just let kyou commentate

Thatgooey wrote:

I have a really good internet connection and computer for streaming, but I don't know if I have the schedule to do it.

This is the main problem for streamers at the moment though. We have two streamers who are both in the eastern timezone, so it's difficult for us to stream matches at 3-5AM

If I had to be honest:

Stream is terrible. 720p is unwatchable since it get's lagged constatly (image freezing) and it doesn't even look like 720p. Again it's not just me since I usually watch 1080p streams without major problems (while downloading shit via torrent at high speeds, meaning 3MB/s). Then again on low quality you can barely see combo count.

Hitsound spam is annoying, though peppy is already working on this so I guess this is ok.

Commentators are clueless about what they're talking about. Doing some research about maps being played and each player overall performances would be a good idea. Getting comments late/early I don't even know what's the problem is something you can fix, I've found myself watching streams where I myself was talking and everything came up late. Meaning there was like a 2 minutes delay@video AND audio (Skype conversation). Anyways commentators should study each map, know what parts player are likely to miss on, do a little research about each player (I don't really know many but sometimes I'm watching and it's really easy to tell who's gonna do well or bad because of how they play).

And the 15 minutes rule is, indeed, useful, but there is a priorities problem. You can show up 20 minutes late, but then again you gotta join the game 15 minutes earlier than the time you arranged. Having to wait 15 minutes before the match w/o playing can be troublesome since your hands "go cold". I'd change that time gap to 5 minutes (unless your cat is on fire or you're playing Stream Compilation you shouldn't have any problem with this) and even let the player play 2 or even 3 warm up maps just in case.

Only good thing I can say about this is the stream is almost always online, which is good, and most matches are being played w/o much trouble, but really there is A LOT to improve, rather than the 15 minutes thing. Like really I would love to know why you need the players to be there. If you want the initial line-up you can get that information via PM. You can set up the stream while players are just screwing around, etc.

I agree and disagree with silm here. yeah, there are definetly issues that are worse than what loctav tries to fix.

on the other hand, for a high quality stream, your pc has to be forged by dwarfs in the depths of the hell and enhanced by dark magic. ok, not quite as good, but you get the idea. without having either rich parents, a good job or just general luck in life, the probability that some random osu-guy has the machine required for high quality streaming is low enough on itself, and then they would have to agree that they stream.

the stream, as it is, is probably one of the better streams who have to deal with these kind of issues.

also I think KRZY is right about the point that players are more important than the stream, and the organizing. this tournament is small enough to be organized mostly by the players them self. any kind of extra stress will only lead to a lesser tournament experience for the players. I am willing to sacrifice my comfort for the players, if it helps them to play the best that is possible for them.

FreedomofBirds wrote:

You have to know, the enemy team also hay to wait 15 minutes, so what? A Korean team won‘t loose against a not-so-good team just because of the wait

am I the only one who found this funny

Wishy wrote:

Stream is terrible. 720p is unwatchable since it get's lagged constatly (image freezing) and it doesn't even look like 720p. Again it's not just me since I usually watch 1080p streams without major problems (while downloading shit via torrent at high speeds, meaning 3MB/s). Then again on low quality you can barely see combo count.

Resolution isn't everything when it comes to quallity. The stream is 720p, yes, but the bitrate is low for reasons mentioned in previous post. We were instructed by peppy to use this resolution knowing this.

Wishy wrote:

Hitsound spam is annoying, though peppy is already working on this so I guess this is ok.

If I knew this wasn't intentional I would of easily fixed it myself. I figured it was intentional since this shouldn't be a bug due to peppy's ability to already be able to adjust volume levels on the client (music is only played from one client). Also, peppy never mentioned anything about it and he is always with us when we are streaming to nitpick everything so its the best we are able to make it.

Wishy wrote:

And the 15 minutes rule is, indeed, useful, but there is a priorities problem. You can show up 20 minutes late, but then again you gotta join the game 15 minutes earlier than the time you arranged. Having to wait 15 minutes before the match w/o playing can be troublesome since your hands "go cold". I'd change that time gap to 5 minutes (unless your cat is on fire or you're playing Stream Compilation you shouldn't have any problem with this) and even let the player play 2 or even 3 warm up maps just in case.

Honestly it would be okay if it was only 5-10 minutes, but something like 30 seconds like KRZY did in the previous match will cause us to be delayed.

Wishy wrote:

Only good thing I can say about this is the stream is almost always online, which is good, and most matches are being played w/o much trouble, but really there is A LOT to improve, rather than the 15 minutes thing. Like really I would love to know why you need the players to be there. If you want the initial line-up you can get that information via PM. You can set up the stream while players are just screwing around, etc.

Some of it has to do with how the spectator client works (though peppy is working on making this more automated so extra time isn't needed). We already ask for initial line-ups 15 minutes before the game is made, but most of the time the captains have no idea (which is another reason for the joining the match early thing). It usually takes them 15 minutes to finalize this (most likely because all of the players are warming up so communication is very slow). As I said imo it should really only be 5-10 minutes. It's still a little bit more than we need, but it gives us extra time in-case something goes wrong. 15 minutes isn't long at all though, seriously. An extra 5 minutes shouldn't affect you, just use it to go to the bathroom or take breathing exercises or something.

yay my map

if the stream is low quality because of the internet connection of the streamer, get someone to stream with a better connection.
also the delay on commentating can be fixed by either
having all the commentators in a tournament client and watching through there
or having an internal stream where they can watch and commentate and then that gets restreamed to the public one.

silmarilen wrote:

if the stream is low quality because of the internet connection of the streamer, get someone to stream with a better connection.

See previous posts.

silmarilen wrote:

also the delay on commentating can be fixed by either
having all the commentators in a tournament client and watching through there

Not everybody can use the spectator client though, and that would require peppy to make a bunch of different account for everybody. The client isn't nearly as stable as osu either (there have been a few times where the client crashed during the matches). Players would have a shitton (8 per commentator) of spectators too lmao. This might be looked into though.

silmarilen wrote:

or having an internal stream where they can watch and commentate and then that gets restreamed to the public one.

...Why would want to do this? xD

Makar wrote:

silmarilen wrote:

or having an internal stream where they can watch and commentate and then that gets restreamed to the public one.

...Why would want to do this? xD

Less delay, I presume. But there would be more work involved (setting up a second stream, etc.)

Kanye West wrote:

Less delay, I presume. But there would be more work involved (setting up a second stream, etc.)

"restreaming" isn't exactly a good idea, though. The only way I see doing this would actually work properly is doing both streams on the same computer, which would take a ton of power and a ridiculously strong internet connection. It would also cause a bigger delay in the time it takes for the players to finish a match and for the stream to show that.

All that is true.

If your Internet connection is not good enough, then get someone with a better one to stream (I could give it a shot but I'm not sure if my PC is good enough, wouldn't mind giving it a try).

I don't understand what's going on with this "commentating delay". Just stream from your PC, don't talk, or either commentate from WATCHING your own stream from another PC rather than the osu! spectator client itself. If you're still getting commentating delay then you're doing something wrong (thousands of DotA/LoL/any game players stream and don't have this issue).

Anyways the stream is "good enough" so none of what I said above is a really big complaint. It's improved a lot compared to last year and it is running smoothly. I'm still against the 15 minutes rule but to be honest, if you changed the warm up thing to something like 3 maps instead of 1 there shouldn't be any problem. Give this some thought since there is usually, from what I've watched, 10~15 minutes of pretty much nothing after matches so there is time to add 1 or 2 more warm up maps. Plus doubt anyone will care spectating people play crazy/interesting stuff like they already do before matches. Then again please don't use the "we need time to organize" card, because it's been several times that I've seen commentators talking random stuff or "answering questions" because there is nothing to do. There is indeed enough time to let the players play, into the multiplayer room already, a 2 extra maps just for warm up purposes. This would solve KRZY's problem I think.

Wishy wrote:

If your Internet connection is not good enough, then get someone with a better one to stream (I could give it a shot but I'm not sure if my PC is good enough, wouldn't mind giving it a try).

See previous posts (again).

Wishy wrote:

I don't understand what's going on with this "commentating delay". Just stream from your PC, don't talk, or either commentate from WATCHING your own stream from another PC rather than the osu! spectator client itself. If you're still getting commentating delay then you're doing something wrong (thousands of DotA/LoL/any game players stream and don't have this issue).

Again, the delay is created -because- the commentators watch the stream instead of the client. If they were able to commentate based on the client there would be little to no delay in this. It takes time for the stream to reach twitch and on to you (it isn't instant which you seem to think it is). Because of this, their commentary gets to me later and is added on to a part of the stream where they didn't actually commentate on.

Wishy wrote:

Anyways the stream is "good enough" so none of what I said above is a really big complaint. It's improved a lot compared to last year and it is running smoothly. I'm still against the 15 minutes rule but to be honest, if you changed the warm up thing to something like 3 maps instead of 1 there shouldn't be any problem. Give this some thought since there is usually, from what I've watched, 10~15 minutes of pretty much nothing after matches so there is time to add 1 or 2 more warm up maps. Plus doubt anyone will care spectating people play crazy/interesting stuff like they already do before matches. Then again please don't use the "we need time to organize" card, because it's been several times that I've seen commentators talking random stuff or "answering questions" because there is nothing to do. There is indeed enough time to let the players play, into the multiplayer room already, a 2 extra maps just for warm up purposes. This would solve KRZY's problem I think.

There have been many times where a match has lasted longer than an hour and so it goes into the time that another match is supposed to start. Surprisingly enough, this is usually because people get in later than we ask them to (another reason for the rule). We won't have time if we did 3 warmup maps. Also, not all commentators even have to organize anything (Mr Color does most of that work for them before the match starts). For them, it's just making sure they have sufficient people and going over procedures for our guest speakers which has nothing to do with the players. You really don't need that many warm up maps anyway. 10-15 minutes should not completely break your 1hour (or however long) warmup and if it does then there is something wrong with you. Again, if you want to know why this is needed, take a look at any other competition (marching band, talent competitions, dancing, singing, etc). In most of these you would have to show up an hour or so early from my experience, yet people complain about 15 minutes in a clicking-circles game.

Map pack please.

Oh right, I got the delay thing now.

Then start scheduling matches on a different way. Players must be the maximum priority and if they want to warm up until the last minute they must be allowed to. If you still don't like this, let the players join the room HALF AN HOUR before the match, so they can start playing random stuff or something I don't know, either that or let them join whenever they want. This tournament is not just a show this is about players actually playing, if you can't "organize" stuff that fast then you're doing something wrong.

Why do you need that much time anyways, 1 or 2 minutes should be more than enough for players to join and stuff, streamers don't really need to do much I guess other than click spectating on each player (do they even need to do that with that client) and nothing else.

What if we forced players to join early and warm up in the multi room instead of on their own?

Btw Wishy, things are slightly more complicated than you think they are :/. Everything you mention adds up to be about the time we are asking for. It's not like we are asking for a half an hour, it's only 10-15 minutes. It's nothing. I seriously don't understand why you think 10 minutes seems like forever to you.

just a little input over stream and commentating

I'm not about to do anything special or study any map or any of that bullshit. This isn't professional. If it were, you wouldn't see me commentating. I'm fine with you not liking the streams, and I'm also fine with you not watching the streams either.

I don't see what's preventing both teams from contacting the ref/tourney manager to create a room, getting in the multi room early and start practicing then until we start the stream.

Mr Color wrote:

I'm not about to do anything special or study any map or any of that bullshit. This isn't professional. If it were, you wouldn't see me commentating. I'm fine with you not liking the streams, and I'm also fine with you not watching the streams either.

While this is hardly professional, I don't really see the issue with taking a half hour and watching Autoplay play each map once just so you get a feel for them :/ You don't need to know it inside and out, just perhaps where some harder patterns are, and if it's an accuracy/jump/stream map. I mean, you're already volunteering time to commentate. Why not do a little preliminary research and make the experience better?

Also, this "if you don't like this tournament, you can shut up and go home" attitude is really coming off as unprofessional. This isn't just you, but from a lot of the staff over the last hundred pages. A lot of the criticisms have been unfounded/hostile, to be sure, but even polite concerns have been bluntly shrugged off and even attacked/threatened by the staff. I know you guys are human, and this is probably pretty stressful, but as people who chose to assume responsibility for something this big, you have an obligation to remain professional and rational at all times. This is true about any management/leadership position in life. Even if someone treats you unreasonably, you need to deal with it without resorting to the cold shoulder/iron authority. Even if you are truly considering everyone's input and making decisions accordingly, you're not giving off that impression, and I think a lot of the frustration from the players/viewers in this thread are coming from this impression that you are blatantly/rudely ignoring them in favor of your own judgement, and your own judgement only. Again, not picking on anyone in particular, but rather directed towards the staff in general.

Still, thank you for running the tournament. The stream is also a huge plus, and even if there are issues with it, at least we have one this year.

XGeneral2000 wrote:

Also, this "if you don't like this tournament, you can shut up and go home" attitude is really coming off as unprofessional. This isn't just you, but from a lot of the staff over the last hundred pages. A lot of the criticisms have been unfounded/hostile, to be sure, but even polite concerns have been bluntly shrugged off and even attacked/threatened by the staff. I know you guys are human, and this is probably pretty stressful, but as people who chose to assume responsibility for something this big, you have an obligation to remain professional and rational at all times. This is true about any management/leadership position in life. Even if someone treats you unreasonably, you need to deal with it without resorting to the cold shoulder/iron authority. Even if you are truly considering everyone's input and making decisions accordingly, you're not giving off that impression, and I think a lot of the frustration from the players/viewers in this thread are coming from this impression that you are blatantly/rudely ignoring them in favor of your own judgement, and your own judgement only. Again, not picking on anyone in particular, but rather directed towards the staff in general.

Still, thank you for running the tournament. The stream is also a huge plus, and even if there are issues with it, at least we have one this year.

Finally somebody else notices, lol.

Actually this is probably the best post in this thread so far.

I, kriers or cubes generally know the layout of the maps and what makes them hard or easy - we actually mention that in the streams
Valkyrie Dimension's high speed + speed-up beginning section
no pain, no game's overall tricky patterns + stream of stacks and sliders
45nen no Yukizakura's traps in Hidden
The low OD in Kyun Kyun Tamaran Inaba-Tan
The irregular rhythm in Shining Wizard
and so on and so forth. We're not professional and we're far from perfect, but anybody who's watched the streams thoroughly knows that we actually are knowledgeable about the map picks.

Also THANK YOU XGeneral2000 for the constructive criticism, even if, as stated above, in our case it's kinda moot

Mr Color wrote:

I, kriers or cubes generally know the layout of the maps and what makes them hard or easy - we actually mention that in the streams
Valkyrie Dimension's high speed + speed-up beginning section
no pain, no game's overall tricky patterns + stream of stacks and sliders
45nen no Yukizakura's traps in Hidden
The low OD in Kyun Kyun Tamaran Inaba-Tan
The irregular rhythm in Shining Wizard
and so on and so forth. We're not professional and we're far from perfect, but anybody who's watched the streams thoroughly knows that we actually are knowledgeable about the map picks.

Also THANK YOU XGeneral2000 for the constructive criticism, even if, as stated above, in our case it's kinda moot

He's talking about ztrot, Zallius and peppy's commentary.

ztrot usually knows what he's talking about too and generally doesn't mention maps anyway

Zallius and ppy barely ever speak

Mr Color wrote:

ztrot usually knows what he's talking about too and generally doesn't mention maps anyway

Zallius and ppy barely ever speak

They commentated some matches that were very early in the morning and they didn't even know the maps. Just watch the vods.

That must've happened very rarely since this week there was only 1 match I wasn't here for - Korea vs Uruguay and 2 matches I wasn't really active on

I have also been brainstorming today about doing something like map previews for the next round. I think I will work this week on making some play through videos of the maps to give people an idea of what to expect, and the things that I encounter and feel while playing the maps (going over the tricky spots to look out for, difficult patterns, map stats, ect.). I am to the point where I am very familiar with enough maps, to where I can easily identify them by name/sound/pattern, whatever and know exactly what the map is. I think it would be pretty cool, and I should have the time to do it. As a matter of fact, I'll go ahead and start on it today and see what I can come up with. I am a good enough player I think to have credible feedback on the difficulty of a map. I've gotten pretty into osu! lately, and I think this could be something cool I could give back to the community. I'll post an update later today.

I would still be interested in doing commentary as well, and I have experience with it from other games. I enjoy doing it, so why not. Maybe I am not very known yet, but that is okay. If anything, I will record the stream and review the replay for fun.

I think having one or two commentators who have knowledge about the maps is enough. Peppy and Zallius aren't really commentating, they're just hanging there to ensure that things go smoothly. I don't think we need 32 commentators from all 32 nations who can all give expert analysis on the beatmaps throughout the games, one or two is enough.

Yeah, regarding the commentating/knowing the maps, I think a lot of the concerns arose from the early stages (the first day or so). I remember watching some of the first matches and there wasn't much commentary during play (and I remember at one point there was confusion as to how osu's letter ranking system worked, something I would hope any skilled player would know). I'm terrible with voices, though, so I don't know who was doing what. I watched some of the more recent matches, though (like the ones just this last weekend), and the commentary was significantly more entertaining. I picked up the comments about the HD traps in 45nen, the Shining Wizard irregular meter, etc. That was really nice.

Also, I'd like to point out that I find it absolutely hilarious that every time someone mentions a player has an FC or SS, they break it.

sometimes we might get situations where not all commentators are available. For instance me and lolcubes stayed up late to help ztrot commentating and ended up so tired we lost out on all but the final match the next day. We certainly have gotten more used to our roles, though. I will keep trying to comment about specific details about the maps from my experience of playing them, since I am still participating in the tournament ^^

XGeneral2000 wrote:

Also, I'd like to point out that I find it absolutely hilarious that every time someone mentions a player has an FC or SS, they break it.

A staple of this tournament

Have you guys ever watched RTS commentary or FG commentary? Learn from them please~

(this is serious advice to commentators. This can make it a bit more fun for you in your roles too)

Thank you for being massively idiotic and linking commentaries to games that aren't osu!.

commentating on games works the same for every single game

you talk about the players
you hype the crowd up (yes, this counts for livestream crowd too) during key events
you talk about the matches

do it right
don't just sit quietly and talk about how you're drinking cola
(not meaning to offend anybody, I know it's hard and that you're new to this)

the commentary wasn't bad either imo, most of what I saw was already good. could be better tho. always room for improvement :b

actually those are pretty good videos as some of those commentators were great, such as the ones on the SC:BW video. Some other commentators I would recommend watching and think are pretty good are TobiWan Kenobi who commentates DotA 2 and Tastosis (Tasteless and Artosis) who commentate SC2.

Aqo wrote:

do it right
don't just sit quietly and talk about how you're drinking cola
(not meaning to offend anybody, I know it's hard and that you're new to this)

Stuff like this shouldn't happen anymore. Peppy got on to Mara's ass for doing so already.

"you talk about the players
you hype the crowd up (yes, this counts for livestream crowd too) during key events
you talk about the matches"

yes, cause clearly we didn't do that


General notification to people: if you have complaints, then that's great and all, but make sure they're actually founded.

Those kind of commentaries are usually done with all people in the same room, and rarely happens that someone talks over someone else. There are exceptions but those are already considered professional commentators and they do it over voice comm or something if they cannot be in the studio (and they usually are).
Not to mention they actually watch the stuff on their PC in real time, where we have delay of around 10 seconds at least, as someone already mentioned.

Those 2 problems are usually the cause of most of our bad parts, in addition that there is a huge disorganization happening in the background (which is why I think this new rule was implemented) where we don't even get notified about a map pick or a player swap (though recently this has been okay but only because several people are doing their best in the background without anyone even noticing).

sorry if this came out too straightforward, I think you're doing a great job guys :b just saying there's always room for improvement. aim high.

Plus these are games where commentary can actually get really hectic because gameplay ITSELF gets hectic. On a game like osu!, we're just waiting for stuff to happen. If both team are FCing the map, we're not gonna get all excited over nothing, it doesn't make sense!

The only part where we possibly could've gotten very excited (and I did) was for results of really close tiebreakers (Italy vs US, for instance)

Mr Color wrote:

If both team are FCing the map, we're not gonna get all excited over nothing, it doesn't make sense!

If I was sitting there as commentator and seeing full-FC-so-far, I'd look at accuracies and throw out stuff like "look at this player, he is really solid with acc on this bpm, he will keep it high all match long. this other player isn't good with 1/4 sliders, notice those slider100s. this player always claims he's not good with AR10, but so far he's SSing this HR map, what interesting standards". etc. dunno. talk about the players. talk about the meta aspect of the whole thing - the team rivalry, the predictions for the match, what happens to each team if they win or lose bracket-wise, and so on. there's always something to talk about.

I never understand how people can get so much drama out of these things. It looks like everyone is going to kill each other.

Be glad I stopped commentating - Loctav just needs to remove my name from OP.