Giving feedback solely based on my viewing experience since I did not attend Winter ESA 2020.
General Feedback: Please remove / disable comments from youtube, they are highly cancer when looking for VODs, insulting runners in very disrespectful manners, as well as the audience, would not feel comfortable running at a speedrunning event knowing that youtube will insult me. Either mod or disable comments alltogether because this feels very unaccomodating towards runners.
Not having hosts anymore was refreshing since donation reading felt more focused than when hosts were still around without a major loss of them.
Intermissions seemed a bit repetitive, would like more variety if you have more submissions of them maybe in Summer, other than that, like Summer 2019 they were a cool addition to the setup time.
ESA lately feels like it has become the METAKO show, in a bad way. First he gets solo event in vaxjo? Now a full day of stream 2 for a meme category that is not even on the leaderboard. I do not personally mind long RPG speedruns of proper categories (any%, plat%, whatever) or short meme categories of a game (<2h) but why do a 16h estimate 23h total run of an unfunny, non competitive category of an already long rpg? I do not know if Metako suddenly became organization member and pushed himself into the limelight like this but it seems very onesided and unfair if that is the case, to get his solo event and a full day of stream when there is a lot of great other runners with proper speedruns or a variety of meme games instead.
Regarding the very same run: it was very odd that there seemed to be a staff member (Ladaur) right on the camera, giving the OK for a lot of very disrespectful requests for the 20$% thing. Like BigJohn's entire run on stream 1 being featured as the "webcam" of stream 2. If I was a runner and this was done without my consent I would find it very disrespectful, disturbing and annoying, especially when it was presumably greenlit by a staff member. When being shut down by another staff member instead of having a proper conversation in private to sort out boundaries (WHICH SHOULD HAVE BEEN DONE TO BEGIN WITH!) she instead chose to call out said staff member as a buzzkill on the stream in front of all the viewers. Very bitter taste to me. Either set boundaries beforehand to not do anything disrespectful to other runners / attendants, or discuss this thing in private off camera within staff, or just scrap these runs alltogether. I feel sorry for the other staff member trying to be respectful to for example BigJohn and then being called out in front of all the viewership as the one who kills "the fun".
This did not seem to be the only miscommunication of Ladaur during the event, as she also said the last run would only go for 3 more hours despite viewers having donated for 4? Very odd, please communicate better behind the scenes with the organization, sorry to call this out I do not mean to be disrespectul to Ladaur but I feel this should be adressed to her directly as it was her mistake clearly.
Other big issue I had when viewing was ads during run? If I was a runner or attendant I would rather opt out to pay 5-10$ more for attending or more donation rather than have advertisements in the middle of an exciting section of a speedrun. Did not seem to be an issue last year but suddenly ads every hour seemed very odd. Disrupts the run and everything.
I hope I can attend ESA soon and these problems get fixed.
Positives though of course also: Event overall had big variety, donations improved over last year Summer event, atmosphere seems great other than the mentioned issues. Everyone at ESA seems friendly with everyone there, great people there, hope it keeps improving!