long post ahead probably

Having commentated in the osu! world cup for several years now, I guess I can share my opinion on the meat of what's been discussed so far in the thread, as well as what I agreed and disagreed on.


I'll start with the preferred style of casting. This is common in e-sports and, hell, regular sports, you have 2 or 3 people casting a game, but they fill different roles. One of them commentates the game at hand, how the players are doing, the score difference, as well as get loud and excited when needed. You'll also need to come up with catchy one-liners and classic sentences that people will throw back at you at every single opportunity. This is play-by-play casting.
Then there's the quiet one, never really gets too excited, this person is here to analyze the games, the maps, how they're going to work between each team, what each player in the game is strong or weak at, basically anything relating to the inner workings of the game. That's your color commentator. He'll try to get in between two of the play-by-play commentator's sentences and give off some interesting insight about the situation at hand. He's also your go-to guy to debrief and analyze between the games, with the play-by-play asking the questions.

This will come as no surprise, but I am not a color commentator, despite the name. I very much thrive in speaking loudly and incoherently about the lights showing up on my screen and having people feel the excitement through my incessant yelling. Jokes aside, that's what I do best. Although if you've heard my type of casting, there's something that probably has annoyed you before and was hinted at earlier; how I cut off everyone. Now, I have to say that as a play-by-play, that can't be helped - if you're having a discussion about the game and all of a sudden one of the teams completely tilts and breaks combo repeatedly, you have to take control and start the play-by-play again. Cutting off people is necessary if you're describing the action. Now, I know I also cut people off at unnecessary moments - That's just me being a dick, but I don't do it on purpose.

Okay, I do it on purpose sometimes, to annoy ztrot. Sure.

The next bit I wanted to talk about is the subject of tournament experience and how good you are as a player. Now, this can be proven elsewhere again (esports, real sports, yadda yadda) but a play-by-play commentator absolutely does not have to have any deep knowledge of the game. I'll take an example in League of Legends since I know the esports scene fairly well, half of the casters in the western regions are not pro gamers. When they stream playing the game they are completely average at it. But they've been around the game for long enough to be able to call the action well without mistakes. Same goes here. Circles get clicked. It's not that hard to describe.
Now the colour commentator thrives on having experience. He loves bringing his knowledge as a former pro. He can notice everything the play-by-play and most of the time, the viewer as well overlook and brings it under the spotlights. I know for a fact that when I casted with Raiku I had immense synergy with him because it was so natural and simple to discuss the maps, the players, their strength and weaknesses, things like handling stress when you're playing, etc. Things that you would only know through extensive knowledge and game skill.

Finally, and this is gonna fondle some robinsons, I have to bring up the issue of "reliability", as it is called. It's been brought up to me countless times behind the scenes. And I have to come clean, I was not the best person when it came to respecting schedules. I was often late, sometimes absent, sometimes I just couldn't cast any of the games during the week-end, and sometimes my voice would get shot. After getting a stern talking-to (this was prior to OWC 2014) I promised that I would do anything in my power to show up to the games on time, cover as many of them as possible on reasonable hours, and if I had to miss any games, warn people in advance so an alternative could be found. Now, I'm sure the people who keep track of attendance will love to prove me wrong on this, but I remember doing a pretty bang-up job, at least in the OWC. The problem wasn't covering the games. I actually started getting blamed for not showing up for enough games towards the end of tournaments. The reason for that is, as you may know, our asian demographic is quite skilled at this game -- and timezones exist. Which frequently meant I was supposed to get up in the middle of the night to cast a game. And, well, that's just not an expectation I could meet. I bailed after the Taiko World Cup, which had EVEN MORE games at inconvenient times, and I guess that was the end of that.

Now, I'm sure I'll get the argument that some people do pull it off - and they pull it off well (s/o to my main man ztrot), but I cannot help but feel like requesting for 24h availability is much too demanding. Especially for play-by-play commentating. You are never going to pull off your best if you have to force yourself out of a night's rest just to catch a game to cast -- You're never gonna be at 100%. I've been there and I've seen the people who do that regularly and I am adamant on this. If you're expecting someone to be on time and fill out the best they can the matches for the day, that's perfectly fine -- the opposite would be suspect. But expecting a commentator to be available and ready to cast at any time from Friday to Monday is just unreasonable. You're probably losing out on a plethora of talented people who would be ecstatic to perform on stage if they weren't bound to a few hours a day. You need different people to fill different timezones. Once again, going back to esports with League of Legends, where casters switch every 3 matches in general. Even with a relaxed schedule like that, casters have had voice issues (i've had my share of them); PiraTechnics, a recent addition to the League of Legends casters was unable to attend its world championship because of it. Montecristo, who casts the Korean league, has had the same issue (although he has a much more stacked schedule). Exerting your voice without restraint over long periods of time will ruin your health, don't take it lightly.

Yeah. I'm not exactly sure what the point of that post was, I guess it's alright insight from someone who's been in the ropes of this for a long time.

And since I'm probably not going to bother to get in game and I know he's around and reading this thread, I might as well. So yeah ztrot I don't know what the sitch is cause I was obviously shown the door earlier in the thread, but if you have a different opinion and feel like having me on for old times' sake i'll be around during the weekends, just hit me up with a match that's in a reasonable time frame and we can bring out all the KFC memes. 👌

Please take Color, kthanksbye. No really, he was the favorite caster for lots of people, me for sure. If you could sort out the timezone issues as he said, I'm pretty sure he would be there every time you want him to (if not I will shrek him myself) and we could once again enjoy a great cast from this already experienced man. There is really no need to stretch people to the maximum of their availability, they have lives themselves and I'm pretty sure the osu! casters (even if paid for what they're doing) can not sacrifice everything to be there 24/7, especially after a hard day of casting already. Considering that there was only few casters available last year (4?) this really is an easy-to-fix issue by simply raising the amount to 6, maybe 7 casters from as broad timezone margin as possible.

Wait is mr color not commentating this year? Because he had to be the best caster out of the whole casting team last OWC and the reason that made me stay watching even after I got permabanned from chat because of the happystick shenanigans.

fartownik wrote:

Sign 3 additional commentators and match them as 2-person teams with the already existing ones according to timezone.

This is how it's done in pretty much any sports show.
One guy being "main" commentator (like the one who tells the action of a match) and one supporting who is usually an expert in a given category (e.g. David Beckham co-commentating a football match).

Let's hope there won't be bancho related player drops this year (no I am not talking about when players used skype)
Last year was a disaster because of that

I thought the bancho drops were 2 owcs ago, and ddos problems were last owc

or was it bancho being ddos'd? ugh I can't even remember that far

I mean the cases when bancho dropped various players during the match/right before the mp results screen due to some problems on the osu! client/bancho side
It's just that recently I've played in another tourney and got kicked to the main menu out of the blue (my connection was fine)
I just want to mention the problem before it's too late

Absolute recipe for disaster. Why aren't countries allowed to choose their own captain in the first place and have them create their desired team.

YodaSnipe wrote:

Absolute recipe for disaster. Why aren't countries allowed to choose their own captain in the first place and have them create their desired team.

1) Who's to stop random players claiming themselves as captains and registering teams?
2) They are (ideally) going to pick people who will make the most reliable captain. Attempting to avoid favoritism in team member picks, and instead pick the best players.
3) Loctav has already said the captaincy can be passed off to another player.
4) Countries can't really pick a captain, instead it is a select bunch of players picking the captain.
5) What if the captain is not allowed to play due to breaking rules?

I don't see why you think this is so bad, honestly it's probably the fairest way to go about selecting teams. If countries have already created the teams before-hand, whoever is selected as captain can just make that the team.

buny wrote:

I thought the bancho drops were 2 owcs ago, and ddos problems were last owc

or was it bancho being ddos'd? ugh I can't even remember that far

DDOS was 2 years ago, that's when we had the secondary bancho server.

Bauxe wrote:

1) Who's to stop random players claiming themselves as captains and registering teams?
2) They are (ideally) going to pick people who will make the most reliable captain. Attempting to avoid favoritism in team member picks, and instead pick the best players.
3) Loctav has already said the captaincy can be passed off to another player.
4) Countries can't really pick a captain, instead it is a select bunch of players picking the captain.
5) What if the captain is not allowed to play due to breaking rules?

I don't see why you think this is so bad, honestly it's probably the fairest way to go about selecting teams. If countries have already created the teams before-hand, whoever is selected as captain can just make that the team.

1) In Canada there's never been this issue. I don't remember it ever being an issue, and if it was it was dealt with.
2) A country doesn't need help choosing its captain.
3) So a random captain is chosen, then said captain (who may not be the best captain) chooses a team (of players that may not be the best choices for this tournament). That's a really poorly thought out idea.
4) We've used this method in the past to great success. I can only speak for Canada as a country, but as far as I know we've always been able to come to a consensus on the ideal captain without the need to have one picked for us.
5) Then they will obviously not be allowed in OWC anyway so this point is moot.

I think its unnecessary. It sounds to me like its possible to have a team captain that isn't the right team captain make a team that wasn't the best team or the one that should've been made for this tournament.

it may be unnecessary for Canada, but there was a ton of controversy iirc previous owc with captains and whatnot. A lot of rosters had to be changed too because of players not eligible to play, so this should be tons easier by just forming teams from a list of verified players

I think there were also cases where teams were actually being submitted from two different captains, which caused even more confusion

Personally I'd like to give this new process a try, what's the worst that could happen?

Bauxe wrote:

DDOS was 2 years ago, that's when we had the secondary bancho server.

so long ago rip

buny wrote:

it may be unnecessary for Canada, but there was a ton of controversy iirc previous owc with captains and whatnot. A lot of rosters had to be changed too because of players not eligible to play, so this should be tons easier by just forming teams from a list of verified players

I think there were also cases where teams were actually being submitted from two different captains, which caused even more confusion

Personally I'd like to give this new process a try, what's the worst that could happen?

Okay, then have this be the solution for countries that have these issues and let other Countries that have no issues like these make their own lineups with the proper Captain. The troll potential is far too high if the wrong captain is chosen.

Is it only possible to sign up for the country you appear to be from in here in the forums? I am not from here, I just live here.
Just want to make sure.

How about this:

As a country (Cananda), decide on what team of eight you want to submit for the tournament. Then, have those eight, and ONLY those eight players register for OWC. At that point, it doesn't matter who they pick as your captain because the only eligible players are players that you have all approved for anyways.

And in the rare case that some random player decides to register without your knowledge, do you really not have the faith that the organizers couldn't pick out that one random and ignore them?

YodaSnipe wrote:

Okay, then have this be the solution for countries that have these issues and let other Countries that have no issues like these make their own lineups with the proper Captain. The troll potential is far too high if the wrong captain is chosen.

Fragmenting the way of choosing teams just adds increased confusion.

If this doesn't work this year, I'm sure they will change next year. But I believe this will be a much better solution.

It worked fine in 3 world cups, it will be fine for OWC as well

It's interesting (actually shocking) the number of people that are backing this. I honestly don't think it is right, but I guess we'll see. Hopefully it all works out in the end.

the_robot wrote:

How about this:

As a country (Cananda), decide on what team of eight you want to submit for the tournament. Then, have those eight, and ONLY those eight players register for OWC. At that point, it doesn't matter who they pick as your captain because the only eligible players are players that you have all approved for anyways.

And in the rare case that some random player decides to register without your knowledge, do you really not have the faith that the organizers couldn't pick out that one random and ignore them?

You want as many people to sign up from your country as possible. There is the possibility that in your "only those eight players", some get barred out for violating the osu! rules and then you only have 7, 6, maybe even 4. And no, we do not let others sign up after the 18th - if you didnt sign up, but your core team has denied players, you can not ask others, who didn't sign up, to join.

So whoever makes efforts to only make a specific team sign up and stop others from signing up will most likely damage themselves, as they will have no list of candidates to substitute possible rejected players with. There are even chances that your "only those eight people" will receive 6 rejections and the entire team has no chance to create itself, either.

So people, make your entire country sign up, if needed. Make your options as widespread as possible, so you can guaranteed go into the world cup with the best team that is foundable.

Any attempt to pre-form teams and only sign up with these 8 are not working out. Experience speaks here. And drama is bound to happen in case someone decides to find that suddenly unfair that they can not roll in anyone else that didn't press "sign me up" during the registration phase.

You have been warned!

YodaSnipe wrote:

It's interesting (actually shocking) the number of people that are backing this. I honestly don't think it is right, but I guess we'll see. Hopefully it all works out in the end.

If you don't need help, make the chosen one publish the candidate list and discuss it/form the team like you always did. I don't see the issue. No one is stopping you to use your selection method as you did before internally.
A troll potential only exists if we deliberately pick trolls and idiots to be captains. That won't happen. We know 98% of the people we are dealing with here, so do not make it look like we roll a dice to decide who gets the captain. You can pick your ideal captain however you want. We just pick someone to get in contact to in order to make it happen. Who ends up with the title of the captain and who gets a team member is totally up to you guys.

In past world cups, we gave the last to the decided captains and almost all of them shared the list with the fellow candidates. They discussed in a group who will end up in the team and who will get the captain title at last. The decided captain mailed me their group decision back. Some decided captains did not even end up in the team at all.

As you can see, if you would just not assume too much that everyone but yourself is an asshole that boycotts your team and trust people a bit more, you could be less frustrated and less worried about this entire method.

Note that you can only participate if you are of a osu! global ranking of #5000 or higher and did not violate the osu! community rules in the past 12 months.

Just wanna clarify, a few random silences for spamming or inappropriate conversation or whatever doesn't bar you from entering the competition right?

Tasha wrote:

I've played in three different world cups for taiko. We placed 4th in 2013, were disqualified due to absent players in 2014 in bracket stage, and ended 7/8th in 2015. I am FULLY aware of the stress players are under in a world cup match. Are you?

In that case, I apologize for including you in that comment. I should have done some checks before saying that. However, the point still stands for ztrot and deadbeat.
Also,

Tasha wrote:

Are you?

No, but I'm not commentating nor do I have any desire to do so.

Apologies to bring this up again, just wanted to say that before it became too late to do so.

plaatinum wrote:

Just wanna clarify, a few random silences for spamming or inappropriate conversation or whatever doesn't bar you from entering the competition right?

I really doubt it, else it would eliminate a fairly large portion of the player base. I'm sure that is the last thing we want after last year.

Loctav wrote:

If you don't need help, make the chosen one publish the candidate list and discuss it/form the team like you always did. I don't see the issue. No one is stopping you to use your selection method as you did before internally.

I am satisfied.

plaatinum wrote:

Note that you can only participate if you are of a osu! global ranking of #5000 or higher and did not violate the osu! community rules in the past 12 months.

Just wanna clarify, a few random silences for spamming or inappropriate conversation or whatever doesn't bar you from entering the competition right?

mmmmhnah. Unless you have like 15 341h silences in a row or being a gigantic dick all over the places, that doesn't matter. That doesn't mean that you shall head out and receive more silences. This is my personal stance on this. A singular silence doesn't matter. Albeit being a known troublemaker might be a different story, but I have never seen a case so far that were refused to participate for a handful of average silences.

xasuma wrote:

Is it only possible to sign up for the country you appear to be from in here in the forums? I am not from here, I just live here.
Just want to make sure.

Anyone?

I don't know if this has been brought up, but can we potentially have 40 teams (5 in each of the 8 groups for the group stage) for OWC 2016?

Minifrij wrote:

Tasha wrote:

I've played in three different world cups for taiko. We placed 4th in 2013, were disqualified due to absent players in 2014 in bracket stage, and ended 7/8th in 2015. I am FULLY aware of the stress players are under in a world cup match. Are you?

In that case, I apologize for including you in that comment. I should have done some checks before saying that. However, the point still stands for ztrot and deadbeat.

I don't see this as a factor at all though.

What does this bring to the commentating table? I think people are discussing the wrong points here. The difference between feeling the pressure and just knowing that there's pressure on players is negligible and can be ignored in terms of a commentating stand-point. What are you supposed to say? "Wow, look at these players, the pressure is immense because I know about it."? It's not even worth a debate, you can at most mention that there's pressure, but even that much is obvious by the viewer.

The only thing I can see where experience can help is the thought process of what maps to pick, but even that is something you can figure out yourself without any experience by being able to estimate and quantify a players skill from the current performance and previous performances/general history and player type.


But I find that having commentators from different regions would help out the schedule, that'd be a big plus if it weren't for loctav's argument of reliability which I completely understand as it has happened a few too many times in other tournaments imo.

loliforz nailed it.

I'll admit when I'm wrong, apologies.

We eSports now

KevEz wrote:

USA USA USA USA USA USA USA

ITALIA ITALIA ITA...uhm all best italian players are rip

This year's groups will be one fierce battleground :3 I can't wait to see.

By the way, just throwing a thought in even though it won't change anything(I'm sure someone questioned this before).
The bracket-thing encourages versatility and consistency throughout all kinds of gameplay-difficulties.
While I can see why a FL-bracket would be lame I think an EZ-Pool would be interesting as this Game-Mod is indeed based on player skill and yields replicable results for the same player without having to practice the map before a lot.

Endaris wrote:

By the way, just throwing a thought in even though it won't change anything(I'm sure someone questioned this before).
The bracket-thing encourages versatility and consistency throughout all kinds of gameplay-difficulties.
While I can see why a FL-bracket would be lame I think an EZ-Pool would be interesting as this Game-Mod is indeed based on player skill and yields replicable results for the same player without having to practice the map before a lot.

No.

Forget EZ, mate. Despite the fact that low AR is a challenge, the accuracy window increases, which makes the low AR challenge moot.

So we will get notification about getting in or not at the last day ? :- )

KevEz wrote:

USA USA USA USA USA USA USA

CANADA CANADA CANADA CANADA CANADA CANADA

Endaris wrote:

By the way, just throwing a thought in even though it won't change anything(I'm sure someone questioned this before).
The bracket-thing encourages versatility and consistency throughout all kinds of gameplay-difficulties.
While I can see why a FL-bracket would be lame I think an EZ-Pool would be interesting as this Game-Mod is indeed based on player skill and yields replicable results for the same player without having to practice the map before a lot.

2/10

Well, put it this way. Good thing "England" isn't playing in this World Cup... right?

Minhtam wrote:

Well, put it this way. Good thing "England" isn't playing in this World Cup... right?

Right?

lmfao

Brazil will dominate this OWC, trust me plebs

Teams to watch out for (a lot of ifs) (These are the Juggernauts)
Poland: Poland has always shown strong with their performance in OWC, last years team was good to get to 2nd place. WWW was most obviously their star player. This year, IF Rafis joins team Poland, Poland will be a force to be reckoned with. Rafis has proved this year that he is one of the best players in osu!standard in 2015. Him combined with WWW is a dream to some polska fans. The other considerations for the other 2 main slots is AmaiHachimitsu (who performed very well last year) and fartonwik. The other players that can sub in will probably be listless and Wilchq. With this team, Poland could finally take a world cup.
Japan: Japan has proved to never fail with their amount of skill. Last year they took 1st place against Poland. This year it's going to be somewhat different for Japan. The original team (Guy, Mercurius, rrtyui, Potofu, Poruteri, Sinch, and serea) is probably going to have to exclude and make some changes. Depending on the new map pool, which I hope is going to be harder, some might not be as skilled as some newcomers to play these maps. In my honest opinion, Recia will be a BIG pick for Japan, he's a very consistent player that can do a LOT of HDHR plays. My next pick for Japan would be moca. moca is a very consistent nomod player, he's very good for nomod consistency and it fits in with the new scoring system that favors accuracy more than combo. My next 2 picks will obviously be Mercurius and Guy, they are the cornerstone of the Japan team and can always be the star player or the backup to the star player, they never seem to fail Japan. IF rrtyui decides he wants to play in the OWC BOYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY the competition will be amazing. rrtyui has proven time and time again that he is one of the best players in osu!standard, amazing consistency, and can do anything. If rrtyui is not going to be in the OWC, then serea and Potofu are going to be my picks.

Teams that are questionable:

Germany: There is an uprising of new players in Germany, but I don't think they have what it takes to really go against the skilled players, Cookeasy and Dustice are your best bets.
Taiwan: Taiwan has proven to be skilled, but hvick is the only amazing player compared to the top players, I don't think Taiwan won't get past Round of 8 at most.
UK: UK has some amazing players, Crai, Doomsday, and Tasty Beverage, and possibly jesus1412 are what represent the UK. I've seen Doomsday prove that he is a player to watch out for this year but the team as a whole will probably get out of group stages, but in terms of beating the titans, not a chance.
South Korea: This will probably piss a lot of people off, but South Korea will probably not get too far in Knockout Rounds. Angelism and Hakurei Reimu haven't been on top of everything lately, plus without My Aim Sucks and sayonara-bye . South Korea has kind of lost it.
Edit: There's so many countries that this post would be too long.