. Would love to see this again next year. Props to feasel, he worked A LOT and did a great job. • Now with a little bit less space for practice/regular gaming it quickly became a bit unorganized. Would be cool if groups of people (like the NES crew) could sign up to get some dedicated and more organized space in the upcoming events. With signups it would be easier to allocate more appropriate space for each "clique". • It would be nice with some kind of info poster/leaflet with information about opening hours of restaurants and pharmacies etc. in the area. Perhaps including a map. • The bar closing at 11pm was a big disappointment. We were usually hanging out there when we were a big crew and wanted to take a break from the stream room. With a 24/7 event I'd expect them to keep it open at least a little bit longer some of the days. |
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First time at ESA, and was very impressed with the whole event! Will go again, if able. I'm not sure having a first timer reflect on how great the event was would be helpful, as I don't really have a baseline to compare it to, so I will just reflect on the cons. Don't consider this as negative, though - if I didn't comment on it, it was fantastic! - Having both streams and more going on in one room was certainly a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it definitely demonstrated a more relaxed and less uptight interpretation of the stream - just here to have fun! - but that was taken to a perhaps disrespectful extreme in some cases. I was interrupted once by the extreme celebration surrounding Street Boyz, and I know I wasn't the only runner. As well, I thought it tasteless for the GTA $25% run to have a bunch of people run over to Stream 2 and draw attention away from the stream - while it was donated by someone else, it didn't _have_ to be accepted. Having all that activity in one room was far better than I expected, but definitely had its issues. - I don't think the "having the audience full at 8 am for the tv crew" thing was executed well. I don't know how the Need for Speed runner felt about the entire audience in exodus after an A-OK from staff, but it definitely seemed uncool. - No idea if this is just how ESA is, but it was irksome to have more runs than not go over estimate. I heard of a couple instances of people submitting runs where their estimate was faster than their PB, which seems to defeat the purpose of an estimate. I don't know if this is an issue with the marathon itself or how people treat it. - PC room was a nightmare, but I'm certain there are other people who can express the exact issues with it better than I can. That's really about it! Not a lot of complaints from me, but high praise to tech, to hosts, to organizers, and to the entire community! Very glad this was my first event, and I hope to see you all at another event! |
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This was my first time attending a speedrun event and I can't explain enough how helpful and welcoming everyone was. I went to this event only knowing who a few of the attendees were, and left with many new friends that I look forward to hopefully hanging out with again in the future. It was easily one of the best events I've attended in general. Thoughts: I loved the glitch showcases, but would like to really recommend that the volume is balanced better. There were several that I couldn't hear the commentary of while sitting in the crowd and also while watching the stream from the hotel TV. Karoake was fantastic and should be advertised earlier than the day of, easily one of my highlights from the event. (Even if we did find out we were violating some hotel rules with the food/drinks, which can hopefully be better articulated next year). Arcade room - Also just as a suggestion, perhaps make the projection of the stream can be made an official part of the arcade room? I know someone else set it up of their own will but it helped make the arcade room feel more attached to the event since you could watch runs as you were playing. Tournament Room: PC Room: Board Game Room: All in all the entire event was great, and I can't wait to attend another in the future. |
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ok this will be a mess but whatever pros: cons: Special personal con: |
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Hi there. Ran and hosted during this event. Most fun I've ever had at a speedrun event. + Good location, much better than Växjö. Having a mall and train station right next to us is dope. The McD's sucks, but the pro strat there is to stock up on snacks from the grocery to satiate those late night food cravings. - Please please please get more PCs so that the quiet practice room actually has some. I never saw any PCs in there. The PC room proper was a bit of a mess. People really shouldn't be allowed to setup their personal machines and keep them there the entire week. You're occupying valuable real estate that could be used. Personal machines should be limited to laptops that you take with you when you're done, or at least enforce a rule where you can't leave your own hardware sitting unused for so long in such a busy space of the event. |
KrystianKrystian and crazycharliehcrazycharlieh like this. |
EDBEDB
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It was my first marathon event attended in person, so I don't have any previous ones to compare the experience to. Almost all of my experience was positive. I did not stay at the venue, so I can't comment on that end of it. The not so great: The great: |
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My 4th ESA Summer. ES-YAY + Free breakfast. ES-NAY - Only 1 PC gaming room (or 2/3 if you count quiet practice and personal stream room?), I think this is the second speedrun event I've been to where there was a room full of PCs but the difference between GDQs to ESA is the number of runs done on PC, so there are going to be more runners needing a PC badly for their practice runs. I didn't hesitate when a runner wanted to practice their game in the PC room when it was filled up. skateman222, I'm sorry to hear the nightmare you had with your console setups. A few years ago, I've made a wiki page on importing NTSC consoles to Europe and see whether or not an EU/UK plug from a EU/UK system works with the NTSC console. Most of them do but some do not. |
HiddenPower13HiddenPower13 likes this. |
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This was my 2nd ESA. Pros: Pro and Con: Cons: Special: |
QUEEFDADDY69QUEEFDADDY69, HiddenPower13HiddenPower13 and 2 others |
Marvelgirl186Marvelgirl186
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Stream Room: Tournaments: Hotel: Arcade: Overall, I had a great time this year at ESA! I hope some of this commentary can help make the event even better next year! |
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This is easily Top 2 ESAs for me (been in 4 now), very good. The new PCs are great, super sick (will get back to the PC situation). I will mostly write about the negatives since everything else was / is amazing, if i were to go through all the good stuff it would result in writing a book. Shoutout to feasel and Liva (as always) for working super hard for peoples entertainment. One of the problems was sound effecting the two streams, this could either be Stream one yelling and being heard on Stream two or a certain bunch of Road Rascals. Not a shot at them at all, just a general problem i observed with sound in the main stream space. The PC-practice room and Quiet practice room was a absolute disaster and was not ok. Reminded me of 2016, the year that shall not be named. Quiet Practice just didn't have PCs for most of the event, just an empty room. Quiet Practice then became a streaming room with a locked door. I had to ask for a friend that wanted to practice his speedgame on how to get access to the Quiet Practice room, since a this point the PC-practice room had about 6 computers left, all of which used by non-runners to not speedrun. Anyone with a runner tag should immediately have access to Quiet practice and literally nobody else, this would require alot of work by the infodesk, but this is actually important. At the start of the event there were mabye 10+ computers at the PC-practice room, this number dwindled over the course of the event for no explainable reason. Monitor cables getting unplugged for console people playing fighters, monitor cables totally disappearing. This along with few setups, mis-use of setups and disappearing setups made it impossible to practice later in the event. Although the new computers were great, the lack of lower power computers were a massive issue. If we still have access to the old Dreamhack computers, atleast the people playing retro PC games, playing whatever non speedrun stuff for fun can use those. And let the runners who need to practice with a good computer have the good computers. These PCs were very often not used for practicing speedruns, instead random coop fighters and other non speedrunning activities. In my opinion if people want to do stuff like that, bring a laptop or bring back the dreamhack computers or equivalent if possible. The setups are for people who don't have or can't run on a laptop for practice. I know alot of people who didn't know where to practice their speedgames if it was on a PC. Some of the area space of the Arcade should have been the Mafia space, and the room used for Mafia or SpeedGaming should have been second stream again. (I miss the comfy small room filled with friends) Many of the rooms were largely unused (Quiet Practice since it had no pcs), one room was largely un-named and only used for hot sauce and karaoke later in the event?. TLDR: Event amazing, very loud at times, PC situation very bad |
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- Pros: Just the whole event in general. Meeting new people and everybody being nice to each other is just amazing. I had an amazing time and will definitely come back next year! - Cons: Well there is some few cons. Some you cannot do anything about and some you might have to think about. Other then that. Event was good. Venue is pretty alright (Hotel is nice! Just faraway from the downtown area) |
praskOopraskOo
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There are too many positives to mention, so I'll go straight to cons/suggestions: AC was cranked too low in the conference rooms (PC room, stream 1 + 2), it often felt like the appropriate dress code was hoodie + sweat pants which is not something I want to wear in the middle of summer. Maybe I'm just naive and if it hadn't been that low we would have drowned in gamer smell, but I was actually shivering on some days. On the other hand, AC in hotel rooms barely worked at all. Lack of PCs, everything was already outlined in the posts above. Due to setup issues and what not, many runs ended up being moved to stream 2, or just played way later in the day. The games that could be moved to stream 2 were marked as setup games, but the only way to find that out was to find it on the schedule page on the esamarathon website, which is really annoying to browse, especially on mobile devices as information about a single run takes up the whole page. Many people, including myself preferred using the horaro page, but that one didn't have setup games marked. People ended up having their games moved to the very final day of the marathon to stream 2, without even knowing that was a possibility. Perhaps runners should be directly informed that their game is a setup game and that could happen. Lots of runs just ended up happening way later in the day (including one of mine, that got moved from about 11:30PM to 3:30AM). A way of getting coffee during graveyard times would be very appreciated, maybe just have 1 or 2 electrical kettles and instant coffee that's available when the coffee machine is turned off. |
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4th ESA for me. I'll try to focus on mainly improvements and downgrades from last year as I've given my opinion on the relocation in the previous year's feedback thread and it was overly positive. Where this year has definitely improved was in the overall palette of things to do. The event is now so much more than just a charity event. It truely felt like a gathering of nerds, with full utilization of the event floor(s). Further, I loved how welcoming the hotel was yet again. I really do enjoy the hotel and the location and Hyllie seems to grow and hopefully also provide further late-night options in the near future. The organisation of things was pretty smooth for the most part, too. I saw small improvements in terms of all around planning, chain of reporting for volunteers and on-site feedback / request responses. The diversity of runs was exceptional. Scheduling team did a great job on initial planning. Well, that's where the improvements end but that doesn't mean everything else was worse. Many things have stayed on an equally high level as previous years. Hosting seniors were incredibly dedicated, layouts were fine, the event felt very comfy and the board room, arcade and other activities were just as good as last year. The PCs and especially monitors were great, but the lack of machines was a big downsite for many runners and visitors alike. While I still don't get how people can go to these events and play auto-chess and league, often in groups, occupying 2-4 PCs at times, the enforcement of kicking these people off worked mostly fine. PC room overall felt very crowded at all times, ignoring the fact that the additional chairs etc could also be a minor escape route hazard... Moving the arcades downstairs might be a plus in terms of noise pollution and added a very neat feeling of having a more secluded area, in a positive way. But moving 2nd stream into the main room area plus generally rotating and moving the event space around with the overall audio for the audience did make for a very loud streaming area. Having both streams in the same location is bad. Stream 2 was pushed to be less of an "alternative" stream and has been given more high-profile runs while more of the "meme" games were moved to Stream 1. This may have also been an attempt to make schedule corrections less of a punishment to the runners that had their run moved from 1 to 2 and also an attempt to make stream 2 more "included" but neither was needed. And I hope it wasn't a reaction to specific runners who complained having had their run on stream 2 next to these "meme" games (Me and you both know what I refer to) because honestly, everyone BUT those people enjoy being on stream 2. It's less pressure, more comfy, less streamlined. It allows for even more diverse commentary at times too. Stream 2 being in the side room was a big plus personally and for most other runners I spoke to. Speaking of Stream 2, Liva did a heck of a great job again. I know that volunteer numbers were low and as such, having a dedicated donation reader + host on stream 2 would have been harder than during previous years. It's fine but a human reader would have been prefered, obviously. Which brings me to the uglier things, most stuff that comes to being both runner and volunteer for this year. Another thing that bothered me was the setup of tech this year. Tech was completely removed from eye contact to runners and donation readers, the two main receipients that have to know when a run goes live. Sometimes you were still reading a donation or a partner message to fill the setup time and suddenly the run was already live. I wish that the feedback from the last three years would have been implemented here to IMPROVE communication between stations and not hinder it further. As a donation reader, the option to open up an audio channel on my headphones to listen in to runner/tech mics during setup would have been nice. But even as a runner, you were often in the dark about if tech was ready or not. If you spoke into mics you were often ignored, probably because they were solving things or whatever but because you didnt see tech station, you were not able to tell if they are busy or just not actually there. Runners, Donation Readers and Tech should at all times be able to have eye contact to each other if needed. Hosts can sit off the side but should also at least be able to communicate with the donation reader and preferably tech as well. The stream should be moved as it was last year again. Stream one into the big room, better audio for the audience, more even to be seen on the webcam, more hype. Stream two should be the comfy stream again. TVs and other setups in the main area should be moved in the back again, with more couches and general hang out area. I think that other than that, the event was very enjoyable once again. I can't wait for next year! |
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HiddenPower13HiddenPower13
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Thanks a million to everyone who made ESASummer19 possible, especially behind-the-scenes people. Pretty sure you heroes don't get enough credit for what you do, so here you go! It's still amazing to me how ideal the location of the hotel is. You pretty much can't improve on that. Weird how the 3rd elevator often seems to out of service though, I wonder if it has anything to do with the event itself or if that's just how it goes there. Stream 2: I got mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand, I understand giving stream 2 just as much space as stream 1 because in doing so, you avoid the notion that stream 2 is just a lesser version of stream 1 and that's that. Feasel carried the tournament room so hard it's actually not funny. He WAS the tournament room. It didn't look to me like this man got all that much time by himself, so huge props for all the effort! I'd like to briefly talk about communication at ESA, as strange as that sounds. As far as I can tell at every ESA, people find themselves in a situation where they need access to equipment or are faced with a problem they can't solve by themselves. I'm confident about 95% of ESA people are very understanding, polite and helpful when it comes to these things. I understand situations where you're like "hey, I need that CRT to practise my run" are uncomfortable. If there's one opportunity for you to leave your comfort zone and face problems like this head-on, it's ESA or never I think. I'd also like to mention all the people who organised side activities, especially because many of them were done rather spontaneously. I really think playing silly games or watching movies together can be a real highlight at any ESA, so I hope these side activities carry on to future events! Shoutouts to the Double Dash crew and everyone who brought hardware and/or played! Double Dash LANs aren't about to run out of steam any time soon as far as I can tell and I love it. In fact, I'm pretty excited how we can improve the experience even more for future ESA's. I think it can be done if we're just eager enough! Finally, the Sunshine relay: thanks so much to everyone who helped out with it, whether that be organisation or helping the players practise. A decent amount of people spend a surprising amount of time making sure as many people as possible could learn the essentials for their shine. |
GreenalinkGreenalink likes this. |
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Most of the more general points for both pros (Location, ice cream, venue, arcade) and cons (Lack of some resources, noise) have already been highlighted by others so I want to bring up a specific con: The quiet practice room needs more regulation. On Wednesday night I was feeling the ESA flu something proper, and had a splitting headache. I had a run on Thursday which I needed to practice for, so I went to the private practice room to get away from the noise, only to find that it was being used by people just recording vlogs, playing fighting games and streaming to their Twitch channels?? I distinctly remember that the streamer didn't want to use the, you know, ACTUAL streaming machines because you had to use an ESA overlay or some shit. Apparently that makes it OK to inconvenience other people who need to use the room for its actual intended purpose. I'm not going to name names, but you know who you are, and that was very inconsiderate. Basically this is completely unacceptable for the single room of the event that is labelled as being a private room. Eventually the staff started kicking people out and putting a notice on the door saying they were going zero-tolerance with noise, but I would say in future it would be a more effective solution to just do regular spot-checks on the room, and throw out anyone who isn't a runner practicing for their run, or people specifically there to help the runner with commentary. There were far too many people in there just openly having loud conversations and laughing, and it's completely unfair on the runners who need some peace and quiet. |
SlamphibianSlamphibian likes this. |
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++ Location, like last year, was perfect! Easily accessible and near a hub airport. - The playlist kept playing the same 5 songs over and over. They are cool songs don't get me wrong, but I'd aprreciate a little variety. |
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So this was my first time at ESA and I loved the entire week from start to finish Most people have covered my points with both streams being in the same a bad idea and also the whole Street Boyz fiasco (Which I loved btw) Ok so to mention a few things that I feel need bringing up, the whole rubbish discussion everyone has mentioned I'm on your side and do agree that people should at the very least put their rubbish in the bins provided since most people that attended are at the point in their lives where they are a adult and putting a little bit of rubbish in a bin isn't that difficult. The tournament room where they had the races and the GTA San Andreas relay race (Which was incredible btw and I'd recommend keeping that for the next event) was a bit tight and could have done with being in a slightly bigger room if possible. I thought the hotel was nice as was the room that I stayed in but I have a problem, the whole policy with the food and drink stuff. Now I do understand that they allowed you to take food and drink up to your rooms or you could eat them outside as its the hotel and they expect you to eat their food etc. A huge plus side to the event was meeting so many new people and old friends from my last few years in speedrunning, it was great to meet you all and I hope we can all meet again soon The actual venue location and where everything was located was perfect travelling distance for me and won't be a factor for me to travel to the event again should it be hosted here in the Summer next year which is great Overall I don't think there's much else to say other than I had one of if not the best time of my life during this ESA event and also I don't think I mentioned the Ice Cream or |
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First huge travel for me, I was super happy the whole event so I don't have much other events to compare. I gave a read to what other people said and I mostly agree with them in general so I'll try instead to give my point of view about different things. About the location: For first time travelers being easy and fast to move from Copenhagen to Hyllie is amazing, same for the way back. Being a little clumsy about orientation I just had to ask like 3 people to make sure I was taking the right train and didn't have any big complication. In my case I had to stay in the overflow hotel, but Hyllie overall is a nice place where you can quickly move between hotels without any major worry. This is possibly the best place ever for this event, even if is very unlikely for me to attend the next ESA Winter I was very happy to hear that is going to be in the same place. Once inside in the venue, there were a lot of really smooth details besides the ice cream machine, coffee, pop corn and water. The location for the arcade was very good, I would love to see more variety in the arcade some next time. The distribution of the areas was overall good but here I agree a little about what most of people said regarding noises interfering in both streams coming from the other or from people in the middle. Actually I had a similar situation happening in the streaming station so that's why about the rest of the venue I'm going to start talking about that. Metako did an amazing job, the PCs for the streaming station were great and the organization overall very good, but the fact that both streaming stations were so close to each other is probably something to consider in the future. I didn't get interrupted, I was actually the noisy one in my turn and I just got lucky that the other streamer was super chill but that definitely could be a trouble at some point. Then about the other rooms I mostly agree about the lack of PCs or in this case I would say more like the overpopulation of people needing PCs. I did notice how hard was finding a PC for practicing, but my run was on day 1! in other words, if I wanted a PC any other day from sunday was just to mess around and not for actual practice for the event and I'm pretty sure I was not the only one. To be fair, the title of the room was "PC Room" and not "Practice Room", so whoever reading that letter would assume every PC is for free usage. For this case I think is a combination between probably needing more PCs and needing more organization to check and give priority to people needing a place to practice. Speedgaming having a spot was great, and having feasel there was a big honor. Definitely we want that in more events! Back to the stream room: Big shoutouts to the tech guys doing insanely good setups, also not sure if anyone mentioned but the machine scanning our speedrun.com data from our badge? dude, that's smooth. I'm not sure if anyone had technical issues in the stage but for me that was one of the best things in the event. There were other rooms in the venue I honestly don't know what they were, like the one called Mafia. The main hall actually was a nice place to stick around having a lot of practice setups and tables, infodesk always being there and having a lot of comfy places to sit if feeling tired. I don't know what else to say for feedback, then I had my own travel experience but probably not interesting at all, just I can TL;DR it saying that was amazing and I would love to come back if I don't have to sell a lunge for it. Greetings from Argentina, loved being part of your event! |
praskOopraskOo likes this. |