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.

We need some asian commentators to scream like krzy (dat pun) when someone misses.

Pls asian commentators, where are you

Kanye West wrote:

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.

We are actually doing as best as we can on this and are trying to improve, but thanks for the criticism.

-

Also keep in mind that osu! players are most often known by their strengths and as they are only shown in their rankings, we can't say much about other aspects where they might do suprisingly well/bad. To name an example: Shadowsoul did remarkably well on the harder insanes, despite the fact that some people think all he can do is [hard] difficulties.

Lastly, this isn't soccer or baseball or even sc2. Most good players aren't even known outside their own country/circle of friends. This tournament has made me realize there is simply no way for us to keep track of the amount of players that don't consistently submit good scores or in some way are visible in the community.

The commentators are fine, i watch matches and too much hype or talk would distract me of what i really want to see, the comments are great since they talk enough, more than that would just distract me from watching the match and shitting my patns putting myself on the guys who are playing .. it's a game where u have to be fully concentrated for not to miss and too much hype or a guy who says everything that's happening in the game would piss everyone off, you can't compare osu to a fighting game.



Also about the 15 minutes rules i think it's way too much, i as a player lose a lot of concentration with that many time, i do feel like 5 or 7 minutes is enough but well, already enough talk about that i guess.

I tried to keep the time-before-match section as short as possible. Setting 15 minutes is the result of examining the last two round where I hosted many of the hold matches.
These 15 minutes are a pure result of examination of how the majority of matches went and we decided that this amount is low but also high enough to ensure everything (not only the stream, but also giving the teams the chance to shortly discuss their setup and gathering their team) runs smooth without disturbing the schedule and make the tournament run as planned.
You have to keep in mind that such scaled tournaments, spread over such a long time, need a lot of organization, it eats hell of time.
I can understand if you feel like being in the disadvantage because you get 15 min cut off, but also keep in mind that delays of 20+ mins can happen due to hectic situations, since the "match was already supposed to be started".
I highly prefer taking 15 mins of your time than stressing you, me and all the others with circumstances that are resulting out of the lack of time.
It might appear as a disadvantage to you for the first, but on the second, this is only for helping mostly you to have a flowing tournament, that don't make you fail because of hectic, stressed and chaotic situations.

If you are able to collect your teams very quick, you're absolutely free to warm up till time is used up or to calm down and mentally prepare for the ongoing match.
If you collect and warm up or warm up and collect makes no difference, yet the first options is more profitable for the whole OWC.

I hope this makes stuff more clear now. If the critics are unfounded and just consist of blaming/accusations about stuff that isn't the case, you get replies as before.
But if you actually stay calm and polite and remove your subtextual "you all suck and fail at everything and never think of us", you get appropriate answers.
Please always keep in mind that you are free to suggest something. But pulling off the "drama card" will make me discard any of your words.

Makar wrote:

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).

I'd like to point out that this is wrong; it's the other way around. Several people, including me, have pointed out how the rule is more harmful than beneficial, yet all we got as a response was "you know where the door is" and "we need time to prepare streams." I've argued how this should not be of higher priority to players, but all Makar keeps saying is that he's given his reasons, he is right, and I am not listening.

I said I'd drop the matter, but his attitude is ridiculous.

Loctav wrote:

I hope this makes stuff more clear now. If the critics ate unfounded and just consist of blaming/accusations about stuff that isn't the case, you get replies as before.
But if you actually stay calm and polite and remove your subtextual "you all suck and fail at everything and never think of us", you get appropriate answers.
Please always keep in mind that you are free to suggest something. But pulling off the "drama card" will make is totallyhomo discard any of your words/

I agree with everything except this part. Staff should give appropriate answers/consideration/whatever no matter how rude others are imo. However, that does not give others the right to go off like that either. Bad attitude should be treated a different way (such as silencing if it continues).

KRZY wrote:

Makar wrote:

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).

I'd like to point out that this is wrong; it's the other way around. Several people, including me, have pointed out how the rule is more harmful than beneficial, yet all we got as a response was "you know where the door is" and "we need time to prepare streams." I've argued how this should not be of higher priority to players, but all Makar keeps saying is that he's given his reasons, he is right, and I am not listening.

I said I'd drop the matter, but his attitude is ridiculous.

Think of it this way then: If we are not able to have anything finished by the time you are supposed to play, you won't be able to play because nothing will be setup yet and things will be late. We don't do this so we can be lazy, we do this so you are able to play your match in the time that you had asked for. I've never once asked you to quit the tournament.

Also, now that Loctav has actually made a post explaining the basis of the new rule, I'd like to voice another concern, which has already been voiced before: "hands going cold." Given that all 8 players have arrived in the room 15 minutes prior to the match, it would be quite bad for the players to just sit there for 15 minutes exchanging friendly words and doing nothing much else. Loctav has said that we will be free to play warm-up matches; I would like to confirm how this can go about. Are we just allowed to pick any maps and play before we actually begin the match on matchtime as 8? Will picking maps that are in the map pool for warmup purposes be allowed? If so, will this not interfere with the MP history later on? I've been told by Loctav after last match that, when we were trying to play the tiebreaker map for fun, we should do it in another room because it will make the MP history look confusing. Is this still the concern?

KRZY wrote:

Will picking maps that are in the map pool for warmup purposes be allowed? If so, will this not interfere with the MP history later on? I've been told by Loctav after last match that, when we were trying to play the tiebreaker map for fun, we should do it in another room because it will make the MP history look confusing. Is this still the concern?

iirc peppy said that wasn't allowed, but I honestly don't see why you shouldn't be able to especially if its not streamed (maybe because you can see a possible outcome and if you should pick the map in the real tourny or not?)
MP history is always confusing, so I doubt that matters.

Also, I still think the time should be lowered to 5-10 minutes :/ I think it only takes 15 minutes because captains fail to cooperate quickly, but if they know they have to be on earlier things should go more smoothly

too much text in this thread

less blahblah, more JB/vikings/baguettes/datBrazilianSingerNobodyKnows/PortugalSucks/etc.

XPJ38 wrote:

too much text in this thread

less blahblah, more JB/vikings/baguettes/datBrazilianSingerNobodyKnows/PortugalSucks/etc.

I agree. Meaningful discussion on the topic of the 15 minute rule has become that of 2 or 3 people anyways, would probably keep this thread cleaner if the rest of it is done elsewhere (just give us the discussion results later).

Makar wrote:

Think of it this way then: If we are not able to have anything finished by the time you are supposed to play, you won't be able to play because nothing will be setup yet and things will be late. We don't do this so we can be lazy, we do this so you are able to play your match in the time that you had asked for. I've never once asked you to quit the tournament.

We all know who I am referring to with the door comment.

But thanks for your response. I've suggested a time period of five minutes instead of fifteen, but after reading Loctav's latest post I'm ready to accept 15 minutes for the better running of the tournament.