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.

WHICH IS WHAT WE'RE DOING

and as we said before as soon as we mention an FC/SS the player breaks it, which is super awesome jinx powers MLG

Mara wrote:

I never understand how people can get so much drama out of these things.

Drama is the main driving force and entertainment of OWC to begin with.

So mention it as soon as anybody breaks or gets a 100 and make them SS the entire rest :b

and yes ^ the whole point of tourneys is the hype. otherwise this would just be random mp match

Now that Aqo mentions it, you guys could incorporate more color commentary (see what I did there?) about the players, teams, maps etc. (Give us a more detailed overview of the map, analyze player strengths, weaknesses etc.) between maps and during lulls in play-by-play. Just some friendly critique.

Mara wrote:

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

I know, right?

It's a nice contrast going on here. Offending the commentators and streamers instead of criticizing the maps or rules. You know guys we can be happy that someone even signed up who can provide this quality of streaming. From my experiences the commentators doing their job right. About the streaming.. ye it lags (fps drop inside the stream) for me, but seeing the 1000-2000 live watchers, I just don't care~.

*higurush goes back to his observation post*

higurush wrote:

Offending the-

this is the core of the problem. that people think of criticism as offense instead of as advice

I appreciate the criticism I have gotten so far. However, some of it only has the purpose of offending others because things don't go they way they would like it to. Once the 15 minute rule was made people starting complaining about it even after we gave our reasons and they continued to say the same thing. This also led to people complaining about other things (streaming, commentating).

Aqo wrote:

higurush wrote:

Offending the-

this is the core of the problem. that people think of criticism as offense instead of as advice

Ye because if a large crowd does the same, it can more or less been taken as an offense~

Makar wrote:

I appreciate the criticism I have gotten so far. However, some of it only has the purpose of offending others because things don't go they way they would like it to.

be mature enough to ignore any words that a random unknown person posted on the internet that might have been intended to offend you and instead look at them objectively as a source of information to learn from to perform better in the future

(again this is not a direct reply to you makar, more like a general reply to all people who take criticism as offense)

That's exactly what I have been trying to do, though conversations just go in circles here
Also, even if one of the staff seems to "rage" on this thread due to something offensive, we actually take everything into consideration anyways.
I'm pretty sure the commentators will improve thanks to these comments and I know when maps were picked people complained but you guys are getting better and considering them anyway.

It just annoys me to hear unfounded criticism over stuff we actually do correctly. It's like people are purposely trying as hard as they can to bitch about something.

Aqo wrote:

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.

This is kind of an interesting point. I mean, you don't need to know every player's BPM range, favorite mappers, three sizes, relationship status, etc, as you're hardly being paid for this and I'm sure you have better things to do than sift through every player's thousands of scores. But one possible suggestion could be to take a look at the "Top Performances" of a couple of the higher-profile players (ranked top 500 pp). You can get some interesting information out of players this way without too much research. Are they getting HD+DT SS scores, or are they playing HD+HR on difficult maps (or maybe even FL)? Do the maps tend to be high BPM streams, crazy patterns, low BPM, irregular timing, etc? You may be able to pin down a player's general strengths and playstyles like that, and the commentary will that much more colorful. It could at least provide interesting background during slower moments in songs or in between map picks.

Just something to consider. I have heard some commentary regarding players (good at low BPM, good with HR), and it's been really interesting.

@Color: Wouldn't be OWC without the drama; some people just like to cause disturbances for the sake of disturbing.

Regardless of how people view it, staff takes into consideration everything being said. People are acting like the staff is completely disregarding all input given and that they couldn't give a hoot about the players. Truth be told, they listen, however the main goal here is to settle things so that it works better for everyone as effectively and efficiently as possible, even if that includes rejection on the players' end sometimes (this obviously means it works in favour of players too of course, it's not a one-way street like some people think and believe). It is inclined to become progressively better in the future. Just stop looking at it like it's a battle against staff and players or no good's going to come of it...it's just senseless.

Mr Color wrote:

It just annoys me to hear unfounded criticism over stuff we actually do correctly. It's like people are purposely trying as hard as they can to bitch about something.

That's the reason why staff has had to regurgitate the same message over and over already. Despite people reiterating their issues several times even after having the reasons explained to them, we are all taking "criticism" into consideration. Most people (including staff) need to step back and think from all perspectives before sputtering though.