[poll] Preferences in Gameplay Videos?

I'm always trying to improve the quality of PA Matches as well as my gameplay casts.

So I'm curious what everyone prefers to watch.

Do you like watching a game as it unfolds from the perspective of one player? Or do you like to watch a commentated match with full view of everything that is happening?

Any other thoughts or suggestions?

I'd love to hear what y'all have to say so I can improve my casts.

I like both, but I like commentated matches better(Which is what I voted), because they give you a better idea of the different strategies being used and why they're being used, as well as how to counter them.

I only watch 1v1s and competitive team games. Preferably casted.

its really hard. my ideal (which i dont believe can be currently done?) would be to have the full view, and commentary, interspersed with perspectives of individual players, (i like the individual stuff so you can see where they look, how much attention they allocate to various theatres etc)

I'd love to do stuff like that. However, it'd require a bunch of coordination and editing. Maybe someday we'll get something done like that. We'll see.

We'll also see what tools are added for commentators. There's talk of casters eventually being able to see build queues and player's economies. Those two will add greatly to a caster's ability to be able to peer into each player's situation and strategy. Gonna be some cool stuff.

I voted commentary.


I think that it is important to keep perspective both on what the player knows, and what the enemy is doing.

I guess the ideal situation is to have the ability to lock your camera to the player, but also providing regular overviews of the entire game.

Interested to see what people say in this thread. Do please give us ANY feedback and ideas to help us Youtubers cater to you guys!

Obviously at the moment commentating is severely limited by the complete absence of essential tools. When the time comes I do hope members of the Uber team will reach out to commentators (and their viewers!) to find out which tools we need. As a minimum I would expect everything that is available in Supreme Commander and Starcraft. I hope that doesn't sound too demanding but I consider it essential to the functionality and success of an RTS.

Casting is great, because having a complete overview of the battlefield means that the caster, if they know what they're talking about, is able to informatively comment on effective strategies and critique the gameplay of the participants. This is absolutely invaluable for people looking to improve their play. Also, when a caster is really into a match and is audibly enjoying themselves, it makes the whole thing really very good to watch.

However, I'd say there is still a place for POV videos for this role too. Not being able to see the entire battlefield helps to give more context to player decisions and again, helps people to learn from their mistakes. POV replays would be exceptionally good for this.

Zaphod, I was watching many of your uploads and I found it difficult to follow the full-commentary style videos because you constantly zap around the map. The pov videos are better to watch for me, but of course it lacks in giving complete perspective. I think a good compromise would be to mostly focus on one player, but to occasionally give an overview of what's happening strategically in the game (in terms of map control, state of production/tech and long-term goals for each player).

Keep in mind that once commentators are better at observing&explaining what happens, people are more used to watching and playing the game and observing tools are better, that this will shift.

I just started a recording of a game (but PA crashed after 6 minutes and corrupted the file)

In that recording, I used the zoom to provide a planetary view of both me and my opponent.

I held down the shift key so that my queued commands were displayed.

It seemed to work pretty well. Not sure how it would have worked once units started fighting each other, but it was working pretty well for my purpose.

Thanks for the feedback everyone!

I figured everyone would prefer commentary. Although, I'm surprised at how many people said they also like PoV.

Really looking forward to when additional casting features are added.

Just bumping this so we can get some more feedback.

I love seeing the set-up matches where players are given a specific goal or a rule to follow, and then to watch the hilarity that ensues.

Id love to see games where everyone can only build units from a particular factory type, and see how it effects the game.

Keep up the great work guys.

Have some plans for stuff like this, just need to get around to it.

Excellent! How very fantastic

I look forward to POV tutorials as well. Like how to scout

Like this?

http://pamatches.com/2013/planetary-annihilation-tutorial-basic-gameplay-and-techniques/

Yes! 1 hour long videos scare me off as a rule. But that's all good I'm watching the second video, which I didn't see the first time through.

Yeah. I'm working on a much more condensed one. Have the script, just need to record a bunch of different snippets. Not looking forward to doing that, but I'll get around to it.

I know it's gross right... PA may actually be the game that launches me as a youtube star.

The best non-live casts are the ones where the caster has already watched the game, so they have an idea of what bits they want to watch and what they're going to say ala Day[9].