I have casted, produced/observed, and just enjoyed comp TF2 as a casual viewer for quite a while - my thoughts, spewed out in no particular order:

I know Dr. Underscore of Fireside has a plugin called Flask where it matches your player camera in game to the observer's so you know what's on your screen is what the cast will display, without having to deal with stream delay or a separate observer feed. When I cast with them I find it a really powerful tool to know that what I'm talking about and what the stream is seeing is 100% in sync.

Static cams can be a useful tool for an occasional cutaway to cover chaotic but localized fights like last pushes, but should be used lightly since a good POV is always more compelling.

I've always thought pre-made smooths that follow rollouts, like they do in CS:GO, are theoretically possible within the engine and could be incorporated into casts with enough production value.

I think cheatfeed is a must have for observers when it's an option - I know some older producer/observers swear by their ability to follow a fight organically and refuse to use cheatfeed at all and I question that approach. I think the best way to observe is a healthy mixture of using your own gamesense as an observer to predict the flow of the game, while also checking the cheatfeed to make sure you catch critical moments.

The danger of cheatfeed is that when you rely only on cheatfeed to observe you start to lose any surprise or drama in the match, as a viewer you start to sense that the player the observer cuts to will always be the one winning a given fight or making an effective play.

put the camera on the medic if you see a soldier die and a medic use uber on the cheatfeed so you get to see the med getting forced. ore put it on the soldier dying. anything but the scout getting the cleanup kill. even better if u can do it in sacs where the med doesnt force

I've rarely seen it happen but there's this one drone pov camera shot that is complete dog and it makes me nauseous

Cheat feed makes the game infinitely more fun to watch. I wish we used it in EU. It doesn't matter if it sometimes makes you be able to guess that this sniper will hit headshots or this scout will pop off, I still want to see those moments from the players POV and not just in the killfeed

I dont know if its possible or if it has ever been done for tf2 but sometimes on other games cast (I'll give here an example on counter strike) we can see at the begin of a round what the team does but in a tps view/ free mode camera. We could see at the begin of a round how the team rolls out etc. it would be more pro.

Here's the example:
https://youtu.be/26blgQu96Ps?si=-XCWoW9RY7zUyVvq&t=2866

Would actually be awesome if we could start using this in EU. A VDO Ninja relay (which is also rare) doesn't quite hit the same after I got to use the plugin when having Wiet observe once. I'd be more than willing to go through the setup every time just to have a much smoother time keeping track of what stream sees.

I tend to try and do a mix of in game fly by and observer feed (VDO NINJA usually) when I cast PBP. The only issue I find, which might be contradictory to the full on chest feed follow idea, is that switching to a completely different pov (fighting a side fight or switching a medic on the opposite team) during a fight can sometimes be jarring and makes it slightly harder to follow the narrative of a fight. This is especially bad with maps like product where a fight behind may be covered or a sudden switch to a sniper makes you miss the flow of a fight.

Again this is less of an issue with an aerial view included. The lack of cheat feed in EU games for the past couple of seasons has actually made observer feed a better way to cast pure PBP imo. I think having a cheat feed is overall advantageous for a viewer perspective.

I didn't know about this but I would agree and say that production-caster disconnect is the one thing that annoys me. Listening to a fight being narrated while watching an isolated med being picked off (or vice versa)

I've also had the same idea about replicating the CS still cams/smooths for things like rollouts, teams busting thru (uncontested) chokes, and teams setting up a last hold. Mainly just filler shots to make it more enjoyable

i think the complaint of caster/obs disconnect mostly kinda falls on the casters rather than the observer ngl

we used to regularly use a plugin that let the caster snap to observer pov any time we wanted to on a toggle bind, but nowadays we dont use it for most coverage for reasons im not really comfortable talking about on the forums
we DO however have a live obs feed for casters to use (i casted from it exclusively last season). Getting used to casting from a first person feed can be quite scary and i understand why most of my peers prefer to cast from an stv (usually at lan casters have both an stv and a stream feed) but it is very doable. Obviously when casting from home youre almost always doing it from a top down pov, which we would never show on broadcast. Getting used to pov casting takes a bit more time and a bit of practice
tf2 is a really dense game and a lot of the time there are too many things going on at once, as an observer (or anyone) you WILL miss something important when watching through a game, and atm getting the big boy esports split screen that league/dota/cs etc. has is just not realistic

this is a very rambly way of saying that the observer/caster disconnect will probably always be a thing and tf2 fights are too big and complicated for it not to be the case, but casters have a fairly straight forward way of fixing it ty for reading