Written by: Sören 'Fantasy' Vendsahm
Source: Honcast Facebook
The Good
Let's not get carried away right from the start, as the HoN Tour Finals event held at the Hardwood Suite at the Palms in Las Vegas, Nevada was not all bad. Even harsh critics like Phil 'The_Thrill' Haller acknowledged this fact in his most recent blog post. The videos hyping the teams, showing off big plays from the past season and cycles, plus introducing all team members and their roles were visually appealing and well made. It set the tone for the matches, that also by large delivered a high standard and were exciting and interesting. Basically all the matches without Stay Green involved were nail-biters and went the entire distance. Those were the five thrilling matches between the old rivals compLexity Gaming and ex-Trademark eSports and the three maps the Swedish team Lions eSports fought against compLexity Gaming. The matches where the dominant Stay Green involved fell short in terms of excitement, but it is not S2 Games to blame for that – they are just on another level currently and can manhandle every single opponent. A winning streak of 30 consecutive maps in official tournaments is speaking volumes.
Aside from the introduction video and the level of competition that was shown, the HoN Tour Finals also provided some actual good production value on day two. Granted, a run-down of the players bio, their favorite heroes and other stations of their HoN careers are nothing outrageously creative or innovative to put on stream, but the fact of the matter is that HoN has not done this before. It was refreshing to see, it was well made, it looked good and the information was valid and spot on.
Why they didn't come up with this on day one is questionable, but at least we saw an improvement, even if it was just those little things. Once again, nothing super innovative, but for HoN this was a huge improvement even though the lighting was not very good, so you really could only see the player right in front of the cameras and not the entire team.
The Bad
Now the larger part of this opinion will have to be focused on the bad things this event brought the loyal HoN fanbase. The production started with flaws right away, throughout the first one and a half hours of stream. Technical issues, obvious production flaws and missed queues were adding up and set the tone for the entire event. AceJR started out as the host of the event and the interviews, but came in well short of expectations. His performance didn't quite set the “professional” standard that other hosts we know from other events like MLG, NASL, IPL or any other you might name. He seemed uncomfortable with the role and S2 would have had better choices with the likes of BreakyCPK, Beef or Emperor himself lined up to do that job. Something like that is completely in their wheelhouse, as AceJR is not familiar with that kind of role and is “just” the Community Manager.
After that the stream switched to the familiar faces of BreakyCPK and Emperor who upped the level of quality again, since they always seem to be authentically hyped for the events and the competition, as both of them just love this game dearly. Nevertheless, BreakyCPK had to save the day more often than not and make excuses or attempts to give explanations for obvious miscommunication and other various problems. One could almost feel bad for those two, as they sat in the spotlight while the whole crew crumbles under the pressure and makes your job living hell.
The “Opening Ceremony” was not much of a ceremony to begin with, as it was AceJR trying to build up some hype by yelling out the player names, but it didn't quite work because no applause or reactions came out: there was no live crowd present! The peak of awkwardness was when Kyle 'swindlemelonzz' walked out of the “tunnel” through the orange smoke, raised his arms only to be followed by a dead silence. Even the intended lightning was not present. No spotlight, no light at all, AceJR was guiding through the black screen, trying to make sense of who was walking down the aisle.
Source: Honcast Facebook
The fiasco continued and technical issues with the players equipment and with the stream occurred, despite S2 Games assuring that they tested everything ahead of time: “It's all worked fine then.” While technical difficulties are likely to occur, at least the equipment of the players and the stream should work flawless for the first match of the day at an event of this magnitude – not much of an excuse can be given to the video and audio being out off sync, the stream needing to be restarted almost four times within the first two hours and the delay hardware problems caused on the players' end. Massive delay followed, the scenery just looked messy, the interviews were sometimes refreshing, but mostly suffered due to the arrangement of the interviewer and interviewee – something Phil also pointed out.
Wrinkled backboard and a wrinkled, way too small background paper for the interviews – it all added up to be a complete disaster in terms of the visual appeal the event had. The backlash this event created is almost unprecedented in HoN history. The fans and viewers of the game that are still around were hoping for years that HoN finally can pull off something amazing and the momentum that the Garena Star League 2013 production gave HoN broadcast was shattered in mere two hours of the first day of the epic conclusion of the HoN Tour Season 1.
The last bit was the “Closing Ceremony” which was once again not done all too well. First, the camera was zoomed in and only four Lions players were actually visible. After that, the crew decided to zoom out of the shot to not only display their ridiculously small interview wall, but also give this more of a locker room vibe with actual lookers in the background. The interview wall tumbled, symbolically for an event that was falling apart. Icing on the cake was that S2 Games even printed out giant checks for each team, but simply forgot to hand them out. BreakyCPK noticed this when Stay Green was in front, he gave them their check and raised the awkward level to a new peak when calling Johan 'Mynuts' Andersson in front to take the one from ex-Trademark eSports alone – after the winners already received theirs.
Conclusion
It was pretty apparent that the event did not live up to the hype Honcast and S2 Games wanted to attach to it and the delivery of one of the greatest spectacles on the HoN calender this year was flat out subpar. It was supposed to be the most epic event ever produced by S2 Games, but as Sam 'Milkfat' Braithwaite pointed out before, turned into a laughing stock of the MOBA community. Absolutely nothing worked out right and the only saving grace for the event was the level of play by the competitors. If xtdM or compLexity Gaming would have just been absolutely dominant on the first day against one or the other, this event would have been nothing but a joke.
As for the future, it is “planned", but nothing is confirmed. At the end of the event Milkfat said it will be almost five weeks until the details of the new HoN Tour Season are announced, once again the international scene has nothing announced for the next week – almost comparable to the situation after the NASL Season 2 Finals at the end of 2011. It is definitely not as bad as it was at that particular stage, but it is also not a reason to jump up and down in excitement. Milkfat already posted his apology on the forums and his promises about things getting better in the future, but this is the fifth or sixth time the HoN community hears this after yet another poor production of a HoN event.
Source: Honcast Facebook
Improvements
Several thousand fans of the competitive scene have put a lot of faith in S2 Games and those expectations and hopes for a better future in terms of production value at events were once again shattered. The awesome production value and the great experience that was promised were the main reasons for not having a live audience was to focus on the stream experience of the viewers – it all got completely sidelined. In mere hours into the broadcast the forums were flooded by complaints and angry fans, in numbers quite big for the HoN scene.
Talking about particular improvements after this event is very hard to do, since it wasn't something sophisticated that went wrong, but every single fundamental of a good tournament and event production was lacking and suffering. Two glaring errors that are worth pointing out are the location and the “half time entertainment”. When you choose a fancy location like the Hardwood Suite in Las Vegas you should embrace that feeling and setting. For the Honcast viewers at home this aspect of the event was completely hidden, as you could only see the basketball court once and the locker rooms during several shots. The location could have very well been been some high school gym in Dallas, Kentucky or even Kalamazoo – there was nothing gimmicky or playful done with the location – so why even have the location?
The second thing is something that should have been a part of eSports for years and was brought to perfection during The International 2 in Dota 2 – an experts table. The highlight of the first day for me was swindlemelonzz analyzing the mechanics, item pick ups and tactics of xtdM and coL after their second or third map. He gave such terrific answers and amazing insight, it would have been great to hear him and another player talk about the recently seen matches, analyze it and go into details about do's and don'ts in situations like that. S2 essentially had everything needed for that already there with a community favorite like BreakyCPK as a host of that round – or even Beef who was present there as well. Plus due to the schedule they could have had two players from each top team currently not playing sitting there and giving their insight and opinions on their fellow competitors. It would have been a million times better than looking at a generic “break” screen with the same old music underlining it which is played on Honcast for 8 months now.
Future
DreamHack Summer 2013 is on the horizon and the stakes are as high as they can get. The community is already on the fence, the popularity that rose due to HoN Tour and the GSL dipped into a precarious low again, so now it is “Do or Die” time for S2 Games and the competitive future of HoN. Another letdown could not only push the audience away from the product, but also the players.
The announcement of HoN Tour Season 2 needs to come quickly, follow up tournaments need to come out immediately and the DreamHack Summer event is in desperate need of becoming amazing – otherwise it might be too late for HoN. This piece is written as an opinion and the words and statements that are used in it, are not reflecting GosuGamers.net's stance on this matter, but only the opinion and view of the author.
