Making improvements to your stream doesn’t always have to involve spending money. If anything, the best improvements one can make don’t involve money at all. But for streamers on a budget, knowing where to make adjustments without breaking the bank can truly take you farther than spending money on the latest equipment.
Here are a few thought-starters for ways you can improve your stream without spending big bucks on new equipment!
Over at The Support Role Discord group – which you should totally join by the way – someone came in and asked for help setting up their capture card for gaming. Without seeing what they were working with, I was able to talk them through the process of getting everything going. At the end, they took a picture of the results. On the shelf was a laptop with OBS on, capturing Fortnite. On the TV was the same OBS feed.
“Wait, why does your TV and laptop have the same video feed?” I asked.
From there, we ultimately deduced that for the purposes of gaming, the capture card they had purchased wasn’t going to work at all for their needs. Bummer.
This is a cautionary tale.
I adore my Elgato Stream Deck. Yes, it seems very pricey for a handful of buttons. And no, you probably shouldn’t buy the Stream Deck Mini because six buttons isn’t enough for most. However, my standard Stream Deck has proven to be more than worth it. With this device, it makes it so easy for me to seamlessly juggle between scenes, toggle audio sources on/off, activate my voice changer, trigger my sound board, and so much more. If anything, I’m pining for the Stream Deck XL so I can have access to even more buttons.
Regardless of how much I and many others may recommend this controller, it’s hard to overcome the sticker shock to really understand the Stream Deck’s value proposition. If you want a taste of what it’s like to have a Stream Deck but don’t want to pay Stream Deck prices, consider these alternatives.
A 5000+ BP Zangief player immediately decides to take a holier-than-thou approach to Rose’s fireballs by simply blocking them until he loses. He quickly follows up his loss with the hateful message below.
I’ll gladly take the free win and the Battle Points, but I won’t accept anyone trying to paint me as the bad guy because I didn’t follow some non-existent set of fighting game gentleman’s rules. It’s people like this who also foolishly believe that throws are cheap and should not be used in any fighting game ever. These gentleman’s rules DO NOT EXIST. You play to win and that’s that. We live in a world where TAC infinite combos in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 are deemed legal by the biggest fighting game tournament in the world. A world where a glitch became heavily used in Capcom vs. SNK 2 because it made the game better.
Furthermore, we live in a world where Zangief can beat Rose! Watch the above video where Aquasilk overcomes any on-paper match-up advantages I had to beat me into submission. M3gatron427’s refusal to fight only further amplifies his ignorance and lack of match-up knowledge.
This is fighting games in 2014. Everything is fair game and anything that isn’t gets patched out. If you want to get under my skin in Ultra Street Fighter IV, don’t throw a match and then send a salty text message as a parting shot. Those childish antics nothing. If you really want to grind my gears, beat me in the game.
(one of many hate messages I received from a salty Deathstroke player in Injustice: Gods Among Us)
I hate the word ‘cheap’. In the world of fighting games, ‘cheap’ is most overused and misused word in the vernacular. It is a word that does more damage to the fighting game community than most people think. When someone takes a loss, many are quick to dismiss their own mistakes and learning opportunities by using the word as a flimsy crutch. With that mentality, most players will never get anywhere in a fighting game.
Losing to something ‘cheap’ isn’t the problem. Odds are, what you lost to wasn’t cheap at all. Heck, if you were willing to put in the time and effort to actually improve your abilities, you probably could have a viable counter ready for any tactic that is perceived as cheap. In this edition of the Universal Fighting Game Guide, we’ll talk about the word cheap, what it means and why you should stop using it immediately for the sake of your growth as a fighting game player.
In Third Person 