only if Condawg promises not to say anything racist

honestly, beyond even the chance for gamer words, the biggest hurdle is just the logistical nightmare it is for production.
it may be decently easy to do at a LAN event or something similar cause you've got all the stuff there, but online I can't imagine it being trivial

Could you elaborate? To the best of my recollection it just requires the casters and the players to use the same mumble. Is the problem recreating the 90sec delay bot that had been previously used for it? Does it take long to set up? Other than that it is just requires the producer to link the channels when they want to hear the comms. Something I'm missing? What do you mean by "all the stuff" that is required and not present for online games?

Take a wild guess

From memory, but it's been a while:

• Getting teams to join, sometimes on short notice
  
• Finding a Mumble server location that both teams won't hate due to ping and routing reasons
  
• Trusting teams not to use certain words that get you in trouble with Twitch
  
• Having someone host and babysit the mumble delay bots (also fix mumble flood protection settings so the bots can mass join)
  
• Dealing with desyncs during pauses. The delay bots are out of sync as soon as a pause starts until 90 seconds after the unpause.
  
• Getting casters to use the comms during interesting moments, breaking up their flow / desire to talk

Everyone on same local setup, much more straightforward to set up a comms relay. That and you've got multiple producers/directors to monitor and decide when to listen in to comms, lifts a lot of overhead. Online it's one person having to juggle all that stuff themselves and the setup inevitably becomes a little more complex, even if

were around.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's a cool idea and could definitely improve the viewer experience and whatnot, but at the end of the day the judgement sits with producers and whether they want to jump through the extra hoops and effort (as well as take the risk), and also the players to put themselves under constant scrutiny by having their comms become public at any moment.
If players are comfortable with (potentially) having to control themselves more and (the already understaffed) producers are willing to take on extra work you won't hear me cry foul.

then again who am I to talk I only speak over gameplay I don't got no professional opinion.

I enjoyed the stream of your match alot btw. Granted I joined in late (~22cet), so maybe other viewers felt exhausted by that time. But i wanted to point out, not everyone found the game boring. 90% of the viewers are silent in chat anyway, so who knows how the majority felt about the game. As a viewer I'd appretiate listening into the comms from time to time, but reading through the other answers it seems unlikely.

First of all, I much appreciate you taking the time to respond.

As an example, let's say we tried implementing this in the current ETF2L season. Since setting them up seems to be a fair bit of extra effort and since some teams don't have english comms, it wouldn't be necessary to set them up for every single game that was casted.

If we attempted to have team comms for matches between wG, tf2easy, league of shadows and my team, I can almost guarantee that with these teams you wouldn't have to worry about people using "certain words" that would get us in trouble with twitch. You could have the teams play their pre-match scrims in the mumble so that you have more time to set everything up. I have never heard of people complaining about lag in mumble, is that a thing? As long as the mumble server is in europe and is functioning properly, that is a non issue. I think the casters taking a small break at times to listen to the comms is not necessarily a bad thing, they get a little breather and they get insight into what the teams is thinking, insight which they can use to create a higher quality cast.

As for the issues regarding pauses and technical details, I'm not going to pretend I know how much of a pain all that really is. If it really is more hassle than it is worth, then fair enough. It is a shame if that is the case, because from my perspective they added so much to the entertainment value of the cast and got the viewers way more engaged. It adds personality to the mix, which I feel is currently very much lacking since there isn't many player interviews or even post game interviews anymore. I feel that is what most people tune in to watch, they want to see their buddies win or the people they dislike lose and hear their turmoil in the mumble.

I'm sure I speak for many high level players when I say I am eternally grateful for all the people still working on TF2 production and those who have in the past. My intention is not to push you to take on more work than you can manage, especially since I'm sure there is an overload of work with TF2 production already anyway, and very little reward for it. I will however keep my hopes up, that in some way we can spice up the production of these casts, because I think there is potential for much more than what were currently doing.

imo if you want this kind of content out there, (and im sure a lot of people also do), you should record+upload or stream your own pov. this kind of content is done a lot better after-the-fact than live, because we can curate actually interesting parts. the chance of casters going to ur comms at an arbitrary time and actually experiencing the whole tense atmosphere of a team, and still having enough % of the game casted by actual casters is pretty low. from memory of this happening in the past, most of the live randomly chosen lets-go-to-comms moments were very boring, or in the worst case, people were gamer-wording.

i think in the best case, we could have recordings of the whole thing and go to replays or highlights of the comms, which is what most other esports streams do (for the above reasons + strats leaking). but imo its probably better for the teams to do this content themselves, because logistically we just do not have enough producers or enough time to do that stuff, and im sure a lot of the teams wouldnt comply with wanting to use a different mumble, people listening in etc.

https://i.imgur.com/GkpX4qo.jpg

Fair points. I personally would not have an issue with occasional strats being leaked seeing as anybody can get their hands on the STVs of our games anyway and be able to decipher most of the strategic adaptations or any pre-set up stuff from just that alone, but I can see how many players might not agree with me on that and be would uncomfortable with it.

As for the void of such content in the game right now, I may be looking to fill some that in the future the best I can. This post was aimed at just the TFTV casts and their production, as this is a topic I've wondered about previously and felt I was lacking answers for why we weren't doing something that would in my opinion improve the spectator experience so much. <3

https://youtu.be/fiI2AVC7nG0?t=1487

Dunno why this came to mind, I vaguely remember someone saying this had something to do with it back in the day, but could be wrong.

Also how can we forget THIS
https://youtu.be/7Vexsq1FXKo?t=4728

That's hilarious, more reason to bring it back really.

Bro have you heard of ixy?

good one domo

i could ruin you Mr.Haggren

i think they did this at the TI and i was like "that is cool"

Dude just have the casters cast from the ether mumble everyone uses that for their team comms anyways

One of my favorite instances of team comms being displayed in a match.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAyNpqushkc

While I wouldn't mind going to team comms in casts, I do think that overall it would be a lot more effort for production and teams than it would potentially be worth, due to how last-minute TF2 production normally goes. I think there could be some worth to doing it on LAN for GFs where sometimes the 90s stv isn't used, but you're asking a lot of from (usually) a sole production member who has to already organize everything/contact teams for regular season matches.

https://youtu.be/1eDaBwmQQOI?t=1253 There were so many absolute gems like that.

In my time, I have brought it up as something we could've added back to TFTV. The logistics are there to make it possible, it's simply the teams aren't willing to cooperate with something so trivial as comms.

In an ideal world we wouldn't just want audio, I'd love to intergrate player cameras into the HUD so that we can put faces to player's outside of just LAN events, innovation we are years behind other esports with.